Did I just walk into a casino or the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon?
The coffee cups were my first hint, but there were four ceramic or glass size offerings. Next were thirteen ‘puck’ flavor choices, but what do I do with the puck?
Perhaps I could ask someone from the queue forming behind me, but nobody wants to talk until they have their coffee and I was a road block.
I was saved by a cute young lady who recognized a geriatric foreigner in a slight panic.
Pick a flavor puck, raise the one armed bandit, put the puck in the slot, and give it a pull. Then there were more choices: single, double, and with milk.
I’d chosen the largest cup so it would, hopefully, not overflow and the golden brown liquid trickled down.
The crowd rumbled as I waited for my cash. As they moved closer, I said,
Travel experiences with Overseas Adventure Travel are well planned, diverse, and generally delightful.
Today’s adventure at our lodge above the Arctic Circle, including a ‘Day in the Life’, assisting with the cleaning and feeding of 101 huskys.
I fell on the sword and volunteered for the poop patrol. I was shown the technique for entering and exiting the kennels to prevent escape attempts. The rest was meeting my fury friends and a few simple swipes of the frozen deposits.
Upon completion, I had fifty new pals and the paw prints on my clothes to prove it. Adorable doesn’t come near to describing my experience.
Next, we took five carefully chosen dogs on a walk. We’ll, let’s say I was the load the puppy pulled around our course. They are born to pull, and they love it. I didn’t hold a leash, I had a belt cinched around my waste. Every few steps, Taiga wound rear back and yank the rope. I take great pride in remaining a biped. Our track was snow, ice, and slop. It would have left a mark.
I’m up at 4:00 am this morning jetlagged from our flights to Helsinki, Finland. Breakfast at our charming hotel doesn’t begin on Sundays until 8. It is a perfect time for this blog post.
My wife Kristin and I are travelers. What’s over the horizon has been a motivator for all of our, soon to be, forty-four years together.
Her family are card players, so by osmosis, we are too. The games are not complicated, although her parents played bridge. The family rallies around social games like: poker, hand & foot, and golf. Games that promote table chatter, discussions about any random subject, and, of course, the accusations that Kristin’s mom has cards up her sleeve.
As Kristin and I have collected destinations on all seven continents, to pass the time in between flights or any dead time, we always have cards.
We have taken turns being champions of whatever locations we’ve played: airports like Huston, Paris, or Osaka. A myriad of hotel lobbies and even the ferry between Buenos Aries and Montevideo.
Invariably, people will never ask you what you are doing on your phone. We all know the answer is wasting time, mostly. But folks will, on occasion, stop and ask us what game we are playing. In that regard, cards are an international language. A rememberence of the past. Warm memories of fun and friendship spread across a table top.
Yesterday, a gentleman approached our table as we played cards at Milwaukee’s Mitchell Field Airport. He didn’t ask what we were playing. He simply shared what a refreshing sight it was to see two people spending time together rather than staring at their phones.
It was an excellent way to begin our Scandinavian adventure, and he was right.
My one-person tent at Everest Base Camp. The Khumbu Ice Fall and the West Shoulder of Everest two miles away.
Some of the guide/friends I made during my trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp have already begun their acclimatization for the 2024 climbing season. Recent FB posts, along with the some stunning photography, awakened the raw emotions and trials of, what was for me, a life-changing experience.
We were free to move at our own pace between camps. My solitary trek was a saunter through Himalayan climbing history, a chance to meet some of my heroes, and an awesome campsite.
Below are a few paragraphs from My Father’s Keep. The book I learned to write when I returned from perhaps my greatest adventure after parenthood.
“Every mountaineer who has climbed or has even attempted Mount Everest from the south would have passed this way. I had always wondered what it would feel like to cover the same ground. The answer was a surprise. I thought it would be like a museum, a stroll through the past. But I realized this timeless scene had never changed. I was looking through their wind-burned eyes, and my legs were just as tired, my lips just as chapped, and my breathing just as difficult. In that moment, I shared the same real-time elation born from immersion in this geologic wonder.”
“I had seen Nuptse the entire day, but now the infamous Khumbu Icefall and west shoulder of Mount Everest loomed over me. Even at that distance, it was not their size as much as the incredible inconsequence I felt. This was not subjugation. I was welcome among these giants. Rather, it was the realization of something greater than oneself.
Then, slowly rising from behind the west shoulder was the prize, Mount Everest, Chomolungma, the Goddess Mother of the Earth.
The Himalayan Mountains are so large that what seemed just within reach was actually two or three miles away, perhaps more. I prodded along in a kind of laboring celebration. I was living a dream come true, but I hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of how wonderful this fulfillment would feel. I was fatigued yes, but the realization that I would attain my goals offered excitement, confidence,and pride all mixed together. I felt weightless.
These images before me had been ink, paper, and imagination from my father’s library, and now I stood before them in humbled reverence. In what seemed like only a few more steps, I saw hundreds of multicolored tents—all symbols of the temporary humanity collected three miles above the sea and two vertical miles below the summit, at long last, Mount Everest Base Camp.
After seven hours of effort, wonderment, and doubt, Phurba Tashi and Russell Brice stood sentry at the turn off the main trail. Russell greeted me with a hearty “Well done, Ed.” To hear that from Russell was another life highlight. He never let on, but he knew I was having a rough day. He knew everything: what meds I’d taken, when I left Lobuche, and reports from the trail. I’ll wager he even knew what I carried in my pack too. I knew Russell and the team had my back even though the effort was mine alone.
Phurba Tashi
I turned to Phurba Tashi, expecting to simply shake his hand. This famous Sherpa I’d met in Khumjung, the man with the twin boys, the man with over twenty summits of Mount Everest, the man with the heart of a lion. But to my astonishment, Phurba said, “Welcome to Base Camp, Ed. May I take your pack and show you to your tent?”
Usually, I can find something to say. During my creative design career, I’d presented concepts to billionaires. But on this day, in this place, I stood flabbergasted and muzzled by high-altitude duct tape. This is an environment where thoughts don’t race, they crawl, and a one-word sentence is a passing grade. My response waggled to the surface like an air bubble. Out popped “Sure,” and I relinquished the pack without the slightest hesitation.
Phurba took my pack and turned toward the tents. I scurried behind his Olympian strides, a nearly impossible privilege for a mortal flatlander. Turning my head skyward, the sun detonated from the mysterious indigo blue. Underfoot, the churned mounds of ice and gravel reminded me of the jumble of plowed snow at the end of my winter driveway.
In the last fifty yards, I was indestructible. I was finally at the foot of Mount Everest. It was not lost to me that my trusted red pack with the special cargo took its final steps into Base Camp on the shoulder of an honest-to-God Himalayan hero. My father would have completely busted his buttons.
Tears welled once again as I whispered, “We made it, Dad.”
Where his ashes were ultimately placed, is the rest of the story.
The loss of my brother left an emptiness like a stone dropped down a well that expires into the void without a splash. We expect to lose parents and friends along the way, but a younger sibling, fuck. The next vibrations were anger. The waste of it all. It had been telegraphed in advance. Three hundred pounds and a sedentary lifestyle. In the end, the worst of it was hidden from his doctor, friends and family until his body spit in his face.
Rob loved his brandy and beer. He was the chum you wanted at the firepit telling stories. He could voice all of the cartoon characters from our youth. He was a talented musician and great with tools. He took great pride in his skills. Our many years, I supported all of his bands. I went to see him at a disco club in Florida. He was a professional then touring with a Disco Show Band, living on the road in motel rooms. I thought, what a dismal life. Later, I would understand. The packed house danced, cheered and held a collective admiration for their performance. My God, for three hours a night, they’re superstars, that’s why he does it, he lives for that energy.
Rob would leave the road and worked for the global company, Krones for eighteen years. They make gigantic machines that apply labels, think Budweiser. He traveled until his diabetes and weight gain prevented it. The company supported him in his decline.
Then, I received a cry for help from one of a friends.
I found him on a broken futon in his living room, next to a juice pitcher filled with piss. Several of the chairs in the room were not just broken, they were crushed. I would discover that he’d been falling for over a year. Diabetic neuropathy and a gangrenous mummified toe no longer supported him. His femur had been broken at the hip for two weeks. He had found a liquor store that delivered to quell the pain.
I was his closest sibling and we are adult children. We both knew the 911 call had to be his and he made it.
In the hospital, the hip was fixed, but hip people don’t do feet. It took weeks to see a foot doctor. I was in the room with his Diabetes Doctor and the specialists when his socks came off. The smell he emitted, was indeed gangrene as I had feared. She was shocked and embarrassed, the specialists looked grim through their positive bedside manner. I knew that alcoholics protect their dependence with ferocious cunning and stealth. My brand of alcoholism is, negative social consequences. Rob’s brand was, drinking in the face of catastrophic health issues. Rob’s success in his deceit would cost him his life.
It was obvious Rob would need handlers so Kristin and I found a nursing home nearby in Sheboygan. I handled all the medical visits and cleaned out his apartment. Kristin, after a lengthy discovery period, organized his finances and handled the medical and insurance activities. We both became his Financial Power of Attorney and I also took on the medical decisions.
First to come off were two toes and an index finger. Then, a mid-thigh amputation followed later by the other leg, also mid-thigh. The associated infections and the horror of his reality left him mentally useless. A crane was necessary to get him into his fancy new $10,000 electric wheelchair. He would sing a song or do cartoon characters when they loaded him in his chair like a sack of bananas. I would cry in my car.
Rob would have a brief renaissance. He shared that he had complete trust in me and thanked Kristin and I for our support. He became well enough to make his own decisions and even moved into a slightly more independent living arrangement. The Penn Avenue Tap was two blocks away and had wheelchair access. I did not protest. His choices had napalmed his body, there was no point insisting on a clean lifestyle now. I let him find whatever happiness he had left. Research showed that a person with those types of wounds and disease had reduced their remaining years to perhaps five. Rob was gone in less than two.
He would die in an intensive care unit. Nine angels had done their best to save him for over an hour. When I arrived, the decision to stop the attempted resuscitation was mine.
His self-destruction clock had been counting down for years. No doubt, my grief had already begun while he was still alive, but intensified when I witnessed him on the futon. The five stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In Rob’s case, I only experienced a prolonged anger and despair followed by the solace of acceptance.
Rob and I had frank discussions about the what ifs of his condition. He favored cremation and wanted his ashes at our family cabin. Our parents are there, too. We picked a spot for the ashes with a view of the bay were he and I spent summers catching and releasing painted turtles. Perhaps our fondest memories together. I asked, “What about putting half of the ashes in a launcher with an M80 and blowing them across the lake?” As appalling as that may sound to some, he giggled at the idea and our older brother and I did just that. In the end, we celebrate the lives of those who pass and there are no rules.
In the subsequent years, my grief has tempered into acceptance by a host of soft and warm remembrances. I feel them, they’re reflections of his spirit. Turtles, of course, all remind me of Rob. Songs on my IPOD, including his own, bring a smile to my face. He’s in the sunrises at the cabin and the dazzling diamonds of sunlight reflected off the lake on a summer day. And of course, any Warner Brothers Cartoon or Three Stooges episode. Rob’s body is gone, but his spirit remains part of the whole.
The drawing of Rob was done in 1978 as a Christmas present at the height of his powers. I caught his likeness with Prismacolor Pencils on black illustration board. He called his guitar the ‘Moon Base’. I would revisit the drawing and greet it like a favorite pair of slippers every time I went to his apartment. After his death, the portrait found it’s way back to me. Kristin’s Aunt Mary and her husband visited our home recently and she saw the portrait in my studio. She studied it for a quiet moment, turned to me and simply said, “You loved him.”
Superhero activities are available to all of us. Not flight or X-ray vision like the movies, but real accomplishments completed within our own risk tolerance and physical abilities. These can be grounded tasks like the first walk to the mailbox after knee surgery or your first two-mile hike to completing your goal of running a marathon or something Himalayan. The key is pushing yourself and feeling good about the outcome.
After our family summit of Mt Fuji, I got the bug to climb some higher destinations. The first was Mt. Kilimanjaro. I chose that because it is one of the Seven Summits, the highest point on each continent. Kili is also one of the highest places a human can go without techincal climbing skills. It is serious altitude and perhaps the only one of the seven I could manage in my mid-fifties.
Nate, my #1 son, joined me in Africa. I chose the most difficult route, the Western Breach. This image is Nate reaching the top of the Breach after completing several rock scrambling sections. We knew the summit (19,340 ft.) was only an hour away the next morning after camping at 18,888 ft. Our joy is reflected in the pose he struck for the photograph, the hard part was over. Little did we know that sleep would be impossible for the Cheeseheads at that altitude. We talked all night about the climb and the food we’d eat back in Wisco. Attempts at sleep ended by being startled awake by suffocation.
Chris, our #2, copped the pose prematurely. This was enthusiasm for our first Colorado 14er, Mt. Sneffels. Colorado has Fifty-eight mountains above 14,000 ft.
The ridgeline above Chris was our route. The second half of the route was fairly straight forward, but getting there was a class three scramble (Using hands and feet). I had been on easier ground at Mountaineering School and used ropes which is class four. Even now, ten years later, pangs of dread from the what ifs will percolate when I replay our adventure.
In each case, the challenges were completed and the relationships with my sons only became stronger. And why not? They’re both superheroes, at least they look like one in the pictures.
Grief finds all of us in life. It arrives without invitation; a rogue thunderstorm that steals a summer day and can flatten a forest or take out a bridge.
Personal pets aside, grief was introduced to me when I was sixteen-years-old. Too young to be witness to a friend’s death, but old enough to recognize being forcibly torn from the naivete of childhood. It would be the first of many loses from my peer group during those formative years.
Bill French was the drummer of The Royals. The band I became associated with in nineth grade and throughout high school. The friendships made during that time continue strong almost sixty years later, we were brothers then and now.
Bill was talented, funny, and showed signs of becoming an architect. He setup his drums like a table setting, parallel to the floor, ergonomics of today were ignored. We had a full-size dummy we called Harlow that sat on top of the amps behind the drums. Bill would entertain the crowd in between songs with stories of Harlow’s unrequited love life.
The band travelled around southeastern Wisconsin in a school bus. I painted ‘The Royals’ on both sides. We shared honest-to-God fun that transcended the clicks and high school social cast rivalries. It was an idyllic time in our lives.
Through the phone earpiece, I heard the words: meningitis, encephalitis, serious, and transfer to the best doctors in Madison. Half that sentence were words I’d never heard.
It was only days. The reports were hopeless, we all felt the need to see him. High school was not a priority. My parents had a station wagon. I approached my mother and said, “The band wants to drive to Madison to see Bill. I want to skip school and use the car tomorrow.” Bless her heart, she said, “I’ll call the school and you can use the gas card.”
Bill’s nurses were angles. They knew about the band and allowed all five of us to surround his bed in the stark-white intensive care unit. His parents had asked that they not cut his long black hair. The ladies had, with great kindness, controlled his hair with a dozen pink tails. He was alive, but his eyes were glazed over, he was in a coma. Helpless is not enough word for our devastation. We all touched him and shared our voices. There was nothing else we could do.
We stopped to eat somewhere on our way back to Sheboygan. One of us made a phone call home or to a girl friend and we would learn that Bill died right after we left the hospital. He had stayed alive long enough for our goodbyes.
We were a little more mature and responsible for sixteen-year-olds because of the band, but all the emotions we felt were new. What do we do with all that rage and frustration?
When we returned to my home. I suggested we all go to the Wilson Dump which was half a mile away. This wasn’t a recycling center, this was the wetlands where the township was dumping all the trash. We spent the next few hours breaking glass bottles, TV screens tubes, and anything else we could smash.
It was an inspired move under the circumstances. It wasn’t vandalism, we were not hurting anybody, just the exorcism of our anger and frustration dealing with an uncontrollable situation and loss. There are now Smash Rooms where you pay to go and break things. I should have thought, franchise, but that was how we handled our grief.
Nonetheless, we were pallbearers before we could vote and witness to Bill’s eldery parents who had lost an only child.
We grew up fast and sometimes it’s cool to break things.
Nate, our first-born son, showed great interest in playing computer video games as soon as he understood the DOS commands. His passion, even in second grade, is reflected in the plate he made in art class. All the second graders made plates. Even Nate’s brother Chris made a plate when he became a second grader three years later. I cherish his, too.
The subject matter Nate chose has him sitting in our dining room at the computer table. At the time, this was a 486 CPU with a 14″SVGA monitor, 4 mb of RAM and a 120 mb hard disk.
I didn’t go anywhere near the home computer and I thought Nate was wasting him time. Parents can be wrong, especially new parents. I was rolling tape from my own childhood channeling my father always telling my brothers and I to get haircuts, you know, just being a dick by default. But, parents can, will, and should learn. It took years to redefine our relationship.
I drew pictures for a living, an industrial designer. But, the day came when all the designers at my firm were told we were going to learn 3D modeling software and render our concepts on computers. A frightening task at first, we realized we were to become sculptures in addition to illustrators. My phobia of technology evaporated. If you can fly 3D modeling software, a home computer is child’s play.
Then, two important things happened. Nate would watch me working in my home studio on hobby or work projects and began to draw. And, I purchased some Rhino 3D software for him to play with on our home computer. I had set an example, fueled his passions, and began to get out of his way.
The first model he built wasn’t something simple and geometric, it was a jet aircraft with all those complex surfaces. I knew he had the gift. He would hone his skills in college and a masters program. Our relationship is solid.
Nate’s continues to sit in front of the computer. Only now, he’s an Art Director conceiving content and running a global creative staff for video game startups. Except now, he has 48 mid tier Dddr5 gb of ram. That’s 11,000 times more ram than in 1994.
L to R – Susan, Takko, Toofer, Kota, Dinky, Skooter and Drafty
I returned from Japan on a mission. Bill Fox, Chairman of the Great Circus Parade (GSP), was on my companie’s Board of Directors. I’d never met him, but he knew I’d done some clowning from reading our company newsletter. He put me in touch with Tickles, the GSP Clown Coordinator, and rolled out the red carpet for my family and our Japanese friends.
Our wonder-filled GSP story would take many pages. We did three different clowning engagements during the week of parade: The Circus Train, The Wings Program (Busloads of special needs children all got a clown to take them to the circus at Milwaukee’s lakefront), and the parade. Just driving around with six clowns in the car was hilarious, but for the blog, I will describe the process we all went through as we readied ourselves.
Takko
Preparing for a gig with six clowns in the house was a pageant. A shared ritual that multiplied our anticipation and excitement. I never tire of the transitional experience as we become agents of delight and laughter. The house smelled of grease paint and baby powder with a CD of circus music playing in the background. Makeup is applied with fingers and dabbed into the skin. The baby powder is used to seal the makeup. You fill one third of that rouge, unmatched sock with powder and pummel your entire face. We remove the excess with a brush a house painter would envy. Now, the makeup will not smudge or be compromised by: sweat, water, the involuntary touch or even tears. Big shoes, wigs and colorful attire are scattered around. The silly-meter starts to register as our clown characters take form. The transition is a gateway, a passe-partout, a license, a permission, and an expectation to perform. The costume is a conduit to a source of special energy. A consciousness where we make ourselves available for folly. And folly is a serious endeavor that, if bestowed, can connect to a numinous presence. It can leave me humbled by the hope I was worthy to be the vehicle of such an intimate gift. The reward is the sparkle in the children’s eyes, a currency for the soul.
Our Japanese friends would be in the final two Great Circus Parades in Milwaukee. Kristin and I would add one more in Baraboo, WI.
The last GSP was 2009. Clown Camp officially closed it’s doors in 2023.
Scary clown movies helped squash the tradition, but I’m grateful we could share in Takko’s dream and perform in front of 250,000 people.
Nate, Takko, Chris, Kristin and the souvenir sticks.
At the end of my blog post, Fujisan, I mentioned that our Japanese friend (Takko) shared her dream with me on the top of Mt. Fuji. This is a story I love to tell.
There are seven stations as you ascend the Fujinomiya Trail on Mt. Fuji. All the stations have supplies, food, restrooms, and sleeping areas. Takko had organized our stay and purchased the souvenir hiking sticks that are branded at each station during the climb for the boys. I told her I was taking care of everything else.
The hut Takko had chosen was only an hour below the summit. The ($70 per person) overnight included dinner and breakfast so we sat down to a meal consisting of: curry rice, some sort of vegetable and green tea.
Nate above the clouds.
A formation of cotton-ball clouds marched in a parade below the hut window. A scene only revealed by a jaunt into altitude. My anticipation was in full flight, I knew we would succeed the next morning. I sat in complete wonderment, probably a little spaced by the altitude and filled with gratitude after a day well spent. I turned to our friend Takko and thanked her for helping my family and enabling me to accomplish a dream of twenty-eight years. She’d done all this after a fifteen-minute conversation two years before at Clown Camp in Wisconsin. Sincere and heart-felt feelings communicated through her workably passable English and my infantile Japanese. Do you understand? (Wakaremaska?) Yes, I understand (Hai, wakaremas).
As dinner continued, I casually ask, “What kind of dreams do you have?” She turns to me and responds without hesitation, “I like to be in the famous Great Circus Parade in Milwaukee someday”.
The rarified air forced a long processing time, I was dumbfounded. Language barrier aside, she knew I was being conversational. I didn’t ask with the intention to automatically assist in her quest. She didn’t know what I did for a living or who my associations were. In two years, we’d only had contact with each other for a little over eight hours, most of it today. Why did she pickthat? What were the probabilities of her dream being something I could actually help her with? Cripes, we were on top of Mt. Fuji.
I went numb followed by an intense enthusiasm, like seeing Dad rolling my first bicycle into the yard. How often in life do you get to hold the key to a door that could lead to an adventure like this and return true friendship with such an immediate gift?
All those emotions ricocheted around in my body as I regained whatever composure I could muster at 11,700 ft. and said, “I’ve never been in that parade, but if you’re serious about this, the chairman of the event is on my companies’ Board of Directors, I can make this happen.”
The Adventures of Spaghetti Eddie 