Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home
For our sanity and for our longterm survival, we took over three months of vacation this year. And it was awesome.
And then it was time to leave ‘home’ in America. We left Dad’s ‘home’ in DC. We left the lake ‘home’ in Virginia. To come ‘home’, whatever that means. And we were ready. Nothing has brought purpose and meaning to our professional lives like working in Tchad, and nothing ever will. And nothing will probably ever be as challenging, frustrating, rewarding, fun, infuriating, blissful or... hard. Just hard. We are bipolar here. But we still believe this is where God wants us for the time being.
So we packed up all our twelve checked bags and six carry ons, we remembered all four children, plus a father, and headed to the airport. Uneventfully checked in, we said our goodbyes to Dad and started ‘home’. Wheels up at 10am and wheels down in N’Djamena a little before noon the next day. We are a mess. But we want to get back to Bere as soon as we can, so we register the two new passports, Lyol’s third of his life and Addison’s second, with the national police. I then head out to James and Sarah’s place to pick up the in-laws’ 4Runner and drive it back to our ‘home’ at TEAM. We set out to do some shopping, jet-lagged zombies in a grocery store.
We finish one grocery store in the dark and head to another, brains fully on auto-pilot. Danae has decided she will buy me a new stove, as our current one is down to a single burner. $450 later, and Danae’s anniversary present to me in the bag, we are outside in the dark trying to load all our grocery purchases plus a stove into a Toyota 4Runner. I strap the two replaced tires onto the roof and we cram the stove and all into the back, although I’m none too happy the stove is on its side. I want it standing up. It’s a good thing Danae gave our suitcases to Laurent. We’re chuck full as it is without them.
Our day of torture not yet finished, we go to eat some Lebanese food a mile away and manage to enjoy the meal. At least, nobody is awake enough to complain. Finally ‘home’ to TEAM and into our two different rooms, me with Zane and Danae with the other three.
Danae gives me an oh-by-the-way right as I’m falling asleep... ‘Oh, by the way. I can’t find my phone. I think it was stolen outside the store.’ Well there goes our plan to leave early in the morning. I switch on Find My iPhone on my phone and lock Danae’s and leave a message for whoever has the phone: ‘This phone was stolen. Please call me at X to return it to me. Thank you.’ Whoever had the phone had switched it off, so GPS had no signal on it. I also send some internet credit to her phone so it would pick up, since she was probably out. Whoever they are, they now have something no more useful than a paperweight and I am going to sleep.
The next morning, we go back to the grocery store and the nice Lebanese owner looks at the security footage with Danae and they see Danae cram her phone into the bottom of her purse as she paid and walked out. Ok, so she had it then. Nobody was anybody near us at the restaurant and Danae was too tired to pull it out then. The car had been locked. Must have been in the parking lot.
Well, we give up the phone for lost and start driving to Bere. But wait!!! On the way out of town, my phone buzzes. Danae’s phone has been located! I call it immediately. ‘Hey, you have my phone. How can we meet up?’ He jabbers on for a few seconds before the call drops. Dang it! I’m out of phone credit! I sent my last money to Danae’s phone for internet credit. Ok, so I turn on Find My iPhone and I locate Danae’s phone. Piece of cake. I will just take the blue dot to the white dot on the map and confront the guy with the phone.
 Except. Wait. Hang on a sec. No. That can’t be right. This thing says Danae’s phone is in Cameroon?!?!?! Lemme refresh and see where it really is. No. It’s still in Cameroon. Well, isn’t that special.
So I pull over and put some more phone credit on my phone. Except this vendor with the Airtel sign isn’t actually selling Airtel credit. Nor is that guy. Or that guy! Ok, Airtel, stop giving people these Airtel umbrellas! So misleading!!!
Well, I drive over the bridge toward Cameroon as I’m looking for phone credit. I finally find some and buy it. Ok, back in business. I call Danae’s phone. Wait! He turned it off again!?!?!? Grrr... ok, it’s game on now!
I drive to customs and patiently explain my situation. They wave me on to the border. I talk to the emigration guy at the gate, relating the hilarity of the situation. He takes me to his boss. I explain the situation again, bemoaning the troubles of theft. He takes me to his boss. How many bosses are around here? Oh right, Chad. Ok. So I explain the situation again, emphasizing my desire to respect international law, and also to put the fear of Allah into this bozo and help him realize he’s actually trafficking stolen electronics across international borders and I have my CIA satellites tracking him. I impress them with the GPS location on my phone, showing Danae’s phone in the left room of a house just on the outskirts of Kousseri, about four kilometers from where we are on the border.
‘We have no authority there.’
Of course you don’t. But maybe you can go and talk to your comrades over there and explain it to them and then the kind folks on the Cameroon side of the border can escort me to this house and back to the border. Or let me go and chat with them and see what we can arrange.
‘Oh, no. We can’t do that. But here’s what we should do. You go to the Cameroonian embassy and explain the situation. They will readily understand and give you permission to enter their country. Then return with a written complaint. Then we will write a complaint to the Cameroonian authorities under my authority and we will go and get your phone.’
Mmmhmmm. Yeah. I know the Cameroonian embassy. I’ll need to pay a visa and it will take another day. This doesn’t sound like fun. I nod my head in agreement at their inefficient plan and walk out, without any intention of following their well-intended advice. Instead, I call Laurent.
Now if you’ve visited us, you’ve probably met Laurent. He’s our taxi driver. He picks you up at the airport and gets you registered and changes your money and finds you lodging and gets you on the bus to us. Laurent has done a lot for us. He’s even gone to jail for us. Literally. A volunteer once brought an air gun into the country. He somehow got it through customs at the airport without being caught. Laurent then sent his luggage to Bere in a minivan. The minivan was stopped and searched by customs, who found the air gun, not realizing the difference between an air gun and a firearm. They put the driver in jail, who then called Laurent, who admitted he was the responsible party. Laurent called us and we flew up in the plane and they didn’t release Laurent until I laid down and told the customs police I was sleeping there. They didn’t want a foreigner on their hands all night long, so they let Laurent go. (And as an aside to the aside, we ended up getting the air gun back, but not until I told the customs chief to shoot me with it as proof it wasn’t dangerous. He refused to shoot me, but was impressed enough with my insistence that he gave it back.)
‘Laurent, are you willing to drive your taxi alone to another country and then confront an unknown person at an unknown house about stealing our phone?’

 Well, what a silly question. Of course Laurent is down! I mean, come on, the dude’s Laurent!
So we sat on the side of the road halfway between the border and N’Djamena awaiting Laurent. And we wait. And wait. And wait some more. While waiting, I try to think of how I can show Laurent how to use my phone to bring the white dot to the blue dot.
‘Laurent, dude! What’s up? You still coming? What’s taking so long?’
So Laurent went to the Cameroonian embassy and had to wait for them to finish a meeting to talk to them and he’s got things in the bag. Sweet.
So we wait some more.
‘Ding.’
Wait. What? They turned the phone back on! I’m calling!!!
Hey, dude, what’s up with my phone? Bring it back to Tchad!
‘Francais mafi.’
Francais mafi, my foot! Dude, we were just speaking French on the phone earlier!
Ok, fine. You wanna play hardball? Ok, let’s see. What are the right words in Arabic. Yeah, there we go.
‘Go! Tchad! Phone!’ Ha! I guess I showed him! He didn’t think I could do it! That’s, like, fluent. He knows darn tootin’ well what I want.
I hang up and send a new message to the locked screen on Danae’s phone: ‘I see you. You have my phone in Kousseri. And I even see the house there where you are in the bush. Please, come back to Tchad with my phone immediately.’ Bam! What now, sucker?!
Oh wait! The phone’s on the move! He’s coming to the border! No way! It worked!?!?!? The white dot crosses the border! Wait! He’s coming straight at us!!!
We drive back toward the border. We’re gonna nab this guy. We’re now right across the street from the white dot. He’s clearly on foot. I pull over and Danae runs across the street to talk to three guys talking together, looking suspicious. I pull out my phone and call Danae’s phone, looking around to see who will pull out a phone and nab the suspect. But nobody’s reaching in their pocket or looking at their hand. Oh, man. They saw Danae too early and are now nervous and on to us.
‘Salaam Aleikum.’ Uh. Wait. Huh? I’m looking around desperately. He’s on the phone, but nobody in sight is talking.
‘Yo, Danae. Not here!’
‘Ummm... uh... Aleikum salaam. Yo, dude. Where you at with my phone?!’
‘Car.’ Ok, so he’s in a Toyota Hiace minibus. He must have just caught the minibus across the street.

 ‘So where’s your car going?’
‘Dembe.’
Click. Ok, he’s headed to the market. Danae, get in!
U-turn and we’re back on the chase. We chase down a minibus and pull it over.
‘Does anybody here have my phone? No? Ok. Sorry, my bad. Have a good day. We love America!’
Chase down another minibus. Dear, you’re scarier than I am. Go get it! Danae hops out and runs up to the minibus. Who’s got my phone?
Sheepishly, an early teen kid crawls out and walks back to our car. I immediately take the phone from his hand and place it into the middle console of the car. A crowd gathers. Danae wants to know where he got the phone. He insists he paid 90 cents for it in the market to buy it from some unknown girl. So you bought a phone you couldn’t unlock the screen of with a picture of a lovely (if I do say so myself) American family on the screen? Danae and the mob ended up escorting the young boy to the police, where Danae handed him over, almost certainly for the boy to be released. But whatevs, we had the phone back!
By now it’s awfully late to drive the ten hours ‘home’ to Bere, so we stay another night, this time at our ‘home’ at Lutheran mission, on the outskirts of N’Djamena where it’s a bit more peaceful. We meet a super-cool family there and spend the evening chatting with them while our kids play. They have four kids, all within a year of our kids’ ages.
The next day we drive ‘home’ to Bere. A road I’ve traveled in less than five hours in the past, now takes ten hours, as oil trucks and others continue to beat up the road to an unrecognizable condition. And we drive slow as we have unbelted children, two marginally strapped-down tires on the roof, and $450 of brand-new stove laying on its side in the back. It is so painful. But whatever, we finally make it, pulling into ‘home’ on the hospital compound in full darkness. Despite all our suitcases being on a cargo truck coming down at some future date, it still takes quite a while to unload the 4Runner into our ‘home’.
Every year we come ‘home’ to Tchad from ‘home’ in America, Danae always gets blindsided with the house. From the million dollar lake ‘home’ we stay at in Virginia to our ‘home’ in Tchad, a ‘home’ which would be condemned if were in America for so many reasons. And yet, it’s the nicest ‘home’ in this district of 200,000 humans. Danae is always shocked by the dirtiness of the place. I never even notice.
This year, for the first time in eight years, the roles are reversed. Danae sees it, but accepts it readily as routine. A nuisance, but one that can be anticipated and dealt with and accepted. I, on the other hand, am utterly shocked that we call this ‘home’ and raise our children here. I’m shocked at how dirty the walls are, how dusty things are, how stale, how simply... not ‘home’ it is. And I’m shocked that I’m shocked. And intellectually, I know this is probably the cleanest our ‘home’ has been in the better part of a year. Somebody must have worked really hard just to get our ‘home’ this clean.
But we get the kids showered and fed and into bed. And we unpack and put away the little we have. And eventually, I collapse into bed. Our bed. In medical school, I slept on the floor for the first six months on a backpacking foam sheet. Every week, I’d go to the mattress store and lay on every single mattress. And every week, I had the same favorite. And every week, I’d make

the owner the same offer, $700, with a smile. And every week, he’d laugh at my offer and kindly refuse. I’d tell him it was an entire month’s stipend for me and I literally couldn’t afford more. Finally, one Friday, after six months of our charade, he accepted my $700 for the most comfortable California king in the store. I don’t know if he lost money on it, but he certainly couldn’t have earned anything. I quickly called Steph to borrow her truck and got a buddy and drove it ‘home’ before the owner could change his mind.
Prior to this, my friend Paul had explained to me that a good mattress is a purchase you don’t want to be stingy with. If you’re lucky, you’ll be spending 1⁄4-1⁄3 of your life on it, and the time you spend on it will dictate how enjoyable many of the hours are you don’t spend on it.
I brought this mattress ‘home’ almost 15 years ago. The mattress then moved to our ‘home’ in Massachusetts. It’s the only mattress our marriage has ever known. Then it cross the ocean on a container ship, trekked across Cameroon and Chad, and ended up in our ‘home’ at the hospital.
Collapsing into it, there’s a familiarity. This is my bed. Beside me is the love of my life. Twenty feet away are four creatures I would give my life for without hesitation. There’s a dog beside me I’ve had twelve years. The fan is blowing on me just as it has for the last eight years. The cries of the pediatric ward are within earshot, just as they always are.
So I make a mental, emotional and spiritual effort to remove the quotation marks and embrace the fact: I am home.

Vacation 2.0

Vacation 2.0
From burying Mom, we had a great debriefing meal with the whole extended family and then our nuclear family took off driving. More. Driving. First we drove to Urbana, IL to visit some of our dearest friends. We weren’t there but one day and we hit the road again to Chicago to meet up with Aunt Janelle and Uncle Bill some more. I showed the family just how awesome Chicago is, including Navy Pier, a marina, the Shedd Aquarium, Soldier Field, Mexican restaurants, Grant Park, Lincoln Park, ‘the bean’, the Sears Tower or whatever newfangled name they have for it these days, a boat tour on the Chicago River, a walk out Union Pier, Michigan Avenue, McCormick Center (where we saw lots of old random friends and family and the educators’ convention!), Chinatown... all packed into two days! We were planning to stay a third day, but Bill and Janelle had to leave early and our vacation waits for no family!
So we took off for Madison, WI to stay a night with the Kings. We would have loved to stay longer, but our dance card was all full (and they have real working jobs anyway, I know, right, so lame), so we turned our wagons further north still to northern Minnesota (Da Mudderland!!!) and Becky’s cabin on the lake. Danae is getting pretty well-versed in the upper midwest and our weather was glorious. She just has an overactive imagination of igloos, penguins and polar bears starting in December, despite my insistence than isn’t the case.
After sufficient fun with old married lady Becky (married last year, woo-hoo!) we headed west for Addison’s birthday. For Addison’s birthday, we met up with Danae’s parents and summited the highest point in North Dakota, White Butte. Zane may have gotten a lame trip to Great Wolf Lodge for his birthday, but nothing is a cool as spending your birthday on White Butte, lemme tell ya, doncha know. Ya sure, ya betcha! We even had cupcakes on the summit! And to think Juniper slept on my back the whole way and didn’t even appreciate the summit.
We took pictures in sunflower fields, we went to the Black Hills and saw Mount Rushmore and we climbed 7+ miles round trip up to the high point of South Dakota, Black Elk Peak, also the highest summit east of the Rockies! (Guadalupe Peak is higher as east, but technically south of the Rockies and not east.) From there, we decided to drive to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, arriving around midnight and setting up camp. In the morning, we trekked around Devil’s Tower, visited with a family camping in a retrofitted school bus (which is now on my bucket list), and kept on driving to Thermopolis, WY.
In Thermopolis, we spent the day hanging out at a hot springs pool and water slide, then put more miles on the car to go to Yellowstone, but we stopped short. We kept looking for a campground, but they all said no soft-sided campers. Bears! Finally we found a campground who thought we would be safe in our hammock and the kids in their tent. We set up camp and then headed back down to Cody, WY, Rodeo Capital of the World for... well, what else, a rodeo!!!
When I married an Oklahoman, I assumed she would be well-versed in rodeo culture. Turns out, I was taking her to her first-ever rodeo! What an honor! What a privilege! What on earth did that horse just do over there in the corner? Gross. Well, at least there’s cotton candy and enthusiasm!
The kids have had books about Yellowstone we’ve read to them since forever. Their favorite is, ‘Who Pooped in the Park?’ about a family having a blast walking around Yellowstone staring at scat (not the jazzy singer kind of scat, the kind of scat that comes from one’s backside). We were finally in Yellowstone, surrounded by more poop than you can shake a stick at. First stop... walking around... ‘Olen and Danae?’ I turn and look. Somebody recognized us from the blog and Facebook friended us and recognized us randomly in Yellowstone! Good thing I wasn’t lighting up a blunt just then, that would have been embarrassing! ;)
 At the same place, they found bison remains right next to a hot pot. People were speculating where it came from. Then a ranger came and explained the bison carcass hadn’t been there the day before and was more than a day deceased. No large animal would have moved it there. Except there were bootprints around. Some human had been playing a prank.
We saw bison (alive) and painter’s waterfall, geological activity to boggle the mind, elk, soaked in a river with freezing water on the backside and piping hot water flowing off the edge onto the chest, met travelers from everywhere, got caught in rain, saw rainbows in the sky and colors on the ground, saw geysers large and small, old and young, faithful and unreliable, and hit all the checkboxes for Yellowstone (except saw no bear or wolf). We left Yellowstone and discovered a great free campsite just between the Tetons and Yellowstone and froze our little fannies off, awakening to a bit of ice. The next day was a drive through the Tetons and Jackson Hole, discovering we aren’t nearly hip enough for such a place (although we did discover an amazing second-hand outdoor goods store, which is kinda like crack to me), and drove on to Vernal, Utah, one of many smallish-sized towns that should be dying in today’s America, but by all appearances is actually doing quite well, thank you very much.
We spent a couple nights in Vernal, soaking in the pool, eating at buffets and preparing for our big backpacking trip!
August 21 we hit the trail! The Uinta River Trail in the Unita Highlands Wilderness in Ashley National Forest. This is what we’d been waiting for! Starting out over 7000 feet, we hiked in 6+ miles and over a thousand feet the first day, setting up camp in the dark and rain on the sloping side of the mountain. The thing about the wilderness, there are no campsites! The next day was another four or five miles, in much heavier rain and freezing cold. We camped about 10,300 feet or so. I set up the hammock, but it was so cold and wet that all SIX of us slept in a two-man tent!!! What a night! The next day we just did a lazy two miles to Upper Chain Lake in the Chain Lakes Basin of the Uintas. It was so beautiful! We found the perfect campsite. Lyol and I hiked up to Fourth Chain Lake to take in the views and returned down. What a trip! But we weren’t done!
Danae and I decided to ditch the kids with her parents and go for Kings Peak, the high point of Utah. So the next morning, we carried the kids’ three itty-bitty backpacks, plus a fanny pack, plus a strapped-on tarp, plus strapped-on hammock and clothes and whatever else we might need, and we took off. And when I say took off, Danae has her own pace. She’s a bullet! Up and over Trail Rider pass. Through the Atwood Basin. Past Lake Atwood. Dressed up for rain. Undressed for sunshine. Dressed up for rain. Hide under the tarp... Up Roberts’ Pass. Back down. We made the decision to ditch what little of a trail there was and strike off cross-country. We invented a short cut to Anderson Pass, trudged across marsh and rock and hopping across streams. Back up on the other side until we arrived at the crest of Anderson Pass. From there we followed a theoretical trail, although it was really just trying to scramble up one massive boulder to the next. Finally, after way too long of this, we arrived at the summit of Kings Peak, 13,534 feet, the seventh-highest of the American high points, and about 300 feet lower than Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which we drove up last year.
By the time we got to the top, I was feeling seriously queasy. I blamed it on exertion, only having eaten a granola bar, a half a tortilla and a tiny hunk of cheese, and of course, the real reason probably had something to do with the altitude as well. Then all of the sudden, I felt my face and my hands go all numb and tingly.
‘Uh, Danae, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think we need to go down. Like right now.’ I was pretty sure I was getting high altitude cerebral edema and was about to die. The good news is, I was wrong...

 All of a sudden, Danae dropped to the ground, trekking poles flying in opposite directions. ‘Well, I didn’t mean to alarm you.’
Danae told me she had sensed an ice pick of electricity going straight down from the top of the her crown into her brain. She was positive, and still is to this day, she was struck by some sort of lightening. I say ‘some sort’, because I didn’t see or hear anything like lightening or a thunderbolt, and I was standing about five yards from her. But she definitely felt something. And so did I. Once she flopped, the electricity in the air had apparently dissipated and I know longer felt the tingling.
Well, now this was excited. Thunder and lightening now started up all around us, as it will do at 6pm in the summer, when you’re on the highest point for hundreds of miles around. Here we were, thousands of feet above the surrounding area in a thunderstorm.
We decided to forego the ridge we had come up, as it seemed more exposed and where the lightening was mostly striking. We decided to go straight down the side of the mountain, a grade of probably 50-60 degrees of huge loose boulders, now wet in the rain. It took an hour to go down 0.3 miles, whereas we had been knocking off about two miles each hour walking across the flat basin. Slowed down by my nausea and fatigue, slipping and falling multiple times on wet and rolling boulders, once so badly I rolled over Danae’s trekking pole (borrowed from her mother) and snapped it in two, and sped on by Danae’s rational fear of being struck by lightening again, it was a stressful hour. We finally made it to the bottom over an hour later and had to go cross-country to find where we had stashed our fannypack with all the weight, by now in the pitch black. We kept on hiking down, this time following the trail for quite a ways down the valley. After zig-zagging long enough and not really making much progress toward our goal, we decided to make another short cut across the valley to the far side, this time in the dark.
We went up and over hills in the dark, across streams, boulder jumping. It was exhausting. We got to the base of the pass and found the first clump of ‘trees’ we had seen since Atwood Basin. We were planning to hike back to camp to surprise the kids by sunrise, but it was approaching midnight and we were exhausted. Down from altitude, my stomach was feeling only marginally better. We decided a 16-mile day that took us up three separate passes was sufficient and we hung our hammock in a stand of two juniper trees, neither one more than seven or eight feet tall. We crashed, listening to thunder and rockslides around us.
The next morning I felt great again and we chugged the 9+ miles back to the kids in a little over five hours, slowing down for the pass at the beginning of the day and the pass at the end of the day. We were happy to see the kids again, and the in-laws.
After their two days of rest, the kids were ready to head down the mountain. It was good they got a little rest from all the hiking while Danae and I killed ourselves. We hiked almost seven miles the first day down and seven miles the second day and covered the fourteen miles out to the car.
It was a pretty awesome trip hiking fourteen miles and fourteen miles out, going up to around 10,400 feet, with a two-year-old, a five-year-old, a seven-year-old, a 74-year-old and a 75-year- old for a week! Both old and young were pretty tough cookies, with everybody carrying their fair share. Well, I suppose the kids didn’t really carry their ‘fair’ share. Danae’s fair share was carrying Juniper, and Addison for a tiny bit, plus whatever else she could fit into the 3000 cubic inches under Juniper’s tushy. Zane and Lyol and Addison all had small backpacks with knife and whistle and compass and fleece and rain gear and food and water. Rollin and Dolores

 carried all their own camping gear and some of the food. And I ended up with somewhere around 110 pounds, although I could still keep up with the five-year-old. Actually, Addison proved herself to be a strong hiker, as did everybody. She probably surprised us the most, however. That girl can go!
We had to make our own campsites, occasionally make our own trail, cross log bridges, go miles on end of rocky trails, crisscrossed with tree roots... it was hard going. But we did it! This brought our summer backpacking total to about 90 miles for our family (plus the 25 additional Danae and I did), or 4% of the distance of the Appalachian Trail. Maybe we’re not quite ready yet. I think our kids could probably do a 13-mile day here or there eventually after building up to it. But even at that rate, we’d probably need all 8-9 months to finish the Appalachian. Some day.
Anyway, back in Vernal, we got two more nights in the same two adjoining hotel rooms, and we ate two more times at the all-you-can-eat buffet. Yum! And OOF-DA! We also completed the ‘Vernal Challenge’, which I know you have all dreamed of completing yourself. We went to Dinosaur National Monument, we hiked to the top of Moonshine Arch, we visited the Utah Field House Museum, we looked at Petroglyphs at McConkie Ranch (and met the amazing old lady who lives there!) and we selfied ourselves with T-Rex, the green dinosaur in town. Most amazingly of all, I got to show my in-laws places in Utah they had never seen before! I think they’ve officially seen it all now! And for our labors, our reward for completing the Vernal Challenge was a sweet treat in town (where we also spent a lot of money buying other sweet treats (those conniving geniuses!).
Leaving our precious Vernal, we headed to Colorado, where we drove through Rangely and wondered if Danae and I would have ever met had Rollin and Dolores chosen Rangely over Jay. We camped in the White River National Forest. We rode on the Silver Plume train and toured the silver mine. We went to Johnson’s Corner in Loveland and bought donuts and cinnamon rolls. We attended a gorgeous (if rainy) wedding of Danae’s cousin in Aspen the day before Labor Day. Congratulations Travis and Ruby and welcome, Ruby, to the family (us in-laws gotta stick together ;) !)!
Then things finally got interesting...
Sunday morning, just before the wedding, Danae and her friends, Emily and Heather, FINALLY settled on Iceland as their destination for a 40th Birthday Party for Emily. The plan was for Emily and Danae to go to Dublin for a few days before then heading to Reykjavik to meet up with Heather for another 4-5 days. So just before packing up and leaving the hotel for the wedding, we bought: 1) One-way ticket for Emily from Atlanta to Baltimore, 2) One-way ticket for Danae from Denver to Washington, DC, 3) One-way tickets for Danae and Emily to Dublin from Baltimore, 4) One-way tickets for Danae and Emily to Reykjavik from Dublin, 5) One-way ticket for Emily from Reykjavik to Baltimore, 6) One-way ticket for Emily from Baltimore to Atlanta, 7) Super-romantic Bed and Breakfast 50 minutes outside Dublin for Emily and Danae. I also went ahead and booked a smart phone photography workshop slash walking tour of Dublin for the day after they arrived and Riverdance VIP tickets and dance lessons for Emily’s birthday!
After the wedding finished in the late evening, we drove overnight from Aspen to Denver overnight, dropping off Danae at the airport and arranging for my dad to pick her up in DC, swing by his house for Danae to grab some stuff, and then drop her off in Baltimore to meet Emily. Then the kids and I, after sleeping in the car, started driving solo, four kids, and myself, alone, in the car, from Denver to DC. Yay! Fun fun FUN! We made it to Council Bluffs, IA and I decided the kids (and me too!) had been of great spirits and patience. So we got some Taco Bell and Wendy’s frosties for lunch, got a hotel (for $36!) with a pool and free breakfast, swam a

long time, ordered in Red Lobster (which is interesting for vegetarians, but possible), then slept. Then next morning was free breakfast, more pool time (the kids had been really good on the drive and earned it), then on the road to St Joseph, MI, where we stayed with my BFF Krystian, who had just bought a house and graciously allowed us to sleep on his bare floor. Along the way, I had decided we had done a bit much fast food, so we stopped at a grocery store and bought loads of fresh fruits and vegetables and water and made our meals out of that. Once at Krystian’s, we put the kids to bed and talked late into the night.
The next day was a beautifully wasted day at the beach. We walked out the pier, past the lighthouse, we swam in the water, which was pleasant, and even got sunburned in mid- September in Michigan! That night was pizza and some good exhausted sleep for the kiddos, and for us too, once we finally stopped talking, but you know how old friends can go on. We woke up, packed up, loaded the car, breakfasted at Cracker Barrel with Krystian’s parents (I lived in their basement for a year in high school) and hit the road again. We made it to DC and Dad’s house well in the dark and fell asleep, but not before stopping at a rest area and trying to get Heather to Iceland on-time despite her flight being canceled, and sending Danae directions to the various places they were supposed to go in Ireland.
We took advantage of Danae’s absence by going to the library, as well as scheduled appointments for all kids for dental appointments and vaccines, as well as dental appointments and vaccines for the grown ups.
We also hadn’t yet purchased Danae any ticket back from Iceland, so we decided to go and join her! Tickets were less than $300 each! So we flew out to join her the day Emily and Heather were leaving.
The kids and I packed into five personal items and two carseat bags, because WOW Air charges for checked bags AND even for carry-ons! So we had to put everything in front of our feet. That’s everything for freezing cold Icelandic rain, and diapers and clothes and everything else. I even squished in 33 pounds of food, since food (and everything else) in Iceland is crazy expensive.
Danae reserved a motorhome and I got a taxi with all the kids to go pick it up. The family renting it to us was incredible. If you wanna rent a motorhome in Iceland, let me know and I will put you in touch with them. They are awesome and immediately make you feel like family. We loaded our stuff in, unpacked, set up the carseats, familiarized ourselves and headed back to the airport to meet Mommy after being apart for eight days. Yay for reunions!
Our week in Iceland was awesome! First of all, I told Danae to screen all email and only tell me what was urgent. Otherwise, my phone was only used to fly my drone and take pictures! A week without email was tremendous. Fantastic. Highly recommended. But we saw waterfalls and icebergs and glaciers and hiked and saw whales and glimpsed the northern lights and swam in natural hot springs and ate lots of skyr and... we did it all! We drove around the ring road circling the entire island. What a week! Iceland definitely warrants its own blog!
After driving about 15,000 miles in three months, we spent the last couple weeks of vacation just lounging at the lake, going to appointments, shopping, packing, and spending some quality time together. And then, we came home!

Vacation 1.0

Vacation!
So our original plan of nine months of extended sabbatical went kaput, but we still decided we needed some extra time off this year. And it seemed all the chips were falling into place. Sarah was here and settled and proving herself to be an excellent doctor and committed missionary. We were into June and the work at the hospital seemed to be slowing down for rainy season, just as it did every year.
So June 11, we decided we were going on vacation. And we decided we were going on vacation the 13th, two days later! Who says you can’t be spontaneous when you’re a missionary doctor with four kids?! We emailed our amazing travel agent (insert gratuitous advertisement for Nathanael Martin at Butler Travel here), who purchased our tickets roughly 70 minutes later! So it was decided.
We took the slow bus up to N’Djamena and were off! We landed in DC on Thursday and found ourselves lost in the woods of northern Pennsylvania with backpacks on Sunday! We even drug my dad along! We had had just enough prep time for me to set up a three-man three- season tent, a three-man four-season tent, a two-man three-season tent, a double bivy sac, a single bivy sac and a hammock and tarp in dad’s backyard first.
We spent four days hiking the West Rim Trail of the ‘Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania’. It was beautiful and fun. Juniper (and occasionally Addison, since Juniper probably walked more than half of it!) rode on Danae’s back, Lyol and Zane carried some small packs, Dad carried a hefty load and I carried the rest.
The kids slept in a three-man tent, Dad had a two-man to himself (along with a sweet sleeping pad we gave him and then promptly stole for the rest of the summer) and Danae and I slept in one hammock. One. Hammock. Two people. Sleeping. Or trying.
You think you know somebody. But you don’t. Unless you’ve spent a few nights in a hammock with them, pretzeled up butt to butt, feet in face, squished together by love and the tension of deep hammock walls supporting a lot of suspended weight, showers nothing but a distant memory and a future you don’t dare to hope for. You know how some mattresses you feel it every time your significant other rolls over. I could feel it every time her heart had the gall to disturb me with its incessant beating. Every breath created an ocean swell of rocking. Every bodily function, and I mean EVERY bodily function, even those we like to pretend our beautiful wives don’t possess, was magnified and felt, rumbles, vibrations and all. Yeah, I can now say I know Danae. And not the old ‘Adam knew Eve’ way. This is deeper than that. We’ve shared a hammock. I hope you all get the chance to know your spouses this way. Because misery loves company.
Anyway, we had a hoot with campfires and roasting and setting up and taking down and seeing nature and walking and getting caught in diluvian downpours and popping blisters and hopping barefoot around campsites and having a great time in general. We may have only made around 22 miles in four days, with a couple of 7-milers in the middle, but we had fun and got tired, and that was the point.
After all that fun, we went to Great Wolf Lodge for Zane’s birthday, which he LOVED, on the way to Asheville, NC, to stay with some ‘Chadian’ friends, Mason and Kim. After a couple nights with Mason and Kim, they had the poor enough judgement to trust us with their 14-year- old daughter Emmie during a week in the woods. So we took Emmie, as well as my sister and her three boys, into the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
 We started the Art Loeb Trail up at the Blue Ridge Parkway and started downhill (I ain’t no dummy). But we didn’t start until late afternoon, so we dropped a car at the bottom, drove back up to the top and then Charity and the older boys headed off down into the woods while I parked, grabbed a backpack and ran back. We all hustled down after Danae and the youngers. Once at the bottom, we drove back up to the top and camped just a hundred yards or so into the woods off the parkway.
The next day was a drive back down to where we had stopped the previous day. Charity and I dropped everybody off and went to park a car halfway to the end, but then discovered everything was gated off. Our party of nine had taken off without any supplies, thinking it was just a short and simple day hike. But now we would need to overnight! So Charity and I had to repack EVERYTHING in the cars to fit all tents, stoves, food, bear canisters, warm overnight clothes, EVERYTHING into two backpacks. We dropped a car at the very end and skedaddled back to the trailhead. Charity hoisted a massive backpack onto her shoulders, I clipped a second backpack onto the back of my normal backpack and we took off, three backpacks between the two of us and our party with about a two-hour head start! We went double time and panted hard the whole way, up and over mountains with way-too-heavy packs on. We did eventually catch up, but it just about did us in. My sister is tough. The rest of the day should have been a lot easier, since we split up our weight a teensy bit with the others, but it wasn’t, thanks to a bit too much exertion on the front end of the day. But we had fun and everybody limped out to the vans the next evening.
After a third night in the woods, we spent Sunday as a bit of an off day. Our family plus Emmie hiked a couple miles up by the Blue Ridge Parkway, then we met the group, along with dear friends Neeta and Jim and Shiloh, swam in the river and ate yummy pizza. We said our goodbyes to Charity and boys, as well as the Hillmans, then drove back up to the top of the Blue Ridge Parkway to begin our adventure down the other side. And what an adventure it was!
By the time we were actually ready to start walking, it was after 9pm and all kids were asleep and it was raining. But Danae and I are terrible parents, so we decided to wake them up and get over the first hill to the next place with trees where we could put our hammock. Well, the next hill was over 6000 feet, as was the next one, and as was the next one. And their names all ended with ‘Bald’. As in, no trees. So we hiked for hours in the pitch-black rain up and over several mountains, encountering dogs masquerading as deadly wolves. And the kids actually were awesome! We finally got over the last 6000-foot bald and into a grove of a few trees. I set up the tents and tarps and hammocks. (Well, Emmie is tough, so she set up her own hammock.) We collapsed exhausted from the blowing rain, the midnight hours, the slog over high mountains.
The next day was a beautiful day. We hiked for a bit, then unpacked everything in the sunshine to dry out. We took a detour to hike up another mountain, Shining Rock, in the Shining Rock Wilderness. We were just a couple weeks too early for wild blueberries. I’ll bet the bears were getting excited and licking their lips. We hiked on and then finally slept just a couple miles from the end.
Finally we concluded our six days and hiked out of the woods and into a Boy Scouts of America camp where Mason and Kim and Grace rescued us. And fourteen-year-old Emmie pretty much carried her own stuff the whole way! 30+ miles!
After our second backpacking trip, we rushed back up to DC for Fourth of July, which was pretty fun to watch the kids enjoy a concert and a gymnastics show and the FIREWORKS!

 July 6-8 I flew out to Chicago to climb the highest point of the great state of Illinois, Charles Mount, with Krystian and his kids. And we did it without any supplemental oxygen!
Then the day after I landed back in DC, we drove back up to the West Rim Trail in Pennsylvania and hiked the final ten miles with the Trecartins. We knew Megan, although we didn’t know she could hike so far while 8.7 months pregnant! And we knew Russ, but this was our first time meeting Andrew. They seem perfect for Chad! And we’re very optimistic they will be here full time soon enough. Inshallah!
Back to DC from northern Pennsylvania, and then on to Oklahoma to surprise Danae’s parents at Oklahoma Campmeeting. (I got to drive all night to celebrate my birthday!) The kids had a blast there for a week, attending the activities and meetings, and hanging out with the grandparents and Aunt Janelle (and maybe even Uncle Bill, but he was a little busy). In the middle of the camp meeting week, Danae and I left one night to drive across Oklahoma, across Texas, into New Mexico, and then back into Texas near El Paso just before sunrise to hike up the highest point in Texas, Guadalupe Peak. It was surprisingly beautiful. Clear weather and could see all around. Danae ran up the thing like a mad woman. It was significantly harder than Charles Mound, being a few thousand feet up and about 4.25 miles each way. Danae was up the thing in a matter of a couple hours, but then we took about the same amount of time coming down. But then everything went wrong.
Driving back to Oklahoma Campmeeting through the town of Orla, Texas, we hit a giant pothole and blew out the tire. Noon. West Texas desert. Mid-July. About a hundred and way too many degrees out. Changed the tire pouring sweat.
Now there are some things you should know about Orla, Texas. First thing you should know: No matter what I say, you won’t be able to confirm or contradict, because ain’t nobody know nuthin’ ‘bout Orla. This is the place six-degrees-of-separation doesn’t exist. Second thing you should know: Everything I will tell you about Orla is 100% true. Orla ‘is believed to have two residents.’ I’m not making this up. This is on Wikipedia. And I met both residents.
Orla is literally an intersection where two roads cross in the middle of West Texas. That’s it. There’s a gas station at the intersection. And a... wait for it... tire shop. In the town with a pothole the size of... well, the size of Texas. No, not literally of course. Not literally the size of Texas. But literally that’s all that’s in town. The two residents are the man and woman running the tire shop. After we blew the tire, it wasn’t two minutes before a tow truck was there asking if we needed help. (We didn’t! I can change a dadburn tire!) Yeah, that’s coincidence.
We slap on the spare doughnut and head off down the under-construction-road. (Under construction, just please don’t fix our pothole as it’s the town’s sole source of income!) We drive on to Odessa and stop at a tire shop. They finally get to it near the close of business. And they see it’s an aluminum rim and it’s bent and they can’t risk bending it back. I need a new rim.
Now apparently Dodge made like 14 different rims for their Grand Caravans this model year, and we found the extinct one! The Dodge in Odessa didn’t have it, nor Midland, nor... well, I’m getting ahead of myself. We figure Abilene is a big city, so we go there and get a hotel, instead of staying with my sister in Dallas as planned. Our hotel is literally next door to the Dodge dealer. At the open of business, we call and ask for the rim, which they obviously don’t have. I call every single Dodge dealer between Abilene and Arkansas. Nobody has it. The central database says there are two down near Houston, one in Fayetteville (although when I call they say they don’t really have it), one in Indianapolis and two in California. Six in the world! Oh wait, there’s one in the central warehouse in Dallas! Great! We start driving. But the warehouse in Dallas will only ship. They don’t let customers come and pick up there. Ok, I call a Dodge

 dealer next door to the warehouse. Can they go pick it up for me? Yes? Great! They need me to pay for it first? No problem! My credit card is... What? It has to be check? You don’t take credit card? Is this still America? Ok, fine, hang on...
I call my sister at work. Hey, can you play hooky and go pay for a rim for me by check at the Dodge dealer? Yes? Great!
Wait, Mr Dodge Dealer? You’re saying it’s too late in the day and your order had to be in by 9am? Seriously? You’re like, right next to the warehouse? Not gonna work.
So I’m staring down the barrel of 700 miles on a donut. That’s not fun. So I call the nearby Dodge dealers for a spare donut in case this one blows. They don’t have any. I call the nearby tire dealers. They don’t have any either?!?!?! Seriously???
I call the biggest junk yard in central Texas in Fort Worth and they have one. I’ll take it! So now I have a spare spare tire. Yes, I’m that out of shape, but I’m not talking about my tummy. Anyway, we eventually make it back to Oklahoma camp meeting, forced to limp along at 55mph on 85mph roads!!! Oh, the pain!
The next day, my rim gets delivered from the Dallas warehouse to a dealer near camp meeting and I get set up. Finally. In time to drive the 24 hours back to DC.
We hung out in DC for a bit with my sister, we met up with more future (yay, Davenport!) and past (yay, Roberts!) missionaries, did some driving range, did some indoor skydiving, and then eventually went to the lake for a week with the whole family. It was our first week there without Mom, and it was a bit lonely, but we all still had fun.
Except, during our lake week, our staff in Chad decided to go on strike. We were always proud to say our hospital was the only one in the country that never went on strike, not even a pared down services in support of others’ strikes. We simply don’t do that. However, we had a few individuals make a power play, as somebody invariably does every time we go on vacation. It was so infuriating and discouraging. They needed a scapegoat, so they targeted one of our foreign volunteers, lodging old complaints and accusations against her we had already previously addressed and given proof showing their accusations were false. Regardless, they were determined this time. They rallied staff and showed their solidarity. In the end, only one of my nurses had the courage and integrity to come to work and treat patients. Others, those who had spent thirty years at the hospital, those who would go out and evangelize to tell of Jesus’ love, those who grew up a staff children and eventually became staff, those nurses who like to be called ‘pastor’, everybody decided their trite and false accusations merited them leaving patients to die. We were utterly disgusted at the stories. They wouldn’t treat our guard’s dying children. They wouldn’t come to operate on dying women bleeding to death. It was the most abhorrent behavior I’ve seen here. And when the regional judge sent his bailiff to ensure order, they actually physically blocked the bailiff from leaving the hospital compound until the bailiff was forced to call the police to give him an escort. Sarah believes some were devil-possessed and I believe it’s possible. Danae and I were prepared to not return if our witness was going to be leaving the suffering children of God to die. We want no part of that.
However, in the end, Sarah’s strong backbone and innate savvy and James’ experience won the day and reason returned to the hospital, but not until the lead instigator was fired, which is a very difficult thing to do in Tchad. Anyway, I don’t feel like devoting another paragraph to this most-shameful episode in our hospital’s history, so I’ll just leave it here. But it was helpful in showing us what is most important to the majority of our employees and which employees are actually committed. We are grateful for that.

Ok, on to happier subjects. Like burying Mom. Wait, no. That’s not really happier. But at any rate, that’s what we did. We caravanned three vehicles down to Collegedale, TN, where Mom has chosen to be buried and we plunked her ashes in the ground. Dad courageously led a small, intimate, personal, beautiful commemoration of Mom, and we said a bit of a final goodbye. Dad had chosen a beautiful cloisonné vase they had bought decades ago in China and sealed it. And then we all spit on Mom’s grave. Well, not exactly. We all ate watermelon, Mom’s favorite, then dropped seeds into her grave.
Then after that, we started our REAL road trip!!! The rest had all just been warm-up!