The annual family newsletter has never been one of my customs, and they usually are written toward the end of a year and not in the beginning of the next one. Even so, I think I might attempt to summarize my good and bad times for 2010.
In a column I wrote this time last year I promised myself that I would not open any attachments or hyperlinks in incoming emails. If I had followed through on that one, I probably would have read only about 10 percent of what I received. Nope, didn’t do it.
In the same column I promised not to forward emails, but to revise and rework any that I wanted to share and make them into originals with no attachments of hyperlinks. Nope, that one was broken early and often. In my defense, I did do a lot of cleaning up of those I got and wanted to forward.
In March I visited my doctor and found that I was way too heavy. He had been on a diet and lost about 30 pounds, so I determined to do likewise. That one I did accomplish, and I’ve kept the weight off, even over the last few weeks, where we all normally tend to gain a few pounds what with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years dinners.
Another feat I wanted to accomplish last year was to travel a lot. Well, I managed to take seven trips, including flying again for the first time in eight years. I visited twenty-eight states.
My crowning achievement was to get back to eastern Oregon in order to drive over the Hells Canyon Scenic Highway. It was everything I had expected and more. It would have been nice to drive it as a loop road, but due to washouts halfway around, I had to backtrack and make it a U-trip instead. The drive was over 600 miles and took from dawn to after dark, but every mile was an adventure.
My camera was kept busy during all that travel, with over 700 pictures. One of my favorites was one I hadn’t intended. It was taken in the early morning at the Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park, and the sunlight was filtered through the tree I was using to shade the lens, creating a rainbow effect. I don’t believe this could have turned out any better. It shows a hanging valley across the canyon, so I titled it “Dream Valley.”
There were some setbacks during the year, but I survived them, though the coronary problem that resulted in my driving prohibition was the most traumatic and the jury is still out on how much that might affect my future travels. At least I still have my wife/chauffeur, who loves road-tripping as much as I do.
God willing, I’ll be around next year to write a new chapter. Between now and then, I hope to share a few more journals with all of you, and of course, to write and share these weekly columns.
