Hold happiness tightly enjoy it brightly

Javea was a little known paradise in the province of Alicante, Spain, when Bobbi and I stored our Madrid furniture and personal effects in January of 1980, and drove to the Costa Blanca in our new Citroen Méhari (orange plastic, French 2 cv).  Javea is where the warm Mediterranean breeze circulates with the fragrance of orange blossoms and creates the feeling of knowing and feeling you are where you are supposed to be.

Bobbi and I would part and go separate ways years later, however 1980 was the year of hopes, illusions and expectations.  We had rented a chalet just outside Javea, where we would live until we found a 100-year-old farmhouse to modernize and decorate.  We had a brief hiatus in our plans when Becton Dixon selected Bobbi to decorate their new Madrid headquarters, which meant she would commute between Javea and Madrid.

I became our five-year-old son Alex’s playmate, co-conspirator in imagination, cohort in gathering wild flowers for Mom’s return and our chief food preparer.  In the early morning, bilingual Alex left in the bus for the all-Spanish Paidos School in Denia. He returned mid afternoon which allowed time for me to write, to shop for food, and to go once in a while for a fast bicycle ride.

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The last blog post was dated July 4, 2014, and the ensuing hiatus in blog posts resulted from summer 2014, when I crashed my racing bici at 28-mph and suffered fractured clavicle, eight fractured ribs, a hairline pelvic fracture and a partially deflated R-lung.

The accident occurred while ridding my vintage Cannondale that should have been replaced.  I had just shaved five minutes off my best time ever and headed downhill toward home when the derailleur slipped.  I could have dismounted and repaired the problem.  However in distress and annoyance, I slammed the derailleur with the palm of my hand.  This catapulted the bicycle chain into the rear tire hub and froze the rear tire at twenty-eight miles-an-hour.

It’s incredible how disaster occurs in slow motion.  Attempts to break forward speed on the front tire destroyed steering control.  There was no doubt I would go down.

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John Wayne Pioneer Trail. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1908, my maternal great grandfather, William Frank Dunn, was President, Publisher and co-owner of the Chicago Journal, which later became the Chicago Daily News.  The newspaper consumed reams of newsprint that was purchased at exorbitant prices from Chicago jobbers. 

So Frank Dunn took the train to northern Wisconsin and negotiated directly with the lumber mill in Park Falls where wood pulp became paper that he bought at a more reasonable price.

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