Visit to Maryland for Easter

We went to visit Lynn’s sister’s family (Beth, Tom and 2 fine young adult children, Tommy and Annie), in Kensington, MD, for Easter from Friday, May 6 to Tuesday, May 10. We decided to fly down and back, instead of driving, as we have done many times before. We took advantage of my condition to utilize the benefits available to the disabled, such as use of a wheel chair in the airports and special rights for disabled visitors to the Smithsonian’s’. We had a great time. We visited both the air & space museum, near Dulles airport (not the more common one in the Smithsonian) and to one of the art exhibits. As part of our weekend, we partook in the religious service, at Beth’s church, Easter morning, we drove through nice neighborhoods to enjoy the famous Cherry blossoms, we played therapeutic games of Scrabble and of Ping-Pong and we attempted a run on the track around a nearby park.
When we were in a café during a lay-over in NJ, we met a nice gentleman, from Texas, who had overheard our conversation and was intrigued by the mention of my accident and had lived in Italy. He had, coincidently, served in the U.S. forces and had been stationed in Napoli. He was familiar with many of our old haunts and he went on to tell us that he has just 3 children, but now is the grandfather of some 14 grandchildren. At this point, the airline pilot we had met, Cameron, came back to our gate to provide to me his email address. I accepted it and I gave him the address of my BLOG, suggested that he check it out in the future, and said it was nice to meet him. When I had met Cameron, he had noticed the Triathlon Florida Ironman T-shirt that I was wearing, and he had struck up a conversation about competing in triathlon and had told me that he was in training to compete in the Lake Placid Ironman, in June of this year. I had told Cameron that I actually did not complete the Florida Ironman, but had a friend who had completed the event several times and had done Lake Placid several times. Thus, we agreed to share a common interest in Lake Placid. Cameron commented how remarkable my recovery was and commented that if I could possibly complete an Ironman in the future, that ABC might want to document my tale in one of their human-interest stories.