This will be short...really!



First off, I cannot believe how many of you responded, and so kindly and thoughtfully, to the e-blast about Buddy's passing. Many of you knew him, and Carol and I hopefully answered and thanked every one of you. When times are tough and you're down and blue and think that all you really want is to be left alone, it's amazing how the outreach from friends can ease the ache. Thank you all.

But of course I couldn't possibly do a soulful, heart-felt message without screwing something up, and in this case it was the year of Buddy's passing. Which was quite obviously 2020 since it happened just over a week ago. But the mind works in mysterious ways (or at least mine does...just ask Carol) and I was thinking and musing and ruminating over how Buddy came just a few weeks short of making it to his fifteenth birthday. Which is pretty damn good in the world of Wire-Haired Fox Terriers. And it's also how I got my brain all twisted up around the numerology and listed the year of his passing as 2015 instead of 2020. The really amazing thing is how few people seemed to notice. Including me when I proofed it (yes, I do look my stuff over before sending...more's the pity). Son Adam caught it right away (of course) as did my proofreader and friend Sam Smith and my old landlord and friend Terry McCullom (I guess real estate guys had better be good with numbers) and Porsche-book author and friend Susann Miller and several others. Thank you all. But where were you when I needed you?
I think this pretty much underscores why I was better off pursuing the arts rather than the sciences. Engineering including, despite what I may try to lead you to believe (usually under the influence of alcohol) regarding racecars I have either built up from scratch or fooled with Ad Hoc (like Alex Quattlebaum Junior's Elva Courier in the Bahamas...see pic below) in the field.

But enough of that, and thank you all again.

One More Thing Dept:
I forgot to mention something really extraordinary that happened on a bike-path ride just a few days after Buddy's passing. But to really understand the portent and impact, we need to go all the way back to my early grammar school days at Greeley School. You could say my interests were manic but embarrassingly fickle in those days, and on a fairly regular basis--daily or weekly, even--I would find myself sucked desperately into the vortex of all kinds of new interests and subjects. Sure, there were cars and go-karts. But before that there were airplanes, and before that it was snakes, and Big Cats (I always had a thing for Snow Leopards) and sharks and rhinoceroses and bats and torture racks and medieval armor was in there somewhere, too. And...well, we really don't need to go into it all here, do we? But at one point, albeit briefly, it was birds. Now I have friends who are life-long birders and, much as I fail to understand the joys of slogging through insect-infested swamps or poison ivy carpeted forests or clinging to guano-covered cliffs just to catch a fleeting glimpse of some feathered whatsis or other that might be more appealing as an appetizer or entree, I also have friends who hunt living creatures just for the sheer, dubious joy of blowing them to kingdom come and others who play golf. Even when it's 110 in the shade and the humidity hangs in the air like old sweat socks. What can you do?

But we were talking about birds, weren't we? And my short-lived, grammar-school fascination with them. I would pore over bird books, looking at pictures and devouring information. And the bird that truly captured my imagination was the Scarlet Tanager. It was the most striking and beautiful feathered thing I had ever seen (picture below):

But it made one hell of an impression. And later at home, when I looked it up, there's some kind of mystical message about change and new endeavors connected with Scarlet Tanager sightings. No shit. Now Carol is a great believer in signs (I suppose I am a little bit, too...not that you'll ever get me to admit it) and I came away from my brilliant-red bird encounter feeling not only that a page had turned, but also that there was something hopefully worthy and worthwhile on the other side.

We now take you back to your regularly scheduled programming. 

Catch the latest poop & pictures, the Jay Leno interview, Last Open Road swag & highly inappropriate attire from Finzio's Store and the lurid & occasionally embarrassing "ride with Burt" in-car racing videos on the hopefully now fully operational website at:

WWW.LASTOPENROAD.COM