Gallery of Paintings

The Beginning…

The journey is to begin on this day. Derrick and I are sitting at the Elkhart, IN train depot. Of course we are waiting on the train it is more than an hour wait. One might wonder when reading the following that there were a few bumps in the road for us and perhaps in some way; there was a hid message.
The bumps in the road or should I say electric wire in the road; began actually on May 8th. I know this for sure because I broke my foot from an electric wire. Please I must ask you to not laugh…as least not yet. In some sense there were other complications but this one was the one which made one wonder if this journey was not going to exist. I am blessed to have someone who is by my side and see’s things less drastic. Derrick with a calming voice expressed nothing has changed just the time.
Well here we are in the depot with me in a boot and what seems an enormous amount of luggage; waiting for a train and a room of Amish people talking Dutch. Maybe we are already amongst a different country of people even though we remain in the United States at the presence moment.
The one hour train ride is now two hours…entering Chicago on the outskirts increases the timeframe. So we get out of the train only to realize the depot itself is about a quarter of mile up the way. Now I again must ask you to not laugh but picture this; Derrick has his luggage, a backpack, brown piece of luggage, and I, am carrying or should I say dragging my luggage, pulling a backpack, laptop container with two laptops inside around my neck. All is well…I know you are laughing. Then a gentleman getting off the same train steps up and says; “I can help you!” Who says there are no gentlemen left? The man informed me that the depot has men wearing red shirt’s driving something that was like a golf cart. And then there before me was a man wearing a red shirt…arriving to rescue Derrick and me from walking…no from crawling the quarter of mile. He definitely was the hero of the moment for he not only picked us up; he even got us a taxicab to take us to the Chicago, O’Hara international airport. Suddenly life was good.
The international Chicago airport is a city or should be considered as a city. The day before I had called the airline to inform them I would need some assistance. I was told to call them about 5 to 10 minutes before arriving at the airport. Needless to say their assistance if I was asked to rate them it would have been a 6. I want to take this moment to let everyone know when a person at the airport says, “Your gate is just around the corner or just up the way” do not believe them…let me say that again…do not believe them. The young man who was pushing my wheelchair disappeared when I requested that Derrick and I would want to eat lunch. Now do not misunderstand my lack of appreciation in the sense of him pushing me to the point of the food court; I do. And when I asked him how far the gate from the food court was he informed me “Just around the corner.” Nothing is “Just around the corner” I found out. Derrick and I were left with him pushing the cart and me as well. Actually we did well….I could not help laugh though; because the end of the cart was pressing through the space in the wheelchair against the top of my buttock. Of course, I said nothing. My job was to steer the wheelchair.
We arrived at the check-in point before getting on the plane. There was a moment I thought to myself; the plane won’t be full. I mean how many people are going to leave the United States and go to Ireland. The plane was huge there was a roll of four seats in the middle and on each side there was a roll of two seats. There must have been over 200 seats in all. So I was pretty sure I was right about the plane not being full when it took off to go to Ireland…wrong. I do believe I learned a second lesson in traveling; never assume anything. I was amazed how fast the plane filled up. Here we are, Derrick and I with my “boot” sitting on a plane with 198 other people, together for seven hours. Suddenly the concept of seven hours sunk into my brain. The first question, that pop’s into my head was there enough oxygen,  in the plane for all of us. I remarkably regain reality and grab ahold of myself in realizing, I was going on an adventure. Aha…an adventure, yes, I have waited 4 years and now I am here, doing it. Nothing seemed to matter at that point, a smile arose on my face and again, life is good.

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