Gettin' Somewhere

 I was eating the complimentary breakfast at the Super 8 in Greenfield, Indiana the other day and this guy about my age got up from his table and said to the woman cleaning the counter, “Thank you, ma’am, for the good breakfast.”

She looked up, maybe a little surprised that someone’d acknowledged her.

“We try…we don’t always succeed, but we always try.” 

“If somebody didn’t like it,” he shrugged, “it’s cause they’re too damn picky.”

I laughed and nodded at the guy, who shrugged again. 

“Well, it’s true.”  

It IS true…but what really made me smile was the simple message of his kindness: looking at the bright side is a CHOICE. 

Some of the pictures we’ve posted in earlier entries of this blog were a combination of luck and skill: we were just lucky to pass by the hawk and heron, and lucky that they stayed around long enough for Tommy to skillfully capture them. Some were ALL skill: we didn’t need much luck to find ducks — we see them quite a bit — but Tommy’s patience and eye helped him get the angle and lighting that he wanted. 

But here’s a little secret: some of my favorite shots that’s he’s posted — like these two today of the bee on the flower and the butterfly — only happened because he’d failed! 

It’s that darn yellow bird. Nothing against robins, sparrows, cardinals and blue jays, but we see them all day every day. We could post DOZENS of pictures of robins, sparrows, cardinals and blue jays. But ever since New Jersey we’ve been seeing this beautiful yellow bird, but we couldn’t even get a bad picture of it to ask someone what it was. It was SO FAST and it never stayed still. Tommy’s Uncle Peter, who knows quite a bit


about the subject, told us “It’s probably a goldfinch. They fly like a rollercoaster.”

He wasn’t lying. All through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio, every time we’d see this yellow blur zip past us, we’d stop to try to get a shot of it, but it usually careened away before Tommy’d even unzipped his bag. I even got in on the action, trying to use my phone, but all I got was about 10 pictures of bushes, trees and cornstalks that the bird had left seconds before. 

So whenever we’d miss the goldfinch…and we always did…Tommy would just take pictures of something else. And that’s how our “failure” transforms into some really cool successes. Looking on the bright side is a choice, right?

And this picture here at the end? 

That very same day I heard the guy be so kind at breakfast, right outside of Greenfield, right after we showed up without an appointment and Mitch (another really kind guy…Greenfield seems to be full of them!) at Family Bike Chain spent a half hour on a busy Tuesday morning checking our bikes and giving us great advice, in a cornfield near a section of the Pennsy Trail…Tommy got it!!! 

Over a month of trying, and he finally got this incredible picture of a goldfinch hanging onto a common mullein (yes, we had to look that up). He’s such a perfectionist that he didn’t want to post it because it’s not as sharply focused as he’d like, but I said we HAD to post it!!! Plus, we’ve got plenty of time to get another, better shot, right? Maybe not the victory he envisioned but a victory nonetheless! 

The next day we crossed the 1,000 mile mark for our trip. We take our victories as they come…Illinois, here we come!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

World Travelers...Kind Of

Image
 We set out from the Atlantic Ocean on June 14th aiming for the Pacific and on July 28th we made it to Pacific…Missouri. No ocean here, but the Comfort Inn has a nice pool!  Yes, it’s just one of the amusing twists and turns of our journey. Let’s see…we’ve had breakfast in West Berlin (Pennsylvania), lunch in Poland (Indiana) and an early dinner in London (Ohio). It was over 90 degrees in Alaska (Indiana) when we passed through, and our biggest regret so far is that we were within ten miles of Funkhouser (Illinois) and didn’t swing by. Funkhouser just SOUNDS cool, doesn’t it?  One place we DIDN’T miss, though, was Casey, Illinois. Pronounced “K-Z”, this fascinating little town was one of the highlights of the whole trip, primarily because we arrived there during Jenny’s visit so she could share in the fun. About 15 years ago, like so many small towns, downtown Casey was struggling. Lots of people were ready to give up, but not local businessman Jim Bolin. He came up with an idea of how
Read more

Going With The Flow

Image
We were supposed to head west from Springfield, Missouri through Carthage to Joplin, but every hotel anywhere close to Carthage and Joplin was booked. Not a single Airbnb except one near Carthage for $900 a night.  That was not a typo.  $900 a night. And there was no way we were going to camp out. First of all, it’s like 95 degrees out here every day and it barely gets below 80 at night. Second of all, we threw away our tent in St.Louis. Too heavy.  “It’s Marian Days,” the very sweet lady at the Holiday Inn told me. “We’ve been sold out for months.”  “Marian Days? Does she have a concert in town?” Of all the many things we’ve learned in the seven weeks we’ve been on the road, maybe the most humbling thing is how little we know. Sure, we know stuff about Philadelphia. But the rest of these places?  We thought Ohio would be flat. Ohio is not flat. In Indiana, we thought that if a road showed up on Google maps it would be a paved road. Also not true…some are gravel. In Illinois we kept se
Read more

It's not Goodbye it's a See You Later

Image
 We made it to Tulsa, Oklahoma…1,705 miles…53 days of cycling (44 consecutive after our trip home in late June)…averaged a little over 30 miles a day…best of all, with your help we raised over $10,400 for Fetal Surgery families at CHOP!!! How do we feel?  TIRED. RELIEVED. BLESSED. Tired…of being away from home…of dirt…of trucks…of the heat. Relieved…to be going home to see family…to have made it to our destination safely each day.  Blessed…to have had the opportunity to do this to help others…to know all of you who encouraged and cheered and listened and advised.  In Tommy’s words: “The biggest thing I learned is patience. Whatever was happening…whether good or bad…I learned it wasn’t going to last forever. I could’ve quit but I didn’t.  In the beginning I’d get mad when I’d see a hill but by the end I thought, ‘Ok, there’s a hill. I could just stay here and not go up that hill but then I’d be stuck here…so might as well just climb the hill.’” Tommy’s right. Hills and mountains don’t r
Read more