(continuing journal excerpts from Spring 2014)

The Third Day … still

7pm

As I was saying … the problem is the number of hours between leaving our hotel room this morning and arriving at the cabin on the Maroochydore River.

The number is 27.

27 is not a huge number, but it is a lot of hours to power the Ventilator (or in less clinical terminology the breathing machine, as I prefer to think of it) that I can no longer be without. It’s more than two years since I learned how to power the breathing machine from the batteries of the power wheelchair (B4, remember her?) through a car-fridge transformer; with considerable coaching from our electronics shop (a real shop, with real advice!). More recently I have discovered how to power the machine from 18 volt cordless drill batteries, which is invaluable because B4 is now parked in the shed and I  use a manual wheelchair almost exclusively. Ryobi Lithium batteries are brilliant, durable things. But how many of them do you need to make a 27 hour dash between power points? The answer I have come up with, checked and double checked, is three 4.5 AH (amp hour) batteries. They cost $100 each, but that is a fraction of the cost of the proprietary batteries for the machine.

So, here I am on-board the train bound for Brisbane, ten twenty-sevenths down, seventeen twenty-sevenths ahead.  One 4.5 AH battery spent, as expected, so far so good! If my maths is wrong, or if something brakes down, there is a fail-safe system as well, built into what used to be a power wheelchair (a story for another day). The ‘Tractor’ for want of a better name, is sitting across the isle of the train and contains a complete spare system that I rarely leave home without: a second breathing machine, back up 18 Volt, 24V, and 240V power supplies; spare air hoses, spare masks, a bag of tools, and two 15 AH wheelchair drive batteries. That sounds like a lot of power, but using it will reduce the driving range needed for catching tomorrow’s  train from Brisbane to Nambour, and then a bus to Maroochydore. Flat driving batteries would be a nasty setback!

Travelling with a sense of calculated risk is energizing and scary. I’m a little less scared and a little more energized with every mile of rail that passes beneath the train, but an indisputable fact remains: I am a very long way from home if something goes wrong!  I feel irresponsible, especially when I think of the inconvenience I will cause other people if the wheels do fall off. And there are so many wheels!

A Journal is a valuable possession throughout life, but an essential one when travelling. Something happens to us when we leave one place bound for another; something so significant that it has fuelled endless books, films, songs and every form of art for centuries.  The changing scenery flashing past and the slower evolution out at the horizon summons an aspect of my soul.  Motion changes every facet of perspective. I become reflective, satisfied, curious, inventive, ambitious even. I love it! A Train Meditation from the pages of my journal …

“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.” (1^st Peter in the New Testament).

My paraphrase (a habit of years; a good way to explore a passage):

Family of God-loved People, listen! Because you are foreign to the world, without a home until we are Home, don’t give an inch to greed, self-interest or other self-demands; these things will deplete your soul.

I am not at home. I am on a long trip and I need to conserve, conserve, plan and save. I have limited batteries for breath.  I have two small Thermoses of tea! I have the smallest of wheelchair batteries for mobility.  So it’s a matter of careful planning and reserving.  People of Faith are also away from home.  We are exiles, aliens, strangers in this world of horrors as much as it is a world of beauty.
Use Sparingly – Save Our Souls. Keep everything primed and sharp. Don’t sleep, remain alert, fit to fight.

Rejoice!

To be continued …

Journal of a Land Voyage III

 

 

(I have come to prefer private email over the public ‘comments’ section previously found on this page. I will endeavour to reply to an email sent via the form below, and I’d love to hear from you!)

One version of my halcyon, daydream life is a life without decisions. A life that follows a calm and satisfying plan, never throwing up unexpected obstacles, never detouring to offer an alternate path; a predictable, safe life. Obviously that life is dull, and absurd, but tempting still.

Decisions, it seems to me, are sentient beings. They hide away to formulate their strategy of attack, fermenting complex blends of promise and fear. They arrive unbidden, timing their appearance with care so that they manifest before The Decider at the very moment when he or she feels most at peace with the status quo.  I suspect they learn their subtlety as we age: decisions that presented themselves in my youth seemed relatively simple and impulsiveness was generally rewarded.  I was, after all, invincible.  But with every added year decisions gain cunning.  And, especially, with every added child decisions baffle me more.  If you’ve been the parent of a teenager asking to borrow your car, or your money, you will know all about this (and my home has seen a grand total of 37 teen-years; 5 still to go….). Today’s decision: will I or won’t I catch a train to Northern NSW, where some of my longest friendships lie.  While I decide – a task that habitually takes me a week or two – I am turning back the pages of my hand written journal to another train trip, just a few months ago:

Journal of a Land Voyage

The First Day

A Wednesday in September 2014.

Tonight a big adventure begins:  first to Sydney, then on to Queensland.  Now that it has finally arrived the day feels neither as thrilling nor as terrifying as I had expected.  I the past weeks since I decided to travel again I have sometimes felt quite intimidated and frightened at the scale of the plan, and by the possibility of things going wrong with me or with my equipment so far from home. Now that all the preparations are complete, it feels modestly secure.  I don’t know how many days I have spent at the workbench with a soldering iron, rewiring and reinventing the breathing machine caddy which hangs behind my wheelchair. Many! The helpful folk at the electronics shop have taught me all sorts of things, but I still need to head back there with projects like this; electronics is such a tricky thing I reckon, and all I’m doing is wiring up switches and LEDs.

Midnight

“The (pause) XPT (pause) service to (pause) Sydney”,

we are loud-hailed every quarter hour in perfectly stilted robot-girl English,

“is approximately (pause) 2 (pause) hours behind schedule”.

Furthermore, we are loudly hailed, robot-girl apologises for any inconvenience.  It’s the “ANY” that I find increasingly annoying, in 15 minute increments.  As if inconvenience is optional: it may be, or may not be inconvenient to spend 2 hours in the middle of the night on a railway platform.  Why can’t she just come clean and simply apologise?  The same thing happens in politics, and sport, “If anyone is offended by what I said then I apologise”.  If?  IF?

1am

Thankfully they have axed the loud-hailed quasi apology, and a uniformed, living being has come around a couple of times to assure us that the train is still expected within the well advertised 2 hour delay.  The living uniform told us with some pride that it was he that had placed the call to someone higher up, suggesting that the quarter-hourly loud-hailing had to stop. And he brought us tea and biscuits!

The Second Day

Midnight

We have returned, my Favourite Wife and I, from a commanding performance by David Suchet in The Last Confession.  On the train platform last night we had listened to Suchet, famous as Agatha Christie’s Poirot, in a wide ranging interview with the ABC’s Philip Adams. Suchet is wonderfully candid about his conversion to Christian faith in his 40s, and the issues of faith, power and unbelief in tonight’s play were all the more poignant knowing that the gentle and humane lead has explored them personally.  Favourite Wife’s birthday celebrated in great style today!

The Third Day

Breakfast in the restaurant of our rather flash hotel, celebrating our 25^th Anniversary.  From our floor to ceiling glass window we look down 30 feet or so onto the top of the old Post Office clock tower in Martin Place.  Our trip has been a success! Lots of planning and no small amount of apprehension about various decisions, especially the timing of leaving home just before one of our daughters was due with her first child, has all paid off and our adventure has run perfectly to plan (but is that a contradiction?).

2pm

We have parted company.  She headed south, by air, homewards with the promise of a new grandchild only days or even hours away. In fact it was our soon to be mother who met her at the airport: I bet that was fun!  I am heading north, by rail. Fourteen hours on board another train to see two little grandsons that are two states away from our home. This leg of the journey is the one I have worried about most, and worked hardest to make secure.  The problem is the number of hours between leaving our hotel room this morning and arriving at the cabin on the Maroochydore River where my family and I will stay for a brief time.

To be continued …

Journal of a Land Voyage II

Rejoice!

(I no longer use the “Comments” section previously found on this page, but I will endeavour to reply to an email sent via the form below. I’d love to hear from you!)