I255 to Valmeyer; Distance = 15 Miles; People Met = 4
What better way to spend the calendar year’s end than with someone who has already done the American Discovery Trail? We drove to the home of Debbie and Pat Sayano in O’Fallon, Illinois. Debbie completed the American Discovery Trail in 2007. Her cause was to raise the funds for a public library in Kenya, a $47,000 tab. That was where she met Pat. Her experiences with that cause will be a podcast feature for the Southern Illinois/Indiana edition of the newsletter. The Missouri edition will be coming out in a couple weeks.
The first evening their we went to the home of Bob and Susan Hoff for dinner and a movie. Pat and Debbie had never seen Avatar before while Cindy and I were happy to see it again. The most interesting part of that first evening was learning about Susan’s efforts with providing a maternity home for women 18 years or old. In particular they provide a supportive, safe haven for young, pregnant women, many with heartbreaking backgrounds, while also working to provide them educational tools for a future.
On New Year’s Eve day we were to hike together with Debbie and Pat. They would drive ahead one section at a time and hike back to meet us. But I, um, made a wrong turn on the very first stretch, thinking I had sufficiently committed our route to memory and foregoing looking at the map. We ended up just hiking the last stretch into Valmeyer together.
For New Year’s Eve I showed slides of our journey for all of us to reminisce. We did not make it to midnight; slide wise we only made it to Colorado. Nevertheless there could not be a better way to spend this particular evening than with someone you can reminisce with.
Debbie has an outgoing, vibrant personality, as you can well imagine for someone who walked 5,000 miles to build a library in Africa. She is now studying to become a nurse, which provided something important in common with Cindy. Pat is a mild-mannered Kenyan with a delightful smile who is still feeling his way in this new country. I loved the way he referred to our deer as gazelles and our forest as jungle.
Debbie and Pat Syano
I do hope that as seasoned travelers they someday travel to our home in Norfolk, CT. If they do it in the fall we can show Pat a most colorful jungle indeed.
Pat, Debbie, Cindy, Kirk
Debbie stayed with us…the tv crew came down & they insisted she set up her tent so they could film her in a more real setting. I also got some of the kids from church/school to go walk with her for about 5 miles. They thought it was pretty cool. Tell her we said hello…even if she has a hard time remembering us!
That must have been fun. Would love to have a bunch of kids walk with us.