Day 19 Making Waves

I have not seen television for three weeks and I have not missed it. Claims of grandiosity filled the screen and started me thinking…

                                                   Mosaic of Alexander the Great

Today we ride from Cleveland to Huron for our nights stay. The trek is pleasant along Lake Erie for 50 miles through the towns of Lorain and Vermillion.

I must stop about half way to make some calls home for a patient I have never seen in need of help. Through the kindness of a colleague who supports my ride I am able to arrange an evaluation for this gentleman in great pain.

By this time I am 4-5 miles behind my group of 4 so I ride 15 miles as quickly as I can to catch up with them. An hour later when I pull into the rest stop they are not there…they got lost!!! On a straight road!!! All one highway !!!

So…I stood by the side of the road and waited for them so I could wave as they approached … grinning ”You should have waited for me!”

And their response…” Why, you’re the one who always gets lost”.

Well, not today…

We ride on as a group and pull into Vermillion. I recall that this village is named for the clay used by the native Indians for red paint.

White  Settlers just picked up and retained the name.

Today in Vermillion there is some sort of summertime festival and the streets are filling with local folk as we ride through. I notice off to my left a small boutique selling t-shirts and out of curiosity I stop.

Inside the old building are a man, two women selling cupcakes, and a small cute child. I say my hellos and after looking around begin to leave when I see a most beautiful shirt. I stop to ask the owner about it and am told that his 8 year old daughter has designed it, her first. So impressed am I that I ask to take her picture with her first creation.

 

We end up taking one more.

Her father asks about the trip and as we begin to talk I come to learn that he has a friend with MS and that he supports similar local rides. He offers me free cupcakes, water and a resting spot but I thank him and explain that I must move on…three others are waiting for me outside in the street.

Two hours later I arrive at our nights stay and learn that we have been invited for a cookout and boat rides by an alumni. I hose shower quickly and we are all herded into a van for a 30 mile ride to another lake south of us.

Once there we are greeted with snacks, drinks, and offers of swimming, kayaking, fishing, a pontoon boat ride, followed by a cookout. A TV downstairs blast out the most recent Fox News.

It was nice to forget about TV.

Unfortunately that is not the only thing I have forgotten, I still have my contact lenses in…no swimming for me. So instead I get…2 long relaxing boat rides.

As I sit and watch the waves behind me from churning water fade to calm

I think back to the TV and “Making Waves”.

I think that all of us at one time or another have thoughts of Grandiosity, even if just in Fantasy. I know I did several times…of course that Grandiosity rarely comes about for anyone and instead we are left to our ordinary lives.

When I read about famous people in history books the themes tend to repeat…So and So conquered so and so and killed many folk thereby becoming ““King of the Hill”. How many times have I read variations of that theme?

Often I wonder about the daily lives of people not in the history books, the ordinary folk like us in times past. And as I think of them, the millions and billions not in print, I wonder about the waves each of them made.

Today as I ride I make little ripples in the lives of MS patients, a colleague will make a bigger wave in the life of someone in pain, and a little 8 year old might make even bigger waves with art designs she is now just beginning to create.

As I watch behind me, the waves turn to calm, but just for a second they were there to behold…to be seen, to be cherished, to be known…

Perhaps these are the important waves in life, not those being blasted out by an electric box mounted on a wall…Perhaps the perspective of history books got it wrong…Perhaps it is the millions and billions of small waves that really count…

Perhaps it so…