13 States To Go

I thought I was done posting for this month but then I saw that tomorrow, March 29th is National Vietnam War Veterans Day and I thought I might write a post about it. Boy did that send me down a rabbit hole. Writing this listening to Sirius CM Classic Vinyl from the 60’s and 70’s and after going through pictures and other memorabilia a good part of the day I’m numb! My mind can’t keep up with everything running through it right now.  I found and read a journal that I wrote when I was onboard the USS America for my second cruise to Vietnam. Boy did that bring up a lot of memories. The most predominant was how much I disliked being in the Navy, being aboard ship and being away from home. Not sure how long this post could turn out to be but if I organize thoughts and pictures before I finish it could be pretty long. The reason is simple that period of my life wasn’t just about Vietnam it was about so much more that made me the person I became booth good and bad.  I was neither fo...

I’m writing this on March 27, 2020 what would have been my brother Rob’s 63rd birthday. So young when he passed away the first day of March. How many more people daily are having to say goodbye to loved ones even more now because of this damn Coronavirus? Since this pandemic spread and we as a nation for the most part have been placed under stay at home orders everything has changed.  I won’t bore the reader or even attempt to explain what I mean by the “New Normal” because you’re either living it as you read this or if time has passed, you lived it. The hope I have and that I hope others share is that we will get through this and come out better on the other side. Lord knows enough has happened since the 2016 election to divide this country and try to tear it apart. Hopefully if anything positive can come from this pandemic it will be to unite us as a country again. Sadly as I write this I don’t have a lot of confidence in that hope because a significant percentage of our populati...

Confluence - An act or process of merging.  Generally when I hear the word confluence I think of two rivers coming together. For example this picture was taken of me standing at the confluence of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado when I rafted the Grand Canyon in 2000. The turquoise of the Little Colorado is so obviously different than the muddy water of the Colorado.  Sadly the month of March brought a different kind of confluence. A confluence of negative events and I’m not sure those are strong enough words.  On March 1st my youngest brother Rob passed away from cancer in Buffalo, New York. While it was expected that the cancer would win the end came much sooner than expected. There’s no point in going into specifics it was just to early and he was too young. He wouldn’t have even been 63 until the 27th of this month. I last saw Rob on one of my road trips in 2017 when I left Stacie’s after we ran the GO St. Louis Halloween run and then decided to travel and ...

Obviously in my previous post I started writing about February and what was going on with PT and some other things but that was nothing. For being the shortest month this February seemed like it would never end because of so many unknowns.  The first week alone included PT where the therapist was teaching me basically muscle strengthening exercises to strengthen the support around my knee. As I progressed through PT for the month it became more obvious that stopping running at the end of October and wearing a brace for three months had been the smart thing to do. My MCL had healed and I was once again mostly dealing with soreness and some pain from my arthritic knee something that won’t improve. The good news is that my PT doesn’t say that I can’t run again but that I need to be very cautious and listen to my body and eventually the knee will probably wear out. It’s not a matter of if but when and I’m not going to live my life sitting around waiting for that to happen. So beginning...