Where the Buffalo Roam

Yellowstone National Park

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson...I hate to advocate drugs, liquor, violence or insanity to anyone. But in my case it's worked.

Mrs. Phred snuck up on this bison with her bad foot and took this great picture...the park ranger told her to stop harassing the buffalo....

There is a hotspot deep below Yellowstone which causes all the geysers, mud pots, hot springs and fumaroles. The hotspot remains stationary and the continental plate drifts over it to the northeast.

The three Yellowstone super eruptions occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago, One was 2,500 times as powerful as Mt. St Helens. If you do the math, you might conclude that we are due for another.

We spent all day in Yellowstone, looking at animals and geology...

Today Mrs. Phred is getting her foot Xrayed...

I did a little bicyling and bought a ten day Montana fishing license...

In the morning we will head for Canyon Ferry lake a few hours north...I want to catch and eat some cut throat trout....

Mrs. Phred has a fractured bone in her right foot. It will be four-six weeks before she can hike or play tennis....

She is being nice and blaming herself for not expecting something to fall out of the luggage compartment onto her foot...actually, I did a bad job packing....

We have a line on some outstanding Bar-B-Q outside of Austin, Texas....Maybe later this year on the way back?

The sky here is more blue...it might be the 9,000 foot elevation that puts us above 3/4ths of the atmosphere....

The people wait for "old faithful"...it goes off about once an hour...

It’s All Too Beautiful

Sarasota, Florida

I get up at 4 AM and play with the computer. I nag some friends in England to send me MP3s from their two albums “The Firefly Sessions”. I look up the requirements for filing a tax return when you have a deceased spouse. I need to help Susan with her 2007 tax return in a few weeks. She is a classic innocent spouse. I’ve looked at her 2006 joint return and it seems easily doable.


At 6 AM I drive to a local bank and try withdrawing $100 cash from my American Express card. It works. I want Mrs. Phred to have at least two cards that work in ATMs when she goes to Venice, Italy on the 17th. Mrs. Phred’s sister in Venice has requested certain hard-to-get items from America. These include rounded toothpicks, a large jar of mixed salted nuts and a taser with an accessory belt battery pack.


At 8 AM we play doubles social tennis. It’s a round robin where you play a different position on each set. I go around five times for 20 sets. Mrs. Phred has a swollen knee. She won’t stay off it. We have an MRI scheduled for her Wednesday. Perhaps it is another torn meniscus?


At 11 AM my volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity begins. I help Amy with the bills and income reports. She’s smart. I would have considered hiring her at my last job as a controller. Amy is stressed today. She needs to do monthly financial statements, get everything recorded and order the 2007 tax forms for vendors and employees. They give me coffee and a nametag. I work for her 3 hours a day, five days a week.


At 2 PM I go to the local library and buy five hard covers for $5.25. I know I’ve read two of them before. A senior bonus of reaching my advanced age is that the 20,000 books and 30 billion estimated words previously read begin to fade out very rapidly. You can read the same thing twice now every ten years with only a vague recollection. In five years, I bet I can read the same book every two months without remembering any of the details. It's a storage issue.


I have to go to Tampa for a special procedure on a basal cell cancer on my temple tomorrow. Apparently cancers in the hair area are more difficult to excise. They say it will take all day. Cut and send the excised tissue to the lab to examine margins. Repeat as needed. I'll take two books and a turkey sandwich. If it takes too long I can probably read the first book twice.


Right now I’m drinking wine and listening to CD1 of the “this is Psychedelia” set. Mrs. Phred is not here to tell me it is too loud. She’s down at the pool watching the Elvis impersonators. Five of them are sky-diving in with the rocket packs that leave the cool smoke trails.


My only two New Year’s resolutions are to go to a three-day Kite Boarding Camp on the outer banks of North Carolina and try tandem sky-diving 30 miles south of Dallas for $169. I love the way Kite Boards catch the wind and pull you 30 feet out of the water. I never got a chance to use my chute in the Air Force.

It's all to beautiful, It's all to beautiful
I feel inclined to blow my mind
Get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun
They all come out to groove about
Be nice and have fun in the sun
It's all to beautiful, It's all to beautiful
It's all to beautiful, It's all to beautiful
-Small Faces
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