Catching Up, Kokomo, Jim Olson, Weather, etc....

Crazy Spring it has been....here it is June 3rd...and I just walked over and turned the freaking heat back on....June 3rd!!!!!  Damn strange...and the Weather Channel, with it's backing from the Obama Hacks at NBC and their Billions of bucks in equipment, still can't get the forecast right more than a day or so out....

Looks like cool and somewhat wet over the next week or so...cool I can handle, wet, with the beginning of the Summer Baseball season, not so much.  Actually tonight was my first
scheduled game, at Convoy, for the Crestview Knights Summer ACME opener...but that won't happen, the Knights won the Regional and will be playing for the State of Ohio Division 4 title this week in Columbus.  Two other teams I umpired this Spring will also make an appearance...Defiance in D2 and their north town city brethren, Defiance Tinora, will join Crestview and 2 other teams in D4.

Back from Kokomo.....

I headed out early Thursday the 85 mile backroad trip west to Howard County, for my first ever "Firebase Kokomo" mini Reunion.  I have been at the last three Kokomo Reunions in September, but this was my first spring fling.  Much smaller, about 30% of the crowd as the massive reunion in the early fall...but a fun time, with Tom McCandless none-the-less.  I

arrived just after Noon on Thursday and stayed for 48 hours before heading back to Celina on Saturday....

We did get some rain, and the temperatures that were supposed to be hot, never got near 80 degrees..the rain was mostly overnight, with some intermittent showers during the day on Friday and early Saturday.   The usual crowd that I have met and partied with over the last few years were there, just in less numbers....come September, we will have our full numbers, and I look forward to that, although I don't look forward to the end of Summer....it has barely been warm at all thus far this spring.

Patricia is down in Centerville this day, sitting with Grandson Kasyn...I was invited, but since he will be here tomorrow with us, I decided to do some "catch up" work...on this blog, and getting ready for the painting that needs done on the garage...something I have been putting off...I won't however paint when it's this damp and cold.  I also need to finish the work that I started last week , looking at the adventures I had with my departed friend Jim Olson, who passed away in early May in North Dakota...I only found out about it last week, and am still in shock.  Given Jim's life style for many

years, and am not shocked that he passed at 61, but I was shocked that he did so, just a day or so after I last talked with him about our plans to re-create our Minnesota Boundary Waters trip of 1978...that was scheduled for mid July...whether Nick and I will do that now, is up in the air.

For now I will grab another cup of coffee....go through some old slides of Olson, Nick, and Me, and others that lived those crazy times that began in the mid 1970s....and see what my old mind can recollect....

back later>>>>

Photos-The Large Flag waving above the "Healing Garden" at the Howard County Camp near Kokomo...my old buddy Tom and me on my first night, Thursday, at the H C V V Club House....feeling no pain at all....and Grandson Kasyn at the "Spray Station" last week, when Patricia and I were sitting with him....a bit warmer on this day last week.