Salt Lake City

I had a business trip to Salt Lake City and since I will probably never return there I explored around the city in my extra time. It was surprised at the snow capped mountains visible around the city in the month of May. I took my life in my hands and ventured around Mormon Temple square. Kind of odd to see tons of 20 year old girls proselytizing every one who signed up for a personal "free" tour. Also odd to see tons of people getting married. I stopped to ask a camera man, who also tried to convert me, about why so many women were dressed in wedding gowns. He said one wedding every 15 minutes starting in the month of May. I must say that the Mormons do build impressive buildings. You must be a Mormon to go into the Salt Lake Temple but all other buildings were open to the public. The last few photos I took from the airplane as I had a great view of the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City from the air as it was the only day without any clouds.

travel in India

During the last week of October and the first week of November I went to India to travel with a friend, this is a summary of the transportation I took:

14,000 miles by AIR took 30 hours
3,000 miles by TRAIN took 75 hours
100 miles by CAR took 4 hours
30 miles by BUS took 2 hours
30 miles by FOOT took 18 hours
and who knows how many hours in auto-rickshaws?

by AIR : Newwark, NJ ➤ Delhi (3660 miles in 14 hours)
by TRAIN : Delhi ➤ Amritsar (278 miles in 8 hours)
by CAR : Amritsar ➤ Gurdaspur (43 miles in 2 hours)
by CAR : Gurdaspur ➤ Amritsar (43 miles in 2 hours)
by TRAIN : Amritsar ➤ Delhi (278 miles in 6 hours)
by TRAIN : Delhi ➤ Bhubaneswar (1070 miles in 24 hours)
by CAR : Bhubaneswar ➤ Pipli (12 miles in 1 hour)
by CAR : Pipli ➤ Bhubaneswar (12 miles in 1 hour)
by TRAIN : Bhubaneswar ➤ Kolkata (273 miles in 7 hours)
by TRAIN : Kolkata ➤ Varanasi (472 miles in 14 hours)
by FOOT : Varanasi ➤ Saidpur (30 miles in 18 hours walking the Ganges)
by BUS : Saidpur ➤ Varanasi (30 miles in 2 hours)
by TRAIN : Varanasi ➤ Delhi (471 miles in 12 hours)

news from the Army and the road

We received news from our oldest son from Ft. Jackson Army base yesterday. He is doing well, which is very encouraging for all of us. He says he is forced to wake up at 4am and goes to bed around 9pm each day. He actually gets off every Sunday, which is definitely surprising, but we don't know what that means exactly. He really looks forward to the evening meal as he says he likes the food a lot; also a bit shocking to me. He has learned to repel and use a gun so far. He likes learning new things and how you have to work as a team, giving him a sense of accomplishing something together. All in all this is great news.

We heard from next to oldest son last night as he made it to Nashville. I hope he doesn't want to stay and become a country singer! I remember stopping at the McDonald's next to the Grand Ole Opry on our trip back to NC, as it is quite hilly and nice in that part of Tennessee. His next stop should be on the western part of Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. I don't ever remember going there, but I must have been there at least once.

let the adventure begin...

So my next to oldest son left this morning at 5am sharp for his 3000 mile driving adventure to California to attend school. One of his best friends is going with him so that makes us feel a whole lot better than when he was talking to driving the whole way by himself. They are planning on sleeping in camp grounds all along the way. The last plan we heard, which is definitely subject to change, was for an over night visit in Nashville TN, Little Rock AR, somewhere in the heart of Texas, Flagstaff AZ (where they will make a side trip to see the Grand Canyon), Tucson AZ (to see my mother), then up through eastern CA so they can see Yosemite with a potential side trip through Las Vegas (which I suggested they didn't attempt). Sounds like a wonderfully exciting adventure for a 20 year old to take on a cross country road trip. Especially with a really god friend, who just so happens to have never been further west than the middle of North Carolina. Of course all of this depends on his car, which hopefully will make the journey without giving them problems. We had the whole car checked by my mechanic friend last week and he has extra oil and engine coolant in the car just in case. I emphatically told him that if he goes to Las Vegas just to see it, then he cannot go through Death Valley on the way to California. Just the name alone should scare him, but at 20 of course it does not.

As I was bidding him goodbye this morning, I realized that I was 20 when I went to Europe and then onto India where I spend two years on my grand adventure. Now I am beginning to understand how my mother felt...

wish list

Some people called it a to-do list, others a wish list, still others a bucket list and then of course there is a honey-do list. So many different lists we can keep. I like to keep lists so I can sleep at night and not worry the next day on what I have forgotten to do at home or at work. I often write down on a post-it note at the office every thing I have left to do and did not finish, before leaving to go home. I am not talking about that kind of list. The honey-do list does not get used much around our home as I know when my honey wife tells me something needs to be done, then I need to do it instead of waiting until later or another day. I am talking about a list of things you wish you could do in your life time. It may be lack of money or time that prevents you from checking things off that list. Maybe you don't even have such a list. I was reminded of this as we watched the movie The Bucket List last night. It is right up there with Secondhand Lions as our favorites. I feel extremely fortunate as I used to keep a mental list of stuff I wanted to do in my life time. I have done them all. Now there are some I would like to repeat, like living in India and visiting the Himalayas. Some of the big things I wanted to do and have done are: visit the Grand Canyon, see beautiful mosques in Turkey, look around Europe, go to the Himalayas, see the Taj Mahal and work in the Middle East. There are related things I would still like to do, like raft down the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon, go on a long trek in the Himalayas and really go all out and see Mt. Everest from Base Camp. If I died today, then I would have no regrets as I have seen many things that I never thought were possible as I was growing up.

Life for me was very simple growing up in the foot hills of the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia. My world was the valley in which I lived and I never thought of life beyond Virginia. Our adopted grandparents next door were born, raised and never left the valley. It was just how life was lived. We had a small farm with cows, chickens, sometimes sheep, a horse, a pony and a couple of dogs. I heard one time that a neighbor's son lived in Saudi Arabia, but that seemed so dream like to me as I could not imagine what that meant. I spent hours in the garden, mowing yards for neighbors and playing basketball. That was my life. I would get lonely and hope that someone would stop by and play basketball with me in our drive way, but often it was just me shooting alone. I never ever thought of any other life. Not until I got to high school that is. Then I just wanted to get out of the valley and go somewhere else, anywhere else. My adopted grandfather who I called Bob-boo, had been to France in World War II and had only talked to me about it once and cried the whole time he spoke of it. That was really my only exposure to life outside of Virginia. Sure we took many trips to see Civil War battlefields throughout the south, but I never thought of living anywhere else. Bob-boo also graduated in one of the first classes at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1903, which is now called VaTech. That was where I wanted to go, but Bob-boo died before I attended the first year out of high school. His wife felt the need to pay for most of my schooling since it meant so much to him that I go there. That was the beginning of the adventure for me as once I left the valley I have been a pilgrim all over the world since then. Not bad for a rural small time farm kid from a town of 500 people. I could never have imagined it would turn out this way.

25 years

I wish I could say that is how old I am, but it turns out that is how long my wife and I have been married. I think it must be unusual in the USA to have been married only once and to have lasted for 25 years. We have seen many good and bad times together and still like each other, which has to be even more odd!

We met under the most unusual circumstances. I was a volunteer with a Christian group in India and Bangladesh for two years. I was not too keen on returning to university, but the leader of the group I was with in Bangladesh suggested I finish my degree and then go to the Middle East since my degree was in Geophysics. The summer I was to return, I went to visit an elderly couple one more time who I frequented since they were the only people I knew personally with A/C. He was a medical doctor and had spent many years in South Korea and had recently moved to Bangladesh to start more clinics. He suggested I visit a man named Mr. Dietrick, who was well known at VaTech (see an earlier post), as he had worked with his son in the same hospital in Korea for many many years.

Upon arriving at VaTech that fall, I went back to my home church to see who was still there that I knew. It is common in a university based church to see tremendous turnover, and I fully expected to arrive as an unknown. On the first Wednesday I arrived at our weekly home meeting, I was greetly openly by people I never met before. It turns out that my monthly letters were read in that home so every one had gotten to know me that way. I asked if anyone knew where Mr. Dietrick lived and he lived just down the street and his grand daughter was there visiting in this very house that evening. She fully expected me to be some old man she had been hearing about in far away India, but was pleasantly surprised to find me to be her own age and quickly offered to take me to see her grandfather.

Things progressed quickly and even though another girl really liked me as well, I decided Sarah would be a great choice since she had lived her whole life overseas in South Korea. It was really a mutual feeling I came to find out. Each Saturday a group from the church, including Sarah and I, would go to the local nursing home to visit elderly people and just be friends with them. We started spending time together in many different settings. We even played tackle football and she still liked me after my aggression raised it's ugly head on the field as we were on opposite teams.

With Sarah's family still in South Korea and my family was split apart from a divorce when I was 14 years old, we really had no hope of a family get together for a wedding. My mother said she would not come if my father came, so after many days of contemplation, we decided to take the leap and elope. We thought Valentine's Day would be cute, but it was during the week, so we planned for Friday, 11th of February 1983. We had a big problem that day as it snowed 18 inches the night before. In desperation, I walked all the way to her house a few miles away and spent a couple of hours digging her car out. That certainly was an interesting way to start 25 years of marriage.

The next decision we had to make was where we would live. We decided we could just live in my room in our two bedroom apartment with my roommates. They had grown up with none brothers in their family so it should not be a big deal for them, or so we thought in our unclear thinking. They were so graceous for a several months and then "helped" us find another place nearby. I must say that first year certainly was interesting as we were two very hot headed people clashing frequently. I can truthfully say that it was all GOD's grace that we lasted 25 years together.

We have lived in different homes in places like Texas, North Carolina, and Saudi Arabia, the last of which is a story for another day. We have travelled to many different counties like England, Amsterdam, Turkey, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India. We have seen our kids go through many changes. One thing is constant, we are still together and learning what the word love really means. I am glad we got married.