December, 2019

Hello :)

Guess who is all done with chemo 

and graduated with honors?

Home

This month has been a lot of things but productive is questionable. I have had a ton of necessary but boring as all-get-out paperwork to push around, a boatload of cleaning up and landscaping to pinch hit for Janice who is not up to her usual self to take care of, and endless maintenance around the house after a 9 month absence.

For instance, you would think that something as goofy simple as re-oiling the woodwork in the house would be something that could be done in short order. An hour or two tops. The thing is, when I built the house I custom built all the cabinets out of Honduran Mahogany with Peruvian Walnut inlays. Then I did the same for many of the door frames, window frames, art nooks and cranny's, the circular staircase banister and a ton of extraordinarily large window frames above the walls in the kids bedrooms. 

Its beautiful alright but two days into re-oiling it (not stain or paint but a nourishing teak oil to prevent the wood from drying out) and I cant believe how much work went into this. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it all over again. Still....

I had to remind myself that these are all things that we would have to do anyway if we we here full time, but I compress in the first few weeks upon our return before tacking new, fun and exciting projects that are in Janice's endless hopper. Its the price of doing business.

The reprieve comes when friends and family show up at our door.

Daughter Kami with her fur baby Finn

Nebraska regulars: Cousin Monte, Cinde, 

favorite mother in law ''sweetie pie''

This may not be Texas, but here we take 

our cinnamon rolls seriously

We did manage to replace our refrigerator and had all our palm trees pruned. After some serious planning and prep work, we will wrap up a few serious projects underway before we leave at the beginning of February.

Meanwhile, our yearly routine requires us to take two full days and a $1,000 to have our French visa's renewed. This means driving to Los Angeles to the French Consulate to be interviewed and 'processed'. Our passports are then sent by courier to Paris to have the visa's attached and returned to us about 2-3 week later.

REMEMBER THIS NAME

While in LA for the above, we caught up with our grand daughter Maddie who just started Woodbury university to study animation. A real ball of fire, she is on the path to give Disney a run for their money in a few years when she graduates. At 17, she single handedly bagged a scholarship worth more than most people earn in a year. Or two years. She has scheduled her Easter break to dip her toe in France with us next March.

MADDIE THOMASON.  

You will recognise the name when the credits roll.....

Monthly humor

As for you, we hope you have a great day. 

Unless you have made other plans.

November, 2019

The end is near

After suffering public shaming for years, the relentless ridicule and humiliation of friends and family, against my better judgment I finally gave in to the endless peer pressure, drank the current version of the Jim Jones Cool Aid, was dragged over to the dark side kicking and screaming and bought a smart phone.

Now I can finally communicate  with my kids (and some friends) during meals by texting them across the table while pretending to scroll and count how many 'likes' I have in my yet to be created social media account, to provide me with the positive affirmation I so desperately need and crave. 

My previous flip phone, while a hell of a lot cheaper, made the same phone calls as the best of them and is now in the local...eh...museum. Happy Ian? :)

Home away from home

We settled in for spell at daughter Cassie's place this month, while Janice got Chemo treatments 4 and 5 behind her. This gave me a chance to make myself useful some while mooching, so Janice could get much needed time to rest.

Teaching Papa new magic

Art and Cassie

Favorite son Wesley came to visit during our stay

But then, in a flash, I was gone.

OPERATION DORIAN

It's that time of the year again. Time to get in touch with life as lived by so many others year round. I have mentioned that I was asked to deploy to the Bahamas with Team Rubicon the day after hurricane Dorian hit back in September, but turned them down because of Janice's need for me to stay with her at the island. No sooner had I settled her in with Cassie days after we arrived from the island, they reminded me that while the world has long forgotten them, the folks in the Bahamas (like the folks in Puerto Rico who are still devastated and trying to rebuild from hurricane Maria in 2017) are in one helluva mess and are seriously hurting. 

Since they were offering an all expense paid trip to lay on the beaches in the Bahamas, I couldn't pass it up. I rushed to get my vaccinations up to date (MMR, Tetanus and Hepatitis A & B) and completed the 7 page medical eligibility requirements. I am not a disaster junkie, but I had committed to volunteer 2 weeks per year and this was only my 3rd foray. Since I am on the international team, this was my first foreign deployment. So, I was off.

Just so I didn't go under any illusions as to what to expect, I got this friendly uplifting reminder from them before I left.

Personal Capability Requirements 

to deploy on this operation:

"Before you step on the plane, we wanted to provide you some guidance on this and all international deployments. Due to the austere nature of international operations and given the destructive power of the storm, there is very little vehicle transport on Abaco Island. This storm devastated the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama, so much that 70% of the islands' residents have evacuated and have yet to return.

You must be able to thrive in austere conditions. You will be sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. Meals will be MREs (US Army Meals Ready to Eat and water). Showers will be via water hose. Outhouses would be an upgrade. You must be physically able to carry your own weight, personal gear, and strike team equipment to your work site in tropical weather. There will be multiple modes of travel to include helicopter, sea plane, private jet, yacht, and other watercraft. You are likely to encounter human remains on this operation.

Attached are your travel orders, dispatch instructions and a video (above) of your work site. Thank you for taking the time out of your lives and stepping into the arena to help those in the Bahamas recover from Hurricane Dorian. Now go kick disaster in the teeth and get shit done.

Your teammates at dispatch."

OK then, let the fun begin....

I flew the 16 hours from Oregon to Nassau, spent the night and made the second flight to Marsh Harbor, the central town on Abaco island. At 120 miles in length, it covers 650 sq miles. It was by far the worst hit area of hurricane Dorian. We were located 200 miles east of Miami and 120 miles north of Nassau off of Grand Bahamas. The local airport was destroyed and only fly by the seat of the pants flights could come in.

Honey I'm home!

I have been told that there is a certain perversity in choosing to subject yourself to hideous conditions on purpose when it can be avoided. A fair statement, but for me does not tell the whole story.

The whole "I am off to save the world" thing is great, but truth be told there is a part of me that needs this yearly experience to ground myself in reality. We joke about it 'not being an easy life we lead', but the fact is we may have worked hard for what we have but it is still much more than we deserve. It is the very definition of being blessed and I want to preserve my attitude of gratitude at all costs.

These deployments remind me just how quickly, easily and randomly it can all be taken away. I know perfectly well what the little I did amounted to... except to those people who we did help. 

Enough said. Here is what it looked like on the ground.

With many roads being out, sometimes there is was no other way to get around, especially to the outlying islands.

I was on a 15 day wave of 52 mostly ex-military, hard charging, type A personalities (my kind of people!) who simply don't know the meaning of "I can’t" and only know how to adjust, adapt and overcome any problem. What could possibly go wrong? To be fair, they did their very best to keep up with me :) The conditions were brutal but the experience was incredible.

During our deployment, we had 2 medics, a nurse and a doctor. They were available in their capacity if needed but were assigned to work with strike teams like the rest of us. The doctor was assigned to work on the team I lead, which was one of seven. The US coast guard was prepared to medivac anyone on the team back to Miami if necessary as there was little in the way of medical resources otherwise available.

The conditions

There was no electricity or functioning cell towers where I went, so no phones or Wi-Fi. [What? No FOX news? Catastrophe!!! Say it isn't so!!!] For the next two weeks I might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

In the US, no matter how bad things are locally, Team Rubicon can truck in portable showers, sleeping trailers (sometimes), a mobile kitchen, toilets, as many rented pickup trucks as we need for transportation, earth movers, skip loaders, backhoes and tractor trailers full of all manner of tools and equipment from hundreds of miles away if necessary from our storage depots located throughout the US. Each operation has a tractor trailer for a command office, complete with generators and a satellite uplink. Here, nothing could be brought in unless it was flown or barged in. 

We could not trust the local water supply so we treated our own and stored it in the 5000 liter collapsible storage bag (brown bag above the wall) to the multiple spigots.

Food on stateside deployments is always terrific but we knew going in that this would not be the case under these conditions. The MRE's (US Army Meals Ready to Eat, AKA field rations) and water we were provided 3 times a day were OK, and only tasted bad while we ate them. Lest there be any misunderstanding about how we really felt about these culinary treats, we quickly renamed them Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. No complaints though, we all knew that we didn't come for the dental plan.

MRE's: Breakfast, lunch and dinner of champions

Personal hygiene is critical in this environment. At home we have shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap, dish soap and clothes detergent. Not having a Sherpa to lug extra stuff around, here a bar of soap served all purposes.

Fill your bag in the AM, lay it out in the sun
and shower upon your return to base. 

When the 3 gallons are gone, you are done.

The wave that preceded mine had located a vacant school that had sustained some damage but could be salvaged. They tarped the roof and gutted the building to the studs, removing all soaked drywall, insulation and moldy furniture. They, we moved in and took it over as our quarters and staging area. Some of us had to stay in emergency pods outdoors. (because of the look, we dubbed the area 'space camp') In a re-play of last year, this time I was put in the corner of Mrs. Sanders 2nd grade classroom with 7 other people (co – ed) 

 My corner of the gutted classroom. The nets were due to the abundance of flies. 
The flies were due to human remains still under so much debris nearby.

Some of the emergency pods some of us stayed in, 

in an area we dubded 'space camp'.

 For our convenience  we were provided 
with washing machines to do our laundry...

...and dryers

Some have asked if the damage done by hurricane Dorian was worse than what I saw in Mexico Beach, Florida last year.  At some point you can't see more damage when it is total. Both locations had neighborhoods where street after street could not be identified as to where you were, as there was nothing left recognizable. No street signs, no house numbers - no houses - just cement slabs where homes had been and piles of splintered wood, glass, wire, metal and insulation. Furniture, appliances and bed mattresses could be seen impaled in tree stumps sometimes a mile or more from where they came.

I guess the biggest difference is that in Florida, the damage was over a 50 mile radius. In the Bahamas, the category 5 storm with 185 MPH (300 KPH) lasted 4 days and covered over 1200 square miles. I could post these kinds of pictures all day long but this sampling should give you the idea.

How much worse could it be?

  

OK, fellas. Let's start on 3rd avenue. 
Hmmm... where is 3rd avenue?

Another big difference is that Dorian changed the topography of the islands. There are now bays where there were none and some that existed are filled in with sediment that got moved. 95% of the locals have no insurance and 70% of the residents have left and not returned. Not surprising with so much of the electrical grid out of commission. No lights, phones or Internet and obviously no refrigeration, A/C, ability to cook, water pumps and on and on... Did I mention no FOX news? :)

 So what did we do?

Generally, we worked on what we called 'societal restoration', not to be confused with what the military would call 'nation building'. We patched holes in roofs with plywood then tarped them to keep the water out, brought in tractor trailer sized generators to re-open schools and provide power to some residential sectors, and cleared debris to re-open roads. 

Two of the 6 people on my strike team, helping me tarp a roof. 

The others gutted the interior to the studs to remove moldy
 furniture, appliances, drywall insulation and ductwork.

The idea being that if we could help not only home owners to get back into their homes and schools, but clinics to reopen, businesses get back up running so people can slowly return to their jobs, earn a living, provide services for more to return, we can begin the cycle of putting their society back together again.

 Welcome to the 'hood

Often, I would struggle with the time and effort we were putting in to salvage what were very modest homes to begin with. Even when the exterior looked somewhat salvageable, the 185 mph winds and 4 days or relentless rain pouring through the shattered windows and filled the houses with water. 

People evacuated and two months later in the 85 degree weather with 90% humidity we opened the doors to what was now a mold incubator. Walls, ceilings, floors, furniture, appliances all covered with mold. My solution? A match. Easy for me to say, but I had to remind myself that this was all they had. Period.

We helped the World Central Kitchen organization set up their site to cook 8000 meals a day as there are no grocery stores open to supply the relatively few remaining residents. We even brought food out by boat to the outlying islands. (As if Abaco was not remote enough!) Every business - bar none- was  destroyed and looted. Now, pretty much everything has to be flown in at great costs as even the only port sustained much damage and is only able to accommodate fairly small ships and only one at a time. 

How do you cook 8,000 meals a day? 

You use 5 foot wide frying pans (they had 8 of them)

Boats piled up on top of each other at the port. 
Hundreds more were on rooftops, in the trees or on the roads.

Reinforced concrete walls could not 

stand up to the 4 days of 185 MPH winds. 

Guardrail impaled in a palm tree

Parts of the Bahamas fared better than others,  but not where we were. All in all, the area we were in resembled Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped. As the video I took below shows, as close to total destruction as can be imagined. It was as if God himself decided that the area should cease to exist and stomped his foot on it. 

Be sure to open to full screen

Abaco has gone from a tourist destination to sail, fish and lay on the beaches to a 3rd world country that, in my opinion, will not be put back together again in my lifetime. Occasionally, we would find a home that we could do something to help restore and get the family back in.

Thousands of telephone poles (and virtually all trees) snapped like tooth pics, leaving hundreds of miles of power and phone lines twisted like spaghetti on roadways, across sidewalks, in peoples yards and trees.

Sadly, I saw no government activity of any kind working to restore anything. 

The place looked like the hurricane had hit yesterday.

My two week deployment over for the year, I happily returned filthy and exhausted to the arms of my trophy bride.

October, 2019

Island Life

Photo credit: Douglas Rawlinson

Photo of us taken by Doug while 
passing by on our way home at sunset. 

Some people ask "Do you HAVE TO take a boat to get back to your island?" 

"NO", we say "we GET TO take a boat back to our island". 

Our outdoor shower (AKA the Taj-Mah-Shower)  in the fall

Road trip!

Last month I wrote that we were heading out for a short road trip before Janice's 3rd chemo treatment. It was a ton of fun and true to our interests, we sought out unusual locations and / or experiences that satisfy our interests for the somewhat excletic. We started by spending over a day visiting 10 different waterfalls in and around Ithyca NY. We saw so many of them, we feel like we could write a book on "The Waterfalls of the North East".

 Chittenanga falls

Taughannock Falls. A 215 foot (66m) plunge waterfall that is reportedly 

the highest single-drop waterfall east of the Rocky mountains.

This yellow brick sidewalk in Chittenango NY was the inspiration 
for the "Yellow brick Road" in the movie "The Wizard of Oz"

 Display blade from a wind farm. Squint and you 
can see me standing at the end on the far right

This fire engine was built a year before George Washington was born!

Patient update

OK, Chemo treatments # 3 and 4 are under her belt. A second PET scan was done and the results were superb! The doctor then ordered her to complete treatments 5 and 6. She was initially scheduled for 4 treatments with two additional ones depending on what the second PET scan results were. 

We assumed that meant that if the results were good, # 5 and 6 would not be necessary. It was the opposite. If the results from the second PET scan were not good, there would have been no point in doing 5 and 6. The fact that the results were very good, he decided that 5 and 6 would be full steam ahead.

We have pulled the plug and skipped the country so our next stop was to daughter Cassie's home in Oregon. We will be here for a spell while she is home some to help take care of mom. I smiled when I gleefully put Janice's endless list of things for me to do away for a while, only to have Cassie generously step in for mom and presenting me with a list of her own (Things I want dad to do).

Cassie and her partner Art set up their 33 foot pop-out camper for us to use during our stay. That way Janice can step away from the kids and have a little quiet time  when she needs it.

So aside from Janice continuing the next chemo treatment here, I busy myself by spending time with the grandkids and doing what I can to help out with the ongoing house projects.

On a lighter note...

Words simply fail me.

September, 2019

Patient update

Chemo treatment # 2 is behind us and the predictable 1st week of feeling like 'El-Toro-Poo-Poo' did not disappoint. Week two was somewhat better and got a serious morale boost when the new "Doo'' arrived after the normal hair loss from chemo. This upcoming week 3 is as good as it gets before getting hit again by the revolting poisonous cocktail of Chemo treatment # 3.

We are going to take advantage of the short window to take a little road trip for several days and get her off island for a much needed breather and change of scenery. 

When it rains, it pours.

For the past 5 months I have been working with a couple of old friends to organize a get together for about 60 people in Montreal. These were high school friends and acquaintances from 50 years ago who had one thing in common in our lives. 

A Catholic priest. 

Some of us had traveled to Europe with him as teenagers, others were simply touched by him in a way that would be impossible to describe except to say that his influence on us all was profound enough that 50 years later we wanted to gather to remember him.

I was tasked to be the MC for our gathering of about 60 people who had traveled from all over the continent to be there, and I had our friend Lyne come provide some adult supervision and babysit Janice while I was away overnight.

At 6 AM on the morning I left, we got a message that my mother was admitted to the hospital by ambulance for heart valve issues, so I made an emergency run to Montreal to deal with that. I then raced to our event and the next day when my mother was released, I drove her home with her new meds just on time to hear that Janice's mother had a stroke in California and went on her own ambulance ride. Janice's sister flew out to address the immediate issues.

All in all, a quiet relaxing week end.

The hospital was different than what I am used to, as the picture above shows the narrow hallways that everyone travels through to get from one wing of the hospital to another. Patients line the hallways as there are no available beds or rooms. I am not going to start an argument with anyone about socialized medicine or the state of health care in Canada, I am merely showing what I observed.  I report, you decide.

Mandy

Daughter Mandy flew in from Germany to spend 10 days with her mom and was a huge help. She cooked, cleaned and did all manner of chores to help out. It is great to have responsible adult children to help out at these times, and to be able to step out of their way to allow them to take over and be competent helpers. Meanwhile we had several friends cook and deliver many meals so that Janice was not subject to my very special hot dog recipes.

OK, just because I am lolly gagging around doesn't mean I am on vacation. Janice may have cancer and is not bouncing around, but with my self-imposed grounding from flying this summer, I have  had considerable time to get busy on the boss's great ideas for things for me to do. I started by finishing the raw Olive wood art piece seen below that we brought back from France.

Next, I was tasked with building a granite stone and slate lighthouse entry light fixture that incorporates a copper themed framed 'flame' lamp. In the dark (obviously) the light appears to be a torch with flames rising from it. Janice insisted it was necessary to keep ships from running aground on Honey Bee Island.

Last and perhaps least, I installed a canvas shade over our deck as the sap and needles from the pine trees was constantly falling on the fabric chairs.

Team Rubicon

Once again, Team Rubicon (that volunteer organization I  worked with last year) requested that I deploy with them to the Bahamas for disaster response the day after hurricane Dorian hit. I have put it off until we get to California and I get Janice settled. My two week commitment per year is about due.

Poor baby

We didn't get to play and you are now tucked in for the winter. 

We will make up for it in June when we go back to dancing with the angels