Another Planning Opportunity...

Another Planning Opportunity…

Here I sit… fretting & stewing, brooding & pouting, wondering how things will ultimately play out… Trying to figure out all my options and actually make a doggone plan… in advance, of course, of the actual need for action. Dang, sometimes it just has to be done, as we all know, but I find it to be enormously frustrating, quite vexing, and a serious assault upon my fragile domestic tranquility!

Being a biker-gypsy out roaming around… but having a date certain for a doctor’s appointment a few hundred miles away… can create a most ponderous situation! It ain’t like I can easily cancel or reschedule that particular appointment… Nope, it was carefully timed by my treating physician (the overall quarterback of the entire project) around an important ‘shot’ that needs to be injected into my delicate butt cheek.

It will be the fourth (or fifth?) such shot, the timing of which was figured with some deliberate precision, designed as part of an ‘aggressive’ treatment regimen to address concern about the possibility of a return of cancer, which had originated in my now removed prostate. Precautionary for the most part as far as we actually now know; however… in for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes… Might as well play the hand to its conclusion and touch all the bases as long as we’ve come this far. All of that is also part of a regular follow-up visit.

The most complicating factor in all of this is the ‘biker’ aspect of the equation. Well, actually the weather is the real rub, but that’s far more important because I primarily travel aboard our girl. I wouldn’t want it any other way, as you might have long suspected, but there are a couple of downsides to this otherwise wonderful life I’m living. Anyway…

Thanks to George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the global weather patterns are now all in a tizzy, and we’re beset with unusual frequencies of tropical storms and rainy episodes (to say nothing of widespread civil unrest plus considerable discontent among journalists), keeping the prospects of riding more than twenty miles at a time in any direction extremely perilous, assuming one prefers not to ride in that treacherous moistness in the first place… which pretty well describes this light-weight wannabe…

It seems like every time I look to ride to Montgomery, another soggy system pops-up and makes landfall complicating the heck out of any hope of making a plan. That’s where I am now… what should/can I plan?!!! Confusing matters even more are the daily changes in any forecast presented.

One day everything looks hunky-dory or at least borderline doable, while the next day’s prediction includes recommendations for construction of an ark! One of those outcomes will likely occur, too, and the weather folks (is the principal tool of meteorologists a Wee-Gee Board?) will then lock onto the one that does happen and claim accuracy! If pulling one’s hair out actually helped, I’d have been completely bald long ago!

I looked into renting a car the other day… since I don’t have one myself any more… Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as it wouldn’t have been here or available anyway without a considerable ride of a few hundred miles beyond Montgomery then back again… that would naturally include lots and lots of dodging rain! It’s a vicious cycle like chasing one’s tail, round and round we go! More like a circular firing squad, actually, than straight-forward ‘planning’!

Anyway, they couldn’t rent a car to me, the long-faced, suitably regretful looking youthful lass sought to console me… Rules are rules, ya see, and I just don’t fit the ‘profile’ of a normal citizen… Rules are important, she continued, and they vary state by state, as they are, among other things, also designed to protect yours truly!

Typical old-fart, I imagine she was thinking… Looking at the outcomes and consequences of this development, and not focused upon what really matters… the quality of the explanation. I find that rules tend more to thwart me more often than not… For those of us who choose to live outside the rather rigid template of ‘normalcy’… well… It frequently complicates the heck out of trying to plan anything!

Now I’m down to considering a plane with an entirely new set of rules and complications, which would include hitching a ride to a nearby airport… but there’s still that car issue waiting for me at the end of the flight… Sam would bail me out, I’m confident, but… What about those independence/freedom/self-sufficiency things I strive to maintain?

I could always just suck it up and brave the elements aboard our girl… and it may come to that… but… Dang, I just hate wearing that cumbersome rain suit all day and sharing a slick, wet road with idiots who don’t know to adjust their driving for conditions!!! The discomfort is annoying but manageable… the inherent danger is the real turnoff for this timid traveler of the geezer persuasion…

Still another unexpected variable has suddenly presented itself. I’m at the moment visiting my good friends Big Wolf and CB. Jerry has offered to drive me there and back in his cage! Dang! Mighty generous offer for certain, and mighty tempting, too! I wouldn’t ever want to impose upon him that way, but I strongly sense there might possibly be something else going on here, as well.

Could it be that my magnanimous benefactor is really anxious for a little road trip himself, even in a cage? I know he enjoys an evening down at Jan’s almost as much as I do… I wouldn’t want to deny him an adventure opportunity, so… another option on the table to ponder, while I try to figure out all the other myriad variables and illusive, ever-changing possibilities… amidst all the forecasted weather uncertainty… sigh… All this is plum bewildering! Maybe I should look into a Wee-Gee Board for my own use…?

There is always that other option… the one I nearly always select. I could just go a few days ahead of the appointment and sit in a motel room twiddling my thumbs… That usually reminds me of those heady days as a teenaged warrior… Hurry up and wait! I once told my late dearly beloved that I’d spent three years in the Army, two and a half of which I’d actually spent standing in line someplace… Oh well, at least I’m dry and out of harm’s way during those protracted pauses… Well, except for exposure to dangerous viruses, that is… which of course is also the fault of W & the Donald…

DDT