The waiter emerged from the Ljubljana restaurant with a smile. Cary D. Lowe and his wife Trish Butler were at the bottom of several steps leading to what had been recommended as the best seafood place in Slovenia’s capital, staring at an insurmountable barrier. Trish’s mobility scooter wasn’t going up those stairs.
“Do you want to come in?” the waiter asked.
“We’d like to, but we can’t get up these stairs,” Cary replied.
The waiter delivered what would become the couple’s favorite travel phrase: “Stairs are no problem.”
He disappeared inside and returned with three colleagues. The four men picked up Trish and her 70-pound scooter, carried them up the steps, and seated them for what turned out to be an excellent dinner. When the couple finished eating, the same crew carried her back down.
This scene played out repeatedly during the couple’s travels across Europe, Alaska and beyond – a testament not only to human kindness but to their spirit and refusal to let Trish’s multiple sclerosis stop them from traveling.
Lowe, 76, worked as a land-use lawyer, for most of his career in Los Angeles. “I wasn’t the one building the houses or building the buildings, but I played an important role in getting about 20,000 homes built,” he said.
His journey to San Diego started with a tragedy. After his first wife Joan died suddenly in 2000, he found himself working professionally with Trish, a San Diego environmental consultant who served on the San Diego Planning Commission. Their business relationship evolved into romance during a trip to the Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco.
For several years, they maintained what Cary calls “an Amtrak relationship,” traveling up and down the coast by train on weekends while his daughter finished high school in Los Angeles.
When Cary learned early in their relationship that Trish had multiple sclerosis, it didn’t deter him. His first wife had dealt with severe health issues, so “dealing with that kind of situation was already familiar to me,” and the couple was aware that her condition would worsen.
By the time they married in 2007, Trish was using a walker. But both he and Trish loved to travel, and their adventures became the foundation for Cary’s second book, “On Two Legs and Three Wheels,” which was written after he retired from law in 2023. His first book, “Becoming American,” chronicled his journey from Austria to the United States as a teenager born to Holocaust survivors.
The travel memoir emerged from Cary’s observation that many people with disabilities had surrendered to their disease, and he wanted to prove that continuing to travel was “absolutely feasible.”
The couple’s adventures took them from riding a bus to the Arctic Ocean (“two days on a dirt road”) to navigating European cobblestone streets. In Paris, when a city bus ramp wouldn’t deploy, passengers got off and lifted Trish and her scooter aboard. At the Arctic Ocean, Trish received a certificate for being “the first scooter at the Arctic Ocean,” delighting oil field workers fascinated by her mobility device.
Not every trip went smoothly. A winter visit to Sequoia National Park proved challenging with icy pathways and malfunctioning equipment. In Paris, when Trish’s scooter charger burned out, Cary pushed her around the city for three days until a replacement arrived.
His advice for “challenged couples” who want to travel:
— Don’t feel that you need to do everything together on a trip. For example, while Cary would scuba dive, Trish would enjoy a leisurely breakfast and read.
–Do your research in advance. Go beyond guide books and the Internet. Call the hotel and talk to someone in a position of authority. Research doorway widths, shower types, and pathways from rooms to amenities.
–Be prepared for unexpected obstacles. Attitude is everything.
Since Trish has recently suffered a serious blood infection, their future traveling may be limited to the open road. As Trish’s care giver, Cary handles everything from getting her dressed to taking her to medical appointments and physical therapy and doing all the cooking. “This is what we signed up for,” he says. “For better or for worse, sickness and in health. We made that commitment, and out of love and commitment, you do these things.”
On a trip to Kauai in 2018, as Cary and Trish were eating dinner, a couple at a nearby table paid for their dessert and sent over a handwritten note:
To the lovely couple by the windows.
As newlyweds, it’s so nice to see another couple show us what true love is!
God bless.
XOXO
The couple in the booth. M&M
Despite the daily demands of caregiving, Cary is already plotting his next book – a thriller drawing on his legal experiences. He has learned that the most meaningful journeys aren’t measured in miles traveled, but in the determination to keep moving forward, one step – or one wheel – at a time.