A day to rest?

Dear blog reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am sitting here on the sabbath taking a break finally. June has been a whirlwind of activity: the wedding,  being  "just married" to the lovely Beverly for 28 years, Father's Day, a trip to Seattle for my nephew's graduation, enduring 12 hours in that torture device called coach seating, my 51st birthday, riding 51 miles through Amish country in celebration, eating red velvet cheese cake, giving up caffeine while combating jet lag. In the middle of all of that, "You Said What? Roger" had its 10,000 view. Thanks to you.

Life is full and a bit too exciting; not to mention a bit bruising to the bank account.

That's not all. You can extend the time frame a few weeks and pick up other huge events; riding 360 miles covering Indiana for Habitat for Humanity, Mother's Day, Ben finally serving out his 18 year, day-prison sentence and earning his elementary education degree in spite of the educational system's desire to bore the motivation to learn out of him.

Is it any wonder that I came to last Monday a bit exhausted, frazzled, and worn out? I went to work and struggled all day to make the connection. My meeting leadership skills at one point were so poor that I had to apologize for being off my game. All last week, I struggled to get home and to bed early to recharge enough for the next day.

Don't get me wrong. This has been a self-inflicted injury. I enjoyed every minute of it; well every minute except the 720 in the clutches of American Airlines. The 360 miles was a joy. Ben's graduation party and the care his friends gave him was a joy to behold. I was so excited about Mother's Day that I gave Bev her present 3 days early. The wedding extravaganza was a sight to behold; complete with the epic struggle against and over Mother Nature. The time in Seattle celebrating Jon's graduation was fun and the site seeing lived up to the hype. Eating the Amish children's entrepreneurial cookies while dodging 51 miles of horse apples, dreaming about 4 layers of red velvet cake and cheese cake was sustaining. I would not have said no to any of it.

Yet, in the end, I was exhausted.

Everything has its time.  It is time to rest.

Take care

Roger

Making connections?

Dearest blog reader

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am sitting in our love seat, under the ceiling fan, on a cool Sunday morning, one day post birthday celebration, still in the grip of long summer days, wondering if I should have a piece of red velvet cheese cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner or just lunch and dinner. Yes, I am fine.

Thanks to all who gave me birthday wishes yesterday via the information superhighway . It gives me great satisfaction, imagining the boys down at the NSA, after reading your well wishes, kicking themselves for forgetting about my birthday.  There is always next year.  You know where I am. Get those cards in the mail early next year, you privacy encroaching hacks.

The lovely Miss Beverly got me a wonderful gift. It is a book called "Fifty Places to Bike Before You Die." I am very excited because it mean's that I will live forever. There is no way that I am going to ride in Australia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Nova Scotia. I might make one or two, but no way fifty. I am living large.

To celebrate my 51st, I decided to go on a 51 mile bike ride. It is not on the list. The Decatur, IN bicycle club sponsors a ride called the Flat Fifty. They have actually added loops that make it possible to ride a century; 100 miles. I had thought about it. However, being disabused of the notion from a lack of training, and the first 90 degree of the summer, I chose the 50 miler which was stretched a mile in a happy coincidence with my birthday. I was a bit disappointed that all of the good training put in for Cover Indiana had gone away and there was no way I could have ridden 100 miles yesterday, but there you go.

It was very a bucolic ride through rural northeastern Indiana. If you ever go on this ride, make sure that you take some $1 bills with you as the more ambitious Amish youth will be sitting along the road with their bowl haircuts and a table of full of cookies and glasses of lemonade offering sustenance and refreshment at a very reasonable price. The cookies came with an excellent recommendation from the sales person; a tasseled haired eight year old.  I like a person who is enthusiastic about what they are selling.

It was a bit incongruous watching all of these bikes go zooming past Amish tending their gardens, cultivating with a horse, driving a horse and buggy down the road loaded down with burlap sacks of feed in a pile. What must they have thought? Riding around on that small seat, the heat beating down without a wide brimmed hat for protection, pedaling around when a horse would take you around perfectly well. It was a very interesting ride.  The most interesting thing about the ride was the ruts that had been worn in the road from the shoe shod horses pulling wagons across the Hoosier heartland at their plodding leisure.

Speaking of horses on the road, there were road apples every where. Here some poop, there some poop, everywhere some poop, poop. Old McGraber had a farm ee-eye-ee-eye-oh.

Speaking of big old piles of poop, it appears that the FBI started and stopped searching for Jimmy Hoffa again. It is astounding that he has never been found. It is a rare phenomena to come across a hide and go seek player that good. No all ye, all ye in come free for him. And to think, he is a Hoosier born and bred from Brazil, Indiana. Which is right next to Parke county which has the second highest population of Amish in Indiana. Kinda makes you wonder if the Amish Mafia might have something to do with the hide part of Jimmy's little game.

I have always found that a long bike ride helps me make connections. You should try it.

Take care.

Roger

Evergreens everywhere?

Dearest Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I have a bit of a travelogue for you this week. This fine Saturday morning finds me in Seattle, Washington celebrating the graduation of Jon, my nephew. It has been a wonderful trip. I did make a strategic error though. I decided to stop drinking caffeinated drinks while I was out here. I figured that I could blame the lethargy and headaches on the jet lag. Plus I gained the added benefit of not putting Bev through my crotchetiness. I knew that it would be bad. I had gotten up to a 4 a day a diet coke habit. That is four 32 ouncers. I knew that those chemical receptors in my brain would demand attention. I knew that ibuprofen immune headaches would be my constant companion during this trip. I knew that it would make me surly, but I am among people who expected surly.

I, however, did not anticipate the affect that jet lag would have on me. I should have figured it out though. I should have known. I whine and complain for a week when the government steals an hour of my time in the spring. In fact, that hour has such a devastating affect on me that I have issued a standing order throughout the Sharritt realm; I am not to be buried until I get my hour back in the fall if I should pass while daylight savings time is in affect. I am not going to head into eternal bliss sleep deprived. Even now three days on the ground, I am not sure what time it is. I know what the clocks are telling me, but my body has other thoughts.

But I digress. This is a travelogue. If I want to project some credibility, I should act like I am a savvy traveler and not some Hoosier from the heartland bumpkin whining that he feels perpetually behind the rest of the country.  First, I would like to thank American Airlines for the smoothest flight I have ever had from Indy to Dallas. Nary a bump of turbulence jostled me the entire trip. It was smooth as glass. Not that I require a smooth as glass ride, I am quite happy that the physics, of hurtling an aluminum cylinder with two basically 2x36 boards out each side, jammed packed with 175 of my fellow 175 lbs (on average) human beings, continues to work. I am also thankful that the budding aero engineers paid enough attention during class to harness the physics and thereby keptus from crashing  to earth as a fiery ball of devastation. No turbulence is just a bonus.

I know what you are thinking. "Come on Roger, a savvy traveler should not be impressed with the simple act of flight. It should be taken for granted. Buck up!" Back off Jack! I witnessed the most savvy flier on our flight; the guy who had to have the flight attendant get in his face because he had to check one more score on his iPhone before take off; the one who told the professional "don't worry. Just a second. " I witnessed Mr. cool rearrange the inflight magazines and read the instructions on the airsickness  bag as we hurdled down the runway approaching that critical moment of no return. It is fun to watch how others work out the steps of faith in those seconds. From the white, knuckled, prayers, to the causal airsickness bag readers, to the guy who keeps his fear at bay by nonchalantly watching yours, we all work out our "this plane won't crash" faith any way we can.

After arriving in the great northwest, I quickly established that the advert guys weren't lying when they put the "Evergreen State" on their license plates. Here an evergreen, there an evergreen, everywhere a freaking evergreen. I could use a few less evergreens. It makes it kinda difficult to get your bearings. Plus none of the roads run in any kind of straight direction. They have to go up and over mountains, around lakes, sounds, and, of course, evergreens. I like the wide open spaces. I want to be able to get an eyeball on my natural disasters before they come sneaking up over that mountain or around that evergreen.

Biking appears to be big here in the Seattle area. Thursday, I was able to ride into Seattle via a series of bike paths. Other than turning right at the wrong evergreen tree a few times and having to double back it was a very nice ride. This place is overrun by wild black berries though. They are everywhere. Well not everywhere, but everywhere there isn't an evergreen tree. These bushes are in bloom now with the promise of free pie filling in about a month.

Washingtonians do appear to have lost a grasp of the natural order of things. They will stop for bikes where the path crosses the road. What's up with that? The bike path clearly instructs me to stop and yet the driver stops too setting up a never ending battle of the polites with frantic hand gestures encouraging the other to go first. I finally had to get off my bike, walk over to this Honda, pull this hippie's butt out of the car, and drive his car across the crosswalk before I could get on my way. This behavior has gone on long enough that the cyclists are fearless. Like coyotes in the Colorado suburbs, they just plunge on out into the street knowing that all of the drivers will stop and smile benignly as they pedal on across.

They need a couple of surly transplanted Hoosiers out here with bumper stickers that proudly proclaim "I brake for Monon Trail road kill" to put the fear of God back into the natives with regards to bicycle safety.

Just to the northwest of Seattle are a series islands. We took a day trip yesterday to Whidbey Island. You may have heard of it. Whidbey is the island that Bill Gates puts his pants on two legs at a time every morning, just like the rest of us. I did not see Bill; still too many evergreens. I did enjoy the farmers market and was happy to see that there were no resellers to be seen anywhere. They all had dirt under their fingernails, calloused hands and dirt covered cloths. I also found a chocolate shop that had chocolate covered bacon. Then, I found this further evidence of civilization.

There is plenty of other stuff to write about, but that gives you a flavor (strawberry to be precise) of what the very northwestern corner of this northwestern state has to offer.

And like Dorothy always said after she gained the wisdom that only a series of near death experiences and freaky flying monkeys can give you, "There's no place like home."

Take care

Roger.

Just walking?

Dearest blog reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my hand a couple of days after Grace and Chris'  wedding. Close your eyes and imagine the entire family white knuckled, firmly straddling  plan A; a wedding in the meadow under a 150 year old oak tree, and plan B; a wedding in the church reception hall. The meadow offered the perceived enchantment and reward for all of the work surrounding clearing, toting, and burning sixty thorn trees. The church offered dry chairs and lack of lightening.  It is a high stakes game of chicken. Who would blink first; Mother Nature or the Sharritts?

The title of last week's blog; "The road to a wedding" was used a little too quickly. I am sure that it was Freudian slippage. A walk down the road has been my personal theme of this wedding for a long time. My procrastination in writing about the wedding has been epic. In a vain effort to keep from becoming the subject of a country ballad, I had not strayed towards my thoughts and feelings about the impending nuptials.  As hard as I tried not to be that dad, I would find myself drifting off towards the land of "I Loved Her First" and "Butterfly Kisses".  Arghhh!

During the past six months as I have imagined walking down the aisle with Grace, my inner movie has always flashed to walking Grace to Maple Ridge Elementary a mile north of our house. This walk in the wedding meadow started a long time ago and seems just like yesterday. Just yesterday, Grace came home from school telling a story that her efforts to exercise were being thwarted by school administration policy barring students from walking onto school property. How unAmerican is that? Those fascists. If a nine year old has the where-with-all to get out of bed a half hour early, to keep her wits about her, to take reasonable safety precautions (look both ways, wear reflective clothing or lights, walk facing oncoming traffic) what right does the government have to stop her?

Thankfully, this governmental entity had no jurisdiction over my ambulatory use of the public highways and byways. By extension, I was able to transfer these expanded rights to Grace while in my company. So for four years, we walked most mornings to school. Side by side, we would walk down the big hill, cross the bridge spanning the mighty Fall Creek, and trudge up the valley's bookend hill. Each fall, we would have to train a new group of drivers, who not understanding sturdy individualism, would stop and offer us a ride up to school. Thankfully, we really did like to walk, and had taken to heart warnings about accepting  rides with strangers.

These walks were filled with talk; talk about the day, talk about books, talk about the farm. The talk that stood out the most was about the viability of the farm. At age 10, Grace knew that we would not be able to survive financially. The work was too difficult and the rewards too small. So small in fact, in the wide universe of potential careers, the one that she had eliminated was farming.

I have often contended allowing the independence of your children involves a series of thresholds that they pass through and you cannot follow. You stand at the door and watch them pass on through. By the very nature of doors and walls, the field of vision into their lives is limited. They can stand to either side and keep parts hidden, or rather limit the sharing. It is healthy. It is growing up, becoming their own people. Also, limits are hard. Like a two year old I have had my tear streaked, snotty nose plastered against that door, wanting to see. Like a loving father, I have held back, and tried to hold my tongue thankful for the wide view of the lives Grace and Chris and our son Ben have walked towards.

This was true with the college threshold. It seems even more true at the marriage threshold. It was brought vividly to me in a painting Bev commissioned that was inspired from a Ghana picture of Grace and three Ghanaian children walking through a village. The artist captured Grace and the children and the village, added Chris and the big oak tree. It is breath taking.

After catching my breath, I was struck that they are walking away. Like a relay race, the baton is passing and they will continue the journey to places unattainable by Bev and I. Through God's grace, the passing of the baton will be long and sweet and it will be a long long walk.

Take care.

Roger