Lessons from a Stone

The Allure of the Guitar

Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post

I didn’t start playing guitar until I retired twelve years ago. I had just moved from my long time home in Southwest Colorado to my last job as regional director for a large engineering company in Pennsylvania. I’d been having back trouble for years, but it was during that move that things got serious. I was more than a little concerned about starting a new, high profile job while my back had begun to spiral out of control. I had seen enough specialists over many years, including a recent visit with a spine surgeon in Durango, to know that I would now be in need of a major corrective surgery.

I began my new post and could immediately tell that it was going to be hell. Loads of responsibility and pressure trying to turn water into wine. By now, I was in serious need of seeing a pain specialist and getting some help with the quickly deteriorating circumstances. Soon my situation became untenable. I’d come from Colorado a well conditioned athlete and mountain bike racer but now it was all I could do to sit through my fourteen hour days. The company had located a wonderful home for our two-person, two dog family and we moved in. But I was immediately in need of finding a place closer to work to mitigate the fairly long commute, which meant more sitting. By far, the most uncomfortable thing I could do to my body was to sit for long periods. The walls containing my life were collapsing all around me. I finally found a pain management clinic that would squeeze me in. Unbeknownst to me, there was a war going on and it was called the “Opioid Crisis”. At least in Pennsylvania, with some of the harshest laws covering the transfer and sale of oral opioids, it was like playing musical chairs and when the music stopped, I would be left standing without a chair. Clinics were booked solid and doctors were being forced to discern how much pain a given patient might be in while interrogating them to see if their pain was real or whether they were exhibiting “drug seeking behavior”, which closely mimicks being in severe pain. I was refused by three clinics before a doctor agreed to take me on as a genuine pain patient. At this point, I’d only been in Pennsylvania for three months and was already fighting to be able to perform well enough to keep my job and all that I had gambled when I left Colorado. The country was deep in the throes of a major recession, largely due the “House Mortgaging Crisis” which had been two decades in the making, and virtually every industry, including mine in oil and gas, was hurting and solid engineers in my particular field (natural gas development) were being laid-off left and right, which is why I was forced to make such a faraway move at such a bad time for me and my rapidly declining spine. I had lived and worked hard making my way in Colorado for thirty years. To me, it was the end of an entire way of life. Just a few months prior to the move, I had simply gone in to see our local family doctor in Colorado and was, with no trouble at all, given a prescription for the very same medication that I was now fighting for my life to renew. I was fortunate that I’d found a pain clinician who, after seeing X-rays, an MRI, and a CT-scan could see how badly I needed surgery, as my lower lumbar spine was completely decimated from years of concussive sports. He wrote a script for just enough medicine to just take the edge off so that I could at least get a few hours of sleep at night and continue working while attempting to locate a reputable spine surgeon. But, make no mistake, the pain was still bad enough that I could barely sit at my desk, let alone travel to and from Houston, something required for my new position as the company was headquartered there, and I reported to the CEO.

It was at this time that I was compelled to find something pleasing to concentrate on to keep my mind off the pain. Since I’d always looked to numerous mountain sports and activities for stress relief and to maintain a semblance of work/life balance, but was now having serious difficulty with short runs and was forced to exchange my runs for short walks, what I was looking for was something immersive enough to help me relax and fend-off the profound associated stress and vastly debilitating anxiety. I had been saving two time-intensive passions to dive into after retirement as I’d done just enough of each over my working life to have a burning desire to take them up when I finally had the necessary time to commit. One was to learn to play and become an accomplished guitarist, and the other was creative writing. As a function of my career in engineering, I had become a highly proficient technical writer, but since taking some literature and writing courses in college, which I had enjoyed immensely, I had had an overwhelming desire to one day pursue creative writing as an avocation. This, too, would have to wait until retirement as becoming an accomplished creative writer doesn’t happen overnight. I decided to continue to put the writing on hold as I wasn’t yet ready to retire in earnest and had hoped to get my back under control and continue working for another four or five years, but I thought that learning to play guitar would help get me through this very difficult period and would be something that I would continue pursuing while finishing up my working life.

No sooner than I had made the decision, my wife and I went to the nearest Guitar Center while I spent an entire Saturday working closely with the store’s assistant manager who, himself, was a gifted and regularly gigging guitarist. We had found a surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh whom I believed could do the work but my surgery wasn’t scheduled for another two months. I needed this change in my life in the same way the desert requires an occasional rain to sustain its own extremely beautiful life force. Years ago, I’d played a bit of acoustic in college and decided that I would initially pursue electric guitar. By the end of the day, I had settled on a very limited edition “Old Growth” redwood Fender Telecaster, the very first guitar to have caught my eye on that momentous day, a good quality tube amp, and everything I would need to get started. Even with the severe pain, I felt an overwhelming sense of elation! We got home and, though it took me two hours to get everything setup in the manner I was instructed by the uniquely helpful and super-knowledgable Guitar Center employee, I got everything set up to be able to play the next day. I went to bed completely exhausted from what had been a long day considering the horrible condition I was in. Exhausted, but full of hope and desire.

As worn to a nub as I was, I couldn’t wait to wake up the next morning and try my hand at playing. That day turned out to be epic as I played until my fingers bled (I’m being completely honest about that!) and played went on to play some more. It was nightfall before I quit for the day. I remembered more than I’d have thought from my bits of playing acoustic guitar in college and found something I’d never known about myself. I could play by ear. I never knew what that meant until I played to a bunch of old favorites and turned Pandora to a blues-rock station where I attempted to play lead along to each song and found myself putting together many of the notes and fitting them in nicely to match the lead guitar on the song. As with all things, there is a spectrum when it comes to playing by ear. Let’s just say that I could do it well enough to thoroughly enjoy what I was doing. Most people spend months, or even years, working on music theory and learning basic chords before enjoyment takes the place of frustration. For me, frustration would come much later when I’d gotten to be a reasonably good player but I was now attempting more complicated things, so the learning curve slowed and got steeper. Time was coming up on my surgery date and the surgeon had instructed me to prepare myself for a long and painful recovery. I was thankful for getting into guitar when I did because I would need it for what would end up as years of chasing pain and having other surgeries, six in the course of the following twelve years. I was forced to retire during the height of my career with just a few more years to go before I could retire “comfortably “. Times got pretty rough and I’ve all but completely lost myself at times, occasionally falling into deep despair from the pain and associated depression, but as bad as things got, I continued to play and began expanding my newfound avocation into buying, selling, and collecting guitars to an extent that my fascination with the guitar would become an obsession. I would read about the history of guitars and learn all about the market for vintage acoustic guitars by Martin and Gibson. I became an “enthusiast” and an expert on vintage acoustic guitars all while my playing continued to get better. I’ve been playing for almost fifteen years now and have developed an equal love of playing acoustically. Today, I’m roughly 50/50 with equal time playing both electrically and acoustically.

The 2011 Fender “Old Growth” Redwood Telecaster I purchased that one fine day at Guitar Center

Aside from problems with my back, I would have a half-dozen major health issues to contend with, three playing out as near-death experiences. Several of the presiding doctors over the gruelling period have made wonderfully compassionate observations as to my inner strength, resilience, and unique ability to endure under the most demanding of conditions. I have spent long periods of time where it was only by the grace of God, support from my family and a very small circle of friends, and my love for making music that I made it through. I had three major surgeries in 2023 alone. One, another spine related surgery and two that had to do with other long-term life threatening illnesses. In the aftermath, I had to relearn how to walk and, on most days I still use a cane to get around. But through it all, there were my guitars standing at the ready to help me through the worst of things. Then, there is my wonderful wife and three fine dogs. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to live mindfully and being thankful for the things that matter most.

But nothing has gotten me through these difficult times like remaining positive and playing the guitar like there’s no tomorrow. It wouldn’t be a stretch for me to say that my love of guitar and making music have saved my life several times over. When I occasionally reflect on all that has transpired, I can only hope and attempt to draw strength from what I have already accomplished as I am currently battling bladder cancer, the one remaining illness that I have yet to conquer. I was diagnosed in mid-2024 and had two surgeries and a failed form of frontline treatment, yet I still had a seven month period of remission only to have it reappear. Over the last six months, I have had two more surgeries to remove two more tumors, the most recent was just a month ago. This time, it was the smallest tumor yet, caught early. I have a follow-up “scraping” surgery in a month (to make sure my surgeon gets all of it), and have just begun a second, less efficacious form of treatment called systemic immunotherapy. It is given through an IV for two-to-three hours at my oncologist’s clinic in Austin, every third Friday for a period of twelve months. I do not know if I have enough gas in my tank to beat this last, most pernicious illness, but I’m going to give it everything I’ve got left. I still have “places to go, and people to meet” and am not nearly done with the things I hope to accomplish in my lifetime.

As always, good thoughts and prayers are more than welcome and are always deeply appreciated…from the bottom of my heart!

Some of the guitars from a collection that has taken me fifteen years to build. The most important pic to me is the last one. It’s a shot that my wife, Genie, took of me and our pure-golden-hearted little girl, Sage. RIP 2021 Age: 15

Thanks for reading!

Rattlesnake!

Originally Written for Medium – Edited and Expanded for this Post

A Five-and-a-Half-Foot Western Diamondback at the Bottom of Our Front Porch Steps

I’ve lived in Western Diamondback country for much of my life, but not until a move to rural Central Texas in 2014 was it that I saw them regularly. In almost thirty years of mountain biking, trail running, hunting, and fishing in my adopted home state of Colorado, I had seen fewer than a dozen and had just three close encounters. Since then, I’ve had many more over a much shorter period and have been compelled to learn more about these reptiles than I ever wanted to know.

After eons of evolution and a less than fifty years of scientific study, much of their behavior remains a mystery to us. I’ve read that certain environmentally-driven changes in reptiles don’t take thousands of years to occur, but significant change can come in as little as a few generations. No one knows all the reasons why, but I’ve witnessed marked evolutionary changes that have occurred over a period of just twelve years. Take rattling and the purported reasons for it as an example. As children, many of us are taught that rattlesnakes rattle primarily to keep close encounters from happening. That before we even spot the source of a rattle, it is a way for rattlesnakes to communicate their presence to virtually anything or anyone, whether the animal (including humans) is approaching with purpose or the would-be encounter is a function of happenstance. It is designed to help prevent those other creatures from continuing on a path which will force a confrontation. It is a wholly defensive mechanism and, believe me. when you hear your first adult-sized rattlesnake rattle, it is a sound you will never forget and will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand at full attention. As humans, this is a response that is well written into our genetic code. The sound will make a person freeze in their tracks to have a tentative look around in an attempt to see the source of this primordial sound. In my fifty-plus encounters right here on our rural Central Texas property, I’ve heard that telltale rattle on just a few occasions before coming dangerously close to bumping into one. I’ve talked to longtime residents of this part of Texas, including a number of multigenerational ranchers, and other outdoorsman and there have been some theories derived surrounding this radical departure in behavior.

The most widely held belief is because just ten years ago, in the extremely rural areas surrounding the town of Lockhart (population: just over 14,000) there was an entire landscape which made for absolutely perfect habitat for growing snakes of all kinds which are indigenous to Central Texas. Between the large expanses of unmaintained ranch lands which have, over the course of numerous decades, gone from being open prairie interspersed with high-quality native grasslands and hayfields, with just islands of brushy species of trees to a landscape overrun with high-density walls of brush consisting of many species of thorny trees and thick stands of red oak, juniper, and mesquite. The area hasn’t had a significant fire (nature’s gardener) in decades to bring the unmitigated brushy growth back under control, restoring the prairie to its true form. This is partially due to the fact that wildfires have had the tendency to be squelched by ranch owners and area fire departments for over a hundred years. This kind of ecological transformation hasn’t happened in our area alone, but has become a serious problem throughout most states. Additionally, and in more recent history, many people have been fleeing the high cost of living in Austin, roughly an hour’s drive to the north, and relocating to Lockhart (the closest small town to where we live) and the surrounding areas. Large tracts of land here in Caldwell county could be had for a tenth the price and land speculators and developers were busy buying-up land for near-term subdivision and longer-term investment. Soon, county planners were inundated with proposed communities and homes began springing up across the predominantly rural landscape. Wildlife was pressured into relocating to areas not yet touched by heavy equipment and land clearing machinery. Also happening during this same period was the steady influx and proliferation of feral hogs, which will eat just about anything, including choice morsels of rattlesnake. The third environmental change to affect the region was the tremendous rise in the Mexican eagle (caracara) population flying overhead. Their historic northernmost range had, up to just ten or fifteen years ago, been two counties to the south. Rattlesnakes weren’t the only snake species impacted by all of these changes and copperhead densities were also on the rise along with a dozen species of nonvenomous snakes. This part of Texas happens also to be the westernmost boundary of the copperhead, which is surprisingly abundant. And, of course, the nearby San Marcos River just so happens to be the westernmost boundary for the cottonmouth, aka, water moccasin. If you’re a lover of North American venomous snakes and nonvenomous snakes of all manner, this is a great part of the country to find them in unusually high densities.

When combined, these environmental changes to historical rattlesnake habitat have seemingly created a shift in the rattling instincts where, with so much newfound pressure, the rattlesnakes began a decline in the times they chose to rattle because, when doing so, they were giving away their positions which could mean being shot on sight, getting gobbled up by hogs, or attract attention from above and find themselves on today’s menu for several caracaras flying overhead. Like all birds of prey, red-tailed hawks have incredible eyesight and will also dive-bomb an unwitting rattlesnake . This change in rattlesnake behavior, rattling far less often, took less than twenty years to genetically take hold. Again, this is the primary theory related to the change held by people who have lived in this area for several generations.

In our time here, we have had as many as four dogs at a given time and two have felt the sting of an envenomation to the face. One bite to our young (less than a year old at the time) black lab-mix, Josie, proved to be non-life-threatening, though we still had to endure not only the fear of losing a beloved friend, but veterinary treatment for rattlesnake envenomation is extremely expensive. Another involved our prized Australian kelpie dog, named Kelpy by my then six year old daughter, who took the worst hit possible and spent three or four touch-and-go days in professional care. That dog meant as much to my wife and I as many people’s children do to them. It was an extremely scary and anxiety-filled experience, one that I would not wish upon anyone.

My first order of business during our numerous moves has traditionally been to build a nice dog kennel. When we moved here, we had two medium sized dogs so the kennel was a roomy 24′ x 32′. Later, when our two dogs had grown older, we took in two larger dogs and I expanded the kennel to a whopping 48′ x 82′. We referred to it as the “Taj Majal”. But long before the new dogs, it would become abundantly clear that I had to do something to keep my dogs and wife as safe as possible. The learning experience in terms of our dogs came the hard way when Kelpy took a big hit on a cold and blustery Christmas night (when virtually any other snake would have been tucked inside of its den) inside the relatively “safe” confines of the kennel. I was in our loft playing guitar with her by my side when Sage, our wonderful chow-mix called out with her five-alarm bark and Kelpy flew down the stairs and out the dog door, crying out with a single yelp before flying back in. Sage was still out there barking but, wisely, not getting too close. After quickly examining Kelpy, I immediately saw the telltale fang marks and blood beginning to trickle just below her left eye, missing the eye orbit itself by less than half an inch. I grabbed my handgun and, after having Sage revealed the location for me, I shuttled her indoors for my wife to examine while I went right back out and unloaded an entire clip from my 9 mm into the snake. My sense of defending my family had taken over, so it was certainly a case of overkill. It was a thick-bodied, five-and-a- half-foot female searching for her denning site which at that time (before I had sealed-up access to the crawlspace and the latticework under the front porch), the area beneath the porch provided access to the crawlspace which had served as a major denning site (unbeknownst to us) before we ever bought the place. The house, barn, and four acre property sat idle and surrounded by hundreds of acres of undeveloped ranchland, between completion of the home in early 2013 and when we moved in during February of 2014. I left the snake there as we feverishly made our way into town to meet our vet at her facility. Bless her heart for putting herself on call for the most sacred of holidays. I carried Kelpy in and stayed with her for as long as our vet would allow and came back first thing the following morning. I arrived at 6:30 AM and she opened the door for me. By then, Kelpy was in sorry shape with her head and neck swollen to virtually twice their normal size. She had been treated with three vials of anti-venin and horse plasma (horses have evolved to have a substantial resistance to rattlesnake venom, but they are not nearly immune). Though I would have had no way of knowing that a rattlesnake, or a snake of any kind would be roaming around on a chill Christmas night with a cold rain mixed in, I felt responsible for the incident, and the sight of seeing my cherished dog in such utter distress made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t get the thought that I was somehow responsible out of my head. In any other place I’d lived up to that point, a well-built kennel was all that was necessary to keep my dogs out of harm’s way. She would spend three more days in the hospital recovering. Immediately after the ordeal, I went down to the local farm and ranch supply house and purchased a few rolls of 24″ x 1/4″ mesh to surround Kelpy and Sage’s kennel and used the material to secure the open latticework under the front porch. Later, when we adopted Josie and Jett, our sibling male and female pair of black lab-mixes and I built the large kennel addition, I wrapped the same bottom two-feet with 1/4″ mesh. Since then, we’ve had one incident where a young (less than two-feet) but still dangerous copperhead found its way through a slit in the mesh that I must have unknowingly hit with the edge of our large field field mower which is designed to be pulled behind an ATV or small tractor. I couldn’t believe it! The young snake must have wandered along the kennel fencing until it happened upon a slight tear. The chances…geez! Josie, who is now “snake-wise”, came across it one evening last summer and barked her own “five alarm” bark and literally came in to get me to see what the fuss was about. I took care of the snake and that’s the only time in the ten years since I started using the mesh when a snake slipped its way through our defenses.

It has taken me twelve years of steadfast work to carve our property out from the surrounding wild and overgrown lands which have proven to be absolutely perfect Western Diamondback habitat with a vastly inordinate snake density rarely encountered elsewhere. Where there was nothing but brush and enveloping weeds with little quality native grass, there is now restored Central Texas prairie which gets mowed regularly to keep the snakes from once again getting a toehold and overrunning the place just as they had when we bought the place, named Lonesome Dove by the builder. There is now a well-worn trail that follows the boundaries of our property on all four sides and this trail gets used many times a day to walk the dogs and allow them to mark their territory. I keep the trail mowed such that there’s at least ten feet on either side where the grass is kept short, along with keeping the remaining parts of our property mowed regularly. Snakes don’t like crossing open ground, so the trail helps serve as a barrier to keep more snakes from finding the property’s inner-sanctum. I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect my family and have spent far more time on this one very imminent threat than I care to remember. I’ve spent time in grizzly country and would choose potential run-ins with them to being forever on guard searching for a threat that is virtually impossible to see. That is, before it’s too late!

As for me, it seems that I am out and about working on our property all too often and exposure to a potential bite is much higher than I would prefer, but when I’m using things like our push mower to mow under the limbs of the trees, or the brush cutter, chainsaw, ATV and utility trailer, I can’t help but from looking out for my personal safety and, where applicable, I put on a very good pair of snake boots or below the knee gaiters and thick leather hiking boots. I also take this precaution when I take the dogs for a hike on the trails of the nearby state park where I’ve had several encounters. Nonetheless, I’ve still had more close encounters that I can remember and remain alert at all times. These are not the immersive, relaxing hikes and trail runs I had in Colorado where the chances of an encounter with a creature of the venomous kind were far more remote, particularly during the winter months. These animals are incredibly well camouflaged and difficult to differentiate from the surrounding fallen leaves, rocks, and forest floor, but I’ve engaged in the serious game of finding them before I walk right over one (which I’ve done) for many years now. Paradoxically, it is their evolutionarily perfect patterns that my eyes have been trained to pickup on. The only way I can explain it is to say that my eyes must now find their markings to be “too perfect”. During the times of year when they’re most prevalent, I’ve learned to take a proactive approach and regularly go out “snake hunting” when it gets just warm enough in the morning for them to find a hidden place in the sun to warm themselves after the cool of the night. Better to find them before they unwittingly find us.

About six months ago, I had my closest call to date. I was out in the barn’s carport working on the ATV. There were several maintenance issues that I was performing at the same time and I had the machine pretty well stripped down, creating a couple of piles of fairing and parts. I was having particular trouble removing the CVT belt (the drive belt) without a couple of tools designed expressly for the task, using only my hands and fingers to turn the assembly and have the belt slide off. It just so happened that I’d enlisted ten minutes of help from our A/C tech who was finishing up with the annual spring checkup on our system. He was kind enough to offer his “second set of hands” and we pulled the belt in no time. Just as we were patting ourselves on the back for making short order of the job, the guy spoke softly while informing me of the very particular predicament I was in. I had donned a pair of cushioned knee pads to do the work and directly under my left knee I had a small, coiled rattlesnake pinned between my knee and the ground. He must have crept into the area where we were working while I had gone from standing to kneeling. It was the knee pad that not only provided enough cushion that I never felt the snake attempting to move beneath me but also kept me bite free. I stood up slowly and took two quick steps back. The snake didn’t appear to be all that “rattled” and that must have meant that he wasn’t in much discomfort. The floor of the carport consists of a layer of fine cedar chips which are pretty soft to walk on and work from. His tail had been free but he never rattled in the ten, or so, minutes he must have been pinned. Our A/C tech had a look of complete disbelief that such an uber-close encounter could have happened as I reached for the short sledgehammer I happened to have nearby and put a humane end to the snake. Not a second later, I was consumed with guilt over what I had just done. While having ample opportunity to bite, he chose to remain still as his best defense. Over the years and due to our rare set of circumstances with the sheer density of snakes with whom we have shared our property, I’d had no choice but to kill them on-sight lest they eventually have a future run-in with a member of our little family (perhaps after they’d grown much larger and were all the more dangerous). I simply couldn’t take that risk. Plus, the naturalist in me knew that the population was way out of control and needed some serious tough love. It would have been highly dangerous and impractical to have tried to capture and relocate each of them someplace nearby (fifty-plus times and counting). I’d have only been increasing the snake density on some neighboring ranch owner’s property.

Finally, after twelve years of living here in a place we love just as it were a living, breathing member of our family, we are enjoying our time in a way we were never able to before. All I can figure is that, at least on our property, rattlesnake densities are much closer to what would be considered normal. In those twelve years, a number of other homes have sprung up nearby and the building activity would have pressured a lot of the rattlesnakes in close proximity to us to move on. There’s still plenty of undeveloped wildlife habitat near us, so I don’t think it’s caused the rattlesnakes and copperheads much difficulty. But in a year like 2016, the time of Kelpy’s envenomatiom, when I killed as many as four or five per month for several months, I was never afforded the opportunity to simply relax while being out on the property. I was responsible for the health and safety of my family, a job that I took very seriously, and I was always out of balance with my feelings about having chosen this place as our next home. I had always lived in rural country and knew there would be a fair share of “creepy -crawlies” here, but never in my wildest nightmares did I think this kind of venomous snake density was even possible.

Kelpy Out Exploring and Being Her Awesome Self!

I am and avid cyclist and am considering carrying a concealed hand gun for which I have a license to carry concealed. Does anyone else carry while riding and what are folks using to holster the gun?

Originally Posted to Quora

I was an elite road cyclist and expert/elite mountain bike racer from Colorado where I competed throughout for almost twenty-five years while holding down a high-level engineering career. This is not an easy thing to do, particularly over such a lengthy period. After sixteen years in the foothills of the Front Range (about seventy five minutes from Denver) but working closer to home, in Golden, I made my home in Durango for the last fourteen years of my thirty years in Colorado. While living in such a hugely competitive state for mountain athletes, with Durango being considered the “Mountain Biking Capitol of the World” (it may still be), I was compelled to continue racing and did well enough into my mid- forties to win (or place top five) in the few events I entered during my years in that much less populated part of the state. Towards the end, I was racing in just one or two events per year.

Being an accomplished elk hunter, both rifle and archery, and learning how to shoot and be safe around firearms by the age of seven, I have always been a “pro-gun” individual, but I have also lived and spent much of my time in rural, if not remote places, so I never felt the urge to “carry” while out riding. But that all changed in 2011 when I was forced to leave my adopted home state and move to Houston, if I had any chance of remaining gainfully employed in the oil and gas industry. It was a rough deal because I had hoped to stay in Southwest Colorado to retire, spending my “Golden Years” hunting and fly-fishing to my heart’s content. My wife and I made the reluctant move to the Houston area where she had already secured a solid position with BP at their US headquarters in Westlake, thirty minutes west of Houston. I found enough consulting work to get by at a time when I had two major back surgeries to coincide with the horrible (for me) move. I had to give up all my mountain activities but, after I healed from the surgeries, I continued to run and ride and enter a road racing event every now and then here in Texas.

Before I could even wrap my head around such a move, I was riding through some pretty rough areas of Houston, still in significant pain, to get to some halfway decent roads without getting hit, and I was set upon twice by small bands of the “criminal element” in a car moving in quickly from my left and they’d push me to the side of the road (as if they were well practiced in their craft) under some bridge or another. But I never rode with anything of value except for thirty bucks and the bike I was on.

During each of the two instances, I was able to “talk my way out” by first handing them the thirty and then stepping off the bike, showing absolutely no fear while making it known that I wasn’t going to make things easy for them. Standing six-four and weighing (at the time) between 185 and 190, (I’m not your typically diminutive rider and know how to defend myself), I somehow wriggled my way out of some bad circumstances based mostly on the “luck of the draw”. I had a gun pointed my way each time but no one with the gumption to pull the trigger and, like I said, I had nothing of value except for that thirty bucks and expensive bike. Fortunately, none of these “would be muggers” had the need or desire to attempt to take that from me.

From then on, I simply racked my bike and drove the fifteen or twenty minutes to reach those country roads, where I could safely park (though I did have my truck broken into once) and take off riding from there. After a couple of years, we were able to move to a nicer part of Texas, well away from the Houston area (a city I’d spent time in and learned earlier in life to abhor). Fortune had smiled upon as my wife scored a very good job in San Antonio, not far from her hometown where many of her friends and relatives still lived. We found some property and a wonderful new home in a very rural area, roughly fifty-five minutes from her new job. But she continued her “lucky streak, and, when combined with a strong work ethic and commensurate capabilities, she was given the opportunity to work from home for the last six or seven years. I managed to find a few sporadic consulting opportunities working from home and formally retired just over a year later, several years earlier than I had planned. Let’s just say that retirement has been tighter than I’d ever thought it would be, but the upside was that I would now be riding in some of the best cycling country Central Texas and the Hill Country had to offer, and again the need for carrying while I was riding went away as quickly as it had come.

Had this story gone differently and I’d been forced to remain in Houston, I could picture myself happily walking into a gun store, of which there were many, so I could have easily found what I’d have been looking for. After doing a bit of research, with all the options available today, I’d likely go with a Walther PDP 9 mm, as pictured below, with its 4-inch barrel. There are several important reasons I’d choose this make and model above everything else available in the veritable smorgasbord of handguns on the market today:

-It has the muzzle energy (“stopping power”) of a 9 mm;
-The four-inch barrel is a better choice for a 9 mm than anything shorter;
-The gun is relatively lightweight, but not too much so;
-It is Walther built and of Walther quality;
-It has good capacity for a compact at 10 rounds +1
-It is uber-thin and very streamlined with no major protuberances to get snagged on polyester jersey material;
-It’s a great looking gun and is well proportioned;
-Great sights and plentiful accessory options.

Last, (IMO), it is priced very reasonably when comparing build, features, and deadly capability.

Of key importance is that it would serve two important purposes. Its primary function would be as a personal/home defense weapon that had “concealed carry” capabilities for my wife. I would simply borrow it if out riding and would knowingly be passing through the kinds of places I described. Again, had I been forced to remain in the Houston area, this is the compact handgun that I would choose. I have huge hands and would have difficulty fiddling with anything smaller. For me, subcompacts and miniguns are out of the question.

Walther PDP Compact in 9 mm, with a 4-inch barrel

If you could save only one guitar from a burning house, which one would it be?

Originally Posted on Quora

I hadn’t posted anything on Quora since around Thanksgiving last year, but jumped on to find a post I’d written at some point during that June or July. This typically fun to answer question was in my feed from one of the guitar-oriented “Spaces” for which I had been a regular contributor, so I couldn’t resist. As is often the case, I dove in a little deeper than I’d intended.

Though this question has been asked many times here on Quora and every guitar forum I’ve been on over the years, I never find it easy to answer. The proverbial “Burning House” guestion is quite different from the “Desert Island” question primarily because we’re talking about the complete destruction of a person’s guitar collection, whether it consists of three, or thirty guitars. Perhaps they have just one cherished guitar, in which case the question becomes easy to answer. I had a quick peek at another player’s answer and I feel the same way about my dogs as he does about his cats…yes, I would shout at the top of my lungs: “Please take any or all of my guitars while I go into the fiery house to fetch my dogs!”.

My ’66 Martin D-18 has certainly earned the right to be saved first, as it has already stoically survived sixty-years on the planet. But my deepest connection is to my very first guitar, a 2011 “Reclaimed Redwood” Fender Telecaster made from an appropriation of timbers Fender acquired when the famed Brown’s Canyon Bridge (built during the Gold Rush, in 1850’s Northern California) was being dismantled due to obsolescence (a narrow-guage railroad trestle bridge that hadn’t felt the weight of a train in many decades), neglect (as a national treasure), and obvious safety considerations (a high-risk accident just waiting for the last hiker to attempt a crossing).

The Fender “Reclaimed Redwood” Telecaster story is really quite fascinating, in part because it remains difficult to this day to separate fact from fiction. I’ll provide this summary : While a sizable fraction of the 500 Telecasters (and 500 like Stratocasters) were crafted from the dismantled Brown’s Canyon Bridge, there was some significant percentage that were crafted from “Reclaimed Old Growth” redwood timbers sourced elsewhere. There was no plausible explanation for the error and the story was essentially and quickly snuffed by Fender. There were more than enough timbers to craft the entire production run of 1,000 “Brown’s Canyon Old Growth Redwood” Telecasters and Stratocasters, so it remains a mystery as to what happened and where those “other” timbers came from.

Few people are aware of this, but these guitars are highly collectable, but it calls into question which guitars were actually from the Brown’s Canyon Bridge, and which one’s were not. If you’re a Telecaster (or Stratocaster) collector, this is something you should be aware of as the true value of these guitars is questionable. Taken as a whole, they have risen considerably in value. But, as a real Fender collectable and historical artifact (to railroad enthusiasts, the Brown’s Canyon Bridge was known worldwide and should have been cared for as a National Historic Landmark) these guitars have risen in value on two distinctly different levels. When this occurs with any valuable collectable item, the lower value is taken to be the correct one.

I googled the story using several different searches just now, and there is nothing that comes up (anymore) which describes the entire story other than a post I wrote for my blog a few years ago. The post is chock-full of great photos of my own Fender “Brown’s Canyon Bridge” reclaimed redwood Telecaster. Here is the link:

https://lessonsfromastone.com/2024/03/30/fender-reclaimed-redwood-telecaster/

My collection grew quickly from that first electric to many more guitars, both electric and acoustic, but that redwood Telecaster would have to be the one I would retrieve from the flames of Perdition. And not only for nostalgic reasons. It remains the best playing, most storied, and rustically beautiful guitar I own. It is also at least a half-pound lighter in weight than any other electric guitar in a collection of electrics curated, in large part, for weight. Though I do have a nine-and-a-quarter pound Les Paul, it is what I would refer to as a “statistical anomaly”. But who has a respectable guitar collection (on the electric side of life) without having at least one Gibson Les Paul?!

2011 Fender “Telebration Series” Old Growth Redwood Telecaster. The special neck plate supposedly separates the guitar from the others, as described. I have not been able to confirm this, but there was more information available online immediately after these guitars were launched onto the marketplace and I had read that there were two differing neck plates, one without the engraved redwood tree. Much of that early information seems to have been lost to time.

My Kelpie, Kelpy

IMG_20190116_091335316 — Kelpy *(RIP 2021),* Roughly Two Months After Being Bitten on Our Central Texas Property by a 5 1/2-foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Post Edited February 16, 2026

In this recently taken photograph (January, 2016) of my Australian Kelpie dog, Kelpy, there is a discernable scar running almost five inches from a point just below the left eye down to just underneath her left lower jawline. This scar of hers, something I can’t help myself from seeing everyday, is a constant reminder of her life and death struggle from a single, full-on rattlesnake envenomation and of the innate toughness of our beloved canines relative to us, mere human beings, as their compassionate caregivers and forever faithful companions. She took the hit delivered by a five-and-a-half-foot Western diamondback on Christmas night, 2016. I recall the event as if it were yesterday. I was in our upstairs loft quietly playing acoustic guitar with Kelpy lying at my feet. It had been a chilly, rain-filled Christmas day here in Central Texas. I’d spent the entire day at home alone with the company of our two dogs. My wife, Genie, had been visiting her relatives at the family farm in Cibolo, roughly an hour’s drive from our place. We have a beautiful house and a couple of outbuildings on some property seven miles west of the small town of Lockhart. Genie had gotten home earlier that evening and we enjoyed a late Christmas dinner. Afterward, she’d gone into our main living area to watch some TV while I retired to our upstairs loft to play guitar. The rain had let up perhaps fifteen minutes before the big event and I remember checking my phone for the temperature outside, which was 58 degrees and the time was 8:30 PM. A moment later I heard Sage, our wonderful Chow-mix, barking outside in the kennel which is connected to the back room of our house by way of dog-door. Sage is an extremely proficient watch dog and has a vocabulary of various growls, woofs, and barks ranging from a mild, low growl to a full-on, high pitched, three alarm bark! She continued on for perhaps five seconds before Kelpy rose from the bed, sailed down the steep wooden staircase…just about leaving sparks in her wake. At a full run I could hear her fly through the dog door as if it had all been done in one grand motion. It wasn’t five seconds later that I heard a shrill and troubled yelp and Kelpy reappeared in the house, frantic. She’s a rough and tumble alpha female if there ever was one, chock full of outdoor life experience at her then age of ten years. I’d never heard her in her life yelp in pain, nary even a slight whimper. I looked her over closely as two streams of blood had begun to pool just below her left eye. Like tears of blood, the crimson colored fluid began to trickle down the left side of her face and, on closer inspection, I could see two tell-tale puncture wounds a good inch and a half apart. Sage was still out in the kennel barking furiously when I ran out into the night after quickly flipping on the back porch light. Standing her ground just eight feet to my right, Sage was trying hard to point out the threat. But it was dark and the porch light left a surreal presence in the muffled fog as I looked and I listened for what was by now just a faint rattling in the leaves. It was cold and I’m certain the snake was by now tired and feeling every bit of the chill. Naturally, I was being cautious as all get-out but there had been no time to don my snake boots so I was tip-toeing around in an old pair of Merrell clogs and shorts. Aha! I spotted the snake, a big one for this locale and opened-up on it with my 9mm Ruger. After shooting the snake full of holes and removing its head with a five-foot garden hoe we keep on hand for precisely such duty, I finally had the chance to check Sage over. I turned again to make absolutely certain the snake wasn’t going anywhere without its head as I brought Sage inside to both better inspect her in the light and settle her. She was frothing at the mouth, lathered from the effects of adrenaline and salivary glands gone postal, but I found nothing…not even a scratch. In all that excitement she’d managed to keep both her head and her distance. It dawned on me that by the time Kelpy showed up the snake would have been completely riled. I feared that this was far more dire than a partial envenomation or dry bite warning snakes sometimes give.

By now, we, all the four of us, were inside with the headless snake left outside to be cleaned up later. Genie was on the phone with our vet who lives several towns distant and turned out to be unavailable. It was Christmas night, after all. After listening to his voicemail message we decided to call our secondary vet, a larger operation just eight miles away and in town. Amazingly, a live person picked up the phone and said they had one particular vet who’d been placed on on-call status for the holiday weekend. The answering service gave us the name and cell number of the vet and Genie immediately dialed her up. We were in luck and, while knowingly interrupting her own Christmas dinner, we were consumed by feelings of good fortune. A vet on Christmas night! Someone was smiling down upon us from on high. The vet, new to the clinic but a Baylor Veterinary School grad, met us thirty minutes later at the main clinic in Lockhart. Keeping Kelpy calm and as motionless as possible was easy…she knew full well where we were going and that papa was now in charge. Having spent ten years with this wonderful dog, she and I had crafted a way to communicate through body language, gentle and firm commands and, from early on, the uncanny ability to know what the other was thinking and going to do before doing it. Genie drove while I sat in the back seat of our SUV smoothing-over Kelpy’s coat and using gentle words in a soothing tone. Keeping her calm would help save her life.

We arrived just a few moments after our dedicated vet, each of us knowing it was going to be a long night. Amazingly, (because of the cold weather) there were two other dogs being treated for snake bite who’d arrived just an hour before we rolled-in. I carried Kelpy to the emergency room area of the clinic and walked along with the vet providing her with every relevant detail. From the moment of envenomation, just forty-five minutes had elapsed. We were darned lucky and we knew it. After I got Kelpy settled the vet and an assistant took over while I watched them go to work. While new to this clinic, our vet was moving deftly as if she and her assistant had been partnered-up for years. Once transfer of care had taken place I was told to corral my wife and head home for the night. The clinic doesn’t carry insurance for people in the emergency room on-site, only their beloved pets. I understood the rule but it would be the most difficult goodbye of my lifetime. They were doing all they could and viscerally I knew my dog was in good hands, but mentally I just didn’t want to leave knowing my dog might not make it through the night. Then logic began to take hold. It was now hovering around 11 PM and Genie and I, and Sage, could do no more for our sweet Kelpy. She was in the hands of professionals and what little time I did spend at the clinic that night, that fact had become abundantly clear.

Sleep came slowly but we were, the three of us, exhausted and I eventually drifted off. The vet had indicated that she’d be there all night by Kelpy’s side, administering antivenin, IV saline, and horse plasma. Over the millennia, horses have developed a tolerance for rattlesnake venom, so plasma taken from the blood of a donor horse has within it certain antibodies to quell the damage the venom would otherwise do. This is Texas and this clinic had been weened on snakebites.

The next morning came quickly and I drove up and ran into the clinic at precisely 6:30 AM. I sat and waited for what seemed a lifetime but in reality was less than twenty minutes at which time I was called back into the ER to see my dog. I was astonished at the size of her head and the open, gaping, and draining wound around her neck a full seven inches from the bite zone. The vet said that she’d taken a really potent bite but that the worst was over. Kelpy had made it through the hellish night. We talked and I conceded to leave Kelpy there for two more days and nights of round the clock care. The vet believed if we did so, if we gave her the best of care for a couple of days she’d pull through. The vet then allowed me to walk Kelpy outside in the neighboring grassy area to “go to the bathroom”. My poor dog. My heart sunk as I watched her once bright but now lackluster eyes meet mine. I could only hope. Hope was all I had. I took pictures of the gruesome sight which, to this day only a few others have seen, but I’ve never had the heart to show to my wife. Brutally grotesque. Though different, her bond with Kelpy is as strong as my own and they can be inseparable at times.

On day four I awoke early…somewhere close to 4:30 in the morning. I was anxious to see my dog for today was the day the vet had anticipated her release and I’d be taking her home. Again, I arrived at 6:30 AM and by 8 AM Kelpy had been discharged into my care once more. This tough, wonderful, creation of a dog had pulled through. I never doubted her…not for a minute. I put her on her favorite blanket in the passenger seat of my truck and we headed home for a joyous reunion. I’d cleaned up the snake’s remains before I’d gone to get Kelpy and tossed them in a cow pasture to be eaten by vultures just up the road a half mile from our home (the mess was gone by the following day). I pulled into the driveway, letting Genie and Sage out at the gate and Kelpy and I drove in. I helped Kelpy out of the truck and within seconds she ran through the house and out the dog door headed straight to where the nastiness had gone down. She sniffed around at the remaining blood spots and with Sage yielding her alpha sister a wide berth, Kelpy turned and as if nothing had happened and casually marked the spot. You’d have to know our beloved alpha female, Kelpy, to understand the significance of that mark. It meant that whatever happened during those four days after Christmas of 2016, not once did she forget who she was! And aside from the yelp when taking the bite, I never heard her whimper. She is thirteen now and is as tough, dominant, and willful as ever.

Kelpy – About a Year Prior to Tangling With Her Rattlesnake on Christmas Night, 2016

Edit: After living her sixteen adventure-filled years, we were forced to have Kelpy put down. She’d been treated for some form of liver cancer over the previous couple of years and had taken well to the medication. She remained happy and healthy until we could finally see that she was in pain and made the decision to have her euthanized, right here in our home. Her ashes sit alongside those of Sage, who passed at fifteen years of age, just a year later. The two dogs had grown up together in Colorado and had forged a powerful bond that goes beyond words. We enjoyed hundreds of trail runs and many other adventures together.