May Flowers

Every May, my town puts on a three-day celebration of its Dutch heritage and has thousands of tulips planted all over town. With the warm winter and spring we had, that meant most of the tulips bloomed early and were down to stems. However, a few flower beds were still in full bloom.

The weather was good for most of the festival, so I was able to get out for at least a short while every day. I did the tourist thing and noticed what flowers were still up and looked at the row of antique tractors on display. There were a couple that would maybe fit on my farm simulator, but one looked like I could almost drive right on and fit perfectly.

With any large event, you have to have plenty of food. I did my share of supporting local organizations by eating from a few of them and finding some new favorites. The real challenge, as with most years, was navigating around all the people.

Using a wheelchair means I take up a larger piece of real estate than most of the other visitors. It always seems that people notice me around, until they're blocking the path I'm trying to get through. Then they just stand and rarely hear me when I try to say "excuse me." To my knowledge, I didn't hit any tourists, just the back of my dad's leg once when he stopped faster than expected.

For the last few weeks, I have been looking forward to this time in hopes of being able to use my new evangelism training. I did hand out some gospel tracts to people, but never felt the opportunity to say much. I'm disappointed in myself that I maybe should have tried harder, but not sure how. If it's God's will, maybe a few opportunities will come this summer.

My assistant and I did learn one thing, remember sunscreen on my neck. With this as my first summer without trach ties, it's something we forgot and I have a small red spot to show for it. You can always learn something new in the quad life. It was nice to get out and enjoy God's creation and I look forward to more days like this to come.