K.C.'s Wedding, Cowboy Rendezvous in Hyrum, Building the Barn

In January I bought a membership at a gym close to our house. I have been a walker for years, but I was feeling like I needed a little work on strength and muscle training. I worked with a trainer for a couple of weeks getting some counsel on what weight machines I should be working on and at what weights. I told her, I am not a body builder, I don’t want to be aching all the time from straining too hard, I don’t want to injure myself in any way—what should I be doing. And she worked me through a series of fitness machines, arms, core, back and legs. And so I am going to the gym about four or five times a week. It is one of the things that is taking up some of my time. I am not losing weight particularly, and I don’t look remarkably different, but I do feel like I am not quite as creaky as I used to be. I still have some regular aches and pains, my knees are never going to be the youthful joints they once were, but I feel like they and hips are a bit looser than they used to be. I am also doing about a half an hour each visit on the elliptical machine. In the beginning I was using muscles that were unused to being moved in the way that elliptical machine works, but now I hop on and do about four miles an hour for half an hour while watching the news on the big screens in the gym. I try to get there after work and before dinner, but I have gone in the evening, too, which takes a big bite out of my evening. Anyway—I am trying to stave of the ravages of time and keep myself limber-er, at least. We are beginning to work on the barn in Petersboro in earnest. I use the word we very loosely. Paul has already done a lot of work and I have assisted him a couple of times. The vision changes regularly. In the beginning I had hoped to have a cute little “get-away space” in the loft where we could stay after the barn was built but before the house was finished. Paul ordered some plans that had a real apartment in the loft, a really fun, cute apartment, but kind of more than I thought we would ever have in a barn. Then he made some inquiries at the time he was applying for a building permit and found out that the way our property is zoned there can only be one residence on the property—if there is a “residence” in the barn, then a house can’t be built. So then we abandoned the idea of an apartment in the loft. However, in contradiction of the zoning—we might still “camp” from time to time in the loft, there just won’t be a living room, dining area, kitchenette and bedroom. There will be a blow up mattress and maybe an electric frying pan—so there. It is still a really attractive possibility for us and watching Paul work out the details of the building, doing prefabrication on the back patio and hauling materials to Petersboro has been interesting to watch. We have a member of our ward who is an engineer, specializing in steel and Paul has consulted with her several times about the steel pole framing that he is working on. He has been up to Petersboro many times digging holes for the concrete footings and doing other preparation work. I have a sense that this is really going to happen. Whatever we end up with in the loft, remains to be seen, but we will have a very impressive barn—a place for Paul to keep his stuff; it will be big enough for the surrey and the two sleighs, and the tractor and a workbench, hay and a couple of stalls for the horses. We are really excited about it. This month sometime we are also graveling the driveway—at least the approach from the road onto our property. We graveled a little section a couple of years ago so that Paul could drive the truck and trailer onto the property, but to meet code the grade can’t be any steeper than 10% so we will be requiring some significant fill to achieve that mild a grade compared to what we have now. We bought a permit to do this, but it has to be completed in 60 days and we are already 30 days in, so it will have to be done sometime this month. Paul and I spent last weekend in Hyrum, Utah—the other end of Cache Valley from Petersboro. The events that we attended in Hyrum were held in a lovely, big high school that services that end of the valley, called Mountain Crest High School. The event that we attended is an annual event called the Cache Valley Cowboy Rendezvous: A reunion of Cowboy Poets, Western Music & Artisans. It has been going for five years, and Paul and I have attended for the last four. It is a very impressive event with two ticketed concerts with headliner artists and three other stages with many cowboy and western musicians and poets. The community of cowboy poets and musicians is relatively small and so these events are a way that these various performers get a chance to visit with each other and see what one another are doing. We have become very friendly with a number of these performers. Paul did ten and twenty minute sets throughout the evening on Friday and during the day on Saturday. On Saturday evening, there is a family dance with Western and Western Swing music. We have attended it a couple of times, but chose to go out to dinner and make it an earlier evening this time. There is also a large vendor area, where artisans of various stripes can hawk their wares. There is always an interesting assortment of things to buy. Last year, I bought a simple food slicer from the Pampered Chef booth—(not really a western vendor, but did a brisk business anyway), but this year I didn't buy anything. I settled in at the Elkhorn Stage audience, and did handwork and listened to a morning and an afternoon of performers. In the late morning we bumped into a couple we know from Back Country Horseman in Salt Lake City, who had heard about the gathering on the Community Corner segment in the TV news, and also a blurb in the local Tooele paper (where they live) and decided to come and check it out. We sat through some sets with them and then had lunch in the cafeteria where another vendor had set up a Dutch oven and chuck wagon lunch. It was fun to visit with them and have someone to have lunch with. One of the headliners for this gathering was the Bar D Ranglers—(not to be confused with the Bar J Ranglers from Wilson, Wyoming—although there are some remarkable similarities in the two groups). The Bar D Wranglers are a western music singing group from the Bar D Chuckwagon Suppers in Durango, Colorado. The group has performed for over 2.5 million guests at their Durango location as well as countless other stages and venues around the United States. The group began performing at the Bar D Chuckwagon in June of 1969 and continues the tradition nightly throughout the summer months. When the Bar D Wranglers take their show on the road, they perform the classic cowboy- western music for which they are so well-known, as well as award-winning instrumental and comedy songs and crowd-pleasing stories that will delight the entire family. They were wonderful musicians and one of the guitar players is a champion flat picker and did a couple of amazing solos during the course of their concert which Paul and I attended on Friday evening. Gary Cook, this guitar player, also hosted a flat picking guitar workshop on Saturday morning, which Paul attended. For Paul, it was an incredible experience—this guitar player was such a virtuoso in the flat picking department and really a consummate musician that Paul felt it was well worth his attendance. There were about twenty guitar players in attendance and half of them were guitar players who were performing artists at this rendezvous—they all wanted to attend his workshop, pick up a few tips and hear about his experiences. Paul did a really nice job in his sets. He now plays the guitar and then talks over the music as he presents his poetry. It is very pleasant to have the musical background to his poetry and he is careful about the music he selects to go under his poems, so that they blend nicely together. I enjoy listening to him perform. His performances have evolved over time since the first days when he just did poetry without music. He has really enjoyed playing the guitar the last couple of years. While we were in Hyrum he reconnected with a musician friend of ours named Clive Romney. He is actually a relative of mine, sort of. His wife and I are second cousins on the Gates side, but we see him much more at Western gatherings of different kinds than we do in family settings. Anyway, he is a serious musician and plays the guitar very well, and as he and Paul chatted, they came to an understanding that Paul would take a few lessons from Clive to improve his level of guitar playing. He had his first lesson with Clive on Monday. Clive’s focus, at least with Paul, is for him to learn to read music instead of just read guitar chords—since he already knows how to read music (those 11 years of piano lessons paying of big time now) this has been an easy transition. This week he has been practicing playing the guitar from notation, and it is coming easily. Clive points out that if you know how to convert notation to guitar playing, you can play anything, not just stuff that has guitar chords, which is so true. Anyway, playing the guitar continues to be a very satisfying outlet for Paul. We were really happy that so many family members were able to come to California to join with us in celebrating K.C.’s wedding and festivities. Neither K.C. nor Elizabeth, nor any of their immediate family members live in California. They chose Oakland because Elizabeth’s grandparents do not travel anymore and she wanted them to be a part of her wedding. The Oakland Temple is huge, and very pretty and in a lovely setting with a huge stake center and a visitor’s center. The ceremony was very nice and it was some kind of wonderful to see K.C. married and so happy and in love. We had a nice time on the temple grounds visiting and taking photographs. Even though the exact mileage to the luncheon and reception center wasn't that far, it involved crossing the Bay Bridge and took more than an hour. K.C. and Elizabeth were organizing their wedding from long distance and most of the people who were attending were also coming from long distances, so they decided to use the same venue for both the wedding luncheon and the reception. The sit down luncheon was from about 1:00 until 2:00 and then at two o’clock there was a reception. For those of us who went to the wedding in Oakland and then came to the wedding luncheon, the reception was just sort of a continuation of the luncheon, although the caterers changed the luncheon food, to reception food on the buffet table. (K.C. and Elizabeth chose not to have an evening reception because they didn't want to infringe on Valentine’s evening for guests who might want to celebrate that evening rather than attend a reception.) The guests who came to reception portion of the afternoon, were primarily friends of K.C.’s who he knew from the four years he lived in San Francisco, members of his Young Single Adult Ward, people he worked with at Accenture when he was employed there, people he knew from high school, BYU and MIT who had moved to the San Francisco area. There was not a reception line, K.C. and Elizabeth just mingled and visited with these other young adults who they knew. I did not know most of them myself as they were people K.C. knew from his adult life away from home. I had some interesting conversations with members of Elizabeth’s family who I had not met until that day. I had nice conversations with Marilyn, Rob and Cindy and members of my family who had joined us that I don’t get a chance to visit with very often. Many of us found this format very relaxing. Frequently, there is a certain amount of moving around during a wedding day celebrations; one goes from the temple to a wedding luncheon and then everyone is hustled out at a certain time to move to another venue for a reception later in the afternoon or evening. This didn't happen in K.C. and Elizabeth’s case because both events were in the same place and the same caterer provided food for both events. I thought everything was so lovely and simple and calm. Of course, we were very happy to have K.C. and Elizabeth get married, so that anything would have seemed lovely—but I felt it was a beautiful day in every way. We have had contact with K.C. several times since the wedding and everything is going well for them—I do feel sorry that this month K.C. will head off for Korea and leave Elizabeth behind for a few weeks, but they will be getting together in Korea soon. It was a very happy day and we really enjoyed ourselves and were very gratified by the strong support that we received from siblings and family members on both sides of our families.