Remix

"For all the sad words of tongue or pen,

the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"

-John Greenleaf Whittier

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The rucksack has primarily contained sweaty cheddar of late, as I drove through the prairies and through the pines to Colorado and back.  Kelly treated us to a large chunk of pecorino romano, and I got some comte at one point, but I guess amicably breaking up doesn't provoke my dairy binging.  We did indulge in a lot of Mexican food, and enjoyed many delicious meals with his family.

I will tell you the funny parts instead of the sad parts; I love Kelly and wish him well in all his endeavors as I head back to Alaska for lots of sunlight to brighten up.  And so, funny parts of traveling to Colorado and California:

- I stayed in a fantastically restored Victorian AirBnB in Council Bluffs, Iowa, containing 3 large parrots, 16 parakeets, and their crazy-bird-lady owner, who immediately roosted them on me.

- We stopped at the self-proclaimed world's largest gas station, outside Las Vegas, with 96 pumps; this is wryly funny to me as it was so appropriately named "Terrible's."

- While visiting Kelly's parents' nudist neighborhood, we admired the let-it-all-hang-out spirit of a dozen singers at karaoke, saw tennis played in only hats and shoes, and walked past a naked guy using a skill saw.

- Back at the RV place where we had planned to stay the summer, a gorgeous clear evening set in, and we sat peacefully enjoying the bucolic farm valley and mountains beyond, while one very agitated and totally goofy-sounding cow restlessly clomped around, her bellows echoing off the hills for nearly an hour, making me giggle with every mooOOOOooOOOooo.

- Upon my return to Michigan, the Pixleys all convened at dad's first race of the summer, where it was too windy for me to set up a tent so I curled up in the back of my worn Subaru in the midst of priceless vintage sports cars, and my nephew found a very large, very dead bullfrog. 

MMMOOOOOOO

My postcard from LA