Do you know where you are?

I recently discovered that this blog was being linked to by another blog. This particluar blog you are reading focuses on the more personal side of my life and there is another one that is updated regularly that is focused on what I spend a majority of my waking hours doing. Here it is and feel free to comment on either one.

Bike rides and family

Well, Kathy and I, (or is it me and Kathy? Don't know and don't care) along with her brother Mike took a bike ride today. I knew it was going to be a long one, but not sure how long exactly. We went to New Haven, along a new section of the river greenway that just opened up this year I believe, connecting New Haven with Fort Wayne. There is a bit of maneuvering to get to the greenway. We are about 2 1/2 miles further away than last year. When I first met Kathy she lived about 3 blocks from the greenway.

It was a fun enjoyable adventure. Nobody would admit to being tired at first. Fortunately we had a plan in mind as to where to go and have lunch so we were all on the same page the whole trip.

The trip home, we went our separate ways. But got back within 15 minutes of each other.

The memory that I had just before coming home was of my Dad and I riding in "Bike-a-thons" each year. When he was my age of 46, I was 17, so I had flashbacks of thinking, "so, this is what it must have been like for my Dad to keep up with his only son."

The other memory came to me while we were eating lunch, and thinking about the latest e-mail I got about my Uncle Carl. He had a heart attack this week and with all the other health problems he has had in the past 12 or so months, this is finally going to be the end. My Aunt's last e-mail on Thursday night:

Dear all,
Late last night Carl had a very serious heart attack. I talked to the cardiac doctors this morning. They were very honest in telling me that Carl has almost nothing left to keep his heart going. They do not know any more than I do how long it can last. He is very weak and can hardly talk at times and is in a lot of pain. We are trying to decide what our next plan should be. Carl is not going to recover and we need to concentrate on keeping him comfortable and pain free. He is still in the hospital but out of I.C.U..Since there is little they can do, it seems they are already treating him as a hospice patient. My heart is breaking and this is very difficult to write.
Love, Lorraine

I remember the last days and weeks of Carl's brother's life, my Dad and sadness comes over me. When I made it home after the bike ride I dreaded looking at e-mail, but as of right now at 4pm on Saturday, there is nothing. And at this point hearing nothing about Uncle Carl is good news.

Yesterday....

Would have been the birthday of two people who are no longer around.

Steve Howard. He was my cousin, older by a few years, the only son of Uncle Carl. I'm not really sure what year it was that he died, except it was too young. Traffic accident. He was back from college for Christmas break and as he was returning to the neighborhood that his parents and sister lived in his car slid off the road. They lived in Carmel Indiana at the time, about 2 hours from us. I was a teen at the time and this was the first funeral of someone that I remember going to. I could hardly stay awake, not from tiredness, but it was my bodys way of dealing with grief.

Now the reason I know when Steve's birthday was is due to something my Mom shared with me a few years ago: She and Steve were born on the same day (many years apart). So she would send a note, I believe to my Aunt and Uncle in rememberence of Steve on her birthday which was August 15, 1933. She stopped having birthdays on Thanksgiving 2001, but that's another story. In the meantime, remember it is always someones birthday, send a card!