As many others have stated this morning, I also woke up with Friar John being my first thought. And so, after makin' coffee, my first move was to sine into this website and view the latest on John's RIP thread here.

I noticed my PM signal flashing and found that John Halpop, aka "freedom" another very close friend to the Friar's, had sent me a PM. This was John's PM to me titled "C**P"...and John I hope you won't mind me makin' this public here:
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Dwight, I'm glad Friar John got to spend part of his last big ride at the Southwest. He greatly anticipated being able to give you crap in person. He also thought a great deal of you as a friend

John
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I think my following reply back to John might best express my personal thoughts about the untimely death of the "The Good Friar" now that I've had a little time to come to grips with this:
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Thanks John. I know from the many conversations I had with him online and in person over the years, he felt the same way about you.

Your "He greatly anticipated being able to give you crap in person" line and Mike's picture in his RIP thread where Mike's caption of, "Trying to get Dwight to listen", had me chuckling to myself.

You probably remember early on when this website was in its "infancy", John and I would often banter back and forth quite a bit on the site, kind of like two bantam roosters. And then, about five or six years ago, I invited John to stay over at the house in California when he was riding down there to visit his parents. More than a few folks on this website thought that that would be somethin' to see when him and I would finally meet face-to-face. Well, to maybe the "surprise" of others as you know, we got along very well that weekend, though I'm not sayin' we didn't exchange a few barbs at each other durin' that time , and became pretty darn close from then on out, though once again, I'm not sayin' we didn't continue to exchange the aforementioned barbs occasionally, of course.

Whenever I threw this here SWTF, one of my first hopes was always that John could make it down here to them, which as you know, he did three times.

And now, I can't believe I will never have the opportunity to visit him up there in your beautiful state...and bug him on his "home court".

Thanks for your PM here, ol' buddy. I think typing this reply to you is probably helping me come to terms with all this.

Cheers,
Dwight

Yep! Just like a good Single Malt Scotch, you might call me "an acquired taste" TOO.(among the many OTHER things you may care to call me, of course)