'Just the Three of Us' or 'Why Don't We Three Get on the Ro-oad!'

Getaway Weekends are wondrous .... M, I and GuntherDog heading down to the backwater town, 195 miles door to door, to where we have a little place on a bay not 7 miles from a beach we have frequented since 1979. Not much of a chance of getting lost here. Even if I take other than a direct route by Bike, M always finds me ... bike propped up on one buried pedal in the sand ... usually a hole in the ground that serves as a support for back-leg position we humans adopt while sitting or reading. Nowadays, M brings the internet to us on the Beach and city papers and foods. I used to revel in making special leftover sandwiches and finger fruit for the time on the Beach ... if it's just the two of us (the culture has not relaxed sufficiently to permit GDog to the Party), M buys a sandwich somewhere.

The trips to such getaways used to be painful and the 195 miles seems to be stretching out. Whatever Dog we brought-with would inevitably bark whenever s/he could along the road. We finally figured it out. See .... While I left Brooklyn in 1954 in a family that never learned how to vacation other than visiting Aunt Helen on the farm or Grandma and Grandpa in his very religious home, M and I never quite got it that our dogs' palates were not as sophisticated as our own and their howls were for fast food. GuntherDog, since our enlightenment, enjoys an egg and cheese on biscuit going to "Gunther ... Y'wanna see the ducks" and a burger coming home. This quiets HIM down but I haven't quite learned the lingo in these dining palaces.

"Supersize it?" .... 

is greeted on my face with questions of whether 

this is a test to see if I object to 

all the oversized people attending 'The Golden Arches.'

and

"Wanna coke or fries with that?" .... .... 

No thank you, y'see GuntherDog is watching his cholesterol intake.

I think of it as M's way of getting back at me for 49 years of howling with the dogs on long trips. 'Lookie, here, M .... Lie Down with Brooklyn Dogs, wake up with both fleas and the Sounds of the Wild." Any case, Gunther has come to enjoy the road trip and has stopped asking whether the hamburgers are Kosher. Indeed, we know very little about Gunther's religious background in the quick-kill shelter from which he was rescued, though we suspect he was forced to listen to Sunday Morning Gospel Hours before AM Kibble. He never presses for fish on Friday, either. Perhaps, he was a Quaker. Are there Quakers in Kentucky.

Last night, with me in a-fib, a fact that I kept from M until after my bike ride, we watched a rented movie ... "Mr. Morgan's Last Love." Can't say that I recommend it ... While it's about a Player on the border of the Fourth Quarter and Overtime, it's confusing, if sweet. It involves loss and love and finding meaning and grown sons who fall in love with girlfriend. Hard to look at Caine old enough to be Alfie's Grandpa ...

What's it all about, ... Gunther ... 
Is it just for the hamburger we live?

Any case, good to hang out with M who came in 1965, the Pooch who arrived in 2001 and my Second-Favorite 1974 Bike. And good to have a heart that decided to return to a normal sinus rhythm and beat ... ready for answering calls from the office and then hitting the road on the bike.