Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The Adventure Called "Life" Intervenes.

       My usual approach to this blog is to add posts whenever appreciable headway is made toward my next adventure; a plan is developed, reservations made etc. That would have been the case this year again, but life intervened in the form of a malignant cancer of Cheri's breast. I would have liked to blog immediately, but the emotions of a cancer patient are tricky waters to navigate, and Cheri's desire for privacy was foremost up to this point. She had a lumpectomy and has finished the treacherous chemo-therapy treatments and is now undergoing radiation therapy, which is a walk in the park compared to chemo. She seems to be almost fully recovered as of this writing, and while I must still be more careful than is comfortable, about what I write, I want to bring you up to date.

       We were in the introductory stages of planning a bicycle trip together when we were so rudely interupted; in fact I had already made reservations at a B&B on Boblo Island (aka Bois Blanc) in Lake Huron, and a hotel in Indian River that would have been overnight stops on our proposed ride from Gaylord to Boblo Island and back, that would have happened last week, in fact. It would have been thirty miles each day on the North Central State Bike Path in Michigan with a ferry ride to the island  from Cheboygan, and a rest day on the island, with two nights of luxury at a place called Insel Haus. I was planning to carry our clothes on my new trailer that performed so admirably last year, and it would have been an epic trip, but now we hope to make it happen next year instead.

        We were also in the process of planning another camping trip out to Maine, including meeting my brother, Skip at Umbagog State Park in New Hampshire, that we loved so much in 2009. Those reservations were also made and later cancelled along with the week at the house on Drummond Island that had been reserved and was scuttled. I would have had a lot to report, and you would have read about most of it by now, had not life interupted us so abruptly.

        As it turned out, it has been a good summer to stay home in Kihei since we have dealt with cancer scares for both of our dogs, one that turned out to be a deep infection in Skittles' leg, and the other an operable tumor on Nani's thigh which was removed yesterday. I guess trouble comes in threes after all, and I hope that means we're done for a while. Now all we have to do is pay for it all, and while there has been no vacation as of yet, the bills are close to those that resulted from other summer's happier pursuits. I have been able to participate in Maui's Summer Master Works Chorus, and have enjoyed the rehearsals immensely. More about that later as the performance won't be until December 2013, so there is a ways to go yet.

        Cheri determined that she would not travel until all treatments were finished, and she had time to recover, perhaps sometime in the fall. This schedule would not work with my professional duties, so we are going on separate vacations this year. I leave tomorrow for Michigan (July 24, 2013) to spend a week with my Mom, and later participate in a week-long bike tour called Michigan Shoreline West that takes us from Montague to Mackinaw City. Brother Skip is going to pick me up there and drive us north with our kayaks to near Munising to kayak the fabled Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for a couple day, before it's back home to Kihei on August 14th and back to work. MY daughter, Michelle is flying in tonight to be with her Mom during my absense. I promise that I will file a full report of this trip upon my return to Kihei. See you then!

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