Mike’s mom is doing well. I took my small bicycle with me, so last night, Mike and I prepped his old ten-speed and did a short “shakedown” to see his brother Tom, a former apartment mate of mine from university days and in more recent years a client. During this visit, Mike’s been using space in Tom’s conference room to complete a book manuscript that’s due at the publisher on Friday.
Today we loaded the bikes in “Ned” (my truck) and set out to fulfill a mutual promise from the 1970s—to make a “pilgrimage” to the grave of frontiersman Simon Kenton in Urbana, Ohio. Our first stop was in West Liberty, where we bicycled out to the so-called Piatt Castles, built by two brothers of contrasting personalities on land their father settled after leaving Cincinnati in 1828. I hadn’t been out there in over 40 years. The adventurous risk taking that it represents became a metaphor for our day-long discussion about what we face in middle life as individuals and friends. Afterwards we had lunch at the small regional airport. Tom had recommended the little cafe beside the runway. There was a B-25 displayed on the tarmac, so Mike and I just let ourselves through the chain-link gate to nose around, almost as if the War on Terror hadn’t made it yet to this neck of the woods.
From the airport we drove to the campus of Urbana University and got back on bikes for our ride to the cemetery. Mike wanted to ask for directions. I knew we could find the grave-site on our own. A caretaker wasn’t around, but we had no difficulty locating the prominent location, with its impressive bronze sculpture and concentric rings of monuments and markers. I wish I could explain what it was like for me to be there—to sit at that spot and know it was my hero’s final physical destination, after a life that was too bold for fiction. To be honest, I don’t have the ability to record my impressions of the time we spent at the site, including the meeting of a goal that literally took a generation to fulfill. At some level we must have understood that the fullness of the graveside experience would first require a chunk of transpired lifetime. Perhaps that’s why we put it off for so long. Now I’m hoping for the inspiration that will enable me to transcend my verbal capacities and somehow capture the day’s insights.