Some Things about Rik

from his own word processor

On one dark December night, I was born, on Grasshopper Hill, in Denver.  Westward the Rampart Range of the Rockies stood blue and white, like broken chips of willow ware china.  Eastward the night hid the stars in snow clouds.  Far away in Europe and Japan war brewed like a foul tea made of stinking herbs.

I spent my childhood in a part of Denver called Barnum, because once P. T. Barnum bought a lot of acreage in the area to use as a wintering ground for his circus.  I never quite imagined elephants and tigers and lions happy in the snow and subzero cold of Denver's winters.

When I was twelve I wrote a poem.  I liked writing it so much I've done it again and again.

When I grew up, I sojourned many years among Presbyterians.  Eventually I went to Seminary.  I spent a student pastor year in John Day country in Eastern Oregon.

When I graduated, I put on black robes and became a preacher on the High Plains of Colorado.  Then I married a California woman.  I brought her to Colorado.  We stopped for fuel in Burlington, Colorado.  She saw a thermometer that read ten degrees.  She remarked she had never seen so low a temperature before.  I told her it was ten degrees below zero.  She never recovered.  Neither did our marriage.

In time we came back to California.  I helped her dad raise sheep and feeder calves and mend fences.  She went to work in San Francisco.

The ranch was only a few miles from the sea and had a eucalyptus grove.  I found dragons in the fog and low cloud that extended inland nights and mornings.  I met many spirits in the eucalyptus grove.  I fed bottled formula to orphaned lambs and hay to cows.

Then I wasn't married any more.  I said goodbye to the sheep.  I said goodbye to the feeder calves.  I said goodbye to the eucalyptus grove and its spirits.  I went to work for a major telecommunications organization.  I said goodbye to the cramped little man I had been, and started a new life.

I went on a cruise on the Love Boat, to Alaska.  I met my partner, Ken, on the boat, and fell in love with him.  We've been traveling together now more than twenty years.

We rode a train from Martinez, California, to Martinez, California.  We traveled 8500 miles, saw a World's Fair, the Smithsonian, and Bunker Hill.  We had a layover in Chicago, on the way home.  We ate a very fine hot dog in the train station.

We celebrated one New Year's Eve in Uxmal, Yucatan.  I bought a superb hot dog with green chiles in Chetumal, Quintana Roo.  Later we went to a royal tomb in Palenque.  Ken stayed outside.  I crawled down to see the empty sarcophagus.  It was just a big stone box.

Once we crossed Canada from East to West, Halifax to Vancouver, by rail.  We didn't eat any hot dogs.  I ordered escargot in Vancouver; it was tough and sandy, and wonderfully garlicky.

We flew to China.  We saw many wonders, from the Great Wall to the clay army of Xian.  The most beautiful thing we saw was Gueilin, where all the mountains look like Chinese paintings.  We ate a lot of very good food, including Shanghai French Fries, but no hot dogs.  We wished, after we came home, that we had bought jade.

We tried Russia next.  We took a bus from London (the bus rode a boat over the watery parts).  We went with a Bulgarian guide.  We learned to follow the Australians in our tour group.  Only they could always find good quality beer.  This ability is essential to survival in Russian travel.

When we came back, we spent three days in England.  We saw Westminster Abbey, Stonehenge, Stratford on Avon, Oxford, the Tower, London Bridge, 222B Baker Street, the Houses of Parliament, the Cotswolds, and Bath, all in 3 days in England.  We need to go back.  We haven't seen everything yet.

Another year we traveled to Australia.  We saw the wild life in Sydney and Alice Springs.  We saw a stuffed crocodile in Darwin.  We couldn't find a pub open on Good Friday in Perth.  Australia without available beer loses something of its authenticity.

We have been in all 50 states, all but 3 of Canada's provinces, and about half of Mexico's states, from Chetumal, Quintana Roo, to the Copper Canyon in Chihuahua.

I went to Denver in the summer of 1999, after many years away.  I visited dead ancestors in cemeteries.  I'll let Denver be.  I'd rather remember it the way I was when I was young, and at least some of the ancestors were still alive.

After thirty-five years I went back to the John Day Country in the autumn of 2000.  It hasn't changed much.  I have, in ways I haven't sorted out yet.  A month later we went to the Grand Canyon.  It's still a deep subject.

In 2001 we went back to China to sail the Yangtze from Qungqing to Shanghai.  We had superb spaghetti on the cruise ship.  I liked that better than Qungqing duck banquet, where the accompanying dishes were all made with chicken.

Then we went to New Mexico for a Seminary Class Reunion.  Always before the preachers gathered to talk about God.  This time they got practical and talked about retiring.  

On a whim, because the price dropped after 9/11, we went to Egypt.  We had a wonderful time cruising the Nile, seeing ruins, and eating French food and Austrian pastry.  We also saw crocodile mummies and colorful tombs, as well as donkeys, camels, and Egyptians.

We just got back from a 2002 trip to Peru, where we rode the Machu Picchu Choochoo, saw ruins, ate a lot of potatoes, and exhausted ourselves in the magnificent Andes.

We have more traveling to do.

One thing I learned traveling is very important.  The special dish of almost every region is a chicken, usually wrapped in something odd, such as river mud, banana leaves, garlic cloves, old cloth, moldy potato skins, etc.  I don't like chicken.

Four cats, George, Percy, Samantha, and Hagar, have owned me each in its turn.  Several other cats relied on me for fish and milk, though they had little other use for me.  All my cat companions have cashed in their nine lives.

Three dogs have owned me.  First was Caesar, a Chihuahua of great heart.  Years after came Dolly the Dingo Doggy; some of her ancestors were of Australia.  She was a dog of great gentleness and much love.  Rosie Rosarita, la perrita mas dulcita del mundo, owns me now.  She is very macho on the outside, and all mush inside.

I like chocolate and spaghetti and Brussels sprouts and ham and broccoli and chile, but not on the same plate.  I don't eat creatures that had fins or feathers while alive.

This page updated March 3, 2002