String, I surely understand your wife’s concern given that history. But she sounds like a person who realizes the lake didn’t kill him. It was an accident. And she knows and loves you. You, I believe, are a fortunate man.
You know that quarry I mentioned earlier in this thread? A high school classmate of mine had his younger brother drown there. He never swam with us there, but he didn’t condemn anyone for it either.
Well, I suspect you’re one of those bikers who has learned a bit from your experiences and aren’t likely to repeat, if you still ride. One of those friends I lost that I mentioned earlier was on an old Triumph also - I don’t know the name of the model, but it had a regular stick shift, a “suicide shift” I think they called it. It was a neat bike. He got run over from behind while waiting to make a left turn in traffic.
I sometimes worry about “theBob” a little, but he’s a very systematic cautious man. I know my worries for him are pretty much ill-founded. He likes that motorsickle song too.
PJC,
We are in a special club. People that know how to overcome adversity. Your repair was well done. Will the hardware come out or stay in? Physical therapy is your friend. Work hard and appreciate every new thing you can do.
Yesterday I went to the doctor for a colonoscopy. They said your heart beat is arrhythmic and shows Afib so we cannot use anesthetic on you. Today I was at the cardiologist putting together a plan. To quote my Mom, getting older is hard work and not for sissies."
Dang, ppine - sorry to hear. I know a little of what you’re feeling…
A bunch of years ago I got a tick bite while down in the Ozarks. Didn’t think much of it and proceeded with the paddling, etc. for the last couple days. This included a pot luck. The next day, when I was due to leave anyhow, I felt lousy. I thought at the time I might have a touch of food poisoning - all our stuff had been stored for a while before the pot luck and keeping it all cold was “iffy”. So it goes. Drove a few hours and I just couldn’t do any more. I took a cheap motel room (In the town of Bourbon MO where, if I remember correctly, they have two water towers one labeled “hot” and the other “cold”), holed up with a fever, chills, and watched “Robin Hood Men in Tights” on cable. Life can be weird.
Made it home but the fever and chills just wouldn’t go away so I just laid low… About a week of this and I felt a little better - well enough to join some friends for breakfast. ( By now I was well beyond sure this wasn’t from something I ate, must be from the tick - but wasn’t Lyme, which I’ve been exposed to before and was nothing like this.) One of the folks was a retired nursing teacher from our local community collage. She took my pulse. “Weak and thready,” she said. Off to urgent care. Urgent care put me in an ambulance and sent me to the hospital. Afib. Nobody could decide what the cause of the illness was - folks were wearing face shields and paper suits when they came in. Treated me like I was an Ebola patient or something. But the Afib and fever both went away about 15 mins after getting antibiotics and saline. Apparently Afib can be caused by sweating out all your electrolytes, as in a prolonged fever. Maybe could have prevented it with Gatorade. But what I mostly recall is feeling like I was waking up when the Afib stopped. It seemed like I’d been half-asleep for a week but then awoke. That must have been seven or eight years ago and I’ve not been bothered since, though I still take baby aspirin to try to mitigate some of the increased stroke risk associated with even a short period of arrhythmia.
So has a cause for your Afib been discovered and is it controllable? Or maybe too early to know? Now there’s something that really could limit endurance and speed paddling. Those are things that are hard to do well while feeling drowsy. Hope you can get it under control and fast. Here’s wishing you nothing but the best.
Oh, and I have the option to have the screws in my tibia removed after a while, but the rest are there for good.
And BTW, How the heck do you break a femur? That’s a huge bone… must take a heckova’ hit to do that. Car accident or climbing fall?
Are we old or what?
Right string - we gotta’ cut this. It just isn’t wise to review the history of every illness and joint in our body - it exaggerates the problems.
I want to think we only get like this on days when we haven’t gotten our paddling fix.
Come to think of it maybe someone here can help… Has anyone here tried to attach an ear trumpet to a PFD? I can shout. Can’t hear you.
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PJC,
I used to ride a lot in the mountains. I liked to pack mules. I ran into a mountain lion, and my saddle mule bucked me off. I broke the femur in the saddle right below the hip joint in 3 places.
Cause of the heart problems is yet to be determined, but world events and Trump are pushing me over the edge mentally and that probably has a lot to do with it.
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time to get out for sure. Infirmities or no… A mind needs to stay healthy in order for the other stuff to get healthy. I hear you. Today is a paddling day.
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Yikes! Sounds like, bad as a femur broken in three places is, it could have been worse. I’m thinking that must have been a long painful evac… Glad you’re with us.
And current affairs aren’t exactly making anyone I know or have heard of a quiver with delight. Kayamedic’s right. We’re better when we get out and nothing is improved by our staying in. I’ll keep the faith and keep on keepin’ on if you will.
BTW, that DNR guy I mentioned in the original post who moved away - well, he went to Montana to keep horses and ride (and hunt) in the mountains. I don’t know if he still paddles at all.
This series of posts has been as frustrating as my worst day in the army. It seems that everyone assumes anyone who finds this knows all they need to know. Bullshit! Tell the reader where you live, what water you’re talking about, etc. And make it easy/obvious how to reply.
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Nice first post…
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Ah, you’re new here.
–Many of us who’ve been reading, chatting, and posting on this board for some time, have something of a familiarity with one another(at least one another’s on-line persona, anyway) that dates back years. Things like locales/particular watercourses, sometime get left out or overlooked when the discussion turns to more of a personal nature, rather than a strictly paddling one. (If you read any of this board’s intro info, “Paddlers Place” is a forum where one gets to know other paddlers. No real guidelines, JUST BE CIVIL Sometimes a few even get together with new paddling friends made here, to paddle in places they’ve never been before. It’s fun! Sooo, if you think what’s written in the postings above are all “bullshit” (and granted, much of it may be)you are kindly invited to go search elsewhere for the satisfaction you seek. Or perhaps, stick around and introduce yourself, and tell us about the places you frequent/paddle.
And sorry about your bad days with the Army. But as a former Navy man, let me say thank you for your service. 
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I had a nice little mind-clearing event today. I got onto the St Joseph river (in Michigan) in the early afternoon when the sun finally came came out after a day and a half of rain. The river was up, the put-in was muddy, the sky was blue and the water was like glass. Paddled upstream and crossed the river to visit a park so the dog and I could romp around. Then the wind picked up and the approaching sky was dark and ominous and I started worrying that my canoe might get blown into the water so we hopped back into the canoe and headed back and now there were whitecaps and an incredible tailwind that made the boat extremely difficult to control. My hat blew off my head and the paddle felt like a sail and I was leaning over and holding the gunwales during gusts to duck some wind and keep my weight low and make darn sure that the dog didn’t sit up. I was having real trouble crossing back over the river (maybe 200 yards) and finally turned back upstream during a brief lull in the wind so I could finish my crossing and then slink back downstream near the more-protected shore. From glassy water to having my butt kicked by the remnants of some hurricane in about ten minutes. I was definitely living in the moment during that return paddle!
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A stream of conscious
is a river of bends
and many there eddies
where passage does trend
look not always to map
to know where you are
and whirl wander in wonder
with the shifting sandbar
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Glad you made it back safely as there was some very bad weather down there. Had our share up here with strong winds gusting to 45, power outages, rain, sun, then back to rain. About the only thing it didn’t do was snow.
For @Jimofrichmond, Tom is in southern Michigan and I live in northern Michigan.
“I don’t want a pickle; I just wanna ride my motorcycle”!
“And I don’t wanna die; I just wanna ride my motor-cy-le”!
Photos: my bikes & me in 1964 and 2020.
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Those would burn really quickly.
Welcome Home
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Worst day in the Army?
You want to talk about it?
I can tell you about a few bad days I had while serving 12 years (3 years in a combat zone) in the U.S. Army.
The post you called BS on is allowed on this website, and everyone was being civil, friendly, and some were jesting. Every post on here does not have to be technical; about canoes, kayaks, sit on tops, or paddle boards. Quite a few of the people who posted have been on this website for over a decade. I know; I’ve been here longer than that myself, and have paddled with a few of the people who posted on the thread. They are knowledgeable, skilled paddlers with decades of experience.
Lighten up dude.
thebob
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