Time for a Vacation

Two days until vacation begins - one and a half if the last reference on a potential nursery worker comes in today! - but who's counting?

Last year I continued to work throughout months of chemotherapy. When vacation came, I still had to report to the infusion unit every week for chemo, and although the taxol didn't cause the nausea the previous chemo drugs did, it was taking a day longer each week to recover from the ill effects of that drug, and there was less and less food I could stand the taste of, so my vacation was simply a time for chemo when I didn't have to serve the church.

I did get a new camera that summer, and spent time getting to know it. Newlin even used some of my photos on his website, tracktimephotos.com (I think that's right!), and one young man bought the CD of the photos I took as he drove his ferrari out of the garage at Watkins Glen for his first time ever on the track. Last year I learned that I am a natural at taking panning shots of cars driving fast on a road course. And last year I had my second experience as a passenger in a high performance car going fast around a road track. Last year it was a ferrari, and the track was Watkins Glen, on the day, the very day, before my last ever chemo infusion.

So last year's vacation wasn't a total washout. But this year, I really need this vacation. And of course the gospel for last Sunday, my last one in church until September, began, "[Jesus] withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick." !!!!!

Well, as I wrote previously, during my week as chaplain to Arts Camp at Camp Washington a couple of weeks ago, I was renewed in my writing, drawing and painting. When I got home, I found that week had fed me more than I had thought. I rose early and wrote all sorts of things. I produced a number of pastels - a medium I have seldom used - on a theme I have not yet exhausted. And I'm really looking forward to vacation to do more of that sort of thing.

It will begin with three days on the banks of the Housatonic River, camping in a tent, and becoming a vegetable. On Wednesday I have my first track day as a novice driver at Lime Rock, with SCDA. Then up to Watkins Glen to shadow Newlin as he works various track events for driving clubs. There will be a trip to New Hampshire International Speedway in the middle of the month - more camping by a river - and ending the four weeks at Watkins Glen, giving the invocation for the annual reenactment of the first ever road race on the streets of Watkins Glen, to kick off the vintage auto weekend. Newlin's working on getting me listed as "crew" for one of the teams - I'd be doing photography.

So, four weeks of doing things I love, vacating my mind, turning everything on this end of the world over to God and the people of Grace Church and having fun.

Did I mention the bag of books I'm taking along to read as well? Oh yes, this is a true vacation.

This blog will be in hiatus. Feel free to leave comments. I'll read them when I return. See you in September!