Saturday, June 30, 2012

Remembering Mr. Mac


We spent our first night in Ashland, Oregon (Map).  Ashland is home to an annual and according to the sign on the highway world famous Shakespeare festival.  Seeing the sign got me to thinking about my Senior year English teacher Mr. Mac. Mr. Mac stands out in my memories of high school (in Arizona) for two reasons.  First, he made Shakespeare fun and interesting.  If memory serves we were reading MacBeth and Mr. Mac brought in one of those old school tape players and would play the dialog for us.  He would stop the tape after just about every sentence and take the time to explain what old Bill S was saying through his actors.
  
Second, Mr Mac actually let myself and a fellow student cut class to attend the Tucson open golf tournament.  My friend Stuart got free tickets from his dad for the tourney.  English was our last class of the day so we approached Mr. Mac and asked if we could ditch class and head over to Randolph North (where they played the tourney back in 1980).  Mr. Mac told us that today “we would be exploring the exciting world of the gerund phrase” but after the lecture we could head out.  We sat down and hung in for the lecture.  After he finished, roughly 15 minutes of a 75 minute class we got up and headed for the door.  Mr. Mac stopped us with “I can’t let you guys go to the golf tournament.”  We were stunned, started pleading our case to get out of class.  Mr. Mac just smiled and replied - "I can’t let you go to the tourney but I can let you go to the nurse - See you tomorrow." 

I heard that he broke both his legs in a skydiving accident the year after I graduated.  Not sure if that’s true or what happened to him since but sure hope he’s alive and well!

Friday, June 29, 2012

Canada and Alaska here we come!

We are headed back to the great white north starting tomorrow morning.  We plan to take 4 days or so getting up to Canada then we will be heading straight to Inuvik.  The trip will cover mostly the same locations, there just aren't that many roads or places to go when you get up into Northern Canada and Alaska but we hope to visit some new places while on the road.

Tomorrow we plan to make it to Ashland, Oregon.  We will then spend Saturday and Sunday in Portland.  Hopefully, on Monday we will be across the border and into Hope, BC.