My Toledo Vacation — August 1986

In my previous blog post I talked about my friend Barbara Alkema who might be my new roommate along with her adult son Josh and their 4 cats. You can read the details about that here. I mentioned in that blog that in 1986 Barb drove from her home in Toledo down to Indianapolis, picked me up in my van, and drove me back to Toledo to spend a week vacation with her and my friend Jim Grubs. I had met Jim online on CompuServe on a disability forum. He had a type of muscular dystrophy different from mine. Barb was his live-in caregiver. We all became friends online. This blog is the story about that vacation that I spent with her and Jim.

The Adventure Begins

I don’t remember the exact dates but it was in August 1986 that I went to visit my friends Jim and Barb who lived in Toledo. Granted one doesn’t typically think of Toledo as a big vacation destination. John Denver even wrote a silly song about what a boring place it is. YouTube
Actually Jim lived in Sylvania which is a suburb of Toledo. Anyway this was a really big deal for me because it was the first time I had been anywhere overnight or under the care of anyone other than my parents. It was a big milestone for me in my independence. It served as proof of concept that let me take other out-of-town trips with other friends years later.

The drive to Toledo was uneventful. I don’t really remember any details of it. Google maps (which didn’t exist in those days) tells me today that it is a 224 mile journey that should take three hours 48 minutes.

Barb rearranged some furniture in Jim’s bedroom and they rented a hospital bed for me for the week. We took my Hoyer lift and my oxygen machine. This was decades before I had a CPAP, ventilator, trach or G-tube. I just had oxygen that I used at night. Jim did as well although I think he may have had a CPAP I don’t recall. Barb did double duty taking care of both of us. We visited with friends of theirs and went out to dinner a couple of times.

Catching A Ferry

The big event of the week was our trip to South Bass Island about 5 miles into Lake Erie. There is a little resort town called Put-in-Bay on the island. They have a fancy marina with lots of expensive boats to look at and tourist shops you can browse. The main attraction on the island was the “Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial”. It is a National Park Service facility and the website (which did not exist in 1986) describes it as follows “Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial was established to honor those who fought in the Battle of Lake Erie, during the War of 1812, and to celebrate the long-lasting peace among Great Britain, Canada and the U.S. The Memorial, a Doric column, rising 352 feet over Lake Erie is situated 5 miles from the longest undefended border in the world.” Link to park service website for Perry’s Victory Memorial

We would drive from Toledo to Catawba Island just north of Sandusky. There you catch a ferry boat out to South Bass Island. You can click on the maps in this blog for a larger version and each has a link where you can to go to Google maps to see more details.

When we got to the ferry landing they told us that we could not take our vehicle with us because they had already taken over a large number of vehicles for the day. There’s only so much room for cars on the boat and there was a chance that there would not be room for us for the return trip. So we parked the van at a parking lot about a block away and got on the boat just in our wheelchairs with Barbara on foot.

I had my VHS camcorder with me and I shot video along the way. You can see the YouTube version at the end of this blog. Some of the images in this blog are screen grabs from that video. Unfortunately the railing on the ferry had a bar exactly at the height of my video camera so it was a little bit difficult to shoot video out across the water. Most of the passengers road up high on an upper deck that gave them a great view but we stayed on the main deck with the vehicles that were going across. A couple of seagulls flew alongside us on the journey. We could see other boats out on Lake Erie and another ferryboat passed us going the other way.


Growing up severely landlocked here in Indianapolis, being able to look out to the horizon and see endless water is a strange experience for me. I’ve never been to the ocean. I have been to Chicago on a couple of occasions and seen Lake Michigan but I had never been out on it in a boat. South Bass Island is only 2.9 miles from shore so we could see it from the shore where we departed. But there were directions you can look out into the lake and it was water all the way to the horizon. For most people it wouldn’t be a big deal but it was a new experience for me.

I don’t know how Google maps computed that ferry transit time in the map above. It says 20 minutes on foot and 31 minutes by car. Maybe it takes longer to load your car onto the ferry than to walk on 🙂

When we got to the landing at the south tip of South Bass Island we realized we were in trouble. We were at the wrong end of the island. We had no idea how far we would have to walk. Most people who got off the ferry went to the bicycle rental stand but that wasn’t going to work for us. As this Google map below shows, it’s 2.2 miles. Had we been in the van it would’ve been a six minute drive from one end of the island to the other. On foot it’s 46 minutes. And with two electric wheelchairs and an aide on foot it was probably longer than that. Of course we didn’t have Google maps in those days or smart phones with which to check Google maps. Not knowing what we were up against we had no choice but to set out on foot.

We passed by a small airport on the island and sat and watched a couple of private planes land and take off. There is also an air service called Island Airlines that will take you out to the island. Jim saw one of them flyover while we were on the ferryboat. Somewhere along the way we came across a little hamburger stand with some picnic tables sitting in front of it so we stopped and had lunch. You can see the Perry Monument off in the distance and it looked like it was just over the hill a bit. But I had no idea just how tall the thing really was. (Again we couldn’t Google it.) We were still over a mile away.

When we finally got to the town of Put-in-Bay it was very nice. There was a nice marina with lots of expensive looking boats. One of them looked like a big offshore racing boat. Others were fancy cabin cruisers. We didn’t really spend any time in the tourist trap shops. We went on to the big Memorial to get a good look at it. Now we could see just how huge it really was. There was a small shack that was sort of like a mini museum. I shot some video of a really cool scale model of the USS Lawrence which was Commodore Perry’s flagship during the battle of Lake Erie. His motto and battle flag bore the phrase “Don’t Give up the Ship”. This was a paraphrasing of the dying words of Capt. James Lawrence who was a friend of Perry and who had died in an earlier battle in the war.

We hung out in the park for a while and it was very peaceful. The island has a very narrow Isthmus right at that point and you can see water on either side. The bay itself is very calm compared to the waters of Lake Erie.

We Are Stranded

The problem now was how to get home. There was no way we could make it back to the other end of the island where we had landed in time to catch the last boat home. Fortunately there is a ferryboat that leaves directly from the bay. Had we known what we were doing, we would’ve taken the boat that landed there. So we purchased a ticket to go back on a different ferry from this different departure point.

There was another problem however. This ferry did not go back to the Catawba Island Terminal where we left the van. Instead it went back to a place called Port Clinton which is 9 miles away from where the van was. We didn’t have any other choice. We had to take this ferry home.

We depart from the north side of the isthmus and had to go around the east end of the island to get back to the shore. It gave us a nice scenic view of the island. On the trip out there were seagulls that flew alongside us but on the trip home there were many more birds and they would fly up to the rear of the ship and the passengers would throw breadcrumbs to them. You could buy a package of breadcrumbs on the fairy. The birds would swoop down and catch them in midair. One person tried holding out their hand palm up with food in it but I never saw a bird swooped down to take it. I wouldn’t have done that.

When we landed at Port Clinton we called a taxi and Barb left Jim and me alone in the parking lot while she went to get the van 9 miles away. Then she drove the van back to pick us up. There was another guy there in a wheelchair with his own van but there would be no room for three wheelchairs in his van so we didn’t even bother to ask him if we could bum a ride. There was some sort of fast food restaurant across the street and we thought about going to get something to eat while we waited but we decided it was best to just stay put. We felt safe where we were.

There are actually 2 different fairy routes that leaves the north side of the island and they go to 2 different locations on the shore. One of them went to Marblehead and the other to Port Clinton. I couldn’t remember which route we went but I did remember that Barb said the taxi ride was 9 miles. So in researching for this blog I used Google maps and discovered that it was Port Clinton and not Marblehead where we returned. Marblehead is 11 miles from Catawba Island according to Google maps. Recalling this whole experience from 1986 has really opened my eyes to how dependent we are in this day and age on the Internet and all of the resources it provides. It makes me wonder how we ever survived without it.

The journey back to Toledo was uneventful. When we got home we ordered some pizza. We were all pretty exhausted from our adventure especially Barb who had walked the length of the island and still had to put Jim and me to bed. We had plans for the next day to drive to Detroit to visit a CompuServe friend of mine but we decided to cancel because we had already had enough adventure for now.

Home Again via Chicago

Barb and I left Jim in the capable hands of his backup aide Dede and we drove onto Chicago to visit other friends there. We had a great time in Chicago for the weekend. I don’t remember why but I did not shoot any video for this leg of the trip. Now I wish I had. Didn’t take any photos either.We got in a huge traffic jam coming through the interstate in Chicago. We also drove by Soldier Field where the Indianapolis Colts were playing the Bears in a preseason football game. I thought it was ironic that I was in town for a Colts game without tickets to see it. We got lost once along the way trying to find the hotel where I had booked us a room. We eventually made it to the right place and checked in. I had my laptop with me and I logged into CompuServe to touch base with friends. They started teasing me about spending a weekend in a hotel room with a nurse. Barb didn’t appreciate that. Barb met up with a friend of hers who lived in Chicago and he hung out with us and spent the night. I don’t remember his name or how she knew him. I had dinner with a friend from CompuServe. Sadly I don’t remember her name either.

This was my third trip to Chicago. The first was a family vacation when I was 13. I always tell people “Yeah… I was in Chicago in ’68. The scene with all the hippies in Grant Park was wild.” The truth was that vacation was the week before the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention with all of its riots and controversy. And I neglect to tell people I was only 13 at the time and was on vacation with my mommy and daddy.

My second trip to Chicago had been just a few years prior in 1981 when I was invited to exhibit some software in the “John’s Hopkins First National Search for Computer Applications for the Handicapped“. My software VersaScan won seventh place in the Midwest regional and was one of the top 100 in the country. (See page 276 of this PDF “Communicating with Tokens” by Chris E. Young) That event was held in the Museum of Science and Industry so I got to spend lots of time there as well as my other favorite museums.

Whenever I’m in Chicago I have to visit the museums. My favorite place is the Adler Planetarium which sits out on a little peninsula on Lake Michigan. I also like the Shedd Aquarium. I’m pretty sure we went to the Planetarium but I don’t think we visited the aquarium this time. [Update: After reading this, Barb reminded me we did go to the aquarium and now that I think about it more, I do remember parts of that adventure as well.]

Getting My Eyes Maxed at the OmniMax

I definitely wanted to go to the Museum of Science and Industry because they had just installed a new OmniMax Theater. If you’ve never heard of it, OmniMax is a domed version of IMAX. Some theaters refer to it as IMAX Dome while others continue to use OmniMax. The film was a NASA documentary called “The Dream Is Alive“. This 1985 film was made during space shuttle mission STS 41C aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Ironically in January 1986 a tragic accident destroyed the Challenger and its crew of seven and the dream was almost destroyed with it. It would be two years before shuttles flew again. It was bittersweet to see the Challenger in such a magnificent format.

We didn’t have time to tour the entire museum. We just went directly to the OmniMax theater. Unfortunately when we got there, the show was sold out. Some nice man who was in line with his family gave me his ticket for free. Barb waited in the lobby for me. The show was only about 45 minutes. It was the first IMAX film I had ever seen. The OmniMax Theater screen is huge. It’s like you took a dome and tilted it on its side and suspended it above the stadium seating. If you would stare at the center of the screen and did not look side to side, the image would fill your entire field of vision. The multichannel digital surroundsound was state-of-the-art. You can feel the floor shake when the shuttle took off. I’ve got a DVD of that film but of course watching it at home even in HD with my home surround system is nothing like IMAX.

I was instantly hooked and I’ve been an IMAX addict ever since. I wished we had IMAX theaters in Indianapolis. In 1996 my wish came true. The Indianapolis Children’s Museum opened a theater called the CineDome. While not technically IMAX nor OmniMax, it was much like a smaller version of the OmniMax in Chicago with a domed screen. Although built by iWerks and not IMAX it would still show 1570 format films some of which were IMAX films. In 2002 the Indiana State Museum opened an IMAX with a traditional flat screen but it had 3D capability. The CineDome closed in 2003 and the museum turned it into a dinosaur exhibit called Dinosphere which is pretty cool but I still miss the CineDome. There are now 3 other IMAX theaters in the central Indiana area but they are smaller digital IMAX facilities as part of a multiplex of other theaters. Purists call these smaller theaters lie-Max but I still like them. Still they don’t compare to the large IMAX at the Indiana State Museum or the Chicago OmniMax. In 2017 the Chicago OmniMax theater was renovated and the IMAX film projector removed. It was replaced by a laser digital projection system and was renamed the Giant Dome Theater. Maybe someday I will go back and see how the upgrade looks. But I still have fond memories of the original OmniMax and my first IMAX experience.

Cherished Memories and More to Come

The journey home to Indianapolis the next day was uneventful. Barb drove back to Toledo. We stayed in touch but I did not see her again until 1990. By then she had a boyfriend and a baby. She was leaving Jim to move to Texas. She did return to Toledo a few years later to care for Jim but sadly he passed away in 1995. She then went to school and got a job doing the social work. We’ve stayed in touch via Christmas cards, email, and an occasional phone call. I will see her again in a couple of weeks when she will come visit and we will decide if she’s capable of helping out as my caregiver. If so she and Josh and their cats will move here. I really hope it works out. Regardless of what happens, I will always cherish these great memories we’ve made together for over 30 years.

YouTube Video of Trip to South Bass Island

I May Have Found a Roommate

I may have found a roommate to move in with me.

The day I posted my previous blog saying that I was looking for one or two people to move in with me and live here rent-free in exchange for being my part-time caregiver, I got a Facebook messenger message from my old friend Barbara Alkema saying “How physical is the job?”. I totally freaked out.

I’ve known her for over 30 years. She currently lives in West Virginia with her adult son Joshua and 4 cats. I had thought about asking her if she would consider coming to Indiana but I thought it was very arrogant of me to presume that someone would pick up their life and move to a different state for me. Barb points out that I sent her a link to the blog hoping she would “take the bait”. Well maybe yes but I sent the link everywhere I could think of. In addition to posting on Facebook I sent emails to lots of people including her. Unfortunately I had an old email address that was no good so when I asked her about her current email then I sent her the link. The idea that she might respond positively seemed like a ridiculous fantasy.

This was much better because she was volunteering based on my open casting call and I didn’t look like I was an egotistical ass asking her to uproot her life and move to a different state.

Who Is She?

Back in the early 1980s before Al Gore invented the Internet (okay I know he really didn’t) there was an online service called CompuServe. You would use dial-up modems just like AOL which appeared a few years later. There were live chat rooms, discussion forums, news pages, and you could book travel just like you can on the Internet today. But it was all plaintext with no pictures and you connected at 300 baud. To compare that when AOL and other Internet services stopped using dial-up modems they were running at 56,000 baud. Today’s Internet is thousands of times faster.

There was a disability discussion group and that’s where I met a man named Jim Grubs. He was 50 years old, lived in Toledo Ohio, and had some kind of muscular dystrophy. It wasn’t the kind that I have. Jim’s parents were in their 80s and could not properly care for him but they had some money and so they hired a full-time live-in caregiver named Barbara.

I communicated with them both online through CompuServe and occasionally by phone. One time Barbara took the weekend off from caring for Jim and left him in the hands of a backup aide named Dede. She drove down from Toledo to Indianapolis to spend a few days with me. We had a great time together. We went out to dinner with my friends Rich and Kathy Logan and then went on to a comedy club where we saw a new rising star in the comedy world. You might’ve heard of him… His name was Jerry Seinfeld. This of course was years before his TV show. We had a great time. The next day Barb and I went over to the Speedway to tour the museum and who did we run into? Jerry Seinfeld! We told him we really enjoyed his show the night before. I wish I had the presence of mind to ask for an autograph.

In August 1986, Barb came back to Indianapolis and picked me up in my van and drove me to Toledo to visit with her and Jim for a few days. We took a trip on a ferryboat out into Lake Erie to a place called South Bass Island and to a resort town called Put-in-Bay. There is a huge lighthouse on the island that commemorates Commodore Perry’s victory in the battle of Lake Erie during the war of 1812. We also had a great time visiting with several of their friends and then backup aide Dede took over and Barb and I drove from Toledo to Chicago where we each visited some friends there. Then she drove me back to Indianapolis. I’m going to do an entirely other blog post about that whole adventure including a YouTube video of some VHS tape I shot on her trip out to the island.

The last I saw Barb in person was in 1990. She had quit working for Jim and was on her way to move to Texas with her seven-month-old baby boy Joshua. I remember she was here the day that my Grandma Osterman went to the hospital for the last time before she passed away.

Barb later returned to Toledo to work for Jim briefly but he passed away in 1995. Barb and I stayed in touch over the years. By email, Facebook, and the occasional phone call.

She went to school and got a job doing social work. A few years ago she developed health problems and had to go on Social Security Disability, Medicare and Medicaid. I wasn’t really sure if she was in good enough physical shape to help take care of me or if she would be interested in moving here. I did know that they were struggling financially but like I said, I thought I would be an idiot to presume she might move here even if she could.

What Is the Plan?

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve talked over all of the ins and outs of her moving here. She of course discussed it with her son Josh who has been a Facebook friend of mine for some time. He is in his late 20s. He’s a bit of a nerd like me. Loves sci-fi. Hates Trump. In a way more nerdy than me. He plays Dungeons & Dragons which I don’t. I’m sure we will get along just fine. Josh currently has a crap job working in a drugstore making crap wages. He was already looking for a better job so he will have to find one here. He has friends in West Virginia that he plays D&D with once a month but they say they can Skype with him or he can come visit sometimes. He also plays online with other people which you can do anywhere. He is on board with the plan.

I’m not wild about the idea of 4 cats coming with them because I’m not much of a cat person but given a choice between A) Living with a longtime friend, her son who is cool, and four cats versus B) Living in a nursing home… I will take “Plan A” any day.

You might think that we live in the United States of America but actually we live in a bunch of egotistical local jurisdictions that each think they know what’s best for their constituents especially when it comes to healthcare. While Medicare is completely federal, Medicaid varies state-by-state. We will have some hoops we need to jump through to get her eligible for Indiana Medicaid but after consulting with my lawyer we think we’ve got that one figured out.

Barb has plans to go visit a friend in a different part of West Virginia the week of April 6. The current plan is that she will spend a week with that friend that then take a bus here to Indianapolis and hang out with me for a week or so. It will probably be too strenuous for her to get me up and bathed and dressed in the morning but we are hopeful she will be able to put me to bed at night which is much easier. Her visit will verify just what she is and is not able to do. If that goes okay then she will go back home and begin to pack. Josh may come before her to start looking for a job.

I currently get nursing services from 8 AM- 6 PM Monday through Friday but that’s only because Carol is living here as my primary caregiver and she has to work. With Barbara living here full-time and not working I will no longer be eligible for that kind of nursing support. I will end up going back to having a home health aide come in for a couple of hours every day to get me up and dressed. We can also get respite nursing to come in and take care of me if Barb needs to go somewhere like a doctor appointment. We would essentially be back to the way things were with me and my dad before he got sick this past summer. My weekend aide has that she would love to come back and work for me seven days per week the way that she did for the past two years before we got nursing help.

In my original blog posts I said that I would need more than one roommate so that they could share responsibilities. However because Barb doesn’t have any friends around here and doesn’t work it will not be a burden for her to be here full-time. Josh can help out around the house as well as he already does where they live in West Virginia.

I took a tour of my house shooting video on my iPhone and sent it to them to show them what the house looks like. Barb will take over the main bedroom that used to be my parents room and Carol is currently using. We have a junk room which contains my mom’s old sewing machine, a worktable that my dad used to build my gadgets, and a closet full of my ventilator supplies. We will clean that room out and it will be for Josh. We’ve already cleaned out my office closet in anticipation of moving stuff out of the junk room. Karen will probably take mom’s old sewing machine. We are going to get rid of one of the sofas in the family room and the organ which nobody plays anymore. That will give us room to put stuff in the family room.

Barb will bring some furniture of her own and some she will put in storage here. They will bring their beds. She has a hutch she likes that we can probably put in the family room. She has her own sewing machine. She sells stuff she makes on esty.com at a store called MakeItSewByBarb. We just priced what it will cost to rent a U-Haul truck and it’s going to be expensive but it’s cheaper than hiring a real mover.

She is excited that we have a dishwasher. Josh is excited that I have a 3D printer he can use to make D&D figurines and map pieces. I’m excited that they have a 60 inch TV they are bringing. Mine is only 47 inches but it will do 3D so we will keep them both. We both subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, CBS All Access and Amazon prime so we can consolidate those and save some money. I will probably cancel some of the premium channels on our cable. I will probably cancel our landline telephone since we all have cell phones. There are a lot of details to work out but I’m extremely hopeful that we can do it.

So send up a prayer or two that we can make this work. This is going to be a win-win situation for both of us if we can work out the details.

Changing my blog software

You may have noticed that my blog looks significantly different than it used to. That’s because I switched from using Google’s blogger.com service to using WordPress installed on my own domain. I’m going to be using WordPress for blogs on my website for St. Gabriel Church so I thought I would just convert everything over.

This means that many of my intra-blog links will be broken for a while and if you’ve bookmarked any of my links they will no doubt be broken. As far as I can tell all of the content including comments is still there. It just is probably going to have a different name.

I hope this isn’t too confusing for my readers but in the long run I think it will work better.

One of the things I like about WordPress versus blogger is that WordPress automatically cross-links each individual entry so that I don’t have to put any “next entry” and “previous entry” link in each of my posts. Because I write so many blog entries that are actually serial articles it was really hard to navigate under blogger unless I went to a lot of trouble to manually add links. I won’t have to do that anymore.