Back from O-hi-o

O-hi-o as my grandson Jack calls it. I was gone for 10 days. Not exactly a vacation as I ended up helping friends move. More on this later.

I designed the trip around friends. Folks I had not seen since before the pandemic and even longer. One was my college housemate during my final year at Ohio University in Athens. It is in Athens Ohio where my friends Keith and Darlene Wasserman live; they facilitate a homeless shelter and several outreaches to the poor/elderly/children in southeast Ohio. Good Works was started by Keith while he was a student at OU when he decided to buy a house and invite homeless singles to stay in his basement. Very grassroots and organic. His motto is: Love is a verb.

My plan after Athens was to bus to Cincinnati to visit Dave and Debbie who also used to live in the same ministry I was in in Chicago. They now work at a Catholic Worker house in Norwood called Lydia’s House where they assist families in crisis and moms and their babies with housing. I traveled with them to Chicago where I spent a hectic 24 hours before boarding the Blue Water Amtrak train back to E. Lansing. All of this trip was either by public transit or car ride.

I took the Michigan Flyer from E. Lansing to Detroit Airport. I arrived at 1:15 pm and my greyhound left at 3:45 pm. There were several options from the airport to Greyhound—DAX bus or city bus #261, both advertised they took about an hour. DAX was $6 if purchased online and the Smart bus turned out to be 50 cents. But, it didn’t turn out to be so smart or an hour. It took 90 minutes, dropping me at the Rosa Parks Transit Center at 3:30. I’d Googled and asked the wizard where the Greyhound terminal was: the answer Rosa Parks. Except that wasn’t the case. I asked where Greyhound was as I didn’t see any of those buses when I alighted from #261. At this point I only had 9 minutes before my bus left.

The woman said to me: How fast can you run?

Oh my God—I was perhaps a mile and a half from Greyhound. Bad intel from Google.

I ran with a backpack and I should not have made it. I pried the doors open with my fingertips and got on, showed my ticket, and sat down. That was some crazy running. It took half the ride for my heart rate to come down and my adrenaline to calm. Lynda picked me up in downtown Cleveland.

Lynda recently lost her husband and was selling her house. Everything was a muddle, but she was pretty sure this was the right decision. Her old 6-bedroom house and the acreage was too much now that it was just her and her daughter. I helped her box up a closet of clothes and move them to her new condo. Not really a feat of exertion, but for her it felt like a BIG help. Just the mere idea and all that it stood for was overwhelming.

In Athens I helped my friend Keith move. As director of a homeless shelter there are a lot of meetings, outside of work situations, stress. Exercise or what is gently referred to as MOTION is part of a balanced wellness plan. Something I discussed with Keith. We first got his recumbent out of the shed and decided it needed a tune-up. He rode as I ran to the bike shop. After scheduling that we were set up on ebikes where we cycled around Athens. Upon returning them, Keith put a deposit down!

In Cincinnati I casually helped out at the community meals: eating! I also held some cute babies. I had a full day where both my friends were working so they set me up on a bike and I rode around looking for my grandfather’s house. He used to live in Madisonville near the streetcar line. That line is now a bike path. In fact I used three off-road bike trails to get around. Lastly, I stopped at a bakery and bought pastries. Cincinnati, settled by German immigrants (bier meisters), felt very German!

Dave and Debbie had plans to drive to Chicago, so I hitched a ride. In Chicago I ended up helping another friend move-in. The pieces and parts were there and she’d already done a fair bit of sorting and assembly, but because she had a work-out injury her ability to lean over or push furniture into place was hampered. I shoved the L-shaped sofa into a corner, set up the lamp, moved her weights and a coffee table by a radiator. We stood in the middle and got a feel for the changes. A few edits and she seemed happy with the arrangement. I was pleased that she was pleased and then begged her to cook me some eggs. In the middle of the table were the Mother’s Day flowers I brought her.

I made it to my train—barely. Saturday traffic downtown was stop and start—perhaps because of graduations etc. I’m glad so many people are using public transportation. Most of the buses and the train I took were mostly full.

So happy to be home for Mother’s Day.