It Might Get Messy

What a week. First Dick Clark, then Levon Helm. The latter of “complications” associated with the throat cancer he had treated BEFORE his last 4 albums! 


Helm is my cancer hero. When I sit on the deck with my guitar and try to sing and it sounds like shit (well, more like shit than it used to, which is saying something), I tell myself that Helm got through it and made 4 albums and did hundreds of concerts during his cancer recovery. Of course, I’m no Levon Helm. But he gives me something to shoot for!


The most humorous aspects of my now a year plus some months dealing with cancer have consistently involved travel. You might recall the slapstick of my train trip to Boston, recounted earlier in this weblog. I guarantee you the trip I made to Knoxville, Tennessee (right up there with Gatlinburg as a tourist destination, I should point out), managed to make that Boston trip look like a “2” on a humor scale where the movie Airplane is a “10”. 


First, there is the matter of food. I’ve always been a big fan of road food. Nobody liked the hotdogs in the Cleveland airport, or Harlan’s Barbecue in Houston, better than me. Hell, even the Popeye’s Chicken place in B concourse in Atlanta is near and dear to my heart. Now, of course, without a convenient rest room and a little privacy to keep my throat clear, solid food is a bit awkward. And liquid food, beyond the alcoholic beverages that keep the salespeople who spend 6 days a week 50 weeks a year on the road sane, is hard to come by in airports. Best I could do on my way out was to dunk a cinnamon scone in my whole-milk decaf latte on my connection in Charlotte. Got about a third of it down, too. 


Ate some rib (as in “one rib”) from Famous Dave’s in Knoxville. And purchased every drop of liquid Instant Breakfast from the local Kroger. Then had to prep for a teleconference to take place at 0400 the following morning, which made it 1000 hrs local time in the Czech Republic, focus of the meeting. This took some logistics legwork. Esteemed Dr. J, local ecologist, kindly lent me his security badge to access the Knoxville office in the pre-dawn, as the Microsoft Live Meeting software would not, of course, load onto my travel Mac. We considered every possible problem, and figured we had them covered.


Except. The company key badge doesn’t open the outer doors of the office building. Called Dr. J at 0330. He talked me through breaking into the building by defeating the security system by slipping a shiv through the door jambs to trigger the internal motion detector. So there I am at 0345, in an office building adjacent to a major highway, breaking into the facility. Which I do. Then I sign onto the meeting, listen to the translation of everything into Czech, speak when spoken to, and hang up when so directed. Now it’s 0700. I hit the Kroger for a pack of bologna and one of Swiss cheese. Eat a couple rolls of each. Watch “Down Periscope” with Kelsey Grammar, which conveniently turns up on TV. 


Head for the airport. Where’s there’s no viable food. Pass on the earlier flight available for a $50 premium. Then almost miss the Charlotte connection when the following flight is (predictably) late. 


Arrive home dehydrated and hungry from 24 hours awake with just the remains of my bottled Instant Breakfast to survive on (and of course it can’t go through TSA security, despite my being patted down every frickin’ time because my medical port and feeding peg trigger the whole-body detector). 


Sleep for 12 hours. Hit the hospital for lymphedema therapy. Get yelled at for not wearing my scary horror-movie lymphedema control mask. 


Sigh. Now I’m re-learning The Weight in Levon’s memory. It’s only 5 chords. And sounds very good as a croaked sort of poetry-reading singing style. Like I said, my cancer-recovery hero!


Don't forget to check urban ecosystems book chapter at http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/, nature photos at http://docviper.livejournal.com/, and this week's PeopleSystems at http://aehsfoundation.org/. Have a good week, everyone!