Cancíon de los Beatles por mì cumpleaños

BEATLES SONG BIRTHDAY

(with unrelated Gunnison River Escalante overlook mountain-bike sojourn accompanied by the dogs)

Rosco’s cousin, Ricardo Cabeza, entered the seventh decade of, uh, I was gonna say decadence, but no! decade of liberty and life and continued winning ways earlier this week. I should have attended his 60th-birthday dinner. I did, however, drop by his house later and chatted some with him and fiancée.

Our birthdays, though on different years, are just a few days apart. Ricardo started singing a song …

Cuando hacerme mas viejo,
Perdiendo mí pelo,
Muchos años de ahora —
¿ Quires tu todavía enviarme una tarjeta-de-San Valentìn,
Feliz cumpleaños, botella del vino ?
Si estaré afuera hasta cuatro-menos-cuarto,
¿ quires tu todavía cerrar la puerta ?
Quires tu todavía necesitarme,
Quires tu todavía comerme,
Cuando estoy sesenta-cuatro ?

Yeah, good ol’ sesenta-cuatro. I hadn’t thought about it. Ever.

‘Cause, you know why … don’t you?

I was less than a third of my present age when that song came out. Fun song. Everyone knew the words. (Everyone knew all the words to all the Beatle’s songs.)

And so, I didn’t think about it, no-one did. Sixty-four was, well, so impossibly far into the future, that’s why.

We drive south on U.S. 50, with the San Juan Mountains on the horizon, about 80 miles away

In the introductory essay to the infamous essays on my “senior citizen hobby” (The Hockey Diaries) I wrote

Time passes, it crawls, it creeps, you wake up one day and it’s no longer the 1990’s. And remember when we were all, lemming-like, pressed up against the cliff-edge of the unknown of the impending Y2K? WHOOSH! THAT was 13 years ago, mes amis.

We park the truck, with the West Elks on the horizon, maybe 40 miles away. On a clear day in the high desert, everything looks close. “Reach out and touch it”

We ride up, and west from the truck, towards the rim of the Gunnison River, near Escalante Canyon.

Betty, and Duallie, and Sleven, and Rocksea, peer over the rim into Gunnison River, many hundreds of feet below

We gazed long and wonderingly. We deduced that the cattle herd was calving, with a few cowboys in attendance. And a couple hovering big dark birds …

Closer than the mountain ranges to the south and southeast is the Grand Mesa, directly east. Maybe 15 miles …

Betty cruises ‘n coasts back down to the truck

(Obligatory kitten/cat photo)

After the next-to-last game of the local too-short ice-hockey season, I was bantering with the other sexagenarian in the league. We were complaining about and comparing senior-citizen aches and pains and I drew the “I am older” card.

“Were you born in the 1940’s?!” I demanded to know of Kerry, who I knew appeared on this planet in early 1950. (Okay, I appeared barely before 1950, but, heck, let’s use THAT to my occasional advantage).

Several heads in the locker room abruptly turned our way. I could tell that these other guys were surprized. Some of them may have been as old as 40-something, but the thought of someone actually from “the 1940’s” must have seemed, well, something from a history book. Yeah, all of us played hockey a couple times a week together, and they may have briefly considered the gray hair and wrinkles, but THAT STOPPED once the ref dropped the puck.

View from our yard across “the pond” at the lights on the other side — late winter/early spring