Sunday Assignments

CBS News' Bill Geist has contributed with tales from across America, which included his own stories, for many Sunday Mornings. Lo and behold, he's survived to tell some more.

I've been on this program since, well, since my hair was bright red, and my grown-up children were small. We've become quite familiar these last 16 years, you and I.

You've been on the sidelines for my kids' Little League games, and gone along to my daughter's ballroom dance class.

You've met my wife, my cats and even my brother-in-law.

Hey, you've been in every room in my house -- attic to basement, the back yard and even in my garage, for those year-end wrap-ups.

You've witnessed my anger and my holiday joy, as I tried to decorate like Martha Stewart

You've been there for the milestones, like turning 50, and even shared my grief over the loss of friends and neighbors on 9-11.

And you've seen me off on business trips -- funny business mainly. Like a 5,600 mile RV journey where we shared the vastness and the beauty of America.

We've gone on some pretty crazy Sunday outings -- to the Museum of Towing in Chattanooga, Tenn., for example.

I've taken you to a festival in Fruita, Colo., honoring local celebrity Mike, the headless chicken who survived for nearly two years after losing his head.

We've gone to pumpkin hurling in Lewes, Del. We've seen the world series of birding in New Jersey and a shuffleboard tournament in Florida, where Mike Vasselotti is king. Also, we went to the track, to watch Zippy Chippy, loser of 99 straight races.

We've gone sport fishing together for trophy smelt in Chicago. You've been in the gallery as I competed in the Bad Golfers Association Tournament in Kansas City. .

You've watched me being voted off the island in the Bahamas and trying my hand at the new sport of extreme ironing in London.

But, not everything has been fun and games. We plunged right into the heated controversy in Wilson, N.C. over a ban on tacky porch furniture. We were there when war broke out in Lumberton, Miss.

We've traveled together by plane over Maine. We've trained in Durango, Colo. And, we took a ride atop author Ken Kesey's magic bus in northern California

We've often dined together on the road, savoring regional delicacies such as lutefisk -- fish soaked in lye! -- in Madison, Minn. And, we had dessert in Pennsylvania

We've gone to a boat church together, for worship, on Lake Wawasee, Ind. We've attended weddings in Las Vegas.

We've even spent the night together in a romantic getaway in Pennsylvania's Poconos, a teepee in Cave City, Ky. and an ice hotel in Quebec.

You've gone along on some pretty foolhardy adventures such as riding along in a figure-eight school bus race in Bithlo, Fla., riding a horse up and down the walls of the Grand Canyon and flying with Hal Wright, a 93-year-old, who'd undergone five heart operations. He piloted a 50-year-old plane that had to be jumpstarted. We folded newspapers while he flew the plane on his paper route in Loyalton, Calif.

Wright is just one of the interesting people we've had the great pleasure of meeting.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting nude newscasters in Toronto, Ambassador Merlin from the Alpha Dracona Star System on the UFO highway in the Nevada desert, Maggie Rennels, who anchors the local television news from her bedroom in Muleshoe, Texas and dedicated folks at the Mackinac bridge in Michigan. They drive the many people across a vast span, who are afraid to drive themselves.

We've met the fabled such as Ted Williams, and the merely fantastic such as Annie Mae Ward, who funds her church in Huntsville, Texas with proceeds from her heavenly barbecue.

You were with me on a fall day in Ketchum, Idaho to watch the annual migration of sheep down from their mountain pastures -- right through the center of town.

We were there on a winter's evening on a Sunnyside, Wash. sidewalk, as the Christmas tractor parade passed by.

We were there on a spring morning in Manhattan when a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male coaxed his off-spring out of their fashionable Fifth Avenue nest to try their wings.

And, we were there on a summer's day in Hanlontown, Iowa for the annual celebration of the day the sun sets in the middle of the railroad tracks, and the rails glow like irons in a fire.

It's been our pleasure -- all of it. We truly hope it's been yours, too.