Mike Triebsch

 The first time that I met Mike Triebsch was at “The Bristol” restaurant in Louisville.   Ann Feldkamp, Tracey’s friend since their Centre College days, had told my wife that she was “in like” with Mike and wanted us to meet him.  Shortly thereafter, Mike decided to propose to Ann but he wanted to make the moment special by combining it with another one of his passions, which was sailing.  The idea was to take Ann out on the water and raise the sail.  He had written on the sail, “will you marry me?”  But it was a windy day and he couldn’t get the sail up.  Not to be deterred,  Mike proposed to Ann on the dock.  We were at their wedding and it is gratifying to know that the two had just celebrated their thirtieth anniversary.  We have known each other for so long that Ann was Tracey’s maid of honor and they were both the godparents to our youngest daughter.  I always thought of Mike as being the big brother that I never had.

In retirement, Mike became a part time handyman.  He believed that you could do anything that you wanted if you had a lot of self confidence and a little common sense.  For example, Mike removed that load bearing walls from his basement on Cowling Avenue and installed new support beams that he had bought from the hardware store.  The idea was to dig up the old floor, cart out the dirt through the back door, and make more head room in the basement.  Mike said that he spent a sleepless night listening to every creak and groan that the house made, half expecting it to collapse of itself.  It didn’t.  The support beams held and Mike earned a lot of respect for completing this demanding project.  He was always doing things like building a picnic table for use in his back yard, or a ramp for his son, or a play set or my children when they were young.  Mike dove right in on these projects with gusto.

The last time that I saw Mike was at Adam’s graduation party.  He had surgery for a blood clot that morning and he couldn’t get up from his chair.  He had such a big personality that he wouldn’t let his health stand in on a good time.   He smiled through the pain and just seemed glad to be there.

The tragedy of Mike’s early death is that he was finally able to retire after a long and distinguished career.  He had worked at the Louisville Zoo, Louisville Public Media, Olmsted Parks Conservancy, and, for 23 years, he worked in Internal Communications for Toyota.  When his job moved to Dallas, Mike had to move with it and his last years at Toyota meant commuting from Louisville.  Further, Mike had earned his Masters from Bellarmine University, saw his son get his Masters from the University of Louisville, and saw his daughter become a sophomore at Centre College.  It is patently unfair that, just when it was his time to relax and enjoy an easeful retirement, Mike was plagued with the health problems that ultimately took his life.

Mike was proud of the fact that he was a native born Pennsylvanian.  In a casual conversation he would bring up Frank Lloyd Wriight’s “Falling Waters” or talk about how General Braddock was defeated at the Battle of the Monongahela in French and Indian war.  We went skiing together at Seven Springs, Pennsylvania because that is where he went when he was a teenager.  He wasn’t a very good skier when he was young but preferred to sneak in some whiskey and drink on the slopes.  More than anything, however, Mike loved his Pittsburgh Steelers.  I had never been to an NFL game and I decided that I wanted to share the experience with Mike so, two years ago, we drove to Cincinnati to see the Bengals play the Steelers.  In fact, in my last text to Mike, I had written “Go Steelers, Beat the Browns!”  He gave me a “thumbs up” emoji on that one.  

His other interests included hunting, fishing, skiing, and Rock and Roll music.  He was so passionate about hunting that he travelled for over twenty hours to get to Nova Scotia to fulfill his life long dream in of shooting a moose.  It was such a long and desperate trip that David Feldkamp, his brother in law, exclaimed, “You must have hated that moose!”  Mike took me fishing in the back woods of Kentucky one weekend, but we were skunked in that we didn’t catch a single fish.  He said that it was alright because he had been fishing a couple of months before.  He shared a makeshift cabin with a friend.  Arriving late in the evening, he saw that his cabin mate had broken into his foot locker and stolen his bottle of whiskey.  The guy was sitting on the floor, drunk as a monkey, when Mike walked in on him.  Rather than get angry at the theft, like most people would have done, Mike sat down and shared whatever was left in the bottle.  The lesson is that he refused to let a little thing like stolen whiskey get in the way of a good time.  

In conclusion, the image that I like to have of Mike in retirement was of him and his dog, Washburn, driving around the neighborhood to go to the hardware store.  One time, when he saw me sitting in front of my condo building, he stopped to say hello.  Both man and dog looked so happy just to be out and about.  That is the kind of guy that Mike was; full of personality and the kind of guy with whom you would like to share a beer with.  And, almost as if it were scripted, the Steelers defeated their hated rivals, the Raiders, the Sunday following his death.

Four Stages of Retirement

 I heard a TED Talk by Dr. Riley Moynes about “The Four Stages of Retirement” and it really hit home because I can identify with a lot of what the doctor was telling me.  My problem with the four stages is that it sounds like they are complete and separate stages but I think that they overlap quite a bit.  In spite of that, the four stages inspired me to write my thoughts, and check in with myself, on how I am doing since I left the working world.  

My “Vacation” stage of retirement began two years ago when Tracey and I sailed up the Danube River with the U of L Travel Group.  We have taken several trips since then, to places as disparate as Germany, France, Egypt, Israel, and Spain.  Tracey retired a year before I did and, now that we have all of the time in the world and the means to do whatever we want, we decided that we want to travel.  We are planning to visit Southeast Asia, Ireland, and France in the next year and a half.   

One tangential benefit is that we have made several friends from the U of L Travel Group and have even hosted parties for them.  This is important because when I lost my job I also lost all of my friends where I used to work.  They dropped me like a hot potato with spiders on it.  Literally, I didn’t receive a call or a text or an email from anyone from where I used to work.  I didn’t take offense because I knew that once I was out of sight then my old friends would forget about me.  So now I depend on the U of L Travel Group for my social life.  Research suggests that retirement brings a feeling of loneliness and isolation but Tracey and I have found a new tribe to belong to and we can build on our new friendships.

My “Lost and Loss” stage began when I stepped back from being a traditional history teacher to becoming the permanent substitute teacher.  Eventually, I had to give up on my job as a substitute for several reasons.  First of all, I was afraid of falling asleep in front of the kids.  Although this would have been bad, an even worse fear was that I would pee myself in class because I would sometimes work three to four hours without a break.  This scenario never happened because I learned to limit my intake of fluids before the school day began.  My final reason for giving up my job as a substitute was that I had run out of things to do to fill the time.  More and more, I found myself playing games on my iPad and I began to lose respect for myself.  It was time to leave the working world.

Another aspect of the “Lost and Loss” stage was when I lost my career, and self image, as an athlete.  I ran my last half marathon two years ago.  The reason as to why I had to stop running was because whenever I exerted myself, it felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest.  The palpitations began within the first two blocks of the thirteen mile race and it took me about four hours to finish.  It was pure misery and I decided that my racing days are over.  Don’t get me wrong; I had a good career as an athlete, participating in eleven Ironman competitions and over twenty half marathons and felt lucky to walk away unscathed.

Barbara Walters was once asked what it was like to grow old and she replied that “you have to get used to a sense of loss.”  She meant that as you get older you will lose family, friends, and even some of your physical abilities.  I know what she meant because in the last three years my two best friends (Tod Knight and Mike Triebsch) and my sister (Cheryl Burnett) have died.  In sum, I have lost my career, my best friends, and my identity as an athlete.  The “Lost and Loss” stage has been tough but I can take solace in the fact that other people my age are going through the exact same feelings during this stage of life.  

My “Trial and Error” stage began two years ago when I was fired from being the permanent substitute to becoming a substitute on a per diem basis.  I reinvented myself by reading the Bible, writing three books, and reading fiction, something that I would have regarded as a waste of time before I retired.  But, suddenly, I had the time to waste.  I gave up the Bible after working my way through most of the Old Testament because it was repetitive and boring and I wasn’t getting anything out of it.  I don’t write books anymore because no one will read them, so what would be the point, but still keep up a journal and a blog.  I remain an avid reader, however, and subscribe to three newspapers and read a lot of books.  Just because I am retired doesn’t mean that I have to stop learning and I still enjoy the written word.

The “Trial and Error” stage was difficult for my because I failed to develop a  began “Plan B” in my career choice.  IfI had to do it all over again I would have gone back to school to become a counselor or would have picked up a side job to have something to fall back upon.  Instead, I chose a career that gave me no room for advancement or personal growth.  When the principal called me into her office to tell me that the school could no longer afford to keep me around as a permanent substitute, I knew that I was too young to retire but too old to start all over again.  I had to start all over from scratch and am still trying to figure out how to fill the days and nights in retirement.


During the “Rewire and Reinvent” stage, retired people often describe themselves as feeling useless or worthless.  I understand the sentiment but I don’t feel that way.  The thing to do is to avoid the trap of isolationism and depression that often comes with retirement.  Many people find purpose by working part time or volunteering but I don’t want to do that for the same reason as to why I didn’t switch carriers when teaching didn’t pan out; I couldn’t find anything else that I wanted to do.  For now I can satisfy myself with my daily trips to the gym.  These trips keep me socially active and, tangentially, keep me in shape for our next river cruise.  My job is to keep myself up for the long term so that I can be ready for whatever comes next, whether that means grandchildren, buying a dog, or volunteering.

I could not have lived like this ten years ago, just in the same way that I could not do the hard years in my present frame of mind.  It used to be that every minute of every day was scheduled but now I have become used to having ambiguity in my day.  My typical day is to get up early to read and write.  Next, I drive to the gym at 5:00 am to swim for an hour and a half.  This strenuous exercise wipes me so I can calm down, relax, and enjoy the rest of my day.  I’ll drive back to the condo, eat and nap and read the newspaper, and prepare myself for my second work out for the day.  The Louisville Zoo is about a six mile round trip and, when I walk it, the trip takes me about two and a half hours.  That means that four hours of every day is made up of exercise.  Tracey and I go out to eat and then we watch television and that is about it.  But we are both happy.

My “Rewire and Reinvent” stage will be successful if I can suppress my controlling personality and stop worrying about what other people think of me.  I am lucky in that I still have my health and my mind is still sharp.  Where I used to be driven and had to fill each minute of every day with being productive, I can now lose myself in this limbo that I have created for myself.  I have no purpose or direction and I am learning to be fine with that way of life.  Being driven and living a life full of stress almost gave me a heart attack so now I can satisfy myself with taking care of myself and my wife.  My only job is to relax and enjoy my life for as long as the good Lord allows me to live.  Hopefully I will have another 30 years

In conclusion, I have learned to accept my new life and to separate myself from what I like to call “The Hard Years.”  These years were when the kids were young and needy, when we had to put my mother into the nursing home against her will, and when I was going through the process of being fired from a job that I enjoyed.

Finally, I read an article that stated that once retirees get to be 70 then they are over talking about the end of their careers and death.  Old people simply want to enjoy their remaining time on this earth.  I think that Mel Brooks put it the best when he was asked in a recent interview how he spends his time.  Brooks is in his nineties and his succinct reply was “I still enjoy eggs and toast for breakfast and roast beef for dinner.”  That’s it.  That was all that it took to make Mel Brooks happy.  The lesson to be learned from his response is that we don’t need a lot of things in retirement and our attitude should be to appreciate the simple act of living.  And maybe to share our joy with a friend or two.

Good Childhood Memories

At the Ocean Ranch there was a children’s hour where we played games like, “I see something that you don’t see and the color is…” and you got a free milkshake if you guessed correctly.  They also had a sand castle building competition.  Finally, we could order a burger from the restaurant and charge it to the room without getting permission first.  We thought that was the greatest thing ever

In Vermont, we distracted ourselves by going swimming in the pond.  There was a long wooden pier that we jumped off, and then we swam over to the canoe or rowboat that the Hall’s had at the pond.  Other attractions were playing in the barn and going to Grandma’s house for dinner.

 In Minnesota, we walked to Lake Minnehaha to swim.  It was probably too cold to get into the water but we did it anyway.  Also, we walked to the creek and played with the clay that made up the banks.

 Dad used to love to barbeque steak on the charcoal grill.  He had it down to a science, letting the meat marinate all day and then having the meat cook on the fire for a very specific amount of time.  He served it with French fried onion rings and it was the best meal that I ever had.

 Swim meets were a big deal while I was growing up. They were held at Plantation Country Club and we built tent cities underneath the bleachers where we would play cards while waiting for our events.  Mom made us jelly sandwiches on raisin bread that has a frosting on it.

 Dad’s favorite meal that Mom cooked was leg of lamb served with mint jelly and strawberry shortcake for dessert.  He liked to let the short cake to stew in the strawberry juice for a while so that it could soak up the juice.

 My father always kept catalogues of boats for sale on the table in the family room.  He always wanted a boat and the one picture where I think he was at his happiest was the one where he went deep sea fishing on a daylong expedition in the Gulf.

We raced home after school so that we could watch “Presto the Clown,” “Speed Racer,” and “Ultraman.”  On Saturday mornings, we watched “Lidsville,” “The Bugaloos,” “The Hudson Brothers,” “Sigmund the Sea Monster,” “The Land of the Lost,” and “The Banana Bunch.”  On Sunday mornings, we watched “Star Trek” at 11:00 and, while waiting for that television show to start, we watched old movies.  There was a rotation of “Abbott and Costello,” “Martin and Lewis,” “Shirley Temple,” “Tarzan,” “The Three Stooges,” and the old black and white monster movies like “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” and “The Wolfman.”    

If the teachers at Holy Trinity wanted to show us a filmstrip then we would have to go to a special viewing room next to Principal Julie Anne’s office.  For example, we saw “Cree Finds the Way,” and “Jot” in that room.

 We used to walk up to the “Convenient” store, even if we didn’t have any money, and stare longingly at the “Icee” machine, wishing that we could buy some of that liquid sugar.

Dad was a serious poker player and he kept a jar filled with his winnings on his dresser.  Mom told us to go to their bedroom and grab a few coins when we needed lunch money.

Our grandparents drove through Louisville on the way back to Minnesota in their mobile home.  They parked it on Long Boat Key for the winter or drove it to Mexico.  The souvenirs that they bought back for us included maracas, hermit crabs, and Mexican jumping beans.

We all felt pure joy when we saw the spire of the Eifel Tower at King’s Island when our parents took us to the park during the summer.

We used to sneak downstairs after my parents had a bridge party so that we could eat the left over candy.

Dad used to stand on the front porch and whistle loudly to call us to dinner.  Mom would ring a bell.

On Saturday afternoons, Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches.  On Sundays, after mass, she made waffles.

ACBL had an annual picnic on the Ohio River.  They had ponies, Bingo, clowns, sack races, and a seemingly bottomless trough of Coke.  We were in heaven.

The neighborhood kids would get together to play “Ghost in the Graveyard,” “Hot Potato,” “Four Square,” and street volleyball.

Searching for salamanders under the drain and crawdads in the creek, and playing in the woods behind the Rowan’s house. 

Climbing the Morton’s tree, crawling through the sewer tunnel, floating down the creek when it flooded, swinging on the Helmeyer’s swing, scaling the wall in the Pfeiffer’s back yard, and jumping on the Rowan’s trampoline. 

Mexico City

    I want to live.  I want to do things that other people cannot or will not do.  And I want to do them now, before I get so old and tired that I don’t want to do them any more.  That is why I chose to fly to Mexico City for a long weekend of tourism.  Travel puts a little kerosene in the carburetor, which means that if I want to be an interesting person then I have to be interested in the world around me.  It is easy to give up and stay home.  After all, there isn’t a lot of real estate between the day that you retire and dying on your recliner.  So I travel because it makes me feel young and energized; it also gives me something to look forward to and some place to direct my energy.

   My first day in Mexico City started off with a visit to The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I was expecting just a church but it was much more than that, containing wide sweeping grounds and newly constructed gardens.  The Shrine is one of the most popular sites in the world for Catholics and the statues alone were worth the excursion. Among the buildings on the compound are the Old Basilica, the Indian Chapel, the Camilla del Pocito, and the New Basilica of Guadalupe.  Of course, I have heard the story of how the Virgin Mary appeared before a man in Mexico but I had no idea that a compound of enormous size and expense was dedicated to this miracle.

   Our second stop on Friday was Teotihuacan (Ta-Uh-Tee-Waa-Kan), which is located about an hour north of Mexico City and, because of the traffic, was almost a two hour drive on the way back.  This UNESCO site include the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon.  When you think of Mexico and the Aztec culture, these pyramids are what will come to mind because they are so famous.  You are not allowed on the pyramids but the Avenue of the Dead leads you from the pyramids to the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, which you are allowed to climb upon.  I felt like a kid again as I sprinted up the steep stairs and had my picture taken in front of three of the 260 serpent heads that the temple contained.

   Since I paid for a private tour on Saturday, my guide had a lot of time to fill because we moved from attraction to attraction so quickly.  Leonardo took me to the 1968 Olympic Stadium, the Estadio Azteca which can seat over 80,000 fans, and to the University of Mexico City to see the huge mural painted on the side of a building.  The mural was created by artist Diego Rivera and represents the struggle of the Mexican people for independence.  These three places were just an aside.  The first of two main attractions was the Plaza de la Constitution where President Obrador was giving an important speech later in the afternoon.  Because it was such a popular event, the avenues were filled with hawkers and sellers of street food, and every corner of the plaza contained a squad of police officers in case there was any trouble.

   After the plaza were took a break from the city and drove to Xochimilco (Sow-Chi-Meel-Kow), which is a series of canals where you can ride on gondola-like boats.  These boats are all painted in bright colors, can seat up to twenty people, and if you want to make your ride even more festive you can rent a Mariachi Band to play for you.  It is a tradition in Mexico City to take your kids to Xochimilco at least once during their childhood.  Some families made an afternoon out of it by renting the boats for a longer excursion and brought a large picnic basket with them.  On weekends college students rent the boats and make a booze cruise out of the ride.

   Our last stop was to Coyocan (Coy-A-Ocan) to see the Centennial Gardens and the Frida House.  Frida Kalo was severely injured in a train wreck when she was young and, during her convalescence, her father installed a mirror over her bed and gave her an art kit so that she could practice self portraits.  Frida became famous for her art which contained bold colors and whose themes included pain and passion.  Her house was turned into a museum after she died.  Just around the corner from her house is the Centennial Gardens, which includes the Fountain of Coyotes.  The Gardens were filled with people because we arrived on a Saturday afternoon and that is when the park holds its festivals.

   On my last day in Mexico City I visited the Museum of Anthropology and Chapultepec (Cha-Pool-Tuh-Pek).  The highlights of the museum were seeing the Aztec calendar stone, the reproduction of Pakal’s Tomb, and a model of Tenochtitlan (Tuh-Nowch-Teet-Lana), or the capital of the Aztec Empire.  Chapultepec Castle was the home of emperors and presidents until it was turned into a museum.  And because it is a castle, I was expecting a rather dour fort with cannons and barracks, but instead it was a palace filled with plazas, statues, and gardens.  Situated above Mexico City, and surrounded by a park that is twice the size of Central Park, Chapultepec is the jewel in the crown of Mexico’s cultural life.
   

      My buddies in Louisville asked me why on earth would I want to go to Mexico.  My answer now is that my flight left at 6:00 amto Dallas and I was in downtown Mexico City before 11:00 am because of the time change.  In essence, it only took a morning’s worth of travel to get to Mexico City and I spent the rest of the day taking a Hop On Hop Off bus tour.  A first rate hotel only cost me $160 per night and all of the food was reasonably priced.  The people could not have been nicer and the things that I saw will stick with me for the rest of my life.  So I say to anyone who will listen, “You should go to Mexico City

On Writing

      I just started a brand new journal.  It is a little intimidating because it is filled with blank pages and I have no idea of how I am going to fill those pages.  What will I write about?  Why do I bother to write at all?  I started journaling when I was first married and wrote so poorly that I threw the first volume in the garbage.  For over thirty years I have filled many journals with my thoughts but I know that, eventually, these volumes will probably be thrown away, just like my first one.  Still, I enjoy the process and I reward myself by putting my best work on my blog so that friends and family can read it.  Once I have found a theme, like triathlon or traveling, I’ll combine several entries and turn them into a book; over the course of the past six years I have written three books and have self published them on Amazon.  The hard fact is that very few people have read my blog and even fewer have read my books but my thought is that is alright.  As long as I enjoy writing I will continue to journal, even if no one else ever opens the covers.

   I only write first thing in the morning because that is when I am fresh and can concentrate.  Over the course of the years I have collected a series of hard backed paper journals, to add an air of permanency, and have used the same fountain pen for all of my writing.  This pen makes me write slowly and deliberately as I commit my thoughts to paper.  I own an iPad but I only use it to type up my entries so that I can upload them onto my blog.  It is too easy to delete files or edit entries using a computer; my true feelings would be edited or deleted. Using an old school paper journal keeps me honest because readers could tell if I ripped out pages or scribbled out some thoughts.

   Another reason as to why I keep a journal is because I need a place to write down my favorite quotes that I have read in a book or heard in a movie.  For example, I stole this quote from “Moneyball” and later adapted it into a paragraph in the journal as an introduction as to why I don’t participate in triathlon any more.  “We are all told at a certain time that we can no longer play the children’s game.  Some of are told at eighteen and some of us are told at forty, but we are all told.”  Another great quote which expressed my fears about how I was going to handle retirement comes from the movie “Inception.”  “Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?”  This one sentence contains almost all of my fears about aging so it deserved a paragraph.  Finally, Mark Twain once said, “I am all for progress.  It is change that I don’t like!”  This quote doesn’t deserve an entry, or even a paragraph, so I jotted it down in the back of my journal for future reference.  Who knows if I would ever be able to use it.

   The last reason as to why I write is because I like to pick up my old journals, some of which are thirty four years old, and thumb through the pages.  The good, and bad, memories come flooding back and I can relive the emotions that I felt at the time.  And because I invested in quality, hard back journals, these volumes look like they were written yesterday and not thirty years ago.  My hope is that my children, once I have passed, will thumb through my journals and read about how I felt when they were born or how we celebrated their graduation and wedding days.  If nothing else comes from all of the time that I put into my writing then the labor was worth the effort.

The Blind Woman and the Ironman

        The Blind Woman and the Ironman         

   I have had some wins and losses as I have made my way through life the game of life but the one accomplishment that I will always be proud of is my 34 year marriage to Tracey.  We have weathered the storm together and have taken a lot of hits over the years.  For example, we lost all four of our parents before we turned 60.  Now that all of the hard years are over, and we are transitioning to an easeful retirement, we get the best versions of each other.  No longer are we career driven or overachieving but instead are relaxed and at peace with the way our lives have turned out.  When Tracey was a lawyer and I was a teacher we both had a strong sense of purpose but I think that we are happier now than at any other time in our lives.

   I was initially attracted to Tracey because she is so smart, having learned how to navigate her world in spite of being blind, and because she was so much sophisticated than I was.  For example, she taught me words like ‘trousseau’ and opened up new worlds for me by making me look differently at things.  Her parents kept a Lincoln bed in their guest room and Tracey had to explain to me that the old saying of ‘sleep tight’ meant that a bed like that was held together with ropes and a special key was need to tighten those ropes every once in awhile.  These are small things but when put in the aggregate they made me realize that I was marrying up.  

   Part of my attraction to Tracey is that she is so vulnerable but maintains a positive mental attitude to get her across all of the obstacles that life has thrown at her.  Before we had even met I had heard about the blind girl who had joined the Louisville Jaycees, a community and service group who had organized a haunted house, and the first time that I saw her she was painting the walls of the house black.  It was her positive mental attitude that was so attractive to me.  What she could do, she did, when she could have spent her life on the sofa and watching television.  No one would have blamed her for becoming a shut in because of her handicap.  Instead, she was helping to raise money for a local charity and she was attending college.  

   The first time that I talked to Tracey was when we were taking a break from fixing up the Haunted House.  It was still summer so we were all hot and sweaty.  Tracey was paint splattered and covered in dust from her job.  When I saw her walk through the door and towards the group who had gathered in the courtyard, she had a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other and I thought to myself, ‘that’s the girl for me.’  

   While we were still dating, Tracey was finishing up her undergraduate degree from Bellarmine while I was at the University of Louisville and working towards my certification to become a teacher.  When were were first married I was doing my student teaching and Tracey went to Spalding University to get her masters.  These were the hard years.  As I started my first real teaching job, we decided to buy a house and then had three children in quick succession.  Tracey had always wanted to be an attorney and decided to go to law school while the children were still young.  I supported her all of the was and one of my proudest moments was listening to my wife as she gave the commencement speech for her graduating class.  In return, Tracey supported me with the crazy hours that I put in to training for eleven Ironman competitions.

   Now the hard years are over and we can travel like we always wanted to do.  Our trips overseas are our reward for finishing our careers on a good note.  Some couples may find it daunting to spend so much time together but that really hasn’t been an issue for us because we know each other so well.  We both can be touchy and we both know when to give the other some space.  And because we travel so well together we have been to places and done things that others can only dream of.  We have climbed the pyramids in Egypt, fed elephants in South Africa, driven a Yugo through the streets of Belgrade, and floated through the Panama Canal.  Our future plans include visiting places that we never would have tried to tackle individually; Greece, Ireland, England, and South East Asia are on our list.  I am not saying that we deserve our storybook retirement but because we have a strong marriage and a desire to live life to its fullest, we are going to appreciate everything that we have.

Paris, France

    The thing about travel is that you never know what you are going to to see or what hardships you are going to have to endure to experience the new memories of our daily lives.  For example, we took an Uber from our condo and arrived at the airport at 4:30 on Saturday for our 6:30 flight to Paris.  Travel is an ordeal, in spite of the fact that we flew throughout the night without incident, and we met the SS Joie de Vivre, our hotel on a ship, at 2:00 pm on Sunday.  It made me feel good that Carmine Esposito was truly glad to see us and hugged us as we arrived on the ship.  Tracey and I were completely overwhelmed after 18 hours of a travel day.  What we wanted, more than anything else, was to meet up with the University of Louisville Travel Group, as we prepared ourselves for the trip of a lifetime as we navigated through the cauldrons of history that is France.

   Our first real day of travel began on Monday, March 24, as we travelled to the medieval castle of La Roche Guyon.  Our tour was good for what it was and we spent a lot of time listening to Patricia, our guide for the day.  She liked to “gab, gab, gab” while describing the intricacies of the castle, but her narrative was less than inspiring.  Stephanie was our guide in the afternoon and she led us through the Chateau Gaillard, or the old castle that was situated above the Seine River.  It was beautiful but I couldn’t escape the feeling that we were stalling; waiting for the opportunity to visit the sights of Paris, France.  Carmine wanted to save the best for last.
   Most of the travel group drove to Mont Saint Michael on Tuesday, March 25, but Tracey and I made the hard decision to skip this excursion because the bus trip was too long.  Instead, we took a walking tour of the medieval city of Rouen.  Pascalla was our guide.  The highlights of the tour included the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Joan of Arc Church, and the Market Square.  The main topic of conversation was how the French government had decided to move the retirement age from 62 to 64.  As we were leaving Rouen, thousands of protesters were entering the old city to dispute the new retirement age, and we later learned that they broke out some windows in the Market Square and they set fires in front of the church and the cathedral.  Tracey and I decided to stay on the ship for the whole afternoon to avoid the protestors and their vandalism.
   Honfleur is the old port city that sits on the Seine estuary to the English Channel.  It was a beautiful day as Barbara, our guide, showed us the historic parts of the city that are so interesting to the tourists.  We have done a lot of trips and I don’t ask a lot from these excursions; all that I want is a good guide who will show us interesting places that are new to me.  Honfluer fit the bill as the place and Barbara was the perfect guide as she blended facts with a lot of humor to make the tour more interesting.  I took a lot of pictures which I immediately posted on Facebook because that is immensely satisfying to me.
   I have been reading about D Day and the Normandy invasion since I was in middle school so I knew all about the Utah and Omaha beach landings but I never dreamed that I would actually be there.  Utah Beach was well preserved and looked exactly like it did when when our heroes landed there in 1944.  When we took our tour we saw the statues and other memorials that had been placed just off of the beach.  The people who had built a memorial even included a Higgins’ boat that the tourists could walk in to.  A museum has been built off site and it included restored Jeeps, a glider, and a C-47 plane.  Life-like mannequins were dressed up in full uniforms and it was a little eerie to take their picture.  At Pointe du Hoc, where the Rangers climbed steep cliffs to take the German command posts and artillery pill boxes, so that our infantry could land on the beaches more easily.  We visited the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach which contains rows of 2,000 white crosses, a beautiful chapel, and a huge statue that is entitled “The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves.”  Our first stop on our D Day Tour was to see the “Les Braves on Omaha Beach” steel statue which has been cemented in the sand.  Barbara led us through a prayer service, through which she had hired a trumpeter to play “Taps” while we were given a rose to place at the foot of the statue or to place in the waves on the beach.  All five of our stops on Thursday showed that the Americans can build memorials with class and reverence; that we can rise to the occasion when it is important to do so.  
   I taught world history at Sacred Heart for twenty six years and in those years I always taught a unit on the French Revolution.  This chapter of history is important to me as I took a whole class on the revolution at the University of Louisville.  It was 1989, or the two hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, and Dr. Weisbach was my teacher and all of the memories of the lessons that I have learned from that class, and that I have used in my lesson plans for 26 years of teaching history, came alive to me as we toured the Palace of Versailles, the cost of which spurred on the revolution.  Tracey and I signed up for the apartment tour which gave us some alone time with the more intimate artifacts of the French monarchy.  Afterwards our guide, Aurilie, had us join the masses in the main section of the building, where we saw the famous “Hall of Mirrors,” the exact place where, after the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck founded the nation of Germany.  The portraits of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette were on display and this was quite a treat for me because I had been using those pictures as examples of French power and wealth for years.  One of the reasons why we take these trips is because it is impossible to describe the opulence and majesty of Versailles; you simply have to visit the place in order to appreciate it’s grandeur.  
   For our last day in Paris we decided to burn the candle at both ends by doing a tour of the city in the morning, the Louvre in the afternoon, and the Moulen Rouge in the evening.  Our city tour acted as a good primer for the history and architecture of Paris.  This overview was helpful because we intend to revisit the city to tour the highlights of what we have missed.  Paris is overwhelming but our appetite has been whetted for another trip to the City of Lights.  The Louvre was also overwhelming that we could not see all of the artifacts in one day so our guide, Joshua, narrowed our experience to seeing the the “three ladies,” which are the “Mona Lisa,” the “Venus di Milo,” and the “Winged Victory.”  I was distracted by the beauty of these works and, as we were leaving, Tracey said to me, “it is not crying if the tears don’t come out.  Right?”  What my blind wife meant was that she was close to having a nervous breakdown because the huge crowds at the Louvre were depriving her of room to maneuver, so she had to cling to me.  All of her skills in mobility were useless to her as we were packed into the rooms much like sardines in a tin can.  Also, the staircases and the constant escalators are difficult for blind people to navigate and the Louvre had a series of both of these things.  Tracey always makes mobility look so easy that I sometimes forget how difficult it is to be handicapped in these public buildings.  
   I didn’t have any expectations for the Moulen Rouge because I didn’t know anything about it aside from the 2001 Nicole Kidman movie, which I hated.  I could tell that this was going to be a premiere event even before entering the theater because the tickets were so expensive and the patrons were so well dressed; it was a high society crowd.  When we first walked in I was reminded of the dinner theaters from the 1950s, highlighted in The Godfather II movie, and I expected Frankie, Dino, and Sammy, to make an entrance at any minute.  The dinner menu was impressive and I am sure that it earned a five star Michelin rating.  It would be reductive to describe the show as merely a display of “tits and ass,” although that was a big part of what we saw, but we also witnessed the dancers in beautiful costumes who were fully engaged with the crowd.  Aside from the burlesque, we also saw a woman who swam in a huge water tank filled with snakes, a roller skating duet, acrobats, and two male power lifters whose specialty was strength and balance.  The show was better than anything that the Cirque du Soleil could offer in Las Vegas and our excursion to the Moulen Rouge offered a strong finish to our memorable trip to Paris.