Take It Easy, The Journey Is Just Beginning

I transferred from a community college in Anchorage, Alaska to UCLA my Junior year. One of my favorite experiences was attending football games at the Rose Bowl on warm Southern California days. I would tell my two boys about it all the time.

When the boys were done playing college baseball and transferred to their own four year universities I wanted to eat the one to take them to their first football games as students. Unfortunately, when Nick transferred to Arizona State University I was still very sick and going through my surgeries. Travel was out of the question. So when Stefan was admitted to the University of Michigan this year there was no way I was going to miss it.

The plan when I sold the house was to work my way up from Utah through Idaho, hit Sturgis, South Dakota in August for the motorcycle rally and have plenty of time to get to Michigan. Unfortunately COVID and the supply chain crisis had other ideas. While I was able to get my truck after a fair amount of effort, the trailer was a TBD, hence the summer in Alaska.

I was frequently asked over the summer how I could remain so calm through the trailer delays. In my younger years I wouldn’t have been. I would have been angry, distracted, unpleasant to the dealer, etc. But I’ve grown as a result of my illness. My odds of survival were around 1 in 27,000. Not a typo. I’m quite literally living on bonus time. Why waste it with anger? I also have an advantage over most people. When I get stressed out the disease I have closes off the arteries to my heart. It causes tremendous pain as it creates little heart attacks over and over. It’s like shock therapy for anger. I avoid it at all costs.

So I spent the summer recovering from the move (which my body desperately needed), playing my guitar, visiting with friends and family, working on a book I’ve been writing about my ordeal and enjoying the beauty of our 50th state.

It was nearing the end of August and I was not going to miss that football game. I was planning on purchasing a plane ticket and figuring it out from there.

Think about what I said a moment ago. I could have spent the last three months miserable, fretting over the trailer. If you’ve read through my earlier points I think you’ll agree I had a summer most people would love, let alone a person with my heart condition.

The call from the RV dealer came just in time. So after a fantastic summer I hopped on a plane, grabbed the truck from Denver and picked up the trailer in Helper, Utah from Castle Country RV.

I only had a couple of days to get everything packed into the trailer but I still managed to get some time in with friends. Mitch and I went to see The Long Run, an Eagles tribute band, at the Cherry Creek Reservoir and I squeezed in a mission with the guys from Colorado Patriot Guard Riders (I’ll write about this organization in a separate post).

It was a pretty tough challenge but with Mitch’s help and the kindness of Donna and Bob I was able to get everything loaded up and hit the road just in time. Let the next chapter begin…