Here is our crew from 25 years ago during a stop in Michigan. When we reached Yellowstone National Park, three of us (Mr. Lime, Gus, and I) had to leave the rest of the group and take a more direct route to our destination. Just after we left another guy (Gerry) joined the group, thus he is not in this picture. Over the years we've had limited contact with most folks in the group. Happily though, for the reunion all but two of us were able to attend. Missing from the reunion were Kristen, on the far left, and Gus, in the black shirt next to me.
Twenty-five years ago my job in the group, since I didn't do the pedaling, was to drive the car carrying supplies, cook the meals, do the laundry, and find a place to stay each night. The first morning at the reunion I sort of fell into one of my old jobs again. Back in the day I did the cooking with virtually no help. This time around several folks worked together to get the meals on the table. That was a nice change. Although we were a single group in theory, there were two subgroups based on half the crew starting the trip in New Jersey and later meeting the other half in Pennsylvania. The NJ crew was a bit more independent in some ways and relied less on the support vehicle. All these years later several of them said they had no idea how much I had actually done at the time. I wasn't looking for it in any way and was surprised when it came, but I got a belated thank-you for being "the mom" from the NJ group. I appreciated it.
Back in 1986 we had lots of laughs with a measuring tape. This time around it was a bottle of ketchup providing the chuckles. Yes, we know how to make our own fun with some of the strangest items.
When we made our cross-country trek we had flat tires. This time around, even during a comparatively short ride to tour the local microbreweries we had a tire with a slow leak which required several stops to pump it up. Once we got to the first pub we were able to repair it properly. It was really wonderful that our host was able to organize borrowing enough bicycles to give us each one to be able to have a commemorative ride together.
All those years ago we were all single and without children. However, two marriages occurred within the group and most of us have children. What was interesting to note is the common theme of adventure and unconventional choices and deliberate lifestyles among the group members. I suppose that shouldn't be surprising given that a 4000-5000 mile bicycle tour of the US is what brought us all together in the first place but that it was sustained to greater or lesser degrees by all of us was kind of reaffirming to me. There was extended wandering for some before settling down. Others settled down early but in unusual settings (overseas, in tents, or intentionally small homes so there was money for extensive travel). There's been a lot of heartbreak and adversity faced by the members of our group, and yet there has been perseverance and endurance as well. I can't help but think perhaps those qualities that were necessary to carry us across a continent were what helped us each find a way to carry on through trials.
Last week in Colorado we convened from all over the US and UK. We decided to recreate one of our old pictures that was used in a newspaper article (the first one in this post is almost the same as the newspaper shot, I just don't have a scanner to be able to reproduce that). Gerry replaces Gus. Gerry's and Trish's daughter replaces Kristen. We relived memories, shared perspectives, and caught up with so much that has gone on with each other over the years. We laughed and cried together, we got on each others nerves and we worked together for the well-being of the group. Folks drifted in and out of the gathering at different times and in different ways, much like we did 25 years ago but the 10 out of 12 of us who showed up all recognized that over the decades and over the the great distances we are all grateful to be a part of this group.
It has been a very bad few weeks for Calypso health-wise. She's also taken a big emotional hit, which is harder to absorb when your body is in revolt. Isaac has an unusually high pain tolerance and he's a 15 year old football player being surrounded by macho athletes, trainers, and coaches (don't get me started). Though he is typically a compassionate sort, sisters are considered a different creature sometimes. Someone recently inquired about Calypso when Isaac and I were out and about and his sister was absent. I let them know she was having a string of bad days at which Isaac added, "Yeah, and she's not exactly the tough type." The person asking was a woman who likely weighs less than my left leg but who has a 5th degree back belt. She knows a bit about tough. The person intending to answer was me...I like to think I know at least a little about toughness. We both corrected my over 6 foot tall defensive end of a son letting him know that the level of perseverance his sister has demonstrated in the last 10 months speaks to a considerable level of mental toughness and that toughness isn't measured merely by one's ability to take down a big guy in pads or ignore physical pain. Here then is the toughness his sister is made of...
-She ended one school year and commenced the next with hospitalizations yet she worked full time in between.
-She went to school half-time for the first half of the year and managed to keep up her grades in spite of being absent so much.
-She's kept on top of what her assignments were and finding people to borrow notes from. On days when she had borrowed notes from classmates and she was too sick to go to school she took responsibility and made sure I had the materials to return to the school office so classmates kind enough to share wouldn't lack their own notes when preparing for tests.
-She has missed out on the overwhelming majority of social activities a girl in her last year of high school could expect to enjoy and was either forgotten or nastily dropped by a number of "friends." In spite of a lot of tears shed over it has held her head up and found solace in the few true ones left.
-She has continued to offer her ear and her shoulder to friends when they are hurting.
-She has been called down for a talking to by the school nurse who thinks she needs to stop faking and just gut it out and has had to endure the repeated rolling of eyes every time she makes an appearance in the nurse's office.
-Although she fought us for a long time she finally saw the value in going through some major nutritional shifts for a significant period of time. She kept to it even when her father and brother brought foods forbidden to her, which she craved intensely, into her presence and enjoyed them in front of her.
-She has advocated for herself before teachers, school administrators, doctors, and when she felt necessary....her parents.
-She has bought running shoes in the faith that she's going to be able to get back to running even though a brisk walk wears her out on a good day.
-She has found a way to smile and laugh and persevere (admittedly interspersed with some dark days) for months even though she has said she doesn't remember what it's like to feel well.
My son, she may cry more often and complain about feeling awful but when the tears are wiped up she picks herself up and keeps moving forward as best she can in spite of still not having answers and not knowing when or if she will ever feel better. It may not be taking a hit from a 220 lb. senior on the opposing football team but that's the tough your sister is made of. Respect it.
Long time readers of this blog know I did a regular feature called Trini Tuesday for the first year and a half I was blogging. Many of you are more recent readers and may not even know I lived in Trinidad for a little over a year. In fact, Calypso was born there. This weekend I visited my mom and since she has recently acquired a scanner which adapts to scan slide film I took a pile of slides down to convert into digital format. It's been forever since I got to look at some of these and they really provoked a lot of memories. I thought I'd share a few today.
For the sake of clarity, what you will see here is not representative of how most folks in Trinidad live but it is a level of poverty which is not at all difficult to find on the island. We lived in a middle class neighborhood in a concrete block house with electricity and running water (but no hot water heater). We found out the hard way it is not at all safe for Americans to live elsewhere. Many of the folks we worked with were squatters though. They had built their homes out of whatever scrap materials they could find or bought bits of lumber here and there as they could afford. They had no running water in the houses. Any electricity they had came from the ingenious use of car batteries, if they could afford a battery.
Join me for a trip out to the village to visit some friends.
Follow the highway out of one of the cities until the buildings become sparser and the vegetation denser. Turn off the highway onto a still paved road and find the water standpipe with a dirt road by it. No one out here owns a car so the road only has to be decent enough to walk. You can park yours at that first house on the left since you know the family and the road really isn't fit to drive down much farther. We'll stop and lime here a while before we head further in to the village.
No, the driving age in Trinidad isn't quite this young but Calypso was having fun climbing around once we parked.
Here's a little perspective on the house. Yes, it's leaning pretty heavily. It's built up on stilts to prevent flooding during rainy season. Farida and her six children moved here after her husband left them. She also shares it with her current partner. He disappears for long periods of time so when something needs repairing Farida needs to see if she can scare up the supplies and borrow some tools to fix things up as best she can. It may not look like much but Farida is proud of it and keeps it neat as a pin inside. The local paint companies give out free paint (the stuff not good enough to sell) near Christmas. She makes sure to get some so she can repaint each year. She also stitches up the holes in the furniture and sews new curtains if she can get some fabric. When you are 11 degrees above the equator the sun takes a fast toll on paint and curtain fabric. The front room is a kitchen and living room. The back is a bedroom with two mattresses. Sleeping quarters are tight. Privacy is barely existent. Without electricity there are no fans to run at night for relief and to blow the mosquitoes off you. You've got to shutter up those windows each night to keep bandits from coming in to steal what few things you have. You'd better hope you can afford a mosquito net and then keep it from ripping. The outhouse is in the back. Fortunately, since their house is closest to the road they have the shortest walk to the standpipe for water. Farida and the girls also like to keep the landscaping as nice as they can. You can see the trimmed hibiscus lining the walk to the front door.
This is one of Farida's daughters. Her daughters are beautiful and smart. Farida worries about their opportunities for education because of the cost of textbooks, uniforms and passage to school. One of the girls needs glasses too. She's probably the most promising student among the sisters but gets headaches when she reads. Taxis cost so much because they are so far on the outskirts of town. In this village it's a pretty common state to have to choose between buying food and paying taxi fare for your kids to get to school. Sometimes in big families, if they don't have enough school uniforms the children take turns going to school. One wears the uniform one day then the next day another child wears the uniform. No matter how smart you are it's hard to get ahead when you can't get to school regularly or afford your textbooks or concentrate through blurry vision or a hungry stomach when you do read them.
Before we go we take a picture of everyone who is home because we know it will be a long time before we get back this way again. We can't believe the way everyone has grown. A few years later when we went back the younger 2 kids were in school. Farida cried with joy to tell us her three oldest girls had finished school, had jobs, and were living in an apartment with electricity and running water. She was also very grateful they were helping with taxi fare, books, and uniforms for their younger siblings. Farida intends never to leave her house but she can't contain her happiness over the children who made it out of the village.
Here is our crew from 25 years ago during a stop in Michigan. When we reached Yellowstone National Park, three of us (Mr. Lime, Gus, and I) had to leave the rest of the group and take a more direct route to our destination. Just after we left another guy (Gerry) joined the group, thus he is not in this picture. Over the years we've had limited contact with most folks in the group. Happily though, for the reunion all but two of us were able to attend. Missing from the reunion were Kristen, on the far left, and Gus, in the black shirt next to me.
Twenty-five years ago my job in the group, since I didn't do the pedaling, was to drive the car carrying supplies, cook the meals, do the laundry, and find a place to stay each night. The first morning at the reunion I sort of fell into one of my old jobs again. Back in the day I did the cooking with virtually no help. This time around several folks worked together to get the meals on the table. That was a nice change. Although we were a single group in theory, there were two subgroups based on half the crew starting the trip in New Jersey and later meeting the other half in Pennsylvania. The NJ crew was a bit more independent in some ways and relied less on the support vehicle. All these years later several of them said they had no idea how much I had actually done at the time. I wasn't looking for it in any way and was surprised when it came, but I got a belated thank-you for being "the mom" from the NJ group. I appreciated it.
Back in 1986 we had lots of laughs with a measuring tape. This time around it was a bottle of ketchup providing the chuckles. Yes, we know how to make our own fun with some of the strangest items.
When we made our cross-country trek we had flat tires. This time around, even during a comparatively short ride to tour the local microbreweries we had a tire with a slow leak which required several stops to pump it up. Once we got to the first pub we were able to repair it properly. It was really wonderful that our host was able to organize borrowing enough bicycles to give us each one to be able to have a commemorative ride together.
All those years ago we were all single and without children. However, two marriages occurred within the group and most of us have children. What was interesting to note is the common theme of adventure and unconventional choices and deliberate lifestyles among the group members. I suppose that shouldn't be surprising given that a 4000-5000 mile bicycle tour of the US is what brought us all together in the first place but that it was sustained to greater or lesser degrees by all of us was kind of reaffirming to me. There was extended wandering for some before settling down. Others settled down early but in unusual settings (overseas, in tents, or intentionally small homes so there was money for extensive travel). There's been a lot of heartbreak and adversity faced by the members of our group, and yet there has been perseverance and endurance as well. I can't help but think perhaps those qualities that were necessary to carry us across a continent were what helped us each find a way to carry on through trials.
Last week in Colorado we convened from all over the US and UK. We decided to recreate one of our old pictures that was used in a newspaper article (the first one in this post is almost the same as the newspaper shot, I just don't have a scanner to be able to reproduce that). Gerry replaces Gus. Gerry's and Trish's daughter replaces Kristen. We relived memories, shared perspectives, and caught up with so much that has gone on with each other over the years. We laughed and cried together, we got on each others nerves and we worked together for the well-being of the group. Folks drifted in and out of the gathering at different times and in different ways, much like we did 25 years ago but the 10 out of 12 of us who showed up all recognized that over the decades and over the the great distances we are all grateful to be a part of this group.
