It’s fun to fish with my dad’s lures

These things are at least 60 years old.  Made of wood and brightly colored.  It reminds me of all the fun times fishing and boating with my dad so many years ago.  Doesn’t matter if we catch anything or not.  Just spending time together and relaxing is the whole point❣️

John and I went back for a second day of fishing

Julie’s little crabs look more like spiders!

What a pretty day for a bike ride!

Chloe being silly…

She’s getting more and more comfortable with all of us❤️

The Stanley Cup finals in Columbus!

Anybody going to the NHL hockey finals game in Columbus this year?! I’d settle for one of the $7K seats, I don’t have to sit in the fifty thousand dollars ones…! 🤪 Geesh!

Attic fan nostalgia

Whenever we have all the windows open and the “super sucker” on, it brings back all the memories, sounds, and smells of my childhood. Love it!

Oh yeah, and Percy helped me with my planks…❤️

Hanging out with Andy for an evening

We ate dinner, ran errands, shopped for food, did his weekly meal prep, and got in a Kendama sesh too❣️ He even treated me to dinner for my help with his Louisville Market Place run.

Zoe and Chloe posed nicely for this pic

Cuties 

Unsticking our lures…

We both had the chance to risk a plunge getting our lure un-stuck.  But only one of us captured it in a pic 🤪

John had a great attitude about our plans changing

We enjoyed trying this little pond in Sugarcreek.  We had the place to ourselves and just relaxed❣️

And then this happened…

One of my Jeep’s rear axle seals gave out and we started flinging differential fluid all over the wheel, camper, and everything else.  We decided that was a good reason to turn back (only 20 miles from home).  No biggie, we decided to get some errands done and find a spot to fish around town a couple times over the weekend.  

All good days start with B&B!

Johnny had some swagger while getting his coffee from my Jeep.  :) 

We were headed off for a weekend of camping, fishing and running the GOAT some more, but decided we better get some breakfast first.

Last game of the season for us

We enjoyed seeing so many of the Cyclones home games this year.  It’s fun to be enjoying hockey again together after since we had season tickets to the Bombers back in our college and early marriage days.  This season was fun even if we only won about half the games and didn’t make it to the playoffs. We have some good goalies coming up, added some talented players and retained some seasoned MVPs, and made some friends among the fans and staff.  Next season will be interesting too.  

My wife goading me in our fitness completion.

She was right, hahahaha

My fan club!🐾

Andy did it!

Per Andy, “It's official.  I have completed my life long goal. I have now eaten 10 cheese coneys in one sitting.”  Now that’s done, what’s next on the list 😂

At least we got to see one shootout this season…

…even if it ended in an L ☹️

Two cuties

This got posted on their church’s Insta.  Back then they were both interested, yet their was still always (a least a little) space between them 🤪💘

Cute little post-workout dog face❤️

Used my reward points!

I scored this hat for free at the Cyclones garage sale this year.  Pretty nice hat, cool graphics, and fits well too!  I bought one for Andy for his bday too, but he didn’t know it yet and kept asking me where his was when he saw me wearing mine haha.

Downtown Cinci 3D maps…

The 3D modeling of the big cities looks really cool.  Really helpful when you’re trying to figure out where you plan to park for example.

I checked out these front row seats for a bit

Quite the haul at the Blue Jackets!

We each managed to catch a free Jet’s pizza AND a Schmidt’s cream puff.  We decided to put a little life into living and indulge❣️

Poor Logan…

Andy and I suckered him into Milwaukee and PackOut…! Now he’s printing all his own organizers and boxes to go in them.  Pretty cool and fun!

Chloe is such a fine low rider basset example

Tiny little rose

Julie always saves a little sample of each bouquet I get her.  This tiny rose is a good example.  

They gave out playing cards at the Cyclone’s game.

We thought the treatment of the refs and the face cards were perfect.  🤪

Sports!

We were waiting for our hockey game to start while peeps were lining up for a Red’s game outside, hockey was on the TV, and the Bengal Mascot inflatable kept falling over.  Three sports in one day, hahaha.

Safely back in the earth’s grasp

I liked this NASA shot.

Just before splashdown after their journey around the moon! Pretty cool.

Another artist’s concept…

…It would be cool to visit the moon like this though! 🤪

Just a visualization, but still…

…not sure I’d want to sign up for this crazy ride back to earth…?! This is what the Artemis II re-entry looked like!

We got to see Jet play a pirate

We enjoyed the Dayton Christian play with Stef and Josh a couple weeks ago.  Jet is the pirate in the middle wearing a vest.  It’s always fun to see what they can pull together.  

Zoe needed a pillow

So she grabbed the baby hippo’s baby hippo 🤪

Fixing everything right up…

Nothing to see here, just a little welding going on to get me back home.  Turns out it welded up so nice that it was stronger than before it broke.  I made it all the way home without any issues.  I even made it by 11:30p so it was still the same day, haha.  That leaves me 20% of segment one to go back to before I hit segment two of the GOAT.

My grandpa and dad would have loved THIS

The guys worked at this family sawmill and that’s where the welder was.  They use that loader/snort grab these huge tree trunks for loading into the saw.

Well this is going to be interesting…

A random nice guy along the route offered to weld my track bar frame end steering bracket back onto my frame.  But, first we needed to pick up the welder (literally) and get it to his house where my jeep was.  I can’t believe the effort his dad and he went to in order to help me out.  I guess it pays to be a prepared and helpful person.  I’ve helped plenty of folks myself and this time I needed to be on the receiving end!  Quite the “forklift”!  

One of a couple creek crossings on the GOAT

Segment one, 80% complete.

However, the view from the top was great.

I could have spent a lot of time running back and forth as far as the eye could see along the power lines 🤪

My steering has been compromised…

The one thing I haven’t really properly replaced are the ends of the front track bar.  They were re-welded when I bought the Jeep.  I noticed that the frame end was coming loose, so I did my best to reinforce it to get me back down to the road.  The looseness caused the steering stabilizer bolt to shake out too.  So I put a substitute bolt in, but it was a smaller diameter and too long.  So I used some electrical tape to keep it in place.  Spoiler alert, the ratchet strap barely held long enough to get off the power line trail.  The electrical tape made it all the way home at least, haha!

Looks like the start to a nice sunset

A side quest power line run

I found a slightly more challenging little climb off the side of the road along the GOAT.  Actually got to use 4WD. 🤪

Side trip into the woods

I had to take a peek at a gravel quarry.  On the way back, I liked the view of my jeep and the woods.

And got this cool shot in the process

I had to stop and check out this 200 year old cemetery!

I enjoyed the rolling meadows on my trip

Just pretty back roads Ohio

Cool old pharmacy in Ripley, Ohio