May 7, 2015
Grampies to Ride Again: With healing of the spirit, and healing of the limb.
Discovery has been a constant theme and companion in all our trips so far. Our bikes continually bring us into new landscapes, situations, and cultures. Surprisingly, despite all our years of life, advanced educations, and what not, there is no end to what we can still learn.
Now we have one more, maybe unfortunate example. Until taking up cycle touring I had never been in a hospital. That changed one year ago when I inhaled a teflon spray trying to waterproof a rain jacket. And it changed again when hit by the truck near Titusville.
Injury, illness, hospitals, healing, trying to regain your nerve and optimism, these are all parts of life that so many people are very familiar with. It's just that that did not include the Grampies. It was something that got put on our list of things to discover.
Even now it seems presumptuous to be making such heavy weather of it. Lots of people, lots of cyclists, have faced far worse.
Notwithstanding, this was a big big deal for us. There were the actual injuries, and there was also the knowledge that paralysis or death were just a couple of inches away. It sets up the need for healing both of the spirit and of the limb. That's why a song by Leonard Cohen, "Come Healing", has meant something to me over the past two months. Here he is performing it with the Webb sisters and Sharon Robinson in Helsinki. It's a prayer for both forms of healing. And even though we do not ascribe to any supernatural effect of prayer, there is something to be said for knowing what your goal is and repeating it, if only to yourself.
The lyrics are a bit hard to make out the first time around. You can read them here, but here is a bit of it:
O, solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
O, see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
Another form of almost supernatural support comes when others are willing you to get better. We felt this through the Guestbook, and I certainly felt this from Dodie, who I (anyway) think has an almost supernatural power of healing touch. But the strongest of these forces comes from Amelia, Evelyn, Joseph, Avi, and Violet. They have an abundance of "life force", and a real concern for their grandparents.
Amelia, Evelyn, Joseph also have some modern equipment, as can be seen from the photo below. Don't underrate that blue thing in Joseph's hand - it's not a rattle, but a gizmo for looking into the ears.
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The Grampies Ride Again
It is actually only tomorrow that I meet with the orthopedic surgeon to get the official OK to go back on the bike. But it does not matter what he says, I'll be on it tomorrow! At the same time, Dodie has a medical appointment for next week. Her right knee is really bad and there are some other issues. I think her approach is the same. Damn the torpedoes, we're outta here!
What that means for a few weeks is plodding up and down our local bike paths. But by the end of June we will grab Avi and Violet and cycle Wallace to Plummer, in Idaho. That would be a reprise of Grampies Go Panhandling, but still fun. Without skipping a beat, we will then zoom over to Montreal and set off with Amelia and hopefully Evelyn on a small bit of the Route Verte. And from there - over to Brussels, heading for Venice and then across Northern Italy and Central France. We will call that one "Grampies Ride Again!" Watch for these three adventures, coming soon to Crazyguy!
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