Beltane Waning Dyan Moon
The garden. The squash and melons are up. The beans have begun to put on second leaves, the peas have begun to climb the trellis and the cucumbers have their tendrils out for their trellis, too. The garlic is not far from harvest and greens are in abundance. Flowers are blooming and the bees are buzzing. A garden that works.
Beltane Waning Dyan Moon
Speaking too soon. Right after I posted the last entry Kate got sick. She lay on the couch in our deluxe room, sweating and feeling miserable. This concerned me, both for her and for what it might mean for our travel together.
I felt we had established the train as a good means of transportation for the both of us, then this sudden onset. Perhaps it was dietary, perhaps motion sickness (to which she is prone), whatever it was, it seems to rule out the train, too.
Traveling with Kate is so much more fun, more pleasurable in a lot of the big and small ways you might expect. The shared burdens of travel: watching luggage, listening to announcements, finding the right exit become easier. The shared joys of travel: people watching, running commentary, being together also multiply. So, I wanted the train to work.
My reaction to her illness was complex. Of course I felt concern for her and empathy, but, too, I experienced disappointment, upset, some anger. Just when I thought we had the travel thing licked, here she was, sick again. Not fair on my part, no. But, it was what I felt.
Not a pleasant moment for either of us. Our job now, today, is to work out new wrinkles, perhaps scopolamine patches or different dietary choices.
Here’s the overall problem. A difficult and painful ride back from Turkey six years ago, in which Kate suffered agony from the long haul, tipped me over from a reluctant flier to an only if absolutely necessary flier. The thousand small insults of air travel combined with Kate’s difficulties to make me say, enough. That was when I resumed taking the train, a practice begun long ago and abandoned for a time in favor of air.
A trip to Denver last fall made it obvious that Kate can’t take long rides in vehicles, either, so that ruled out car, truck or RV as modes of travel. Note that none of this is her fault, underlying health issues from degenerative disc disease to an intolerance for certain motion stimuli just cause problems.
It does however leave us with diminishing options for traveling together, something we hope to do more when she retires. We’ll just have to see where this goes.
Beltane Waning Dyan Moon
Empire Builder, Winona, Minnesota around 8:00 pm
We just ate dinner with a couple who retired 5 years ago from IBM. They’re headed for Glacier National Park, then onto a cruise up the Northwest Coast to Alaska, thence to Denali. All the retirees we’ve met have said how much they enjoy retirement. Positive news for us with Kate’s impending retirement.
This trip, a quick one, has only 2 more hours to run. It has however established the train as a means of transportation suited to Kate. We pulled out the beds and napped our way between Chicago and Milwaukee. Before supper Kate lay down, then while we ate we had the cabin steward restore the seats. There is a toilet and a shower in this unit. That would make a longer trip more fun.
The Mississippi flows just to our east with the ridges of southern Minnesota and Wisconsin lifted up from the river valley. We just passed the Billy Carneal, a barge tug (even though it pushes), with 9 barges in tow (even though they precede rather than follow the tug.) There were waiting on the tainter valves to drain a lock.
The eastern sky, toward Wisconsin, has a pink blush. This long summer day gives more time to see the river on the ride home. In the winter night has fallen by Winona and the river passes by in the dark.