One hundred fifteen years ago. Here are some statistics for the Year 1906 :
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The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
The average wage in 1906 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
? a dentist $2,500 per year,
?a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,
?and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
were condemned in the press AND the government as “substandard.”
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month,
and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s DayTwo out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated DUH! )
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 115 years.
Okay, let’s party! It’s Chris and Mark Milner’s 40th wedding anniversary and Ian Fitzpatrick Melchior’s 16th birthday!
One of the most memorable and prettiest weddings I ever attended was that of my niece Christine Fitzpatrick and Mark Milner.It happened on June 26, 1971 – 40 years ago today.
I don’t know how it was for the members of the wedding party,- they probably lived through the usual behind-the-scenes jitters – but there’s never been a more relaxed and comfortable party for assembled wedding guests.
The warmth wasn’t only due to the hospitality though. When I say it was warm, I mean WARM. The temperature was 96 degrees – hot, for most of the guests, but for my husband Gene and me, newly arrived from chilly Seattle, it was sunny and glorious. And even the food was good!
It’d be a challenge not to have a fun time when in the midst of all those Fitzpatricks!. Add that to the congeniality of the Milner family, and you’ve got a world-class party going on.
Everybody looked gorgeous – like a magazine ad. Especially the bride and groom. Note that Chris is wearing the family’s most famous dress, and as I keep promising, she’s going to relate its story on a blob at the end of the month.
Chris and Mark were just commencing their teaching careers in Iowa at the time of the marriage. They recently retired from teaching in Ankeny, Iowa and that city is probably still reeling from the loss of what had to be their two most popular teachers. Right now, they’re marking time waiting to transplant themselves to Portland, Oregon, where daughter Heather and son-in-law Dan Roecker live with their little ones, Jake and Ruby.
Their son Corey and daughter-in-law Rebecca live in Colorado, but to celebrate the anniversary, I think they’re all going to be in Portland next week, and they may come by train to visit all their related outlaws in Seattle! Yippee, hats and horns!
Chris wrote me the following about their first forty years of wedded bliss:
“40 years! We knew we would be able to go the distance.
“While in Maine on our honeymoon, we survived capsizing in a small boat in the Atlantic, and then being lost in the middle of a tidal river in the fog with drunken locals. Later we lived through a tornado that ripped through Ankeny.
“But those hair-raising events were quickly replaced with a windfall of loving family, good friends, fantastic children, beautiful grandkids, proud moments and fulfilling careers. Time marches on!”
But as it’s marching on, don’t expect these two to settle down and retire. You can count on Chris being up to her armpits in projects of every size and shape, and the irrepressible Mark will likely be plumbing his true calling as a stand-up comic. He’s been in the cornfields, and entertaining those high school kids long enough!
I hope you have a happy 40th anniversary, kiddies. Now get out there and party.
And you too, Ian. My great-nephew Ian Fitzpatrick Melchior is 16 years old today.
Ian is the fourth oldest child of my niece Rene’ and Dan Melchior. He’s the only “Ian” in the family. His name comes from both Hebrew and Scottish Gaelic, and it means “God is gracious”. It is one of the many forms of the name John.
If you’re old enough to know what I’m talking about, honk if you think this handsome kid looks like a teenage version of Steve McQueen.
One of Ian’s “highlights” of the winter’s snowfall, was a broken leg. He and his brother Joshua were playing around wrestling in the snow, and that did it! Recuperating from the damage put a crimp on Ian’s soccer and wrestling activities, but I hope the leg is mending by now.
Ian’s with his cousins Jane and Tom Fitzpatrick in the photo below.
His mom, Rene’ wrote this about him: “Ian is going to start at the high school this fall. He’s an A student, and he enjoys getting his schoolwork done so he can move on to something else. That doesn’t mean that he enjoys all the schoolwork, just getting it done.”
“I think his favorite subject would be anything about the wars and battles in history. He likes to play XBox with those kind of games also. He enjoys tormenting his smaller siblings. He thinks that is normal, since that is what he received after years of being the youngest sibling.”
“After he finishes school, Ian would like to be a Navy Seal. He would be good, he loves a challenge. Never tell Ian there is something he can’t accomplish. He will not listen to the fact that his broken leg this year may deter that goal, because it has left him with metal in his leg. He has already asked his surgeon how long he will have to wait to have all the metal taken out.”
“Ian is still serving as an altar server at our church. He’s a very loving, sensitive person who cares for all those close to him.”
He sure sounds like a winner to me. And with a face like that, how can he lose?
Happy 16th birthday, Ian. And next time it snows, stay inside! Your legs will thank you for it.
Interesting. Two important family events happened on the same day of the year – June 25.
This must be the way it happened.
It was Christmas Eve, 1976. My daughter Susy Ford and her boyfriend Curt Warden, were standing around in the kitchen while we were doing dishes following a big family meal.
“Listen up, everybody”, Susy must have commanded. “Important announcement! Next June 25, 1977, is the 21st birthday of my illustrious cousin and debonair man-about-town Tim Fitzpatrick. What shall we do to celebrate such an auspicious occasion?”
“Wow”, said Curt. “Maybe we should get married. That would be one way to celebrate.”
Everybody agreed. And that, children, is why it happens that the wedding anniversary of Octo-woman’s daughter Susy and son-in-law Curt Warden and the birthday of her nephew Tim Fitzpatrick happens to fall on the same day every year.
Susy and her cousin Tim both hit their big 21st birthday within six months of each other, and they were both born in Iowa. Even more important however, is that they get to share today’s blob.
I suppose we should talk about the wedding anniversary first, since any discussion of my nephew will probably go on for hours.
Susan Marie Ford and Curtis Neil Warden met at a horse farm while Susy was still in high school. They announced their engagement – like I said earlier – at a Christmas party at our house in Seattle. They were married on June 25, 1977 – 34 years ago.
It was the first wedding among our kids but we fumbled along with the preparations just like we knew what we were doing. All the bridesmaids and my dresses were homemade, and my sister Joan made the bridal bouquet and nosegays. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law Don and Lorraine Ford came from Eugene, Oregon with their daughter Leslie.
Susy is wearing a rather famous bridal gown. It belonged to my niece Christine Fitzpatrick Milner, and it took on an amazing life of its own, as you’ll learn in a later blob.
Susy and Curt produced four spectacular children: Elizabeth, Gretchen, Neil and Josie. Elizabeth and Gretchen are both married now (to Sean Smith and Joe Stark respectively) and everybody still lives in Seattle and its environs.
Susy has worked at Ford Video for many years and now manages the business. Curt has been a truck driver all during their marriage but he’s eligible to take early retirement from his company as soon as he can adjust to the concept of living in poverty, or winning the lottery, whichever comes first.
If there was ever a marriage made in heaven, this is it. I don’t think it’s possible to observe a happier union of people than is found at Susy and Curt’s house. And one of its unexpected by-products has been the rewarding presence of Curt in our extended family. I still can’t figure out how we got so lucky. “Acquiring” him was way better than winning any old lottery.
So there you have it. Let’s hope the bride and groom get to have a night out to celebrate their cousin’s birthday, and – oh, yeah – their anniversary!
They were married at St. Bridget Church in Seattle, Washington.
And they’ve lived happily ever after for 34 years..
Now for the birthday boy. Timothy Arlan Fitzpatrick was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at Mercy Hospital on June 25, 1956. He’s 55 years old today.
Tim is well-known for making a scene. He was such a big baby (9 pounds 10-and-a-half ounces) that the nurses asked my sister Joan if she’d be enrolling him in school when they were discharged from the hospital. When they fed him in the nursery, he almost sucked the nipple out of the bottle and the nurses could hear him down the hall. Tim has never done things in a little-bitty way.
Tim’s sister Chris told me, “As far as anecdotes are concerned, one of my favorites is from the days we lived on 18th street. I was babysitting (so what else is new?) and Tim decided to be the man of the house. We didn’t seem to have hot water and having watched dad do it a thousand times he proceeded to re-light the pilot light on the water heater. Investigating a loud ‘noise’ in the basement I came upon Tim, nonchalantly exiting the area. Little did he know his lack of eyebrows, eyelashes and bangs told the whole story.”
According to my sister Joan, when Tim was 9 or 10 years old, he decided that he wanted to be a garbage man when he grew up. His dream was dashed, however, when the marketing world discovered him. Tim later became what’s known in the trade as a “super-salesman”.
His brother-in-law Mark Milner sent these stories to add to Tim’s annals of infamy:
Mark wrote: “From my interactions with Tim, it’s been clear he IS a salesman, dating back even to his high school days. I would certainly come to realize I should be careful if Tim told me ‘trust me’”.
“Chris and I were already married and had come back to visit the family. Tim and Jeff were outside with their brand new rough terrain ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) They were tearing all around the house into gullies and valleys near the house. Of course I wanted to try it but I’d never ridden one.”
“I asked about taking a spin. Tim smiled and said, ‘Just hop on, give it a lot of gas, and put it in gear’. That didn’t seem right to me but with complete sincerity, Tim said, ‘It won’t be a problem, trust me!’ So I did it, and the ATV took off like a rocket straight up in the air with me hanging on for dear life. But it didn’t crash because it came back down on top of me. What’s that saying? “Fool me once, shame on you!”
“Some years later Tim accompanied our family to Adventureland in Des Moines – a local amusement park. Tim and I were talking and he discovered I had never been on the Silly Silo ride. He described it as a fantastic ride, a unique physical experience. It spun you around at such high speeds it felt like you were floating in the air.
“Somehow I felt like this was a bad idea, but Tim smiled and with complete sincerity said, ‘This will be a blast, trust me!’ and he started to walk into the chamber of death. I followed him in, got strapped in, looked up and saw that Tim had left the ride and was smiling and waving to me as they closed the door.”
“It certainly was a unique physical experience! It was just a giant centrifuge. The only things that floated were hats, glasses, loose shoes that were sucked off your body by the spinning. Plus the vomit of neighboring riders reacting to the ride. I’ve never been so nauseous for so long in my whole life! What’s that saying? ‘Fool me twice, shame on me!’”
Further proof of Tim’s salesmanship can be found in the beauty he married – Denise Vileta Fitzpatrick. A classy lady if there ever was one. And he has three lovely daughters, Katie, Abby, and Elizabeth, and four grandchildren – Alexis, Aiden, AJ and Olivia.
Tim works in the communications technology field. I think it has something to do with the marketing of phone networks but I’m pretty sure he’s not a bookie. If he were to take up a life of crime, though, he would be a really effective and charming con man. Matt Damon, eatcherheartout.
One more thing, Tim likes to believe he’s immortal. According to this video though . . .
Sorry about that, Tim, but have a happy birthday, anyway.
Victoria Glendinning % Simon & Schuster 1st floor 222 Gray’s Inn Road London WC1X 8HB England
Dear Miss Glendinning:
I recently discovered your advice about growing flowers. I am so impressed that besides finding time to be an important British biographer and novelist, you made time to improve my gardening skills. I am enclosing a photo of you which I found on the internet. Please autograph it so I can add it to my collection of seed catalogs.
“Geraniums bloom better if they are spoken to. But a kind word every now and then is really quite enough. Too much attention embarrasses them.” – Victoria Glendinning
Amazing advice.! Thank you ever so much, Miss Glendinning. At last I know the reason for my lack of gardening success. I didn’t realize that I should be talking to the petunias. I’m going to hurry out there today and remedy that. But what shall I say? Can they speak English? And if not, what then – Latin?
I tend to be bashful. Do I need to properly introduce myself first? Maybe I’ll just kinda look down in surprise and say, “S’Happenin’, Bud?” Or, maybe, “You look familiar, kid. Have we shared the same bed before?” Or else, “Cheez, Rosie! Ain’t those aphids a drag?”
Daisies never tell, but I suppose I should at least pop the question, “Do you love me? Or do you not?” I just hope they won’t get the idea I’m proposing marriage.
On second thought, Miss Glendinning, what about the neighbors? They already think this place is the funny farm. What if they see me tiptoeing through the tulips, chatting in my friendly conversational style to the flora in my garden? I fear they may conclude that I’m even more deranged than they suspected. Especially if, unbeknownst to me, the plants I’m talking to are weeds.
What do you advise? Breathlessly awaiting your response, I am,
Early tomorrow, my granddaughter Arden is picking up her mom – my daughter Judy Taylor – and they’ll drive to Eugene, Oregon. Judy will be in a craft show there where she’ll demonstrate and sell her rug hooking projects and supplies.
Whenever we’d go on car trips when Judy was little, we used to play games like “The Minister’s Cat”, or contests where we’d have to find the next letter of the alphabet on signs whizzing by.
Now that summer’s here, in case you’re going to be taking to the road on a short or long trip and need some group entertainment, you might try solving Minute Mysteries.
The object of minute mysteries (aka lateral thinking puzzles) is for you to unravel the mystery, based on very limited and somewhat ambiguous clues. You are given a scenario (usually involving a death of some sort), and you have to deduce what has happened. Someone must look at the solution so that you can ask them questions to try and figure it out. The questions have to be phrased so that the only possible answers are yes, no or not relevant. There is no limit to the number of questions, and it can be helpful to have multiple people working on the case.
Here’s an example to show you how it works:
1. Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the same house. Bob and Carol go out to a movie, and when they return, Alice is lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water and glass. It is obvious that Ted killed her but Ted is not prosecuted or severely punished.
The solution: Alice is a goldfish. Ted is a cat.
Here’s a few more Minute Mysteries in case you want to collect some for future use:
2. A woman comes home with a bag of groceries, gets the mail, and walks into the house. On the way to the kitchen, she goes through the living room and looks at her husband, who had blown his brains out. She then continues to the kitchen, puts away the groceries, and makes dinner.
The solution: The husband killed himself a while ago; it’s his ashes in an urn on the mantelpiece that the wife looks at.
3. A woman has incontrovertible proof in court that her husband was murdered by her sister. The judge declares, “This is the strangest case I’ve ever seen. Though it’s a cut-and-dried case, this murderess cannot be punished.”
The solution: The sisters are Siamese twins.
4. A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender pulls out a gun and points it at him. The man says, “Thank you,” and walks out.
The solution: The man has hiccups; the bartender scares them away by pulling a gun.
There. Now don’t say you can’t think of any way to relieve long-trip boredom. Make up a few Minute Mysteries of your own, or else check out some more ready-made ones at this website:
We had a new baby yesterday. Born at Del Webb Hospital in Sun City West, Arizona.
My niece Elizabeth Gorman Brown and Robert Brown brought another son into the world. He doesn’t have a name yet, but he weighs 9 pounds 2 ounces and he’s 21 inches long. That definitely gives him a presence in the world as does what you’re about to see.
Present for his delivery at the hospital – besides his mommy Beth, of course – were Bob and their little ones, Virginia and Bill. Also there were Beth’s mom and dad – Leo and Peggy Gorman, and my nephew Michael and Niki Gorman.
Amazingly, thanks to Michael and his iPhone, we were there, too. Only minutes after his birth, this is Bob holding his new baby son. Present at Beth’s bedside, you’ll also see his grandmother Peggy (my sister-in-law), my niece-in-law Niki holding little Bill, and wee Virginia sitting on the chair.
According to Michael, “The naming of the Brown children is always a mysterious process. Beth already told the nursing staff not to expect a name tomorrow either! I think it is like a College of Cardinals thing. When we see the white smoke, we’ll know a name has been decided.
He is 21″, the longest of Beth’s kids. You have the weight (9.2) already. He has slept pretty much the whole day.
Beth is doing well and says she is happy to not be pregnant anymore. The final two weeks were very difficult on account of being physically painful for her.
I am including a little video snippet from my iPhone. It is Bob holding the baby for the first time. No Beth in the video, don’t think she was camera ready!”
What a breathtaking moment! I won’t ever forget seeing that video “snippet”. Thank you, Michael, for sharing it!
Congratulations on your new treasure, Beth and Bob.
And as for you, Baby Boy-With-No-Name-Yet: The Lord bless you, and keep you: The Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.” ~ Numbers 6:24-26
Wah! There’s only one athletic activity I wish I could do! Skateboarding. It looks like crazy fun, as long as you can avoid the scrapes, abrasions, bruises, contusions, and broken bones that goes along with it. If it wasn’t for my aversion to blood and pain, you’d see me out on the front sidewalk every day. I’d be flyin’ on mah’ skatebo’d, bro’. Ah be baaad…
I think you should know that today – June 21 – is national “Go Skateboarding Day”. You know what that means. You’ll just have to get the thing down out of the garage, oil up those wheels, head for the nearest driveway – and go for a glide.
Of course, I know perfectly well you’re just humoring me. The only person I know who may actually be following my advice is my great-nephew Brian Ford, a dedicated skateboarder, if there ever was one. Unless he’s hampered by a new cast or crutches, I’m sure he’s be out there risking his life on his longboard.
We could all use a little encouragement when it comes to extreme sports like skateboarding. This means you, Tyson.
Tyson is granddaughter Gretchen and Joe Stark’s bulldog. I think he needs to watch this video tutorial by an “athlete” named Tillman.
There! Now don’t you feel pumped to try it yourself? Judging by Tillman’s weight though, don’t count on dedicated skateboarding to do much for eliminating body fat.
In spite of the fact that I have eleven beautiful granddaughters, I only have two grandsons-in-law added to my collection to-date. While not many in number, the two I have are choice.
This is one of them: Sean MacQueen Smith, – urbane, funny, athletic, good natured, and one of the best qualified members of my family who could have taken up a lucrative life of crime.
Sean is 34 years old today. He’s married to my eldest granddaughter, Elizabeth, daughter of Susy and Curt Warden. They were married in 2005, and it must be due to their good sense and moral upbringing that Sean is still working on the legal side of the law.
As a baby born and bred in the Pacific Northwest, Sean grew up to love and appreciate the outdoors. He and Elizabeth (and their dog Lily and their two cats) duck away from their home in Seattle every chance they get to escape to their Lummi Island paradise, and to our endless supply of interesting and beautiful sites (note to prospective visitors) that can be explored and enjoyed in the Pacific Northwest.
Sean is a dedicated bicyclist. He logged about 1,500 miles on his bike last year. He bikes back and forth to work, and on all kinds of marathon rides besides. A few weeks ago, he was heading for work, and a car pulled out of a parking lot, hit him, and threw him – still on the bike – somersaulting over the car, and landing on the other side. Unbelievably, he got up, received the insurance information from the worried woman who had been driving the car, and then drove his damaged bike the rest of the way to work. And home again that night.
Sean earns his living as a software consultant/engineer. He works for Isilon Systems (a division of EMC2). I don’t know what his IQ is, but I don’t think my keyboard types numbers that high. He also loves computer games, puzzles, problems, and taking things apart and putting them back together. These may be typical job qualifications for one of the most profitable positions in the industrial world today – that of computer hacker. I keep reminding him of this opportunity, but he just won’t listen.
The two members of my family who could be nominated for computer hacking – should the economy nosedive any further than it has, would be Sean Smith and my nephew-in-law Dan Roecker (husband of my niece Heather Milner Roecker). Oddly, they were born within 11 months of each other, making them, in a way, “Irish twins”. In spite of my best efforts, however, I have been unable to corrupt their morals in order to take up partnership in a life of crime.
While I was writing this, I emailed Elizabeth to ask some questions about Sean. What she wrote is so much better than what I did, that I’m going to post it below:
Sean was born on June 20, 1977, at the UW Medical Center to Brent and Celia Smith. They lived in Ballard at the time. Sean was an only child for almost 10 years. He was a smart little boy who wanted to understand how things worked and who was likely to take things apart to find out.
Here he is with his parents and grandparents.
When Sean was little, he was not interested in your average kids’ toys. For example, when he was turning about 3, he asked for a fan for his birthday because he thought it was cool how they worked. He drew a bunch of pictures of fans, and his mom still has them. I watched a home video of him opening Christmas presents one year when he was maybe 5, and he was super excited about his favorite gift–a flashlight! Sean still loves gadgets today. He has a bunch of remote control helicopters that he has learned to do tricks with. And believe me, that is not easy! I flew one of the little ones in the house once and immediately crashed it and broke part of it.
When Sean was about 8, his family moved to a little house on a big lot in Richmond Beach. Not long before Sean turned 10, his parents had another little boy. They were sure that this one would be a girl, and they had a girl name picked out, but they told Sean he could pick the name in case it was a boy. He chose Evan, and Evan it was!
Sean went to middle school and high school at Lakeside, a private school with excellent academics, but Sean didn’t feel like he fit in with the crowd there. His closest high school friends went to different high schools in the area. Many of those friends are people he met in elementary school, and he is still in touch with many of them today.
After high school, Sean went to the University of Washington. He lived in his parents’ garage apartment for most of that time and part of the time he lived with his great aunt Margaret, who had an apartment very close to the UW. Sean was in the architecture program at the UW and then switched over to computer engineering. He ended up with a minor in architecture and a major in computer engineering.
Sean met my high school friend, Irina, in the computer department at theUW, and she introduced us during a hike at Mount Si in the summer of 2000. We started dating right away, and about a week later, Sean took me out for my 21st birthday on a fun and special date to Port Townsend (which he partially recreated about 5 years later when he proposed on the dock there).
Sean had an internship at RealNetworks in the summer of 2000, and he later had a summer internship at Pixar in California. After Sean graduated, he worked in Snohomish for his dad’s engineering company, Teknologic, for a few years.
Sean has always had a love for biking and he often rode his bike to the UW while in school. When he worked at Teknologic, he bought a house in Everett and sometimes biked from Everett to Snohomish for work.
Then he got a full-time job at RealNetworks in Seattle, so his commute became much longer. He got from Everett to Seattle via a combination of bike and bus each day. We were married in July of 2005, and I couldn’t handle that long commute, so we ended up selling his Everett house and moving down to Ballard, not far from the area where Sean spent his childhood. We bought our house in October 2005. Sean is very handy at building and fixing things on our house and has started and completed many projects here–and we have many more to do!
In early 2008, Sean left RealNetworks and went to Isilon Systems, a company that provides massive clustered data storage systems. Sean is a software developer there. His favorite things about his job are when he gets to figure out the most efficient and best ways to solve problems. He is very good at solving problems and is constantly coming up with creative inventions and ideas in all areas of his life!
Isilon Systems is conveniently located in a building next to the Sculpture Park at the Seattle waterfront, which happened to be the very same building I worked in. My company later moved across the street, but we are lucky to be able to have lunch together often and commute together sometimes too. Though the truth is, I often drive, while he bikes almost every day. The bike ride varies from about 6 miles to 8 miles depending on which route we take, so I bike to work occasionally too. However, I might bike a handful of times during nice weather, whereas Sean bikes in pretty much any weather! He biked more than 1,500 miles last year alone. In September, Sean’s company will move to Pioneer Square, so his bike commute will get a little longer.
Last month, Sean was captain of a bike to work month team at Isilon, and on the very first week of the bike to work challenge, he was hit by a car while on his bike. Sean was doing everything correctly, obeying the law, and was very well lit, wearing a bright neon jacket in broad daylight. But a lady in a parked car pulled out suddenly in front of him to do a U-turn, and he didn’t have enough warning to brake in time, so he went flying over the hood of her car (with his bike clipped to his feet!) in a forward somersault type of move and landed in the road along with his bike. The lady felt terrible and fortunately she was an honest person who told the insurance company that she was at fault, so they paid for the damage to his bike. Sean then got back on his bike after that terrible crash and rode home! And although I tried to convince him to take a day off after that incident, he got back on and rode to work the next day!
Obviously, Sean is pretty tough and resilient! He enjoys any and all outdoor activities, including hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, camping, etc. We have kayaks and often go out for a paddle on Lake Union after work in the evenings.
In the summer of 2009, Sean and I bought a cabin on Lummi Island, which is technically in the San Juans, but it is accessed by a small 20 car ferry that goes from the mainland just north of Bellingham. The crossing is only 5 minutes. Lummi is a quiet little island with friendly people and beautiful scenery. It only takes us 2 hours to get there, so we go up there often on weekends and vacations. Our golden retriever, Lily, and our two indoor cats, Booja and Oogie, love the cabin. We see so much wildlife there! Sean’s mom, Celia, loved Lummi so much that she ended up buying her own waterfront cabin there and moving there! Sean’s dad and brother live in Richmond Beach, but Brent has an amazing cabin in Winthrop that we love to go visit too.
Sean is a very good cook and an excellent home bartender. We both love good food and often try new restaurants and pubs in our area. Sean is very social and likes to spend time with our family and friends. We often play board games and enjoy going to trivia nights at local pubs.
Sean is funny and can always make me laugh. He is spontaneous and adventurous, which makes him a good influence on me, since I tend to be more cautious. Sean is such a sweet, funny, smart, and talented guy. I am lucky to be married to him!
And the rest of us are lucky to know him, too. Now if only I can convince him to read “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”. Coincidentally, the heroine’s name is “Lisbeth”, and she is a super amazing computer hacker without equal. If he’ll read it, I’m sure Sean will find it to be an inspirational experience. Heh-heh-heh.
Have a happy birthday, Sean! We love you to pieces.
I don’t often stay up at night worrying about discrimination against the males of the species. Only – just a tiny bit – on Father’s Day.
For the life of me, I can’t remember even hearing of a Father’s Day celebration when I was growing up in the 1930s and 1940s. I not only never got my dad a Father’s Day gift, I didn’t even know I was supposed to.
Mother’s Day was certainly recognized in our neighborhood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. At school, we drew and colored “greeting cards” oozing with hearts, flowers and Xs for kisses. I remember my sister Joan and I making “flower baskets” out of construction paper and filled with violets and lilies-of-the-valley. (We did that on May Day every year, too). Those were the only kind of gifts I can remember giving our mother on Mother’s Day. I don’t think there was much marketing promotion going during those Depression years.
At church, lots of people wore a flower to honor their mothers: red if the mother was living, and white if she wasn’t. Lots of our mothers received corsages that they wore that day – also in red or white depending on whether their own moms were living. The subject of the priest’s sermon at Mass would invariably be about the Blessed Mother, and why our mothers should be honored. Sometimes families had picnics later in the day.
But I keep drawing a blank on what we did on Father’s Day. I can’t remember even hearing of such a holiday. The daddies of Iowa may not have basked in the same kind of glory our mothers did. I still feel bad about that. So does the necktie industry.
According to Wikipedia, Father’s Day was first recognized in 1910, but it didn’t become a national holiday until 1972. I was 40 years old by then, and since my husband Gene and I had produced 7 children, we figured the third Sunday in June was definitely worthy of some kind of family partying. And from then on, I always “carded”, and contacted my dad on that day, fervently trying to make up for lost time.
So let’s hear it now for our fathers and for all the other dads in our lives! I’m sorry we discriminated against them all those years. How could we have known their pain in not receiving that new necktie or barbecue apron they’d been pining away for?
Now here’s a little Father’s Day Appreciation video from Fred:
My grandson, Neil Warden is 28 years old today. But a vacation he took recently might have cut all that short.
After high school, Neil worked for nine years at Quality Towing, as a tow truck driver or dispatcher. Recently, he quit, though, to pursue a new career as a licensed massage therapist.
Neil loves snow-boarding, working out and hiking with his dog Toast. He has a large movie collection, and he lives in his grandmother, Bonnie’s house, caring for it until it will be sold. It’s the house his dad Curt grew up in.
’‘Neil is a smart, funny, cute and responsible guy”, says his mom, Susy. “That’s why the baristas at Starbuck’s always give him free coffee.”
Sounds like a normal kid, right? Wrong.
To celebrate his new future as a massage therapist, Neil decided to take a two or three week vacation – alone and on a motorcycle. He planned vaguely that the trip would take him to the Grand Canyon and various parts of California. It wasn’t cast in stone, though. He planned to just let the trip take him wherever seemed interesting. Returning home to Washington state from California, he planned to take the scenic route along the coast.Along the way, it was one crisis after another. To those of us sweating it out at home, Neil’s solo motorcycle trip started to sound perilously close to the one we’d suffered through in the movie “128 Hours”.
Considering all the things that could have prevented him from celebrating his 28th birthday today, I decided to let Neil tell the story in his own words – diary-style. He has a judicious way of minimizing the hazards he faced, but in case you yourself would ever like to bike your way along the same route, read on.
From Neil Warden’s Motorcycle Diary, April 2011: Day 1…..
Departed Seattle at roughly 5 pm. On a motorcycle. With a tent, a (worthless) sleeping bag, ipod, some food, and a tarp. It was a familiar ride to Yakima, Washington where I camped the first night. I made a quick stop on the top of Snoqualmie Pass to check that all my gear was secured. It wasn’t very secure but I said whatever and kept going. It turns out it was secure enough. Nothing fell off throughout the entire ride. That I know of.. After Cle-Elum the wind was high and gusty and made it a little difficult to ride, but no big deal. I camped Monday night at the Yakima Nation campground. Pretty uneventful night. I remember eating snacks for dinner and sipping warm water from my nalgene bottle. The night got a bit chilly. I think i woke up at about 1am in the tent and didn’t sleep much the rest of the night. The sleeping bag i brought just didn’t cut it. It was very compact but not warm.
Day 2…..
Used the bathroom at the campground to charge my phone and ipod. Packed the gear back on the bike which takes about 20 minutes. When I was packing the gear that morning, I remember thinking “i should probably get a new sleeping bag”. Got back on the road to take a less familiar ride south east toward Oregon. I had gotten gas two times thus far. The bike has a 3 gallon tank which will get you 150 miles max. Give or take a few depending on riding conditions (wind, rain, hurricane, tornado, blizzard, etc.) I decided I would look for gas between 120 to 130 miles on each full tank for the rest of the trip. The ride on this day was great. Two lane curvy highways, sunny, hardly any other traffic. The plan was to go to Bend, Oregon and see how I was holding up being on the bike.. I think Bend was about 200 miles. I stopped at a sporting goods store in Bend and looked for a new sleeping bag. They were too expensive so i decided to just pickup a cheap blanket somewhere later. Got back on the bike and decided to ride down to a KOA campground in Klamath Falls, Oregon. This put day 2 ride at about 350 miles. It was a pretty ride. I think about 70 degrees. No wind. Good riding. Got a blanket at a Fred Meyer later in Klamath Falls and got thru another frigid night.
Day 3…..
This was my favorite day as far as being on the bike goes. I went to Starbucks after packing my gear on the bike. Got coffee. Charged phone and ipod. This night i would end up in Reno, Nevada… A long ride, I don’t remember how long but somewhere 350 or 400 miles? Depending on how many towns I passed thru or how many times i stopped to take a break, these rides were about 6 to 7 hours. I enjoyed this ride because it was mostly all canyons and curvy and wide open. There were times on this ride where I would see no one for a good half hour. Once you leave Oregon and move thru California to Nevada there is a lot of farmland in between mountains and not a lot of people. There were a ton of signs for deer crossing which made me a little nervous at first, and I remember spending some time in my thoughts daydreaming about a huge buck jumping out right in front of me, and just before the crash happened, I would spring off the bike seat at 75 mph into a front flip and continue to roll into 8 or 10 somersaults eventually reaching my feet and slowing to a run, then walk, then stop and turn around to go back and pick the bike up to see if it was still operational, and then possibly tend to the animal with my first aid kit. I’m certified in first aid and CPR, just FYI. There are border check crossings in and out of California and Nevada which I was unaware of. So I am glad this was a trip that I didn’t happen to be transporting any illegal firearms or substances. I did have bananas though which I illegally smuggled into the state. I remember when I had almost made it to Susanville, California, the ride was great. No one on the road and a lot of 30 mph curves which I took, not at 30 mph. I stopped at Wal-mart in Susanville because there was a Subway inside and I had 100 gift card to Subway. I can only eat 3 things on the menu because I decided to not eat meat. Tuna, veggie delight, or veggie patty. I’m still sick of these sandwiches. I remember as I passed thru all these small towns thinking how strange these people were in the way they interacted and spoke to each other and even dressed. Everyone knew each other. But later I realized I was in these nice people’s environments and I was the weird guy on a motorcycle wearing Addidas shoes and baggy jeans and Volcom t-shirts. I think that the smaller the population a town has, the slower the time goes. No one is in a rush. I made it to Reno, Nevada that afternoon. Gambled a little bit. Ate some buffet. Got a room at the Circus Circus.
Day 4….
The ride from Reno, Nevada to Vegas on Google maps told me it would be 10 hours of straight driving. It’s only 450 miles but the road isn’t straight. So I decided to get on the road early at 5 am. From Reno, there was a lot of small towns to pass thru until you really get into the desert. And then in the desert . . . there is nothing. This is also when it began to get hot. I think it was in the 80’s and got hotter throughout the day. I remember thinking after I got out into the middle of nowhere, “Man, I hope this bike doesn’t break down, that would suck.” Luckily it didn’t. In the desert, you will see a sign that says the next town 40 miles or whatever, and if you squint your eyes and the heat waves on the road ahead aren’t too thick you can see the next town. It’s just flat and barren. I stopped at a town exactly in the middle of Reno and Nevada and had lunch. I think the population was like 1900 people. I saw like six. Three of them were shirtless men in tattered overalls giving me evil stares as I walked into the one restaurant in the town. They were frightening and I kept a close eye on my bike as I ate my fish sandwich and french fries. They were probably nice men that lived there their whole lives, but I’m glad I never saw them again. I had been doing well on meeting my goal of fueling the bike every 120 to 130 miles. The last time I got gas this day i remember stopping at a tiny gas station/gift shop in the middle of nowhere. The gas pumps didn’t have credit card readers so I had to go inside. Anytime I would talk to any local people they would ask me where I was from and where I was headed. The guy working the cash register at this station asked me the same thing. I told him I’m from Seattle and not sure where I’m headed. He said he wished he could get on a bike and do the same thing, which is also what everyone else said. I left the station on the last leg of the ride into Vegas. I began to get a little paranoid about the extreme heat at the operating condition of the bike in the extreme heat. It was definitely in the high 90’s and getting hotter. I think part of me actually willed the bike to fail. I kept thinking about it, like, “Well something’s gonna happen.” So I finally made it to Vegas and decided, instead of continuing on the freeway to my hotel, why don’t I get off at the north end of town and cruise down the Strip. In this 100 degree weather, on a bike that hasn’t been ridden in like 5 years or something… Hitting every stoplight red i could literally feel the bike getting hotter and was just waiting for something to blow… About 5 blocks from my hotel I went ahead and pulled the clutch in to come to a stop and weird, there was no clutch. No clutch at all. So i banged it thru some gears and violently slammed my way into the parking garage. As it turns out it was a minor fix.. The hydraulic fluid was a little dirty and had some moisture in it disabling the clutch. So that sucked. But I dealt with it later.
Day 5….
Got picked up from my hotel at 6:15 am by a crazy bus driver that took me to Planet Hollywood to get on a bigger bus with a bunch of other people to take a tour to the Grand Canyon. This was a much better idea than riding there and camping. It’s a 4 hour drive from Vegas to the Canyon. The bus driver was a nice fella and entertained everyone with some knowledge about the Canyon, Vegas, the Hoover Dam, etc. I was the only American on the tour bus that I know of which was interesting. All the people were nice and interesting. As I was talking to one man, probably in his 50’s and from northeastern Canada, he asked me where i was from. “Seattle” I said. He responded with “Seattle, now where is that?” At first I thought he was joking but he was serious. I thought this was strange and said something like, “You know Seattle, the Space Needle, SeaTac Airport, Microsoft?” He had no idea. Later I talked to a couple from Macedonia. I acted like I knew where Macedonia was when they told me, and then later confessed I actually didn’t know where it was at all. It’s a small country just north of Greece. So it’s actually not weird at all the other guy didn’t know where Seattle was. I didn’t know where his city in Canada was either. The world is actually really big. And also really small. We finally made it to the Canyon at about 2 pm. I thought that when I got off the bus and walked to the edge and looked down it would be breathtaking. It is very impressive, but breathtaking not so much. It’s more weird than anything. What a big hole in the middle of nowhere. The rim of the canyon is all the same level. You can see across the canyon to the rim at the other side and follow the tree line as far as you can see. Like someone took a big shovel full of earth and threw it off the planet. I wasn’t mesmerized by it, but it was definitely worth the trip and I hope to go back someday. There are trails thru that Canyon that you can navigate with a guide on foot or on a donkey. When I go back, I would like to ride a donkey into the canyon. The bus took us to two different view points on the Canyon and the view was great from each. It was also fun to observe all of the people there. I think I was one of the very few Americans. The bus didn’t drop us off till very late, about 10 pm that night. I was tired. Hit Subway, got some nasty sandwich and walked around town for a bit. Vegas always smells the same.
Day 6….
Checked out of the hotel at about 7 am. Called AAA and had them come pick me and the bike up to go 3 or 4 miles to a shop. The tiny shop I got to was a run down hole-in-the-wall shop. I felt a little uneasy about this. The owner of the shop was also the only mechanic and in what could of been a 20 minute repair job, I spent 3 plus hours at the shop. He was a nice old man in his late 70’s. By hour number two, he had me helping customers load bikes into their pickup trucks and show them where the service desk was. I remember thinking about if he was ever going to start working on my bike and or am I going to get paid for working for him. He told me a lot of interesting stories about riding around the country in the 60’s and 70’s and about his relationship with his son who he hasn’t spoken to in a while. He was also a little absent minded. He gave me free diet cokes and i put some of his special flavored soda from Mexico in his cooler for him. He prefers that soda, you know, because it’s got real sugar in it. The minor repair finally got done. We bled the hydraulic fluid. Put new fluid in. And that was it. I asked him about the limits the bike has in intense heat and if I should worry about some serious mechanical failure. He has been fixing bikes since he was in his teensm and he said this bike is never going to break down. And I believe him. When I got back on the road, I merged onto highway 15 towards Los Angeles. At this point, I had no idea where I was headed, but it was early afternoon and I hoped to get somewhere before dark. But then it got windy. Windy like I would be leaning all my body weight to the left and turning as hard as I could to the left just to stay straight in my lane. I have no idea how windy it was but I would guess approximately 1 thousand mile per hour gusts. The road from Vegas to LA is a super flat raised highway about 10 feet above the desert floor. Very hot. The idea was to get to Bakersfield to get a bite to eat and figure out where I would stay. The whole ride towards California was windy. Wind going south then abruptly changing direction to north, south, north, south south, north. I was too busy trying to stay upright, and things like wind resistance and miles per gallon slipped my mind. So, on this silly highway in the middle of nowhere with about 120 miles run on this particular tank of fuel, the motor let out a little sputter. Weird, I thought. I better pay attention to that. Maybe 10 seconds later, another sputter. Well shit, i thought, I’m running out of gas. At this point on the road, I was passing a sign for the next exit, 1 mile. I couldn’t see what was near the offramp because there was a canyon wall to my right side. So I back off of the throttle a little and tried to keep it going. The sputtering got real bad.. I thought it was all done but I made it to the end of the onramp where the bike died. I put it in neutral and coasted on the slightly downhill offramp towards the stop sign at the end of it. I could see no one was coming to the left so I stayed off the brakes. The canyon wall was dropping to my right and as it did, it revealed a little gas station. Oh dear, I thought. I failed to stop at the stop sign, made an illegal lane change and coasted up to the pump with the bike not running. After I got gas, the bike almost didn’t start because it had been sucked dry but it did eventually. So it all worked out. I finally made it to California where there was miles and miles of rolling hills and grapes growing. I rode into the night and stopped at a motel in a small town. Days Inn, i think it was.
Day 7…..
Got up and had my continental breakfast. Raisin bran and black coffee. In matching styrofoam cup and bowl. I could tell a lot of the people, families, that were also enjoying this continental breakfast were probably not there for one night. I think they lived there. I thought about that for a while and then packed the stuff up and rode north. It rained that night so there was a little water on the seat… The forecast was like 60% chance of rain or something. There was rain in the forecast all the way north thru Oregon into Washington. The plan was to go west to HWY 101 and ride the coast highway home. Stopping at cool places and camping on the beach or near it. Stopping at Six Flags on the way…. The point where I would break west from old hwy 99 to hwy 101 was Sacramento, but I decided if the weather was bad I would just head north. It’s no fun to camp in the rain. When I reached Sacramento, I wasn’t so much concentrating on what direction I should head but rather thinking about whether or not one of the massive bolts of electricity coming from the sky was going to shoot me in the helmet. The weather conditions were poor. Standing water on the road, zero visibility, no windshield wipers on my helmet. At first, it was raining so hard that I slowed to about 40 mph in the 70 while the cars flew by me because I couldn’t see anything. But I really couldn’t see any better at 40 then 70 so i just accelerated. There were breaks in rainclouds which was nice. But the ride this day was rather shivery. I made it to Oregon – boots soaking wet, but most everything else was dry. Stayed in a Motel 6 that night. Watched some TV and had pie and decaf coffee at Denny’s across the street.
Day 8……
This day was pretty messed up. I had decided to just come home because the weather forecast was so bad. I should have stayed in Nevada or southern California and just waited till it got better. But I got up at 4 am. Packed the stuff up. And took off towards the Sisques. The Sisques are a group of mountain passes that sit on the border of California and Oregon. There’s snow up there. As the sun came up, I thought “I am doing pretty good so far.” No rain or anything yet. Also, I had put large ziplock bags over each foot before I put my boots on for protection. And then I came to the first pass and the temperature started to drop. It was very cold. Some body parts, my hands in particular, lost feeling very quickly and actually weren’t as uncomfortable as others. The extreme numbness actually helped but my arms and legs not so much. It was 20-ish degrees and then it started to snow off and on. I got through the first couple passes by getting off at off ramps and doing jumping jacks on the side of the road and then getting back on. Luckily, just past Weed, California there was a Wal-mart. I went to the sporting goods section and looked for those hand warmers for skiing. They didn’t have any but in the fishing section they had foot warmers. So I bought all of them. In the parking lot out front, I quickly took off my top layer of clothes and wrapped my arms and legs in them. It helped quite a bit. Back headed north, I stopped at Roseburg, Oregon and had some breakfast at a nice establishment. There were more interesting people here. A lot of t-shirts with American flags and eagles or both. Which is cool. The ride from the motel I left that morning to Seattle was 650 miles. I didn’t know if I could make it the whole way and tentatively planned on passing out in a motel somewhere near Portland. It was a long hard ride. I passed Portland and got gas in Vancouver, Washington. Took a short break at a Tully’s where I sipped on a carmel machiatto or maybe it was white chocolate mocha. I don’t remember, but it was delirious. The rest of the ride was pretty easy actually. I was a bit tired. For a while I would close one eye and let it rest while I had the other open. I might of taken a nap from Chehalis to Tacoma because I don’t remember passing Olympia. But, I finally made it back. Almost 3000 miles total. If only the weather had been better I would of done another week or two enjoying the coast but that wasn’t the case. It was a nice adventure and I hope to get on the bike and have another one soon. With no lightning, and no snow, and stuff….
So there you have it. Aren’t you just itching to pack up for a solo motorcycle trip yourself? (I don’t think so.)
Have a wildly successful birthday, Neil. I so glad you’re back on terra firma.
