A Widow's Ride

I awoke today to hit the road to Horizon Unlimited California and as I was getting ready, I was watching the morning news and sadden to hear that the baseball legend, Yogi Berra has passed away last night at the age of 90.  Yogi is not just known for baseball but he was also known for his paradoxical or redundant quotes also known as Yogism’s.  Ironically, one of his quote is fitting for this blog post.

Keep trying. Stay humble, Trust your instincts.

Most importantly, act.  When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

(Yogi Berra)

When I set out to do this journey, I set out to be out on the road for a year.  However, like I mentioned in my previous blog post is that I did not expect that I would not be able to do it physically.  Midway through the trip, the arthritis in my hands have been flaring up pretty bad to the point where I was popping Ibuprofen like candy.  After my post, I got a lot of suggestions from friends and family for remedy from homeopathic cure such as take Turmeric daily or wearing compression gloves.  The best one that worked was to take Aleve instead of Ibuprofen. It doesn’t take the pain away completely but it lasted longer.  This solution made the ride more bearable but I knew that I could not keep going like this.  So when I reach the end of Route 6, I knew that it was time to go back home and seek professional help.

Unfortunately, getting doctor appointment quickly is not easy.  So knowing that it will take time to get to the root of the issue with my hands, I will have some idle time.  So when I visited Ron Grace of Lost for a Reason and he mentioned that he was unable to attend the Horizon Unlimited (HU) event in California, I knew that I would have plenty of time on my hand so I offered my assistance to his charity organization.  As it turned out, they still needed speakers for HU, so I offered to do a presentation and submitted two suggestions for topic; Life Lesson from the Road and Roadside America.  Well, they picked both topics so I spent the last week and half working on both slideshow.

While working on the presentation, my mind kept wandering back to the time I was on the road.  I’m starting to get withdrawal being cooped up in a house.  I miss the freedom and the carefree lifestyle that the road had shown me.  At the same time, I do not like being in constant pain either.  While taking a break from the presentations, I started googling for alternative ideas.

One idea is to take shorter trips, I still want to finish my bucket list of traveling on the remaining eight U.S. old routes.  So maybe, I can just do one route then come home for a while and then do another one later in the year.

Another idea is to invest in a touring van such as a Sportsmobile or a VW Rialta as my main mode of transportation and haul Purple on a hitch on back of the van.  This is sounding like a better idea more and more every day.  While on the road, the one thing I miss the most is exploring on the dirt road but with a fully loaded bike, it was not enjoyable to do.  With having a touring van, I could camp on BLM land and spend days exploring the nearby area on Purple.  Another thing that make the touring van more appealing is when bad weather hits, I would have a better shelter than a tent can provide.  Also, I could carry a lot more gears in the touring van than I could on a bike.  The list of Pro is growing longer than the list of Con.

Okay, I was getting a little bit distracted by this research to figure out other alternative ways to satisfy my wanderlust.  For now, I need to focus on what I can do today while I wait for my medical appointments. Meanwhile, I found a couple of side jobs to hold me over financially since the estate still haven’t closed yet. Until then, I just need to remember to take it one day at a time.

Today’s Reminder:

“When I catch myself feeling overwhelmed, or not being able to get anything done because there is so much to do that I don’t know where to start, I’ll stop for a moment and remind myself to take it one step, one task, one day at a time.”