Miscellaneous stuff

Since starting my new job as Interim Dean, time for blogging has been scarce to non-existent. Here are a couple of items from the pile of random stuff piling up in my brain.

• Sturgis Motorcycle Rally: My good friend and motorcycle amigo, John, and I are headed out this Friday, 8/2, to check an item off the bucket list. We are riding our bikes to Sturgis, SD for the infamous motorcycle rally held each year in the Black Hills. The rally brings thousands of bikers together in a cacophonous festival devoted to all things motorcycle. We have secured lodging in the basement of a house right in town owned by the parent’s of an old acquaintance. On Monday, we are going to spend the day and night out at the Buffalo Chip Campground, the site where all the rowdy shenanigans rumored to take place at Sturgis happen. That night we have tickets to the Styx concert … the band whose music is on the playlist of my high school and college years. We also hope to do some riding in the area and check out Mr. Rushmore before heading home through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. We’ll need to put in 7 to 8 hours of riding each day to pull this off, and I can already feel the developing pain in the behind.
• I downloaded a new app to my I-Phone the other day. It’s called, “WeCroak.” You get a reminder 5 times per day that you are going to die. Sounds morbid I know, but, in Bhutan they say contemplating death five times daily brings happiness. I love it!
• Janet and I are in the initial stages of planning a 3-week trip next March to Iceland, Ireland and Israel. It’s just coincidence that the names of all the countries we will visit start with the letter “I,” but it’s pretty cool. The III trip! We are looking forward to soaking in the Blue Lagoon, visiting my aunt and uncle in County Clare and then joining a tour sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Portland. It will be our first visit to all of these places. If you have any tips to share, I’d love to hear them.
• Hope you are having a great summer! Enjoy every moment. As Joan Didion is quoted in WeCroak: “That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.” It all matters folks!