I had the great opportunity to learn from and know more about a great friend of the EMC, John Cohn, over the past several years.  One of the stories John shared to us a while ago told touched our hearts.  In short, pulled from his website, this is the short story:

Sam was an exuberant boy with a 1000 watt smile. He loved his friends, family, dog, and bird deeply. Sam was passionate about guitar, snowboarding, lacrosse, and having fun. Yes, having fun was important to Sam.

Springtime meant lacrosse for Sam and a time to play hard with his buddies. Ultimate frisbee at the park were memorable times for Sam and he would come home with a big smile on his face and grass stains on his body. Summers you could find Sam floating down the rivers, swinging from a rope swing, biking, or just hanging with friends. A summer would be complete with time spent at Camp Abnaki and jamming at Burlington Rock Camp. Fall would be the season Sam would try and stretch summer out a little bit more until the snow started to come. That time was then spent at Bolton Valley Resort on his snowboard. He enjoyed ariel tricks and hitting the rails. Mostly he enjoyed just hanging with his friends and little brother Gabe.

Sam loved music and was always plugged into some song. Guitar was second nature to Sam. He could play “Asturias” on his classical guitar to heavy metal on his Gibson. He enjoyed playing bass and wailing on the drums. His favorite times were when he would jamming with one of his friends, or his big brother Max.
It is hard to capture Sam’s true spirit in a few paragraphs. He taught us so much. Mostly he taught us to have fun, ease up, and to be there for each other. He is a true best friend to many and deeply missed.

Sam was born on May 28, 1992. He was hit by a car on November 20, 2006 in Florida while visiting friends. His beautiful body stayed strong long enough for organ donation. He gave his heart, liver, kidney, and kidney-pancreas so that four others would live. His spirit continues on through them and surrounds us today. Sam lived his life to its fullest on this planet.

To help with Sam's passing, John and his family create what are called SamStones.  Here's a short description, found on his website, of what they are:

If you would like to know more about Sam Stones, you can find out more here:  http://www.samestone.org/.  Corinn and I wanted to contribute, so we were given a bag of stones from Diane, John's wife, and will now bring them on our McBe Adventures.  My goal is to, as accurately as possible, track where I placed them with a photos of the location and to document that location within something like Google Maps.  So if you see future posts of SamStones, you'll know that we've traveled recently.  Below is our first map of where we placed many Sam Stones while in the UK.  Click on each marker, as the map is interactive, to learn more about the location we placed the stone and a short story of the site.  You can even change the terrain, move the map around, and zoom in and out!

Below are photos where we visited with Sam being part of the shots.  We tried placing Sam where we though he'd have a great view of the locations we visited.  Some shots were difficult to obtain while others we though were really great.  We figured this would be good to compliment the map above as a way to visually see more of where we traveled with him.  Hope you enjoy them! 

Arthur's Seat

 

The Nasmyths Home

 

The Nasmyths  :o) 

 

So the day began great... Corinn and I packed early, my mom came by to pick us up, we were able to get to the airport more than on time, and we were happy.  Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:40PM but after we loaded up the pilot received word from Newark that due to thunderstorms we were going to have to wait in Burlington a bit longer.  The captain took a chance that we would be able to leave at 7:30PM and kept us on the tarmac.  But by 7:45PM, there seemed to be no clear sense of when we might leave, so we were loaded back into the airport. 

By then, Corinn and I had not eaten anything since 11AM and were disappointed to see that the food courts in the airport were all closed.  We didn’t have any cash on us or our cell phones... We also found out that the only ATM available happened to be out of service.  As the night wore on, so did people’s patience.  There was a long line at the service counter of people wanting to know if their connecting flights were delayed or canceled in Newark.  Corinn was the last in line to talk to the lady at the service counter; it was unclear if our flight to Scotland would be delayed or not, but we were assured that we would be leaving Burlington tonight.  In case we didn’t make our connection the Continental agent assured us that they would put us up in a hotel, and we were even booked a pair of first class tickets for the next day.  Just in case.

Finally, 10:30PM rolled around and we re-boarded the flight, yay!  Our flight to Scotland should have flown out by 10:15PM originally, but because of the delay, we still had a chance to get there just in time.  When we landed in Newark, we sat on the tarmac for a good 30 to 45 minutes waiting to park at a gate.  Four gate changes later it was 12:20AM and of which the flight coordinators issued 4 gate changes.  By the time we got off the plane, our flight to Scotland was gone, boo...

Corinn and I were very saddened and incredibly hungry as we hadn’t eaten for 12+ hours at this point... Keep in mind that we’re trying to lose weight at the same time and dinner tends to be the largest meal in our day, not to mention usually eaten at 6:30PM.  Corinn got in line at Continental Customer Service and I ran for food; McDonalds was the ONLY place open in the Airport, but that Quarter Pounder with Cheese couldn’t have tasted better... though it set us back 500 calories and the fries were 510, yikes!

After a heated conversation, we discovered that Continental  was  not going to honor the hotel stay voucher (pretty much the reason why we decided to stick with the flight out to NJ sooner than later) and we got put on an earlier flight of which we lost the first-class seats.  What made it worse was when we were the absolute last people in line before customer service closed, which meant rooms were going to be hard to find.  When we called hotels around 1AM, no one had the $55 rate for distressed passengers which Customer Service had promised.  In fact, when we called all the hotels on the long list we were given, none of the hotels had rooms, supposedly.  Just out of simple curiosity, I then played a game where instead of asking if they had a room for a distressed passenger, I called back and asked if they had a room.  When many of the hotels confirmed they did have a room, I asked what the rate was.  Once they gave me the rate, I then asked for the distressed passenger rate.  The response fell within one of these situations or claims:

• “We don’t have a distressed passenger rate.”
• “I just rechecked and we don’t have rooms available.”
• “It’s $150.”
• “Let me transfer you...” (very very very long wait to no one)
• Hang up.

We found a Travel Lodge, not on the list, which would house us at $68.  After confirming, we ran down to baggage to pick up our stuff, but discovered it was in transit to Scotland and could not be recovered... So this happens to be the ONLY trip where we didn’t pack a carry-on for a situation like this...

...Nuts...

After about a 30 minute ride from the hotel courtesy shuttle into NJ, we arrived, signed the paperwork and then went to the room.  It’s your typical fixer-upper.  It was kind of disturbing though to find that the bed still had questionable sheets, but Corinn went down to the front desk to get replacements and finally we were able to sleep at 3AM.

The upside to today was that I got to spend it with Corinn and I finally got a Skype account so we can make calls through our computer!  I thought that was pretty cool when we dialed Charles and Mary in Scotland, the family that we’re spending the time with this week.  Not sure what we’re going to do with an 11AM checkout time and almost 8 hours between that and our flight.  I’m hoping day two will be much better than this...