Well, all the road trips are finished, at least for me. The Girl has two more, Lake Tahoe and Nashville, but at this point I will probably not be playing. I am pretty tired and kind of have a lot on my own soggy paper plate. She is the master of persuasion, so time will tell.

Oregon and Washington were fun, but not productive photo-wise. It turned out to be hottest week in a decade or so, and the haze was pretty bad for landscapes. Spent a good time with my brother and sister in law and got to see my nephew Daniel at Seattle Pacific. Had a nice ferry ride and visited Pike Street Market; all the regular stuff.

The second trip was not a pleasure trip. Had to fly in to Newark for the annual DTRF fundraiser held somewhere in New Jersey. Not that the location was secret to anyone but me. New Jersey is a place I just don’t get, like Organic Chemistry. From the moment I set foot outside the airport I am lost, and I stay lost until some kindly resident has a flash of pity and agrees to take me back to an airport. In my home California, streets are generally straight until something (a large immovable object of some sort) is in the way. The pavement then circumvents the object, with purpose. New Jersey’s highway system was obviously carved out long before that principle was adopted. I have an image in my mind of drunken pilgrims wandering about aimlessly, naming each new path after the first person they see or the nearest type of tree.

The only reason on the planet that gets me back to the great state of NJ is the opportunity to sit with the other patients that share my rare sarcoma. This is a very diverse group, since the disease is very politically correct in its selection process. All together, 30 patients or so made the trip this year. The stories range from very, very bad all the way to remarkable success. Some were dealing very well, some were just tired. I sat next to Lyon, a sixteen year old boy from California who has spent the last 12 years of his life locked in this struggle. He has had 11 major surgeries and 3 rounds of chemo. He is an amateur photographer and hopes to be accepted to Brooks Institute upon graduation. Brooks would be very lucky to have him. His website is a labor of love, stop by and sign his guest book!

Doctors from all over the world came to present the results of their latest research. They know the people in this room are intensely interested. The almost million dollars of research money comes from the people and the friends of people in this room, not the government or the drug companies. More than that, solutions to this rare disease could hold the key to cures and treatments for other sarcomas, ones that play to a much larger audience.

The ride home from these events is something of a mixed bag emotionally. I had taken a biography of Buddha to finish on the plane rides. My concentration lapsed; I was reeling from two sad bits of news I learned at the gathering. Firstly, one of the most inspirational speakers from last year could not attend, and was receiving very aggressive chemo in a last ditch battle with a tumor she has fought amazingly for over a decade. And worse, we lost two people over the last year (a woman my age, and a very young boy), statically a lot for a group of patients our size. As I read of Buddha’s struggles, a young boy behind me kicked the back of my seat for five hours. God has a funny sense of humor, I thought.