Godspeed, Andy Clark

Indianapolis BMW Club member Andy Clark died yesterday morning in a fire at his home on the southwestside of Indianapolis.

Details are sketchy as the local news media doesn't seem to be very interested in the case. I've asked an old colleague of mine from The Indianapolis News days, who has lots of firefighting contacts, to see what he can turn up.

Andy had a brush with death nearly four years ago when he was injured in a motorcycle accident on U.S. 67, north of Spencer on April 4, 2015 as he was returning home.

He was critically injured when he was hit in the head by a spare tire that flew off of an oncoming horse trailer.

He was flown by LifeLine helicopter to Eskenanzi Hospital in Indianapolis with a head injury and breathing problems. His daughter Piper was taken to Bloomington Hospital to be checked out due to knee pain and swelling. She was released to her grandparents.

Jonathon Fishburn and his passenger, Angela, narrowly missed being hit by the same tire.

Doctors worked to reduce the swelling on his brain and to clear his lungs. As of 3:30 a.m. the next day, Andy had started to come out of a coma.

He spent several months in the hospital and rehabilitation but eventually recovered and returned to motorcycling.

Who knew?

I take about a dozen pills during the course of an average day and swallowing them easily without choking is a problem sometimes.

Water doesn't work so well for me, so I tried milk and then kefir.

Then I tried tomato juice and discovered the pills go down easily and don't try to come back up.

I shared this discovery with my son Steve last week and he got good results with tomato juice and with V-8. He shared it with his doctor who said he'd pass it on.

Where I was last week

I got home Friday night from a delightful 7-day visit with Steve, Nicky and Lisa in Las Vegas.

They picked up the tab, including airfare, as a Christmas present to me and I'm deeply grateful.

Unfortunately, the weather was against us and it was warmer in Thorntown most of the week than it was in Vegas. Nevertheless, it was great fun.

One of the highlights of the visit was the Penn & Teller Show at the Rio Casino. Penn Jillette and Steve are friends. Penn is a pretty good jazz bass player and has taken a few lessons from Steve to improve his technique. He and a brilliant pianist named Mike Jones played the "show before the show."

Penn and Teller did a meet and greet in the lobby outside the theatre, which is where we shot this selfie.