Before I retired we lived in western Pennsylvania and in those days both Joan and I were serious long distance runners.  For a period of over 30 years we trained on almost a daily basis and frequently competed in road races on the weekends.  I was just a middle of the pack racer for most of those years, but Joan was better and usually brought home a trophy.  In those days we watched what we ate and all of the miles we put in kept us on the slim side.  In other words, I didn’t always have this big gut that I am carrying around now and I was very weight concious.  This was the environment that Mandy was raised in, and she actually was instrumental in starting the first girl’s cross country team at her small high school.

When it came time for Mandy to pick a college she decided to go to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Blacksburg was about a seven hour drive from where we lived, so when we dropped her off there in September we did not see her again until she came home for Christmas vacation.   When she arrived home I could see that she had “porked up” some as kids are wont to do on dorm foods and when they discover beer.  I didn’t say anything to her about her weight over the two or three weeks she was home.  She returned to college and was there for her January 10 birthday.  Being the subtle dad that I am however, I bought a bathroom scale and sent it to her as a birthday present.  Usually when I would give her something I would get a call or a card.  But this time no acknowledgement whatsoever.  At some point, perhaps a year or more later, the subject did finally come up and she was still mad about it. Oh well!

Now we fast forward to today.  I am not running any longer and I take a ton of prescription medications for various ailments I am plagued with.  These meds come to me by mail and I have it set up that they are automatically sent by the mail order pharmacy when I am about to run out.  While we are traveling on this extended trip we had our mail forwarded to Mandy in Houston and when she gets my meds she finds out where we are going to be in a few days and sends the meds to me “General Delivery” in that city.  On Monday I picked up a package of meds at the post office in Skagway.  Also in the package were two very nice Father’s Day cards, one from Mandy and Dave and another from the twin grandbabies.  But a more curious inclusion in the package was a set of toe nail clippers.  Clipping toe nails is something I frequently neglect and in the warm South I am almost always in a pair of flip flops.  I can only conclude that she noticed while we were visiting, and decided after almost twenty years to pay me back for that set of bathroom scales.  GOTCHA DAD!

Today we leave Skagway.  There is only one road to Skagway and it ends here.  Rather than drive back up the way we came we have decided to load WildaBeast and the car on a ferry and cruise the fourteen miles across the bay to the city of Haines. If we did the drive to Haines it would be 360 miles.  My friend Fred highly recommends a visit to the hammer museum in Haines so we certainly do not want to miss that!

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