Super Bowl

For all the football we played in the backyard, I was the only sibling bitten by the professional football bug. I love it. I use to watch it with our father. I knew all the football rules and some of the plays. As a result, I was really obnoxious as the high school mascot. I wanted to watch the game and cheer the team appropriately (a first and ten cheer when the team was third and fifteen was rather inappropriate).

Bill is into high school and college ball and Dan was rather indifferent. Unless it was the Super Bowl. Then Dan enjoyed the game IF the teams were competitive. Most of the time he was on the road and got the game on the internet after he stopped for the night.

Dan didn't play football. He was not exactly built for the sport. He was too tall and too skinny. And if truth be known, he was a bit of a klutz. Even if he played end he had to be able to run and catch at the same time. Not Dan. He could fix anything mechanical but he would trip over his feet walking across the room.
So playing football was out. Watching football was in.

He, of course, rooted for Minnesota Vikings. (Dad was born and raised in Minneapolis- we rooted for the Golden Gophers and the Vikings or missed dinner!) Once Dan met Dad Mueller he rooted for the San Diego Chargers.

So in today's game, I can be sure that he would have rooted for Green Bay. Small town, close to Minnesota, sixth place seed, etc. He would have liked the game, too. He would have hated the turnovers.

Today I could almost hear him. Sitting on my couch. Grousing about calls, cheering great catches. Yeah, I can hear him.

Writer's Conference

 Dan, as I have said before, was an intellectual trucker. He read everything and retained more than any man should have a right to do. He actually was a very good writer but he hated to write. That came from, I think, his lousy handwriting. And his handwriting was awful. Worse than mine! And I have the excuse of being a "professional" so I am suppose to have bad handwriting and a worse signature. Believe me, I do.

But Dan should have been a writer. Bill tried to get him to go back to school to hone that skill but Dan hated school more than he hated traffic jams. So Bill, being Bill, invited Dan to his condo in Sun Valley, Idaho at the same time that the Sun Valley Writer's Conference was happening. Bill can be sneaky....

Of course, Dan didn't have an admission tag. Bill did and Bill's wife, Kathy did, but Dan didn't. And those little plastic thingys were expensive. Plus they weren't selling anymore of them. But Dan wanted to go to some of the lectures and workshops.

Sooooo......I have been told by a party who shall remain nameless that one of my siblings  someone "accidentally" stepped on the foot of the volunteer guarding the door at one of the lectures. The poor thing was so distracted by the profuse apologies being made to her by this the handsome Viking  that some other people were able to enter the room before they were checked for the proper credentials. This, of course, is complete and total hearsay. I know nothing.....

To say that Dan was hooked on the Writer's Conference would be an understatement. Being in the same room with accomplished writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, of great literature of all kinds made him feel like he was over the moon. He would talk with them, share his thoughts and be taken seriously. Dan, the truck driver. Taken seriously by serious people. Walking in tall cotton, as our father would say.
He planned to go again this year.

This is the link to this years Sun Valley Writer's Conference. Enjoy.  http://www.svwc.com/

The Motorcycle

Dan's favorite mode of transportation was NOT his truck. It was his motorcycle. He would ride it whenever he could. He and Pat would take vacations on it. A day ride would turn into a couple of days or a week depending on his work schedule. He even rode out to California from Montana on that thing one time. Almost roasted himself in Nevada and froze in the Sierras!

He loved the freedom and openness of the bike. Riding along Highway 1 at the edge of the ocean or taking the twists and turns of Highway 190 in the Sierras was a thrill. I remember him telling me that he could drive by Pierpont Falls on the way to Camp Nelson and truly see the falls. Something you couldn't do from inside a car.

When I visited Montana last year he took me everywhere on the bike.I could smell the water in the Bitterroot and the hay in the fields. It was a totally different experience.  He wanted to take me to Camp Nelson on it but Mel was a bit concerned for my safety. I was not. Dan was an exceptional driver and I felt safer on his bike then I did in most people's cars!

Dan and me on his Harley

I am posting this picture of Dan and me on the bike because it shows the size of the thing and it is a good picture of Dan without his helmet on!

Just a week or so before he died we took the bike up to the Harley shop to be worked on. It needed an oil change etc. and the Harley shop was in Atascadero. We walked into the shop and he immediately started pointing out bikes I could "handle". I was scared to death to drive one of them. He could never figure out how he was the only one in the family with the bike bug.

After he died, I contacted the Harley store to see if they could sell the bike. They didn't do consignment sales but they remembered Dan and his bike. We had been there once and they knew who he was. It made that kind of an impression on people.

End of the Trail

When we were growing up our parents would take us to Mooney Grove in Visalia. It was a big day for me as Visalia was a CITY to me. It had BIG streets and street lights and lots of cars and stores where people didn't know your name. The park was bigger than our neighborhood!

Dan, as was his spirit, would climb anything that "needed" climbing. And there, at the entrance to Mooney Grove, stood "End of the Trail"

The original plaster sculpture stood in Mooney Park after the San Francisco Expo until 1968. It was swapped out for a bronze one with the Cowboy Museum back east. They restored the plaster one and the bronze one remains in Visalia.

But every time we went, Dan climbed it. Mom and Dad would yell at him every time. And the next time he would climb it.

It was, I believe, this statue that caused both Dan and I to look at the Native American history and learn what had been deleted from our history books. We both felt that the Native American was not at an end and that there was much to learn from their history. But Dan especially felt it after he moved to Montana and lived with the Native Americans there. His feelings were complicated and I can't presume to know them all.

I just know that they started when he first climbed "End of the Trail".

Just an Aside

I was looking at my "dashboard" this morning. That is the thingamabob that tells me all this neat stuff about the blog. One of the cool things it tells me is where the people are that read the blog.

I am stunned! There are readers from United Kingdom, Malaysia, Slovenia, France, Denmark and Russia!

To think that someone in each of those countries now knows a little bit about Dan is astounding. Whoever you are and where ever you are, THANK YOU! Dan would be very happy to know that he is circling the world.

Now there are physical parts of Dan in people and emotional/spiritual parts of Dan everywhere.

Pretty mind boggling....

Please leave a comment and let me know where you are from. I really appreciate your readership.

The Thinker

Dan at Zion National Parks

This is how I remember Dan. Almost a part of the earth. Apart from other people but together with the world. As I look at this picture I can almost hear his mind whirring. Thinking thoughts that you and I would never dream of thinking. He thought about the world and how it worked. Not in terms of physics but in terms of the emotional, the logical, the words that explained the things he saw and heard.

He would tell me about these experiences. Of the times that he would sit and think. Maybe you could call it meditation but it was far more active than that. He actively would chase down a thought. Follow it through its permutations until it hit its own illogical or impractical end. Then he would be off on the next thought.

To think that the special brain that was Dan exploded within him somehow makes sense. Kind of like driving a car when the oil is too high. Or the electrical system is giving off too much energy. Maybe there was a genetic flaw, like an electrical short, that caused his brain to bleed into the one area that he treasured and used the most. The area of communication and thought.

This picture, sent by his granddaughter, Kilisha, gives me great peace. I see Dan at peace. Thinking.

Long Hauling

Dan loved sunshine. He loved to sit at the end of the road in Pismo, overlooking the beach and the ocean and soak in the sunshine. I had given him one of those outdoor, reclining, gravity chairs so that he could relax out there and let the ocean winds cool him off on a warm, sunshiny day.

The problem was that once he started working full time at a trucking job, he had no time to sit in the sunshine. He was always in the cab of his truck going somewhere. He use to love trucking. He loved driving alone with his thoughts, his music and , god forbid, his cell phone. He would blow that thing up talking to people everywhere. Even me. But that was when he had a route that took him from Missoula to Seattle and back. One way on one day. One way on the next. He would spend the night in a motel that the company had reservations at for its drivers.

But this job was a long haul gig. Leave San Luis Obispo for Orange County, then to Los Angeles, then to Orange County again, then to Nevada, over to Sacramento, up to Washington, down to Portland, up to Washington, etc, etc, etc. He slept in his truck and ate at truck stops. He didn't have a chance to make friends or have a social life. The company would push him. He had to argue with the dispatcher to get his mandatory 10 hours of rest. He had to argue for days off.

It made him angry and irritable. All he wanted was a job that would pay the bills, let him go to Camp Nelson and let him lay in the sun. What he was doing wasn't it.

 The last night that I saw him he was eating dinner at my place. Just beans and hotdogs. But he really liked it because it wasn't a truck stop. He had driven the truck to a turn out on the street below ours. I had picked him up there and after he ate, I drove him back to the truck.

He started to get out of the car and he turned to me and said, "Here I go again." I told him to be careful. He just smiled.

He always smiled.