The Final Lesson

Epilogue

The lessons that we learned on our bike tours served us well during Lukas’ illness. Sadly, our little son was unable to ride up that last hill. His liver, which never worked properly, stopped making clotting factors. On Christmas Day, the 41^st day of his life, Lukas started bleeding. Early morning the day after Christmas, we received the call we’d dreaded and rushed back to the hospital. His blood pressure was almost non-existent, and our poor son was pale and ghostlike despite constant transfusions. It was clear that we had to let the bleeding stop.  Despite Lukas’ grave condition, his eyes opened, and he welcomed us. His big, beautiful, blue eyes looked from side to side, and danced with us one last time. He said goodbye in the only way he could.  Lukas was dressed in baby clothes for the first and last time, wrapped in blankets, and placed in my arms for the first and last time. We held Lukas, told him we loved him, and he died in our arms. 

Lukas left his imprint on our hearts and lives; we are forever changed. The lessons learned while biking have been augmented by those learned while living with, loving, and losing our son. Lessons of patience, strength, and bravery. Lessons of self-reliance, but more important reliance on each other, our families, and our friends.



Lesson 8: Expect the unexpected

Most vacations are carefully planned and all too predictable. Before you get there, you can view your room on the Web, get a view of the beach, and be pretty sure that there will be a coffeemaker, television, and clock radio in your Junior Oceanfront Suite. One of the joys of bike touring is that every day holds surprises and unexpected pleasures. On the first day of a tour in Ireland, jetlagged and weary, we rode down a narrow country lane. High hedges ran along either side of the road, and we passed a farm with some donkeys. "Laura, look at the donkeys." We looked to the left and smiled - how quaint. After a few hundred yards, we heard a clip-clopping sound behind us. Turning, we saw that they were chasing us. We sped up, and so did the donkeys. The lane was narrow, barely wide enough for one car or two bikes...or two donkeys. We slowed, and the donkeys slowed to a canter, then a trot. Or maybe it was a trot, then a canter. We sped up, and they accelerated. Amusement quickly turned to terror - these were big donkeys and could do some real damage to jetlagged Americans on 26 pound bicycles. We rode as fast as we could, and then made a sharp left when the road dead-ended. The donkeys appeared to have been confused by this maneuver - reinforcing my longheld belief that donkeys are dumb as rocks. The terror was still on us, though, and Laura sprinted across a busy road, barely missing a semi as it barreled around a curve.

The unexpected is not always quite so frightening. On the island of Arran, in Scotland, we spent the first hour of our day riding up a single long, steep hill. It had a 7% to 10% grade - for every mile forward, we went up about 500 vertical feet. After 5 or 6 miles, with 40 pounds of gear, it begins to add up, and we were exhausted as the road finally began to flatten out near the top of the pass. The view made it worthwhile, though: an impossibly green valley, the ruin of a castle sitting on the bay, and a small village. We began our descent, a 4 or 5 mile glide into town. At first, it was a faint hum. Then the hum became notes, echoing through the valley. As we got closer, it resolved into a bagpiper, playing Amazing Grace at a funeral. The memory still takes our breath away.

Lukas' birth was the most unexpected thing that ever happened to us. We went to the obstetrician’s office that morning, expecting a quick ultrasound, some reassurance, and then I could join my friends for a round of golf while Laura returned to work. It was Friday, after all, and the weather was beautiful. Four hours later, Laura and I learned that Lukas was near death; instead of being bathed in amniotic fluid, the uterus had become a desert, and he was struggling. A day or two more, and he would have died in utero. An hour later, I stood in the operating room as over 5 pints of blood poured from Laura's uterus, and my tiny 1 pound, 7 ounce son uttered his first cry.

Lesson 7: There will be good days and bad days

Some days on a bike tour couldn't be better. The sun is shining, the scenery is beautiful, your legs and lungs feel strong, and at the end of the day you feel like you've accomplished something. It even feels like the entire route runs downhill. Or, to paraphrase the Irish, the road rises to meet your wheels. Other days, it is raining and windy, the route is an endless series of hills, and your butt hurts. Then, you get a flat tire. And a second flat tire. And even (yes, this has happened to me) a third. Next your disposition sours.  The only thing that keeps you going is the knowledge that there are more good days than bad, and that if you weren't out there slogging through a bad day, you'd never have the opportunity to experience a good one. Life for the parents of a child in the NICU is full of both good days and bad days. We went from fear to hope to despair, often within a period of a few hours. Some days were harder than most – learning that Lukas would need heart surgery, then bowel surgery, and concerns about genetic diseases and brain damage. These bad days were followed by the utter relief, often on the same day, of successful surgery, and news that all the genetic and neurologic tests were normal.

Lesson 6: Keep lines of communication open

When riding, Laura and I always maintain a single file. We are usually quite close, often within 5 feet, so we can draft. Cyclists draft to reduce the work for the person riding in the shadow of the lead cyclist. Because we ride so close, we have a series of signals designed to help keep us safe. They include: "bump" (pothole ahead), "car back" (car about to pass us), "car up" (car approaching in the opposite lane), and even "dive" (a bus is coming and we have to dive into the bushes).

We're not kidding about the last one - it actually happened several times while biking on a narrow lane in the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, with a maniacal German tour bus driver bearing down on us. Keeping lines of communication open was important for us during Lukas’ stay in the NICU. We talked about the things we would do with Lukas when he came home (like a bike tour!), which helped keep us optimistic about his future. We also made sure we communicated with each of his nurses by being there for part of every nursing shift, and trying to spend a few minutes talking to the neonatologist and surgeon at least once a day.  We also communicated with Lukas singing him songs, sharing finger hugs, and telling him we loved him. 

Lesson 5: Pack light

On all of our bike tours, we have been totally self-contained. No sag-wagons to carry our gear; no pre-determined, pre-tested routes; and no other cyclists. Just the two of us, two bikes, panniers, and a bunch of maps. We spent 5 weeks in Europe back in 1995 living this way - truly a transformative experience. Of course, other things found their way into our pack: trashy novels (Mark), erudite intellectual novels (Laura), and the occasional bottle of single malt scotch for “emergencies” like the third flat tire of a rainy day. Since this gear has to be carried up every hill, crag, and mountain on our tour, sometimes covering 100 miles in a day, every ounce counts. That means polypropylene underwear, no blue jeans, and only 4 or 5 shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, and 1 set of long pants for 42 days. Our stay in the NICU showed us that while we love our life in Athens, it is amazing how much of it we could leave behind for weeks at a time. Our jobs slid to the backburner.  We subsisted with one suitcase full of clothes, one bag of books, and a laptop for each of us, with nights spent in an inexpensive hotel room near the hospital. A 1 x 3 foot desk at the bedside for Mark, and none for Laura. Yet, it was more than sufficient, and we quickly adapted to this new, simpler rhythm. Our lives are cluttered with physical and mental detritus – packing light and keeping things simple is good practice.