Adventure 127: Lake Havasu City/Post A

Frac's Home Sweet Home in Lake Havasu City

Thanks to my nimbly peg work, I escaped with the narrowest of wins in the Phoenix Open. There she sat, right in the stink hole, wailing like Moses after being denied the promised land. So it goes: "Let my children go," she moaned. So I left. Always the gracious second place finisher, the wily cager showed no sad longings, no I wish I wases, no, ahh shuckes. She simply swallowed her medicine, and then she asked for a consolation hug (I'm always the winner on that deal), which I gladly gave. We squeezed a little, then we hit the road. Our trip out of Phoenix was uneventful. The roads are smooth, the traffic was light, and the motorists were courteous. Three hours later, we backed Frac next to Mike and Kathy Ellsworth's house in Lake Havasu City. Mike and I taught together for about a decade at Riverside Middle School. It was the middle third of my career and Mike is one of the educators I've most admired for his knowledge and for his ability to build relationships (Kids and adults). He's one of those people you like immediately for his warmth, strength, integrity, and humility. He's one of those guys who's so good, he makes it look easy. We did the by now normal retired thing (Summarized the last forty years in about forty minutes), and Mike also caught me up on the lives of our former colleagues at Riverside. Mike and Kathy are fixers. They're both skilled craftsman, and though it seems like work to me, they like to buy houses, fix them up, and then sell them. Flipping it's called. They don't plan to flip this home in Lake Havasu, but it's a typical Ellsworth project. It's a repo house that was used as a halfway stop for illegal Mexican immigrants. Mike said, for example, that the garage door was wired shut and there were a dozen or so mattresses lying on the floor. The back yard beyond the patio was filled with thousands of beer tops (Kathy says she's still finding them in the gravel). Long story short, they got a great deal, and with their expertise, the house is now their winter home (Although there is always another project to complete). We enjoyed an excellent London Broil with asparagus and broccoli salad, which we ate on the back patio as the sun set behind the mountains on the California side of the Colorado River. The we retired to the dining room table for a game of Train Dominoes (New to us) and home made apple pie (Ala mode). The thin gruel continues. We also heard from my siblings. My sister's cremation has been arranged and her memorial will be held next Saturday. I spent the hours we drove today thinking of what I might say in her memory. It's difficult because I'm four years older, and when our parents divorced, our lives took separate paths. I had left the house by the time Sandy went through high school. We crossed paths over the years at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but mostly we spent our adult years raising our own families. I do know that she was a devoted mother (And grandmother). I think the best thing I could say to describe her is to relate a story when my son Steve and I were on a trip to Philmont Boy Scout Ranch when he was a scout. Philmont is eighty square miles of territory donated to the Boy Scouts by Waite Phillips (Founder of Phillips 66). He used the place as his private hunting reserve in the thirties. Currently, about twenty thousand scouts a year move through the property on wilderness treks every summer (It's very cool). One of the things they do on the ranch is track (Using radio tags) about eighty bears (Black and Grizzly). Anyway, we were on our trek, and we saw a large mother grizzly with her two cubs. They were less than a fifty yards from us. We quieted ourselves (No easy matter with a half dozen teenage boys in the troop), and began to back away. She didn't give us a second look, but I guarantee if we had made one step toward her cubs, she'd have covered the ground in a manner reminiscent of the wrath of God. My sister Sandra was like that. She was a live and let live person, but pity the fool who chose to mess with her cubs. I'll miss her, but not nearly as much as her kids. I wish them well. Here in Havasu City, we're in for a treat tomorrow. Mike is going to take us for a motor boat ride on Lake Havasu. We'll get to see the famous London Bridge (Second most popular tourist attraction in Arizona), and better yet we'll get a view of this arid landscape from the surface of a magnificent body of water (Lake Havasu is at least forty-five miles long). So as usual, life is good, especially today, and perhaps we'll also get tomorrow.

 Frac following along (Taken by the Bunny on I-10).

 Turning off I-10 onto Highway 95, there must be ten thousand RVs parked out in the desert.

 Art shot: The long and lonely.

 Periscope depth.

 The Ellsworh home: reclaimed, redone, revived.

 No bumps, scrapes, or bruises when we backed in.

 The view from the patio.

 The view of the patio.

 MIke and Kathy enjoy sunsets every night.

 London Broil (Pretty good, for thin gruel).

 Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth.

 Mike, ever the teacher, explaining the rules to Train Dominoes.

 My little train (I won the game tonight, and I didn't cheat).

One the the layouts. If you win a hand, you get to push the tile in the center of the green piece. It makes a little train engine whistle sound. Cute.