I expected to get a polite response from Mr. Beall with that politician response "thank-you for the benefit of your views". To my surprise, that's not at all what happened. To explain what did, let me use the press release I put out:
National Academic Association Reverses Decision, Awards Garrigan Win
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Not only was I surprised by the reversal of the game's outcome, I was surprised at just how much treatment the story got in our local media. That press release was run verbatim in the local paper and in a newsletter sent out by the Sioux City Diocese. Shorter versions appeared in the Mason City and Fort Dodge newspapers, and the local radio station carried it on each newscast for two days. They had apparently even contacted Mr. Beall to verify the facts of the story-more than that station does for most of the local news.
Since we didn't know the final outcome, we were all very disappointed after the "loss" to Waverly. The kids basically retired to their rooms and sulked. I set out on a very long midday walk. I followed the streetcar line down St. Charles, first stopping briefly at the same Rite Aid I had taken the kids to before and then at a McDonalds built to resemble a church that I have mentioned in previous travelogues. I wasn't particularly tired, and there was still plenty of time until our final game, so I just kept walking. I ended up making it past the hotel Margaret and I had stayed at when we were in New Orleans at Christmas a couple of years ago. That's almost at Lee Circle (near the Superdome), and about seven miles from Loyola. I caught the streetcar back after a fascinating little walk.
It was into the afternoon when I got back to the dorm room. Daryl and I went around to rouse the other kids and get them ready for our afternoon match. As we did the coach from the team across the hall yelled at us, saying we were too noisy and that she and her team were trying to sleep. Neither Daryl and I nor the kids were being especially loud, and while the dorm had quiet hours, they ended at 7:30 in the morning. I felt like telling her where to go, but of course I was too polite to actually do so.
Our final game was against Madison Central High School. I had e-mailed Mr. Beall before the tournament asking where all the teams were from. He correctly identified the other three and told me Madison Central was from Madison, Wisconsin. There is indeed a Central High School in the Badger State's capital (I would drive right past it later this summer on the way to a baseball game in Appleton), but that wasn't where this team was from. Instead of being Midwesterners, they were from Madison County, Mississippi, the wealthy suburbs north of Jackson. They were a pleasant enough group, and I don't know that I'd describe them as especially good or bad. After the problems this morning, though, our kids didn't really have their minds in this game. There was no controversy this time, but it was not really a surprise when we lost. The surprise was that it was actually quite a close game.
We again had the afternoon free. We let the kids divide up and go their separate ways again, though many of them couldn't seem to decide what they wanted to do. In the end most seemed to just lounge around on campus all afternoon. Daryl and I went to the Audubon Zoo, which remains one of the nicest wildlife parks I've seen anywhere. I've described that before, so I'll spare the details here.
We had arranged for everyone to meet at the Cathedral, where we would go to mass as a group. Daryl and I spent enough time at the zoo that we had to literally run across the mile-wide park to catch the streetcar downtown. We made it, though we were the last in the group to show. Fortunately Angie had stepped up and made sure everyone else was accounted for and was prepared to lead them into church if necessary.
I've always rather liked St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. On the outside it looks like the Disneyland castle, and inside they have beautifully painted ceilings and elaborate marble work. The kids didn't care much for the building, though, and nobody cared for what had to be the dullest mass I've ever been to. The chief celebrant was a middle-aged Asian priest who had just been ordained today and was presiding over his first "official" liturgy. It was difficult to understand him, and he just droned on and on, not only in his homily but also in explaining the symbolism of every part of the service. The "good old boy" deacon who assisted him was better, as were a couple of lectors who read scripture as if it were dramatic interpretation. Even so, every part of the service dragged badly.
Daryl and most of the kids stayed downtown after church. The kid whose uncle lived in Mississippi thought his uncle would be coming to visit him at the dorm tonight, so I escorted him back to Loyola on the streetcar. I had not eaten since breakfast, so after leaving him there I went back to the streetcar to find a place to have supper. I went down to Louisiana Avenue and walked up to a drive-through burger place called Rally's. The immediate neighborhood was far from inviting (with teenagers standing outside a drugstore on the corner, yelling at passersby), so I walked a couple of blocks down St. Charles to have my supper and wait for the streetcar. I was still eating when the first car passed, so I just kept walking another block or two. Apparently most of the group was on that first car, and they saw me and wondered why I was out walking so late.
When I got back to Loyola, Daryl was in the lobby of the dorm. He wanted to do some laundry (though I must say it surprised me that he and his children wouldn't have packed clothes for the whole trip-we were only gone a week). They had a nice laundry room in the dorm, and the information we had gotten ahead of time said that detergent would be available for purchase. Unfortunately they didn't have any vending machines, and there was no detergent at the desk. Having already walked an incredible distance today, I agreed to accompany Daryl to that same Rite-Aid I had taken the kids to earlier, so he could get some laundry soap. We got to the drugstore quickly, and he made his purchase. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a long wait for an outbound car to take us back to campus. Several inbound cars passed us, but none was headed our direction. We decided to start walking back and let the car catch up to us whenever it came along. At each stop we looked back to see if a car was coming, but none ever did. We ended up walking all the way back to campus, probably about a mile and a half, and only then did the first outbound car come by.
Back at the dorm we found that the uncle of our student once again didn't show up. The kid was understandably annoyed, particularly since once again there was no explanation. I never did find out what the problem was.
I visited with the kids to plan our activities for the next day while Daryl did laundry. When I got ready for bed I looked at the pedometer I wore since today was the first day of our summer fitness program at Garrigan. Even I was surprised to see that over the course of the day I had logged 18.6 miles.
While they were quiet, most of the kids didn't really sleep last night. They played cards and chatted with each other in their rooms. They were, however, better than the people across the hall-the ones who were trying to sleep at noon. They were loud and obnoxious at night, when quiet hours were supposed to be enforced.
We checked out and left Loyola around 9am. We made it quickly across the city and crossed the six-mile bridge that separates Lake Ponchatrain from the Gulf of Mexico. On the east side of the bridge we stopped at a McDonalds in the suburb of Slidell. We then drove on to the Mississippi Welcome Center, on Interstate 10 about an hour from New Orleans.
The welcome center offered free soft drinks, and the kids downed more than their share of them. We were mostly there, though, to check in for a tour of the NASA Stennis Space Center. I had been to Stennis several times before. On those occasions, I just drove up to the gate and then proceeded to the visitors' center. Apparently since September 11th all the NASA facilities have been under heightened security, though. Now you can only visit Stennis as part of a guided tour. You have to check in (showing full photo ID and going through a brief security check) at the welcome center and then catch a bus to the grounds of the facility. The bus ride was eerie. The road through the Stennis facility is a four-lane highway. Normally the combination of workers and tourists keeps it very busy. Today was Sunday, though, so there were few employees. Coupling that with absolutely no tourist cars, the road was absolutely empty.
The space center is another of those places I've described at length elsewhere, so I'll not go into detail here. The kids had specifically asked to go here, but most of them didn't really care much for it. I'm not sure what they thought it would be, but obviously it didn't live up to their expectations.
We had a bit of a shock when we got back to the welcome center and found that one of the suburbans had a seriously flat tire. The good news was that it happened here, rather than as we were speeding down the interstate at 75 mph. The bad news was that the temperature was nearly 100o, and the spare that was in the disabled suburban was almost bald itself.
I assumed the tires on both suburbans would be interchangeable. Daryl wasn't quite so sure of that, but fortunately I was right. The other suburban had a good spare. To get things changed, though, we had to clear out the luggage areas of both suburbans, work a strange screw mechanism that mounted the spares to the wall, jack up the disabled vehicle and remove the bad tire, replace it, try to get the flat tire mounted to the wall with the screw mechanism, and then load everything up again. It was an annoying and time-consuming process, and I was definitely thankful that Daryl was more mechanically inclined than I am.
After getting the tire fixed we drove along the beautiful Mississippi coast. We stopped twice, once along the relatively empty beach at Pass Christian and again at Biloxi, right in the heart of the tourist district. All but one of the kids thoroughly enjoyed their time on the beach. The exception was the same girl who had complained about the Days Inn in Arkansas. She also complained (with some justification) of the filth in the French Quarter, and here she felt the beach was too dirty to set foot on. I'd love to know what she thought a beach should look like. We saw a little bit of litter (though noticeably less than was here back when I was in college), but mostly it's spotless white sand. Sand if, of course, "dirt"-so maybe that's what grossed her out. I'd had quite enough of her at this point, and I just let her stay in the suburban and pout while everyone else enjoyed an afternoon in the sun.
We did have one injury on the beach. One of the kids stepped on a sharp rock and cut a gash on his foot. We quickly got things cleaned up and treated, but he walked with a bit of a limp for the rest of the trip.
We had a late afternoon lunch/dinner at a Wendy's on the Coast that used to be owned by that uncle who didn't bother seeing his nephew in New Orleans. We then drove north to Hattiesburg, which was little changed since I went to school there. We joined I-59 and drove northward to Laurel.
The interstate makes some tight curves as it winds through Laurel. As we came around one of these I hit the brakes hard and switched lanes when I saw a police officer ahead directing traffic around a truck that had gone off the road and overturned. He was holding both arms together and kept gesturing up and down, as if he were landing a plane. Hand signals were most definitely not part of the curriculum when I went through driver's ed, and I had no clue what he wanted. I pulled far over and slowed down a bit, but apparently not enough to satisfy the cop. As I passed he shook his fist at me and bellowed "SLOW DOWN!" I guess that must be what those plane landing gestures were supposed to mean, but their meaning was certainly lost on me.
We made it through Laurel in one piece and then drove on past Meridian and on to the Alabama border. We stopped briefly at a rest area that was under construction and then, as the sun was setting behind us drove on into Tuscaloosa. We had reservations at a Fairfield Inn. I had printed out directions from their website that explained how to find the place, but they were obviously incomplete. We took the suggested exit, and their map implied it would be just off the interstate. While we saw lots of businesses, Fairfield Inn was not among them. I turned onto the first cross street, which I thought was four lanes wide. It turned out to be eight lines, with an extra-wide median. I had turned into oncoming traffic, and I was rather embarrassed as I weaved my way back to the correct lanes. (Perhaps I should have paid closer attention to that How I Learned to Drive play.) We drove all the way down to the next exit and then about halfway back. Just as we were going to stop at a gas station to ask directions, one of the kids spotted a tiny unlighted sign leading to an access road. We followed the road back next to the interstate and found the motel. It was exactly in the location their map had shown, just not quite so easy to get to.
We checked in, and then Daryl and I went out to buy gas. We had credit cards from the school to pay for gas, and I planned to just put the card through the scanner at the pumps. Unfortunately, the message "SEE ATTENDANT" came up. I asked the attendant to reset the pumps so we could pay inside. We filled the tanks (to the tune of $77.50), and I presented the school credit card to pay. The card didn't go through, but the clerk assumed it was just a problem with the magnetic strip. He typed in the numbers manually, but this time it came up "DECLINED". I wasn't sure why the school card should be over its limit, but I ended up putting everything on my American Express card-figuring I could settle things up later.
In retrospect, I'm betting the problem had to do with the CYO baseball tournament which was also this weekend. The baseball team usually gets hotel rooms for CYO, and it's quite possible with a group of kids that the hotel could have put up a large deposit on the credit card, which would have effectively maxed it out. We were able to use the card without problems later in the trip, and I was quickly reimbursed for the charge on my personal card.
By this point it was nearly 10pm, but many of the kids still wanted to have something more for supper. A few of them had also gotten sunburned on the beach, and they wanted some pain relief spray to put on that. We stopped briefly at a K-Mart (just before closing time) to get some sunburn treatment and then headed to a nearby Waffle House for supper. Part of the group was served quickly at the Waffle House. Unfortunately the part I was in had snail-paced service from a clueless young waiter named Blake. The food was good, though,
I had been tired when we first got to the motel, but by the time we had eaten and returned I was wide awake. The Fairfield Inn was really quite a nice place, but I mostly tossed and turned all night long.
Again this was one of those "Murphy's Law" days. We were supposed to leave promptly at 6:30, but by the time everyone actually was up and packed, it was really more like 7:00.
We spent much of the morning driving through northern Alabama, which is a surprisingly mountainous area. It's really quite pretty, and totally different from most of the rest of the state. We stopped at the first exit inside Georgia and had a bathroom break at a really sleazy little convenience store out in the middle of nowhere. We then switched drivers and headed north past Chattanooga and on to Lenoir City, Tennessee.
We had lunch in Lenoir City at a Krystal restaurant. Again there were numerous other restaurants nearby, but everyone chose to eat at Krystal. I like Krystal, which is pretty much the same as the White Castle chain you see in the north-tiny square steamed burgers, flavored with mustard and onion. A lot of the kids didn't really know what to expect, and they generally didn't care for the place. Some of them ordered too little-assuming that the burgers were the same size as those at Hardees or McDonalds. Others didn't care for the flavor of steamed meat. To those who complained, I pointed out all the other restaurants in the neighborhood and noted that no one had told them where they had to eat.
There was a really bad entrance ramp to I-75 at Lenoir City. It was short and steep, with almost no visibility. I barely made it on, and Daryl all but crashed. Somehow, though, we did get on the freeway and continued our journey north. We went through heavy traffic at Knoxville, and then a combination of traffic and nasty construction throughout northern Tennessee. I was delighted to finally stop at the welcome center just inside Kentucky. All across Kentucky the roads were excellent. Often they had six lanes through essentially rural areas. Traffic was heavy, but with sufficient lanes everything moved along efficiently.
Through Kentucky and Tennessee we drove along the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. It was a pretty drive, and sometime I'd like to go back and drive through there when I wasn't in a hurry. I couldn't help but notice exit after exit to roads that were named after hollows (Singing Hollow, Hungry Hollow, Bear Hollow, etc.) That backwoods word for "valley" reminded me of an old hymn we often sing at my church that uses the same word. Its lilting Welsh melody (Ash Grove) kept going through my mind all afternoon:
The Master has come, and he calls us to follow
The tracks of the footprints he leaves on our way;
Far over the mountain and through the deep hollow
The path leads us on to the mansions of day;
The master has called us, the children who fear him,
Who march 'neath Christ's banner, his own little band;
We love him and seek him; we long to be near him,
And rest in the light of that beautiful land.
The Master has called us; the road may be dreary,
And sorrows and dangers be strewn on the track;
But God's Holy Spirit shall comfort the weary;
We follow the Master and cannot turn back;
The Master has called us, though doubt and temptation
May compass our journey, we cheerfully sing:
Press onward! Look upward, through much tribulation;
The children of Zion must follow their King!
The Master has called us, through life's early morning
With visions as fresh as the dew on the sod;
We turn from the world with its smiles and its scorning
To cast in our lot with the people of God;
The Master has called us, His sons and His daughters;
We plead for His blessing and trust in His love;
And through the green pastures, beside the still waters,
He'll lead us at last to His kingdom above.
That song accompanied me north to Lexington and then on through the horse country plains to a rest area about an hour south of Cincinnati. I had pretty much been driving on auto-pilot all day, and the kids in my suburban were all asleep. I was dead tired, having not really slept much last night, and without some one to talk to I wasn't sure I could stay awake the rest of the way. I asked Daryl if we could switch who was driving which suburban. He agreed (though I found out later he was probably as tired as I was), and we made our way north for the last leg of the trip. The kids in the white suburban (notably Daryl's own children) did a much better job of keeping me awake. We made it north to the Ohio River and caught a gorgeous view of the Cincinnati skyline as we crossed the bridge into Ohio. It was rush hour, but traffic moved along pretty well, never slowing much below 45 all the way across the city. We continued north and exited just south of Dayton, where we easily found the Super 8 Motel.
Two of the girls had arranged to meet their parents in Dayton and continue on a family vacation from there. One of the girls (the same one who seemed to be allergic to dirt) had said that her father was always late, so she purposely had told him we would be there an hour before our itinerary stated. Needless to say he was right on time, but construction and other delays kept him waiting a full two hours before we showed up.
I registered and got the room keys, but I told the kids to just leave their things in the suburban. We had tickets to see Garrigan graduate Brad Nelson play in a baseball game tonight in downtown Dayton, and with the delays we had no time to spare. We made our way a couple miles further northward on an awkward stretch of interstate (I-75 is six lanes in the suburbs, but only four in central Dayton). We then found spaces in a parking ramp and walked from there to the ball park. We reached the turnstiles of Fifth Third Field just as they were singing the National Anthem.
Brad spent most of the summer playing for the Midwest League's Beloit Snappers, a Milwaukee Brewers farm team. (Just before I wrote this travelogue, he was called up to the High Desert Mavericks in California.) About half the Midwest Leagues are similar to Beloit; they're located in small industrial cities and play in parks that could be described as "historic" or "run-down", depending on your point of view. The other half, including most teams in the Eastern Division, play small-town ball in big cities. Dayton is bigger than Des Moines, yet its team is in the same A-ball league that includes places like Burlington and Clinton. They have a brand new stadium, complete with skyboxes, and they fill the place every night. Beloit is lucky to attract 1,000 fans to a game (I've been there when there were less than 100 in the stands); Dayton regularly has crowds of around 7,000. While we had tickets, we didn't have seats. We were told that the entire seating bowl is sold on a season ticket basis. Our $5 general admission tickets simply rented space on the grass embankment (the "lawn cheer") overlooking right field. Fortunately even the new A-ball parks are not that large, so we had a good view from the grass.
Everything about Fifth Third Field is done with big league professionalism. While the Snappers don't even include biographies of their own players in their $2 newsprint program, the Dayton Dragons provide a free magazine unique to each game with biographies and updated statistics on both their own team and the visitors. Beloit's simple scoreboard is much smaller than Garrigan's (which, admittedly, is probably the best high school scoreboard anywhere). The Dragons, by contrast, have Jumbotron video screen and a huge digital message board towering above left field. Beloit serves their drinks in wax Pepsi cups and beer straight out of the bottle, while in Dayton both beverages are served in souvenir plastic cups with the team logo. The Snappers sell team souvenirs in a dumpy little shack erected under the aluminum stands, while the Dragons have a huge brightly-lit team store that can be entered from the street and looks like it belongs in a shopping mall. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
At the time of this game, I had been to one other minor league park that would compare to Dayton. That was when I saw the Kane County Cougars in Geneva, Illinois last summer-basically on a whim when I happened to be in Chicagoland. That was probably the most annoying baseball game I've ever been to. No one in the stadium seemed to pay any attention to the game. They were loud, drunk, and obnoxious, and they made me feel like an outsider who wasn't welcome. By contrast, I'd really enjoyed watching Brad in Beloit (where the crowd is really laid back and friendly, and very few people drink the overpriced beer), and in the past I had enjoyed minor league games at old parks in Clinton, Davenport, and Burlington. I was expecting Dayton to be a lot like Kane County. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised. The crowd was friendly, even when I wore my Snappers cap and cheered for Brad and his teammates. Everyone seemed pleased that people would come from Iowa to see a game in their city, and they almost went out of their way to make us welcome. There didn't seem to be any problems with drunk people, and pretty much everybody was just watching the game and having a good time.
The Snappers lost the game, which was hardly a surprise given that they had about the same season as their parent team down the road in Milwaukee. Brad didn't hit any homers, but he had a decent game-going 2 for 4, with a double and an RBI. (He would go on to set the Beloit team record for doubles and to lead all of baseball in RBIs.) It was an interesting game, though not one anyone's likely to remember forever.
One thing I was worried about in the new park was whether we would be able to actually see Brad after the game. In Beloit you can't help but see the players; they have to go out on the concourse to get from the dugout to the clubhouse. Fifth/Third is set up like a Major League park, though, and players go through tunnels under the stands, so they can completely avoid the fans if they want. As the Snappers came to bat in the ninth inning, we all made our way to a section near the visiting dugout that had been mostly vacated by that time. We were able to catch Brad's attention after the game, and he came up into the stands and had a long visit with everyone. I had told him we would be coming (though I hadn't said which specific game we'd be at), but even so he seemed almost overwhelmed that so many people would come so far to see him. He politely signed programs and cards that some of the kids had brought and made everyone feel like he genuinely appreciated our being there. Whether he did or whether he's a good actor, I don't know, but at least he made all of us feel good.
We drove back to the motel on that same awful stretch of freeway. Traffic was still horrible, and I almost hit someone trying to merge in front of a fast-moving truck. Somehow we made it back to the Super 8, though. We got settled, and then Daryl took a few of the kids out for supper. I had eaten more than I needed at the ballpark, so I watched Headline News while he went out with the kids. Eventually everyone got settled in for the night, and we were off to sleep.
After staying up late for the game we planned a late departure this morning. I gassed up both suburbans and was pleased to see the school credit card worked again. We breakfasted on the rather minimal selection in the Super 8 lobby and were on our way around 9:30. Traffic was heavy in Dayton, but at least we had missed rush hour.
The biggest traffic problem we had involved trucks. Ohio is one of those states that has a slower speed limit for trucks than for cars. (Illinois does that, too.) That set-up seems ridiculous to me. All it does is force cars to constantly have to pass slow-moving trucks. On densely packed highways, it's often difficult to get into the left lane, so cars are forever slamming on their brakes.
Going the other direction, I had mentioned that St. Louis was the border between north and south. Here that border was Dayton. This morning we left the forest behind for good, and no longer did we have a Waffle House at every exit. I think that pretty much all the way across the country I-70 determines the north/south border. Further east that interstate pretty much follows the Mason-Dixon Line, and it extends the meaning of that line all the way to the Rockies.
Traffic lightened noticeably in Indiana, and before long we were in Indianapolis. There was construction on the Indy beltway, so we took I-70 right through downtown. While there were a couple of odd exits, that route really went very smoothly. Traffic was remarkably light, and I'm definitely filing away the downtown route for future trips east (like when Brad gets promoted to AAA ball.)
We stopped at a rest area west of Indianapolis. There were signs everywhere saying that the water was undrinkable, which made me wonder whether there had been a flood or a farm accident or what. I passed on the unsafe drinking fountain and bought a diet Coke instead from their vending machine. Then we set out west again.
We stopped for lunch at an expensive Arby's (my ham sandwich was $5.49) at the last exit in Indiana, just east of Danville, Illinois. Some of the kids also purchased illegal fireworks here, a tradition Father Feierfeil had started on our first quiz bowl trip to Dallas. It's a tradition I'd rather abandon (I like living in a state that has sensible laws on such things), but the kids had already bought out the store before I could stop them.
We made our way across Illinois on I-74. Black clouds started to threaten as we went around the Peoria beltway, and Daryl got on the CB to say that he had heard severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings on the radio. It was good that the warnings were for places we were neither in nor going to (areas east of the Quad Cities, mostly), but I did wonder just what we were supposed to do if a similar warning was issued for our area. There's not really much you can do out on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and the exits between Peoria and Galesburg are few and far between.
It poured and poured as we drove west of Peoria. Water built up on the highway, and we had to slow to 35 mph at times to keep going. Even so, visibility was all but nothing. It reminded me of the storms we used to get in Mt. Pleasant around Easter every year, with rain that literally came in sheets. They don't get that kind of rain in western Iowa, and while this brought back memories, it's the sort of thing that's probably best forgotten.
We stopped in Galesburg, officially to buy gas, but mostly to get out of the rain. Things let up a bit as we headed northward to Moline, though we could see there was serious flooding all around the Quad Cities (odd to think of, when drought was on everyone's minds later in the summer). We fought traffic westward to Iowa City (one of the busiest stretches of interstate anywhere in the country), turned north, and then stopped at the rest area on I-380 just across from where we had stopped on our trip southward.
Angie took over driving for me after our toilet break. She drove northward up Avenue of the Saints to Clear Lake, where we stopped for dinner. This time, for the first time on the trip, people split up and ate at different places. Part of the group went to Burger King, while others went to the brand new Wendy's at that exit. After dinner we headed back westward to Wesley and on to Algona.
It was good to once again have a quiz bowl group that was good enough to qualify for nationals and even better to get back on a winning track-even if it was a controversial victory. The kids were basically good, and while there was some whining now and then, there were no real problems with anyone.
I enjoyed seeing a part of the country I'd never been to before, the Appalachian foothills in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. I really would like to go back there for a more leisurely trip one day.
I also enjoyed seeing Brad play in one of about twenty games I'd catch this summer. (I'd later see him in Peoria, Davenport, Burlington, Appleton, and South Bend-not to mention several more games in Beloit.) At one time or another someone from Algona saw Brad play in every single park in the Midwest League ... and I was proud that the quiz bowl team was those "someones" for Dayton.
As I write this school is about to start up again, and before long it will be time to host our quiz bowl tournament at Garrigan. I'm hoping this year's team continues to do well. I'm not really planning to go back to nationals next year, but I hope that sometime before too long we will make the trip again.
The background music on this page is the Welsh folk song "Ash Grove", the tune for the hymn "The Master Has Come"