Jason Rice, daughters Cameron and Avery, Nick Shundry and Michelle Rice pose in September 2014 at the Eva Marie Gallagher Memorial Princess 5K Run, won by then 15-year-old Cameron.
During these final weeks of summer’s last full month, I’m in the mood to talk about trips, starting with one from my friend Michelle Rice that details a 2014 trip that she, husband Jason, and their daughters Cameron and Avery, then 15 and 13 respectively, took. Michelle told me the tale after she asked me about my summer travel plans late last May while we were visiting our friend, Joyce Zerante, a resident of The Greens at Lima Convalescent Home. When I told Michelle of my intention to see three national parks in a week’s time on a 4,200-mile driving trip in mid-June, one of which was Yellowstone that would necessitate a two-night stay in Cody, Wyoming, the closest town to the east entry point to the massive park, it triggered her memory.
Truth be told, while some roll their eyes when hearing about or seeing vacation photos or videos from others’ travels, I love to hear of their road adventures and to view their images. Others’ trips provide opportunities for them to narrate pleasurable aspects of their lives, and their trips also provide me ideas for my own future ventures.
The fact that I would be in Cody made me want to hear Michelle’s tale even more. What I heard certainly went far beyond the standard vacation tale because it included another’s story, one that plumbed the depths of life’s greatest contradiction, death, and the way a young doctor used a grueling physical endeavor to cope with his profound sense of loss.
The Rices’ trip to Cody served two purposes, to visit Jason’s uncle and also to explore Yellowstone, America’s oldest national park. After making the trip through the park from the east entrance to the northwest quadrant to view the geyser basins, including, of course, the one with that famous moniker, Old Faithful, the Rices were ready for more of the park that Native Americans once called “Burning Mountains.”
It was then, recalls Michelle, a problem arose.
“Our exploration that day was stopped by the aftereffects of a mudslide that covered Grand Loop Road, and it was quite a long wait to clear the road, since snowplows had to be brought in to move the mud.”
The Rices and several other would-be motorists got out of their cars. That’s when they encountered a cyclist making his way through by choosing a relatively clean route to get beyond the mess before reassuming his peddling duties.
Recalls Michelle, “I could tell by the bike and his attire that he wasn’t a rookie cyclist. I struck up a conversation as he was walking his bike and offered him some water and a granola bar, and he told me such a touching story.”
The cyclist name was Nicholas Shundry, an ER doctor from the Canton-Akron area. He told Michelle that in April of the previous year, he’d lost his fiancée, Eva Marie Gallagher, at just 30 years old to a torn aorta, the artery that carries blood from the heart. In Eva’s honor, Shundry started a memorial fund, gathered sponsors to raise money for charity and was in the midst of riding from Portland, Oregon, to New York City, a distance of some 2,950 miles. The experienced cyclist thought an exhausting physical pursuit with charitable implications would somewhat assuage his grief.
Recalls Michelle, “I just found Nick’s backstory so moving, so of course I wanted to follow his progress. We also exchanged cell numbers after he told me about his efforts to organize in Eva’s honor a 5K run that he called The Princess Run in Canton in late September to raise more for charity in Eva’s honor.”
After following the blogs all the way to the end of the young doctor’s cycling feat, Michelle received a call from Shundry with the date for the 5K run.
Says Michelle, “Both my daughters were runners, and I had done some 5Ks as well, so, that October, we made the drive as a family to Canton for the race.”
And, perhaps fittingly for a vacation interaction that started with a Yellowstone mudslide and an offer to provide a mud-speckled cyclist some water and a granola bar, it was Cam Rice that crossed the finish line first on a crisp early fall Saturday morning in Canton, before anyone else in a field that included her sister, Avery, and her mom.
Surely vacations for all of us are filled with chance encounters, but for Michelle, Jason, Cameron and Avery Rice, their encounter with a dedicated young doctor who practiced his medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital proved that there are times when some encounters become cherished memories.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
