For most of my life I’ve kind of used the excuse that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grow up. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the Caribou County Sun, the local Soda Springs and Caribou County, Idaho newspaper, and saw my name in the “Pages From the Past” section, under “50 Years Ago.”

I remember the circumstances quite clearly. After a number of years of a less-than-mediocre music department, the Soda Springs school district hired Brent Covington in the fall of 1959 as the music director for the high school. He was young, energetic, and exciting (I think this was his first teaching contract after graduating from college). He was also strict and had very high standards. We knew something great was happening when, at our first band practice in the old high school band room, he wrote on the blackboard a trumpet obligato for the school’s fight song and had the trumpets each try to play it. Then he got out his trumpet and showed them what he wanted. It was just plain spectacular.

We actually started doing the things that high school bands in that day did: march and play in parades and football games. He formed a pep band to play at the basketball games and even got the school district to pay for a bus to go to the away basketball games. In the fall of 1959 I was a Freshman in high school and played the drums in the band and in the pep band.

He told us that we’d have elections and a real band government. At the beginning of the second semester in January, 1960 we held elections and I was elected as a band manager over a part of the band along with two other Freshman classmates, Duane Beins and Barry Bingham.

Band was a very important part of my high school experience all due to Brent Covington’s enthusiasm, discipline, and standards. A couple of years after I graduated, Brent’s father died and Brent left teaching to go run his father’s farm near Idaho Falls. He was killed in an automobile accident a couple of years ago.

I wonder if he ever knew how much of an impact he had on a small group of backwater band members?

However, I guess when I finally show up in the “50 Years Ago” column in the newspaper, I’m no longer really able to ask what I want to do when I grow up. Maturity (at least from a chronological standpoint) has arrived.

We pulled into the garage about 5:20 pm this afternoon. Within about ten minutes Nina was in her pajamas, a very good indication that she wasn’t going back out again, no matter what. I was in agreement with that thought as well.

We had some fairly dicey roads as we left Laramie and passed a couple of pretty serious-looking accidents as we left the city. Nina was the driver this morning from Laramie to Green River and handled the roads very well. One interesting note from the drive, though. As we were getting close to Rock Springs, Wyoming, we were listening to the weather from the National Weather Service on my ham radio. The car sensor said the outside temperature was 16° but the weather report said the temperature in Rock Springs at the airport was 30°. We both commented on the interesting discrepancy because our car temperature sensor is usually pretty close. However, over the next couple of miles, we watched the outside temperature increase rapidly to 36°. We definitely were driving through a weather front and found that both the car and the weather report were correct!

No further weather on the rest of the drive. We stopped at my favorite brother‘s place in Green River for a couple of hours then drove to Soda Springs and visited with mother for a bit and then drove home. The tracking process worked as expected. Our daughter Dawnmarie texted us as we visited with mother that she saw we were in Soda Springs and to say hello to her grandmother.

Some statistics from the trip:

• 4,263 miles round trip.
• 176.784 gallons of gasoline
• 24.7 miles per gallon (this is a correct number)
• $442.70 spent on gasoline
• $2.506 average cost for gasoline
• $2.699 highest price paid in Mentor, Ohio
• $2.179 lowest price paid in Cheyenne, Wyoming

Ta ta for now!

We’ve spent the night in Laramie, Wyoming and are up getting ready to leave for the final push home. The radar weather map from about a half-hour ago shows pretty clear sailing, except that the storm in northwest Wyoming is kind of dropping south and east. We may get some of that as we make our way towards Rawlings and then Green River.

We’ll stop in Green River for a short visit with my favorite brother and then again in Soda Springs so my mother will know for sure that we’re back in the area. She’s anxious for us to get home safe and sound.

The tracking process works quite well, so long as I have cell phone connections and don’t mess up the settings. Yesterday we had lunch in Lincoln, Nebraska and I accidentally changed a setting and tracking stopped working. Our daughter Dawnmarie later in the afternoon told us that we were stuck in Lincoln and needed to get something fixed. I figured it out and got us back on track.

Earlier yesterday morning she sent me a text message:

If I had nefarious intentions I would be landing at Seward Municipal Aiport and zipping down county rd 280 to accost you.

I got that just as we crossed under County Road 280! Pretty near real-time tracking.

The application, however, requires almost exclusive use of the iPhone and, if the display is on, it uses power faster than the charger can supply it, draining the battery in about six hours when plugged in and in about two hours running on battery alone.

Today we’ll be crossing most of western Wyoming where cell connection is fairly spotty. I’ll have the application on and see how it performs when it can’t make an internet connection.

For those interested, the tracking map is available at http://aprs.fi/?call=k7ojl

We’re leaving in the morning to begin the Big Trip West … a Return to Pocatello. The weather map is much calmer than it was last night at this time. I can only describe that as “goodness”!

I’ve discovered a new capability now that I have a ham radio license. It’s an ability to post regular position reports which can be viewed on the Internet.

You can track us as we move westward. That is, position reports will be posted while we’re driving, most of the time (except when I’m using my iPhone for something else). These reports are sent by way of my iPhone to a system that then transmits the report over the airwaves to the system that plugs the position report into a database and makes it available for viewing anywhere in the world.

So, to track us on this trip, click on this link:

http://aprs.fi/?call=k7ojl

My last reported position will be displayed on Google maps. If we’re actually moving, our track will also be displayed.

I think this is pretty cool!

Ta ta for now!

I’m not all that disappointed to see 2009 disappear into the history books along with the end of a decade. We’ve had a very nice end-of-year trip out to Pennsylvania which is also coming to an end and will disappear into our memory banks. Fortunately, some of that trip will be preserved in (digital) pictures and (digital) blog posts. That seems somewhat transient!

The new year rolled around while I was sleeping. Some of the family stayed up to toast the new year (with sparkling cider) but why should I break tradition? I think the last time I stayed up past midnight on a new year was ten years ago when we were all worried about the Y2K bug as the year changed from 1999 to 2000. Because of a lot of very hard work and long hours in preparation, the calendar change was a non-issue and I was able to go to bed and sleep soundly.

On New Years Day we left Dawnmarie’s house and drove a couple of hours west to Mayfield Village, Ohio (an eastern Cleveland suburb) near where Nina’s sister Pam lives in Kirtland, Ohio. We’ve had a good time visiting with her and her husband Ed. Yesterday Ed and I went out, prowled through some bookstores, the Apple store, and a couple of pawn shops. After a nice Italian dinner in Mama Robertos, a rustic Italian restaurant in Mentor, we spent some time playing with his new electronic music machine. This machine can record a number of tracks, save them in various formats, and render them onto a CD. It’s quite amazing what Ed can do to the music once it’s recorded in the machine.

Ed is a very good musician and owns a delightful number of musical instruments. On New Years Day he played some of the songs he’s written (very good and very entertaining) and hopes to record on this machine. In the process I’ve learned a little bit of new vocabulary such as “bounce”, “master”, and “time mark”. Don’t know what I’ll ever do with it, but it was a whole bunch of fun.

Tomorrow morning we’ll head west. The weather map is not nearly as quiet as it was when we came out here fourteen days ago! It’s also a whole bunch colder going through the midwest.

I hope to be able to get as far as Council Bluffs, Iowa by Monday evening. Anything past Davenport, Iowa would be a bonus for sure.

We’ve got a busy couple of weeks ahead of us when we get home. We’ve got a whole new year to get used to as well (how many times will I write 2009 before I get 2010 fixed in the brain?). We’ve had a great vacation and a good start to this new year.

Happy New Year!

I enjoy surprises. I enjoy surprising folks as well. Throughout our marriage, Nina and I have delighted in perpetrating surprises on family members.

When we were transferred to Germany, we suddenly showed up in Soda Springs at my parent’s home for Christmas … a surprise. When our daughter Heather announced her engagement, we drove out from Ohio to surprise her in her dorm room so that wedding plans could be constructed between mother and daughter. Just this month our visit to our daughter Dawnmarie and family was a planned surprise for the grandkids. That surprise worked out marvelously and we’ve had a great visit with them.

There are, of course, other kinds of surprises. I love magic just because it always seems to surprise me and delight me. A few weeks ago at our weekly Rotary Club meeting, the presenter brought along two magicians who did several table-top magic tricks. They were just amazing. The Chamber of Shadows at the Mystique Theater in Pocatello is a new venue in town that consists of a fine dinner followed by about 45 minutes of table-top magic. It should open sometime in early Spring and I think we’ll go so I can be surprised once again.

Occasionally the surprise is really stupendous. One such happened on March 14th this year when our daughter Dawnmarie very nonchalantly walked up to our car in Lava Hot Springs, a very long way from her home in Pennsylvania, all the while talking with Nina on her cell phone and refusing to hang up. As far as surprises go this year, that one leads the list.

Ta ta for now!