List of crazy adventures is lengthy

The car was pointed north, toward Fort Wayne, and rain was falling. A minor league baseball game was our intended destination, but it sure didn’t look as if anyone would be taking the field.

“This is one of the craziest things we’ve ever done,” I told my wife.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “This doesn’t even come close to the craziest thing we’ve ever done.”

So, as the miles ticked past and the drizzle continued to pepper the windshield, we started taking stock.

What about:

•That time we climbed Mount Monadnock on a hot summer day and didn’t take any water along? We thought we were going to die.

•That time I suggested to my wife that we should take our 11-year-old daughter to a poverty-stricken country in the former Soviet Union for six months? Hard to get any crazier than that, but she said yes to the adventure.

•That time I agreed to be in the dunk tank on the Fourth of July only to have a local political figure I’d been sparring with show up with his sons in their Junior League Baseball uniforms? Most of my time was spent climbing the ladder to get back to my seat before they threw their next pitch.

•That time on a holiday weekend when I failed to make hotel reservations on the long trip home? The trip was about 100 miles longer than intended, and the sheets on the beds in our hotel room didn’t appear to have been washed between guests.

•That time on a trip to Alaska when we signed up for a bear hunt only to find that it was the real deal, with a guy with a rifle at the front of the group and another guy with a rifle at the back?

•That time — at our first house — when we thought it would be a good idea to wallpaper the bathroom together though we’d never wallpapered before? It was a good way to test a young marriage and learn about the depth of one another’s vocabulary.

•That time — also at our first house — that we wallpapered the twins’ nursery, somehow thinking that it would work more smoothly with Connie sitting on the floor while I was on a ladder being informed that the wallpaper was crooked? Another marriage test successfully passed.

•That time we decided to drive all the way around the lake near the cabin in New Hampshire? It was my idea. I had seen a map that showed what appeared to be a road. It was not a road. Connie’s Honda CRV made it through woods and streams and stony washes, but it was a long, long time before we figured out where the heck we were. And throughout the entire misadventure, our first-born grandchild Julian, about 2 at the time, slept in the back. We were delighted to make it around the lake safely, but his mother was not pleased.

And on and on.

About the time we crossed the Adams-Allen county line, the rain diminished to a sprinkle.

There was mist off and on during the baseball game, but the TinCaps won 7-4 and were able to add something more to the list.