You can tell I am feeling better – almost a full four weeks with writing a single word! In my defense, it was an insanely busy period! And in a wonderful way! I suppose a quick summary is in order….

I did get my tattoo and am 99% thrilled with it; I wish the writing had been larger, but ultimately I am absolutely happy with it. The experience was really nice – mind you it was my first ink – so I had no idea what to expect. It was only about an hour and was not uncomfortable at all. I am already thinking about my next one!

We made the trip to Maine and saw our kids and grandkids; my daughter and her husband and kids went up as well, as did my niece and her kids. So it was a giant family reunion as well as a great Halloween party. We went up Friday and took my son and his family out to eat and saw their new house now fully furnished and set up – beautiful! Saturday we did some easy hiking and then gathered with the others at my sister in law’s house for the party which was awesome. It was so nice to see the Maine cousins and the Rhode Island cousins playing together. We got up early Sunday for a great breakfast and skedaddled home to begin preparing for our party the following Saturday.

Prepping for our party is a big deal; I have something like twelve storage totes and five or six boxes in the attic that have to get hauled down and sorted out. Then something like 75 batteries have to be installed and the items tested to make sure they work. And of course we babysit two of our grandkids. Luckily, Monday was a holiday affording me the time needed to haul everything down from the attic and at least begin sorting through things. Tuesday was kids so I did not get much done, but Wednesday was all day outside hanging animatronics and assorted scary figures, hanging around 25 strings of lights, and setting up the cemetery – over 7 miles of ground covered and all in the yard! And got all the playground mulch laid out as well.

Saturday was a long day, waiting for the party to begin. I went to the store to pick up the sandwich platters and once safely in the car, I returned the carriage to the pen. And, as I always do, I took a run and hopped up on the carriage handles to roll/ride it. I do this twice every week. But this was a different grocery store with different carriages; and they do not behave like the ones to which I am accustomed. To the extent that the carriage flipped backwards, dumping me violently to the ground in the parking lot. The carriage then righted itself and took off like a torpedo, happily avoiding hitting anyone or anything. I tore the dickens out of my knee but had to laugh about it – what an insane display to put forth in the middle of the parking lot on a Saturday morning!!!

The party went great. Some of the folks from Maine came down in their RV, but my kids could not make the trip. That meant that while we had twelve kids there, the oldest was seven. Such a change from years past when most of the kids were at least ten! So of course through the years my decorating has been getting more and more scary, growing as the kids all grew. But now? Now it is almost too much for the current crop of young’uns! None the less a great time was had by all! And I logged over 10.5 miles in the yard for that day!

Given all that, there was not a lot of time for hiking; I only managed two hikes in October: one for 9.4 miles and one for 17.5 miles. Of course I also did my four or six mile road walks whenever possible. We had to up my BP med the morning of the 9.4 mile hike as it had begun to get uncomfortably high over the previous couple of weeks. My doctor ended up doubling the dose, and in hindsight, hiking immediately after that day was probably not a good idea. I had an extremely uncomfortable hike and was plagued by lightheadedness throughout much of it. My split times and overall hike time were quite poor and disappointing. But just four days later I did the 17.5 mile hike and that was hands down the best hike I’ve had in a very long time, certainly since my surgery. Apparently I’ve adjusted to the new BP med dose change! I got out today as well and did a 15.4 mile hike with really good split times and overall time.

Since surgery, I have logged 154.7 hiking miles and 228.6 walking miles for a total of 383.3, I am quite proud of that! And for the year, I have 38 hikes totaling 408 miles. My goal at the start of the year was 500 hiking miles and once my cardiocation began, I basically gave up on that goal. But hard work and perseverance have served me well and I now believe that the goal can still be met as it is only another 92 miles. As long as my health holds up I have approx. seven weeks so I need a little more than 13 miles each week.

I had my annual physical recently and it was (thankfully) unremarkable. My bloodwork shows some issues with my liver, likely due to the statin so we’ll recheck it in a month and decide then where to go with it. Everything else was good though, including whole lipid panel, which means the diet, exercise, and statin are doing as promised.

It is all still a bit surreal to me, that I had the bad stress test, the bad cardio catheterization, and ultimately the quadruple bypass. I find myself flashing back to moments and recalling how I felt – mental snapshots I guess – and they barely seem real as if I was recalling a scene from a movie I watched a few weeks ago. And others I just can’t remember, such as going down to surgery; I sort of recall the ride down in the elevator but I cannot recall getting from my bed to the gurney in the hall – did I walk to it or did they just wheel my bed out into the hall? My wife and daughter were both there to see me off and I cannot remember exactly what I said to them as I headed off. I would have hoped to had said something loving and positive and rememberable as I really didn’t know if I would ever come back up from the surgery. But I simply do not know what I said…

Since I began this we’ve had a presidential election, one that went as I feared it would. While I am a lifelong conservative, I do not vote party, I vote the person. And in this case, there was no doubt that the right person was not conservative. Felony convictions, sexual assault convictions, complete disregard for safekeeping top secret documents all served to outweigh any and all policies he ran on that I may have supported. I knew it was a longshot for Harris – a woman, of color made it tough enough. But she was only cast into the role after Biden bailed; she really never had a chance even though her ratings shot up once she became the candidate.

But beyond that, people are fed up. Right or wrong, people are sick of inflation and the economy and they sent that message with their vote. My analogy for what we saw is the French Revolution. You can mess with people all you want and while they’ll grumble about it, they’ll stay on the same path. But mess with their food? All bets are off then! There were a LOT of issues in France then, but when the crops failed and food prices went through the roof with the great bread shortage – the fuse was lit. Similarly, Americans are fed up and sick and tired of inflation, especially grocery store costs. I read a lot of social media platforms from Facebook to Reddit to TikTok and so forth, and while the division between red and blue was deeper and more hostile than ever, when you pared away the expletives and insults, the number one thing that angered people the most was inflation, and always exemplified by food prices.

Now, from my perspective, the economy was certainly showing great strides in recovering: inflation was down, jobs were up, and the markets were hitting records regularly. But sadly for Harris, those positives were wiped up by the fact that the daily cost of living things such as food and gas, remained disproportionately high. And when things are not working as we like, we vote for change. And that is what America did – the presidency, the House, and the Senate. So we’ll see if the change so many desired actually works to their favor.

Part of the issue is that an economy as large as the US economy is not simply altered by dipping an oar into the water; a massive vessel requires a great amount of time and distance to change its course. Truthfully, Trump at least partially rode the coattails of Obama’s economic plan for several years; it takes that long for things to change. And Trump will ride some of Biden’s recovering economy for a while as well. I always wish well to my leader, it’d be completely irrational (and borderline insane) to wish your president bad luck and no success; it’d be like hoping the pilot of your plane to crash! Their poor performance affects me as well – in a big way!!

Time to bring this to a close, I’ve rambled on far too long already. It had been uncharacteristically warm here for November, and that has made it so nice to get outside and extend our summer and autumn. That will change at some point so please try get outside and enjoy it while it lasts! Stay well dear reader.