Once upon a time, Bud and Irma Akendorf, married forty-seven years, and patriarch and matriarch to a burgeoning extended family, dreamed of one day exploring the highways and byways of America.

So it was that one luminous, clear, and warm Arizona morning, with blessings and encouragement from family and friends, and their newly purchased RV well-stocked with all the necessities, the Akendorfs left behind their humble home in Sedona, Arizona, and took to the open road where many wonderful and strange adventures awaited them.

Among the weeds sprouting in the crock of the old glory road, (or at least what was left of it, and perhaps what was left of themselves) it seemed to Irma that they had never really left the mother road, only know it had lead them halfway down the back side of that intrepid hill called Life. The glory of their youth, like the glory of the road, long behind them. Perhaps what Irma felt when she, with insoluble tears in her eyes, discreetly studied her dear husband with his strong arms and his Old Spice was this: he was mortal. Bud wasn't just whistling an old Sinatra tune, he was whistling past the graveyard, and he was doing it for both of them.