US Tour Week 15: OR WA BC - AMEN.

2006-12-20

Merry Christmas, dear friends! What an adventure this has been. As you read this, the Jonsson-Goods are safely ensconced in their own home, catching up with Advent decorating. Read this short week to bring closure to the story you have been following with us, in whatever way you have been able to do so!

Thursday, Dec 14/06 to Albany OR:
If I had worried that this tour would end with a whimper instead of a bang, again I must have prayed a mite too hard. David, too, admits that in the back of his mind was the thought that just a little rain would take away some of the multi-state grime that the Little Guy trailer has accumulated... Remember where we left the Jonsson-Goods last week? In the pummelling wind and rain on the coast of southern Oregon. The morning did not dawn clear and romantic. All our bedding was wet, pillows sodden, clothes hanging and trying unsuccessfully to dry out from all possible spots (and there aren't many). As we began the slow process of putting ourselves back together, a woman knocked on our window to urge us not to stay the day. The coast guard was predicting gale force winds over the day and we were to take care on the coast and highways.

I don't know why Oregon doesn't get more press. Its coastline from south to north is some of the most tumultuous and starkly beautiful stretches of ocean I will ever see. Imposing black-grey mounds rose enormously out of the sea, the surf cascading around them with a brilliant ferocity. Waves rose up and met one another, pounding upon the shore. David set his eye on the road ahead and struggled to keep the van on the road, through winds that suddenly struck up in fierce gusts. Our day was spent in this way between coast and inland, with rain battling at every window.

In Bandon, we stopped to buy a roast chicken and sourdough loaf to eat in the camper, and just the run from van to the supermarket door soaked us all. Obviously not having mastered the bathroom supervision situation, I came back from same to find Isaac already out and demanding service in the aisles. A cashier reported to me that he had asked her, "Where is my dad go?" When she asked him what his dad's name was, he looked at her matter-of-factly: "Dad."

The post office just over the bridge from Rogue River is literally perched on a small cliff and I got out to quickly grab a few CDs to send in a box (last call for US postage!). My arms full of trailer junk, I found myself literally clinging for dear life as plastic bags and papers whipped by my head in a wild burst of wind headed for the canyon. Luckily I did not go with it, but I renewed my vow not to get out of the van until we had reached our destination of Albany, if I could help it.

April Hall Cutting greeted us at the door saying, "The reports say it is the worst storm of the year! They said: 'Don't drive'!" Truly, as we had ridden along the I-5 on the last stretch of highway toward their home, the rain greeted our headlights as a bright silver drape, and for awhile, riding the road ahead was like fording a river in torrent. Swaths of tree branches lay over roads already cleared of fallen giants and by the time we reached the off-ramp for Albany, the power was out in the streets. David was growing a headache - a work in progress.

April is, as devoted readers will know, the benefactor of numerous parts of our tour. She and her congregation of Sweet Home United Methodist Church hosted us in concert at the beginning of our trip, she hooked us up with Craig's brother, Ernie - and partner Beth - Cutting in Minneapolis and the Osgoodes of Beacon New York. She offered homestays with members of Craig's apparently prodigious clan all over the entire country - a show of crazy faith in both us and the hardiness of her inlaws. So, it was imperative that we make an overnight at April and Craig's the crowning final night of our journey around the US.

However, the squirrels - I mean Jonsson-Good children - were climbing the walls with glee to be out of their cage, so the evening visit was a little like pinball. Still, it didn't stop us from sharing in a warm glass of eggnog around the Christmas tree and reminiscing a bit. David and I both think we didn't even turn over in our sleep that night - carry-over from our paralytic sleep of the night before.

Friday, Dec 15/06 to Vancouver BC, Canada:
Oh sheesh, even as I write the words "Canada", I burst into tears. I know I will be glad to be home in a while, but it is very hard to get off a midway ride that has been so exciting, so all-encompassing, for so long. My worst fear in returning is that home will feel normal. An odyssey (and iliad) like this should, in the end count, feel like it has changed one profoundly. Has it..? I guess you only know when you encounter the ordinary again - in a different way.

Anyway, in Albany - April and Craig stood clear as we attacked a load of laundry in their home, Craig made waffles on a little iron by the breakfast table and Patrick excellently put together a map of the US puzzle. The day had dawned clear of rain, though clouded. April sent us off with love and a bag of her congregation's "Nuts for Jesus" (fund-raising) hazelnuts. Too funny.

What a storm this has been! Fallen trees littered the way. In one town, we could not get gas for a power outage; in another, cars had lined up along the street and those who were gassing up were often filling gas canisters as well. I kept the squirrels busy with road school as we drove the long hours along the interstate. We rejoined highway we had driven on our way in to the tour. Because of this, we were pretty annoyed at ourselves to have already forgotten the capital of Oregon - one of our first Geography lessons of September (It's Salem! Yes, I know NOW, thank-you)

In Washington, we had a surprise opportunity to stop in at the Chamber of Commerce nearest Mount St Helen - our resident volcano. When the staff person was done explaining that the bathrooms were generally off-limits because they wanted to keep the transients out, Patrick asked me who a transient was and why they would want to keep them away. One of those opportunities to ask what Jesus would think about a rest stop that wasn't for everybody. Tough when the pipes had to be ripped out twice and Jesus was a carpenter, not a plumber.

A huge topographical model shows the volcano as it now sits - topless. Small containers in a display case showed the decreasing size of volcanic debris it sent in increasing distances. As we sat totally enthralled by a Weyerhauser video on how trees are logged and cut high-tech, David and Isaac walked in to wonder what was taking us so long in the rest rooms! Lunch was ready - bean soup sent by April to gird us for the border crossing.

Which we managed by 8:30pm. I had spent the afternoon getting all our remaining receipts logged in to our banking software so I could cleverly pull up the information about what we had spent for the border guards. I remember my parents doing this on scraps of paper and saving all receipts the odd time we took a short trip over the line in my childhood, and this is my version of the same. The funny thing is, I always feel like I am lying when we come through customs, in the same nervous way that, if I were carded at the pub at age 44, I might still smile nervously as if I were trying to dodge in under-age. So, David answered all questions and then turned to me when asked the value the goods we were bringing into the country after 3 1/2 months. I answered firmly: "Six hundred and sixty-six dollars." Where we stuffed it, I don't know. I do think the nice young man at the booth wondered the same, and as he leaned back to squint briefly at our little trailer and 3 kids on the edge of the willies. "Have a good evening," he said. He was a wise man.

Now, the Lower Mainland around Vancouver is a hauntingly beautiful place around Christmas-time. Unable to quite make up its mind every year about whether it wants to join the rest of the country, get cold and show a bit of snow, or bask in the mist that haloes it almost year-round, it wavers between the two on December nights. At least it appeared to be doing the same Christmas flicker, but I knew that it had shared in the west coast's storms of the previous week. Hearsay had it that there had been 3 feet of snow in Langley further out earlier in the week when the entire city was uncharacteristically blanketed with white. And while we had been sailing the high seas on the Oregon interstate, fully a quarter of a million people had lost electric power in the province of British Columbia.

Gwen and ME's house sat enwreathed in fog and Christmas lights as we drove up to their door. Our friends were not there to greet us (regrettable absence due to Hawaii) so we had the gift of an empty house in which to unwind the long cord of our trip to the United States, and begin to wind it back in again.

Saturday, Dec 16/06 Richmond BC:
We did not see our children all morning long. Patrick and Nicole kept the door to Ben's bedroom closed for the duration and were as quiet as I've ever heard them at play. I make a point not to listen in on their imagination games, because it is private indeed. If my gaze has ever inadvertently broken in across the wireless band that is the border on their fantasy world, I have noticed their eyes turn a different shade as they are forced to acknowledge this world again. I was, however, privy once to a conversation on this trip in which they invited a new friend to the game by explaining that they would be children who had been abandoned by their parents but who had super powers to live by. I feel............. good about that.

David dropped us off at Watermania wave pool for the afternoon as he left to rehearse with Charlotte Diamond and her HugBug Band (MY request). By the time Isaac and I had completely memorised the red route water slide and our fingers were prunes from the hot tub, it was time for us all to take a bus together to Lansdowne Centre for their evening appearance. The mall was curiously calm and I made a mental note that some Christmas shopping venues were not the Barnum and Bailey I avoid all December. Dry-erased the mental note when I rounded the corner of Toys R Us (unadvisedly having allowed Patrick to go and "gaze on toys") The place was a disaster - boxed toys littering the floors, parents and small children blocking aisle junctions, a toddler crying holding an electronic piano bigger than herself, the boggled and bewildered wandering with a mission. Why DID Jesus tell us to buy so much stuff for his birthday..?!

Still, when I returned to the rotunda full of people waiting for Charlotte to sing, there was something chaotically beautiful about the gathering. Little children stood in front of the stage, waiting to dance their way to Christmas, others - some high school alumnae fans - sat in seats, parents milled vigilantly about the outskirts, a family with a loved one in a wheelchair sat centre-front smiling hugely. The group - like the Lower Mainland itself - was a gorgeous mix of ethnic hues. In the middle of one song - and I don't know whether it was a Christmas carol or a song about bugs - there simply was a halo around this group of filled hearts. I felt a surge of bliss, like I have experienced on this tour to the States, but this time I was able to say: This is Canada. I could not at this moment put into words what made this particular multi-cultural circle here a CANADIAN one. I simply know that it was. A gift of Christmas.

Sunday, Dec 17/06 Vancouver BC:
The last music day of the tour and we wake up fully an hour and a half late. Forty-five minutes to rise and shower, eat and shepherd the team out the door. (Actually, David has adopted a more accurate metaphor for motivating the Jonsson-Goods: "herding cats") However, I realise as we swing in beside my old Vancouver church home, Ryerson United Church, that I do not feel rushed or worried. I feel my feet upon the ground and - in the same way it felt as if our eyes had been gifted with clearer vision on the mountain tops of Sedona, I had a clearer sense of being there to greet old friends and be welcomed. David headed off for an afternoon concert with Charlotte in North Vancouver.

Bryn Nixon, my old colleague, always makes room for me to join the musical team when I am in town, and this morning I got to play with my old musical buddies - the band. This is all they have ever been called - the band. A group of guitar and drum-playing middle-aged barristers, engineers and professionals I once struggled to be the boss of when on staff, they greet me with the same hugs and loud riffs. All but Ken Ball, who gave me the finger from an unfamiliar place in the pew. Tells me later he got the splint from wiping up a drop of salsa on the carpet and catching his finger sideways..! Oh Man. He's gonna have to re-grow all his guitar callouses. Plus apologise to all the people he's been gesturing to.

I like to say, once a year, that I have sung Handel's Messiah at the Orpheum and it is perfectly true. It is the Bach Choir's Singalong Messiah, and my performance is for the benefit of the 3 baffled people on each side of me from the front row of the balcony. Bryn was kind enough not only to drive Patrick, Nicole and me down to the theatre after our lunch together, but also to take Isaac home with him for the afternoon. This was critical to both our survival, as the Singalong is the absolute musical highlight of my year, and if it had to come down to split-second choice between blockading the balcony railing or hitting that B-flat, I'm afraid I might waver in my commitments. I'm not sure how it happened that the event my father used to perform in (not singalong) and for which I had less than zero attention when a child became the cry-if-I-miss-it event of my year in grown-uphood. I do remember the day, though, when a friend first invited us to attend with her young family. Her - then - 3-year-old fell asleep in her half-folded seat in the absolute back row of the balcony as we struggled to know which page we were on (let alone hit a note). But, I was changed. Now that little girl is in her twenties, and I am attending with my semi-bored young ones, absolutely confident that "we shall be changed."

Actually, God bless her, Nicole did read along with me over virtually every measure. She was absolutely devoted, and we did share some great sonorous notes together: King of Kings...! She looked forward to singing with glee: "All we like sheep!" - enjoying the double entendre like no-one else in the entire 2500 seater room would. Patrick valiantly tried to keep up, but threw up a couple of obstacles in his own way and got stuck: His pride was grazed by having to sing soprano (he's a BOY, after all, and maybe he should be singing tenor..?) and if you can't sing something right why sing at all? (Have my concerts taught the boy nothing..?!) Never mind. There's no escaping; like Sleeping Beauty, you will turn 25 and prick your finger on an SATB score and fall deeply in to music. I have cast my spell, as my father cast it on me.

I wish I could identify what it IS that makes an afternoon of Handel's Messiah sung poorly and nobly by a halting group of strangers, accompanied by strings, woodwinds and brass, so entirely healing. I am not sure that another big choral experience would do the same. I am not sure that my own concerts approach it. Somehow it, with its appalling theology of prediction, suffering, atonement and revenge still manages to swell with the themes of grace, comfort, trust and beauty. The music is perfectly wed to its words; the sheep go astray, the valleys are exalted, the nations furiously rage together, the people rejoice. We feel the impact of every note. By the time we have poured out every drop of breath we ever owned, it is the end, and Amen flows in great rivers one upon another. I can feel when we are nearing the Amen which is the tallest and longest water-slide of the whole soprano part, and as it approaches I know that it is where i will stop singing and begin to bleat, tears clogging my throat, the sheep who made it through to the end.

And here, again, the perfection of this whole tour strikes a full chord within me. I meet the conductor, Bruce Pullan, who appears wondrously on the stairs as I pass by the trays of Bach Choir eggnog and mince tarts, and I don't let him leave until I have managed to burble out some words about how important it all has been to me. He seems surprised; but how could he know? He does this every day.

I write home later: "Tell Dad the last song of the tour was 'Amen'."

Monday, Dec 18/06 Summerland BC:
Maybe if we just kept on driving, I could keep on writing to you. I feel a great loss coming over me, even as I know that when I am no longer recording these trivial and all-important events of this tour, I will likely have an extra 2 hours a day to do something with! Perhaps I will write a song with my extra time. Perhaps I will have a day in which I expect nothing earth-shattering to occur, no great learnings to be distilled, no road-side rest-stops with murals of miracles to study, no fluttering of angel-wings around each interstate sign.

We package ourselves out of Gwen and ME's house, making our way through towns that still have no power - or had lost it again an hour ago. As we ascend through the white-covered pines of the Hope-Princeton highway, crews are out removing seemingly endless fallen trees, restringing power lines through the mountains. Snow on the road becomes "riveting", pitted and rutted so that we jar along, unable even to hear each other speak. There are one or two frightening moments skidding around iced corners. By dark, we have descended to clear road again and turn onto the final stretch into the Okanagan Valley. Here, the kids' excitement rises so that, when we finally turn into Summerland itself, Nicole is already in full happy dance in her seat. "Oh, I love this place!" she exclaims. "I love it, I love it, I love it..!" Snow covers the ground, the air snaps with cold, Susannah Wesley is only slightly baffled by the unfamiliar terrain of Canadian ice.

There, our dear friends, Allison and Diane, greet us at our own door, the heat on and the stove rattling with dinner. Blessedly, they did not ask us: "SO. How was your trip?" - the question that has no answer but a gaping stare. We accept their hospitality in our home, as we have accepted the hospitality of strangers and friends in a hundred homes this fall - knowing that a place had already been prepared for us, whether we were expected or not.

By way of Epilogue:
Today is Christmas Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve. Isaac has stopped demanding that I go with him to the bathroom five feet away, here at our home, and I look forward to hearing him stop referring to it as the "Min's Room". I have still not decided whether the children and I should carry on with Home Schooling in the new year. Something tells me this trip is not done and requires more time to debrief and de-clinch as a family. Something also tells me to let go and take those hours back for myself. I'm open to advice...

David couldn't remember where the granola went in the kitchen, but he's getting his stove legs back, gradually. We mailed the last of our away-Christmas presents in the nick of time and went out to cut down what is probably the second ugliest Christmas display we have ever had (the first - because you asked - was a pretty little tree that we wedged in our living room plastic jungle gym one year in the condo when Pj and Nicole were little, and we knew they would topple it if it weren't en-caged). Like last year, we have cut down the bottom branch of a pine tree up the hill from us, suspending it on our wall with lights, garlands and the Jonsson-Good historical ornament collection. It is..... magnificent.

After a hundred days of constantly locking our living quarters and taking pains to camouflage any valuables, it came as the kind of surprise you burst out laughing at in the middle of the street: It turns out that not only do all our VW keys work in the sliding side door of the van; ALL keys of ANY description work on that lock. Our mini bike lock key worked. An emery board would have worked! We have been "open" the whole trip..!

In the New Year, we will do some discerning and identify some places that it felt like we should return to in the US, over the next 2 years. Your thoughts and invitations would be considered divine intervention in that process.

If you have actually read through every one of these 15 Tour Logs, there is a prize for you. Drop me a line and I will ask you a skill-testing question ["To which famous American hero was Shannon of Phoenixville, PA, related?" "To what temperature did it drop when we camped in Page Springs, AZ?"] OK, just kidding! But, let me know if you READ IT ALL, and we have a gift for you. Not you, Mom.

If you didn't, but here you are, bless you! Thank-you for accompanying us on this journey of a hundred days. Believe me when I say that your presence and your prayers have been felt. It is deeply moving to know that others are interested in one's story.

Our Stats, for those who wonder:
Days on Tour: 106
Distance travelled: 28,598 km or 17,771 miles
Concerts total: 27
Worships: 22
Workshops: 9
Variety of Denominations sung with: United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Congregational, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), United Church of Canada, Roman Catholic, Church of Religious Science, Ecumenical gatherings.
Hosted Overnight: 10 with family, 45 with friends new and old
Days Camped Overnight: 27
Nights in Hotels: 11
Nights in Hostels: 3
Number of Toilets Visited: 636 per person (an estimate) or 1272 per gender
Days Adults were Sick: 0
Average Highway Speed: 50 mph...
Number Thefts/Break-ins: 0
Flat Tires: 0

COSTS:
Gas - $2558 mostly US dollars
Food - $2340 mostly US dollars
Lodging - $912
Repairs - $2331
Travel costs (tolls, tools, taxis, parking) - $340
TOTAL on-road Costs: $12,940

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