Day 2 of Sectionals. We won, beating a larger and seemingly more powerful Phoenix team.

My mother sent me this.

Polly wrote me a postcard.

I flew out to San Diego for regionals and stayed with Sarah and Nick.

Sunday at Regionals.

On Monday afternoon, just as Sarah was about to take me to the airport to go home, Mommy called to tell me that Poppop had died and the funeral would be on Friday. I said OK and we went to the airport and i got on the plane.

At the stop in Phoenix, i convinced the flight attendant to let me off the plane to make a quick phone call and i called Ian to tell him not to buy plane tickets. I got back on the plane and got home around midnight.

i got up and did some reorganizing and packing and ran some errands around town. I went to work at about 3:00 and left work at about 10:00. Ian met me at my house, we packed up my truck and hit the road.

We had driven through the night and we drove all day, winding up at Earlham in Richmond, Indiana that evening. We stopped there and camped out on the back campus fields by Brick City.

We continued on east and got to Shunk that evening while everyone else was at the viewing at the funeral home.

Went to Poppop's funeral. I made a point not to look at Poppop while he was propped up in the casket because that's not how i wanted to remember him. I'd rather remember him out in the woods building a road with the bulldozer at age 87. All of us grandsons carried the casket to the grave.

Family photo. Back: Ian, Jason, Paul, Adam

Front: Ann, Caroline, Nina, Gramma, Sarah, Mary, Emily

Teco's first trip to the lake. He proved to be a great traveller.

Linda and Brett came up to the lake for a short weekend visit.

Ian and Teco and i headed home on Halloween. That evening we were stuck in a traffic jam near Cleveland and we considered getting out and trick-or-treating to the neighboring cars. We didn't do it. We drove and drove and drove and played lots of stupid games (like "silent alphabet game" - no talking until you reach "z") and slept for about 3 hours somewhere in Missouri and got back to Albuquerque in 39 hours.