Fun? Travel? Not Now - I Need to Walk First

Hello Fellow Travelers!

As I figuratively bounce though my day, I check in periodically with some old friends in the West.  Two of them (a male and female) both have summer houses and vacation overseas.

Leavenworth, WA at Christmastime - Magical!
Leavenworth, KS?  Not So Much!

I always thought Leavenworth was a supermax prison in Kansas, but I've learned that there is a quaint Germanish village in Washington with the same name where people (some) vacation!  Who knew?

My best girlfriend is taking her family to Japan!  The closest I'll ever get to "The Land of the Rising Sun" is a pink, Kate Spade, Cherry Blossom purse I found on EBay!

And I liked that primarily because it reminds me of a spring cookie!

What am I, the cancer free, doing?

I'm so glad you asked!

I'll tell you what I'm not doing:

I'm not going overseas and I'm not going to our summer house.

I am writing and working out.  And writing some more.  Then working out again.

I practice standing a lot.  Just standing!  And it's really hard!

And I'm searching, always searching for neuroplasticity.

There is no end to the work I have to do to attain "muscle  memory".  For those of you keeping score at home, "muscle memory" is teaching the muscles themselves through repetition.  Performing the same movement, the same way hundreds or thousands of times.

 The PS monitors everything I consume, and, as a direct consequence, I'm continuing to lose weight.  I'm also hungry all the time!  When I get too hungry, I go to the gym.

Where I lift weights and watch "The Food Network" (I still watch"Cupcake Wars", all the sugar, without any of the calories!  Or mess!)

Between trips to the gym, and biking many miles to nowhere I look at cookie-shaped accessories online.  And, not surprisingly, there are many websites devoted entirely to selling round and circular objects.

There's a lot of hunger out there!  And plenty of people happy to sell you anything to feed that hunger, how "American" is that?

Anyway, as readers already know, I'm only interested in things that work, that move me forward.

I have no interest in anything that doesn't positively impact me in some way, no matter how small the impact might be.

I believe my stubborn refusal to accept cancer/brain tumor contributed to being successful in remaining cancer-free, year after year

I'll keep looking for neuroplasticity, working even harder to walk.  Someday,  I hope to be in some exotic locale sipping something equally exotic (but still Sugar Free) with my friend.  Hope.  That's all I need!

How Cancer has Made Me "Risk Averse"

Hello Fellow Travelers!

This week I had  my usual mountain of moment-by-moment challenges to deal with  (ice in your water:  refreshment or "recipe for disaster"?) and then I saw this "Breaking News" on CNN:  "Blizzard to Demolish Eastern Seaboard"

It was the lead for days and temporarily outtrumped even Trump himself, so of course, I watched.

But you know which channel was truly jazzed by this calamity, enraptured by the prospect of impending doom?  "The Weather Channel"!  They were  absolutely breathless at the prediction of near-certain disaster! And like all great weather calamities, this one got a cute name.  Move over hurricanes Katrina and Betsy, here comes Winter Storm Jonas!  And he's a "Nor'Easter".  With an adorable, child's name!

Why is it that once a disaster is assigned a cutesy name it becomes a little deadlier?

I was so happy something other than politics was in the news I followed the press following the storm!

The upshot?  It was a big mess, but it's over with!  Several people died in "Jonas-related" situations.  Several not several hundred.  You know why the "casualty count" was relatively low?  People actually listened to their elected officials!  This assortment of governors, police chiefs and health officials pleaded to the public.  And the public actually listened.  They stayed off the roads!   The streets were clear so the emergency vehicles could get to actual emergencies.

In the hours and days preceding Jonas' arrival, the governors of several eastern states appeared on television repeatedly to tell citizens to keep off the roads for 36 hours.  By Saturday, the "crisis" was over.  Planes flew again and people began digging out of the snow, crisis averted!

"Stay off the roads?"  Well,"duh!"  Everybody knows that!  No one would need to tell me that, I didn't live through brain cancer just so I could skid on some ice pointlessly going to the Kwikee Mart equivalent!  I'll never need milk that bad!

I value life too much to take a stupid risk like driving in a blizzard.  If I could drive.  Which I cannot.

I've fought too long to stay alive to risk running into the "Reaper"by playing in the snow!

I now have a heightened awareness of how truly dangerous everyday life is.  I evaluate every circumstance by how potentially dangerous it could be.

I've been dizzy longer than the Civil War lasted, I'm not willing to take any physical chances!

See what happens when communities stay inside and don't drive in blizzards with cute names?  Less people get hurt!  

Like I said, "Duh!"

Cancer A Motivator? I'll Take Inspiration Wherever I Can Find It!

Hello Fellow Travelers!

This week I derived new inspiration for my continuing adventure from a new and unexpected source:  Cancer.  It kills a lot of people and last week it took David Bowie, who not only was an innovator and an artist,  he was art.  I saw him this morning in a silly Ben Stiller movie about the silly world of male modeling ("Zoolander" - What can I say?  It had a  gasoline fight with predictably tragic results!  I'm all in!)

Sill from 1983's "The Hunger" with David Bowie and the incomparable Catherine Deneuve as chic vampires in Manhattan

Anytime I saw Bowie in a movie, he made the movie a lot more interesting just by him being in it!
Mostly, Bowie was a musician.  A musical genius that was a little "not of this world" because no one is really sure if, in fact, he was from this world!  And cancer got him!

I always looked forward to experiencing anything new he did because whatever he did, whatever medium he chose, was always relevant and interesting.

The realization that his last album would be his last was a very sad one.  Then, I reconsidered.  Bowie was a master of reinvention!  Had he crushed out the big "C", he would have continued to surprise and amaze and would have looked fantastic doing both!  I was fortunate enough to not only survive a brain tumor but remain cancer-free for these past five years!

Of course, I never met Mr. Bowie but it makes me just a bit sad to know I never will.  Or will I?  After all, he was a "Space Oddity" and I'm more than a little odd and I've "lost my place in space".

It seems to me like more people than ever are being given terrible news.  I can't tell if the increase in malignancies is real or I'm  just noticing it more often because I had a tumor.

I'll never do a lot of the things I used to do, and that's OK, nobody cared much, and I wasn't very good at cooking/cleaning anyway.  I'm really not great with all things financial, I  simply let the PS handle everything!

What I can do is pedal another mile, refuse a cookie, drink another glass of water.
What I am good at is putting myself in absurdly difficult situations and cheerfully complaining endlessly about them!

I was listening to my PS play some Bowie today and he played, "Heroes", a beautiful, sad, song.  Who will be the hero that cures cancer?  When?

My #1 Challenge: Vertigo

Hello Fellow Travelers!

I saw an important documentary of corruption and social injustice in our Court system and it was on Netflix ("The Making of a Murderer") so I was going to rant about how that dude was  framed!  And "Netflix" is free!  Then, this happened:  I  fell down,  hard.  I actually split my lip open.  There was a little blood but mostly there was a puffy lip!

My primary handicap, my biggest physical challenge, is vertigo. I awoke from anesthesia in 2001 with no balance and I still fall over constantly.  I'm a table with three legs,  an engine without a distributor cap, get it?

Vertigo impacts everything else; it's impaired my vision, my ability to speak (I can't), and my inability to write anything by hand (I really can't)  Most importantly. vertigo, this constant sensation that the earth is falling away, has rendered me incapable of standing and walking.

When I stand up, there's a fairly good chance I'll fall down.  The PS has the best solution, "Don't!"  OK, I'll bear that in mind..

(Don't you just hate it when someone goes all technical on you?)

Surrounded, nay, overwhelmed, by this level of empathy how can I not develop new brain connections?  I mean, this is the same dude who puts bandaids on his chest before running just because it cracks me up!

That's love, people, post-cancerous tumor l-o-v-e!  Put a friggin' bow on it!

It's something, anyway, what did you expect?

A puffy lip doesn't come anywhere near to asking my only question so I won't even ask it!

I am mindful of the passage of time and that every tumble, every self-inflicted injury, takes a little more out of me, brings me just a little faster to the end of this journey.

I'll therefore take the PS' less-than-sage admonition and try not to.  Fall.

Puffy lip?  People pay money for puffy lips!

It's A Thankless Job, but Someone's Got To Do It! Happy New Year!

Hello Fellow Travelers!


The "duty" I force myself to endure is accepting and consuming these pieces-of-art-in-a-box when I occasionally receive them.

Recent Delivery

As 2015 ends, I'm very excited for the arrival of a New Year.  I've set new goals for myself,
physically and spiritually and I'm ready to walk around again.  The end of 2015 brought many good things, one of which was an assortment of macaroons from a bakery in Los Angeles, sent by my bestie, who travels the country, dispensing justice and, occasionally sampling baked goods across this great land.


Not only are they the "bees knees" gastronomically, each one is a miniature work of art.  They are so beautiful and beautifully packaged actually eating them seems like sacrilege, but eating is what they're made for so I'll take one for the team and wolf them down!

Round, Macaroon-shape Bag PS Gave Me

Such is the dilemma of the cancer survivor; "to eat or not to eat?"  Who am I kidding?  There's no dilemma!  Of course, I'm going to scarf those!  Who wouldn't?  And then look for round handbags
 online!  That are reminiscent of macaroons.

I am feeling stupendous and very ready to not wear a wheelchair anymore!  I have a large amount of things to do, and 2016 isn't soon enough for me to lose the wheelchair!

Macaroon Tree 

I can't wait!