What's After Work?

For the last 8 years I have been riding in the Great Cycle Challenge to raise money for children's cancer research. I started soon after my heart surgery.  I was already riding my bike for the exercise and I figured this was a way to help others while helping myself. This year I am trying to raise $1000 for cancer research and today with the very generous help of my friends I am halfway there.  It does make me happy to have such caring friends. 

For a year and a day I have been waiting and on March 16th 2021 I received the second of the required vaccines needed to prevent covid 19. It has been a long strange journey to get here. During this time I have learned about myself and others.  Last January Jan and I took a big trip to Hawaii. It was great we flew from Tampa to Hawaii in a big plane packed in with a bunch of people we did not know. No masks or excessive hand washing. I'm not even sure we carried any hand sanitizer. While there we ate out at  restaurants and visited sights with lots of people.  I also just started my retirement in January and had planned to do lots of fun things. I was going to get involved with volunteering in my community. Jan and I were going to travel and see things. Then before I could even get started on March 15, 2020 everything came to a screeching halt.  Next thing I know we are sitting at home watching Netflix and figuring how to order groceries online. I broke out the sewin...

January 6, 2020 was my last day of work. I remember that it was rather anticlimactic. It was the day after Winter Break and a teacher work day. Everyone at work had just come back and it was a non-student day. I was there because if you work one day in a month our health insurance covers you for that month, If you have ever priced insurance a month is worth working a day. So after a number of very nice parties celebrating my retirement. (I know that is a strange concept now, getting together in large groups for any reason. ) I had a few weeks to just relax, sit back and contemplate my future. Ummm what should I do? I thought it would be sleep late and watch late night TV. No! My body had other plans . Even without the need to get up and go to work I was still waking up early and getting sleepy around 10 pm. I guess my body was having a hard time adjusting to this new life style. The nearly 40 years of work had taken it's toll. I realized I would  never be able to go back to my 20...

  For the past 5 years I have ridden in June to raise money to  support of research to develop better treatments and find a cure for childhood cancer. This year because of Covid 19 it was moved to September. I began the month with the challenge of raising $500 and riding 250 miles. I'm still trying to ride 250 miles but because of my having very generous family and friends I have raised more than $1500. That is just  amazing. One of the other challenges I gave myself is to document each ride and share that with my friends, family and other Great Cycle Challenge riders. What follows is each of those posts that I placed on the GCC site. I started posting before September, kind of a prequel to the ride.

 September is a very exciting month for me. I will be participation again in the Great Cycle Challenge to help prevent childhood cancer. It is a bike ride and a fundraiser. This is the 6th year I have done this month long ride. I started after I had my heart surgery looking for ways to motivate my exercise and I just kept with it. In that time I have raised over $2000.00 and ridden over 1200 miles just in that one month. Usually the ride is in June but this year it was pushed back to September because of Covid 19.  Because of that extra time my friends have donated $860.00 to this cause. Maybe having a few extra months was a good thing. I'm going to try and post an update on my ride each day on either Facebook or on the Great Cycle Challenge webpage .  Below is a video that I created on my first ride that I started one minute into September. 

Dr. Galloway and the gang over at West Florida Radiation Therapy have developed a very efficient process of treating their patients. I arrive about 5 minutes before my scheduled treatment time. The waiting room is often empty in spite of having plenty of chairs. I have my temperature taken and wash my hands. Then within a minute or two I will have my name called. As I'm going back to the treatment room there is usually another guy just coming out of that room.  When the technicians are ready they call me in and I climb onto the treatment table. After I'm on the table my feet and legs are aligned using a hard pillow that is molded to my legs and feet. Then the table is moved into position and the technicians adjust me using lasers and my aiming tattoos.  The techs then leave the room and the machines take over. First two arm move into position to x-ray me to determine the position of my prostate. The table will make slight adjustments itself to move me into the best position. A...

I knew going into retirement things would be different. Not just sleeping in and going places but also trying new things.  As you all have read in an earlier post Jan and I did go to Hawaii soon after my retirement and that was fun. But at about the same time I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. That was not one of the "new things" I wanted to try but at least I now have the time to deal with it. And 9 weeks is the time it will take. I started radiation therapy on June 3, 2020 and will continue for nine weeks 5 days a week. No missing treatments! The doctors office is not far from my house so travel time is not bad and once I get into the groove of things I think each visit will only be about 20 minuets.  I've had 3 treatments so far and the radiation technologists, nurses and staff at  West Florida Radiation Therapy  are all very nice and caring. They have quite an efficient system there for treating a bunch of old guys with prostate cancer.  Dr. Mic...

William Blake  /  Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils c.1826 A lot has been happening over the last week or so. I try to find something funny or positive to write about. But what's been going on both in the world and in my own life that has been difficult. A little over a month ago I had a blood test that came back with an elevated PSA number. An indicator of prostate cancer. Seriously! It is said that God does not give you more than you can handle. I've read Job in the Bible and I really have no interest in discovering my limit. At the beginning of the month I thought we would be visiting both my daughter and her family and Austin and Morgan in North Carolina. Then travailing on to Evansville In. to visit Jans Dad. With my diagnosis it was decided that they would visit us. Then we decided Austin should not come because of the increasing threat of the Coronavirus and flying was not a good idea. Then we decided that it may not be a good idea for Jessica and Noah to tra...