Catching Up

  You know, I got the idea recently, that rather than send out long e-mails with pictures of what Jan and I have been up to lately, I would do short blogs. What do you think, kill two birds with one stone, maybe? Since the last blog I went on a PGR mission in Byron, over by Rochester a couple of weeks ago. Jan and Leah went along. We met Gen and the boys at Byron and they went on to Austin to tour the Spam museum, while I stood on the flag line for a couple of hours. I no sooner than dropped the girls off when it started to rain, so when we got in line at the church, I made sure that I was under cover, being one of the older vets at these events does have some privileges once in a while. The guy that we stood for was an Air Force vet about my age from Rapid City. I guess he was from the Byron area so that is why the funeral was held there. He will be buried at the Black Hills National cemetery, a place that I would like to have a marker at, in the future, of course. With the wars winding down things are slowing down for the PGR, mostly what we do now is vets from WWII on forward. I have been keeping track of the missions that I have been on, and it has been quite a few. You get a lot of time to think about what you are doing standing in the heat or cold or rain sometimes for a couple of hours, and a lot of things run through your head. You wonder about the person that you all are standing for showing the colors you all served under, the family members, mothers, fathers, siblings, husbands, wives and children of veterans young and old, how things are going for them? Then sometimes I wonder what I am doing there? I admit the idea of having an excuse to ride to these funerals is part of the equation, but there is more to it than that. When you hear from family members how much they appreciate you being there, it makes you realize why you keep going on missions. Anyhow, enough about that. Jan and I were over to Rochester for Thanksgiving at the Theobalds, and some Black Friday shopping for Jan and Gen. As usual, it was quite an event at their house, lots of good food and drink and Sam, Gus, Leah, and Aaron in the house the whole time. Lots of laughter and full tummies for all. Leah, and Aaron rode home with us, with a stop at Cabelas' in Owatonna to check out a sale item, which turned out to be not what I was looking for anyway, I did get a pair of warm gloves though. I took some pictures around the table at breakfast on Friday and I will throw them on with a photo of our maple about a day before the entire load of leaves dropped off. Enjoy?
Oh ya, Eli got a different bike just recently, a KTM 400. It looks good, and he will have the whole winter to putz with it.