Fellow Travelers

If North and South America were a figure eight the Miami Airport would be the intersection in the middle. It's the crossroads of two continents. People flood in from all corners of the Americas in the morning, play an extended game of musical chairs and then dash off for their destinations in the afternoon.

Currently I’m sitting in the Miami airport having just arrived from San Francisco. James and I are waiting for our friends flight form Chicago and then we are off to Haiti for Carnaval later this week. It’s as good a time as any to start a blog. In the last few years the trips to Haiti have been just Marilyn and I, doing our thing. This time there will be six of us. So here is a quick intro to my fellow travelers. I hope to add notes and photos to this blog daily for the next two weeks, but of course it will depend on my ability to acquire internet access.

Fellow Travelers

Arron Brown is a connoisseur of anything on two wheels. He races bicycles, plays bike polo, and is employed at Working Bikes. Working Bikes is a charity in Chicago that rehabilitates used bicycles and sends than to folks in developing countries. He builds and rebuilds bicycles and motorcycles Aaron is an artist, musician and general low key genius. We first met when he was my student at Columbia College Chicago and then reconnected in East Pilsen Chicago a few years later. We have
previously traveled together to London.

Kevin Gurtowski is my nephew. He’s a business student at the University of Illinois at Chicago and divides his time between Chicago and Taipei when not traveling. We travel together occasionally including Puerto Rico, Haiti, Costa Rica, Catalina Island and annual trips to London and Stowe Vermont each year until recently. He is on his way form Mexico via Chicago today.

Marilyn Houlberg is a curator, art collector, art dealer and was a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 35 years. We have traveled to Haiti many time since our first trip during the Haitian revolution and ouster of Baby Doc in late 1985.

John T Unger is and artist, entrepreneur and TypePad Guru. We met in East Pilsen Chicago when he had a studio down the street from Marilyn Houlberg. He now lived in far northern Michigan (lower peninsula) In my experience, John is impossible to find but one can start at www.johntunger.com

James O'Claire is a college student in Sonoma County CA and former employee of the now defunct resort Dawn Ranch Lodge. He spent last summer in South Africa working as a volunteer science and math teacher.

Poncho is the smallest tea cup Chihuahua and divides his time between Chicago and Port-au-Prince