“And without even taking a minute to think about it, she says, ‘Well, I’ll go.’
“Then in the next breath, she goes, ‘Where is it?’ She didn’t have a clue where it was or what it was. And when I told her it was in Tanzania — that it was the highest peak in Africa — she didn’t hesitate a second.”
And because Trimbach had had the backbone to follow through on such an off-the-cuff embrace, there the two of them were — part of a nine-person climbing party that also included Debbie’s husband, Greg, who runs 2-J Supply on Valley Street — making the ascent up the 19,341-foot mountain.
“Here she was on Kilimanjaro,” Bowling said. “She had never climbed before. Never hiked with a pack. Never used a pole. So I look over and say, ‘Deb, what were you thinking?’
“And she just said, ‘Go Big ... or Go Home!’ ”
But the truth is, whether she’s on the other side of the world or right here in the Dayton area, Debbie Trimbach always seems to go pretty big these days.
As her son Kevin put it: “She’s not your typical mom or grandmother. Definitely not.”
For example:
That bike ride she and Sue were on was the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA), an annual, weeklong loop around different parts of the state. This year the trip will encompass about 400 miles and Debbie will be on it again. She also biked the Natchez Trace from Natchez, Miss., to Nashville, Tenn., and within the past half year she also cycled throughout Missouri.
Before long she’ll run a half-marathon in Indianapolis. And then in October she and Greg will be on a trip to the Holy Land.
There are also her weekly martial arts classes — she has a fourth-degree black belt in tae kwon do and now teaches the discipline — and there’s likely to be some whitewater rafting along the way, as well.
And yet it’s not all personal fulfillment. For a dozen years she has volunteered every week at the House of Bread, the community soup kitchen on Orth Avenue, just off Edwin C. Moses Boulevard.
As you watched her there the other day, you couldn’t help but notice both the familiarity and the sincerity she shared with many of the 175 people being fed that day.
“There are some real lessons to be learned here,” she said. “You see people living in the same town you are, but in whole different circumstances. There are things you wish you could change — like great grandmothers raising little kids for whatever reason — but you learn not to judge.
“The big thing is just to give back. I’ve been blessed in my life and I need to try to share some of those blessings.”
No idle promises
Greg said he and Debbie have known each other since they were in the sixth grade. They were high school sweethearts at Vandalia Butler High School, married soon after graduation and immediately began having a family.
“She had four kids in six years so she had her hands full right from the start,” Greg said. “She was always deeply involved in our kids’ lives. They went to CJ (Chaminade Julienne) and she was always the wrestling mom, the football mom.”
Along with daughter Renee, there were three boys, Ryan, Jason and Kevin. All played football at CJ for Jim Place.
“Over the years a lot of things went to the wayside for her because a big portion of her life was dedicated to us kids as we grew up,” Kevin said. “She always put us first.”
As the kids grew up and left home, Debbie said she began to take a different mind-set:
“For a long time I stayed home and raised the kids. People would ask me to do things and I’d say, ‘Maybe when the kids are older.’ I said ‘maybe’ for a long time and now it’s finally time to say ‘yes.’ ”
Actually, she didn’t say yes to everything at first, Greg said:
“As the last of our kids was leaving I told her, ‘Hey, we need to find something we can do together.’ Neither one of us liked to play golf, so I said, ‘How about biking?’ She said, ‘Naah, I don’t want to do that.’ So I went out and bought her a bike anyway and you know something? She hasn’t been off it since.”
It was thanks to biking that she met Sue, whose sister, Pat Carter, lives in Beavercreek and had invited her on the GOBA tour five years ago.
Sue, who worked 30 years for the postal service, is quite an adventure seeker herself.
She’s done the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim hike, trekked Yosemite’s High Sierra camps, explored Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca site in Peru, and bungee jumped off the Victoria Falls in Africa.
In Debbie she found something of a soul mate and once they agreed on Kilimanjaro and Debbie pressured Greg into joining them, they both began training for it.
“What I like about her is that she follows through on what she says,” Sue said. “She doesn’t make idle promises. She means what she says — no matter what it is.”
Kevin agreed with that: “She’s somebody who is not intimidated by a whole lot. If you look at her stature, you see she’s a small lady. But that doesn’t measure her heart. She’s got the heart of a lion.”
‘Spiritual’ experience
Arriving in Tanzania a day and a half before they would head up Kilimanjaro, Debbie convinced Sue and two other women in the party to take part in a 5K race the next day in the city of Moshi, near the base of Kilimanjaro, so they could meet some of the people there. They ended up sponsoring two local runners that day.
For their ascent, the group had four guides from the Tusker Trail company and 42 porters. Although not a technical climb like you’d experience in the Himalayas or Andes, Kilimanjaro is daunting — especially because of the extreme altitude — and according to the Kilimanjaro National Park, only 30 percent of the trekkers actually reach the Uhuru Summit. The majority of climbers turn around at two points a quarter of a mile or so from the top.
The ascent goes through five temperate zones, beginning in lush rain forests, then reaching barren Alpine deserts and finally the glacier-capped peaks or Snows of Kilimanjaro. One of the stiffest challenges, Debbie said, is going up the Barranco Wall (some 13,000 feet into the trek), which is over 700 feet of sheer rock that goes almost straight up.
“When we got to the summit,” she said, “I looked at Sue and said, ‘What do you think girlfriend? This was your dream. We’re standing literally on the rooftop of Africa.’ And she just started crying.”
“It’s a moment I will never forget,” Sue said. “It was spiritual and emotional and it was wonderful. It was all that wrapped into one and I was thrilled Deb was there with me. It’s a moment I will never forget.”
Sue said her next big adventure may be touring Patagonia at the top of South America: “I hope I can talk my husband into this one, but if not ... maybe Deb. She is always game.”
But then that’s the case even back here.
“Not that long ago she took our oldest granddaughter, who was maybe eight at the time, to a KISS concert at the Indiana State Fair,” Greg said. “And one of the fans there told our granddaughter, ‘Oh that’s nice, you came to the concert with your mom.’
“Well, our granddaughter got all perplexed and she said, ‘No, no ... she’s my GRAND-MA!”
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