OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

Well, with all the excitement from yesterday's blog, maybe I'll try something a little quieter. Actually, this may turn out to take several days and be rather boring so you can skip it if you want. I suppose you can skip it even if you don't want, but that doesn't make as much sense.

People look at me and my wife and think we've been married forever. Sometimes it seems that way to me too, but I mean that in a good way. Actually, it's only been about 16 years. That may seem like a long time to some of you out there, but at our age, it's a blink of the eye. My wife and I have BOTH had two other lives (read that as "associations with previous spouses") since becoming what we laughingly call adults.

We seem to spend a lot of time together nowadays. And that's OK with us. We're usually within hand-holding range and if one of us goes out of the room for any length of time the other will come looking for them, wondering if they got lost (which my wife has done several times). Either that or we'll carry on a long-distance shouting conversation through three rooms and around the corner.

Once the scurry of the day is over, it's just her and me. Many times, after getting home from a family get-together, I'll remark "Well, it's just you and me, alone together again." And she smiles and holds my hand and it's all OK.

We've both done all the activities that everyone younger holds important, tended to the raising of kids to teenagerhood to adulthood, tried to make our mark in the world (only to find it was being erased almost as soon as we made it). Now we're done with that, we have an opportunity to live more for ourselves rather than others or the world. We're "alone together again" and we love it.

I have to admit that I probably have cheated my children out of one thing - traditions. I never was one for such things, preferring shiny new baubles of experiences, a changing whirl of newness. My wife, however, is the queen of traditions, she moves from one to another to another. And I'm afraid I've become infected.

There are countless customs, traditions, and habits in her family, ranging from standard ones like Christmas dinner at her folks (still, at the age of 91 & 85) to rather uncommon ones like the singing of the lutefisk song at that gathering. With so many to choose from to discuss, I think I'll pick our yearly trip to the North Shore.

I'm not much for lakes. As I tell my wife, "it's just water, we've got the same stuff in our bathtub." And it's so FLAT. But she loves lakes. Now me, give me a mountain any old day, a big, in-your-face, see-it-from-100-miles-away mountain. Now thats a landmark that makes a mark, a scenic wonder that is scenic, all a lake is is wet. But, she's my wife, so you know where we go.

And if you've got to go to a lake, I suppose Lake Superior is about as good as you're going to get. If you look at a map, you'll see that Minnesota is sort of a straight-up-and-down state with a pinched-in waist and the igloo-shape to the east is Wisconsin. Anyway, Lake Superior stretches across the top of the igloo and a big, fat finger of it reaches around the edge to poke into Minnesota.

Funny thing, though, there's Lake Superior to the east as you drive along at the southern end of it, but as you continue on up the road, the land starts to turn more easterly, and more, and more. And pretty soon the lake is almost due south. Voila, there you are, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Anyway, my wife had been up there many times before I came along and she wasn't about to change that habit, so along I go.

But, lo and behold, I find I enjoy it. I don't do a whole lot WITH the lake, just do my own thing. Maybe it's the company, maybe it's her LETTING me do my own thing, maybe I'm just getting old, but it can be very enjoyable. Not exciting, mind you, but then, I've had plenty of exciting and it's really overrated.

A quick aside. "Kind treatment makes me love you, be mean and you'll drive me away." Those are the words in my ears right now as I listen to Dave Brubeck and Jimmy Rushing. It so fits my life, I just had to pass the words on.

September, that time of change. In Minnesota during September you can swelter in 90's heat and humidity. Or you can feel the first autumn chills sweep down from Canada. Kids are going back to school, leaves are thinking of turning, and the lake can be turbulent. It's time for the pilgrimage. Time to seek the refreshing coolness of the lake breeze after the stifling summer in the Twin Cities.

It used to be the custom to get up early, load up the car with every possible item you might ever need during a week in a housekeeping cabin. But two heart attacks for me, asthma for my wife and being sadly out of shape (literally and figuratively) for both of us, made us change our habit.

I finally convinced my wife that we could buy a lot of stuff we'd need up there (then the kid who carries out the grocers can load it) and that we could afford to buy the small size so we'd use it up during the week. This is especially OK with her since I'm paying and it isn't coming out of her grocery money for the month.

And we carefully examined what it was we really needed and what we just thought we MIGHT need. After several years of carting the popcorn popper up and only using it once (or maybe not at all) we decided we could do without popcorn for the week. Either that or buy some of the already popped kind or convince the cabins' owner that they need to put in a microwave.

I'll arrive home from work on Friday night and the front hallway will be full of suitcases, sackfuls of books, etc. I'll load this non-perishable stuff into the trunk and we're halfway done with only minor distress.

On Saturday morning we get up at the regular time. The last thing I want to do is jump out of bed and start driving. It takes me at least an hour just to get my eyes to stay open for more than 15 seconds. Besides, I'm on vacation, why would I want to rush?

At about eight I'll get my wife up and we'll finish up the last stuff we need to get together, things like pillows (you really get to depend on your own pillows as you get older), the coffee pot (got to have the coffee ready in the morning when I get up, love that automatic timer), my laptop (got my tunes, movies, games, on there), jackets (might be cooler at the lake), fill the thermos with the rest of the coffee, turn off all the lights, etc. We finish loading up at a leisurely pace and finally we're ready to go.

We check the last things off the list I've printed off from my computer. For years we wondered whether we'd forgotten something and finally I hit upon the "brilliant" idea to keep a list on the computer to be printed out each year. Only took me about 12 years to figure that out. I may be slow, but I DO eventually get there.

"Used to" and "eventually". My wife used to make sandwiches for us to eat midmorning on the way up to the lake. It was something she had always done while raising her kids, trying to make ends meet. Eventually, I convinced her that we could establish a better custom. We could afford to stop before we got out of town, sit in a restaurant, and have a "bought" breakfast.

This was more than fine with her once I convinced her that I wasn't like some previous people she'd traveled with. I didn't mind stopping once I got started, didn't mind taking the time right after we started, didn't mind the expense, didn't think any less of her for not doing the work of providing food on the trip. Yep, she doesn't mind one bit stopping at Old Country Buffet.

So, usually by 10:30 or so we're really on the road, trying to get out of town, hitting the merge of the 35's, passing all the small towns and casinos on the way up toward the mighty metropolis of Duluth. More tomorrow.