When a friend asked me to accompany her to Peru to hike the Inca Trail, I incorrectly envisioned something like the Great Wall of China – wide paths with few inclines. The Inca Trail hike is four grueling days of high altitude climbing in the Andes Mountains on 600-year-old stone stairs that are now catawampus. Everyone moves at their own slow pace. Alone, I put one foot in front of the other, eyes trained mostly on my feet and the path. When stopping to drink water, I’d look back at dramatic vistas, each time astonished by the distance my legs had carried me.
When studying in France in 1990, I had a two-week midterm break. I’d originally planned to go to Rome, but after months of being the tallest blonde around, I instead took a train to Amsterdam where I hoped to blend in. It worked –the locals often initiated conversations with me in Dutch.
On my second evening in Holland, I walked into a small crowded jazz bar. A quartet, with an upright bass that took up more room than one of the handful of tables, was tearing it up. I asked a young man with a dark mullet and glasses if the empty chair at his table was available and immediately heard his Boston accent when he said sure. That’s how I met Mike Reardon.
He was traveling alone until friends of his who lived in another Dutch town returned from England. The next day we visited the Van Gogh Museum together where there was a large retrospective exhibit because it was the centenary of the artist’s death. That evening we hatched a plan. Mike and I would tour France’s Loire Valley together. I’d be his personal translator and he’d be my buffer from flirty Frenchmen.
The next week we rode bicycles rented at train stations to wineries and chateaux. Some, such as those in Blois and Chambord, are immaculately maintained, while others, like Chinon, where Joan of Arc met with King Charles VII to tell him of her visions, are in ruins. All that remains of the chateau built by Cardinal Richelieu (who was villainously portrayed in “The Three Musketeers”) is a stone foundation flush with the earth. Mike and I ate lunch nearby in a restaurant filled with truck drivers. It was the best meal of my life.
After we parted in Paris, Mike and I stayed in touch. As with all faraway friends in the 1990s, we wrote letters. Later, when I briefly lived in Boston, we’d get together. Soon after I left Boston, Mike moved to South Dakota where he lived for 20 years. A trained jazz guitarist, Mike’s a musician’s musician and played with a variety of groups across genres during his time in Rapid City. My first three sons and I stayed with him there while on a cross-country road trip in 2007. I next saw my friend in 2015 in Phoenix, where he’d moved in part to be closer to his mother. A few months ago, I noticed on Facebook that Mike was leisurely making his way across the country. He stayed a good while in South Dakota, making music with friends and planning an annual festival in honor of one beloved musician who recently died.
I got the full story when Mike arrived in Akron earlier this month. Seven years older than me, Mike was in his early 30s when we met in Europe. He’s now old enough to collect Social Security and decided to do so this year, which allowed him to pack up and travel north during Arizona’s hottest months, something he plans on doing every year.
What to do when your musician friend of more than three decades stops in for a long visit? Why make music, of course. Mike and I spent a morning practicing George Gershwin’s “Summertime” before recording it several times using equipment he managed to fit in his small car packed for 10 months of travel. And then we took our show on the road, by which I mean we performed at Akron Symphony Orchestra’s first Wednesday Broadway Karaoke Experience at Jilly’s.
“You know,” I whispered to Mike while he tuned his guitar on stage before we performed a jazzy rendition of the popular song from ‘Porgie and Bess,'” I’ve secretly always wanted to be a lounge singer.”
Mike’s recent visit was the most time we’d spent together since we traveled France. He’s still as pleasant and interesting to be around as he was then. We’re the same people, but the days since France now add up like steps crossed on the Inca Trail. Standing high on the mountainside of life, the tremendous number of years that have passed and the distances we’ve both traveled, were readily evident. It’s a breathtaking vista most days overlooked while simply living.
I figure if Mike comes back every year, in a decade we will have recorded enough songs for an album.
This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, August 17, 2025.
Whoopsie Piggle 
What a fabulous story! I love it!
❤️