Hello: I'm back

Howdy all, and thank you for the kind words. They mean a lot.

The camping went well. Nothing miraculous happened, but my son and I busted through the brush for 4 days, and wore ourselves out quite thoroughly. The first two days it rained incessantly, which was just perfect. I was hoping for a little struggle to keep the time interesting, and that just suited the bill. Rain or no rain, we built a fire every morning and evening and ate hot food, so it was good.

We spent 3 days moving as far and as fast as possible without setting foot on anything man-made. For example, on day 2, I picked a point 2.5 miles away as the crow flies, and we raced each other there. He was unhappy that I had chosen a point so close, "That's barely an hour! Pick something worthy of our time."

He got there in just over 2 hours, and me in just over 2.5.

To get there we each navigated 10 elevation changes of more than 100 feet up and down (picture 10 flights of stairs, only substitute mud slopes so steep that moving forward without hands and feet is impossible), a huge, thorny raspberry patch (with him in shorts - it should have given me more of an advantage, but pain is not much of a deterrent to him), and a horse pasture (again, he ran through it while I worked my way around it.) I gradually became quite adapt at using a found walking stick as my third leg, as it was the only way to get dependable traction more often than I can count.

The trip back was done together, and at a leisurely pace. (At least he had the common decency to feel fatigue!) I will tell you this, though, 2.5 miles worth of open woods during a steady rain was more than enough to cause both of us to lose all sense of direction. When we pointed "home", we were wrong by 90 degrees. The GPS units made getting home a real breeze.

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So, I was home in time to catch about 1 hour of Wimbledon. It was nice, though, to see it end up right. Mauresmo has struggled so much, and to hear that she successfully overcame Henin-Hardenne was heart-warming. You may recall that Henin wimped out the last time they played, claiming a stomach ache. She played through this time, and took her lumps fair and square. Good. Mauresmo silenced a lot of us on Saturday, and gave all us "chokers" a reason to hope.

Federer needed to beat Nadal if theirs was going to be a "rivalry." That he did, and that he did so convincingly was a great relief. Anyone with any sense is betting on them in the final of the US Open in August. My money would be on Federer again. Once he has someone figured out, he seems to be able to keep up the pressure. Just ask Nalbandian - the last pro to "own" Federer.

I picked Italy to win the World Cup, too, so it was a good weekend for me in that vein. One word about Zidane ... that dude uses his head to strike balls every day - his shot at Materazzi should practically be considered assault with a deadly weapon. Wow. What a hit!

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Future blogging.

There will be some, but I don't know how much. I go out to California in a week, and am gone for almost 2. So, I offer no predictions on the number of posts between now and August. Thanks for checking in on me while I was gone, though! I will try to get out to everyone's sites shortly.