My dad came out for a visit last week and stayed with us for a week. I’ve started several entries talking about it and dumped them all for being too… Something. Too “too.” Hell, I’m only four sentences into this entry and it too is veering toward going the way of its predecessors already.

Let’s just say that my relationship with my father is “complicated” and leave it at that, shall we?

So. The old man was out for a visit last week. This was the follow-up from my visit to see him back in September, when I “made him an offer I don’t think he can refuse.” The offer I’d made was for him to move to L.A. and live with us, so he was out here to give the arrangement a test ride. Post-visit, I think the verdict from both sides — his and ours — was: Eh, maybe not.

My dad’s a small-town guy and the culture shock of the big city was kind of hard on him, and me and Beth and Zoe have our own habits and environment that didn’t adapt quite as well as I had hoped to having a new roomie. I think he was uncomfortable with being here and I realized the enormity of what I had offered, and both of us… Well, I don’t know, it was a sketchy conversation when we finally talked about it after he went home, and we never really came out and talked about it, we more talked around it. But I think — I hope — that we both agreed that it was an interesting idea that didn’t quite work out in practice.

But I still think he should come out here, where the climate and altitude will be easier on him and where he’ll be closer to family, and I think he’s open to the idea of coming out this way if he can live independently. So now I’m looking at options in some of the more rural areas of Southern California, where he can get the climate and still have the small-town feel he needs. Even if living with me doesn’t work out, I’d still like to have him nearby — for both of us.

Here he is over breakfast one morning last week. Yes, he’s smoking while on oxygen. That paints his personality far more effectively than I could with words.

When I was in Bozeman, MO over Labor Day weekend in 2003, I rented a Road King and rode it all weekend. I went through Yellowstone National Park and over the Beartooth Highway and I learned why Harley lovers love Harleys. It was the best motorcycling experience I’ve had in my life, and I say that after riding for 20+ years.

I kept my digital camera hung around my neck and did a lot of one-handed navigating as I snapped pictures while I rode — not exactly a recommended safety procedure when you’re going through a hairpin turn at 10,000 feet or are stuck in a traffic jam 10 feet away from a 2,000 pound buffalo who hates loud noises. I took a lot of pictures that weekend but didn’t have the webspace to share them. Now that I’ve leapt aboard the flickr bandwagon, I do.

Check out my Yellowstone slide show.