Posts

Me, mile 50

Cuyamaca 100K Race Report – 2018

Here we go again. I’d put myself on the waiting list for this always sold out race sometime back in the spring. It seemed unlikely that my name would ever come up. I was a few weeks out from running Stagecoach 100 when I got the invite…
Rosedeer Hotel, Wayne, Alberta
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Ashes to Ashes: 2016 in the Rearview Mirror

New Year's Eve at the Blackfoot Truckstop Diner Blackfoot Truckstop Diner, in Calgary, watching fireworks go off at the zoo across the river with a handful of folks all of whom had seen better days. New Year's Eve, Rhubarb Pie, having spent…
Trans Canada Highway
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The Old Man’s Last Winter

The old man is dying. This is a series of notes I wrote while visiting him in Canada.Return of the Prodigal Son1974. I was touring artist colonies in the French countryside with my Grandpere, a retired French diplomat and hobbyist painter. He…
Salton Sea
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Smell the Barn

The old man isn't getting any better."Experience Vibrant Seniors Living!" says the brochure for Rocky Ridge Retirement Community.It doesn't seem like his experience was all that vibrant.He took a spill 5 weeks ago in his apartment there. The…
Take Care of the Land

85 years old.

My buddy Ken is 85 years old. He's a old vaudevillian who hit the road before he was 10, playing the accordion and tap dancing through Missouri, Kansas and Iowa, the remains of the old RKO circuit.He met his wife in New York. She was singing…
Vancouver Island
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The Old Man, pt. 2

The old man is in his 80s now.He's not doing so well.Always taciturn except when drunk (and, often, even then), it wasn't so easy to see his mind slipping away. He was never a fast man - his speech, his movements, everything about him was tightly…
Bart & Bernice
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The Old Man & the Wedding

My stepfather and I had not talked in 14 years. Our relationship had never been that terribly close because we're both suspicious, distrustful characters, and we'd both given up on each other by the time I got to be about 10 years old.My little…