This is Emily when she was about three. She was "lucky" and didn't develop diabetes for another twelve years. Go back to the first posts and you can see she turned out to be beautiful.Thursday, September 20, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Donations
Anyone who finds this blog and still wants to donate to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund may send checks to:
John J. Viall
750 Woodbine Avenue
Glendale, Ohio 45246
Make checks payable to JDRF.
John J. Viall
750 Woodbine Avenue
Glendale, Ohio 45246
Make checks payable to JDRF.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Beautiful lands
Friday, September 14, 2007
Final Thoughts
I have been home for a month now, and have kept my weight off, and gained nothing but a bit of perspective.
I originally thought I'd never want to take another long ride; but now, I wonder.
I loved the experience. I saw a lot: the scenery and wonderful people I have already mentioned many times. I saw mother-daughter anoerexics and an elk skeleton in a roadside ditch, roadkill you don't see every day in Ohio. And I saw enough stars out west to remind me why they call it the "Milky Way."
I went to a barbershop in Tillamook, Oregon and saw last year's hair scattered across the floor. The barber looked somewhat the worse for wear, as well, but the haircut was $7 and I was anxious to get cleaned up before I boarded a plane the next day. There was a solitary customer waiting: an eccentric old man with thick goo in his hair and red paint down his nose and all across his chin. Trapped in my chair, and trapped by my habit of being polite, I listened with some interest to his rambling discourse. He explained that "friends," a group of teenage girls he had visited, had "done" his hair and painted his face.
He added that he had also run afoul of the police recently when neighbors complained he was talking to their cow. I suppose I could have "mooed" to show I was listening.
On this trip I smelled the oceans and the fresh cut alfalfa and lumber trucks with enough cedar logs to scatter moths across the continent. I smelled bacon and eggs in the mornings and ate like a cholesterol addict, and still lost weight!
I saw radial tire debris everywhere and dodged it constantly but not always with success. Pieces of exploded truck tire speared my tires at least five times and left me pumping up new tubes and cursing my fates. I cursed a lot less on my trip, though. I learned to relax a little and focus on elemental matters. Getting from point A to point B. When could I stop to eat? How much water was left? How many miles to go? When should I take my next sip?
I learned not to look up hill too far and just keep pedalling.
It was a metaphor for aging, I think.
I could wax poetic praising my new tire pump. I could describe nesting eagles in Oregon and forests in Colorado dying from beatle infestation. Often I felt like God was protecting me. But I would immediately have my doubts. One day I heard that a major bridge on I-35 in Minnesota collapsed; and God did not choose to protect the people there, who deserved protection as much or more than I.
I met a hippie biker who liked to get high whenever he rode. "There's nothing better," he explained, "than coming downhill when you're baked."
I worried about bad drivers--who might be "baked," or drunk, or hate bicyclers and who might want to drill me. Sometimes, when I stopped to rest, or eat, or pee, I wondered: could I cheat fate in this simple manner?
Could I, by stopping one moment and not another, avoid my fate--and let some sleepy driver pass who might have swerved and hit me? Could I alter my destiny? Perhaps, while I looked for a spot to "go" a drunk passed on--to kill someone else less lucky. I read that one of the victims of the bridge collapse was a nurse. She had been born in Somalia and fled that wartorn land to begin anew in America. She was riding with her two-year-old daughter when the structure collapsed suddenly around her.
What were the changes? Escaping war and dying amid the wreckage of a falling bridge on the far side of the world.
Then again, I know even at conception there are a thousand sperm racing for a single egg. If the wrong one gets there faster and penetrates the egg before "our" sperm arrives then none of us are "us" and we are someone different due for different fates and different bridges and different stops along the road. But in every case the last exit is the same and the sign we see read: DEATH. 1 MILE.
So I recommend we all enjoy the trip. Whether the smells we pick out are a whiff of a campground porta-potty or the perfume of a red-headed waitress, or burning rubber on pavement, or mountain flowers, take them in.
I saw a girl of six in a purple cowboy hat in Yellowstone. It was something I had never seen and I meant to take her picture. But she and her family headed down a different walk and I missed the chance.
I hope the girl in the purple hat travels to a happy end.
I had fun on my trip and recommend a similar journey to anyone so inclined. Several people have called me a "hero" and many seem impressed. I think all of them could do what I did, too
--but they don't yet know they can. I hope they make the trip, or some trip like it, before they're done.
One day, while I was gone, I called all four of my children on my cellphone. All said they were happy in life and I am pleased with how each has turned out. I like them all. Abby, 28, wants a copy of Herodotus for Christmas and I will oblige. Seth, 27, shares an enthusiasm for the Bengals and we lost our voices at the season-opener against the Ravens. Sarah, 20, is starting her junior year at Ohio State, and I rely on her to steer a mature course. Emily took her first job while I was away and got up early to train for cross-country.
Whatever fate awaits me, I have been lucky along the way. If I died right now, I would say my luck has held. The trip is the thing and I have been able to steer my own path.
One day, I took a side road and happened to meet my future wife. I could have turned the other way in that Hyde Park bar. I could have spent too long in the bathroom and not chanced to talk to Anne. I could have stayed home entirely and graded papers instead of going out.
Fate could have frowned and I might not have met her in ten million years.
That would have been the worst fate of all.
I originally thought I'd never want to take another long ride; but now, I wonder.
I loved the experience. I saw a lot: the scenery and wonderful people I have already mentioned many times. I saw mother-daughter anoerexics and an elk skeleton in a roadside ditch, roadkill you don't see every day in Ohio. And I saw enough stars out west to remind me why they call it the "Milky Way."
I went to a barbershop in Tillamook, Oregon and saw last year's hair scattered across the floor. The barber looked somewhat the worse for wear, as well, but the haircut was $7 and I was anxious to get cleaned up before I boarded a plane the next day. There was a solitary customer waiting: an eccentric old man with thick goo in his hair and red paint down his nose and all across his chin. Trapped in my chair, and trapped by my habit of being polite, I listened with some interest to his rambling discourse. He explained that "friends," a group of teenage girls he had visited, had "done" his hair and painted his face.
He added that he had also run afoul of the police recently when neighbors complained he was talking to their cow. I suppose I could have "mooed" to show I was listening.
On this trip I smelled the oceans and the fresh cut alfalfa and lumber trucks with enough cedar logs to scatter moths across the continent. I smelled bacon and eggs in the mornings and ate like a cholesterol addict, and still lost weight!
I saw radial tire debris everywhere and dodged it constantly but not always with success. Pieces of exploded truck tire speared my tires at least five times and left me pumping up new tubes and cursing my fates. I cursed a lot less on my trip, though. I learned to relax a little and focus on elemental matters. Getting from point A to point B. When could I stop to eat? How much water was left? How many miles to go? When should I take my next sip?
I learned not to look up hill too far and just keep pedalling.
It was a metaphor for aging, I think.
I could wax poetic praising my new tire pump. I could describe nesting eagles in Oregon and forests in Colorado dying from beatle infestation. Often I felt like God was protecting me. But I would immediately have my doubts. One day I heard that a major bridge on I-35 in Minnesota collapsed; and God did not choose to protect the people there, who deserved protection as much or more than I.
I met a hippie biker who liked to get high whenever he rode. "There's nothing better," he explained, "than coming downhill when you're baked."
I worried about bad drivers--who might be "baked," or drunk, or hate bicyclers and who might want to drill me. Sometimes, when I stopped to rest, or eat, or pee, I wondered: could I cheat fate in this simple manner?
Could I, by stopping one moment and not another, avoid my fate--and let some sleepy driver pass who might have swerved and hit me? Could I alter my destiny? Perhaps, while I looked for a spot to "go" a drunk passed on--to kill someone else less lucky. I read that one of the victims of the bridge collapse was a nurse. She had been born in Somalia and fled that wartorn land to begin anew in America. She was riding with her two-year-old daughter when the structure collapsed suddenly around her.
What were the changes? Escaping war and dying amid the wreckage of a falling bridge on the far side of the world.
Then again, I know even at conception there are a thousand sperm racing for a single egg. If the wrong one gets there faster and penetrates the egg before "our" sperm arrives then none of us are "us" and we are someone different due for different fates and different bridges and different stops along the road. But in every case the last exit is the same and the sign we see read: DEATH. 1 MILE.
So I recommend we all enjoy the trip. Whether the smells we pick out are a whiff of a campground porta-potty or the perfume of a red-headed waitress, or burning rubber on pavement, or mountain flowers, take them in.
I saw a girl of six in a purple cowboy hat in Yellowstone. It was something I had never seen and I meant to take her picture. But she and her family headed down a different walk and I missed the chance.
I hope the girl in the purple hat travels to a happy end.
I had fun on my trip and recommend a similar journey to anyone so inclined. Several people have called me a "hero" and many seem impressed. I think all of them could do what I did, too
--but they don't yet know they can. I hope they make the trip, or some trip like it, before they're done.
One day, while I was gone, I called all four of my children on my cellphone. All said they were happy in life and I am pleased with how each has turned out. I like them all. Abby, 28, wants a copy of Herodotus for Christmas and I will oblige. Seth, 27, shares an enthusiasm for the Bengals and we lost our voices at the season-opener against the Ravens. Sarah, 20, is starting her junior year at Ohio State, and I rely on her to steer a mature course. Emily took her first job while I was away and got up early to train for cross-country.
Whatever fate awaits me, I have been lucky along the way. If I died right now, I would say my luck has held. The trip is the thing and I have been able to steer my own path.
One day, I took a side road and happened to meet my future wife. I could have turned the other way in that Hyde Park bar. I could have spent too long in the bathroom and not chanced to talk to Anne. I could have stayed home entirely and graded papers instead of going out.
Fate could have frowned and I might not have met her in ten million years.
That would have been the worst fate of all.
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