What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling. Time for some R&R, preferably spiced with a bit of history and aviation!
I am a bit of a history buff and World War II, a war my father flew in, has always piqued my interest. My father was a navigator in B17s stationed in England. The Eighth Army Air Force had the highest casualty rate of all the service branches. As a pilot who has had the opportunity to be SCARED in the air (I once danced with a massive thunder cloud that nearly ripped my plane apart-with me in it!), I don’t know how anyone could have done what these young men did. I don’t think I could have faced my fears, my mortality, at that age and repeatedly flown into war. But they did. Day after day. Wow. I have such respect and regard for them.
Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man. Landing is the first. -Pithy Pilot Sayings
Years ago I walked into St. Paul’s cathedral in London with my father and there was a display with a book under glass. The book contained a list of men who had died. One of my father’s flight mates was on the page that just happened to be open.
My father died at 60. This year I’ll be sixty. I don’t see any pre-ordained limitations or similarities, but he died of pancreatic cancer, after a period of considerable stress. I too have been under massive stress and I need to make my health my priority.
So Hawaii ho! If I have to be #HomelessWithCancer, I’m going to have some fun!
Why Hawaii? I haven’t been there. It’s a restful, restorative place. My health has taken a horrible beating since September, and I know that I need to attend to my physical and spiritual self.
Pearl Harbor is obviously on the must see list, but the purpose of my trip is healing. I am not looking for the resort experience or for an urban challenge. I am looking to restore my creativity and outlook on life.
One of my cancer friends and fellow blogger Eileen Rosenbloom (Woman In The Hat) will be on Kauai and I want to get together with her. Stephie will be on the Big Island in May and if our stays coincide, we want to get together. I’d like to visit each island, and see what healing spaces and places each offers.
It all depends on when my house sells. And where things stand with ThinkTLC.
“Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” —Steve Maraboli
What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory!
Always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.
–Margaret Mead
On Twitter this week, this caught my eye. It’s from the Parisian surgeon Olivier Branford whose tweets I enjoy enormously.
For a while, I rather enjoy some routine. It’s great to know where the good snow is on a mountain. To know that you’re likely to find lift next to the ridge. To know that it’s Friday night and you’re playing tennis and doing dinner afterwards. Routine can be nice.
But we can become so mired in our routines that we forget there’s a big world out there. We lose our spontaneity. And then the routine becomes a deepening rut.
I remember being at Ashland the year I was on the road with Whiskey Oscar. I was lucky enough to get a standing room only spot in the back of the theatre, and then after intermission a front row seat! The performance was Macbeth and it was stunning.
At intermission, I sat on a stone wall and watched the crowd. I felt like I knew who all these people were, without having ever met them. They all moved in a certain way; said the appropriate thing; played their small role in a social medley without a flaw.
It was a perfect ordinary event, but it gave me an eerie feeling. I felt as though I was watching a dance and everyone wore a mask. The mask –a combination of clothes and mannerisms, musts and must nots–tightly defined them. I just watched, feeling very disconnected on the one hand, but also very connected to a deep sense the familiarity of the scene. I’d been there so many times in my life. But now I seemed to look in from some other place. I had no routine or mask to define my presence.
Once again, I feel like I’m looking at a life, but this time it’s mine. It’s like watching a slow motion crash. It’s almost an out of body experience as I do the tasks I must do to sell the house; to pack; to say goodby to my beloved Chanel. This can’t be happening; I don’t want to be #HomelessWithCancer, even on an adventure. But events are now beyond my control. The only control I have is to let go.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Orleans 1988
At the start of the year, Michael held onto his acquired aura of Yankee stoicism, a bulwark against this sensuous town. Years of WASP repression had sent his instincts for pleasure deep into hiding, and the New England spareness of his school days provided him cover. Here in New Orleans, he held onto these props of security.
Narcotic prescriptions were doled out only reluctantly. “Drug addicts,” he judged his patients’ pain without care.
“Just give them what they need,” Monsieur le Doctor told him.
Nights on call became a battle of wits and will, with Michael’s patients pitted against his prescriptive reticence, trying to crack his power over their pain. And somewhere amidst the eternal heat of the summer, the endless stream of sick and unhappy patients, and the constant strain of studying for the upcoming boards, Michael changed his mind, and prescriptions for narcotics started to flow easily.
The ring of the phone became an inconvenience to be dealt with, a pill to be administered. But slowly, anger seeped into the equation. Anger at the phone, the patients, at everything and at nothing. At times it became frightening to be around Michael and his emerging anger, always hidden but never far from the calm ivy league surface of Monsieur Henri’s star pupil.
The year unfolded. My classes were wonderful. In terms of architecture, I learned about Louisiana from the perspective of her buildings. I studied suburban and urban buildings; townhouses in the quarter and plantations in the country. The garden district houses and uptown showcases. By Christmas, I could walk through any part of town and rattle off the buildings, the ornamentation the architects and the dates.
My other class was American cartography, but it was really about how Louisiana determined the geographic exploration and evolution of the U.S. Every facet of American cartography was examined from the perspective of the Gulf of Mexico. New England, that tiny collection of states on the morning weather map, barely warranted a mention. It was a most interesting perspective.
My eye was constantly on the map. Old maps in class, tv maps in the morning, maps of the future in my mind. Where to next? Anyplace north was my vote. Back to New Haven. Boston. Chicago. San Francisco.
***
The parades of Mardi Gras are at once magnificent and home made.
“Mister, Mister!” goes the call of the crowd as the floats pass by. Beads are tossed and caught.
The weeks leading up to Lent are full of parades, king cakes, celebrations and preparations, big and small. After a day of slicing flesh and repairing spines, Henri would take us out for dinner at a restaurant along the parade route. Courses were ordered to accommodate the progression of the parade. So there might be oysters followed by bead throwing; a main course with a go cup for the wine; more beads; a cheese course; more beads and desert. Followed by brandy and cigars (for the gentlemen) amidst our catch of beads for the evening.
In addition were the endless parties that just seemed to keep coming. Friday nights out on the town were de rigeur throughout the year, as was the constant stream of food and drink.
And the food! I grew up in a food oriented family. Our multi-month European travel safaris were marked by the restauants we visited. Now in New Orleans, I viewed the town by the food it offered. From simple burgers at Port O’ Call; cajun popcorn at the bar on the corner; spinach salad with fried oysters at Maison de Ville; and the piece de resistance, the bread pudding souflee with bourbon creme anglaise at Commander’s Palace.
All the food in New Orleans was good. The warm searing spices locked your attention to the matter at hand, the plate before you, and temporarily refocused your attention from the sweltering heat. How is it in such a hot climate, heavy, spicy dishes prevail? The dark roux that binds the gumbos; red beans cooked slowly on Mondays, the historic wash days, served with streaming starchy rice; jambalaya; étouffée. The list goes on.
On a balcony overlook Royal Street, we sat pondering this Friday’s meal. From our second story perch I watched the crowd. They laugh, go cups in hand, as they weave through the streets.
I turned my attention back to the menu and ordered Shrimp Remoulade, follow by blackened prime rib. Michael ordered his usual stew of steaming gumbo. I sipped my wine, Michael his scotch. It was a pleasant night, the stars twinkled above and our future was ahead of us.
“I have an offer to go back to Yale,” Michael informed me.
New Haven. Connecticut. YES!
“What do you think?” I asked diplomatically.
“I don’t know if I want to go back where I trained.” Michael brought his glass to his lips. The ice, his concession to the heat, jingled as he raised the glass. Never join a club that wants you was one of his key operating rules, but this was a club worth joining.
“I’d think about it. I miss New England,” I slowly built my case for anything north. “But I can understand how you fell about going back to Yale. Whatever happened to the offers from the private groups?” Private practice would pay considerably more than academic medicine and having seen the abusive hierarchy and byzantine power struggles of academia, the prosperous bliss of private practice seemed like the route of choice to me.
“Shrimp remoulade?” the waiter inquired.
“For the lady.” Always the gentleman, Michael.
“How is school?” Michael changed the subject as I submerged myself in the tangy, spicy cool shrimp on a warm night in New Orleans.
“Wonderful,” I replied in combination to his query and my food. And for that moment, I let the topic of the future drop.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Orleans 1988
Morning, the sun streamed over the peeling ad for Dixie beer on the wall of the next door warehouse. I poured rich, hot, bitter chicory coffee for breakfast. I had found a marvelous Swiss patisserie uptown which baked the world’s richest, most decent brioche. These cakes become my standard morning fare as I watched the TV report on the steamy Gulf weather. New England looked so small and far away.
The year in New Orleans was a year in limbo. I took some classes at Tulane (architecture and cartography); Michael learned spinal surgery; and part of the year we traveled, looking at “real jobs” for my soon to be board certified husband.
Michael was offered some wonderful oportunties. To go back to Yale (my choice!), Harvard. Positions in Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York. We seemed to spend every spare moment agonizing over what would be the best choice
In between, weekends became an attempt to escape from the heat and whatever else bore down upon one’s mind. And we both had a great deal on our minds. I cannot speak for Michael, but I was concerned about this year in limbo. I was concerned about my own future, about starting a family, about a new place, a new job. It was an uneasy place to be, and I felt as if I were being swept away by forces and decisions beyond my scope of influence. I steadied myself with the day to day minutia of life in this incredible town.
And I found great delight in simple pleasures. The architecture. Dining out. Music. The pleasure of learning again. A cup of cafe au lait on Jackson Square. Michael however found no such simply joys. His weekends soon devolved into a pitcher of Manhattans, a bag of Zapp’s potato chips and a stack of videos. Senseless violence videos of commandos and gunfire and visions of sexual brutality. Day after day, weekend after weekend. I tuned out at this side, reading or buried myself in the difficult task of resurrecting long dormant academic skills of my own.
Over the course of several months, Michael grew increasingly distant and incommunicative. He hated his patients, he hated the hospital staff, at times I think he hated me. He would couch his remarks in daggers, then withdraw into silence. This bright, talented man had somewhere decided upon a path of darkness, and here he resided in the recesses of his mind, his pitcher of Manhattans at his side. I do not know what sent him to these inaccessible places which begged for such relief, but he started becoming depressed and angry with greater and greater frequency. The pressure of the upcoming boards was considerable and I think fantasies of failure and grandeur drove him in circles in his mind. It was clearly a circle of destruction and I finally revolted one fine Saturday. I poured his Manhattans into a pitcher and drove uptown where I deposited him and his pitcher on a bench in Audubon park with the Sunday papers for amusement. He sulked, alternately lashing out at me, then demanding the attention I withdrew.
I walked.
I walk through the park. I walked to the University and I did not come back for hours. This descent into surly weekend oblivion was becoming too much. I thought back and if I were honest with myself, I would have admitted that some erratic behavior had surfaced before, although not to this degree of intensity.
Michael was a wonderful raconteur and mimic, and his tales delighted everyone. Years later I found out they were all false. He would boast about sports he never played; cars and racetracks he never drove; and a boarding school he never attended. But at the time, he pulled everyone in, and we all believed.
This year, in New Orleans, he is vaguely macabre and totally self absorbed. He is absorbed in his drink, in the darkest recesses of his mind, yet he demands that his every dark and perverse whim be the center of attention. He pulls the life out of those around him when he is like this.
And then, in a brighter moment, he is all shine and energy, witty and engaging, the perfect handsome Harvard man. But that is a facade, an energy shield. He uses his energy to lure people in like lightening bugs into a jar, and then he slams on the lid, leaving no opening for air, and one by one, the sparkling lights with all their energy and beauty, dim and die.
It was the heat. It was New Orleans, I reassure myself. Alone in this strange town tucked behind levees and hidden from the river to which it owes is very soul, characterized by its culinary and personal excesses, with no one to talk to or confide in, and with Henry as the standard bearer singing into the night, I saw no outlet but a naive hope for some better future.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Flying a sailplane demands all my concentration. It is like anything I have done before. Vague and invisible forces of risking and sinking air form this world and I must find the rising air if I am to stay aloft. Where is it? Which way should I go?
Where before things had been real and tangible, here things are vague and invisible. Currents and suggestions abound, but there is little physical evidence to follow. How do I know that there will be lift under that cloud? How do I know where to look under it? Why do I rise in the air for no apparent reason? Why do I encounter sinking air? I do not yet understand any of this.
If I choose properly, I will have a good flight. If I do not, I will spend the day scrapping for lift and I’ll never go anywhere.
I have dropped into another world and I do not yet understand its ways. They are foreign. I fly though areas of blue sky, blue holes, where there should be no lift, only to find myself in an avenue of rising air that seems to extend as far as I fly.
Yet not two steps to my left, the air is sinking, fast, down towards the earth. If I make the mistake of drifting off into that air, I will lose a great deal of altitude. It could terminate my flight. In a field or s0me other place I don’t want to be. Just two steps over.
When I first started flying, there were rules. You enter the pattern at this altitude. Never lower. You have to have a field picked out at this altitude. You do not stray. Things have a definite progression.
At some point, judgement starts coming into the equation. Former guidelines are reconsidered, challenged. Now I enter my pattern a bit lower. At one thousand feet, I still look for lift, not yet committing to a landout. I readjust the rules, but sometimes I get bitten by this. Some rules are good rules. I need to mind them. I am not greater than the forces around me. Whenever I dare to think that I am, my arrogance comes back to haunt me.
Conscious and unconscious rules. In my heart I know when I have strayed too far. When I feel those first tugs of uncertainty, it is time for me to temper my will and look at the sky around me. I must fly with it, not in spite of it.
I have that sense that things are amiss. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think I need to concentrate on perceiving lift.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Pennsylvania 1988
Moving from the decadent abandon of New Orleans and Mardi Gras to this germanic mid-Atlantic culture where Fat Tuesday was Fasnacht Day was an unbearable contrast for my gastronomic soul. Fasnachts are donut holes. On Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, the day in which all of New Orleans rocks and rolls, eats and drinks and parties until the sun rises, the Pennsylvania Dutch consume donut holes.
Hershey is a relatively small town outside of Harrisburg, in the central Pennsylvania countryside. It’s main claim to fame is the chocolate company. Milton S. Hershey’s legacy lives throughout the town, with the Hershey Chocolate company and Hershey Park historically providing employment for the area. That and the medical center. Milton S. Hersey gave $50 million dollars to the state university to start a medical school, with the stipulation that it be built in this town.
In the rarified world of Ivy League academic parlance, Hershey Med Center is not quite top drawer. Those distinctions are awarded among themselves, to the Hopkins and Harvards of the world. But it was growing, forming a new center for spine surgery, and for Michael it offered an opportunity. Or at least, that was his perception.
When I think about moving to Pennsylvania, I always remember a sign along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Harrisburg 97 miles, it reads. I recall a total sense of isolation and panic. What would I do here? Loyal spouse, I disregarded my concerns and concerned myself with packing and moving halfway across the country and into the country.
Central Pennsylvania is a curious place. It is extremely conservative, almost out of the fifties. As I started looking for work, I encountered attitudes which were well beyond my experience. I had one potential employer say that he wanted to meet my husband, and another ask why I wanted to work at all. I did not fit in.
Conformity was valued here, and this tendency showed itself in peculiar ways. One was the uniform consensus that this was such a perfect place. Quiet, peaceful, predictable.
“This is a great place to raise a family,” I was told again and again. This chant took on an eerie quality, repeated as if it was a mantra, providing a buffer from any other possible perception. I was unable to connect with the seemingly mono-dimensional perspective of a world I did not belong to. Lives were bounded and well defined. In medical circles, wives were marked by the status of their husbands. I missed New Haven and the eclectic, energetic academic environment of a major university and I longed for the waters of the Sound, the music of the buoy, and the cool seaside breezes of summer.
I should have put my foot down about going to central Pennsylvania. There was something eerily incongruent about the area. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that bothered me, but something was not right.
But instead, I deferred to my husband. It was his first job after his medical training had finally finished and I wanted him have the freedom to do what he wanted. Besides, I could hardly force him go back to Connecticut or to give the west coast a try. So I was along for the ride.
***
It was a Friday evening and I planned a leisurely dinner for the two of us that evening. In New Haven we used to share leisurely dinners, talking until all hours. I decided to throw some steaks on the grill for dinner in an attempt to dredge up the pleasant past.
For the first time in nearly three years, we were finally getting unpacked in a new house, in a new town.
“Isn’t dinner ready yet?” he inquired.
“In a minute. How do you want your steak?”
“Goddamn it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s dog hair on my pants.”
“We do have a dog.” The bassett hound howled in agreement.
He ignored both of us and topped off his drink.
“Aren’t you on call tonight?”
“Only spine call.”
I looked at him. Only spine call. If any spine trauma came into the emergency room tonight, Michael was the surgeon responsible.
He avoided my gaze.
“Here,” I gestured him into the dining room with a plate of food. “You look beat. You know what we should do? We should go on a trip. When was the last time we took a vacation?” I asked, joining him at the table.
“Life is not a vacation,” he admonished in his new found assistant professor’s tone.
“I know that. I just want to take one with you. We live in the same house and never see each other. I think we need to spend some time together. Remember how much fun we used to have in Maine?”
He ignored me.
“St. Maarten?” The days at Yale, remember those? I silently inquired.
“We haven’t had a vacation in five years. Five years! You look terrible and you have no life outside the hospital!”
“There’s nothing wrong with my life.”
“What life? All you do is work. You are totally stressed out. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. If it’s not getting to you, it sure is getting to me.”
“There is no stress. I like my work.”
I looked at him hard across the dinner table.
“You do nothing but complain. You hate your peers, you hate your patients and you are chronically unhappy. You hate the call schedule; you hate the new Dean. You blow up over nothing. You have dropped all your outside interests and friends and you refuse to take a simple vacation. You’re drawn, you’re grey and you drink too much.”
Michael was silent. Rock still. I had intruded on sacred ground, but I couldn’t stop now.
“Look at you. You’re on call tonight and you’re on your third drink.”
He glared at me.
“Michael, get out of that hospital. Go away alone if you have to. Stop drinking. Get some perspective, get some help. Your job doesn’t love you. Your patients don’t love you. Your staff doesn’t care about you. But I do and I cannot seem to reach you. I am really worried about you. I see a man who I love dearly, falling steadily apart. You’re miserable, stressed out and working yourself to death, for what? For your boss? For a title? For money? All the money in the world isn’t worth this. If you died tomorrow, would you wish you’d spent another day at the hospital?”
Silence. Deafening silence.
Michael rest his fork on is plate. He looks dark and unwell.
“Michael, what is wrong?”
Dark circles hang low under his eyes. Tears seemed to form, then hatred. “I never loved you. I am in love with my nurse. She loves me. She needs me..”
The sound of the beeper. Michael reaches quickly for it, leaving his words hanging in the air.
Emergency room. Auto accident on the way, spine trauma and Michael is on call. He quickly downs the remainder of his drink and without another word, leaves. I hear the garage door open and close, as he disappears in his new Mercedes.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
It was a tight thermal, swirling rapidly upwards. I banked the glider hard to the left. The large metal sailplane banked and seated itself in the rising air.
The altimeter indicates climb, but I can not sense it in this heavy plane.
“Stick back,” my instructor advises. Back pressure, back pressure and rudder to keep the plane turning tightly to climb in a narrow thermal. I hold the plane and we gain altitude. The thermal is small and it takes all my effort to try to center the plane in the rising air. Slow, keep the plane slow, because we climb ever so much better just above stall speed. It is an art, flying a sailplane, and I am absorbed in practicing my craft.
And then, without notice, I am looking over my toes at the earth rotating around and around. My straps press into my shoulders and I hang from the mounts. One rotation. Two. Another. Green earth beneath my feet. The sight is mesmerizing, pulling me down with it. The altimeter spins down.
I am stunned; I truly don’t know what happened. I instinctively neutralize the stick and push it forward, kick rudder and regain airspeed. The plane rights itself. In the thermal, the combination of too much opposite stick and rudder had produced a cross control spin.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Until you stand alone, you do not stand. The first time I truly stood alone was when I was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis. It was at Yale. Doctors would barely look mean the eye when I asked hard questions. Hard answers were not their turf. Events after my surgery had nothing to do with them . Survival was my affair.
“Don’t let skin stand between you and the diagnosis.”
They didn’t. There was surgery and drugs. Eventually I would beat the odds and be alright, but at the time I had no idea if I would be alive next year.
What would become of me? How could this be happening?
There were people who came into my life, as if by chance; people who were sent to befriend and help me, but I was too frightened to let them in. What was I frightened of? I try to recall. Of living. Of feeling. For I had made a terrible mistake in marrying an unfeeling man.
Alone again in a sailplane. This time I feel. I feel terror. I am low over the land. There, a football field. But in my heart of hearts I know I can’t get my plane into that field. There are goal posts and bleachers. Fences. It is too early the season, and I am not seasoned enough.
I want to cry out like a little child. But there is no one to come to my rescue. I am alone in the cockpit. I must save myself.
Sink. There is nothing but sink everywhere in this valley.
I will have to land.
I will have to land.
Last time I landed out in a field I came in high and managed to stop before I would have flown into the trees. I walk back in my mind and look at that landing. The trees were terribly close. I had made a series of bad judgements.
I remember landing, drifting. A bit too fast, a bit too high. None of this good. The trees are coming. If I do not get this down, I will smash into the forest at five feet off the ground. I do not want to do that.
Forget that, focus here now.
Turn off the radio. Concentrate. Concentrate on the task at hand. Five hundred feet. I am over the black tarred roof of a high school. It is my last chance. The accumulated heat on the roof might just generate a thermal.
I feel a bare bubble under my right wing. I prefer to thermal left, but that is irrelevant. I turn and I bank the plane very, very carefully, watching to keep that yaw string perfectly straight. The plane climbs better in a slight slip but not now. Now I fly perfectly.
I look at the altimeter. I lost thirty feet on that last circle. But lift is here, I can feel it. It is erratic and disorganized. Another turn. Another. I wait, a timeless wait, and I try to hold my altitude. It is not even, but there is something here. I fear that if I move the plane I will lose the fledgling lift that seems to be forming and there may not be another opportunity at this altitude to find it again. I stay put.
The bank is steep and I hold it so, constant, just turning around and around and around, hoping, praying. I watch my airspeed. No chance to stall, keep it a little fast, but fast the plane doesn’t climb as well.
I grind around and around praying that my wings catch some wisp of rising air. I am down to five hundred feet AGL when the altimeter slowly, almost imperceptibly, starts to rise.
Just keep it here. Keep it in the forming lift.
I am near tears.
Around and around. How much time passes I do not know, and it does not matter. Flying plays games with time. All that matters is altitude. Precious altitude. I am approaching 1,000 feet and my rate of climb has increased. I am still reluctant to move my plane, to explore the air to see if there is better climb here. I stay put, just circling over that black rooftop, eyeing the athletic fields just beyond. I will not put my plane into that field. I will not.
I will myself to rise. First I will just climb out of here. Then I will worry about how I get home. I am flying from an unfamiliar airfield and I haven’t a clue where I am. How far out am I? What valley is this? Where is the river? What of the weather?
I turn the radio back on and the people I had been flying with are all declaring another turnpoint. They are leaving me behind.
I don’t care about turnpoints. I don’t want to go to another turnpoint, I just want to find the friggin’ field I took off from. I just want to go back, I want to land, but to go back I have to keep going forward.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Pennsylvania and California 1990
Cold steel for a quick heal, the surgeons say. Except that those who wield the scalpel never seem to face the scars they inflict.
Those days were black. Michael would call periodically, depressed. He had moved into a horrid little apartment and then tore off the front door in a fit of rage . His parents kept asking what I was doing to their son. The truth is, I never saw him. He had dropped out of my life when he ran off with the nurse. They never accepted that he was doing this to himself.
All that I heard of my husband, this man who had been my companion for fifteen years, were rumors and late night phone calls with rambling thick talks of insurance polices and money. His depression was unbearable. The simple act of speaking with him placed a heavy drain on my heart. I felt as if his words could pull the very breath from my soul. I hate you. I need you. You ruined my life.
I was speaking to a bottomless psychic pit, a black hole that beckoned me down with it. I felt as if I were pushed and pulled into his enormously dangerous swirling whirlwind of human emotional debris, and if I did not extricate myself form this downward spiral of events, I would die, battered by some senseless piece of refuse swirling in the murk. I had to get out. I had to pull myself away.
I called Eva, my lycra and big haired Czech friend from Connecticut, who was now living in California. “Can I come visit?”
Of course.
I stayed a week, a week during which I poured my heart out. I simply cannot comprehend these bizarre events. I am beside myself and I can see that my constant ravings are a bit tedious for those who must listen. I fear I will wear out my welcome. I need space. I need to wander and be alone. I excuse myself and head to San Francisco.
The weather was beautiful. North of the city, I drove to Sonoma. I sampled wine as I traveled the road, not knowing where it might take me. The climate; the unending rows of vines, staked and laden with fruit; the hills; and the flowers all seemed comforting and impossibly light compared to my life in the east.
I could relocate to San Franscisco, I thought. And come up here on weekends. I stopped for lunch and soaked in the possibilities and the sunshine as I continued my trek through the valley.
In Calistoga I stopped for the evening. That night I wandered through town, stopping to eat at a place where I shared some space at the bar with an owner of a local vineyard. We talked about wine, about the valley, about the food. It was a pleasant and innocuous conversation, and I went to bed that night, well satiated from a combination of a good dinner and distance from my life.
***
At the eastern edge of Calistoga, before the vineyards take over the landscape, there is an airstrip. Glider Rides, the sign says. Something about the idea of a glider ride was appealing this California morning. I approached the desk.
“What’s involved in getting ride?” I asked.
“They won’t start until 10:30 or 11.”
Ten thirty or eleven. I want to get moving, back to San Francisco. But some indefinable sense that I had to do this held me there.
“I’ll wait.”
I put my name the top of the passenger list, and set off to explore the town and the mud baths until it is time to fly.
***
I returned around eleven am. A quiet bustle, a discreet hum of activity hangs in the air. Someone fusses with the cowling of an engine; someone else takes the canopy cover off a glider and removes the ropes that hold the wings to the round. He calls for help and together the two men push the engineless plane towards me, over to the flight line.
I am introduced to my pilot and the engineless plane that will take me aloft.
I ask no questions. I feel no fear. I climb into the front seat of the glider and fasten my seat belts.
The pilot, an older gentleman, settles himself into the seat directly behind me. I hear the sound of his seat belts linking, metal clasp against metal hook, and the turning of dials and the beeping of instruments as they come alive.
“Ready?” asks the voice behind me.
I am ready. I look up and see the big bubble canopy come down over my head. It latches into place. I sit sealed in my seat in the front of the plane, and I wait.
Through the canopy I hear the sputtering sound of a motor, and a big red and white plane taxies out onto the strip front of us. The propeller whirls, dust billows up, and a young man runs up to the nose of the glider with a long yellow rope in his hand. I see his free hand open and close in some sort of silent signal, and he runs away.
In front of me, the big red and white tow plane positions itself in place on the runway. Its engine is roaring and dust and dirt spills into the air behind it. The yellow tow line that connects the two planes becomes taunt as the red and white beast inches forward.
Someone lifts a wing off the ground, leveling the sailplane.
“Here we go”, warns the voice from behind. The rope gives the glider a tug, and all at once we are bumping over the ground, hurtling down the runway in the dust behind the big red and white airplane.
At first it seems awkward and somewhat out of control. The stick maneuvers left and right, and I sense the concentration of the pilot in back. We hurtle forward, faster, faster, faster. The bumping over the ground grinds into a steady hum , and then it smooths. We are skimming over the ground, being pulled mercilessly forward behind the big roaring red and white beast in front. The ground rushes by, perilously close, and then, all of a sudden, the tow plane breaks with the ground. We are flying.
The plane in front of me points its nose upwards and we follow, banking to the left in tandem, the two aircraft rise through the air in perfect formation.
I look out over acres and acres of vineyards. Tall hillsides form the bounds of the valley where rows of staked grapes stand neatly aligned beneath the beautiful blue California skies. I am quite lost in the perfection of the scene below when a sudden bang brings me back to the situation at hand.
What was that noise? Images of falling from the sky hit the pit of my stomach and I grab hold of the glider’s sides.
Laughter erupts from the seat behind me.
“It’s ok. I just released the tow rope. Look, we’re flying on our own.”
And so we were. I peeked out from the confines of my seat. The tow plane had disappeared and silently, effortlessly we were soaring. The sensation of flying like this was so strange, so unlike anything I had ever experienced before. All at once it was peaceful, gentle, and thrilling.
“Is this safe?” I inquire, a bit belatedly, from my passenger’s seat.
“Haven’t had an accident yet,” says the voice in the back. “And I’ve been flying thirty years. This is a great place to fly. I come down every summer. Come on, let’s go explore.”
The plane banks steeply on its side and circles like a bird. I lean into the turn and look out the long wing, to the earth. It looks as if I could just slide down the wing and fall to the ground. But we don’t fall, we rise.
‘We’re in lift,” says the pilot. “Lets see if we can climb up a bit.” And we stay in our tight little circle, going around and around. There the plane evens out and we are flying straight ahead.
“Want to stall it?” asks the pilot hopefully.
“No, no!” I answer, my aerial confidence still that of a fledging.
“It’s too early to get too high. The ground doesn’t heat up enough to produce good lift for another hour or two. But we can fly around the valley. Where would you like to go?”
“Over to those hills,” I point westward and the plane heads to the mountains. From my birds eye view, I spy mansions and pools, roadways and forest, valleys and hills. We swoop and we swirl in the air, surveying the earth from our aerial perch. It is so expansive, so beautiful. There is an inmate sense of proportion to the roll of the land viewed from half way into the sky. In my silence I am stunned by the magnitude of the experience.
“Time’s almost up. We’ll have to head back,” the voice interrupts my reverie.
We turn back towards the airport. As the plane descends everything looms larger. The perfect rows of vineyards start to weave a bit, the ever green from above, a bit less even as we get closer. The cultivated ground comes closer as the nose of the glider points to the earth, and I watch as my perspective vanishes. All I see is the dusty landing strip rising up to meet me. Just when it seems like we will collide with our destination, the sailplane levels out and we glide down slowly, parallel with the ground, until I feel the earth meet the belly of the plane and we come to a stop. The airplane dips one wing to the ground, as if to officially mark the end of the flight.
I thanked the pilot, paid my bill and headed back to San Fransisco.
And so it was, by way of New Haven, New Orleans, Hershey, PA and Calistoga, CA that I happened to stumble upon this sport called soaring.
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
It was Labor Day 1991. Those three days are indelibly recorded in my heart, my mind and my first logbook, a log book which appeared from the jumbled potpourri of soaring paraphernalia which lived in the trunk of Sam’s big blue Buick. A tow car par excellence and a roving soaring supply store.
Sam opened the trunk and fished around. Tow ropes, tools, books, papers, and magazines littered the space. “Know I’ve got one here somewhere,” he muttered. And then it emerged, a little blue book, rectangular in shape.
“Here, ” Sam gestured the book towards me. My first logbook. And in this book my first entry, written in my instructor’s slanted script, reads as follows:
On the opposite page, under type of piloting time, Sam had written: Dual .5 hours. And it was signed SC Harvey 261344.
In this little blue book I would record each and every flight, each and every lesson as, bit by bit, I took to the skies. Many of my early flights were short ones. Partly because we tended to start lessons early in the day before the lift started, and partly because I didn’t know how to keep the plane aloft. And so in half hour increments, more depending upon the soaring characteristics of the day, I learned to fly.
I look over those early entries and try to recall my first feelings. Familiarization. Nothing is familiar, everything is astonishing! I am in a world of magic and awe soaring silently through the skies.
First I learn the simple basics. I learn about stick and rudder. About the need to coordinate movement between them. About ailerons and elevators. Dive brakes to control your altitude. Open them and they disrupt the smooth flow air over the wing. Close them and I feel the adhesion of the air to the wing’s surface and our descent diminishes.
I learn about how to fly on tow. Where and how to position the plane. What to do about slack in the tow rope. How to set up a pattern and how to land.
I learn about thermals. Invisible updrafts air that keep you aloft. I learn about sink, invisible drafts of descending air that pull you down. I learn about the delicate dependencies of being on tow, and about the exquisite freedom of flight.
In my waking hours, I never dreamed of flying and now I feel as though I live in a dream world where this is my greatest reality. Energy comes from places unseen, and in my sailplane I try to position myself and make use of these gifts of the earth. My human efforts to navigate through this alien world are fledgling ones, but I have to start somewhere. And so for that first weekend, I start a pattern which will guide the next several years of my life. Up early, to the airport to get the planes pre-flighted and hauled to the flight line, and then off into the sky for a day of soaring.
What I recall most about that long Labor Day weekend was the restoration of a sense of wonder. Perhaps it was the introduction of a new dimension to my perspective of life. Perhaps it was the thrill. I just knew that to be in the air was the most exhilarating experience I could imagine. It was the only thing in my life that made me feel alive again.
Inspiration, joy & discovery through travel. Oh, did I mention with supposedly incurable cancer?
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CancerRoadTrip is about making lemonade out of lemons.
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Pearl Harbor is obviously on the must see list, but the purpose of my trip is healing. I am not looking for the resort experience or for an urban challenge. I am looking to restore my creativity and outlook on life.
perspective of her buildings. I studied suburban and urban buildings; townhouses in the quarter and plantations in the country. The garden district houses and uptown showcases. By Christmas, I could walk through any part of town and rattle off the buildings, the ornamentation the architects and the dates.
My other class was American cartography, but it was really about how Louisiana determined the geographic exploration and evolution of the U.S. Every facet of American cartography was examined from the perspective of the Gulf of Mexico. New England, that tiny collection of states on the morning weather map, barely warranted a mention. It was a most interesting perspective.
slicing flesh and repairing spines, Henri would take us out for dinner at a restaurant along the parade route. Courses were ordered to accommodate the progression of the parade. So there might be oysters followed by bead throwing; a main course with a go cup for the wine; more beads; a cheese course; more beads and desert. Followed by brandy and cigars (for the gentlemen) amidst our catch of beads for the evening.
And the food! I grew up in a food oriented family. Our multi-month European travel safaris were marked by the restauants we visited. Now in New Orleans, I viewed the town by the food it offered. From simple burgers at Port O’ Call; cajun popcorn at the bar on the corner; spinach salad with fried oysters at Maison de Ville; and the piece de resistance, the bread pudding souflee with bourbon creme anglaise at Commander’s Palace.
crowd. They laugh, go cups in hand, as they weave through the streets.
cup of cafe au lait on Jackson Square. Michael however found no such simply joys. His weekends soon devolved into a pitcher of Manhattans, a bag of Zapp’s potato chips and a stack of videos. Senseless violence videos of commandos and gunfire and visions of sexual brutality. Day after day, weekend after weekend. I tuned out at this side, reading or buried myself in the difficult task of resurrecting long dormant academic skills of my own.
Tuesday was Fasnacht Day was an unbearable contrast for my gastronomic soul. Fasnachts are donut holes. On Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, the day in which all of New Orleans rocks and rolls, eats and drinks and parties until the sun rises, the Pennsylvania Dutch consume donut holes.
stand neatly aligned beneath the beautiful blue California skies. I am quite lost in the perfection of the scene below when a sudden bang brings me back to the situation at hand.
