Laughing All The Way

Joan Chittister in her book "Gift Of Years", Brene Brown in her book "The Gifts Of Imperfection", and Barbra Brown Taylor in her book,"An Altar In The World" all talk about the importance of play in adults' lives. The business and busyness of adult life leeches play right out of most of us so by the time we have some discretionary time in our lives again we've forgotten how to. One of the ways retirement can be life-giving is if we can use it to help us re-learn how to play.

Well, today has been just one of those days. We only had about 70 miles to drive from the outskirts of Albany to Cooperstown, but Beverly was feeling very playful and routed us through fields of buttercups, hairpin turns, through the metropoli of Duanesville, Roseboom, Dorloo (which even had a street named Mesick) and more. Must have taken us 2-1/2 hours to go those 70 miles. We found ourselves laughing so hard at Beverly's choice of routes tears were streaming down our faces.

In Cobleskill we stopped at McDonald's. Mind you I have not eaten anything from a McDonalds in 25 years. But I was somewhat desperate. Being GFDF (Gluten Free/Dairy Free) it's not easy to find breakfast food. Not easy even at home, but on the road, well...

Apples with sunflower seed butter has been my morning fare the last 12 mornings, but I didn't have it in me for another nut-buttered apple. So, we stopped at McDonalds and I ate the sausage out of a couple of sausage biscuits. And these were two of the dining guests at MickeyD's today:



Sadly her large pink bow doesn't show up well that was decorating the front of her head while a black bow decorated the back of her head. I couldn't quite tell if her outfit was intimate wear or evening wear. Either way, it was not your typical McDonalds attire. In response to my comment that she was all dressed up, she smiled coyly, giggled, and denied she was dressed up for any special occasion.



And then this gentleman joined our section of the dining room. His hat has is decorated with powerful flames on either side while the front reads: Brotherhood of Three Wheels. Now that was a conversation starter for me, for sure. Turns out the Brotherhood is a motorcycle or-gan-i'-za-tion with a national membership of about 6,000. He became an active member after he took a spill on his two-wheeler and he decided it was time to make the switch.

Good fun en route to Cooperstown. I'll let Kirk write about Cooperstown, the museum, the town, and his life-long dream finally realized--to be here, to soak it all up which we did for 9 hours.