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Aug 01
2009
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It's 11:07 pm and I'm sitting on the porch of my Dad's cabin up in Potsdam, NY where I've been since Tuesday. The picture shows the view from here into the woods and on one of the last mornings.
I had come up here to meet with my Dad who was diagnosed with lung cancer a few months ago. As one can probably imagine, I wasn't sure what to expect, since I hadn't seen my father since the last time we met during Christmas of last year. To my great surprise, he looked completely fine, looked a bit lighter in terms of the weight and I could see that some of his hair wasn't the way I was used to it due to the chemo, but other than that if you didn't know he had cancer, you wouldn't be able to tell.
The first day we drove up through NY state taking the longest, most rural way we could have and arrived at my Dad's camp late on Wednesday. There is no power here, no water and the "sanitary facilities" are limited to a shower that runs on rainwater, and an outhouse. Last night I had to get up at 4:00 am to use this outhouse and I gotta say that's some scary shit droppin' a deuce in the dark with a flash light pointing into the woods where at any point in time a pair of eyes could be looking at you. Thankfully nobody (and no animal) did this to me.
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in the pitch dark, there's an oil lamp hanging off a post that's giving off minor light and I hear a small creak trickling in the background. Every now and then you hear a crack in the woods, maybe it's a deer, maybe the coyote that walked by here the other night I quite frankly don't know and don't want to know. All I know is that I have another 85 minutes of battery life on my macbook pro, a few good buds left in my bag and a full stomach from eating steak and shrimp over at the neighbors.Considering the rather hectic life I live, this has been one of the better things I've done in the past few years. Catching up with my Dad is good, though it sucks to have to have the sobering talks about inheritance, getting my name on the deed of the property and all the other preparations for when he does have to leave this Earth. I'm extremely proud of how he's handling everything - the first few weeks after he got diagnosed he wasn't sounding good at all on the phone, but apparently the chemo therapy took really well and after his 3rd session he was already working on regaining the 25 lbs he had lost initially.
Today we "walked the line" - meaning we did a routine walking off of his entire territory, just for maintenance purposes if you will. We checked for fallen trees, whether any of the neighbors cut down trees they weren't supposed to, checked deer tracks and all that fun stuff. After that I took one of the coldest showers of my entire life. The "shower" mind you is a contraption of two plastic barrels that are setup to catch the rain water and when you want to take a shower, you just unhook the nozzle, point it in your direction and start freaking out cuz it's cooooooooooold. Technically only "room temperature" but when it's in the 60's most of the time I'm sure we can all agree that this temperature isn't exactly what your body expects when taking a shower. Being the geek that I am I even filmed it, just so you could see I'm not making all this shit up.
Tonight we were invited by the neighbors for steak and shrimp and I was so blown away by their house and setup that I might just have to dedicate an entire blog post on how awesome it is. The deer come in their front yard and eat the apples (even got one on video that was standing close to the front door at some point), a huge property, a well, tons of rooms with big windows - a pretty amazing setup that I can only dream to have one day.
Sleeping has been a bit on the shitty side as my back somehow doesn't seem to appreciate air mattresses, nor the slow leak of air that results in my shoulder blades rubbing the wooden floor at some point but I only have two more nights to go so I figure I'll spare my Dad of any complaints.
All in all it's been extremely satisfying to make this happen and leave all my responsibilities behind me for a week. That of course doesn't take into account that when I landed in Detroit, I had text messages and voice mails on my phone telling me that my client's website was having problems and I ended setting up my mobile operations center in the airplane, while waiting on the run way to take off which had been delayed due to thunderstorms. Typical, I know - who am I to deny this :)
Other than that, hope all is well with the crew, hope the work on the bus is going forward and I'll see/talk/connect to everyone next week.
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