Celebrating a Lifetime of Service

After escaping the gridlock of  Washington DC (and I don't mean only Congress) I made it over hill and dale to Delaware, and had an anxious moment when I nearly missed the exit. ba-dum-dom.

 But seriously, Dover was a nice place to pass a few minutes on the way to New Castle and Wilmington. Travel Advisory: anyone deliberately traveling to Wilmington for the purpose of spending the night...don't.  Wound up in a motel with gangbangers, prostitutes, panhandlers and the occasional bug, none of which ever shared my bed...especially the bugs. Made a clean getaway the next morning in spite of a restless night and one eye out the curtains on my car.

 Then it was on the way to Baltimore by way of Cape may and Wildwood NJ...don't bother going to your map and wondering. I know it added about a hundred miles in each direction, but there was someone I just had to meet up with.

Marvin Hume is a 92 year old WWII navy veteran with vivid memories of the war and an ache in his heart for two boyhood buddies lost in that war, one who still haunts the hull of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

In the early ‘70’s Marvin (and I have his permission to call him Marvin) purchased some property on the bay side of Cape May, Sunset Beach, and all its concessions. The former owner asked him to continue his tradition of raising and lowering the American Flag each day. In a moment of inspiration Marvin ran an ad in a newspaper requesting casket flags from the living relatives of fallen servicemen, the flags that adorn military coffins and are ceremoniously folded tightly and presented to surviving family.

From that single ad, over the last 40 or so years, from Memorial Day to labor day, he has flown about 5,000 casket flags in remembrance of the fallen, usually attended in the evening lowering by several hundred locals and visitors alike. Now, unable to walk distances without the aid of a walker, and legally blind, he still manages to attend the sunset services each and every night and swears he will continue till his last day on this earth.

The day to day operations of his various business are being handled by the next generation of Humes, and a succession plan is in place for the future, and there is a two-year waiting list of flags to be flown. He wants the tradition kept alive till the day there are no more casket flags left to fly.

I must admit, there are days on the road that get me down…the driving, the solitude, and the feeling that the end appears no nearer now than the day I started. But…when face to face with vision, fortitude and determination in the person of someone like Marvin, I have to take a step back and wonder…just how rough do I have it after all? Then I just keep on truckin.’

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Starting Week 7 in the Nation's Capitol

Had a great day today, the start of Week 7.

Had lunch in the offices of United Charitable Programs, the 501C3 organization that sponsors the Tour and allows me to operate as a non-profit. I had been talking to them for the best part of 4 years or so, but always with the same one or two people. I was surprised to learn they have a staff of about a dozen dedicated people who manage the status of about 400 programs of which I am only one. It was a good lunch and I was able to pick up a check for reimbursements of some of my traveling expenses to date.

I've also had time to reflect, over the last couple days, on my good fortune to date:

 I have received support from organizations like the American Legion and VFW in more than half my nights on the road. Friends have filled some of the rest and different CSL congregations have provided much of the rest. While I have had to pay for a handful of hotel rooms i am still way under spending projections to date...a very good thing.

I have not been in a single traffic jam or even a rush hour in six full weeks. (The only gridlock near me appears to be Congress...lol) My schedule allows for late morning starts to my travel most days and early finishes, leaving early mornings for writing and updating photos and posts, and evenings for resting and recharging for the next day.

Most days I don't get to play tourist as I am pretty single minded in pursuit of my goals here but multiple day stays allow some sightseeing with the hosts allowing me a deeper look into corners of the country.

There is some genius in my itinerary and I don't claim to be that genius...I believe I was divinely led to this schedule. Evidence is that I have been one step ahead of bad hail and flooding in some cities, and one step behind other natural forces such as tornadoes and thunderstorms of biblical proportion. Rain is inevitable in the parts of the country I have been traveling through, but serious weather patterns have been dancing around me daily without even causing me to slow down. I have been blessed.

I have now been through all or part of 12 states on this swing east...13 if you include the District of Columbia, and will be in three more next week.

I recently got a little down on myself and the tour during a day that didn't go quite according to plan but was able to turn my thoughts around to all the good things I can expect to enjoy in the next couple of weeks including visits to friends I haven't seen in a decade.

Life is good.

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Week 6...a little ahead, a little back

Hard to believe I am now more than 10% of the way through this journey, at least physically. Emotionally I'm somewhere else on the track and unsure of which direction that train is headed.

Back in Denver I have a lot of "friends and acquaintances" especially at my home church. Hard to tell on the road just how many realize I'm really gone. In truth, I have a hard time making really close friends, especially after my closest friend in the world transitioned about four years ago. My responsibility to maintain my own world so, no blame game here, just a reality that I feel a little more alone on the road than usual. And the severe rain and thunderstorms yesterday in Cincinnati and vicinity did not help the mood.

I'm not quite meeting the people on the road I had anticipated getting to know. I expected to be interacting with more veterans along the way, especially since I am being supported largely by American Legion and VFW posts, but they would just as soon make a reservation for me and send me directly to the hotel without much personal interaction. And when I do spend time in a post with other vets, there is a lot of silence, a lot of solitary smoking and drinking, even in groups, that I feel closed off to. And, personally, I don't drink much and can't stand smoke, and can't seem to hide it...a real conundrum.

And when I stay at a private home, notably those associated with other churches within the community of my home church I have great visits, sleep well, and when I leave, I reflect on the perfection of their lives and spirits which deepens my own feelings of isolation.

But, this is the road I've chosen. It is the path for which I have cajoled donations from a lot of friends and strangers, for which i have planned extensively, and on which I still expect to meet a lot of incredible people along the way. So, I'll persevere.

It's not exactly like Cortez, or one of those guys way back when who burned his ships after reaching the new world so his men had no choice but to move forward. I know I am always at choice, and I am choosing anew each day.

Looking ahead, I will be spending three days in D.C. with my sponsors at United Charitable Programs, Two nights with a former roommate in Baltimore, a couple more with a friend in New York, and the rest of the year will be filled in with other friends, family and acquaintances, both old and new.

Whether or not I choose to see it, it is all good.

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Just Another Great Day on the Road

Reviewing each day on the road is like rummaging through a newspaper each morning. A newspaper has a certain familiarity about it...same stuff in the same places, easy to navigate, but different content each time you pick it up.

So far I've been almost no place that I've ever been outside major cities and, while it is different each day I've discovered that I can expect:

     ...lots of rain at some point along the road during this part of the summer

     ...lots of forest and field interspersed with huge tracts of water (usually named something like Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, etc...and about a million lakes.

     ...lots of different gasoline prices, so get it where you think the last low one is. Last week I was buying gas in Chicago at $4.55 a gallon. Yesterday I filled up in Kentucky at $3.23 a gallon...go figure.

     ...lots of the same fast food franchises we see everyday, everywhere, but also a lot of new (to me) names of regional fast food that hasn't taken the nation by storm...yet.

     ...lots of time to check out the scenery and appreciate some of the quirkiness of the country. Yesterday I saw a billboard advertising "Amish Style Cooking, at the Schwartz Family Restaurant." Had to laugh a little.

     ...lots more miles than I had planned for. Turns out my mileage calculator used to plan for this trip measured as the crow flies. I'm almost 1500 miles over projection to this point in only five weeks. But I expect it to get better once I hit the east coast...fewer mountains for one thing.

Today I am off to eastern Indiana and southern Ohio before ending the day in northern Kentucky in a private home rather than a hotel...it'll be a nice change of pace from the last few days.

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