Friday, September 1, 2023
This morning I installed the
laptop/map/notebook carrier in the runabout. I
should have done it before today, because I
had to make some changes in it to make it fit.
I unwrapped the new rear tires and set them on
the garage roof to warm up in the sun. I think
it was about 1:00 PM when I started to install
them. It's alarming how much I've gone
downhill in a year. During last year's
September trip I made three tire changes, and
they were not terribly difficult. Today just
mounting a couple of tires was an exasperating
ordeal. Being so weak, especially in the knees
and ankles, made just getting up off the floor
a major project. The first tire was struggle
enough, but the second wore me out. When I
finally got it on the wheel I started to air
it up and the tube popped. Did I damage it
when I pried the tire onto the rim, or had it
sat on the shelf for too many years? I don't
know. I got another tube off the shelf, put it
in the tire, and pried the tire onto the rim.
This one didn't pop. It just leaked. So again
I took the tire off the wheel, pulled out the
tube, and had a look. There was a small hole.
I patched it, put it back in the tire, and
pried the tire onto them rim. This time it
held air until I got it up to near 65 psi,
then it blew out with a bang and the escaping
air blew my glasses off. I was undamaged, but
the tube was a total loss. When I got the tire
off and pulled out the tube I found that it
had split where I patched the hole. So again I
got a tube off the shelf, put it in the tire,
mounted the tire, and aired it up. This time
the tube popped at fairly low pressure. By the
time I got the tire off the wheel again it was
quitting time and I was exhausted. After
dinner I watched the News Hour and the Friday
evening blather shows, then came back to the
shop and attacked the tire project again. I
was down to the last tube on the shelf, a
rubber-stemmed Hartford. I was not about to
take the time to install a metal stem. I'll
just grit my teeth and live with then shame
and disgrace of having a rubber stem in one of
my wheels. I struggled the tire onto the rim
very carefully to avoid damaging the tube, and
this time I aired it up to 70 psi and it held.
I'll check the pressures tomorrow and see how
all four tubes are holding. Meanwhile, there
is the drama of the new camera. Yesterday the
USPS tracking page said it would be delivered
today. It wasn't. This evening the tracking
page said it arrived at the local post office
this afternoon at 4:35 PM, so it should be in
my mail box tomorrow afternoon. I plan to
spend the day getting ready to travel, and
hope I'll be ready to head east early Sunday
morning.
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 At least this didn't explode.
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Saturday, September 2, 2023
This will be brief. My next post here should be from somewhere in Missouri. The theme of the day was getting ready to go. I drove the runabout down to the gasino and filled up. The price was 20¢ a gallon less than in town. Driving on the old highway I hit the mama of all potholes. It knocked off a headlight rim and broke out the glass. I won't stay here to deal with it. I'll find a glass shop in Michigan. Today's mail brought the new camera, so I'll be able to take pictures. That's all for now. Gotta go pack.
Sunday, September 3, 2023
I was off early in the morning, hampered only by the rising sun shining through the windshield as I headed east. I've made the drive through southeast Kansas enough times that it's becoming pretty much routine. Through Cowley County and the rest to the east I knew my way and didn't have to stop very often to jog my memory, with only an occasional stop to take a picture. Unfortunately I can't show you any pictures now, because of what happened later in the trip. I hope to correct that when I'm again able to download photos from my camera and relearn how to post them on the website. Here's where my faulty memory clouds the picture. I made it across southeast Kansas with no trouble and crossed into Missouri. Missing a turn in Joplin caused an unplanned detour that cost me more than an hour of wasted miles. I reached Springfield about quitting time, gassed up, and found an out-of the-way parking lot, and bedded down for the night.
Monday, September 4, 2023
I was off for an uninterrupted drive. I had no more trouble finding my way. I left Springfield, where you catch old 66 that parallels I-40 most of the way across Missouri. A former US highway next to an interstate is often ideal for Model T travel. You can cruise along at a comfortable Model T speed of 35 to 40 mph without a lot of fear that you'll get run over, because all the big, fast trucks and most of the other traffic is over on the interstate. I passed through Marshfield, Lebanon, and points east as far as my nmext wrong turn. There is a stretch where old 66 has not survived, and you have to take a couple of back roads to get to the next town. This is where I made another navigational error, missing a turn that would have taken me east. This missed turn didn't waste as many miles as the one in Joplin, but it robbed me of nearly an hour. Making my way back, I turned onto one of those lettered Missouri back roads and made my way to Doolittle, where old 66 resumes. In Sullivan, when I stopped for gas, I met a local woman who noticed my 1915 chick magnet. As it was approaching time to stop for the night and I was wondering about a good place to park, she phoned the local undertaker and got permission for me to park in front of his establishment. So I parked in the spot where hearses stop when they bring in the customers, and while a thunderstorm with a lot of wind and rain passed over, I spent the night parked in a dry spot where I was able to sleep in the car and didn't worry about getting wet.
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
This morning I headed east on a very unfamiliar leg of the journey. I followed that east into Saint Louis, crossed the Mississippi River on the Eads Bridge into East Saint Louis, IL, where I made my way to Saint Clair Avenue, Lincoln Trail, and eventually US 50. This is where my memory fails me. I have no recollection of which road I took north to US 40, or where I spent the night.
You also, if you know anyone, could go to TJ.
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Indiana day. I arrived in Terre Haute, went north on US 41 to Rockville, and from there it was familiar territory: Crawfordsville and IN 47 east to IN 13 and north. It was on 13 (?) that I lost my gamble on old tubes and had a flat. I ended the day at a local garage, where I slept on the owner's living room couch.
Thursday, September 7, 2023
In the morning I drove on my iffy spare to Anderson, where Model T guy Rod Barrett resorted to taking a tube from one of his cars so I would have a real spare tube. I found my way to IN 9 and went north, headed for Huntington, Fort Wayne, Auburn, and Michigan. I made it as far as Huntington. I had been to the Walmart and was headed southeast on Goshen Road, but not for long. At US 24 I was entering the intersection to turn north when I was in the wreck that put me in a series of hospitals and rehab centers for the rest of the year. I have absolutely no memory of the collision. A very brief video made by a bystander shows my car in fairly heavy traffic, when suddenly a car comes from the north and hits my Ford. At that point the video ends, and you don't see my car flipping over or me hitting the pavement. Approaching the intersection is the last thing I remember. I woke up in the Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne the next day, or in a couple of days, or whatever. At that point I wasn't able to count the days.
ALL THE ABOVE, from Sunday through Thursday, is from my sketchy memory, and I can't be sure about any of it. I remember some of it pretty clearly, but much of it may or may not be accurate. Google Maps helped me recall some of the route, but the rest is as I remember it, accurate or not. At this point I will interrupt the daily blog and jump ahead to next spring, when I am back at home and recovered enough to deal with it. What about the period from September 7, 2023 to March 31, 2024? Obviously I have forgotten a great deal, but as circumstances permit I will come back and fill in some of the gaps during those six months.
So what else happened in September? One day I awoke to find my brother visiting. He says I was clear and lucid. Obviously I had him fooled. I may have seemed pretty alert, but that early in this adventure the traumatic brain injury was still very much in effect. I think it was in September that I was taken to Northwestern in Chicago. I believe that was where a feeding tube was installed, and it was with me for the rest of the year and into 2024. One thing I do remember from Northwestern is that by then I had had more than enough of hospitals, and I tried to leave. One of the nurses wrestled me into bed, and there I remained for a few days until I was taken back to the Lutheran hospital in Fort Wayne.
Was this next part in September, or October? I'm not sure, but at some time the docs figured I had been in Fort Wayne long enough, and I was treated to another ambulance ride to Shirley Ryan Rehab center in Chicago. That's where I spent October, November, and some of December. It's where I had the last dream/hallucination that I remember. At the time, of course, I didn't realize it was all in my head. In early October I figured that I was recovered enough to be home. So I drove south out of Chicago, down through Indiana, and about sundown I looked for a place to stop for the night. Spotting a hospital, I pulled into the parking lot and went inside. It turned out that the head nurse there was my friend Molly from Missouri. She put me in bed for the night. But some things didn't add up. What was I driving? I had no memory of renting a car. Molly has never been in Indiana. The next thing I knew I was back at Shirley Ryan. Looking out of my window there, I saw a Marriot sign just like the one I saw from my window in Indiana. I wonder how they did that. All of that — driving out of Chicago, stopping at a hospital in Indiana, seeing Molly as the head nurse there — seemed absolutely real at the time. As far as I know, that was the last "experience" I had that was all in my head.
Shirley Ryan being my longest stay, I remember a few things from there. One is that nobody works harder than nurses. Goof-offs are rare. Most of them are there to take care of business. One day I was being wheeled to the restroom. I thought, "I don't need this tee shirt" and I tried to pull it off over my head. Apparently I leaned forward too far, and I did a face-plant. So here I am with my face on the floor, too weak even to lift my head, and soon there are seven or eight pairs of feet standing in front of me. Some of them were wondering what to do, but some knew exactly what should happen next. Three of them picked me up and put me back in the wheelchair, and we all went on with the rest of our day.
There were three young docs who would come around some mornings and talk to the patients about some aspect of health and healthcare. At the end of their little talk, they would ask, "Are there any questions?" The first time I heard this, I raised my hand and asked, "Who was the Lone Ranger's nephew?" Of course, nobody knew the answer to this silly little bit of 80-year-old trivia. So I asked it every time. This was not senile dementia. There was method to the seeming madness. It was an experiment. I wanted to see how long it would take for someone to come up with the answer, and who it would be. I don't recall when I started this exercise, but it went on until December 6, the day before I left. In the walking lab I ran across one of those young docs. We visited for a little bit, and then, knowing what would be next, he asked, "Are there any questions?" Of course I asked, "Who was the Lone Ranger's nephew?" And he replied, "Dan Reid." I said, "You have made my day." I explained that this whole Lone Ranger exercise had been an experiment to see who would be curious enough to take a few minutes to look up the answer, and perhaps find out why this old man kept asking the same question over and over. He showed not only curiosity, but care for a patient who might be around the bend.
Meanwhile, the cousins were busy. Jerry came up to the farm from Texas, got the desktop computer out of my office above the shop, and sent it to Robert in Idaho. Robert eventually was able to transfer most of what I had on it to a later model, though I do miss some of the files that were lost in the process. Some in the family expected I would spend the rest of my life in a nursing home, and wouldn't last long. I'm not sure how many believed that, but Robert came to Chicago to take me to Idaho so I would be close to him and Ellen. I suspect that when he arrived at Shirley Ryan it came as something of a surprise that I was not a vegetable, but had most of my wits about me. Robert and I went to O'Hare on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, and flew to Idaho. He and Ellen had found a good place for me in Weizer. In a day or two I was back on solid food, not puree of this and puree of that. One thing I really liked in Weizer was that every table in the dining room had a salt shaker and a pepper shaker. I hate to have salt and pepper, if I can get them, in little paper packets. I was in Weizer Care for only three weeks. When I arrived there I used a wheelchair and a cane to get around, and by the time I left I had graduated to the cane most of the time, and was walking without it occasionally. Sometime in my string of hospitals and rehab centers my phone disappeared, along with all the saved numbers that I had kept in it. So while I was in Weiser I prevailed on Robert to take me to a Verizon store and I bought a replacement. I believe it was December 28 when Robert drove me to the airport in Boise and I was on my way to California. My plan was to stay with my brother in Lomita until I could get rid of the feeding tube, then I would fly home.
That's where I will interrupt the story and begin 2024.
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