Art and Ernie - click to enlarge
Hi, looking forward to seeing you and sharing some time with the participants at the class reunion. My perspective is that time has flown by much too quickly and I hope its life experiences have treated you well and you’ve enjoyed the trip. For us, I’d say that life has been good and continues to flow in that direction. I hope it has been the same for you.
My bio seems relatively simplistic as I try to report it and for me that is a good thing. In retrospect I believe there have been more peaks than valleys for us. The us in my world consists of my beautiful wife Jo (Jolene), and a black dog named Ernie. I’ve spent the majority of my lifetime in the Tri-Cities and yes it is still a great place to live. We did slip across the river and have for about the last 18 years lived in Pasco. This hasn’t thwarted my being a Bomber or clinging to the Green & Gold.
After retiring from Battelle Laboratory (a great place to spend a satisfying and rewarding career) and with encouraging information and reinforcement from fellow classmates Cliff & LaDean Stice, we jumped head long into RV-ing and exploring a bit of the country. This has been interesting and we’ve enjoyed seeing new places and meeting a lot of other folks. I’d encourage it for anyone that wants to see some other sides of different hills and get a different pulse on the country. The experiences have been delightful and educational. Our plan is to keep following that yellow line down the road for as long as we can and keep circling back to the Tri-Cities.
This traveling experience has taught me a few things like, why they call the Mississippi River the Big Muddy, finding out that Louisiana has great food experiences, Texas is twice as wide as it should be, Arizona has beautiful birds and big spiders. Utah has lots of red rocks. Oregon is almost as beautiful as Washington, and the list could go on. This part of our life has been great fun and we’ve met other very nice people.
Our traveling has kind of stuck in the Southern California desert for the last couple of years in a spot called Borrego Springs. It is raw aired desert with sunshine and warm temperatures through the winter, hiking and four wheeling, lots of coyotes, palm trees, tennis for Jo, and not to forget Mexican food and desert creatures.
As a closing thought, I include this. You might want to incorporate it as a thought for yourself. As I’m sure you are aware we are all moving into what I’ll refer to as the last quarter of our lives. For my part I plan to heed the advice of Rudyard Kipling; “Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.” Keep breathing hard and putting one foot in front of the other and if you can, leave the place better than you found it.
As always, your friend and classmate.
Art Bruce