This past weekend, my brother-in-law Ash and I went to a camping resort on Lake Michigan. We went down to the beach just before sunset and decided to walk and talk before a swim. We left our shoes and headed South. When the sun set I pointed out that it was going to get very dark soon. After a while I convinced Ash that we needed to reverse course. By the time we got back to the public beach area it was so dark we missed our shoes sitting there and ended up walking at least a mile or a mile and a half past the spot, completely lost for where the steps were leading off the beach. I kept saying “Just a little further and I think we will find it.” Ash convinced me otherwise and we went back, eventually finding our shoes. It all looks pretty much the same in the dark. I am glad no one moved our shoes.

Today I had soup for lunch, split pea with Ham to be exact. I followed it up with the last piece of apple pie. Both were good. When I was done I went to put the other half of the soup away (one can makes two servings) and There next to it was the aluminum foil which had been covering the now empty pie pan. I looked at the foil, it was relatively clean. I shrugged and reformed it to fit the top of the soup pot to store it in the fridge and instantly realized I had become my grandmother. Grandma was raising small children during the depression and developed the habit of never throwing anything away that might possibly have a use in the future. She, notoriously, had a drawer in her kitchen which was full of, I kid you not, used aluminum foil and plastic wrap which she would wash off, neatly fold and reuse, no one knows how many times. We finally got her to quit doing that a few years before she passed away pointing out that she had… a pretty large sum of money in the bank in her “rainy day” savings. “Eva,” my step father told her “you’re 90 years old, how many rainy days do you think you are going to have to get through?” I still put the old foil on the soup.

Yesterday I was in a bit of a bind. I knew that Kathy and I were going to be out on a weekend together (starting tonight) and that we planned to go cross country skiing. The problem was that my ski boots had come apart from their soles. Kathy had been gently reminding me that they needed fixed for the last two weeks and of course I planned to get it done. I had just never actually done it. I called the shoe repair place that I had found on the web and asked if they could get them fixed in a day and they nearly laughed at me. I made some more inquiries and a few phone calls later I found Tony’s Quality Shoe Repair down in South Bend. Tony is a little Italian guy from the old country whom you can tell by looking at his knotted muscles that make up his hands, he knows what he is doing. Tony took a look at my boots and told me that he could not reattach them the way they had been made (with a rivet through the toe) but that he could do it in a better way. When I got them back less than a day later they were wonderful. Done fast and good for a mere $20. I then noticed some really nice dress shoes in his shop and he gave me a catalog for some REALLY nice custom made shoes. I drooled all the way home. I really like everything on page 11 and the classico loafer on page 13. Now, keep in mind that these shoes start at about $250 and go up to about $350, but oh boy if I had the money, I would have some of those. The white saddle shoes on 18 would definately catch Ash’s eye. If I were a rich man…..

Yesterday the family and I watched a documentary on the Apollo moon trips and the significance of having human beings stand on another heavenly body. The one person they could not get to be interviewed was Neil Armstrong. He is perhaps one of the top 10 most famous people of all time and he does not like publicity. He lives quietly and does not want the status of Hero, or Legend or anything. Amazing.
When Apollo 11 came back they had a parade with 2 million people there to cheer on those brave, crazy men who went a quarter million miles away for the first time and actually stood on what is for most of us, a disc in the sky.
He seems pretty humble for a person who had mankind united for a time saying “We did it!” I just don’t think we have heroes like this any more. There don’t seem to be any 2 million people ticker tape parades anymore.
There was one thing about the film which struck me. One of the people who went to the moon, Charlie Duke, became a Christian after he returned and in the documentary he said: “My walk on the Moon lasted three days and it was a great adventure, but my walk with God lasts forever.”

Today I took the family Ice skating at a rink in South Bend. I had not been on the ice in about 10 years and for Kathy and the girls it was only their third time ever (the second time for the girls was yesterday). All in all everyone did amazingly well. The only time that Kathy fell was when we made a train with me as the locomotive and as we rounded the corner I kind of catapulted everyone. I was happy to see that all those skating skills I picked up in Pee Wee hockey whilst living in the U.P. all of my youth had not completely left me. The one thing I noticed right off the bat was that rental skates hurt! my feet are still real sore. Everyone else noticed this as well, but part of it is just that our feet are not used to being in skates. Kathy said she felt like a geisha because of how they bind up their feet. The girls had one major drawback- roller skating had them knowing the basics of how to stay up on skates so they quickly learned how to get going fairly well. The problem was that they had not learned how to STOP!

We spent four and a half days in the U.P. from Christmas on and I wanted us to do some good winter outdoor activities. We went tubing on Minneapolis hill and had a great time. You get to ride the tubes UP the hill due to a very cool tow rope. We also went cross country skiing until my boot broke and I had to walk back a quarter mile carrying my skis (which reminded me how out of shape I am) but it was fun. We also wanted to do some snowmobiling in my parents back 40 but my cousin could not come up with a sled for us to borrow and rentals were $189 a day (yikes). We also wanted to go ice skating but due to me not knowing schedules we ended up just going TO the ice rinks in town and getting to the only one open that day 15 minutes after they closed. (we did get to see the old ice arenas that I hung out at as a kid and the girls watched the Zamboni. We are going to go skating when we get back down south. Right now we are at Kathy’s sister’s house in Midland for a New Year’s eve party with 97,000 other family members. Good times.