Book 3 Chapter 1 Page 1: Spread Eagle (Gail enters the nursing home)

            “You dirty kids!  You are all against me!  I wish that I never bore you!”  Gail was screaming at her children, the three of them who had bothered to show up for the official commitment day to the nursing home.  Fire was flaming out of her eyes, steam was whistling out of her ears, as she felt the wrathful righteousness of all the saints in the calendar as she called for a plague on the three houses of her children.  In a rare show of unity, Cheryl, Jeff, and Laura arrived at the nursing home at about the same time to show Gail that her three children agreed with the decision to have her committed.  Also, like the thirty senators who stabbed Caesar, if all three of them showed up then Gail could single out one of her children and blame that lone child for her commitment.  It was like a scene from Alamogordo where the scientists hid behind a glass enclosed shelter to watch the atomic bomb go off, only the three children retreated to the foyer to watch the scene unfolding through the safety of a picture window.  Their mother was shaking her head emphatically, leaning her whole body from the passengers’ side of the vehicle across to the drivers’ side, all the time yelling, “I don’t want to go in,” and “I own my own house!  It is bought and paid for,” and “my cat needs me!”  This went on for some time before Gail exhausted herself and the two maintenance men were called to pry her hands from the door handle and bodily remove her from the car.

The day that Gail was forced to go into the nursing home, which she would forever refer to as the day that she died, started out as any other day would begin.  Cheryl tricked her mother into leaving the house by promising to take her out to breakfast.  As soon as they left Laura, and her son Jack, moved Gail’s bed and dresser from her house to the nursing home.  It was the hope of the children that if Gail had some of her prized possessions from her house in her new room at the nursing home then she would more easily transition herself into this new lifestyle.  That was delusional thinking because as soon as Gail saw the furniture and realized the permanency of what was happening to her, it was like throwing oil onto an open flame.

            After Gail and Cheryl had their lunch, they got into the car with what should have been a short drive home.  Gail was distracted after lunch and was poring through her purse, so she didn’t notice when the car pulled into the nursing home parking lot.  It was only when she saw the nursing home logo on the outside of the main building did she realize where she was and the real purpose for this trip.  It was at that moment that Gail became belligerent.  With a determined look etched across her face, Gail refused to get out of the car and stubbornly anchored herself to the passenger’s seat.  Laura stepped in and kept the car door open so that Gail couldn’t close it and make Cheryl drive away.  There was a standstill; Gail refused to get out of the car while three of her children stood and waited.  They refused to let her go back to her house and Gail refused to go into the nursing home.  Jeff, feeling useless as a bystander, went inside of the nursing home and asked a couple of nurses to help.  Try as they may, the nurses couldn’t budge the mother either.  Finally, a husky maintenance man was enlisted to help.  Gail had a death grip on the door handle of the passenger side and the men had to pry her hand off.  Gently, but firmly, they sat Gail into the waiting wheelchair
            Kicking and screaming now that she had been removed from the inside of the car, Gail squirmed around in her wheelchair.  Held in place by the maintenance mas, and guided by the two nurses, Gail was wheeled through the front door into the secured section of the nursing home.  Once inside of that hallway the residents cannot leave on their own volition.  The three children followed their mother to the secured section and then lined up outside of their mother’s new room as she was wheeled into the hallway.  They watched as the ugly scene began to unfold.  Gail refused to go into her room.  She stretched out her arms and legs to prevent the nurses from pushing her through the door.  She had a death grip on the door jam and wedged her feet between her wheelchair and the door frame.  Laura compared it to giving our cat a bath in the tub when the cat stuck out its four paws to prevent us from putting him into the water.  The scene was somewhat comical, if it was a disinterested observer who was watching, but then it wasn’t funny anymore when Gail yelled at her three kids.  Slinging arrows as fast as possible, with the intent to wound and inflict pain, Gail yelled at Jeff; “You never became a doctor!”  She was searching for some vulnerability to attack in each of her children.

Once Gail was forced into her room by the staff, she started calling all the nurses, “whores.”  She was dismissive when anyone tried to reason with her.  In one final act of defiance, Gail made a show of taking a framed family portrait that was lovingly hung in her room for her, taking it off the wall and then throwing it on the floor in the common area.  The broken glass sliced a gash through the whole family.  The symbolism was strong enough for anyone to see and, when the staff rehung the portrait, they had to remove the glass so Gail wouldn’t use it to harm herself.  Eventually the nurses had to send Gail to the hospital to give her sedatives and anti-psychotic medicine to calm her down.  “We are not equipped to handle this kind of behavior,” they told me. “And if her behavior doesn’t improve then she will have to find another facility.”

    

Retirement Tyson Spencer

Retirement
        One of my favorite sayings that I like to share with other people is that “a good chess player thinks one or two moves ahead of the game.”  It helps to think that life is a game, if for no other reason than it gives me a feeling of control.  The trick to winning the game is to stay flexible and to let my options play out.  After all, I cannot play my hand until all of the cards have been dealt.  
Another hint to winning is to not let any opportunity go unexploited; but also, don’t let any tragedy go unexploited.  When the game of life is finally over, and I have taken advantage of opportunities as they arise, and have avoid the pitfalls; then I can say that I have won the game.  “Don’t hate the player; hate the game,” is another saying that I like to use.  I have been lucky and I know it.  If I had a role in my good fortune it was to pick the right woman to be my wife and to have raised three children whose company I truly enjoy.  Everything else has been left to chance. 
For the average American, the quotient of happiness declines in their 30s and 40s, and bottoms out in their early 50s.  Then happiness begins to creep up again in the mid-50s, probably because the average American retires at 61 and is looking forward to not working.  Happiness coasts along through the early 70s, but after the age of 75, the rates of depression and suicide begin to climb.  This is due to the loss of ability, failing health, and strained finances.  My hope is to live as long and as well as possible and then have a quick, but glorious, death.    
All of us have regrets at the degree that went unpursued, the career that went unpursued, or the company not started.  My hope is that I can beat the odds, as I have never been saddled with success, so I have no heights to fall from.  Ernest Hemmingway, after a remarkable life, shot himself when he was 61, probably because he knew that he had once been a great writer and couldn’t live with watching his skills decline.  My professional career was below average, at best, so I am not walking away from power, fame, money, or status.  I am no Hemmingway; I was a history teacher and now I am a substitute teacher.  It is that simple.
Yet, I have won the game of life.  I did it by avoiding the roadblocks of divorce, debt, gambling, and drugs.  My marriage dividend includes living in a wonderful condominium and having a nice car to drive.  I have it made and I know it.  It is time to take stock, appreciate what I have, and build upon my success.  I will not be satisfied with merely running out the clock because I intend to send the game into overtime.  My career may be over, and my children may be on their own, but that is no reason to waste the extra innings that have been to given me.  My plan is to work on kaizen, or continuous self-improvement, and to travel.  There are no other goals than to keep the good going.  I want to finish writing my novel, to read the Bible, and to read history for the fun of it.  The satisfaction that I need to have a fulfilling life can come from reading, updating my blog, and staying fit.  There are so many pitfalls that I can still fall into, especially financial pitfalls, that I still need to concentrate on running a tight ship.
I want to retire beloved, fulfilled, and respected.  The game is only over after I have died and, by then, I won’t care about how I am remembered as long as I have lived a good life.  Until that time comes, I will devote myself to peace, spiritualism, and wisdom.  The real trick will be to learn how to love myself and, hopefully, I have the time and the resources to figure out how to do that.

Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth.”  Well, I got punched in the mouth on Saturday by biking 106 miles in 100-degree temperatures.  I thought that I could finish the ride before the heat set in.  I was wrong.  All of the signs were there for me to not make the ride that day, but I didn’t pay attention.  The heat and humidity had been predicted well in advance.  On the day before the ride, I had jogged nine miles and had no recovered from my run.  Diarrhea had plagued me the morning of the ride but I still chose to get on the bike.  My thought was that if I am going to do the Ironman in October then I have to prove how tough I am by riding the course whether I felt well or not.  If I waited for the conditions to be perfect then I could never train outside.  It is that bull-headedness, that stubbornness, which has kept me in the race for eleven seasons, but also almost caused me to collapse from heat stroke.
I still had 35 miles to go, and was the furthest distance from my home, when I could feel myself weaken and had to stop and take half hour breaks.  Dehydration was my enemy so, after I had drained my water bottle, I had to fill it up again at a gas station and then again at a flower shop.  It didn’t seem to matter that I kept myself hydrated because it was so hot that every time that I exerted myself, I felt faint.  My heart was racing in the mid-day sun so the best that I could do was to slug it out until I got home.  When I still had 20 miles to go my nose began to bleed, something that it had never done before, and once the spigot opened I could not get it to stop.  An image of myself, that I do not like to recall, is me on my hands and knees, struggling to get off of the ground after stopping for a rest, clearly distressed with a stream of blood dried out below my nose, and yet determined to get back on the bike to finish what I had started.
The lesson that I learned that day is to pay attention to the signs that it is too hot to get on the bike.  I am not proud of this ride but I do feel like I have suffered in my preparations for the Ironman this year; I feel like I have earned my place at the starting line.  By the end of my ride, my voice was a couple of octaves higher and it had become raspy after breathing in the hot air for so long.  Further, my eyes were dark and hollow, giving my face a half-crazed look.  When the ride was finally over and I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that my eyes had sunk back into their sockets, and they felt like they would melt down my cheeks.  My face remained flush because of the near miss with heat stroke.  Peering unsympathetically at myself in the mirror, I looked and felt ten years older than I was when I began the ride and, once again, I asked myself why on earth I would do this to myself.  My brain could not come up with a satisfactory reply.  


Chris Spencer
I first met Chris Spencer while I was attending Bellarmine University.  His parents owned Spencer Gifts and, even back during our college days, Chris was one the nicest guys that you could ever hope to meet.  For example, one time, while commuting to college after a snow storm, my car slid off the street.  Chris owned a Jeep and, without even being asked, he hitched up a tow cable to my car and pulled me out of the ditch that I had driven into.  Much later in life, I taught both of his daughters when they attended the high school that I work at, and I also saw him periodically through the years.  Chris competes in the Ironman Triathlon and his finish time qualified him for the national championship in Kona, Hawaii.  His best time was ten hours and ten minutes and his goal was to finish the 140-mile race in less than ten hours.  However, he suffered a career ending injury when he was thrown from his bicycle while crossing some railroad tracks.  This injury occurred shortly after he separated his shoulder after hitting a curb so Chris decided to call it a career and put his bike in storage.
Shortly after Christmas, Chris was working the cash register at his store when suddenly he felt faint.  After crumbling to the ground and blacking out, his daughter found him unconscious on the floor and she called 911 for an ambulance.  There was a blockage in his carotid artery which caused him to lose consciousness and the emergency room doctor tried five times to find the problem.  He snaked a tube from the femoral artery in Chris’ leg all of the way up to the carotid artery in his neck but wasn’t having any luck with finding the blockage.  The doctor turned to the nurse and said, remorsefully, “let him die in peace on the table.”  But then, in a moment of inspiration, the doctor decided to give it one more try, and found the blockage that was so small that it barely registered on the scope.  
Chris had been intubated for the surgery.  When he woke up in his hospital bed he found himself surrounded by his wife and daughters.  He wanted to tell then that he was alright but he couldn’t talk with a tube down his throat.  In time the tube was removed and he could tell his family how much he loved them.  And he could count his blessings.  After enduring months of occupational and speech therapy, Chris had fully recovered to the point that I couldn’t tell that he had been sick.  He was as big and strong as he had always been and had lost none of his natural friendliness.  He is left with a good story that is worth retelling because it stands as a warning to me to not take the good life that I had built for myself for granted.

Retirement

               One of my favorite sayings that I like to share with other people is that “a good chess player thinks one or two moves ahead of the game.”  It helps to think that life is a game, if for no other reason than it gives me a feeling of control.  The trick to winning the game is to stay flexible and to let my options play out.  After all, “I cannot play my hand until all of the cards have been dealt.”  

Another hint to winning is to not let any opportunity go unexploited; but also, don’t let any tragedy go unexploited.  When the game of life is finally over, and I have taken advantage of opportunities as they arise, and have avoid the pitfalls; then I can say that I have won the game.  “Don’t hate the player; hate the game,” is another saying that I like to use.  I have been lucky and I know it.  If I had a role in my good fortune it was to pick the right woman to be my wife and to have raised three children whose company I truly enjoy.  Everything else has been left to chance. 

For the average American, the quotient of happiness declines in their 30s and 40s, and bottoms out in their early 50s.  Then happiness begins to creep up again in the mid-50s, probably because the average American retires at 61 and is looking forward to not working.  Happiness coasts along through the early 70s, but after the age of 75, the rates of depression and suicide begin to climb.  This is due to the loss of ability, failing health, and strained finances.  My hope is to live as long and as well as possible and then have a quick, but glorious, death.    

All of us have regrets at the degree that went unpursued, the career that dried up, or the company not started.  My hope is that I can beat the odds.  I have never been saddled with success, so I have no heights to fall from.  Ernest Hemmingway, after a remarkable life, shot himself when he was 61, probably because he knew that he had once been a great writer and couldn’t live with watching his skills decline.  My professional career was below average, at best, so I am not walking away from power, fame, money, or status.  I am no Hemmingway; I was a history teacher and now I am a substitute teacher.  It is that simple.

Yet, I have won the game of life.  I did it by avoiding the roadblocks of divorce, debt, gambling, and drugs.  My marriage dividend includes living in a wonderful condominium and having a nice car to drive.  I have it made and I know it.  It is time to take stock, appreciate what I have, and build upon my success.  I will not be satisfied with merely running out the clock because I intend to send the game into overtime.  My career may be over, and my children may be on their own, but that is no reason to waste the extra innings that have been to given me.  My plan is to work on kaizen, or continuous self-improvement, and to travel.  There are no other goals than to keep the good going.  I want to finish writing my novel, to read the Bible, and to read history for the fun of it.  The satisfaction that I need to have a fulfilling life can come from reading, updating my blog, and staying fit.  There are so many pitfalls that I can still fall into, especially financial pitfalls, that I still need to concentrate on running a tight ship.

I want to retire beloved, fulfilled, and respected.  The game is only over after I have died and, by then, I won’t care about how I am remembered as long as I have lived a good life.  Until that time comes, I will devote myself to peace, spiritualism, and wisdom.  The real trick will be to learn how to love myself and, hopefully, I have the time and the resources to figure out how to do that.

Ironman Louisville 2019 Training

Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until he gets punched in the mouth.”  Well, I got punched in the mouth on Saturday by biking 106 miles in 100-degree temperatures.  I thought that I could finish the ride before the heat set in.  I was wrong.  All of the signs were there for me to not make the ride that day, but I didn’t pay attention.  The heat and humidity had been predicted well in advance.  On the day before the ride, I had jogged nine miles and had no recovered from my run.  Diarrhea had plagued me the morning of the ride but I still chose to get on the bike.  My thought was that if I am going to do the Ironman in October then I have to prove how tough I am by riding the course whether I felt well or not.  If I waited for the conditions to be perfect then I could never train outside.  It is that bull-headedness, that stubbornness, which has kept me in the race for eleven seasons, but also almost caused me to collapse from heat stroke.

I still had 35 miles to go, and was the furthest distance from my home, when I could feel myself weaken and had to stop and take half hour breaks.  Dehydration was my enemy so, after I had drained my water bottle, I had to fill it up again at a gas station and then again at a flower shop.  It didn’t seem to matter that I kept myself hydrated because it was so hot that every time that I exerted myself, I felt faint.  My heart was racing in the mid-day sun so the best that I could do was to slug it out until I got home.  When I still had 20 miles to go my nose began to bleed, something that it had never done before, and once the spigot opened I could not get it to stop.  An image of myself, that I do not like to recall, is me on my hands and knees, struggling to get off of the ground after stopping for a rest, clearly distressed with a stream of blood dried out below my nose, and yet determined to get back on the bike to finish what I had started.

The lesson that I learned that day is to pay attention to the signs that it is too hot to get on the bike.  I am not proud of this ride but I do feel like I have suffered in my preparations for the Ironman this year; I feel like I have earned my place at the starting line.  By the end of my ride, my voice was a couple of octaves higher and it had become raspy after breathing in the hot air for so long.  Further, my eyes were dark and hollow, giving my face a half-crazed look.  When the ride was finally over and I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that my eyes had sunk back into their sockets, and they felt like they would melt down my cheeks.  My face remained flush because of the near miss with heat stroke. Peering unsympathetically at myself in the mirror, I looked and felt ten years older than I was when I began the ride and, once again, I asked myself why on earth I would do this to myself.  My brain could not come up with a satisfactory reply.  

Canadian Grand Tour

                                    The Canadian Grand Tour
            Whenever I told anyone that I was starting my Grand Canadian Tour with Detroit, the inevitable question that I heard was “Why in the world would you want to go there?”  But Detroit has an underserved bad reputation because the tourist area of Detroit was beautiful.  The revitalization of this once decrepit city started with the construction of three casinos, a huge convention center, and a brand new walking path along the Detroit River.  My tour of the city didn’t start until late in the morning so I had time to walk around downtown by myself for a while and I saw the stadiums where the Lions and Tigers play, and I took pictures of the public art that the city has scattered around the entertainment district.

            Bob was our tour guide in Detroit.  He is an attorney and has been giving tours of his city for the past twenty years as a side gig.  Obviously intelligent and extremely patient with the tourists who were always lagging behind, Bob was nothing but charming for the three hours that we spent with him.  Just as any tour guide can make a good tour even better, the other people on the tour can make the experience more interesting.  I met a couple from Seattle who had just returned from a vacation in Kyoto, Japan so carting around their two year old in a stroller through the streets old Detroit was relatively easy.  Geoffrey was the older man from the U.K. and his wife had just died.  He was determined to visit all 50 states in the U.S. before his time on this earth was up and he had already visited 48 of them.  The other tourists included a couple from Stuttgart, a man from Toronto, and a woman from Israel; we had the United Nations of tour groups.

            The theme of our tour was the revitalization of the downtown area so Bob did not tell us the history of the city but instead concentrated on the buildings in the downtown area.  He emphasized the art deco design of some of the high risers and how the buildings had been refurbished and remodeled.  We toured the Renaissance Center, which is the pride of Detroit with its hotels and business towers, and the River Walk, which abuts the complex and continues for over five miles.  At the end of the tour, we took The People Mover, or the elevated tram, back to the entertainment district where the Tigers and Lions play.  I could not have been more impressed with the beauty of Detroit or our charming tour guide and happily moved on to the next phase of my Canadian Grand Tour.

            As I crossed the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit into Windsor, it occurred to me that I had never driven in a foreign country before, so I was unprepared for the new paradigm of being behind the wheel in Canada.  The road signs, for example, were in the French language and used kilometers instead of miles.  These signs used different symbols.  For example, the exit numbers were encased in yellow and were outlined in the shape of Tennessee.  There was only local information on the signs and rarely did I see the distance in miles for the larger cities if they were more than 50 miles away.  There were no billboards but I didn’t like that, because many of the commercials on the boards would tell me how far the next exit.  This information helps me to plan my breaks.  Also, the roads were bad, the reflective tape that acted as lane dividers had faded so I had to guess as to where my share of the road was supposed to be, and I was driving east in the mornings so the sun was always in my eyes,

            MapQuest was a godsend on my trip.  This app showed me where to go and rerouted me around the heavy traffic.  This became important to me, especially as I navigated the rush hour in Montreal, even though I was on the road by 6:20 every morning.  MapQuest automatically clicked on to warn me that I was approaching a traffic jam or that I was approaching an intersection where I was to exit the interstate.  My problem was that I was always worried about my phone running out of power, which it did in Montreal and Syracuse, and I knew that I would be lost without it.  As I hurled myself down the bad roads of Canada, I had a death grip on the steering wheel with my left hand, and my phone featuring MapQuest in my right hand.  My posture was to lean slightly forward to get my face closer to the windshield; in this position, I could better concentrate on the traffic.  I was always squinting to keep the morning sun out of my eyes.  Whenever I arrived at my final destination and got out of the car, I was literally shaking from the exertion of navigating the road, but I have never felt more alive.

            Toronto is about five times that size of Louisville and is the largest city in Canada.  The centerpiece of the city is the CN Tower and it is the most popular tourist attraction so I went there first.  I got in line before 8:00 am so I was among the first into the Sky Pod, which is the highest observation point, and I took my time to enjoy sky-high view of the city.  On the Lookout Level, they had replaced the floor with Plexiglas, so that when you stood on it there was seemingly nothing between you and an 1800-foot drop.  I do not scare easy but even I was nervous when I stood on the Plexiglas.  When I moved off to the side for a while to people watch as the other tourists took their turn, I saw them laughing at the fact that nothing stood between them and death but a thin sheet of plastic.

            I walked around Toronto for about three hours before my bike tour began and I saw where the Raptors, Blue Jays, and Maple Leafs play.  It was Canada Day so there were free concerts at the public square at the corner of Dundas and Yonge.  The Church-Wellesley Village is the gay area of Toronto (it is designated as such on the tour map) and as I walked through it, I saw the Pride flags everywhere. They had even painted over the crosswalk white stripes using the colors in the Pride flag.  Moving towards the west, I saw the Queen’s Castle, where the military was firing off artillery pieces in the park to commemorate Canada Day.  In the front of the castle, there was a huge party, with free ice cream and a D.J., to celebrate the unification of the provinces of Canada.  I moved on quickly so that I wouldn’t be late to meet the bike tour.

            Peter was our guide and I shared the tour with a family of five.  The youngest girl started to cry after the first two miles because she was tired and wasn’t used to being on a bike.  I told her that I am an old man and if I could do it then so could she.  That seemed to buck her up and she finished the tour without any more tears.  Another girl looked fresh and energetic when we first started but by the end of the tour, she was all sweaty and used up.  As for me, I was so excited by the thrill of riding a bike through the streets of Toronto on Canada Day that I began to sing WWI songs to myself.  I only sing these songs when I am in a really good mood.  We rode through the public square at the city hall, the distillery historic district, and on the Queens Quay Road.  There was a designated bike lane downtown so when the Blue Jays game ended, and the fans emptied into the streets, we rode through the crowd as if Moses had parted the wave of humanity just for us.  The whole experience was exhilarating and I don’t see how the day could have gone better.

            It took me four hours to drive to Ottawa and then another three hours to get to my hotel in Montreal.  Ottawa was always meant to be a brief interlude between major cities, and I had to drive an hour and a half out of my way to get there, but I wanted to see the capital of Canada.  Pierre was the teen-age guide for our Duck Tour.  Purposefully, I took different types of tours at each city so that I could remember the differences between them, and Ottawa had an amphibious vehicle tour available so I took it.  Ottawa is a small city in comparison to Toronto, so there wasn’t as much to see, but from the boat on the St. Lawrence River, I could make out the Notre Dame Cathedral, the National Gallery, and the Parliament building.  Pierre was fun because he kept switching back and forth, from the English to the French languages, and he obviously had to concentrate to keep his stump speech straight in his own head while balancing the two languages.

            I decided that I needed to take a break from driving so I took a Gray Line tour bus from Montreal to Quebec City.  It took three hours to drive there and I was able to relax and read the paper while Andre, our guide for the day, drove the bus.  While on the tour, I met a couple from South Africa, a schoolteacher from New Zealand, and a lady from Georgia.  The highlight of the day was seeing the Chateau Frontenac, where my parents and my grandparents spent their honeymoon.  I also toured the Plains of Abraham where the British General Wolfe defeated the French General Montcalm, thereby ending the French occupation of Canada as they ceded the territory to the British Empire. It could have been a beautiful space, like Gettysburg or Shiloh, but the city put a huge concrete and steel amphitheater right in the middle of the battlefield and destroyed the aesthetics of the place.  The guard at The Plains didn’t speak English, nor did many of the locals, so being in Quebec City is about as close to being in a European city as you can get on the North American continent.  Finally, on the way back to Montreal, Andre pointed out that we could buy cannabis on our tour because it is legal to smoke marijuana in Canada.

            The final destination of my Grand Canadian Tour was Montreal and I power walked the city before my tour began.  Bruno was my tour guide for the day and he asked me why I would go on his tour if I had already seen the city, and I replied, “Because I have no idea what I just saw.”  Bruno had the air if a retired theater teacher; he spoke dramatically and had a heavy French accent.  We toured the Notre Dame Cathedral, the clock tower and the exchange, and walked down Victoria Street.  What made this tour different was that I made some new friends whom I hung around with all day.  Lisa was born in Taiwan, grew up in New York, and then moved to Quebec so that she could study French.  She had to leave the tour early to go to the recital hall where she had an evening engagement to play classical music and to sing.  Revlon was from Dubai, stank of money, was obviously well travelled, and he patiently explained to me the politics of the United Arab Emirates.  The other people in our group was a lady from the U.K. who taught Mandarin and a couple from New York who were obviously work out fanatics.

            No one else would want to do this trip with me because I exhausted myself every day by driving long hours and taking vigorous tours.  At night, I drove to the hotel and went straight to bed.  The hotel breakfast is free so I pounded down eggs and waffles and still managed to be on the road by6:15 am.  Yet it was fun to allow myself to be myself in that I was always on the go and only stopped to sleep and eat.  I gained a lot of confidence because I had planned everything well, followed through with the plan, and had the energy to endure hours of touring every day.

            My daily mantra was, “keep it light and loose.  Go with the flow yet remain mentally tough.”  I had to compartmentalize my thoughts to put my problems at home on the back burner; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the trip.  The weather was perfect for the whole week and I was able to get the best out of the five cities that I visited, although I realize that by staying in the tourist areas, I didn’t see the real life of Canada.  However, the tourist area is all that I wanted to see.

            This trip was a real confidence builder because I wasn’t afraid to succeed, wasn’t afraid to do it alone, and I avoided all of the triggers that could send me into a bad mood.  Instead, I felt sunshine on my brain.  I felt fresh, I felt electric; it was if I could feel my synapsis glow red hot as the neurons sped through them.  I was amped up.  My body took a pounding with all of the power walking that I did, but one of the reasons why I work out so much is so that I can unleash myself on a demanding trip like the Canadian Grand Tour.  I was mentally exhausted as well but it was worth it to give myself some seasoning, to make myself more interesting, and to shake myself out of my complacency.  I wanted to give myself some depth by gaining some new experiences and to take a break from my usual routine.  Finally, travelling makes me appreciate how good I have it in Louisville.  I have a nice life with a luxurious condominium, a family who loves me, and a job that I find rewarding.  After a week living on the road and in hotel rooms, it certainly felt good to be back home.  

Book 3 Chapter 8 Section 2: The Pond (My Last Days with My Mother)

 Book 3 Chapter 8 Section 2 The Pond (My last days with my mother)

Every nursing home tries to find a way to make itself unique, to set itself as being different from all of the others.  Jeff spent a lot of time picking out just the right place for his mother.  Cost was a major factor that he had to consider, but the ambience of the place was also important.  The nursing home that he chose was different from all of the others that he visited in that it had an outdoor park set right in the middle of a vast complex of residential buildings.  It had a pond as its centerpiece.  Since it was an open-air park, ducks have found their way into this area, and they could often be seen flying in from the overhead skies to land in the alcove.  Aside from the ducks, there were fish and turtles in the pond, and the wildlife made the park very welcoming.  A final nice touch was when the management planted all sorts of fauna around the pond and the lush, green area made the residents feel like they are in a public park.  A walking path led to a gazebo and the whole area was wheelchairs accessible.  It was all laid out so perfectly that the pond invited anyone who had leisure time to come and visit for a while.  This oasis was a place of peace and tranquility

Whenever a visitor came to The Masonic Home, they must stop by the front desk to sign in and get a visitor’s nametag.  The receptionists always stopped Jeff on his weekly visits to ask, “How is your mother.”  It was the same question that she asks every week and Jeff’s inevitable response was “She is not going to get better but will only get worse.”  It was a dark statement and the receptionist looked glum whenever Jeff said it, but he was tired of the forced concern by some of the staff and decided the way to cut them short was to tell the truth.  Honesty always through them off and the eldest son was free to move on from the foyer to Sally’s Garden where Gail was committed to stay.        

As soon as Jeff enters his mother’s bedroom, he immediately tells her to get ready to go for a walk.  If Gail was given a choice as to whether she wanted to leave the room or not, she would always pick staying put.  He helps his mother into the wheelchair and then pushes her out of her room and through a maze of corridors.  After a short walk, they find their way to the pond and parks themselves next to the water.  The morning sun shines in and it feels good on their skin.   Since Gail doesn’t get out of her room very often, much less leave the wing, she almost never gets to go outside.  As a result, her skin is pasty white and the pallor of her face is grey.  Jeff locks the old woman’s wheelchair into place so that Gail doesn’t accidentally go tumbling into the water, and he takes a seat at a bench. Mother and son sit in silence.  There is no need to interrupt the respite with conversation because nothing new can be added to the conversation that they have already had on previous visits.  They close their eyes before lifting their faces towards the sun.  Their pale skin begins to burn but, almost recklessly, they two do not move from their perch because the moment is too nice to give up on easily.  The waterfall provides a constant tinkling for ambient noise and, when they tire of the sun, they open their eyes to watch the goldfish swim in the pond.  If they are lucky, they get to watch baby chicks following their mother in or out of the water.  Ducks take off and land from inside the confines of the building that surrounds them.  The whole environment is so inviting that neither one of them seem to notice the time passing.

For just a little while, Gail seemingly escapes the doldrums of living in a nursing home.  For the time being, mother and son had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, so they may as well sit and enjoy nature for awhile.  Yet when the baby chicks no longer distract them and the ducks have flown away, Gail and Jeff look around the residential buildings that surround the pond and become conscious of the fact that they were being watched.  They see old people looking out of their windows, spying on the middle aged man and the old woman, and Jeff knew that the nice feeling of having escaped the confines of the corridors and rooms of the nursing home had vanished.  In their imaginations, they were on a lakeshore, or somewhere in the wilderness, but now reality hit and they knew that they were back at a retirement home.  They didn’t like the idea of being observed and so the two walk and wheel their way back to Gail’s room.

When it became time for Jeff to leave, he had slipped into the habit of kissing his mother’s forehead before he found his way out the door.  This was something that he had never done while growing up and certainly could not have done it in adulthood.  He had seen one of the caregivers hug his mother’s head and was expecting Gail to explode in rage at this act of unwanted familiarity.  Instead, the old woman obviously enjoyed the human contact and was not defensive or angry at all.  It was a little embarrassing that a complete stranger had to teach Jeff how to show a display of affection towards his own mother, but from that point on, he determinedly gave his mother a kiss on the forehead as he left her room.  Gail always smiled bashfully at this act of love.

Mother and son settled into this routine and enjoyed the best relationship that they ever had.   Part of the reason why the two became close was that Gail became completely dependent on Jeff, and she knew it.  There was always a glint of recognition when Jeff entered her room; sometimes Gail would exclaim “Jeffrey” when she saw her son, and then he wheeled her down to the Sunday service.  Although she was never particularly religious, now that Gail was on the decline, one of her few coherent thoughts was that she wanted to go to mass.  As they waited for the nondenominational service to begin, Jeff pulled up a chair and talk to his mother for a while.  It was mostly idle talk as he verbally checked off a list of his siblings, and their children, but most of this was old news that Gail had heard before.  Once the service began, mother and son usually fell asleep, just like almost everyone else in the hall.  The preacher wasn’t discouraged and carried on with the service.  He reads some scripture, uses some talking points that he found online for his sermon, and the whole insufferable ritual is over in twenty minutes or less.  When he is done, and the service is over, the caretakers must wake everyone up and send them to the common area for lunch.  Jeff wheels his mother to the dining room and read to her from the newspaper while they waited for her fried chicken, the special on Sundays, to arrive.  Once she was served, Jeff took his leave, because that was a good break off point.  On his way out of the door, he promised that he would visit again in a week.

The weeks turned into months and the months turned into years.  Gail came to expect that Jeff would visit on Sundays and that was how she marked time.  When she saw Jeff the first comment that came out of her mouth was, “It must be Sunday!”  That was the most emotion that she would display unless something was bothering her.  For example, one time when Jeff entered the room, he found his mother crying.  When he asked what was wrong, she whimpered, “I have enjoyed my time at summer camp but I am ready to go home now.”  Dementia shrouds her memory and she walks around in a fog, trying to figure her little world out.  One week she may remember that her father fought in WWI but she won’t remember that her husband was dead.  Sometimes she confused her son for her deceased husband.  She furrowed her brow as she tried to remember who her brother and sisters were when Jeff mentions their names.

Gail’s tablemates at meal time are Eloise, MaryAnn, and Helen.  If this were a country club, or even a normal restaurant, then the room would be filled with chatter.  But this is a nursing home and the residents do not talk to each other while they eat.  They don’t even want to come to lunch and have to be coaxed out of their rooms.  Out of the three people that Gail has to share a table with, Maryanne looks the most normal because she vibrant and takes pride in her appearance.  However, when forced to engage in conversation, it becomes immediately apparent that Maryanne has no short-term memory at all.  Sitting between Gail and Maryanne is Helen, who is prim, proper, and so polite that she introduces herself to her tablemates every time that they sit down for a meal.  When the meals are over, and before they are wheeled back to their rooms, Maryanne whined pathetically to no one in particular, “I want to go home.”

Eloise had rounded out the table of four, but then something went horribly wrong for her because one day she stopped showing up at the table.  Her room was vacated and she was transferred to Judy House, the part of the complex reserved for the residents who cannot feed themselves or do their own toileting.  Even after sharing meals with Eloise three times a day for a year and a half, Gail did not notice when her former tablemate disappeared.  Artie, who doesn’t respond to anyone who tries to get her attention, replaced Eloise.  Meanwhile, in the background, there are some residents who should be sitting at a table but refuse to associate with the others.  Snooks acts just like a little kid and steals food to take back to her room when no one is looking.  George moves so slowly with his walker that he always arrives late and the rest of his table is finishing up by the time he arrives.  The main reason why he was so slow was that he used a walker and his pants would often accidentally drop to his ankles.  He had lost so much weight that none of his clothes fit him anymore.  Since he had to use both of his hands to hold onto his walker, he couldn't reach down to pull his pants up.  He had to wait for someone on staff to help him.  In the corner of the dining room is a woman who nobody seems to know.  She complains about everything; the food, the temperature, and the fact that no one comes to visit her.  “All we do all day is sit on our butts all day,” is her favorite line and the staff goes out of their way to avoid her.

Once he drops his mother off at her room, Jeff walks down a long corridor to the exit.  As he does, he sneaks a peek into the rooms of the residents if their doors are open.  Most of the old folks are either sleeping or watching television.  One passive aggressive man blares his television as loudly as possible because he doesn't want to wear his hearing aide.  Everyone in the hallway has to listen to whatever he is listening to because the volume echoes throughout the wing.  Finally, as he makes his way through the foyer, Jeff waves goodbye to the nosey attendant who is still staffing the front desk, and he makes his way out the front door.  On the stoop is an old man sitting in a wheelchair.  He stations himself in the exact same spot every week and spends his afternoons sunning his bones.  “Not a bad way to spend the final days on this earth,” Jeff thinks to himself as he gets into his car and drives away to begin working on his weekend chores.

Niko and Sandra Triantafillidis

                                        Niko and Sandra Triantafillidis

            Niko and Sandra Triantafillidis are wrapping up the third leg of their around the world tour.  Niko had been working fourteen-hour days at a job that gave him little time for leisure, so he saved up his money to take an extended vacation.  He bought a Ford F150 and tricked it out with a canopy that can lift and expand in the bed of the truck so that the couple can stand up inside when they like.  Niko bolted an extra gas tank to the truck, attached a special filtration system for dusty roads, and then shipped the truck to Africa and the United States for their road trip.  There was also a fold away bed so the F150 had everything that the young couple needed for an extended road trip except a shower and toilet.

            For the first part of their trip, Niko and Sandra flew to Brazil and took a bus trip to Ecuador, Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina.  They learned that the problem with taking the bus was that when they were at a beautiful spot where they wanted to spend some time, they couldn’t do it because the bus wouldn’t stop.  Therefore, for the second leg of their trip, they shipped their truck to South Africa and drove it to Botswana, Zambia, and Namibia.  Then they flew to Asia to visit South Korea, Bali, Japan, and Australia.  The final stop of their trip included a stopover in Hawaii before they pushed on to Los Angeles where their truck was waiting for them.  Niko and Sandra drove up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco.  On their way to Louisville, the young couple drove down to Las Vegas, up to Wyoming, down to Austin, across to Pensacola, and then up to Kentucky.  They only had a 90-day visa, so instead of going to Alaska, as they wanted to do, they drove to Toronto and flew home to Germany.

            Because they were on a budget, a favorite activity for the couple was to visit national parks, where the admission was free.  And since they had a lot of time on their hands, Niko and Sandra volunteered at different places.  Helping to raise baboons at the animal rehab center in South Africa, for example, was an outstanding memory.  The parks that they will remember the best are Victoria Falls in Zambia, Machu Pichu in Peru, and Iguazu Falls in Brazil.  Swakopmund in Namibia was a good memory because it had been a Germany colony before World War I and traces of the old empire still remained.  For example, the street signs, are still in German.  The National Forests in the United States are also free so the couple visited Yosemite, Death Valley, Yellowstone, the Monument Valley, and many others.

            Of course, no trip of this magnitude can happen without a few snags.  Niko and Sandra had a hard time finding clean water and relied on bottled water.  It is easy to forget to use the bottled water when doing mundane tasks, like brushing your teeth, and one little slip up can result in diarrhea.  There is nothing worse than being sick while on the road.  Another problem was when they shipped their F150 to South Africa, the port authority demanded a bribe to release the vehicle.  They paid the bribe but once they had the vehicle in their possession, they were afraid to leave it alone.  They were the lone white couple in many of the areas that they visited and that drew a lot of unwanted attention.  Since they were outstanding, anyone could track their movements and break into the truck when they knew that Sandra and Niko would be gone for a while.  Another example of unexpected frustrations was when the young couple was trying to obtain the right stamps for their passport to move from South Africa to Zambia.  They had to wait four hours to get the stamps and still didn’t know if they bought the right ones or if they paid too much for them.  There was no official present to help.

            Still, life is short.  When the time comes for looking back, what great accomplishments of yours would you like to look back upon?  Wouldn’t you like to say that you have travelled around the world?  Niko and Sandra will always have memories to share.  They have laid on their backs and listened to lions roaring at night as they drifted off to sleep in their truck.  They have seen Lake Titicana, the birthplace of the Incas, while touring Peru.  They saw the deep ravines in Fish River Canyon in Namibia, the game reserve in Botswana, and the canopy of stars at the Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah.  All of these memories were gathered through the course of one long trip, and now they can spend a lifetime enjoying them. 

"Teacher and Traveler" introduction and cruising

Introduction

When I was growing up my parents took my three siblings and me on a yearly summer vacation to visit our extended family.  We alternated between seeing my father’s family in Minnesota, my mother’s family in Vermont, and my grandmother who lived in Florida.  Although none of the places that we visited was tourist attractions, it was the feeling of going on an adventure that I really enjoyed. Our trips were the highlight of my childhood and, once I started a family of my own, I knew that I wanted to give my children this same sense of adventure.  The difference between my parents and me is that they went on their vacations out of a sense of filial duty.  Today, since my whole family lives nearby, I knew that I could take the kids anywhere that I wanted.  The only reason to go on a trip, then, was to make some memories. Our vacations have helped to bind us together through shared experiences.  I know that this is a cliché but, just because it is a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true.  All of the trips have been the effort worth it because they allowed us to spend some quality time together.  In addition, they became a way for me to reward myself for grinding my way through another year of work.  For me, there is no better way to pat myself on the back than to spend time with my family. 

The fun for me is the challenge of laying out a good vacation.  It provides me with a brief respite from my work life.  The planning, and the trip itself, get me out of my rut for a while by exploring what other cities, and countries, have to offer.  The key is to get an anchor event for every place that we are going to visit.  Once I have the event, then I start working on the hotels and all of the other logistics that go into a well laid out vacation.  My personal preference is to visit new cities to see the best that they have to offer, whether it is a museum, or a major attraction that the place is proud of.  When the kids were small I could do whatever I wanted as long as I incorporated some fun side trips, like going to an amusement park; but as they got older I had to bend and do what they wanted to do, like going to the beach or build in an afternoon for shopping.  Compromise has become a big part of our time together.

            When we first started taking our family trips, I was very concerned about money, so we took many car trips because they were relatively cheap.  I prefer driving to any other mode of transportation because I feel at peace while in the car.  While driving on an extended road trip, I am forced to slow down.  I know that no matter what I do I won’t be able to get to my destination quickly, so I settle in for a long ride and allow my mind to wander.  The constant drone of the car propelling itself down the road blocks out all distractions, and the vibrations that my vehicle emits have a calming effect.  To ensure that I am comfortable on a long ride I sit on a soft pillow, and then stuff a second pillow at the small of my back, next to my lumbar, to avoid back pain.  In effect, I become locked into position into my seat, just like the drivers at the Indianapolis 500.  Yet, I feel free.  I like to drive through the night because when it is dark out, and there is little traffic on the road, I can I work myself into a trance.  Before I know it, the hours have flown by and through concentrated thought; I have exhausted myself mentally and physically.  Finally, at the end of a long road trip, I park the car, and unbundle myself from my seat.  My whole body creaks and groan as I stretch while I get used to standing on my legs again, but I feel completely satisfied.

For me, the destination isn’t as important as having the whole family do the trip together; there is no ultimate Mecca that I feel like I have to visit and that gives me a lot of freedom to mix up the type of trip that our family takes.  We can go to Europe, or not.  There is no place where I have a burning desire to visit and, when we first started out, the only rule was that our destination had to be within a ten-hour drive.  Over time, when money became less of a concern, we started to take cruises.  New Orleans is only a twelve-hour drive so we took many ships out of that city and, when we had exhausted all of the destinations out of New Orleans, we started to fly to other ports. 

Even when the trip doesn’t go well, I would argue that the vacation was still worth it because we had a shared experience.  For example, when we drove from Cape Canaveral back to Louisville, it took us about eighteen hours in the car.  We sat in a traffic jam in Atlanta for three hours in the middle of the hot August sun.  By the end of the drive, I was carsick.  For the first and only time, I had to turn the driving over to my son because I literally couldn’t sit up straight.  I was exhausted, hot, and dehydrated.  Yet, even this drive I don’t regret because we all suffered through it together and we still laugh about it to this day.  On the other hand, I didn’t repeat the mistake of driving through the afternoon sun in a southern city during the summer months.  

  One final reason to travel is because it makes my family appreciate what we have.  After seeing the poverty of Belize City and Mazatlán, for example, and observing how the unfortunate live, we are better able to suffer through our relatively small inconveniences of congested traffic and long checkout lines.  We didn’t expect to see the poor people; that experience was just a residual of a long bus trip, but it is something that will always stay with us.  Often the true adventure is experiencing something that we never expect to have seen or done.  

            I have divided this book into sections, depending on what type of vacation we took.  The comic cons, for example, are a totally different type of vacation so they deserve a separate category.  Other than the trips are organized to descending order; the most recent trip are mentioned first in each category and the trips that took place years ago are last in each category.  If we went to the same place twice then I combined them into one entry.  After putting in literally hundreds of hours to write this book, my only hope is that you will enjoy it.



                                    Forward on Cruising

I like the big cruise ships because I am a gym rat.  The bigger the ship, the better the gym, and since I go to the gym twice a day, the facilities mean a lot to me.  First thing in the morning, I get up, grab a cup of coffee, and wait outside the gym door until the manger opens it.  Sadly, I am not alone, and several of us muscle heads stretch and loosen up until the door opens.  While the others make a beeline to the treadmills, I go the weight room because so few people are there at that hour.  A stretch and abs class is offered at 7:00 so I do resistance training for an hour and then join the class.  After weights and the stretching class, I take a run to rid myself of any energy that I might have left.  This is my favorite part of the whole day because I like to run around the upper deck while watching the sun come up.  The growing daylight, reaching through the clouds, looks like a painting by Monet, Gaugin, or Cezanne.  I give myself permission to be myself; to not feel guilty about going to bed so early so that I can get up and run in the morning.  

After an intense workout, I can relax, and I meet my wife back at the room.  This leads me to my second favorite hobby on the cruise and that is eating.  I love to try new types of food, like frog legs and escargot, because if I don’t like it then I can pick up something else.  Experiencing new foods is low risk on a cruise ship because if you don’t like what you ordered then the waiter brings you something else.  Everything is all-inclusive on the ship so I can try several entrees in one meal if I want.  Also, I like the meals because it is then that we have our family time.  Everyone gets together at breakfast and dinner to talk about excursions and whatever happened that day.  Everyone is in a good mood because the excitement from the day hasn’t worn off yet and because we are hungry and know that we are about to be fed.  Even the fussiest eaters of my family cannot complain because there is such a variety of foods at the buffet.

            My wife, Tracey, is blind.  The reason why she likes cruising so much is that the ships give her complete freedom.  All of the rooms and the elevators have been labelled in Braille and those signs at least point her in the right direction.  When we first get on the ship, Tracey maps out where our room is in proximity the restaurant, casino, and stairwells.  She can find her own way around in that confined space.  If she wants to go to the far end of the ship, to lay out on the serenity deck for example, then she will need some guidance.  Aside from that, as long as she stays in the same general area, she has complete independence.  Her confidence in her ability to navigate the ship has grown with every cruise that we have taken and I am proud of her.
            The nice thing about a cruise is that they offer a little bit for everyone.  For example, Grant likes the comedy shows and the trivia games.  Lillian hates the sun because she burns so easily, but she likes Karaoke and dancing, so she has something to do.  Virginia has never met a person whom she couldn’t turn into a friend, so when she is not with the rest of the family, then she is palling around with some new acquaintances.  Everyone is happy while on the ship and we all have grown to enjoy leisurely dinners together when we can share the new and interesting experiences of our day.

My son in law, Tanner, even came with us for one cruise.  The purpose of the trip was to spend some time together, so I only ordered two rooms on the cruise ship and there were three people in each cabin.  I was expecting for the third person in our small room to get a bunk bed but instead there was a pull out sofa for the third bed and it blocked the door every time we opened it up.  The result was that when I left the cabin early in the morning I had to climb over Tanner.  It was like a comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live, because any time we moved around the cabin we were tripping over each other.  When I remarked that Tanner had been a good Joe about it, Lillian responded with, “Well Virginia has not been a good Joe about it” because she complained whenever someone climbed over her bed.

            Part of the fun of cruising is sharing a table with complete strangers for our meals.  We have met an array of people, including a know-it-all, a Debbie Downer, and a guy who looked like a rap star with his over-sized glasses and his clown watch.  When the matre d' put us with the rapper and his entourage, I would have thought that there would be no interaction between us since we are so different.  Yet the rapper turned out to be a nice person and we chatted amicably.  As we were talking, I silently chastised myself for prejudging people by the way that they look.  It was a lesson that I had to learn again two days later when I saw a twenty-something girl in the lobby who was poorly dressed and sported several tattoos.  "White trash," I thought to myself.  However, when we sat down at the same breakfast table, I learned that the girl had been in college for nine years to get her PhD in psychology.  The cruise was her last opportunity to spend some time with her parents before she moved to Alaska to complete the doctorate program.  Fortunately, I kept my observations to myself, once again, I realized that traveling breaks down prejudices, especially when you are forced to spend time with people who are different from you, and I am still learning not to judge people by their appearances.

No matter where we go, there are no shortages of characters on a cruise ship.  Meghan, who was working on her PhD in math, and Justin, her husband who, upon meeting me, said, “I feel the need to make him proud of me!”  I was a lot older than Justin and I think that I was a father figure to him.  Then there was Roscoe, the writer and reenactor, who liked to practice magic in his spare time.  Roscoe hailed from Wichita and was on the cruise to see the grave of the famous outlaw named Soapy Smith, who was buried in Skagway.  Cathy was an older kindergarten teacher who bought the unlimited drink and bingo package.  She got her money’s worth because she was drunk for the whole cruise and spent most of her time at the bingo parlor.  Finally, Tod and his wife were a religious couple and they were paid by their church to take two mentally handicapped adults on the cruise.

            The more earthy passengers enjoy going to the pool parties, but it is not my thing.  To fill in some of the down time on the ship, the cruise director held games like Pool Olympics, Majority Rules, and The Perfect Couple.  The competition that stuck with me the most was the “Mr. Sky” contest.  Volunteers were called up on stage and encouraged to perform sexually suggestive dances.  The participants included a man with Downs Syndrome, a Dad with a huge paunch, and a couple of truly buff guys.  Watching this parade of dancers in the front row were three little girls, a couple of mothers, and a grandmother who used a walker to get to her seat.  I thought that the parents of the three little girls would have a lot of explaining to do some day and, probably, the little girls would not thank their parents for taking them to a strip show.  Even I had to spend some mental energy trying to erase the images of the dancers from my memory.
            The pool parties and getting seasick are two of the things that I don’t like about the cruises.  Also, just getting to port can be a pain.  On our last trip to New Orleans we had to ordeal of driving through a monsoon to get to the parking garage.  The last time that we flew, our departing flight was an hour late because they took so long to load our luggage onto the plane.  We missed our connecting flight but the airline was good enough to give us a voucher for a hotel room and a food voucher as well.  When we finally got a flight out, our plane ran into some turbulence, but it was the flight attendant, and not the passengers, who panicked.  With fear in her voice, she ordered everyone back to his or her seats and to buckle themselves in.  If we weren’t concerned before, we certainly were now worried.  We landed safely but these incidences lend themselves to the fact that it is the journey to our destination, which can put a damper on a trip, but rarely does the cruise itself disappoint.  

Thanks,
Jeff