Hiking with Mike

Mike, middle standing, 1983
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Mike Phelps played soccer on my Rumford High School team back in the early 1980s. Hard to believe it has been 30 years. Since then, he and his wife Karen have been terrific community people. They have two wonderful sons… not surprisingly, both play soccer. Mike spent many years volunteering as the Greater Rumford Community Center soccer coach. He'd have scores of kids down at the fields; often, he worked with the littlest kids. Big Mike and all those rug rats and ankle biters.

Mike and I hiked Whitecap Mountain the other day with our dogs, Fergie and Bailey. They know each other from their time at Sharon's daycare, so they had a terrific time wandering and sniffing the mountain trail. We went up the main trail, crossed over onto the Connector, and looped back down crossing the bridge with its water falls back to the main.

We didn't get into any deep conversations during this hike. We told dog stories and "Remember when's" about soccer and former players. It was an easy-going couple of hours--the kind of time old friends spend with silences that surface and linger like memories unspoken.

Mike & Fergie

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Fergie in a Blueberry Field atop Whitecap.
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