39th Anniversary Outing

It's been awhile and some of the daughters have been after me to post. We (especially me) are affected by in the current economic uncertainty so I have been spending almost every day working on sprucing up the rental property in an effort to find a new tenant. Feels good to be working, and my arthritis is behaving. That helps. But we canceled all our travel plans including Alaska, Moab/Texas, and Yellowstone.

We did head out for a few days for a buggy run in NoCal with 18 other buggys. Coincidentally it was our 39th anniversary (!), but we didn't tell anyone because Paulette got sick. At first I thought she had the cold I have been battling for 3+ weeks, and assumed she would handle it in similar fashion. We both went on the first run and midway she started feeling poorly. We terminated the run and headed for camp. At her urging I went on the second buggy run and left her to sleep. That night she was quite a bit sicker than I had been. In fact, I think she was as ill as I have ever seen her. She slept most of the remaining time we were in Clearlake, Calif.. Heading for home we drove only about three hours before stopping for the night. That was probably a good thing as she wasn't doing well enroute. The next day was another 7+ hours to get home and she handled that better. Each day since has seen some improvement, and we went out to eat last night, but after a week Paulette doesn't have her strength back to normal. She told me she now weighs less than at any time since we got married, and less than when she graduated from High School. In response I said she needs to add on a few more pounds to look healthy again. If she loses any more weight I'm taking her to the doc. We are waiting for Mom to get better to celebrate our anniversary.

The above is the important family info. Here is a little of the recreational activity. The second day seven buggies did a "technical" run. By that I mean it had a high degree of difficulty traversing 21 miles of dirt. The lead buggy made the ascent to the top of a rutted area and stopped to get pix of the rest of us negotiating the rough. I was last in line. Here is the pix he got of me. We couldn't believe it when we saw the pix. I knew I was bouncing along and powering up the deep ruts, but had no idea the front end came off the ground that far. You get an idea about the angle of the climb by looking at the lake in the background. The guys joked they are going to do a buggy calendar next year and I'll be Miss September. B-)