I first met Ray when I was a junior in highschool in 1972. Several years later, I went to this crazy movie; Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I remember telling Ray about it. He went and saw it too. Afterwards he used to gallop around his house with two coconut halves, "bangin' em together".

For 34 years Ray and I were buddies. Ray helped me to focus on important things, like exploring the Sierra. We were always doing crazy backpacking trips, mountain climbs and cross-country ski trips, leaving in the wee hours of the morning. Alice probably thought we were crazy.

Ray in sierra meadow

Ray at Mill Creek

When she'd accompany us at 3 AM, she had no doubts, her husband and his friend were a pair of lunatics.

We'd get to the trailhead at 7 AM, stagger out of the car, skip breakfast, don our packs and vanish into the wilderness. After nights of sleeping on rocks, days of being harrassed by mosquitos, chased by deer flies, eating trail mix, granola bars and pathetic meals, applying sun screen (we didn't need no stinkin' dark glasses) and mosquito repellant, we'd reemerge: pounds lighter, filthy, wild eyed and effused with a magical something, an essence.

Maybe it was due to being tormented by mosquitos for days and nights. It might have been crossing rushing streams on wet logs hoping that, if someone had the misfortune to slip and fall in, they weren't carrying the food. Maybe it was lying on the summit of Half Dome, on the last ledge of the visor, summoning up the courage to open my eyes, turn my head, look down and back, to the broad sheet of granite the visor was perched at the top of, to follow this vast, vertical plane of stone down, thousands of feet, to where it vanished into trees and talus, and, continuing on, to Yosemite Valley floor, more then a mile below my perch. Whatever it was, we couldn't wait until we could do it again.

Ray had hiked the lower third of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in the spring and summer of 2005. His favorite song of was by Jackson Browne: "For a Dancer" Here is a video that commemorates my buddy of 34 years.

Our friendship deepened with my rockclimbing accident. He was in Yosemite Valley, that July day and saw the helicopter, that rescued me, come in. He didn't know what had happened or anything. When he found out what had happened to me, he told me, he almost soiled his armour. When I started to come out of my coma, after 6 weeks, my Mom told me Ray was in my room and a nurse ran to get him a wheelchair so he could sitdown. If she hadn't he would have passed out.

The food in the 3rd hospital, in San Jose, was terrible. I looked forward to Ray coming to see me. He took me to Berkeley a few times. He would buy me lunch, then we would go to Peet's for coffee and, sipping it,

Ray at home

watch the world go by. Eventually we had to drive back to San Jose. I hated the hospital, Ray knew how much I hated it and told me he wished I could go back to Merced with him.

My injuries were pretty horrible and, when I first got out of the hospital (9 months to the day), I couldn't walk and had to use a wheelchair all the time. Initially I went back to Merced, stayed at my Mom's while stuff was being worked out in Santa Cruz. My aunt (Mom's sister) died of breast cancer and I moved over to Ray's house. Alice went off to work at 6:30 AM and Ray went to work an hour later.

Ray always left me with a full pot of coffee, lunch fixings and the VCR with a stack of video tapes. I must have watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail at least thirty five times. He'd get home from work, collect me and we'd go have an early dinner.

Ray used to kid me, that I must been a jerk in a past life to have this sort of karma (my accident). I can't say if there is reincarnation or not. If there is, then, in a past life, I must have been a really good person to be blessed by knowing Ray for 34 years.

After the 1989 Loma Prieta (Santa Cruz) earthquake, the phone didn't ring for 3 days. I finally called Ray wanting to know, "Why hadn't he called? Didn't he hear about the earthquake?" . He was so relieved to talk to me, to know I was alright. He had been waiting at a stoplight in Modesto when the earthquake happened. He went home and found the earthquake was centered near Santa Cruz and had been been calling for 3 days, but couldn't get through. Incoming calls were blocked, but I was able to call out.

Be well, my friend . . .

Ray used to tell me how he wished that I could go into the mountains with him, go backpacking again. I wish I could too. Ray has gone away and I can't find him anywhere. Ray was my best friend, my buddy for 34 years. He stuck with me after my accident, when everyone else, except my Mom, had written me off. Ray treated me as a valid person, a person of worth. He never used my disability as a pretext for treating me badly.

I last saw Ray three weeks before the accident that took his life. His final words to me: "Don't let the bastards grind you down."

Ray was the kindest, gentlest person I have ever known.

One of Ray's favorite quotes, "When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not crying and screaming, like the people in his car."

I miss you dude.