He liked to sit out by a fire and smoke his cigar.  Or chew on it.  Never really did anything else by the fire.

On our great cross country trek of '93 the motor home was diesel.  He had a 10 gal can on tied on the back bumper which was supposed to carry extra fuel b/c sometimes diesel was hard to find.  One day we were driving through Middle-of-Nowhere, CO and were getting very, very low on fuel.  I wasn't worried b/c we had that 10 gals in the back.  Except we didn't.  He didn't confess that until we finally coasted in to a station--on fumes.  But you can be sure, we always did after that.

He hated planes.  He would fly if there was no other way to get to his destination (Hawaii, Germany) or if we needed him quick, but he hated to fly.  I think he volunteered to help us move down to FL in '07 b/c it gave him an excuse to take a train to VT in October.  Funny, b/c when he was here last year, he told us that he'd gone para-planing!  About 4 years before he saw a guy para-planing near his house and talked to him about it.  The guy offered him a chance to try it.  And he did!!  Strapped himself into the harnesses and let this guy drive him around.  And he loved it!

We would play the "How many red lights?" game on our way to go hunting early in the morning.  25cents to the winner.  He cheated.  Every time.  The rules of the game: guess how many red lights we will have to stop at along this section of road.  "Stop" being the key word.  As the driver, he had some control over that.  :)  He'd slow way, way down from way back and then speed up again when it turned green.  I only won once, when the light turned red again before we got there.  :)

He was notorious for forgetting his wallet when we went out.  And we found out at his funeral, that it wasn't just with us.  One man told the story of going to the bank with Grandpa.  He said he waited in the car for about 20 mins and then G'pa emerged from the bank and said, "Wrong bank."  They laughed and went to the right bank.  15 mins later, G'pa emerged and said, "Forgot my wallet."

I never heard him say no to ice cream.  Mint chip was his favorite.  I wonder if that has anything to do with our obsession with ice cream.  Probably.