Penultimate.

Jackson hat.

I do like that word as it is a strong word I feel.  Also, I feel it doesn’t dictate a positive or negative connotation. Tomorrow is my surgery, that is penultimate; or is today penultimate? Both, today comes before the surgery and the surgery comes before whatever is next.  Slow deep breathes are coming easy to me, I am calm and relaxed; I wish I was already done writing so I could relax a bit. I am so happy that I will finally have this surgery in the the morning.

And, a bit worried too.  An eight thirty check in.  I’ll be gowned up, laid down, and cut open.  A specialized extraction kit has already been ordered to remove the pair of Florida set screws clamping onto my bar.  Once they are removed it should easily slide out of the tunnel of skin it has created, as I should only need small incisions on either side, not all the way across.  Then the unscrewing of the pedicle screws buried two inches deep in my ilium’s.  And then.. a few squirts of alcohol, some stitches or staples, and more calcium tablets and ibuprofen.

Both times they have lied to me on the process of going under, silly games to calm a patient.  Put the mask on so we can check the airflow, then we’ll have you start counting before the meds flow.  Nope.  Never counted, couldn’t even start at one hundred.  I wanted to see how long I could make my mind stay if I knew to start trying hard.  I’m going to have to remember that tomorrow.  The two surgeries that I consented to (the first five I was unconscious) were in Florida, so I’ve have a whole new crew this time – my home team.

It’s been a long year with doctors and at the end of the day (tomorrow) they came through well, pulled out my bar, woke me up, gave me my bar, and sent me home.  And if that is true, I will replace that sentence with a novel. Someday. It won’t be just the doctors though, there would be a lot of characters in the twenty twenty two book, or movie (my friend Patrick insists this be a screenplay.)

Enough chit chat, it is eleven twenty five. I’d venture to say I have finished packing today  I mean, it’s not “drive-away” done. However the bulk of the hard work is done, and it was hard even once I backed my car right up to my porch steps.  The last item from Amazon came a day early, a tripod for my forty foot fiberglass mast.  Coupled with some screw in tie down stakes, I think it should make a solid platform for my two meter base radio-

Well, by base I mean my mobile radio, a Yausu FTM-400XDR.  However, once I get there (there being a loose word in the south west direction towards Corpus Cristi.) This radio will be sta (ha, had to stop and send a message, eleven forty three.) ..will be stationary once I set up camp, at least permanent (for a week or two) camp that is, at which point I will switch its input from my center roof mounted five eights wave two meter (and six meter and four forty) NMO mounted Larsen to a home made to a two meter quarter wave ground plane antenna mounted atop my forty foot fiberglass pole.

Then it will be base and I plan to use my HT (handheld sized radio,) a Yausu FT-3DR to carry with me each day as I walk.  My HT also has built in GPS receiver, enough chips and modem, to be able to automatically send out a short (five second) radio broadcast on a specific frequency containing my location, speed, altitude, etc.  That radio transmission will then be received by my base (the parked mobile with a tall antenna,) through it’s modem, sent to another computer, repeated again so others in the area with an HT could contact me (like a TXT message,) and uploaded to the internet to display on this map.

Let me through in some more pics, stories yet to be told when I have more time:

Time to rest.

 

 

 

packing

phone number 517-769-590, 50 cent credit check.

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