Evening Light

The one picture I took of our backpacking buddies turned out to be a blurry suggestion of four guys laughing waving their arms and having  good time. We told stories, remembered many epic hikes and climbs, relived scary drives through whiteout snow storms and sleeping on the ground next to our cars so we could get an early start. There were several versions of the story of leaving Dave behind asleep on a picnic table. Apparently everybody thought he had gone home with somebody else. Fortunately for him,  we ran across him as we brought up the rear and gave him a ride home with us. There were memories of two who died far too young, two who are coping remarkably well with chronic illness, as well as more recent hip replacements and knee replacements. As the elder statesmen of the group OilMan and I have fewer bionic parts, but that is probably because we took far fewer risks....

We were awakened in the night by the sound of something trying to dig its way through the bedroom floor, but despite prowling around outside and under the house with a flashlight,, trying not to wake the fellows who were scattered about the house on blow up beds, we were unable to raise anything but the neighbor's Siamese cat.

After the guys all left for a golf game, I succeeded in backing my car straight into the side of one of their rental cars parked at the top of the driveway. It wasn't a desirable to start the day. I briefly considered denying everything, but wound up texting OilMan with a confession. Things looked bad when they got home and couldn't open the door, but some judiciously placed kicks finally released it, and they assured me that they had insurance to cover such eventualities...

By the time everyone left, OilMan donned his rat suit and crawled around underneath the house but was unable to find any sign of the creature that was making such a racket under our bedroom floor. We have decided to blame it on the Siamese cat, even though we can't really figure out how it could have made such a noise...

A helicopter clattered over the house as I roamed around outside in search of an emergency blip...we are being warned of more severe weather alerts and "oppressively" hot days ahead....