So it goes...

These past couple days have been one of connecting with an old friend, Pat. I've talked about him in the past. He and I were best buddies in high school and much of our college years. He was in my wedding in New York, and I was in his in Tulsa. Over the years, as we were growing our families and living our lives we dropped out of touch. There was an occasional letter, and then an email, but for the most part we drifted. This last reconnect was driven by a text exchange we had last summer. He was texting about how a Bob Seger song, Like A Rock, had a big impact on him one night on his deck. We'd seen Seger together in 1980 and, like our friendship, we just sort of lost touch with his music over the years. Well, just for grins Pat looked up to see if Seger was still even alive. When he did he saw that he wasn't only still alive, but he was in the middle of his "Final Tour." Pat was always "spontaneous" so he pulled the trigger and got tickets for us,...

With the release of Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir a mere 79 days away, I thought I'd give some sneak peeks at some of the characters in the book. I won't go into much situational detail as far as what is in the book, I'll leave that for you to read when it comes out, but rather I'll try to outline the role they played in my life and how it relates to them helping shape the book. Because the story starts out with a section on friends, I'll talk a little bit about a friend of mine named Pat. Growing up, Pat was probably my best friend. Oh I had other very close friends, but Pat and I were just a bit tighter. He has a wicked sense of humor and I always gravitated to him for that reason. We were also both over 6'4", skinny and never good enough at sports to be a starter or on the varsity. We had similar musical tastes - at the time it was Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, The Cars, and of course our mutual favorite George Thorogood. W...