Trip to the hospital

Fortunately, it wasn't for me. I spent a very long day taking a friend of mine to his appointment at a major hospital several hours away.

Those big hospitals are a zoo. We went to one far wing of the place only to be told we had to be in a different wing right across the complex. Once we got there, we discovered the first place was wrong and that's actually where he had his first appointment.

Since my friend can only walk short distances I pushed him in one of the wheel chairs provided by the hospital. Only after crossing the complex a couple times did I discover one of the brakes was defective and dragging the whole time. That came as some relief to me as I thought I was just in terrible physical shape. With the brake fixed it wasn't bad at all.

Being in that hospital brought back memories . . . terrible terrible memories. I once came to in the surgical wing of that place with no idea how I got there. The first words I heard was: he's not a good candidate for surgery.

Say what? Yeah, bad memories, but at least this trip my buddy had good results. I'll put that in the good memory column.

It also helped that we had a yummy dinner at a decent Chinese place. On the final leg home we stopped for a drink at an Inn neither of us had been to in a long time. We were remembered and treated like royalty. The owner did not let us pay for our drinks. It was on the house. Nice.

In spite of dealing with the hospital, we had a pretty good day. We decided to do another road trip next week. This time it'll be a fun trip to places to we want to go, so that should be even better.

-Sixbears

Close Calls

A good friend of mine who lives lives in Kentucky e-mailed me today. A tornado touched down in his backyard. There was a lot of tree damage but his house survived in good shape. That's as close as I'd ever want to come to a tornado. Actually, that's closer than I'd care to come.

I'd rather deal with a hurricane. At least there's some warning. There's time to decide if one should bug out or hunker down. Tornadoes give very little warning.

My lovely wife and I had some tornado encounters this past winter in Florida. They weren't backyard close, but close enough for high winds to strip all the leaves out of trees.

Tornadoes are rare here in the mountains of New Hampshire. They aren't completely unheard of, but it can happen. They don't last long and tend to be weaker than those in tornado alley. The worse damage in recent memory involved some lost roof shingles and damage to a garage. The weather service at first denied it was a tornado, but someone had video so they had to admit it was a tornado.

My buddy's e-mail reminded me that live changing events can come out of nowhere. Had the tornado landed just a little bit to one side his house would have been turned to splinters instead of his trees. We can't take the future for granted.

That doesn't mean we don't make plans for the future. We just should not believe those plans are set in stone. Sudden change can literally drop out of the sky.

-Sixbears