Life After Windbird, Day 7: All-Around Great Day
Date: Friday, August 19, 2016
Weather: Perfect Summer Day; High Temp 84 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio #8, Falmouth, MA
This was an all-around great day. Mark has his first infusion of Keytruda and everything went smoothly. And thanks again to Bruce Woodin for coming to pick him up while I was out and about with the Goldpebbles. Mark just general felt so much better today and we are hoping that is because of the new pain medication schedule set up by his primary care physician yesterday. He’s taking the same medications, just on a different schedule, and it seems to be working. His blood pressure is back to normal and he is much steadier on his feet. Hopefully this trend continues.
Sam, Jonah, Ollie, and I delivered Mark to the treatment center this morning and then headed to the Heritage Museum and Gardens for a day of fun. And fun we did have. We arrived just in time for the 11 am Caribbean music concert. The group was called Taino. We know from Ziggy and Coco and the Tainos were the indigenous people of the Caribbean and Florida, and Puerto Rico in particular, so made for a great connection. The concert was fun and as we watched there was a group of children all dressed in the same t-shirts that stood up front. As we were listening to the music, Sam blurted out, “Jonah, that’s Luke and Graham up there.” These are friends of Jonah’s from his days at the Woods Hole Daycare Cooperative. He went up to talk to them and found out they are in a day camp at Heritage. So that was another great connection. But after a few songs, the Goldpebbles were getting restless, so we left the concert and headed to a building that houses a carousel. After the carousel ride, we headed to Hidden Hollow. This is an area with lots of hands-on activities for the kids. Sam and Jonah quickly discovered a PVC pipe game where you connect sections of PVC pipe and then send golf balls through the pipe maze. Sam and Jonah were not satisfied with the current configuration, so they took it all apart and engineered a whole new game that became extremely popular. While they did this, Ollie and I played the xylophones, tried on various animal costumes, and then made our way to the sand pit. Eventually Sam and Jonah joined us there and played in the mud. There was a well near-by and the children were allowed to get buckets of water and carry them to the sand pit, resulting in s mud pit. But the boys were very careful and kept themselves dry for the most part. We then walked down to an overlook at a small lake, had lunch, and ended our day by watching a puppet show presentation of ‘The Pirate, the Princess, and the Pea.” All three boys seemed to really enjoy the day, so it was deemed a success.
While watching boys play in the sand pit, I got a call from our Australian cruising friends, Geoff and Chris of Shambala. They were in Key West getting ready to head across to Cuba and then on down the coast of Mexico and Central America to Panama. They called as they were leaving Key West this afternoon. It was wonderful to talk to them, but they and we are a bit apprehensive. Geoff has developed epilepsy and the medications cause him to have memory issues. It’s a long way home to Australia, but they are going to take it slow and easy and then get crew when they head across the South Pacific. We’ll keep in touch via SailMail and Skype and hope that all goes well for them.
Tomorrow we gear up for the Falmouth Road Race on Sunday. Heather will be running the seven miles and we will prepare to be her ardent fans. The Studio is located just after mile 6 of the race course, so Jed and boys will either stay here tomorrow night or come here early on Sunday morning to wait for Heather to fly by as she heads into her last mile of the race. Good luck, Heather!
