I picked him up at the bus station just after lunchtime this afternoon. I had checked the schedule on the Internet and noticed that a bus was arriving from Columbus at 12:35pm. Prior to that, the last bus had arrived four hours earlier, just after 8 in the morning. Since we hadn't heard from him by noontime, I had a hunch he would be at the station just after that 12:35 bus arrived.

As luck would have it, I was correct. He was at the station and he called to let us know he was in town just as I was pulling up to the bus terminal. But it wasn't because he had just gotten into town. He actually had been on that earlier bus, but since he arrived early, he decided to spend a few hours running some errands he had planned.

So from the bus terminal at 10th street, he marched uptown to 37th, bought a medical reference dictionary, then shlepped it back downtown as he stopped at various stores searching for items unavailable to him in Mexico. In all, it was a six mile round trip around the city, half of it carrying a twenty-five pound medical reference in one hand. Not too impressive until you realize Uncle Max is a few years past 80.

When I visited him down in Morelia, we spent one afternoon climbing one of the nearby mountains on the edge of town. I was down there with a friend, and we figured it would be an easy task to cruise up the mountain and back. What we didn't count on was the steep climbing near the summit at almost 12,000ft.

The thin air and the exertion was awful. We were stopping to gulp lungfuls of air at every second step. By the time Mike and I finally reached the summit, Uncle Max had been waiting for us for several long minutes and was relaxing in the sun with his shirt off. He was 78 at the time.

Anyway, he's here for a couple of days and, if we get the chance, I'd like to walk him up to the local overlook just outside of town. He's a couple of years older now, and his eyesight isn't what it used to be. I think I may have a chance of beating him to the top this time.