Riding bikes with coyotes and fighting buzzards

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It’s 10:16 PM and I cannot sleep.  I am wired as hell and I wish this would go away so I could get some rest.  Both dogs and my wife are snoring while I write this and glance at the television playing Star Trek Voyager…because I love Star Trek. 

May as well run through what I’ve been up to lately.  So, here it is: I ride my bike; I work a bit, here and there, I sold the store to a very nice young man named Chris Carr; I vacuum the house; I ride the moto as much as possible (which is not very much); I shoot some hoops if it’s nice outside; I wander around the neighborhood, aimlessly searching for discarded squirrel pelts from coyote kills.  I use them to make blankets for wayward carnies and I also fashion tapestries from them.  Beth won’t let me hang the tapestries inside the house so I put them in my garage/shop (the third car bay).  I’ve used the pelts as rags while cleaning and lubricating my bicycle and motorcycle…they (the pelts) are very absorbent.  Sometimes the damned things attract more coyotes, even though any meat on the pelts is gone.  I don’t mind the coyotes so much.  I sort of like them and I often feed them dog food from Walter’s bin.  I even named one of them Banjo and he runs alongside me when I ride my bike out in the country. 

As far as bike stuff is concerned, I turned over management of the First Internet Bank team to Mr. Knapp and he is doing a swell job.  The fellas and ladies are winning races already and I think this season is going to be a great one.  I’ll admit that I had mixed feelings about letting go of the management of the team but when I think critically about it, I mostly feel relief.  It was very difficult running the bike shop while also trying to run the team.  Ryan will be great at it and I think the team will be very solid and strong going forward.  I may do something in the future with another team but for now, I am going to just enjoy watching First IB do their thing and win races.  It’s way more fun this way.  And I will be cheering for them just like I always have since I started the team five years ago.  It’s been a wonderful ride and I learned a lot and I am grateful to all the riders who came through this program.  You all made me so proud and I take away a lot of personal fulfillment from this team.  So, thank you.

So, personally, I’ve been riding a fair bit this season and have had a great base phase.  I think I am ready to race and I hope to have a good season.  Our team is basically the same as last year and we are capable of winning any race we enter.  Masters racing is basically all about tactics.  Most of us are at the same level of fitness now, having done shitloads of training hours over the years.  We all know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and each race resembles a bunch of nervous two-year-old race horses waiting to make the right move.  This year should be a bit more competitive and interesting as I believe Texas Roadhouse has bolstered their roster with some stronger riders.  The Zippers will be strong, as they are every year, with the usual suspects making things difficult.  Then we’ll have some of the smaller teams from Fort Wayne, Cinci, Lexington, and some of the other regional cities who will, hopefully, animate the races so they are not so formulaic.  I love it when the pace is high and there are loads of attacks.  Way more fun.  

Anyway, back to the squirrel pelts.  The thing with them is: you must get them when they are fresh.  A two-day old kill will simply not do.  By then the skin is too dry and the fur is already falling out…no point in trying to tan it then.  To make a full blanket, you will need at least 45 to 50 pelts.  It usually takes me around a week to find that many, in the right condition.  I sometimes have to fight off turkey vultures also.  And they are very dangerous when hungry.  Do NOT…I repeat…do NOT grab one of them by the tail feathers.  Nothing enrages a full-grown male turkey vulture like some idiot human grabbing the beast’s carefully-groomed tail feathers.  The rotten buzzard will fight like hell and dart straight for your eyes if you don’t block the attack.  Truly vicious.  I have found that the best way to handle them is to keep some Hall’s Mentho Lyptus in your pocket and toss some of them at the birds if they get too close.  For some reason, they love the type of hard candy and lozenges that old people keep in bowls on their family room tables.  Other things that would do include Werther’s, cellophane-wrapped peppermints, and Ricola.  Oh, and Luden’s.  

M’kay I am finally starting to not feel so damned jittery and I think I’ll try and sleep now.  What time is it?  CRIPES!  It’s 11:06!  I customarily get to sleep around 9:30.  This will not bode well for the morning.  I am liable to be ultra-cranky and in desperate need of strong, black coffee.  But Beth turns on the coffee maker at 5AM when she gets up…so the stuff tastes like melted tires by the time I get to it.  But maybe that makes it stronger.  Anyway, I hope so. 

I hope you all Live Long and Prosper.  Hell, I hope I Live Long and Prosper.  I hope the over-abundance of squirrels in the neighborhood live a Reasonable Amount of Time and Prosper…prior to becoming a pair of snow boots or a slip cover for my driver’s seat in the Ram.  

Love, Chris

There's a new Chris in town and He is not Me (or I)...but I promise you will like him!

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So I sold the shop.  I guess that’s the biggest news in my life at the moment.  It is a bittersweet thing.  I am not sure what to think or say about it quite yet.  Too fresh and too strange.  I find myself just off in space a lot right now, thinking, pondering, ruminating, whatever…  It just doesn’t seem real right.  I’m glad I did it because I was just about out of energy…I mean the sort of high-functioning, aggressive energy you need to stay focused on the strategic goals and mission of a small business like the bike shop.  It has been ten years now.  And that all important energy was divided up about evenly between those years and I just plain ran out of gas.  

When Ryan and I started Motion, we were consumed with the goal of creating the best bike shop in the city of Indianapolis (and the Town of Fishers) and we worked very hard over many hours a week to accomplish that goal.  Of course we did not create the best bike shop in the city…we did not have the resources to do that…but I think we did create a pretty unique community of cyclists in our little area.  I think we really tried hard in those baby years and we put a lot of our personalities and our Essence into the thing and while I concede that we didn’t create the best shop in town, i believe we created a good one.  At times it was exceptional.  And sometimes it was bad.  I guess all businesses are like that.  I think Motion took on my personality after Ryan left and I am sort of a volatile person and the shop mirrored my mind sometimes.  I’m sometimes a very crotchety guy and i didn’t always treat people as well as I could have.  But I was many times very good at what i did and I believe that I helped to make a good number of people very happy.  Those times were the times I loved the most.  To see a genuine smile on someone’s face when they bought a great bike from us…a bike that we took the time to match up with that person based on an actual conversation and an honest and questioning demeanor.  Or to experience the satisfaction of a customer when we solved a difficult problem with their bike when we performed service for them.  Those times really got me jazzed and gave me a deep satisfaction.  I took those experiences and created an identity for myself based on them.  I was the owner of Motion Cycling & Fitness and I am proud of what I accomplished.  I am proud of what Ryan and I both accomplished, actually.  I don’t think we could have made it without him in those first few years and I am forever grateful for his partnership with me and his belief in our mission from those very first few conversations at Claddaugh Irish pub all the way to the formation of our LLC in May of 2007.  What a ride.  What a damned fine and highly satisfying ride it was.  

And I guess that last statement is why I am experiencing postpartum depression right now.  Yeah…I ran out of gas, but dammit the ride was, at times, so good, and provided me with so much during the last ten years that I can't help but replay those great experiences over and over and i am just torn up.  …also I need to find a job.

So Chris Carr is the new owner.  He is a solid guy with a lot of energy and a much more stable personality than me.  He is not easily rattled and I do not know anyone who does not like him.  He is easy to like.  He has been active in the local cycling scene for years now through his work at the Cycle Studio in Carmel, working part-time for me, and through the racing scene.  Chris is one of the strongest guys i know on the bike and will actually be riding for First IB this season.  He has completed the Leadville 100 and is strong on the mountain bike also.  I think that his enthusiasm for the sport and his drive to create something great out of Motion will serve him well.  I hope with everything in me that he can grow the shop and attract even more people into the little community that we started.  That may be the thing i miss most.  I will no longer get to see all the people I have come to call friends on a monthly, weekly, sometimes even daily basis.  The shop was a great way to stay in touch with a lot of people i know.  It really helped me to conquer my naturally introverted (highly introverted) personality and to learn to initiate conversation and interaction with people.  Were it not for the store, I would most certainly be a hermit by now…living in my adobe hut in the desert of Arizona…probably with a coyote as a pet.   Anyway, like I was saying, I hope Chris can make something great out of the shop.  I think he will.  I will be around for awhile to help out and maybe provide a bit of guidance (and do service and glue tubular tires on lots of wheels because I am the best guy in town at that…I really mean it…my glue jobs are true and they will not roll off in hard corners in fast crits, I promise).  So yeah…I’ll be around, working limited hours for a while.  

So that’s what’s going on with me right now.  I just read through this thing and it sounds very weepy and has a sort of “poor me” vibe to it.  I did not mean for that to happen.  But I guess that’s what was on my mind so there you have it.  

Oh yeah, I have been working with the First IB team to get the kits (jerseys and bibs) done and we should all be well-dressed in about a month or so.  The guys and gals are also getting some new bikes and wheels.  Felt and Zipp have once again been very generous with their sponsorship of the team and we will be FAST this year.  Check out the FB and Twitter pages for news about the team and the riders.  We’ve picked up some massive firepower during the offseason and we will be very competitive on the national race scene.  I won’t mention all the sponsors in this blog but they are all very generous and we are well taken care of for 2017.  It’s gonna be fun to watch so pay attention to those feeds for links to live-streams of the races we will do and for results.  And look out for the Whale as it lumbers its way around the country filled with people who are all faster than me and lots of bikes and bags full of lycra and beet juice.  

Okay I’m done.  I’ll do a fun one soon.

gon' get swole now...big changes ahead at the store...Arby's is gross

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Today wasn’t such a bad day.  It’s the end of November and the sun was out and the temp was up.  50s is not a bad thing this late in the year.  I did not ride my bike but I got a good run in and took the bearded one with me.  He lasted about seven miles before he called No Joy and demanded to be released so that he could retire to the comfort of his leather chair, which he has commandeered from Beth and I.  I got another three in for a total of ten today.  That’s three ten-mile runs this week for a bike rider.  

I hate riding bikes this time of year.  It’s difficult for me to get motivated to ride when it’s cold and dreary outside…and it’s only gonna get worse.  So, I usually just run a lot and maybe do three rides during the week, most of them on the trainer, followed by my brutal and masochistic leg routine that includes many sets of different movements, all to failure.  This has been my routine for many years.  It seems to work just fine for me and also serves the purpose of making me actually want to ride my bike when January comes and I stop running so much and start riding loads of miles.  If I only rode my bike during the fall and winter I would hate the damned thing and probably give up riding and racing, all together…Chorus: If I only rode my bike during the fall and winter I would hate the damned thing and probably give up riding and racing!  

And so it goes with maintaining fitness during the off-season.  If anyone wants to come and try my leg routing, we have a pretty complete set-up in the basement.  I promise you will know hors category suffering.  

So Beth leaves Tuesday for Japan and I will be a de facto bachelor here at the homestead.  That means the pups will be present at the shop a lot for the next couple weeks.  Also, Chris Carr’s giant “dog” may joins us also.  Leo is a Rhodesian Ridgeback who weighs about 140 pounds.  He could probably kill anyone or anything he wants to but, in fact, he is as gentle as a baby fur seal and mostly just wants to sleep a lot.  This is the time of year, from now until about the first of February, that we can have the pups in the store.  It’s pretty slow and I don’t have to worry about Bella jumping on people or Walter yelling his head off whenever the door buzzer goes off.  Should be a good time.  Maybe we could start a dog daycare in the winter for supplementary income.  Yep…That idea has some legs.  

And speaking of supplementary income and business diversification…we have six computrainers and are starting to teach classes now!  Chris Carr is leading that initiative and we already have a couple of people who have bought packages.  We used to do trainer sessions in the store a few years ago when we didn’t have so much inventory and bike racks all over the place; we sometimes had as many as twenty people riding trainers in the store on weekend mornings and week nights.  That was a fun time…a really great memory of the store when we were younger and just wanted to build a community.  I think we did.  We have such great customers and Pals of the store.  I met many of my good friends through the store and those trainer sessions.  That is one of the most important, and treasured benefits of owning the place.  

The computrainer sessions, though, are much more structured and we can display and record so many metrics now.  This makes training much more effective and enjoyable.  Chris and I will split teaching duties this winter so come on in and try it out!  

And enough about business…for now.  There are some very big and very exciting things about to happen on that front.  I cannot say exactly what right now but change is coming.  I’ll do an update when our plans are more solid.

And holy shit that Arby’s guy is blabbering on about meat and things that sizzle and how much money does that company spend on advertising?  It’s ridiculous!  Where did this guy come from?  I imagine they found him in some hole in the wall barbecue place in a filthy bayou down south.  Just gnawing on a half-dead hog and screaming for more hot sauce and sweet tea.  His voice acquired that rich, deep, resonant pitch by being stretched and stretched by swallowing great hunks of smoked meats until his larynx became thin enough to vibrate like a tugboat horn.  They display images of huge mounds of what looks like perfectly smoked mastodon thighs and expertly crafted sandwiches with fluffy white baguettes and layers of sliced meats.  When we all know (and they do also) that what you really get at Arby’s is a soggy yellow bun with a pile of grey spongy crud that smells like feet.  But that dude…what a trip.  “What kind of sheep…is a beef?”  I love it.  But I will never eat it.  

This is too long and running on fumes now because I am sleepy and the games are boring today.  I did get to ride the moto around the block, though.  That was pretty fun.  And I polished the wheels and body work so she is all sparkly now.  Good stuff.  Beth put up a ton of Christmas decorations today and they look great.  She is a dynamo.  So much energy.  We decided today that she is definitely an overachiever and I am…well…not an overachiever.  But I appreciate her natural inclination to be productive because if she was not, we would live in a house devoid of decorations, or pictures on the wall, or even furniture.  My natural environment mirrors my brain: rows and columns and NOTHING ON THE KITCHEN COUNTERS!!!  Oh, and clean floors.  

That’s all for now…I can hear the underpants gnomes singing in the other room so that means it’s bed time.

Man, how about this weather?! The end (of the race to the white house) is near.

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Election day is Tuesday!  That is only two days from today.  It is a terrifying thing to think about.  It is embarrassing, actually.  Were I in another country I would feel compelled to apologize for America and her ridiculous and atavistic political system.  I am also ashamed of the media.  Networks taking sides, tongue in cheek style, encouraging blood-lust in this dirty rat fight.  Terrible political ads running non-stop in a frenetic attempt to undermine and assassinate the opposing candidate’s character and even their family and religion.  it is truly awful, yet weirdly entertaining at the same time.  I cannot watch the morning news right now because of all the political ads.  They are mostly attack ads.  As a result, all ll I know about any of the candidates (especially for minor offices like governor, senator, or any of the state offices) is that they are terrible people in general, cheat on their taxes, eat most of their meals with lobbyists, and murder children for sport.  Tennessee Trey, Shell-Game Shelly, the Mustache, Orange Julius Caesar…it’s all so silly.

So, what then?  What do we do?  Just a question…I have no suggestions.  If I could write in Samuel L Jackson, I would.  Wait…that’s a suggestion, but can I?  I bet he would be a great prez.  He certainly would not take any crap.  And because he is a Jedi he would also be morally incorruptible and firm but fair.  I’m betting his IQ is at least twenty points higher than either of the current major candidates.  Yep…that’s who we need to lead our country into this funeral procession for the american dream.  Samuel L Jackson.  I can visualize him on the White House lawn at a pulpit screaming at journalists…his fist slamming the thing and his neck veins popping as his head stretches forward in a show of dominance… makes me laugh.  We should load him up with Starbucks and tequila and give him complete authority to do whatever he wants to do as it pertains to the leadership of our country and the protection of our fundamental ideologies.  Haha just kidding…our ideologies were quietly buried long ago in a moonlight funeral while we were sleeping.

And enough about that.  We’re in deep doo-doo and we all know it.  No matter who wins this twisted joke of an election, we are all in for a life-changing surprise.  New precedents will be set in almost every aspect of our lives.  There is a permanent shift in our paradigm coming and it will be very gloomy and very mean and disguised as empty promises and an inflated stock market.  A sociopath or a real-life banshee will inhabit the white house and gorge themselves on our remaining hope and for the most part, we will lay down like captive dogs and take our beatings and be grateful for the handfuls of kibble we are given.  All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.  And all that jazz.  Anarchy is really the only thing to do at this point but that is a difficult thing to arrange and it would really hurt.  Ach!  I am done with this topic now…I promise.  

The Colts just won in Green Bay!  Great game.  But now comes Sixty Minutes and the Zika virus and that goddam orange-skinned silverback cult-leader with a taste for human brains and dammit it is so very, very wrong and SHIT!!  I keep talking about the race to the throne.  i really mean it now…I promise I am done.  Done done done.

A British Tar is a soaring soul…as free as a mountain bird.  His energetic fist should be ready to resist…a dictatorial word.  HaHa!  I love that lyric.  You have to sing it, though, in the melody for which it was written.  Look it up.  Fitting, though, given our current situation.  

What great weather we had today.  I did a nice, long run and took Mr. Beard with me and he made it seven miles.  I dropped him off and did another six to make it a half.  Felt great and no problems at all, physically.  Knees are great and I’m lifting more weight than I have in about five years.  Maybe I can ride in the elite field again next year.  Though I have no business riding with First IB, now that we have the reigning USA Crits series champ riding for us.  FIB is way super fast now and I cannot believe how far we’ve come in only five years.  Makes me very happy to think about it.  We only have one rider left from the original crew but that’s natural, I guess.  But I can’t help but think about all the guys and gals who have been a part of this program.  From our first Cat 3 win with Tom Laser to our first Elite win with Benny, and all the other wins since then.  This has been a gut-wrench of a ride and I could not be happier with the creative aspect of the team.  Loads of help from a few very important people.  I will give shout-outs to them now:

Ryan Knapp-thanks for taking the offer and igniting this thing.  We’d never have come this far without you and your desperate need to win bike races at all costs…and also your influence on the rest of the team.  Everyone respects you like a godfather and that helps a helluva lot.

Bri Clark-thanks for your ability to create massive Excel spreadsheets with crucial data at warp speed…and also for your very long emails that address every concern i’ve ever had with the team and all the bullshit we have to deal with.  I really, REALLY appreciate it.  

Rachel Langdon-thanks for creating those gorgeous proposals for us and for your wholehearted commitment to the team from day one.  I’ve enjoyed your presence immensely and I am sad to see you go…but happy for you and the opportunity you have ahead of you.  

Benny and Becker-you guys are the foundation of the team and have been here from the start.  it has been my pleasure to see you both blossom into the excellent racers, but more importantly, the excellent men you are today.  I remember being able to kick both of your asses just a few years ago and now I don’t think i could even hold your wheel if you really wanted to bring the heat.  Man oh man how things have changed…

Beth Richter-thanks for coming to all the races and taking excellent photos and for always being available to help straighten out my brain when it becomes twisted and choked with all of my concerns and uncertainties regarding the team and life in general and how best to manage those things.  You are a calming force when I inevitably feel overwhelmed with everything.

I think that’s it for now.  I need to go to sleep soon and Walter is looking at me and I can tell he wants to say “dude!  let’s go upstairs already!  I am so done with this day…thanks for making me run seven miles when all i really wanted to do was run to that path with all the goose poop and have a feast.”  Gross…Walter is so gross.

Until next time!

A political post from someone who doesn't know anything about politics.

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This weekend is Hilly Hundred weekend and everyone is gone.  I am left here, alone, to defend the sense and mental direction of the common man.  And, as you can imagine, that is a very difficult thing in a time like this…which is to say, a very rotten time.  Rotten like a filthy, ten day-old dead possum rolled in Richard Nixon’s ashes.  

People like to say things like “I normally don’t like to make political posts.”, but they really do.  The problem with a common man or woman making a political post is that the poster cannot possibly know enough about the subject about which they are posting to be accurate or at least appear so.  Oh…when I refer to “common” people, I simply mean the regular folks you see walking or running or riding bikes with their kids around the zillion square miles of suburbs around Indianapolis.  Anyway…political posts are a vile and vain thing to do so please stop doing it.  Except for me, right now.  A person from either the Republican party or the Democratic party will win the election and life will go on as it has for hundreds of years here in the good ole’ U S of A.  

As it stands, currently, it appears that Hil-dog will be the champion in this grotesque race of ten-faced monsters.  It is inevitable.  Both candidates are cut from the same bloody cloth and both of them have armies of Disney Imagineers working twenty-six hours a day to come up with the ridiculous, yet highly entertaining sentences that they gut-squeeze from their putrid mouths.  Who would have thought that a so-called human being could both eat and shit from the same orifice?  I certainly didn’t think it was possible.  But then I heard that yam-colored wack-job wander like a punch-drunk idiot through that question about Obama’s birth certificate and I decided right then that only a highly-practiced freak-show manager could mumble that ineptly, yet supremely-confidently through something so important.  And, so, all Hillary has to do is be reasonably coherent when answering those softball questions from whichever neutered moderator is presiding and she will appear, at the very least, sane.  And that word has never much cared for the Donald.   

But sanity is not very important in a Presidential race, in case you didn’t know.  What really matters to me and most of the reasonable people I know is a person’s character.  True character (haha just kidding…what really matters is how deftly a candidate can sell false providence).  And that word, character, envelopes and gives depth to another word: honesty.  And one need not be sane to be honest.  That is the word that I wish I could assign to one of the candidates for President from which we currently have to choose…to lead our nation.  They are both nasty caricatures of the fading idea of the American Dream to which so many members of our country’s lower and middle-class desperately cling.  A snake-oil tycoon with the overbearing confidence of an enraged Silverback versus the quiet sort of scheming evil that would scare even an archangel to the core.  Rocky Infinity.  Shakespeare himself could not properly put this tragedy on paper.  Maybe something like “Much ado about a Whole Lot of Bullshit.”  Or maybe one of the newer writers would do it better.  Trump would make a great Frankenstein’s Monster with his soft intellect and ferocious appetite for human souls…due to the lack of one of his own.  And Hillary…

…I just spent about ten minutes trying to think of a character in modern literature who has similar characteristics to Hillary.  i failed.  She is so obviously vicious and filled with hatred toward anything which may threaten or stand in the way of her rise to Ultimate Power that you can clearly see a blackish sort of aura around her when she bumbles around the stage with those practiced little steps.  Maybe she is a little like Charon…ferrying people across the Styx to the underworld.  Yeah…that is probably the most accurate analogy you could cull from the past 5000 years.  And that should tell you something about what motivates her.  Give her a few coins and she gives you safe passage across the river and deposits you in the land of the dead.  And that is pretty much what the federal government does, right?  Death and taxes and all that crap…  Whoever came up with that phrase was pretty smart, I guess.  

Ahhh well…we’ll either have a transplant from the Hall of Presidents or the personification of evil  as our next president and either one will work feverishly toward the same goal, albeit in different manners: the procurement and retention of power.  I think that there are some politicians who are genuinely concerned about the state of affairs in this world (or country, or state, or city or county) but I believe they are few and far between.  The two buffoons who are running for president (actually three buffoons…let us not forget the CEO of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. who does not know what Aleppo is) are certainly not.  Power is the chief motivation of both of their campaigns.  It’s a very animalistic thing, this presidential race.  Hungry rats.  

Enough!

I sort of wish I had gone down to the Hilly.  I have seen a bunch of tweets and FB posts with cool pics of my buddies riding around B-town and eating fried chicken and pizza.  What did I do?  …a semi-long run today with my dog and then a bunch of lunges and pull-ups in the basement.  I think that maybe I will compete in the Crossfit games next year.  I do so love to rip out a bunch of clean and jerks as fast as possible and then run up a hill as fast as I can.  I may even go paleo while I’m at it.  Give up pizza and Little Debbies and Pringles and all that awful crap that makes me so happy at four in the afternoon when I’m starving at the bike shop.  Zebra Cakes.  They are the best.  Zebra Cakes are actually the same thing as any other Little Debbie cake-type food, only with stripes.  What makes them so good is the wax coating.  It’s like the wax they use in those huge, grotesque wax lips you see around Halloween-time.  I guess they flavor the wax with some sort of artificial addictive substance which causes you to eat an entire box of the things before you are even aware that you are chewing.  Zebra Cakes…the heroin of the retail professional.  They rank only slightly lower than Bob Evans biscuits and gravy on the grand scale of foods that I may or may not have eaten since I was five years old.  

And to hell with this blog entry.  I spoke too much about politics without actually stating a position and now The Deer Hunter is on and I need to concentrate.  The Deer Hunter is probably my favorite movie.  Very heavy stuff.  A brilliant study of character and the evolution of friendship…especially in the 1960s.  The final scenes always make my eyes wet.  I will do another one of these in a couple days.

One Shot,

C