Bob & Ron - What Really Matters

travelarium at shutterstock White Snow I met Dwight on a Sunday. He, his family and their dogs were at our sled dog races, on a beautiful day in Colorado’s high country under a cobalt-blue sky. Pure white snow, pure white Samoyeds, there’s nothing better. Colorado mushers usually set up a racecourse somewhere, and they'd get insurance and arrange a safe place for their campers full of dogs and sleds.  They’d flag the course, time the races and, late on Sunday, tear it all down and return to their homes and kennels. If you were a kid and your mom and dad had a dozen Siberians, imagine how much you’d look forward to your first race. Just you on your sled, out there in a snowy forest. With a few fast dogs who could run like the wind. CC0 @ pxfuel Our Town In 1995, the little town where my wife and I lived held an annual sled dog race of our own to attract winter business. We did everything. The mushers only had to show up. Of course, they loved that and brou...

Shutterstock Marble 75 years ago, five Marines and a sailor hoisted a flagpole atop Mt. Suribachi. Several of them would die within weeks, there on Iwo Jima. Three of them now rest in Arlington under marble headstones. Near the Continental Divide in Colorado, a tiny town sits at the base of a marble mountain. A century ago, from its quarries men cut great blocks of purest whiteness for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Lincoln Memorial.  David Gould @ Pexels Steam locomotives pulled flatcars piled high with impure pieces of it alongside the  Crystal River, as men shoved them into the river to stabilize its banks.  The town built a schoolhouse atop blocks of it. Dad made the back step of our house out of it.   Of course, t he town's name is Marble. The Poet Wikimedia Commons In 1994, my wife Michelle and I returned to Colorado to live in Redstone, a tiny town downriver from Marble. Michelle was a teacher at the Marble school an...

Sabri Ismail @ Pixabay The Talk This is "the talk" you've probably been dreading.  I helped my mother, my mother-in-law and my darling wife deal with their end-of-life issues and  I learned three things. First, it would have been so easy if these conversations had started years earlier. Second,  I could deal with it and hate it at the same time, and third, so important it gets its own paragraph:  Don't talk to Mom. Listen to her. "I Need To Sign Your Checks, Mom." Sbringser @ Pixabay Imagine your kids saying this to you: "Mom, we think you need to be in a nursing home. We have to know how much money you have. Sign here to give me the Power of Attorney to sign your checks and see your medical records. And before you ask, no, the home doesn't allow cats." George Desipris @ Pexels See what I mean? It can sound pushy, frightening.  So, start with love. Mention the time she saved you from something scary. Convince her you want to wa...

My journey with a diagnosis of prostate cancer has been well documented in my book  The Prostate Chronicles - A Medical Memoir . It’s been a successful catalyst for an irreverent discussion of this cancer that involves one-in-nine men. The good news is that only one in thirty-nine die of prostate cancer. I confirmed that no matter what treatment choices a man makes to address this cancer, they all suck.  I was diagnosed with T2C prostate cancer and, on  August 30, 2018,  a young X-Box surgeon removed  my prostate using the da Vinci robot. In June of 2019, I celebrated my eight decade by turning seventy and going to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, CA. My friends commented on how good I looked, blah,blah, blah. One friend blurted out that seventy is the new sixty! Bulll Shit was my retort.  At sixty, I didn’t have prostate cancer. My wife and I enjoyed a great life of intimacy, and I didn’t have to pee every twenty minutes. On the plus sid...

Krom999 @ Flickr Petunias John @ Flickr I'm a 73-year-old man watching hoodlums, I mean, grandsons practice skateboard jumps over my petunias. So, I guess it's only natural for me to remember my past when me and my immortal pals ruled the world. My teens were a snap. 5-mile hikes to school through snow so deep I needed a periscope. Sure, I had to dodge a few dinosaurs. And we had nothing to eat but rotten radish roots, but that's just the way it was in the 50s.  The 70s Things were easier in the 70s. I got lucky and won a combat tour in Vietnam. When I got back, I was having a Sassparilla in a bar somewhere and met this guy, Chuck B. He'd spent some Navy time in a sub, standing off the Russkies during the Cuban Missile thing, so we had that whole uniform thing in common. Chuck and I and our pals spent our twenties riding high, in between being interviewed by women looking for the perfect mate. Chuck was luckier than most....