Peter Waring

Michael is second from the left.

Of all my boyhood friends, Mike, you stand out as a beacon of Adventure. From grade school days when you all lived off Hubbard Street and we used to wander across neighbor's back yards.

Of course, among the highlights was the 1,000 mile/24 day bike trip with Nick McGray and David Vanderlip. That trip would never have happened if it weren't for Mike's daring initiative, supported by the confidence of my dad, Dana, that we could actually pull it off without killing ourselves. My mom Dorothy's solution was to give me a pack of self-addressed postcards and make me promise to drop one in a mailbox every day.

We almost didn't make it thru the first night, as I recall. We had biked 66 long miles on our old three speed Raleigh (or equiv) bikes laden with 40 pounds or so of camping gear.

We stayed at a Youth Hostel near the CT River in MA and to pass the evening, we played cards, Poker, I believe. At some point, I came to the conclusion that Mike was cheating, and in one of my rare moments of over anger and physicality, I pushed Mike up against the wall and threatened to punch him. He laughed it off with his characteristically deep voiced laugh,

claiming that he was just trying to get my goat (which he certainly did).

Nevertheless, the four of us survived to see Lake Champlain, camp out with billions of Black flies in a pasture in Waitsfield, VT, touch the corner of York, ME and stop in to visit your Grandparents in Boaton.  They lived in what had once been the carriage house of the Saltonstall family estate. The four pedaling Musketeers swam in the estate pool (with permission?) and proceeded to play a rowdy game of hide and seek or Tag among the many hedges of the grand garden (definitely without permission).We continued south taking the ferry from Woodshole to Martha's Vineyard where we delighted in exploring the various sites around the island.

Finally home victorious and a lot stronger physically and psychologically for the ordeal/adventure.

In retrospect, Mike's audacious bike tour did, in fact, give me great confidence in my own ability to fend for myself in new territory and solidified bicycles as a permanent part of my life, including biking to Princeton three years later to become a freshman, joining the Princeton bike team, going to Europe with my brothers and ordering a custom racing bike to be built for me in

Copenhagen which I rode alone from there to London (via the ferry to Dover).

Another adventure I recently retold to my new Swedish family (my youngest son Adrian is marrying a Swede) was driving to Cape Cod in search of evidence that the Vikings had landed there long before Columbus.  In particular, we searched for holes in rocks which had a rounded triangular shape characteristic of using a flat chisel to secure their boats.

I wasn't too surprised to learn later that Mike was a prof of anthropology at Rutgers, had done research in India, and then went undercover posing as an older undergrad in Rutgers dorms to document social patterns there.

Please know that my thoughts and my heart are very much with you now. You will continue to live large in my life.

Someone once said about my parents something that is true for you as well,

He "sure did think outside the Box."

Your biking Buddy,

Peter