A Year of Change From Bittersweet Farewell to New Beginnings

What a difference a year makes.

When I heard Greta Van Fleet earlier, I damn near felt the ghost of my late wife flick me in the ear to remind me of life with her.

Oh yeah... It instantly brought me back too - last July on our final road trip together; 2023.

Kara had this vocal crush on Josh Kiszka and loved “You're The One,” so it's a song I played a lot around that era.

I remember driving down to Wheatland, California (the long way around) to check out my own vocal crush, Ed Roland and his band Collective Soul. They were playing at the Hard Rock?

What made this honeymoon rather bizarre was the writing on the wall. We knew this was our farewell tour.

I mean - we got along alright; for the most part.

I may have had a few burs in my saddle, but I made sure Kara was never privy. I didn't exactly want to spoil the mood.



Of course I guess I'd be lying if I denied bickering AT ALL with her during this time? Especially when she may or may not have accused me of “waiting to die” and or “simply giving up” once we reached our San Francisco hotel room.

Feel free to choose your own adventure.

But… We weren't exactly breaking anything off either.

We were just operating under the assumption that the odds of BOTH of us being around to exchange gifts on Christmas morning that year was SLIM.

You see – she was sick with a metastasizing melanoma we were only quasi aware of??? We had the feeling SOMETHING was growing, but we were probably half in denial and half coming to terms with what mortality actually meant. She'd already lost her colon six months prior to this.

Me on the other hand? My congestive heart failure was just starting to flirt. I spent our entire journey being tickled by the tip of a certain black hooded individual's sickle under my left rib, a burning ember below my left boob and experiencing this god awful anxiety spiced with shoulder pain.

Side note? An ailment that still harasses me to this day as a matter of fact.

It was a coin flip which one of our days were numbered - and as it turned out... The morning we woke up in Yreka, California??? “Forever” would only consist of 113 more sun sets on her end.

I spent the entire concert concerned over our fuel situation.

Kara (bless her soul) was never one to leave any money on reserve if (Heaven forbid) an emergency arose. I knew we wouldn’t have enough to make it the hundred miles back to our suite that night and the 370 from the bay north to Medford. We only had something like fifty dollars left and gas was approaching five bucks a gallon.

She’d get paid the morning we were to wake-up in Oregon, so the rest of the trip home would have been a breeze. But, I just knew we'd strand ourselves mid Siskiyou mountain range.

Somewhere short of Shasta.

It turns out that I'd have been right too.

Mind you; my high school rock heroes were bringing it!

I remember knowing I'd have to and dreading the call home to hit my mom up for cash while I was bouncing my fist in the air and bopping my head along to the beat. We HAD enough money at one point, but somebody couldn’t just let it sit.

I was usually pretty good at biting my lip, but that did secretly weigh on my shoulders.

Oh and upon returning to our airport hotel that night, we heard gun shots outside which ultimately expedited our departure the next morning.

We decided to hit Seaside and Astoria on the way home and drive the 101.

      Almost a year later and I find myself retracing a lot of the same steps Kara and I took that trip with my new girlfriend; someone completely different.

Today, (without that aforementioned song gracing the radio) it's hard to even picture traveling those lanes with anyone other than Angie.

So we took Connie, Angie's mom (who I met for the first time on this trip), south to Salem so she could pick up her freshly repaired pickup. Apparently the engine caught fire down there once upon a time?

Well it just so happened that the Ironman contest would lock up all the places to stay up and down the west coast unless one is willing to pony up three bills - which put a crimp in our plans.

Her mother was gonna rent somewhere our party of four (since twelve year old Nathan, Connie's grandson, was also with us) could crash before Angie and I would peel off on our own the next morning to return home by ourselves.

A visit to Walmart produced blankets, pillows and such - as her and my plans excitingly morphed from a motel stay into auto camping.

The bed we slept on was awkward for the most part.

Her rear seats fold all the way down like a transformer in order to virtually disappear and continue the rear cargo deck - the platform on which a person or persons can lie and stretch out on.

Yeah... It was well after midnight by the time we found this perfect spot to park and this couple was eager to turn in.

The moon was bright lit the atmosphere brighter than a streetlamp and we were anything but graceful setting up.

We were anything but stealth.

Every pair of headlights spotted us center stage for seconds at a time.

We went nigh-night with the window above our heads slightly rolled down. Rolling to either shoulder involved serious pain.

“Ow ow ow, AH!”

Moments of agony were broken up by hysterical laughter before concluding with more pain.

It reminded me of the kind of luck my best friend Orion and I used to have when we'd try to do stuff in high school. Whatever could go wrong typically would.

At one point during the wee hours of the morning, I clinched my eyes shut and willed it to stop hailing. Our heads and pillows were getting hit and closing windows would have involved getting soaked. Reaching the ignition would have meant climbing out the hatchback to access the driver's seat up front.

It worked; it honestly cleared up.

Angie thank me before painfully flipping to her other side and going back to sleep.