Lunch with the old sports department crowd

You bet I was excited to see David Elfin for lunch last week. He and I worked together in the sports department of the big daily in the mid-1980s. I was his boss, technically, the assistant sports editor to his men’s basketball beat writer. In reality, though, we’d both come up here with time spent…

The faces I haven’t seen since 7th grade, the memories remain

My old friend Luke Heaton sent me some photos from the Division Avenue High School 40th Reunion. I flashed on the faces of my old friends, four across. Luke. Dave. Peggy. Holly. I didn’t graduate from Division, mind you. My high school is Ward Melville, further east on Long Island. I attended that Nassau County…

Bringing back the very goods

We saw a lot of nice merch in Estes Park and Denver. Of course, when you’ve got one checked bag each and carry on each that you’re going to lug on the plane at Denver, through the airport for the layover in Atlanta and then back home to Syracuse, you’re not going to try to…

Drink, eat and be merry

To every Family Reunion there must come the Group Meal. When the destination for the vacation is a locale where nobody in the gang resides, that adds to the inherent challenges. Who likes what type of food? What time does everybody prefer to eat? (Don’t forget to factor in the time zones everybody involved started…

What’s in store for us today?

I’ve joked about the T-shirt-iness of the downtown stretch of Estes Park. Surely, the shop owners have set up racks of Rocky Mountain-loving wear daring you to plunk down your 20 bucks and call it your own. What tourist town doesn’t? Truth be known, on the grand scale of Where I’ve Been, this destination for…

Everything appears to be on the up at Rocky Mountain National Park’s Alpine Ridge Trail

No Rocky Mountains, no Estes Park. No kidding. Our days in the still-quaint but bustling Colorado village for my dear wife Karen’s Family Reunion were dominated by the looming peaks that make up the Rocky Mountain National Park. In fact, even walking along the tourist-trap T-shirt shops, the window-treatments trumpeted the fact that this year…

There’s a lightness on the edge of town

If there was one theme that repeated itself every dang day during my dear wife Karen’s Family Reunion in Estes Park, it was: Take a Hike. So on Monday morning bright and clear, the gang that remained gathered on the Village Green with a mission to walk along the Creek Walk that at its start…

Going, going, gone to Coors Field

We gave ourselves an 75 minutes between leaving the Denver Zoo and the start of the game between the Colorado Rockies and Cincinnati Reds on Sunday. After all, GPS told us the trip between the two downtown landmarks was merely a few miles and 15 minutes or so. George Three didn’t fancy the in-city driving,…

A wild time at the Denver Zoo

When my dear wife Karen put a Sunday baseball game on her Family Reunion group page on Facebook, nephew Drew from Alaska quickly indicated that he’d love to join his aunt, the Uncle from Syracuse he’d not yet met, and new cousin Elisabeth and her boyfriend George Three on the excursion to Coors Field to…

Take a hike, gladly, ride a jeep with the gang

The first day we walked around the town of Estes Park, outside a storefront my wonderful daughter Elisabeth spotted a bunch of people hopping aboard a big jeep. We wondered about the adventure awaiting. The next day, we ducked inside, grabbed a brochure, and talked turkey with the woman behind the counter. Well, elk, actually,…