Just wanted to thank everyone for the outpouring of support over the last 24 hours. It took about a million zip ties to put my chair into something passable for a seating system to get me home late last night. We were able to piece together the chair United broke last year so that I…
Category: Down days
Goodbye to One of The Greatest
There really is no proper way of explaining him. Like any other force of nature, his energy and impact had to be experienced firsthand. My earliest memory of him is that he had a tattoo, definitive proof in a three-year-old mind’s eye that my Grandpa Ed was a pirate. His gravelly voice, perpetually tanned skin…
Triplog Day 1: A Nightmare in Newark
To be honest, I don’t know where to start. In fact, I don’t think I have the energy after everything that has transpired in the 20+ hours since my last post. My chair is broken, I spent four hours in a Newark emergency room with skin breakdown, and some of our luggage got lost. And that barely scratches the surface of what kind…
Triplog Day 9 — Perspective at Harmony Ridge
The view from our hotel just outside Joshua Tree National Park was breathtaking the morning of our ninth day on the road. Little did I know, my emotions would soon be as tumultuous as the terrain I’d woken up to. I was already in a somewhat sullen mood after the Bobbseys and I dropped Claire off at the Palm Springs airport…
In Sickness and in Health
I knew today was coming. I’d probably looked at it on the calendar a half a dozen times, but somehow in the overall randomness of the day, I let it slip. My third wedding anniversary. It really is hard to wrap my head around the fact that, in November, Kristen will have been gone for three…
The Recovery Waltz
One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. Back in college, they held an “Introduction to Ballroom Dancing” class in one of the gyms adjacent to the sports medicine room for varsity athletes – not that the CWU wrestling team actually spent much time in that area. No, the redheaded stepchildren of the athletic department rarely mingled with the revenue-generating…
Away from the Sun Again
I should be in Maryland right now. Maybe Ohio, or at least Illinois – somewhere on the road to Washington DC for a Roll on Capitol Hill that starts on Monday. I’d take anywhere but where I am now. There is an old adage that says that life is what happens when you’re busy making…
Happy birthday
St. Patrick’s Day. Such a goofy holiday (I mean, of all the saints that could be honored). Most of us think it has something to do with snakes in Ireland, anyhow. It’s mainly the day that gives that annoying kid in class an excuse to be even more of a nuisance, and the party crowd…
Somewhere in between
I wake up in the morning having had another one of those dreams where I regain movement in my arms and legs. They are always so vivid, so clear. Every touch completely realistic, every smell so real you could almost taste them. It starts out slow, me faintly beginning to move. At first, I don’t…
Crosses to bear
Everyone has a cross to bear, doesn’t matter who you are. And although mine is a rather heavy load, I try to carry it as quietly as possible. But sometimes you buckle under the weight, and just want to scream. This is me screaming/venting… They say that everything happens for reason. Is this my purpose? …
Kenny Salvini 