May 2015

POKHARA, Nepal — We gathered on April 29 at the Blue Sky Paragliding company headquarters in Pokhara, Nepal to load four Jeeps with relief supplies and get organized. We loaded 120 kilograms of rice, 25 liters of fuel, 10 tarps, 10 blankets 15 boxes of water, shovels and picks in our truck and more in the other three. We worked with Karma Flights because they had already established a relay distribution station to make sure supplies got into the right hands. The paragliding companies have all leapt in to help.
Our group of Nepalese, French, Canadian, British and Americans hit the road feeling optimistic and slightly apprehensive as roads are bad and it’s raining. We began to fishtail, something wrong with the steering. A quick roadside fix put us back on the highway. In Mugline we bought more blankets. The traffic was thick; everyone drove too fast. As we crested a small hill the gears would not engage. I jumped out and saw the back right wheel was sticking out 1.5 feet, just barely on the truck. A few small cars passed us, but the big busses and trucks could not. A mechanic arrived in two minutes, and in 15 minutes the new part was installed, the wheel back on. During this time an angry German film crew criticized us on our poor choice of places to break down.

A very special lunchtime was approaching on Tuesday, May 5 at the Village Smithy restaurant in Carbondale — it was precisely 40 years earlier that restaurant founders Chris and Terry Chacos had first opened the doors of what was arguably to become the most popular eatery in town.
Serving breakfast and lunch (“Dinner was too complicated,” Chris Chacos noted that day) the Smithy, as it is known, has become almost the automatic choice for locals looking for good food and a place to encounter friends and neighbors.
It also has been what politicians now like to call “a job-creator,” offering employment to a broad swath of local residents in a town that, in the mid 1970s, had a population of roughly 1,000 people.
During its years of operation, Terry, who is 72, estimated that the restaurant has employed about 400 people, an estimate that Chris, who turns 82 next week, neither debated nor doubted.