Sometime after I went to bed last night, I completed my 70th trip around the sun. Today I begin my 71st.

They’ve been interesting trips. I’ve enjoyed most of all of them. They’ve all been different. If I could do them over, there are probably a few different roads I’d choose, a few different off-ramps I’d take, a few different corners I’d turn. But for the most part, they’ve been pretty good trips. If I viewed them as just different parts of one long trip, I’d agree with Jerry Garcia — it’s been a long, strange trip.

But I like looking at them as separate trips. The first few were in Chicago, where I learned to walk and talk. The rest, for the most part, have begun and ended in North Dakota, the place I love. My parents made the decision to bring me here for my fourth trip, looked after me for the next 15 or so, and then I made the decision to spend most of the rest of them here, with the exception of minitrips outside the state to make life a little more interesting, and the four trips my Uncle Sam took me on around the globe.

I’ve made about eight more trips than my dad did, but I’ve got a ways to go to pass my mother’s record. That would be a good goal, I guess. She made 85. And by God, she made the most of them. If you’d have asked her as she approached the end of her last trip, she’d have said every one of them was a good one. She was the most positive and optimistic woman I’ve ever known. Maybe that’s where I get it from.

I was reminded over this just-passed long weekend of the value of family and good friends. My siblings and I all gathered for a couple of days in the North Dakota Bad Lands, and they all said nice things about me at supper Saturday night. I am grateful for all of them, and to my parents for giving them to me.

And in a little gathering on my patio yesterday, a kind of a spontaneous rally around a cake and a jug of lemonade, friends gave me little gifts and encouraged me to make a whole bunch more trips.

I think I will. And I think I’ll follow Neil Young’s advice: “My, my, hey, hey, it’s better to burn out than fade away.” Lillian gave me this T-shirt yesterday. I’m going to wear it once a week for the rest of my trips. Until I burn out.