Road Trip to Two Cities Beginning with “Du”

My last blog gave an account of my first real travel escapades after suffering a deep brain surgery setback last year. Trips to Wisconsin and then Chicago with walker, wheelchair, G tube supplies, and everything else all packed in the car, helped assuage my fears about travel. More importantly, those trips showed my husband and me that travel is not just possible, but now a permanent part of my Road in Retirement. So, three more trips were planned! The first two trips are described here to places starting with "Du."

Duluth and Sea Legs

A brief trip to Duluth involved a beautiful lunch with friends, a small lake, a sunny summer Friday, and a pontoon with legs. The legs are this miracle invention that allows people with balance and walking issues a chance to board a floating vessel like a pontoon. They also circumvent the cost and effort of installing a boat lift, but I’ll stick with the more melodramatic explanation.

Jesus and Boats

Water, boats, and people are a combination designed by God for practical and supernatural purposes. Jesus loved boats. Yes, boating. We read about Jesus walking on water right up to a ship and then climbing in, we hear of him calming the raging Sea of Galilee from a boat’s bow, we are told, and the apostle John (chapter 21) credits Jesus with instigating a haul of 153 fish in one outing in a little boat nearly too small to contain the catch. Jesus even used a boat as a pulpit once to preach to hundreds of people on shore; a boat that rocked in the waves because “legs” weren’t invented yet. But what about all of the unrecorded times that Jesus and the disciples just wanted to cruise the waves of the Sea of Galilee to enjoy some downtime, soak up some vitamin D, or relax in conversations that were not necessarily “gospel” oriented like telling jokes about Peter’s incredibly stinky feet or wondering how the families were doing back in Capernaum. I was on a pontoon for an afternoon just relaxing with friends because the boat had legs. Those legs were miraculous to me because they would level the rig to an even height with the dock so I could board with relative ease. This is my road and by golly I will enjoy it.

The Dubuque Reunion and Cousins

My other “Du” road trip was to Dubuque, Iowa for a family affair on my side. My mom had a sister in Western Wisconsin and another in Dubuque, Iowa when I was growing up in Southeastern Wisconsin. My mom and her two sisters had 18 kids between them and we cousins got along for the most part; seeing each other periodically. In typical life fashion, all three families started out with Leave It to Beaver (60’s TV show about a suburban family with only minor life-upsetting events) life situations, but then unplanned and messy circumstances brought challenges of all types that strained our three families. My upbringing; for example, took some nasty twists and turns beginning with the sudden death of my father when I was seven years old, leaving my mom with seven kids and all the pressures one can imagine for a single mom raising a family in the mid-1960s. My other siblings and cousins had challenges through the years as well, but more than an adage, time brings healing and those of us who could make it, gathered in Dubuque in 2024, many of us staying at the elegant Hotel Julien. It was a joyful gathering aimed at simply catching up. We caught up on family history, kids, jobs, sports, and life in general. We enjoyed culinary delights from our native lands such as Polish poppyseed coffee cake, Danish kringle, and Wisconsin cheese. I loved every minute of it.

Back Home

On our way back home to Grand Forks, about 10 hours for any normal traveler or 15 hours by Chris and Eileen time, with a couple of miscues, my chauffeur asked me what three things stood out the most about the trip. It was an immediate answer. I gave him three names of cousins who sat and talked to me throughout the weekend's reunion events. To these cousins and quite frankly to all my family members at this reunion I wasn’t “poor Eileen with Parkinson’s Disease.” I was that little baby girl with cholic (or just a spoiled baby disposition 😊) who wouldn’t sleep at night. My aunt described that “uncontrollable crying Eileen” situation as getting so out of control that she was sent to my home from Dubuque a couple hundred miles away as a teenager, to babysit me 24-7 for a week. This provided my mom with some well-needed rest and respite. Families were like that, back then. As a matter of fact, sometimes for reasons we never knew we were shipped off to different relatives’ homes for weeks!

Miscues

Oh, and about the miscues, they seem to follow me on my road wherever I go; one of them was leaving my wheelchair behind in a Culver's parking lot in Sparta, Wisconsin. We left Dubuque, made a stop in Sparta, and were on our way to a hotel at the halfway point back to Grand Forks. We rolled into a rest area, yeah, like many many miles down the road and the censored conversation went something like this. 

“Hey Chris, where’s the wheelchair?”

 “Uh, ok I am not sure. Is this a trick question?” 

“No, I need the chair to get to the bathroom.”

“Aah yeah, um it’s not in the back of the car?”

“No.”

 “Well, uh, oh oh, let me think aah . . . the Culver's handicapped parking spot!”

“Isn’t that a few . . . cities  . . . back the way we came?” 

“Yep.” 

As I reflect on this incident now, I smile. How did Chris not back into it, or see it in the rear-view mirror, we (excuse me, he) will never know. I mean if it was an evening Wisconsin bar stop, yeah, one could maybe understand the miscue, but it was a Culver’s lemon ice stop in broad daylight. Ok, that was a WI joke, not reality, mostly. Anyway, this is a retirement road, thank goodness, and I have some time on my hands and a loving chauffeur for backtracking if need be. Oh, and the third trip hasn't happened yet, but it will involve air travel. Yikes!