Squeezing the last juice out of summer, and encountering someone who has let theirs go sour

Sunday afternoon Marie and I took a hike up Angel's Rest Falls and had a picnic in a community park in Wood Village on the way home, bread and cheese and salami, grapes and blueberries and a bottle each of Curveball pale ale. I won $46 in the $3 rebuy, finishing 265th out of 5200 players. Here is how much I love Marie: I skipped watching the Duck game on Saturday, and left a poker game today with 61,000 chips. Set the computer on "fold next hand" and walked away, folding until I blinded out, so we could leave for our hike. The game could have taken another five hours. First prize was $7000, but the prize I won was far richer. There was no guarantee I would have done better than 265th had I stayed--in any tournament poker game your next hand can be your last. You can flop trip aces and lose--it happened to me this weekend in a 20,000 chip pot.

Marie wasn't feeling her best today and the air quality was subpar in the George. I'm no meteorologist but it seemed like an inversion layer or something. It was much harder than normal to breathe going up the trail. We only hiked about three quarters of the way up, and stopped to rest at an utterly holy place where the trail comes next to a stream. There are flat rocks to sit on and a canopy of trees, and a breeze blows through the ravine, freshening the air. We sat for a moment and absorbed the stillness, the play of the water over the rocks. I said a little prayer for us, silently to myself, and thanked God we had come to such a beautiful place together, a place where God's purpose and plan are so evident. Marie was clearly tired and under the weather a bit, but she was a good sport and good company and I enjoyed just being around her.

I like to take the backroads whenever possible, especially on trips. It's fun to drive leisurely in the Vista Cruiser with the top down, taking our time, enjoying the music and each other and the splendid view. On the way home we were tooling down the Scenic Columbia River Highway, doing 35 miles per hour, the speed limit, on a fairly windy road that has country homes along its banks, and a jerk in a silver Lexus comes screaming up behind us and just lays loud and long on his horn. I gave the Cruiser a little more gas but didn't hurry. This was Sunday afternoon after all, on a road called The Scenic Columbia River Highway. How could anyone object to someone taking their time on a scenic highway? That's what it's for. That's why they call it "scenic". There's a perfectly good freeway a few miles north, where el Jerko could scream down the fast lane at 80 if he wanted, get a couple more traffic tickets to keep his lawyer busy.

We got a little further down the road, around a couple of bends near Tad's Chicken and Dumplings, and wouldn't you know there was a white Lexus in front of us going even slower than I was so I had to slow down again, you know, maintain proper following distance, like we all learned in driver's ed. By this time Silver Lexus is livid. In the rearview mirror I can see him gesturing and swearing, and then he lays on his horn again, really loud and hostile.

If only life were like the movies. I would have loved to have put the car into a half spin and gone all Die Hard/Terminator on this poster boy for road rage. I had to laugh at how really out of line he was getting over a 10 minute slowdown in his obviously overstressed day. Now Marie is a little fiesty, as we have seen here on the blog. You don't want to rile her up. She unbuckled her seat belt and shook her fist at Mr. Lexus, well, shook one particular part of her fist, a finger I think it was, and told him a specific way he should pleasure himself.

I have seldom meant anyone so deserving of that specific saluation. I really wanted to kick his ass, and I'm not normally an ass-kicking guy. Fortunately in another mile we got to the bridge over the Sandy River into Troutdale, and he continued north to the freeway where he belonged. We had our picnic and thought of funny ways Mr. Lexus might get his comeuppence. One day he's truly going to honk at the wrong guy and end up with a bag of garbage or a rotten watermelon all over his sparkling windshield. That would be terrible. I would never think of doing such a thing. And it would be very, very wrong.

There sure are a lot of knuckleheads out there with no idea of how to enjoy a summer day. The beer was cold and the grapes were sweet, and I had a date with the girl of my dreams. I've always liked the fiesty spunky ones. We took the slow way home, down Halsey through Troutdale, Fairview and Wood Village, listened to the Sunday night blues show on KINK. A nice long few kisses good bye and a warm embrace and Marie had to drive home. I wish she could sleep over. But she has to work at 5 am.

And now, in a blog first, I'm going to bed before 11. I'll try to write a longer post tomorrow, something elevated like politics or poetry or Pac-10 football. Tonight this is all I had. Sleep well, and may God grant you grace and peace, and no silver Lexuses in your rearview mirror.