Bucks County Herald – August 31, 2006

Dan Ryan & Gracie Sorbello

Dear Friends,

Good morning. Dan Ryan is not just an average college junior. The New Hope area resident spent a year after high school working his way around the world before starting his engineering pursuits at Duke University.

I met Dan at the Riverside Symphonia when he was a Lawrenceville School student. His mother, Bonita Ryan, was the Impresario of the Symphonia (and after a long absence, has returned). I succeeded in having Dan substitute rowing for baseball but failed to convince him to matriculate at Penn. From the beginning, I was impressed with Dan because he was talkative at 4:30 in the morning. He’s inquisitive and opinionated. I like that.

This summer, he joined me often on the Schuylkill River at daybreak. Dan told me about an amazing young woman who just graduated from Duke and rode a unicycle from coast to coast. She raised $7,500 for the fight against cancer. I also was intrigued by her name…Gracie (not Grace) Sorbello. In addition, the field hockey star was a music major (piano and reed instruments). I’ll write about her unbelievable trip on another day.

As I prepared to write about Gracie Sorbello, it dawned on me that I should tell you about Dan Ryan’s trip around the world. This week, he starts his junior year but in Madrid, Spain. Can you imagine studying mechanical engineering at Duke via Spain? My guess is that along the way, Dan will enroll in a matador school for extra curricular excitement…or run with the bulls…something fitting for his adventurous ways. With his red hair, he’d be known as “Rojo cabesa torero.”

Anyway, his trip around the world began in 2003. For three months Dan worked for the American Cruise Line on a ship plying the Hudson River and the Atlantic. Dan was a deck hand and steward. He once served on the bridge with the captain and steered the ship around Manhattan. “If I wanted to run aground, I could have,” he joked. All kidding aside, Dan made enough money to get him to New Zealand, Australia and China.

In New Zealand, he found time for a bungee jump…Dan told his mother after the adventure, not before. Living in hostels and hitch hiking, he traveled throughout New Zealand before working in Queenstown hotels, “the adventure capital of the world,” he says. Dan waited on tables and made great tips on room service calls. I asked him if he’d encountered any Mrs. Robinson’s? “No,” he answered, “but there were plenty of flirtatious moments.”

Running out of money, Dan picked zucchini with Brazilian workers in Auckland. That’s where he met Elaine, a very good looker who specialized in ping-pong. I asked him if he has a girl friend at Duke. “Yes,” he laughed, “but she doesn’t know it yet!”

Then it was several weeks in Hong Kong with a friend of his mothers. “The Hong Kong night life is crazy,” Dan advised with a knowing grin. With $30 he headed into mainline China where he spent nearly two months. One of his favorite experiences was finding his way to a rural train station in order to visit the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Fortunately he met a young Chinese who had a laptop computer that translated Chinese into English and visa versa.

The train finally arrived at 2 AM, packed to the gills. Workers maintaining the railroad bed pointed at the red haired, Yank with freckles and round eyes as the train slowly passed by. They must have been astounded…as were the rest of the passengers. Dan was surprised to see so many Muslims in China. He played pick up basketball with many of them along the way.

He remembered a sign in two languages at the great damn. One was written in Chinese and the other, a version of English, which Dan called “Chinglish.” It read, “A civil person is a good person,” meaning…”Your duty is to honor your government.”

With his resources about to expire, Dan held an ace in his hand…an airline ticket to Paris. There, he met his mother for a joyful reunion. The twosome got to London via the Chunnel and finally home to Bucks County.

Dan kept a diary of his travels…although he’s not about to let me see it. Stay tuned.

Sincerely,

Charles Meredith