The summer of 2003 one of my last season's on the road...I had been lucky for the last 5 or 6 years I had managed to hook on to one of truckings premier positions...running show freight...It paid so well I could buy my last truck cash and a trade in...Life without truck payments was good thing...Show freight had a few perks as well which made it more than worthwhile...In the spring of 2003 I was asked to do a tour with Suzuki motorcycles moving their demo ride program around North America for three months....My daughter Ash caught wind of this and began a campaign to go...She has one of my traits once she gets something in her mind you can't get her off of it...some people call it stubbornness..we prefer to call it passionate persistence...Consequently she ran roughshod over her mothers objections..It was on..A chance for the two of us to get to know each other as most her life up until then I had been but a voice on the other end of the line...It was a perfect trip...Easy miles between venues with at least two days at each....and a bike to use when we needed it...We spent that summer taking that special father-daughter relationship that had had a stunted growth because of the lifestyle I led and gave it a chance to blossom...

I learned a lot that summer...I learned about her..She wasn't my little girl but a grown woman...a good person...much to her mother's credit as I had little influence there...She humbled me with her knowledge on subjects that I had given little or no thought to and subjects that were mine that she had taken the time to learn...As we traveled the roads we talked,we argued ,we fought and we laughed....Laughed so hard it made our sides hurt...On the back roads of the prairies I showed her how to handle an 18 wheeler..... almost 76 feet of truck and trailer,500 horsepower and an 18 over /under gearbox.. I watched the look of satisfaction on her face as she mastered it bit by bit ...One day we took the bike and road for hours in the Black Hills of South Dakota and together marveled at the scenery.... The two of us sat in the hills above Las Vegas one night...sharing a flask of Jack Daniels while sitting silently gazing over the city of lights in the valley below...In a diner just outside Kit Carson Colorado we battled over the tiny table jukebox until she won out throwing quarters in there and punching buttons in a blur.. ..much to the amusement of the few patrons there...Ashley learned as well.. about who I was.....She got a taste of the open road ....We passed the miles singing Willie and Waylon even while she would breakdown laughing at my voice....Three months we spent catching up on all the lost years... which she has never once complained about.......We became father and daughter...

In a few short weeks Ash and her family will move halfway across the world to New Zealand...I will miss her..We have only really known each other for a few short years....I'm at peace with it however because I know it's her turn to follow the highway of her life..There's the internet,the phone and there will be a trip or two for me in the future and I have something that cannot be erased....The memories of the summer that was.....

cheers hug a redneck