Another story: To be told at night at camp. I was walking along a path that was leading me up the side of a mountain. As the path steepened and I was moving out of an easy grade to a more steeper one, I heard a rustle in the bushes. I turned to look, but saw nothing. The trail now became a ledge on the side of the mountain and again, I heard the same noise and this time when I spun around, I did detect some movement of leaves on the brush alongside the path. I became concerned, but not fearful yet since no threat was detected. I did, however, began to look for possible cover places to defend myself. Unfortunately, these places were diappearing as the path rose ever higher on the side of the mountain. I realized that, at this point, I could not reverse course without confronting whatever was behind me, be it a prankster or beast. My hope was to continue and maybe the path would top out into a better landscape, but such was not the case. The path narrowed and soon it was not more than a few feet wide with a drop off of a 1000 ft or more down the side of the mountain. I was trapped! Vegtation on the drop off edge had thinned to nothingness, not even a strong sprout to grab, nothing but some grasses. And now, my pursurer came into view. It was huge grizzly bear ambling up the path behind me. Now, I was scared. The perceived threat was real; My hide tingled; My mind raced - what to do. I hurried up the path and the bear began to close the distance between us. My heart pounded. At last, the path dwindled to a mere 2 ft wide with no more in sight. The bear was upon me. [At this point, the storyteller stops and waits. If no one takes the bait and asks, "What happened?", you have a plant in the audience who does. When asked, "What happened?", you reply, He ate me!" An alternate ending is, "I woke up!"]

Broke a spring a while ago - too old to find a replacement, so have run as it was for a while, with the odd bang when going over a bump. Fan control on radiator not working, they were going to order a new one, but soldered a wire ... but it still overheated ... so it seems that the seals on the water pump weren't holding (probably from overheating due to the fan not working properly). About $400. total to install a $65.00 water pump: mechanic said not worth it. I've been hauling several containers of water with me ... can run about 10 miles in the country before it gets hot (and don't seal the rad cap). I had a loaner while my auto body friend found a car to fit my specs and is doing some repairs on it. Couldn't remove the 3/8 tank of gas from the one in its death throes, so ran some errands with it and am running it for the weekend ... with the keys for the loaner in my pocket, in case of need. I expect to drive it to the junk yard on Tuesaday (Wednesday?), after the Civic holiday on Monday, if the replacement is ready. Carrying a can with some gas, in case the yellow caution light on the dash stays on for a while. Quite an adventure, clearing it out! The "new" one's a Chev. "Cobalt", vintage '05 ... so they said that I skipped the '90s all together. I'd bought a '90 Dodge (actually "Mitsubishi") "Colt" about '97, ran it till about '04, then had about a '93? "Taurus" for a couple of years. Pulled over to the side of the road to ask a couple of walkers whether they'd need a ride, and a gravel truck following claimed that I hadn't given him enough space, so the back of it got pretty well mashed ... so I didn't completely avoid the '90s. Drivers' consultation, about an hour and a half video and discussion with about a dozen participants, with sign-recognition and multiple choice driving questions again next birthday (every 2 years, after 80). ole joyful

Hi Iva Mae, I`ve been planning to dwell on that package, and some other matters, with a bit of embellishment, probably, but not stretching things too much, over on the jokey thread about the jockeys with the tired elastics (that got some folks a bit huffy) a week or so ago. Or ... should we suggest that those folks got their shirt-tails (undershorts) sort of tied into knots? (I`m in a newly opened library that has French (slash) English keyboards, some of the keys have double use, and I managed to get the (E with an accute accent) rather than the question mark, and the (e with an accute accent) rather than the forward slash ... and the computer tech here couldn`t find the key to shift the usage back, so she set one up for me for the question mark ... but not the slash! (The exclamation mark works ... but the apostrophe is on a dual key, as well). Life ... do ... have its problems, right� ? ole joyful

Just came back to check this message again ... and found that it started on June 25 (and carried through till July 8). I hadn't noticed before, but June 25 is an important date in my past. Some time ago while visiting a business plaza in the city, I saw the words of that date written on a game store window, so went in there to check. They were not of Korean background, but carried the game, which has a Korean origin. The words are "Yook Ee Oh": "yook" is "six", "Ee" is "two" and "oh" is "five", so when put together, they are "6 - 25" which to Koreans are as familiar as "9-11" is to U.S. folks. It is the date on which the Korean War began, June 25, 1950. And it ended with a truce, in July, 1953 ... and there hasn't been a "peace" in place, yet! When I was in university, in 1950, the year in which the Korea War began, some left-leaning people said that it was the Republic of Korea (South Korea, or "ROK") that started it, not the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Whatever "democratic" means, in that context. If there's anything that people who had deeply dedicated to a certain ideology, philosophy or theology can't stand, it's to have some people make a joke of their major viewpoint. When they claimed that South Korea started the war ... we laughingly said to them that, yes, South Korea started the war ... and in two days, their capital city was overrun by the army of the country that they'd invaded ... ... and they lost their military headquarters. Anybody who'd believe that ... would probably believe that the moon was made of green/cream cheese, if the people making the claim were earnest enough! The war was still going when I was appointed by my church (The United Church of Canada, union of Methodist, Congregationalist and about 70% of the Presbyterians, in 1925) to go there to carry on missionary work, and the truce was declared while I was on a ship on the Pacific en route there. Eighteen days out of sight of land on the Pacific, en route from Los Angeles to Manila gives one who hadn't seen an ocean until then an idea of how large this world is. The main task was to help something over 100,000 refugees get their lives started over. So I was quite interested in the date of this thread when I noticed it. ole joyfuelled