Very Bittersweet Day

This morning is a very strange morning for me.  With mixed emotions with leaving Voyageurs Natl Park today, we also deal with a close family friend losing his teenage daughter in a car accident yesterday afternoon.  Mark and Kaitlyn were close to us though we rarely saw them.  In our time together they had spent many of days at our house visiting his brother & sister in Virginia.  We had been "adopted" into his family in Michigan.  Mark renovated our house in Fredericksburg.  Mark's life has been the closest one I know of that matches Job from the Bible.  And we learned of Kaityln's passing as we're leaving a dinner given in our honor and checking phone messages.

These young passings are never easy.  From watching them carry my cousin's bloody clothing from a hospital where he died after a motorcycle accident, from finding out that one of the best young pilots you had ever flown with was missing from a low level turn over water, from wrapping up a young weapons officer's pay records just hours after he wrapped his brother's car around a tree in Virginia Beach, from watching a church colleague lose her son on a 4th of July car accident until now, the feelings never change.  It's just one big kick in the stomach.

Kaitlyn, you were loved and you will be missed.

As life goes on, it's now time to figure out how to get this big rig around a nice big pine as we leave this morning.  This, of course, assumes everything works.  At the moment, Verizon isn't.  At this point in the blog, I have logged off and back on 10 times to the wireless service and now removed the battery twice to see if that will help.  Maybe Verizon should put its money into its wireless system instead of advertising.  As the Verizon rep has noted in the past, let's install a new SD card and they would be happy to send me a new MiFi if that doesn't work.  I always respond as to why they think a new one would work any better?  Based on the Verizon wireless forum, it doesn't sound like a new MiFi is any better.  Not starting off as one of our better days.

Later, David