All posts by Mike

Jeff N is right; I’ve got to get back to this

Personal stuff

I think I was doing better before this pair of cats adopted me. Back in the day, I was 100% a dog person, little room in my life for cats. Not exactly sure what happened to change that.
I used to find time to carve out space for almost-daily diary entries on a regular basis. It was a whole lot cheaper than therapy, and one of those constants in my life, kind of like coffee in the morning and keeping my wife warm in bed. I think it was about 5 years ago, when a significant disruption came into my life from 45+ years ago (and no, it’s not a kid I didn’t know about) and I started spending my evenings differently at home, spending time after dinner cleaning the kitchen, watching dumb shows on Netflix with my wife, and kind of wondering what life was supposed to be like at an age where many of my friends have already retired.

That whole thing of re-evaluating everything in your world and trying to make more time for the important stuff. Thing is, that stuff you thought was important before, that you started to move away from… the re-prioritization… you’ve got to be careful because you might find some of those things you abandoned were more important than you thought.

In a nutshell, I let quick bites on Facebook take the place of longer, thoughtful posts here. Not that my thoughts are important to anyone else,but taking there’s a bit difference between having a quick thought and posting it on Facebook, to see if it sinks or swims, and putting something here, where it’s going to sit for eternity and better represent my ongoing thoughts and state of mind.

If I think about how long it’s been between diary entries, I feel bad. When I get out of the habit, it’s easy to just add another day without posting, figuring what difference does it make if it’s two weeks or two weeks plus three days. Who knows how long it might have stretched if Jeff N hadn’t come into the store and mentioned it. I had no idea he read it. For some reason, that hit me pretty hard.

So I’m going to try and get back to a regular schedule again,and somehow get past the easy way you can post on Facebook vs WordPress. I need to take the time to actually think about things.

And what am I thinking about right now, sitting in a United Club Lounge in Denver, en route to Europe with Karen (my wife of 45 years)? There’s a little bit of that Talking Heads thing-

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

I’ve never lived in that shotgun shack (something I’d not understood if not for the Showtime TV show “Your Honor” about a corrupt Louisiana judge, describing a type of house where the front and rear doors are connected by a long hall, allowing a shotgun to shoot literally through the length of the house). I have found myself in other parts of the world, but always with intention, never the “how did I get here” thing. Large automobile? That’s one part of the American Dream that never got to me; I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 18. The beautiful house… well, it’s in need of some repair these days, but still have the beautiful wife.

The beautiful wife thing- beautiful wives are known for being high-maintenance, and I’ve certainly experienced the conventional side of that, but now, with her being Stage IV cancer, there’s a whole ‘nother side to that coin, but it’s not a chore, it’s not duty… it’s what I’m here for.

Still not sure how I got here though!

Feel like I could be riding faster!

Personal stuff, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride

It’s getting a bit frustrating; for the first time in ages, I’ve been feeling like I’ve got the ability to push harder on the climbs, air it out a bit, but it wouldn’t be kind to put any distance between myself and people I ride with who normally would leave me in the dust on a longer climb. I can’t maintain a hard pace for a long time, since I run out of air (maybe, finally, getting that looked into mid-December), but the legs do feel like they want to go. But ex-pilot, who’s retired (and thus “ex”-pilot), has been putting in daily rides and is sometimes a bit run down on Tuesday & Thursday-mornings.

I was telling Kevin )ex-pilot) on this morning’s ride how I had been thinking, been a bit concerned really, that the 2024 trip to France might have been the last, because I was running out of what it takes to get up the big climbs. But that’s not how it played out. We had a few challenging rides and I held up fine, even on the ultra-gnarly Col de la Bonette.

Of course, any sense of progress comes crashing to a halt shortly, when I’m off the bike for 2+ weeks, on vacation with Karen (my wife), a non-cycling vacation traveling to Amsterdam for a day, then train to Paris (was supposed to be for two days but there’s a just-announced train strike that requires we move things forward a day) and then a 9 day cruise ending in Barcelona. This is a trip that didn’t seem all that likely to happen at the time I put things together, as we just didn’t have a good feeling about where Karen’s Stage IV cancer was going to go. I booked it about as late as I could (August, for a mid-November cruise… people typically book their cruises about a year ahead of time, sometimes more!) and navigated the myriad of rules regarding travel insurance that might apply, and not, based on Karen’s cancer. But now, just 9 days away from flying to Amsterdam, things are looking really good. Karen had a Cat Scan last week that showed no progression, and it was read by the amazing interventional pulmonologist (who saved her life last January) who concurred that her lungs were looking good and there was no need for him to perform another clean-up of her airways.

Staying on the cancer stuff, it’s tough interrupting treatment that has clearly kept her alive. You worry about what’s going to happen without treatment for a month. You try to rationalize things, as in, maybe the body needs a break from toxic chemical so it can endure another year of treatment. We’re literally praying that’s the case; we don’t want to go into the next scan and see things not-so-good and be thinking we shouldn’t have gone on vacation!