The Broken Butt Mountain Tour - Sioux Falls

We met Loyd and Max at Wall Drug for lunch - they were on their way back from Rapid City.

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Lots and lots of water next to the freeway around Mitchell and Sioux Falls.

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Chad, Jessie, Parker and Doug at Tom & Steph's house.
(I lost my whole family picture. Sorry it was a good one.)
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Hooray, Tom just retired after 44 years... going to work on his golf game.
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Congratulations Tom!!!

The Broken Butt Mountain Tour - Omaha

Steve's family picture

Younger brother Bob showing me the contents of the Long Island Ice Tea -
all of these in equal parts plus 7-up and a bit of coke for color.
Thanks Bob and Janet for the hospitality.


Omaha Union Station Museum - they have restored this wonderful building - it is quite interesting. This is a replica of the original Buffett grocery store.

I have never heard of a Douglas truck.

Nothing to say about this one yet.

Beautiful stain glass bevel piece in the museum.

What a ceiling.


Hey, 5 of us in the car - someone had to volunteer to ride in the backseat middle.

Bob and his olives with a splash of martini.

That be Howard Buffett's house for sale on the corner in Dundee just a block from Pop's. As I recall, he wants $375.000.

The grand Omaha finale: driving by Warren's house (twice).

The Broken Butt Mountain Tour - St. Louis

Where else but this blog can you get interesting material like this. From the Millenium Hotel, room 610, you can see the World Headquarters of Tums. (Note the Busch/In Bev Stadium lights in the background.

Cardinals game on tap... Chicken sold us $99 tickets for $30 each.

Sixteen rows up, we arrived in the top of the 2nd, saw a Cardinal Out, Hit and Homerun. Then we saw lightning, people scrambling out of their seats and a sheet of rain coming at us from the outfield. I wanted to stay but Steve said he would buy me a beer ($7 bucks each, I left.)

Shortly after we got seated, before the Hit and Homerun, I took a 2-finger picture. Not sure why I held up 2 but the lady behind us was amused.

They cancelled the game but could have finished in my estimation after 90 minutes of rain. The rain game was the next Monday - we were in Omaha at that point.

Rain, rain, rain...

Parting picture, two sad boys in row 16, right behind the plate.

Steve played the penney machine - tried to cheer up. We saw a machine called Road Trip and then lost it before we thought of a picture. Alas the blog journey does without.

The Broken Butt Mountain Tour Starts in Nashville

Nana came to babysit for a long weekend while Megan and Eric went mushroom hunting.

Panama using the neighbor's swing and slide.

Pancake reading a book in the Teardrop.

Steve relaxing in Megan and Eric's driveway.

People comment on how I can get Panama to do things that I want her to do.
For instance, I told her to pose and give me a really big smile... she did.

"Ok Grampa, I smiled, more root beer..."


Steve, Panama, Carol and I went to the Adventure Science Center since we did not have a lot else to do. We enjoyed it although there were a ton of school kids - must be their school's almost out outing.

Pancake listened to Grampa's heart sounds...

she said "no heart Grampa", then laughed at her own joke.

"Grampa, when can I get out of this bubble... I was just joking about your heart."

Lunch. Glutten free burritos...

Nashville Sounds game, free hats, what a deal.

A real riot broke out when Steve began cheering for the Aces. I tried to tone him down, soon baseball Managment moved three young, well endowed ladies right behind him to get his mind off the baseball game. I think that they also were armed with drug scented perfume - the whole section of seats near us started to doze off. I was drowsy, almost got hit in the head with a ball that one of the Ace players tossed to the middle girl of the threesome. I think she used to be a catcher cuz she just took it in her chest to save her nails. No picture of them - we weren't nearly bold enough. Thankfully Steve quit misbehaving until we got downtown.

Sounds got beat by the Aces... 4 to 3. Tony Gwen Junior went hitless. San Diego called him up days after we watched him play. Tony will probably remember him when he and Patty get to the game.

Second Fiddle for free drinks... thanks John.

We enjoyed the music... and people watching the young people shopping around.

Raining at Lookout Mountain so we decided to start the road trip without the hangliding portion of the trip. We stopped at Stella Court, dropped off the hanglider and Teardrop and headed west.

Amaya Rolled Over at 2-1/2 Months

Mother's Day Weekend

Carol, Doug and Panama went on a short trip to the Lookout Mountain Flight Park. We were there to watch the world class pilots finish the Flytec Rally Race. Unfortunately, the weather in Georgia was not good so they had to turn around in southern Georgia and drive back to Florida to finish the last two days of competition.

Carol and Panama in front of our accomodations at the south end of the landing zone. The weather has been very wet and the field is soggy. There was no flying on Friday nite or Saturday until early evening. At the point that the clouds separated and the wind died down a bit, the tandem pilots hit the deck. Panama and I drove around on their golf cart picking them up.

Pancake enjoying a bag of nuts and raisins. She is wearing Grampa's hat because she is cool...

Thanks to this lovely couple, we had some very nice acomodations at the end of the field. Thanks Scott and Leah... we enjoyed your little place in South Park. (Scott says that heat develops between them whenever they are together. He might be right... or is that camera flash reflection?)

This is a view of the sky in their cabin from the middle of the living room. Apparently this is a work-in-progress, however, it looked great to me so far. (Scott is an artist and does wonders with the airbrush... I also heard a rumor that he is a top drawer drummer.)

We had some time on Saturday to wander to some of the Chattanooga tourist areas. Pancake claims she knows nothing about the fender bender in the middle of a cute little bookstore we visited in the middle of the city. Plenty of other sites to see in town... we passed a revitalized old town, a huge beautiful city park/river walkway in the middle of the city and the world famous aquarium.

During Church at the Mountain - Panama and I took some pictures of the foliage around the perimeter of the church. The Bishop was there to do some Confirmations and unfortunately Panama's attention span was shorter than his sermon. Not even two rows of Knights directly behind us in their puffy hats & swords could keep her quiet. (I guess she determined the menacing swords were cosmetic in nature and that the sword rattling was palsy but it shook me up. At any rate, Grampa gladly took the Panama act outside. Nana prayed for us... Oh Lord keep Panama safe in his watch and temper his impish, childish sense of humor.)

Carol and Panama now in the landing zone watching the tug "probe". (On closer inspection, this is actually a hanglider that launched from the mountain - they were getting some extended flights due to some ridge lift.) I originally thought that this was the tug pilot taking a solo flight into the air to test the tandemability of the atmosphere. (If he returns quickly rather than fly around to scout things out, that is usually bad news.)

Panama (our 5:30 am alarm clock) got us on-the-road back to Nashville early on Sunday. (We stopped for breakfast at my favorite Trenton restaurant - Pancake put a dent in my hashbrowns and Carol's ham.) The family had a Erica/Megan put together picnic outing at a local winery - who was well prepared for the Mother's Day Celebration. The south wind was kind of "fresh" for the first hour or two but it got lighter until time to leave - few sprinkles at that point. We had a great time. Amaya dressed up very nicely. (She wore a classic Armani 50's era polka dog dress with a faux light gray fur collar and solid white faux linen jacket for the outing - the dress pictures are under the "Armani Amaya Collection" contract but the Erica said the shoes were not part of the agreement so I got a picture of her faux black patent leather dancing shoes - shown above.)

The Mothers exchanged some nice presents - Megan made a beautiful collage of the babies for Carol. Carol will reciprocate the warm feelings by taking the girls later in the summer to a Dianna Krall concert in the city. Eric had to ask who she was so I guess she hasn't bought any of his songs...

The kids with the oneryest one upside down. Panama refused to partake in any of the pictures. She is an angel in every other way of course.