It was one of those phone calls you dread getting.
On Saturday morning, I recognized the area code as coming from my hometown in Los Angeles where I grew up. It was my old friend, Jim, who I went to high school with.
He asked me if I was sitting down.
I answered, ?Yes.?
His brother, Robert, had just retired after a 33-year career with the City of Los Angeles as a programmer.
An avid banjo player and lover of blue grass music, he had bought a new RV and planned to start his retirement touring the summer music festivals in Alaska.
He made it as far as Madera, California on CA Highway 99, where he and his wife Elise were killed in a crash.
It was difficult for the California Highway Patrol to piece together what happened, as all of the participants in the accident were killed and there were no witnesses. Nearby residents reported hearing a loud explosion at 10PM.
All they could do was speculate.
Maybe a truck driver fell asleep and rear-ended the RV, driving both vehicles into a giant eucalyptus tree. The RV?s LP tanks ruptured and exploded in a ball or flame, killing everyone.
Or maybe the RV was passing the truck, and unfamiliar with driving a long vehicle they pulled back into the lane too soon, clipping the truck. We will never know.
Rob and Elise leave behind two children. Devon, 23, was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada and no one knew where she was.
I offered to go look for her, as I know the trail well. But I was told that friends were waiting at her next food drop in Independence, CA to tell her that both parents had died.
Her 19-year-old brother was about to join the Marine Corps. I was about to start calling some generals at the Pentagon to get him a good assignment.
Both bodies were burned beyond recognition. It took a CHP detective 10 days to trace the VIN to the next of kin.
The coroner is awaiting dental records before releasing what little remains there are. A memorial service won?t be held until September. There is nothing to bury.
Robert, Dave, John and I were the technology nerds of our days in high school. We built the rockets, shorted out the school power, and set the speed bumps on fire.
There was that night with the case of Ripple which I will never forget.
Robert?s father was the Scoutmaster of our Boy Scout troop (click here for his story, ?The Passing of a Great Man?).
After graduation, we stayed close.
Dave became a resort manager, and died in a mountain climbing accident in Utah in the 1980?s. John, who spent a career as a scientist at the Los Alamos Nuclear labs in New Mexico, is undergoing cancer treatment at UCSF. Now, Robert is gone.
That leaves me as the last man standing of the original four.
To say that I lived a wild and reckless life would be an understatement.
I have been shot, stabbed, broken my neck, and caught almost every disease known to man. I?ve crashed three planes and three more cars. There are whole countries I can?t go back to. Insurance companies hate me.
And I?m still at it. I?m climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland again next month.
Yet here I am in perfect health, with my 120/75 blood pressure, my resting heart rate of 45, about to walk out the door for another ten mile backpack.
It was Robert, who played it safe, never left town, and was about to collect on a rock solid government pension, who ended up dying a violent death.
Go figure.
It is all proof that you have to live each day of your life as if it is your last, live life like a Mad man, and hope that the check to the undertaker bounces.
For a live TV report of the crash, please click here at http://abc30.com/news/3-people-are-dead-following-a-fiery-crash-in-madera/1356741/?
I?m out the door, headed to the mountains once again.