I have forgotten who said it, I think it was Sartre. That the value of something is best understood only through the loss of it. It brings to mind the song “San Diego Serenade” by Tom Waits and covered by the late Nanci Griffith, Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and “These are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs. I think that any revelation as to the fragility of one’s health creates these feelings most strongly. All of a sudden all of those old memories take on a magical hue.
It went like this: First, a standard American physical. Nothing exciting. But, a request for a standard test run because of hitting an age target. Then, the test reveals no problem with the thing that the test was run to discover. But, something unrelated is noted. Then, a specialist referral is made. A problem is discovered. A long period of uncomfortable waiting ensues. Laser surgery is finally performed.
Then, only several days after the surgery, a short hike is taken. I am alone. My dogs are in tow. It should be a mickey-mouse endeavor. Although a tad vertical, at a high elevation, on a hot day, extreme sunshine and very little shade. Then, some dizziness. Intervention from a kind couple, a pair of Australian mountain bikers. Boom, two ambulance rides and two hospitals later. Both hospital rooms packed with family including my new son-in-law from India. Strangely enough the second hospital room is on the floor where my youngest daughter works as a nurse. She knows everyone. It was fun. Tests and then more tests. Headed home the next day. The diagnosis: dehydration. Some mention of heat stress. Not a huge deal but now all of my numbers are out-of-whack. They should return to normal soon, if they already haven’t. The results of the surgery appear to have been a success.
All of that took around one-and-a-half months. Time passed slowly with lots of various discomforts, and mild humiliations along the way. Thankful for many nurses, doctors, ambulance personnel, my family and Australian mountain bikers. Especially the Australian mountain bikers. One apparently rode back down the trail and into the entrance of a hospital to alert the authorities. The trailhead was the hospital parking lot. Apologies are due to the physician who saw me in the first hospital room after the “incident”. Let’s just say that I wasn’t eager for the second ambulance ride nor the second hospital, and I was somewhat vocal about my opinion. Also thankful for the Olympics being on television through much of the laying around time, and Emily in Paris, binging all of Emily in Paris. I am now a fan. Unfortunately a bunch of projects were dropped. But not projects that can’t be resumed. Another few weeks of laying about followed the whole dual hospital one-night stay.
Through all of this I didn’t do anything on researching uses of ai or prognostication on its future. Or doing some video as had been projected.
Although, now, I am well, several weeks after the whole saga began, I’m sort of sure anyway. Smiles all around. Soon to be back to what I was up to before. Somewhat there already.
A week ago, or so, I did make a brief trip to Colorado. The intent was to a catch a Cubs game in Denver, and hang out in Boulder for a bit. It would be my first trip and attempt at a long walk for photography since the whole medical episode. Postinos one of our fav’s from Phoenix is now on Pearl Street in Boulder. It also involved a short stop in southern Nevada to check on the place there.
A foul ball at the Cubs game was inartfully bobbled above me, cushioning it’s descent, falling to hit me softly on the hip and ended up rolling on to my travelling companion’s lap. That was a nice moment. She ended up with a ball, from a Cubs game, no injury involved. Neither of us saw it coming but she ended up with it. The Cubs were in contention for the playoffs then. They were winning 5 – 3 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. They managed to lose the game. But that has been the way of things for a while now.
The evening after returning from the trip, a cold visit to a local outdoor music venue, Red Butte Gardens. The Indigo Girls and Amos Lee. Many good concerts there, among them Mary Chapin Carpenter (with my Mom), the late Jerry Jeff Walker and Buddy Guy. My Mom fascinated with the concept of “Sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug.”, those were the best of nights.
All sorts of stuff has happened over the years for me in Colorado: work meetings at a corporate office in Denver were common, as were trips to meet with clients in Denver and visits to the distal suburbs south of Denver to check on industrial facilities or meet with government officials. Also fly-throughs at the old Stapleton Airport on the way to projects in remote cities in Wyoming and to meet with other government officials in Cheyenne.
There were always short trips to see the Cubbies. And multiple longer tent-camping trips through Rocky Mountain National Park and nearby environs, and the various ranges, canyons and National Parks and Monuments in western Colorado. And my eldest daughter had decided to go to the University of Colorado and join the rowing team. But at the last minute, actually during the last night before registration, she decided on Utah. My best memories of that era were from a funky motel in Boulder which had a very large covered central area with pools and tiny hills and wallows of fake grass. The roof was a translucent aqua plastic, so everything beneath it was colored aqua. Quite old, it had fallen to the counterculture. Faint marijuana odors even before legalization. There was a bar at the front of it and just inside the covered interior area from the door to the bar, there was a massage chair where a woman sat accompanied by a man with an enormous didgeridoo. Their service, as you would imagine, included both a massage and a concurrent didgeridoo serenade. It sounds ridiculous, but it wasn’t. It was the best of times.
Ouray in particular took on a strong family magnetism. I remember vividly waking up under freezing conditions on a Fall morning atop the high-elevation Lizard Head Pass. After packing up our camp, I and my traveling companion and two dogs, long ago dogs, headed south toward Ouray and beyond. She fell asleep before we reached Ouray and seeing that it was a huge hot-springs resort, I attempted to drive through without stopping. At the time I was the type to get to the next thing, whether it be a hike, or a bike trail, or a stop at a park or whatever. Let’s call it goal oriented. I knew that if she caught wind of a giant hot spring after our rather brisk night on a high mountain pass I would be done for. An entire day lost. It didn’t work out. Just seconds before passing out of Ouray, one of her eyes opened, just sufficiently enough to see one of the hot spring signs. She sprang up and demanded I turn around so that she could investigate.
The gig was up. We returned to Ouray on a regular basis over the next ten or so years. The campground just above the town and a short walk above breakfast restaurants and the hot spring became our thing, in small tents, then big tents, and finally a Volkswagen camper van. Of course always with two dogs and later two children. My thing in particular was to hit the hot springs, rent a big rubber tube, hop on it with a throw-away copy of a Russian novel or something along those lines and float around reading all day long. Those too were the best of days.
Finally for about fifteen years the huge and, at the time, I thought, silly because of its distance from the city, new airport was a jumping off point for trips to Europe via Iceland and Playa del Carmen via Cancun. That all ended a while ago because the airlines were bought or reduced their cheap flights out of Denver. Those also, the best of days.
So to make a long story short, I hadn’t been to Denver for six or eight years. And somehow this had gone unnoticed. This last trip was short but my long walk was almost ten miles. 9.4, I think. I’ll take that as a pretty nice accomplishment for now. A few steps in the right direction. Around 300 photos, almost entirely of Boulder, are included in the new colorado usa 1 and 2 galleries of my Photography Galleries. Entering my photography galleries should reveal numerous cover photos which should show the name of the gallery on hover or with a soft touch depending on the device. Clicking on each cover photo should open a page with around 250 photos, or less if it is the last in a geographic series. Everything is organized by geography and nothing more. Some geographies include photos from numerous trips. I suspect I have a large number of slides of Colorado from the journey’s mentioned above but those have not been scanned. Some day.