Tales From A Road

Sorry I’ve been gone for so long.  I really did and do intend to write at least once a week but sometimes, I’ve found out here in last couple of years,  life just has other plans.  But now, I find myself sitting in a beautiful garden blanketed in the sweet smell of Jasmine and thinking I might actually have a thought or two I can put down on “paper”.  You see.  I did something I hadn’t done for probably thirty years [no, not that], I went on a road trip.  Yep.  Just a story about a road trip…get out your “ho-hum.”

For those of you that know me you are thinking, “Thirty years that’s impossible.”  OK, but twenty years isn’t stretching it especially when I’m using the definition of "utterly by myself."  Not working, not on a vendor junket, not at a trade show, not doing the daily commutes, but by myself and I have to tell you at first it kinda’ freaked me out.

As I was getting ready to leave, where my wife would be visiting while I was gone, her folks house, I was as fidgety as a whore in church [never could figure out why whores supposedly can’t believe in God thus being nervous in church].  Noticeably and it was noticed.  How could this nervousness be?  Especially in a man who has been told more than once he walks like he owns the world.  Admittedly now, walking with a cane has leeched some of that aura from the impression.  None the less, sick or not, I still have an arrogant amount of self confidence left so this nervousness made no sense.  And with trepidation that’s what I did, I left.

I have been poked and prodded.  I have blindly joined research trials.  I suffered through the especially incredible humiliation of a prostate biopsy performed by Dr. Doom [for you guys that read this I will be all telling about a prostate biopsy in a future blog and you are not going to like it] himself while he was accompanied by the beautiful blonde urologist trainee Anna who asked me if she could feel too.  Radiation,  chemo,  dark nights.  The list is stupidly long and I was heading off to my favorite place but heading off full of trepidation.  What the hell?

I guess we get so caught up in the new challenges in our lives we forget we were and are capable of living the old joys.  As I pulled out of town I found myself comparing a road trip into the known with a visit to an Oncologist who was explaining my trip into the unknown.  The more miles I put between that thought and each mile closer to my destination I realized I was comparing apples to oranges. 

Then BANG! Just like that I started laughing.  Not just laughing, laughing.  The wind rushing in through the windows.  The speed-o-meter at a number that was just right for me and illegal for all.  Dropping over the top and starting down into the Kittitas Valley.  Laughing like a berserker because I was on a road trip with the only terms being what the next four days were going to bring me and they brought me a lot.

But enough.  Those of you that stayed with me to this point, well there is more and I will share it.  There’s the deer, the apparently broken ankle, the monk effect and of course as we all know I’m sure I have an epiphany or two along the way somewhere. 

Talk to you later.