The best of old friends, with more to come. Lorn and I will soon be hanging out with another.

——————–

One week now into this my EPIC summer journey of 2018 and it is oh so very clear how much different it is.

Like last year, these my Epic journeys are exactly that. Journey. Unlike the vacant, wandering of my albeit vibrant youth or the scattering superficialities of past post game-fully employed vacations, the intention of today is certainly paying off.

In deed.

And yesterday was all that and more. So different yet so the same. Instead of us hanging out together, Lorn dropped me off to meet John in downtown Rochester, right in the middle of this weekly summer Thursday thingy. Lorn then went off to do his thing as I did mine. We would have plenty of time, another time.

As I walked through the ample crowd of appropriately Rochesteresque summer revelers, I gladly gave a slight mental nod. An internal introspective of sorts, of this turn… this time. This time which stood in contrast to last time.

I’d stood here before.

It was seven years ago… this, last time. Seven years ago I had also included a visit to this place, stayed with Lorn and went downtown during this summer Thursday thingy and stood, right, here!

Here in front of the stage

Only last time I was there to meet what this time I see as a superficiality. A meeting that did nothing to add any possible EPIC-ness to my travels. There is no need now to go into that. Thus I passed the stage and looked around at the people. I had several minutes before I could expect to even let John know where I was so I was looking for something else.

I found it.

Among all the clean-cut, Mayo Clinic/IBM versions of summering Minnesotans, I saw… an aloha shirt. Heh… oh yea! Now this was something this kamaina Oahu kid could certainly enjoy killing some time with. I walked straight over and introduced myself.

I will not recount that encounter here, but it will suffice to say now that this was so much a better thing than last time. Last time when I was busy wasting time on a sad sequence of superficialities. This encounter was of course also superficial, yet it was far from sad.

So when John showed up, I was in prime condition for that my intended, far from superficial meeting.

More to ensue as this too is to be…

To be continued…