(AKA The Geezer Reunion Tour)
Backstory: Mid-1970’s
While in college I spent three summers volunteering at a Catholic mission in Lewis County, Kentucky, mainly teaching 2-week Bible school sessions for whatever kids lived in some “holler” or another. Each two-week session ended with a graduation ceremony attended by Fr. Pat O’Donnell, the pastor of Holy Redeemer Church in Vanceburg.
This is a graduation-day photo taken at the Walter Fraley home in 1977. Walter is the guy in middle wearing a hat, and I’m the guy next to him wearing a tie. (I always wear a tie to formal occasions such as graduations.) Fr. Pat is wearing sun glasses.
In 1977, I met John, a volunteer from New Jersey, and at some point I learned John and I were born on the same day; I’m about 15 hours older than him. Another memorable volunteer I met was Joe from Pittsburgh, also about the same age. Although I immensely enjoyed my time with John and Joe, I pretty much lost contact with them after 1977.
2024
Fast forward 47 years to January 2024.
My brothers and I take each other out for dinner on our birthdays, and at the dinner celebrating my 70th birthday, my brother Bruce mentioned he received a phone message from some guy named John who was looking for a guy named Gary who volunteered at Holy Redeemer Church in Vanceburg, Kentucky almost a half-century earlier.
I knew right away who that is, but when I called the number the next day I got this recorded message: “You have reached St. Joseph’s House. Please leave a message”. I hung up immediately, assuming that I had the wrong number, but also glad that St. Joseph himself hadn’t answered the call. If he did answer, what would I say to him? That I enjoyed your quotes it the Bible?
(Editor’s comment: St Joseph passes through the Gospels without saying a word. You should have left a message.)
Anyway, I checked the number, and I tried calling again. This time a human voice answered and I recognized it as that of my birth-twin John. (When he said my name I recalled that he has what I assume is a New Jersey turn on the vowel “a”. I pronounce the “a” in “Gary” as I pronounce the “a” in “air”; John’s pronunciation was more like the “a” in “car”.)
John explained he had thought about me over the years, and on our shared 70th birthday he thought he would try to contact me.
I asked him about St. Joseph House, and he summarized the last 47 years in a few sentences explaining that he and his wife Donna founded a non-profit organization called St Joseph’s House, and over the years they adopted 17 children (and had maybe had 60 – 70 children, young moms, and others pass through the St Joseph’s house for various periods of time). They also started the St Philomena school, and had become a community service resource in Coatesville, PA, which is about 50 miles west of Philadelphia.
John mentioned that all these years he had kept in contact with Joe from Pittsburgh (!), who is married to Sharon, has two adult children, and is now living in Washington, DC.
After I hung up the phone with John and thought about our call it became clear to me what my bike trip would be in 2024: the Geezer Reunion Tour to visit John in Southeast Pennsylvania (SE PA) and Joe in Washington DC (DC).
The Plan
I resumed bike riding at age 60, and I’ve ridden the 500+ mile route from Cleveland to DC via the Great Allegheny Passage / Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath (and then took my bike and myself back to Cleveland on Amtrak). Five hundred miles is about the maximum ride for me in a two-week PTO time span, so adding a leg up to and from Coatesville to a Cleveland-DC route would be beyond my capabilities.
Instead, I decided to take my bike and myself on Amtrak from Cleveland to the Harpers Ferry PTA, West Virginia station, and start the trip there. I would head north through Maryland and into Gettysburg and York, then east through Lancaster to visit John in Coatesville, then back west again to York, and south to DC to visit Joe.
Here’s a map of the route:
(Editor’s comment: A mathematically-inclined reader may observe that the Coatesville-to-York-to-DC route is somewhat shaped like an inverted right triangle, and wonder why I didn’t choose a shorter, straight line from Coatesville directly to DC. Well, you are correct, Hypotenuse, but there seems to be no good bike route it that direction. I had to backtrack from Coatesville to York, then south to DC.)
The Posts
Three things to keep in mind before you begin reading these posts:
- Each post covers one day of the trip
- I photographed and wrote about things that interested me
- You aren’t me
I expect that no one will be interested in everything I’ve written. When you find yourself asking “why did he write about this?” just skip ahead to the next topic, or the next post. Or, you may find that just looking at the pictures is more interesting than reading the surrounding text.
In any case, I hope you find something interesting in what follows.
(To continue to the next post, click on the “Next article” below on the right side.)