Time Traveling, Sort Of

It's been weeks since I've noticed the strong and oftentimes relentless scent of smoke in my nose that I've mentioned here previously. My lungs appear to be mostly back to normal as well without the spontaneous cough from deep in my chest that I'd been experiencing. I can't say with certainty if my symptoms were Covid related but I suspect they were. Yesterday marks four weeks since crashing my bike and injuring my ribs. I'm feeling mostly healed from that as well. I took one of my golf clubs out of its bag last night and gave a few 80% swings out in our yard. I think I'm ready to at least hit the range for a few sessions before easing my way out onto the links again. 

I'm not totally disappointed in being unable to golf this past month because I've used my spare time to ride more than I otherwise would have — and I needed that. My form is beginning to come around but I still have some work to do. Most of my riding lately has been on my road bike; a bike I've been neglecting the past two years since purchasing my gravel bike. It's been really nice to be on it again and riding some routes/roads that I've not ridden in a while. 

Tammy and I took in the Artisan Home Tour recently. It's a tour of newly built homes that we'll never be able to afford but they're still fun and interesting to see. My favorite homes are those that feature an in-home golf simulator — something for my next life's wishlist. 

On our way home from the tour, I took Tammy by the home in Wayzata that my family lived in for one year in 1964. There were two men sitting on the front porch as I parked our car on the street and walked up the driveway to introduce myself as the son-of-the-original-owners of the home. Mark was a man of few words and struck me as either suspicious of my motives or not all that interested in what I had to say. The other man offered that he'd lived in his home across the street since 1971. 

I shared with them some memories I had of living here as a 7-year-old boy and how when we lived here my father used to drive a '57 Chevy and that one day he was driving on the freeway when the hood of the car got caught in the wind and was thrown back into the windshield (for whatever reason, it wasn't latched shut). It then occurred to me that I might be able to bring up some photos on my phone of his home from when we lived there. Google Photos made quick work of my query. Mark took one look at the photo with our cars in the driveway and commented, "That's a '56 Chevy". I was never good with car models and years.

I asked Mark if it would be okay if I took a quick look at the backyard of his home to see if it matched any of the fading memories I had from back in the day. So much had changed. An addition to the home that they added in 1990 altered the appearance considerably from how I remember it: side view of the house. It was in this backyard that I have a distinct memory from my 7-year-old mind that's stayed with me all these years: I was hunting for caterpillars and thinking to myself that all of the songs that could ever be written have already been written. How could there possibly be more songs to write? The Beatles had just exploded onto the music scene and would prove me wildly wrong!

I made my way back to the front porch to find that Mark's wife (standing inside their home, just behind their front storm door) had joined her husband and their neighbor. I introduced myself and showed her the pictures of their home that I'd shown her husband. Anita invited me inside to have a look around, encouraging me to take some photos. I only took a couple inside their home as it didn't feel right to take any more than that. I thought a before and after comparison with 57 years between these two photos would be nice. She and Mark have lived in their home since 1982 and it was their understanding that there were 4 previous owners. She commented that their next-door neighbors, Dave and Carol Fackler, were original owners of their home and still lived there. I recalled that Mr. Fackler was a military man. Anita told me that he retired from the Navy. He's 87 years old now which would've made him 30 years old when we lived here. A pouring rain kept me from leaving the shelter of their porch's overhang a few minutes longer than I felt I should stay. I used that time to tell them how one night, several neighor kids and I had caught a dozen or more crawfish from a nearby pond. We put them in the mailboxes along our street and laughed at how the mailman was going to be so shocked the next day when he delivered the mail — another memory from our time there. It was a good home for our family of 8 plus our pets.

I was out riding last week when I got a text from Ruth, our neighbor. She wanted to let me know that a fawn had bedded down in our back garden and that it was the most adorable sight. Hours later when I returned home I stepped out onto the deck to water our hanging baskets when I noticed the fawn was still in our garden waiting for its mother to return. I went back inside to retrieve my camera to get some better photos than my Android phone could hope to capture. The last two photos are of the fawn taken a half-hour after the first two photos as it was preparing to move places.

That's all I've got.