Easter weekend PGR tour

Jan and I took a kind of long distance tour on Saturday to visit a few of the places that I have been to on Patriot Guard missions in the last couple of years. As is usual in my photo layout, if you read from the bottom up they will be in the proper order. We headed out Saturday morning with our cooler full of peanut butter sandwiches, soft drinks, and snacks. The first stop was at Duvi Wolf's grave site in Farmer, South Dakota. As can be seen by the photo, no gravestone is in place yet, but since her funeral was late last Fall I assume that no stone could be placed yet. We usually make several trips a year to Rapid City and the Black Hills, so I'll check back in the future to see how things are progressing. Farmer is another small town on the prairie that is virtually disappearing. I imagine that being bypassed by the interstate and having the railroad tracks removed didn't help. They actually had a high school up until 1968. It makes me wonder what the town was like in the 50's and 60's. I know that the small town - Ormsby population 220- that I came from, in 1960 could almost fill up a school bus with kids. Today I am sure there is no more than a hand full of kids in Ormsby, Minnesota. I digress, from there we headed mostly north to Willow Lake, South Dakota where the PGR helped dedicate a veteran's memorial in the city park. It is another very nice memorial in a small town with a special part for a local son Scott Saboe, who was a 33 year old helicopter pilot in Iraq when he was killed in action. I don't know if I am more aware of these memorials or that there are more of them being erected, but it seems as if I have run across a lot of them in the last few years. Anyhow, from there we headed east back to Minnesota to Dawson to visit the grave site for David Staab. It is at another rural cemetery that is kind of bleak this time of year. Sgt. Staab's headstone is unique with all of the etchings on it. I wonder what someone 1 or 200 years from now will think of the Chevy pickup? Sgt. Staab who took his own life after returning from Iraq is as much a combat death as anyone killed in action on the battlefield. His was one of the toughest funerals that I have attended, but I am afraid that it won't be the last. Next we headed north to check out a possible campsite at Lac Qui Parle state park. We couldn't do much recon there because of high water on the Minnesota river. The next stop was Lucan to show Jan the site of Captain Dan Days which I attended last year and had such a good time, as a matter of fact I have been to a couple of missions there. Lucan is a patriotic small town with a nice park and a brewery too, we took the tour last year. The last stop was at Eli and Lindsey's for a night cap, all in all we had a really nice day. The last few pictures are from last weekend when the whole tribe was at our place for an early Easter dinner. The Theobalds stayed over Friday night so we got a few on Saturday morning. Well, that's about it from here for now. The weather has taken a turn for terrific so I have had all of the bikes out for runs and oil changes and the 94 Ducati, Francesca, is running pretty good too after carburetor cleaning and fresh gaskets, new rubber, and battery. After the last winter we deserve it. Take care and stay in touch.

For Our Badger

This post will be for Genevieve who has acquired the nick name "Badger" over the years, partially because she attended college in Wisconsin, maybe not. This string of pictures kind of bookend the early years and the present time. I would have included some more but I am only up to her early years in my ongoing slide conversion process. I really wish that I was more comfortable telling my children how proud of them I am face to face, so I do it with the keyboard. I have found that to be true of most interactions. I think that it gives me more time to think or delete things that should not have been said. Anyhow, now that I have that out of the way, I really want my limited readership to know how proud I am of Genevieve and her accomplishments thus far. She has done well in sports and academics and just accepted a promotion at Mayo, but I think that her accomplishments as a parent may be the highest calling. I don't know if it a common feeling or not but I never expected any of our children not to be successful in life, the idea that they would fail just never occurred to me. I pretty much give the credit to St. Jan for how the kids turned out.
Following my usual format, the pictures are in reverse order. If you read from the bottom up you will see Gen from pre-birth through her own motherhood. At the very top she is with Gussie last "summer" at Spearfish, South Dakota and the next is at Gussies birthday party in February this year with Sam, Gus, and cousin Leah. The next couple should be self-explanatory and one with all the girls eating ice cream and at the bottom is St. Jan probably in February 1978. We will see 2/3 of the clan on Saturday for an early Easter get together here at our house so we will get to see them again. One of these days the whole clan will get together and it will be great, no more communicating on line or over the phone and the cousins can get re-aquainted. With that I'll end with, Gen I love you and am proud of you too. I hope that I have more time to watch you and your brother and sister's lives unfold in the future.

Our Baby is 30

This blog will be following the incentive from Rachel, posting for her daughter Annika. I really don't know why it should be so hard for me to tell my children that I am so proud of them, but it is. I wonder if it may come from my background. Man, the older you get the more that you recognise influences from your childhood poking through. Eli, I am not sure where you got your work ethic probably from your Mother, but it makes me proud to see that you are not afraid to work hard to get what you want. I ought to know I have helped on a few construction projects with you. We can see what a good father and husband you have become and that makes us happy for you too. You have gone from a child on a Z50 Honda to a rider that quite frankly scares me to watch at times, so I let you break trail when we ride off road. You have gone from entry level jobs to being an engineer for the Union Pacific. You have no idea how much pride we take in watching you grow into a man that we can be proud of. I hope that you don't find this too mushy but it is for a 30 year old that still kisses his Mom and I and says " I love you".

Love Dad

update of sorts

Just a short note to the two or three readers that may know me. St. Jan and I drove over to Rochester on Wednesday and spent the night with the Theobalds. If those boys get any bigger and I am sure that they have a long way to go, I will not be able to wrestle on the floor with them much longer. It is tag team time when they get going. Anyhow, the most recent visit to Mayo was a good one, with both Doctors Moore and Miller saying everything looks great, although they could just be trying to make me feel better, you just never know.. After our morning appointment we cruised the mall, or Jan did. I headed for Barnes and Noble after we both got our hair cut. We stopped in Mankato on the way home for a couple items and were home by supper time - 6pm to you non-midwesterners. Yesterday I had a new tire put on the front of our GS and made a PGR mission run over to Marshall for the funeral of another PGR member that died of a stroke over the weekend. She was Ginny Tusa, in her early 50s and originally from Jackson. According to her male friend she was an organ donor and eight of her organs were transplanted and a total of forty benefited from various parts from bone marrow to skin grafts, so in a way she lives on in an assortment of other people. I also got talking with another member that has an autistic grandson that is involved with making quilts out of old blue jeans. It sounds kind of cool. I think that they sew all of the pockets together to form one side and the use the legs for the backing. In the middle goes some batting and then they tie it. It sounds as if they are sending quilts all over the place as word gets around. Anyway I was home by 2030. Stay well and stay in touch.

SSDD

Guess what, it is still cold and snowy here, although, today it is in the mid 20s. Of course along with warming temperatures we now have freezing drizzle. It's funny, complaining about the weather does not make it any more bearable. I have been working on a project that gets me out of the house, I finished sheetrocking the ceiling in our new garage and last night I started on the walls. My neighbor Ray, loaned me his sheetrock jack for the project and it was a lifesaver. The toughest part was hoisting those 70 pound sheets onto the jack, once they were on the jack they were cranked up to the joists and screwed into place. Working the sheets up around the overhead door tracks, and light fixtures would have been impossible without the jack. So much for that. Last Sunday Jan and I took a drive up to Rosemount for a PGR mission to welcome home two busloads of 34th Division soldiers at their armory. These types of missions are a lot more fun than the other type, if you know what I mean. While we waited for the buses to arrive we were offered cookies, water and probably coffee, this is Minnesota after all but I didn't see any bars come to think of it. After a while we could hear there sounds of approaching sirens from cop cars and then the coaches came around the corner to be greeted by our cheers and applause. These troops had been in Iraq for a year in the area of Basra. Come to think of it I believe that the three funerals that I attended last Fall were troops attached to this unit. Ben Kopps' funeral was just up the street from the Rosemount armory and the others were in the southeast Metro just across the Mississippi from there. It was a cool but sunny day for a drive in the GT and we were home by supper time. A couple weeks ago Jan and I spent a few days in Rochester trying to take care on Gen and Steve's boys, Sam and Gus, while they were in Phoenix for the marathon. Gen ran and Steve cheered her on. Gen finished with a time that she was satisfied with. I think that most serious marathoners would crawl through broken glass to finish the race after running 26 miles. St. Jan and I chased Sam and Gus around while they were gone, again I had forgotten how much work is involved with a couple of active boys. One day we took them back over to Kellogg, Minnesota to a toy store that they had visited earlier. We will definitely will be going back there in the future. It is like a toy store in Europe perhaps, not at all like Toys Are Us for sure. Well, that's about it for now. I'll throw in a few pictures to illustrate the narrative. Take care and stay in touch.

The LONG COLD Winter

It has been awhile since I last posted here, but I have been busy moving snow for a couple of weeks or so, among other things. Last December I was working on our Christmas letter and I only have so many creative juices to go around, so the blog took second or third place. I feel like pa Ingalls in "The Long Hard Winter"- I think that is close to the correct title-by spending hours every day there for awhile, scooping, blowing and scraping snow. I spent some time on the roof of the garage scooping off a foot and a half of snow to lighten the load and raking off the house roof as high as I could reach and blowing out the drive ways. After dragging myself back to the house for a break the plows come by again and it starts all over in the driveways. Anyhow, this global warming is really turning out to be a bitch this year. Oh, and did I mention that the average temperature the first ten days of January was 0 degrees? Frankly I think that around here it must have been a lot lower than that, many days never got above -5 degrees. Enough about that. It looks as if the January thaw may be just around the corner. This is one of those winters when you are driving down a sub zero highway with the snow blowing across the road and cannot believe that six months ago you rode a bike down the same road in a t-shirt. The last PGR mission that I was on was up at Fort Snelling for a soldier that was gunned down at Fort Hood by the name of Kham Xiong. He was originally from Laos and his family had a long history of service, primarily in Viet-Nam and Laos during the war. While standing the flag line it was interesting to see all of the middle aged men in their assorted uniforms and berets shaking hands and hugging one another. Forty years ago they were all young men running through the jungles of south east Asia making life difficult for the enemy. Christmas was good this year although we missed the DeFor family greatly, they're still in Germany, probably for most of this year, so maybe next year. Gen and Steve and the boys made it from Rochester in nasty weather but they got here and that is what counts. My mother in law Bernice spent Christmas in the hospital after surgery for a tumor that has since turned out to be the only cancer site. This cancer business, it's getting to the point that almost everybody I know has had a go around with it. Anyhow, one of St. Jans' co-workers transferred to another position at the agency and they are not hiring any replacements so the work load just continues to rise. They have said that they may allow overtime to complete things which is a change. Jan would retire tomorrow if only there were some way of covering health care. It is amazing now-a-days how the health care angle keeps a majority of people working at jobs they really don't like just for the health care benefit and that is getting worse everywhere too. I have been extremely lucky to have had an account that paid for my health care after I retired that took me to medi-care and the VA. When I enlisted in 1962 I had no idea how valuable that service would be in the future, of course at that age nobody expected to live much beyond thirty, much less retire at a ripe old age of 62. I have been working on some more slides in this winter prison so I'll search around and add something new. I see in my last post that I used the same batch of pictures that I used in an earlier post, so with any luck at all these will be fresher. Take care and stay in touch. The pictures are from my brother Paul and my trip to the Canyon in 1975 and a trip that Jan, Rachel, and I took to Yellowstone the same year.

An Update of Sorts

This will be for my readers that are not on the e-mail lists. Last week I had another round of doctor visits at Fairmont and Rochester, mainly to reassure Jan that I will live another day or two. Fairmont was a visit with my cardiologist to get the results from an echo cardiogram that I had done the week before and things are just hunky-dory with my ticker. Hopefully that part of my body has inherited some genetics from my Mom's side of the family. Jan and I went over to Rochester the night before and bunked with the Theobalds for the night. Luckily we got there in time to chase the boys around a little before bedtime ( see Tatertot Hotdish ). The appointment wasn't until afternoon so we spent the next morning cruising the bike shops and the mall before heading up to 5 west to see Dr. Martin. He poked and prodded and ran the scope through my nose and down my throat to look for trouble and everything was good here too. We skipped out of there and ran for home. Saturday was another PGR mission to Buffalo, Minnesota for an airman's funeral. Ssgt Rory Gavic died at Hill AFB, Utah. He was 25 years old and a dog handler that had spent a tour in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The word was that his birth father had just recently passed away and maybe that had something to do with his passing. I have been to way too many of these missions, but I am afraid that they will just continue even with the efforts being made to recognise and treat PTSD in our warriors. I arrived pretty early after a 0600 departure from home and had the distinct honor of welcoming a new PGR member to her first mission. She also was a Gold Star mother that buried her son 5 years ago this coming February. I have no idea of the pain she must be suffering. She described something in her heart that needed to get out and she joined the PGR. Once word got around everybody was paying attention to her. The time we stood in line during the visitation hadn't been too bad she said when I asked her after that part of the service but she expected the internment at the cemetery to be a lot tougher and I expect that it was, although I did not get a chance to talk with her after that. She was lined up close to the grave site so that all of the ceremonies would be visible. I was surprised to have a comment on my last blog from a Gold Star mother in South Dakota. What a honor to be contacted by someone that is dealing with such a loss. On to sunnier subjects. The weather has been nice- for November- so I have managed to get out on a bike recently and my projects keep moving along. I replaced the timing belts on my 94 Ducati, surprisingly it was not that difficult, except for getting them over the sprockets, and it ran when I got done. I also put a performance silencer on the dirt bike and that helped too. I think that I need to rejet also but that can be a winter project as it sounds as if the temps are headed for the basement soon. Thursday this week we are off to Rochester to the Theobalds again for Thanksgiving. I am sure that it will be a good time. Everyone is staying over so that the girls, Jan, Gen and Lindsey can go shopping on black Friday morning. I suppose the guys will just stay in bed as long as possible. I think that I will post a couple pictures just to brighten up the page. Be well, and stay in touch.