Our Christmas Letter 2022 part 2

   If you have read my previous letter, you may have noticed that it stopped at the halfway point of the year the month of June. So, this part, logically will begin with July 2022.

   July

   On the first Jan and I took the trailer back to Lanesboro for a few days, continuing our tradition at Eagle Cliffs campground. Things took a downturn the next day, when we received word that my youngest brother, Paul had passed away in Duluth at 1545 in the afternoon. I did a blog before these Christmas letters with my feelings on his passing, so take a look at that blog for more detail. After that news we did our usual routine, with the fireworks at the campground with the Theobalds, me getting some riding and Jan relaxing with the trailer. We did leave the trailer with Eli, Lindsey, Leah and Aaron and they moved to another campground by Preston for a few more days in that area. Aarons' birthday was on the 10th, wow 14 already and moving up to MVL for his freshman year. The rest of the month was pretty regular summer stuff, although Jan spent some time pricing items for a garage sale for Paul and Marcy's things here at their home in St. James.

   August

   This was a fairly average month for us, with doctor appointments, Paul's estate sale and my almost annual Wyoming loop bike trip. Rachel also celebrated her birthday on the 18th while I was on the road somewhere in Wyoming, come to think of it. We had a wake for Paul at Bailey's in Ormsby on the 20th followed by scattering his ashes on the ball diamond in Odin. Jan and I did go to a few soccer games for Sam and Gus at various locations in eastern Minnesota. I see that I did start some maintenance work on our 94 Ducati, to get her out of cold storage and back on the road somewhat. Jan and I had lunch at the thrift store in Mountain Lake where our granddaughter, Leah, was working the lunch counter. Joe started college at NOVA and Annie and William headed to Robinson High School.  So much for August.

   September

   More soccer for Sam and Gus, Hans' birthday on the 5th and a few doctors' visits and my longest ride of the year. I was going to head out to southern Utah but reconsidered while on the way, ending up in southwestern Colorado again. I rode a route from Grand Junction to Norwood, Colorado that was a scenic surprise that I am going to ride again. Heading east from Montrose on a 31 degree morning and the stretch from Sterling to home in one pass. Oh ya, there was a mouse in my room at Sterling, and a recall on the BMW at Sioux City later in the month. 

   October

   October is a month with a few birthdays in our family, with William DeFor on the 14th, Jan Kuehl, my other half on the 22nd and Sam Theobald on the 23rd, I think that about covers it. Jan and I had grandparents' day at MVL with Leah and Aaron on the 13th and 14th, and more soccer games with Sam and Gus. I am also taking some tests to see if some of my health problems might be caused by my service in the USAF, time will tell, I guess. Towards the end of the month, I made a short run out to the Hills before the weather gets too cold for trips like that, also turned the BMW over to 70k miles along there. Earlier in the month we had a killing frost that froze the green leaves on the trees before they had a chance to fall off, kind of unusual to say the least. 

   November

   It seems like a lot of November is getting ready for what comes next in this part of the world, just like death and taxes. I had a VA test at the hospital in Spirit Lake, Iowa on veterans' day of all days, after which Jan and I drove up to Mankato for the usual freebees. MVL also has a very nice veteran's day program every year that I have been to since Leah, and now Aaron attend high school there. I did some maintenance work on the Triumph, changed oil on the Mustang, which also got a fresh set of tires. Believe me 265/35/20s are not cheap! A nice touch was that the day after the pleasant weather tire change, we got 6 inches of snow, so the GT went into storage for the winter. Rachel and Hans celebrated their 20th anniversary, can't hardly believe it's been that long since that magical wedding ceremony at the Conservatory!

   December

   The 2nd of December was a big day. The new B-21 stealth bomber was revealed, Eli reaches the milestone of 8k hours in his quest to be allowed to test up to the next level as an electrician and I-we, ordered another Ducati Multi Strada. Jan and I had lunch at our bank in Ormsby. Mars, which has really been on display this fall slid behind the full moon on the 8th, quite a sight. We actually made the drive to Chatfield one Monday night to watch Sam and Gus play basketball, diving right from soccer to basketball. Hopefully the weather will cooperate the next few months and we'll be able to see some of their games good Lord willing. As I am writing this final installment, it is at a -41-degree wind chill with a blizzard warning until sometime on Saturday, the day before Christmas. This year we are to gather at Eli and Lindsey's home for Christmas, hopefully this weather moderates somewhat by then. Tonight, it is a day later and if anything, the weather is worse than last night! Jan and I pretty much stayed indoors and putzed with things, as the internet was down from the night before. You never know how much you depend on the internet this time of the year until it is not working. Things are looking somewhat murky with Christmas this year, with the weather being such a beast, I guess we will have to see what tomorrow brings. I find it kind of depressing, that so much time and effort are put into celebrating Christ's birthday. I imagine it would be somewhat unorthodox to maybe celebrate some other time of the year. After all we are celebrating His birth not just the day. The important thing is that He was born for us on a day sometime in the year. The actual date is really immaterial, we have just chosen the 25th of December to remember His birthday. So, with that I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year, may our next trip around the sun be a good one.

   Pete Kuehl   2200 12-23-2022    

   

    

The Christmas letter from my viewpoint 2022

   It's that time of year again to look back and try to put down a reasonable facsimile of Pete and Jan's year in a blog format. I keep smaller and smaller records of what we have been up to during the year, so this epistle gets shorter every year. I will be laying out a month by month listing of weather and events in our lives, primarily from my viewpoint as the author. Someday Jan should be doing this as she has a blow-by-blow account of everything that has happened to us and our families a day at a time for years. So, now that I have that off of my chest, I will start off with the first month of the year. 

   January

    This month starts and finishes pretty much like all of the rest of the January's I have been through in the upper Midwest- cold and snowy. In between Jan and I made do with some basketball games, trips to New Ulm, Mankato and Rochester for assorted reasons. Rach got her Mercedes "truck". My brother Paul ended up in Rochester with covid that was touch and go for quite a while, but he did make a miraculous recovery that time. See my previous blog about him and his struggle with ALS.

   February

   February was busy, judging from my notes, with doctor visits, basketball for Sam and Gus, moving snow etc. etc.. Jan and I did celebrate our 51st on Valentine's Day, also birthdays for Annika who turned 16, Eli and Steve (Scuba), so it's a pretty busy month. Things like these tend to keep my mind off the cold and snow that need to be dealt with, and the lack of warm enough weather that keeps me from riding at all. Due to that fact a lot of the maintenance gets accomplished this time of year. Paul remains in Rochester, so Jan and I are checking the mail and the home for them.

   March 

   Kind of unique this month but all our girls' birthdays were on Tuesdays this month, with Leah turning 16, Lindsey a little more and Genevieve some more too. Typically, after complaining about the weather, I see that I had some bikes out for short runs toward the middle of the month. We had thunderstorms with snow and plain thunderstorms and snow, taxes, another stress test for me and dog sitting for the Theobalds while they took a spring break trip. Other than that, just another month off the old calendar.

   April

   April started off with bad news for our neighbor Leona, she got the news that her son Steve had passed away on her 95th birthday. Jan and I attended his funeral at Saint Olaf in rural Odin later in the month. St. Olaf is another local church that I have never visited along with Waverly, both nearby to Ormsby. Other than that, the rest of the month was cold alternating with winds and some rain and riding weather. The Theobald boys Sam and Gus are starting the soccer season already, with a game in Rochester at 30 degrees, burr. Aaron had his confirmation exam on the 24th and Gen ran a marathon in Cincinatti on the 29th. After the marathon she flew to Nashville to meet with Rachel, who was flying in from DC, which pretty much wraps this month up.

   May

   May is the big month for the boys in the family, with Paul on the 4th, Phil and Joe on the 19th and me on the 25th. Rachel and Gen spent the first few days of May in Nashville being tourists. After the 30-degree soccer game the end of April, Jan and I were back in Rochester on the 4th in sunny 65-degree weather. After some routine medical visits, I headed back to Wall for a couple of nights, so that I could ride into the airshow at Ellsworth and back and have a shorter ride home the following morning. A word of advice, if you should attend an airshow that has an F-22 demonstration, bring earplugs, it's extremely loud! Jan and I were back to Mayo for another follow up with my team there, things are still looking okay so far. I ran the Mustang up to Duluth to see Sam play in a soccer game and a short visit with Paul at the Solvay House in Duluth. Little did I know that would be the last time I would ever see him in this life. Our life went on pretty much like what passes for normal here, mowing the lawn, riding, maintenance on vehicles, and waiting for the frequent rain to let up. Aaron graduated from St. Paul's school here in town on the 26th, it hardly seems possible that he's gone through 9 years of schooling there starting with kindergarten. Jan worked with that class for several years as a teacher's assistant helping with subjects, so she got to know that gang pretty well over the years.

   June

    Number one grandson Joe graduated from high school and is furthering his education at NOVA, plus Gus is moving on to Lourdes, plus Eli finished his last year of electrician training.   I started the month putting tires on the BMW GS and Jan and I went to Sherburn to see the new Top Gun movie, it was pretty good. I recall that we saw the first version of it in Rapid City and my mom was along, so it's been a while back. Of note, I hit a buzzard while riding near Waseca, not fun. A note, if you are riding on the upwind side of a road and approach buzzards or for that matter any large birds be careful, they will always take off into the wind, regardless of what hazard is coming down the road. Luckily, I managed to duck and I only lost my turn signal arm and cracked a trim piece, could have been a lot worse. I attended a funeral of a guy that had hit a flying turkey and been fatally injured by the strike in the head. Soccer game visits, more medical checkups and of course riding, including a spin on some local gravel roads with our granddaughter Leah on our bikes. Jan and I met Rachel who was in Minnesota for a business trip in Bloomington. We drove to Rochester and met Eli and Gen, and attended a soccer game among other things.

  

   

Paul

    My brother Paul passed from this life to the next on July the 3rd at 3:45 pm in Duluth, Minnesota. Paul was born in Triumph, Minnesota on May 4th, 1953, and lived a majority of his life in this area. Due to the fact that Paul was nine years younger than me we did not spend a lot of time together until he was in his teens I guess. In the late sixties and early seventies, we spent some bike trips and camping time with each other. In 1974 Jan and I drove to California to give him a ride home from our sisters home in Oakdale. He had spent the winter working at the prison where she was employed. The route home took us to the Hearst Castle, Disney Land and the Grand Canyon. We decided then that we would return to hike to the bottom in 1975. The first part of August 1974, Paul and I were out in The Hills dirt biking when we got the call the Jan had gone into labor with our first, Rachel, we packed up and drove all night to get home only to find out it was a false alarm, Rachel did not arrive until the 18th. Spring 1975 found us arriving in a snowstorm and spending the night in the back of his Mustang before starting down the next morning on snowy trails. We spent a couple days in the canyon, had a few beers at the Phantom Ranch at the bottom, before swinging down to Mexico and back to Minnesota. Paul played fast pitch softball with Odin for several years and caught most of the time back in the days when lots of people showed up for the games and our mom worked the concession stand. We had a long history with softball because our dad both played with and managed the team in Ormsby, just a couple miles from Odin which were huge rivals back in the day. After Paul married Marcy in 1987, we went our separate ways so to speak with them moving to the Twin Cities area and then to Duluth.

    This next part is going to be something I have been dreaming up on my bike trips, you have a lot of time to work on subjects while droning down the interstate. It is going to be my vision of his arrival at the next stop in his life cycle, Heaven.

    Paul is riding in the passenger train of life when he arrives at his stop at 3:45 pm on July the 3rd 2022. His guardian angel says, "here's your stop Paul" and helps him off the train onto the platform at the station. When they step to the platform Paul finds that he is 25 and in perfect health again! His angel says, "well here you are, there are people to greet you, and I've got to go, there is one just being born, and they are going to need me". Paul turns and Jesus is there to welcome him home and show him off the platform and on to the welcoming committee. Mom and dad, Kathy and Howard plus several cousins too. The train carrying brothers Pete and Phil has left the station and continued on towards their stops in the future. Attached to the station is a wood shop that is fully equipped with every wood working tool known to man and in the distance, Paul can see green fields as far as the eye can see just waiting to be cultivated and harvested in their time. Beyond the corn fields far away are lights around a ball diamond that will need to be visited for sure, and maybe a nearby John Deere dealer too. It looks as if a person could spend an eternity here, and that's what he will do. 

    This is just my version of what a person's heaven will be like. Everyone that arrives there should have their own heaven within reason of course. This fictional tale is not biblical I'm sure, but just the author's optional reality.