Family and friends......

 7:34 am - Sunday - March 27th - Elks Backyard, CA - 54° F, humidity 69%, wind 3 mph out of the south by southwest.......heavy overcast today with a forecast high of 76° F.  On this date in 2017 TLE and I were out riding the SART (Santa Ana River Trail) bike path on our Cannondale tandem bicycle.....we stopped at a local San Bernardino Subway shop for a 'footlong' before our return trip to the Newell.....covered 23 miles that day.....↴

We've trying to vary our walking route each day so as to not get too bored doing the same thing over and over again like we've done for the past almost 2 months.  Because of where we were (Newell House, and the Anza Borrego Desert) during that that time we were limited in our options, but now that we are here at the Elks Lodge we have a lot of options.  I usually defer to TLE as to the route for any given day, and she suggested Saturday that we just do an out and back walk on the PET* trail, to which I agreed, but with the caveat that we would walk one more block west than normal to Fontana High School before turning around....she agreed.  In all, with the extra block, we covered 3.52 miles, a new high for our daily walk.....

A couple of street signs along the PET*....the one above is on the Fontana section, and the one below is typical of the Rialto section.  Maple Avenue is where the Fontana section ends (on the east), and where the Rialto section begins...the Elks Lodge is in between Linden Avenue and Maple Avenue on Rialto Avenue.

....our grandson, Brayden (son of Sharon and Rod) is in his second season of little league baseball, and had a game scheduled for 12:00 pm at Westwind Park in Ontario, so around 11:30 am we hopped in the VW and headed down to see him play.  His little league team is called the 'Dodgers'.....how fitting!  My favorite major league team is also the 'Dodgers'.....

Brayden in the field

.....Brayden managed to get two hits during the game, and drove in a couple of runs making his parents, and grand parents very happy......

....it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and it never got above 84° F.  We were home a little after 2 pm, and shortly thereafter I was watching the 'World Golf Championship' match play tournament being held in Austin, TX, and then the first game of the 'March Madness' Elite 8 between Villanova and Houston.  It was a hard fought game featuring great defense, which was won in the end by Villanova 50-44....a very low scoring game.  The second game was between Duke and Arkansas, but we had a 6 pm dinner date with long time friends Paul and Karye Hood at Brio's in Victoria Gardens (Rancho Cucamonga), so I set the Duke/Arkansas game to record while we were at dinner.

I began riding mountain bikes with Paul (13 years my junior) back in the early 90's, and we rode together most every weekend for 20 years.  I count him as one of my best male friends, and have greatly missed that camaraderie we shared on and off the bikes over those two decades.  We met Paul and Kayre at Brio's (Italian restaurant) at 6 pm, and after a little over two hours of catching up, and reminiscing we exchanged our 'until next times', and headed for home.  I'm still smiling today thinking about the great food and conversation.  I neglected to take the traditional 'usie', but here is a picture from Karye's Facebook page of them taken at Mt. Rushmore......

......I've had few regrets over the decade we have been on our nomadic adventure, and one of them is not being able to spend time with Paul like I did for the 20 years before.  He is one of my most unforgettable characters.....a good, honorable, decent, loyal man...a man I am proud to call FRIEND.

Upon our return home I turned on the TV and began to watch the Duke (#2) vs. Arkansas (#4)  game.....it was a good, 4 point game with about 5 minutes to go with Duke in the lead, when Duke went on a scoring run, leading by as many as 18 points before Arkansas closed the gap to 9 points, but it was too late, and too little as Duke held on to win 78-69.  So, after Saturday's games Villanova and Duke are in the Final Four (to be played next weekend), with final two of the Elite 8 games scheduled for Sunday determining the last two Final Four teams.

Thanks for stopping by!

*PET = Pacific Electric Trail

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