A Day with the Nephew

Dear Lucy,

Yesterday I got to spend the day with my nephew Hobie.

Hobie is the only child of my sister Nancy who committed suicide in 1991.

The first order of business was a trip to the fairgrounds in Pomona where Hobie was competing in a trucker rodeo. Hobie drives a semi for Fed Ex and volunteered to go to this competition that hosted drivers from all kinds of corporations, even UPS.

So, I went to watch him compete to be a good aunt to my beloved nephew. Oh, ya, did I mention there was free food?

Anyway, they set up a course of cones and such that the drivers have to get through within 10 minutes. You would think that would be way more time than they needed, but they had to go really slow to make all the turns.

Hobie did well, though we didn't stay to hear the results. He was number 300 and was early in the day so there were probably close to 600 contestants. He had a case of Corona beer chilling at his house and so outdrinking him seemed a better way to pass the 97 degree hot afternoon than hanging out with a bunch of truckers.

He is married and has 4 girls ranging from age 5 to 12. His wife was babysitting twin boys who were about 5. It was a circus sans the organ music, but I finally got to try "Guitar Hero".

For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a game hooked up to the television set where you pick a character, get a little electric guitar and try to follow a song and hit all the notes. You score points for every note hit (oh and there's a wa-wa bar too; way cool) and then spend the points to go virtually burn down a hotel or buy a cooler guitar. It was loads of fun though if I never hear "Slow Down" by Foghat again (that's the song I played for about an hour) I won't shed a tear about it.

The best part of the day was when Hobie gave me two photo albums that he had packed away over the years containing pictures of Nancy from the time she was a baby to about 18. He said that he thought that I should have them as they would have more meaning to me than to him. He hit a home-run on that one!

--Kathy