OTR Fini

Whenever we take a road trip, by motorcycle or car or airplane, I post OTR (on the road) updates to social media. When we return, the entry is “OTR fini.”

Donna and I, with our friend Mary Anne, drove to Las Vegas Tuesday for a departed friend’s memorial service, which was held on Wednesday. We drove home yesterday. OTR fini went up on Facebook about 4:30 PM.

Our old friend Rudy (aka Upchuck & Die) was a Hash House Harrier, and I’d been asked to speak at the service as a representative of the Hash. Another old friend, one of Rudy’s fellow Freemasons, spoke to that side of his life. The inurnment, at the Veterans’ Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City, was officiated by representatives of the US Marine Corps (yet another side of Rudy’s life). In all, it was a satisfactory laying to rest, all organized by Lauri, one of Rudy’s daughters.

We stayed over at our son and daughter-in-law’s house, but there wasn’t much time for visiting. That’s okay, though: Donna flies back up next week for a few days, and the two of us, with our dogs, are going again in early March for our grandson Quentin’s Eagle Scout induction ceremony. I plan to trailer the Goldwing on that drive: the day after Quentin’s induction my son and I will ride to Death Valley with a couple of Las Vegas motorcycling buddies.

Here at home, I’m on deck to lead tomorrow’s group ride to Sonoita and Patagonia. This one’s for the Knuckledraggers Hash House Harrier Riding Club I started a few months ago. Not many riders have been showing up for the monthly Sunday rides, so I’m switching to Saturday to see if it makes a difference. In the past, I stayed away from Saturdays because that’s the day the local hashing group has its weekly trail, but what the hell, what have they ever done for me, etc, etc. So we’ll see.

I’m frankly amazed how central a place the hash still occupies in our lives. We were heavily involved from the late 1980s into the mid-2000s. I thought we’d tapered off over the past ten years, but here we are still scheduling our lives around it. Well, other hashers our age are much the same, so we’re in good company.

A real-time interruption: one of my sisters just called. Lois, our father’s second wife and the matriarch of our extended family, may be entering her last days. She’s in palliative care, heavily sedated after a bad fall at home. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but had better start planning for the worst. More to come on that.

Back to the present: our dogs, who stayed with a friend while we were in Las Vegas, were as happy to see us again as we were them. I woke up in one of my son’s spare bedrooms yesterday and said, “Donna, let’s go home and get our doggies. I miss them.” She said “Me too,” and we were on the road half an hour later.

The older you get, the more the people … and pets … you love matter. I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything more profound than that to say.