{"id":438,"date":"2012-09-19T10:01:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T18:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/?p=438"},"modified":"2024-02-13T13:49:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T21:49:24","slug":"pragmatism-yet-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/pragmatism-yet-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Pragmatism Yet Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
John refueling by the side of the road in Portland, Maine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had just read an email from a friend who, having not seen a blog post in the last few days, questioned whether we’d become road kill on a narrow highway or had been holed up in the swimming pool of a posh hotel. Neither came close to fact.<\/p>\n

When I last posted, I had inherited Mike’s flu, but was suffering through. I had been able to overcome inertia each day to complete the day’s mileage, but at night the blog suffered. We were well into Maine, and I figured I’d catch up at my son Chris’s house. I kept wishing for my situation to improve, but there was little if any movement.<\/p>\n

Then came September 17th<\/sup>. We were headed from Bath to Rockland, a 45 miles stretch, which was another segment I had been looking forward to. Both Mike and I had been in the area for a family reunion 50 years ago, and both of had happy memories. Besides, you’d think having less than a hundred miles to go (95 to be exact), would provide a formidable argument against pulling the plug. But deep down I felt like hell.<\/p>\n

Just after leaving Bath, my cough got worse, the output from the hack was greener, and my energy level waned dramatically. Shortly we hit a long, shallow hill, with Mike in the lead. He usually led on the level stretches, and I’d catch up on the hills.\u00a0 This time when I pulled abreast of him, my deep breathing hurt all the way down into my chest. Our fate was becoming unavoidable, it was time to call the doctor.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Sitting on a side road far enough off the highway to escape the road noise, I called my physician in California, left my tail of woe on the answering machine, and then sat down in the grass. Moments later, a multi-colored group of four hen turkeys followed by a large white tom, began migrating towards us from a nearby farmhouse. We’d heard them before we saw them, initially assuming the noise was from small dogs.<\/p>\n

They surrounded us, and one hen got close enough to peck my leg and draw blood. In a heartbeat the tom was beside her diverting her attention to more Darwinian matters. Resplendent in his mating plumage, he began a dance with the hen, bumping her first on one side and then the other. Shortly the two were one, and Mike and I discovered yet another lesson about the birds and bees. We thought we knew all about chickens, turkeys, and eggs.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

And then the doctor called. Basically I told him the story, that both Mike and I had already taken one course of antibiotics which had done it for him, but not for me, and that I was dead in the water. His advice: A bigger hammer <\/em>prescription, along with the advice to “take it easy.”\u009d<\/p>\n

The way I felt, I didn’t need that last bit of advice.\u00a0 With our destination less than two days away, I was ready to call it a ride. Later that afternoon, with the first dose of prescription in my stomach, bikes in the back of a second truck, Mike was reading the side effects to me of the new bigger hammer. “<\/em>May cause diarrhea for up to 4 months after dosage is completed.”\u009d Bigger hammer, indeed, the way I felt, “Bring it on”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had just read an email from a friend who, having not seen a blog post in the last few days, questioned whether we’d become road kill on a narrow highway or had been holed up in the swimming pool of a posh hotel. Neither came close to fact. When I last posted, I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johndaltonwalks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}