Tag Archives: driving

What It’s Like to Tow a 15,000-lb Fifth Wheel Trailer 1,500 miles

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Or why I’ll never be a long-haul trucker.

I’m writing this from the relative comfort of the desk in my RV. I just completed a 3-1/2 day drive from Arizona to Washington State and am parked alongside a very large garage adjacent to a private heliport at a friend’s house in Auburn.

I’m resting.

The drive was a lot more difficult than I imagined. Difficult enough for me to blog about it. In detail.

No, I’m not going to give you turn-by-turn driving instructions and list the sights I saw along the way. No one really wants to read stuff like that. If you’re at all interested, you can read about the first two days of the drive here. I wrote that two days ago when I was still relatively fresh.

Instead, I’ll tell you why I’m exhausted and why I’m glad I don’t have to drive again tomorrow.

Towing: the Basics

My RV is a 36-foot long Montana Mountaineer fifth wheel. Because our 2001 Chevy Silverado 3/4 ton pickup already had a gooseneck hitch receptor on it, I converted the RV’s hitch to a gooseneck. Well, I didn’t do it. The folks I bought the RV from did it. It makes it a bit tricky to hook up — still not sure how I’m going to line it up when I need to hitch it alone — but it does keep the pickup’s bed free of a bunch of extra hardware.

The trailer is 15,000 pounds max gross weight. I didn’t weigh it before this trip — I wanted to, but didn’t get around to it. (There’s a scale at the local dump in Wickenburg, so it wouldn’t have been so tough. Weigh the truck alone, then weigh the truck with the trailer and do the math.) I don’t think it’s fully loaded, but I bet it still close enough to 15,000 pounds to make the weight debate moot.

The truck can pull the weight. Its manual says it can and it can. I push a button on the gear shift lever to turn on the towing package feature and the Duramax diesel and Allison transmission do the rest. It stays in a lower gear so I can get it up to highway speed and then shifts back down into a lower gear when I brake for engine braking.

It takes a while for the truck to get up to highway speed. Normally, the truck is remarkably peppy for a diesel. That’s one of the things I like about it. But add 15,000 pounds and it’s working hard. 0 to 60 takes about 30 seconds. If I’m on flat road. Add an uphill climb and I might not even get it up to 60.

Add a downhill coast and I’ll have trouble keeping it below 60. And that’s the problem.

The Trick is to Avoid Using the Brakes

Imagine a freight train barreling along at 50 miles an hour. Now imagine some idiot stalled at a crossing on the tracks. He’d better get his ass out of the car and hope his insurance is up-to-date.

I once spoke to a train engineer for Conrail in New Jersey. He told me that if there’s something on the tracks, they don’t even bother trying to stop. Why? Because they won’t be able to stop in time anyway. It could take over a mile for a freight train moving at cruising speed to come to a complete stop. Why? Because of the inertia of all that weight moving at cruise speed.

As I gained experience at the helm of my own personal freight train, I quickly learned that my main goal should be to drive in such a way that I minimized the use of the brakes. There are three reasons for this:

  • It takes a long time to stop — or even to slow down. The less often you need to stop or slow down, the better off you are.
  • Using the brakes wastes fuel. Look at it this way: you pump a lot of fuel through the engine at high RPMs in a lower gear to get the damn thing moving. If you hit the brakes, not only are you throwing away all the stored energy in your weight and speed, but the engine is going to downshift again and use more fuel at high RPMs to slow you back down. May as well punch a hole in the fuel tank and let it drain out.
  • Using the brakes wears down the brakes and works the engine. You have to press harder on the brakes to get a reaction out of them. That means you’re wearing them down more. And with engine braking, the poor engine is working hard even when you’re slowing down. Is that fair?

It’s the Stress that Exhausted Me

The difficulty in slowing down or stopping is where all the stress comes in.

The entire time I was driving, I was on alert. I needed to know that I had to stop or slow down before I had to stop or slow down. So I looked at every other vehicle around me — as well as traffic lights and stop signs when I wasn’t on the freeway — with a critical eye. Is that guy in front of me going to hit his brakes? Is the idiot next to him going to cut me off? Is that traffic light up ahead going to turn yellow before I get to it? Is that school bus up ahead going to stop?

Even when I was on straight, flat freeway with no other vehicles around me, I couldn’t relax. At one point, a dog ran into the freeway in front of me. A dog! Like that freight train engineer, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop in time. If he didn’t get out of the road, I’d run right over him, just like a freight train. There’s no way I’d try to swerve at 60 MPH with all that weight behind me. I leaned on the truck’s horn. Fortunately for the dog, he ran back where he came from without becoming my victim.

So all day long, hour after hour, I was tensed up, fully alert and ready to react before I needed to. It exhausted me.

Now Add Some Mountains

The route I chose was mountainous. In Death Valley, I was 230 feet below sea level. Near Mammoth Lakes, CA, I was at over 8,000 feet above sea level. For three days, it seemed like all I did was climb up and down mountains.

Up wasn’t a big deal. Press the pedal and burn fuel in second or third gear, trying to maintain a decent speed so as not to annoy the people behind me. It didn’t matter if there was a curve up ahead — I probably wasn’t going fast enough to make negotiating it a problem.

But down…well, that’s another story entirely. The Chevy has never been a good coaster — my 1994 Ford F150 is far better at that — but add 15,000 pounds and gravity can turn anything into a coaster. I had to use the brakes going downhill just to prevent the speed from climbing higher than I could handle. The transmission did its part, of course, but that wasn’t enough on the 9% grade (not a typo) coming down into the Panamint Valley in Death Valley National Park. In second gear, with the engine red-lining, I was still pumping the brakes to keep the speed below 50 miles per hour as I negotiated curves on a two-lane road that hugged the side of a cliff.

You want to talk stress? I can’t imagine anything more stressful than that.

Add Rain

Actually, I can: wet pavement on those curvy downhill stretches.

The rain started on Day 3 and haunted me for the whole day. That’s the day I descended from the mountains in Northern California into southern Oregon. There was this one stretch just south of Ashland on I-5…a lengthy downhill ride hugging the side of a mountain with curves marked for 50 mph. Bad enough dry, but nightmarish when wet and surrounded by tractor-trailer trucks. Who the hell designs highways like that?

I’m an Arizonan. I don’t drive in rain because it doesn’t rain. When it does rain, the roads are slick because of oil accumulation. It’s terrifying. How slick were these roads? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to find out. I just struggled to keep my speed down, imagining the horrific crash if the trailer decided to slide a different direction than the truck was going.

Overreacting? Perhaps.

Reading this, you probably think I’m a sissy. But I have a lot of miles under my belt — I’ve driven clear across the country more times than I can count and have made 3-1/2 round trips from Arizona to Washington since 2005. I’ve driven everything from motorcycles to this rig, including hundreds of different rental cars.

But driving this rig was unlike anything else I’d ever driven. It wasn’t like my Ducati, which I could whip around curves by tossing my weight around. It wasn’t like my Honda S2000, which red-lines at 9,000 RPM and has just the tiniest bit of body roll in curves. It wasn’t even like the Chevy without its load, able to accelerate or stop quicker than you’d think a truck should.

Just the knowledge that slowing down or stopping was going to be so tough had me on edge the entire time.

And that’s what kept me safe.

But when it’s time to return to Arizona, I know one thing for sure: I’ll be planning the route with the straightest, flattest roads I can find.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of yet another lengthy blog post here on An Eclectic Mind. If you got this far, you must have gotten something out of what you read. And isn’t it nice to read Web content that isn’t full of annoying ads?

How about doing something to show your appreciation? I’d love it if you’d add a comment at the end of this post to share your feedback with me and others. But I’d really love it if you’d visit my Support page and chip in a few dollars to help cover the cost of hosting this blog and motivate me to keep writing new, interesting content. It’ll only take a moment and I really would appreciate it!

 

On the Road Again

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Notes from halfway down the long drive from Wickenburg to Seattle.

I’m writing this from a Walmart parking lot. I’m propped up in a queen sized bed with three pillows behind my back and my laptop on my lap. It’s 3:30 in the morning and I’m pretty much wide awake after just over five hours of sleep. It isn’t noise that woke me — this Susanville, CA parking lot is remarkably quiet. I guess I’m just done sleeping for the night. But it’s too early to continue my travels along winding mountain roads, so I figured I’d share an update on my blog.

This isn’t a pleasure trip — although parts of it have been very pleasant. It’s for work; I’m repositioning a truck and my new RV from Arizona to Washington State for the summer. The RV will be my home away from home as I work on cherry drying contracts for central Washington growers. The truck is needed not only to pull this massive fifth wheel trailer but to carry the refueling system I need to meet my contractual obligations.

The Truck

I’ve written about my new RV elsewhere in this blog, so I won’t repeat that here. But I’ve probably neglected the truck. It’s my husband’s truck: a 2001 Chevy Silverado 3/4 ton pickup. It has a Duramax Diesel engine with towing package and an Allison transmission. A “man’s” truck, capable of towing more than 15,000 pounds. (We bought it new in 2001 to tow a horse trailer with living quarters that I’ve since sold.) Inside, it has many creature comforts, including heated leather seats, power windows, and stereo system with iPod connection. The truck runs well and is up to the task of towing my home away from home over 1,000 miles.

I’ve mounted my old Garmin 60c GPS over the dash and have it wired into one of the DC power outlets. I’d loaded in topo maps (my preferred map type) for my entire route and then some. I’m using it mostly as a trip computer, to calculate distance driven, average speed, etc. I’m keeping close track of fuel consumption so I can calculate burn rates.

I’ve also clipped my cell phone case to the visor and connected it to another DC outlet. I’m wearing my Bluetooth earpiece for most of the trip for safer hands-free communication — when I can get a signal. Verizon has the best network — which is why I use it — but even Verizon doesn’t cover some of the places I’ve driven through on this trip. I can hear the signal fade in and out with beeps in my right ear as I drive.

The Route and Stops

Track Me!
If I’m traveling — whether by helicopter or on a long drive — you can usually follow my SPOT Messenger track online at tinyurl.com/FindMaria

Every year I choose a different route for this drive, shunning freeways as much as possible. This year, the route included stops to visit with friends in Las Vegas and Reno, NV, and Ashland, OR. The route began in Wickenburg, AZ and headed west on route 60. What followed was a numeric alphabet soup of route numbers: 72 and 95 to Parker, 62 and 95 to Needles, 40 and 95 to Boulder City, 95 and 215 to Las Vegas, etc. You get the idea.

In Vegas, I visited with my friends Jim and Judith. Jim is a helicopter pilot who flies a Hughes 500c. He and his wife, Judith, lived in Wickenburg for quite a while but, like most of our other friends, bailed out when the saw the reality of the situation there. They moved to the San Diego area for a while, then various places in California, and finally in Las Vegas.

Jim, an airline pilot who took early retirement years ago — luckily, before the airline went belly up — is an inventor. He designs, manufactures, and sells power external aircraft power units called StartPacs. They’re used primarily for starting turbine engines, although he has a whole range of power products now, from power sources a pilot can use while fiddling with his avionics on the ground to big, self-propelled APUs for bizjets. When they left Wickenburg, they took their business with them. They now employ a handful of people in their Las Vegas office and manufacturing facility. Jim gave me a tour after lunch on Monday and showed me some of the new designs he’s gotten patents for.

I left Vegas and headed west and then north through Pahrump. Another road took me west again. By 4 PM, I was in Death Valley. Although the temperatures should have been topping 100°F there this time of year, it was unseasonably cool, in the high 80s, with plenty of cloud cover. There were also signs of rain coming from the clouds, but the ranger at the Visitor Center assured me that it was unlikely for any drops to reach the ground.

On one ranger’s suggestion, I made my way to Panamint Springs. After a long, slow climb up over the mountains, I experienced a harrowing descent down a 9% grade. The truck’s tow package really helped out, downshifting to 2nd gear automatically to reduce my need to ride the brakes. Note to self: avoid Route 190 between Stovepipe Wells and Panamint Springs when towing a 36-foot RV.

Panamint Springs is still inside Death Valley National Park, but it overlooks the Panamint Valley, which is one valley west. It consists of a motel-like lodge, restaurant, and dirt lot dressed up as a campground. I paid $15 for a water-only hookup for my RV for the night. (I didn’t bother hooking up; I didn’t need water.) I had a heck of a time getting the RV into its pull-through spot. Although it was plenty long enough, the campground designers had placed large boulders at either side of the driveway. Making the turn without damaging the RV’s underside was tough. But I eventually managed and Alex the Bird and I settled in for the evening. I watched the changing light on the mountainsides from a patio table at the restaurant. At night, it was dead quiet and very dark. I stepped outside to admire a sky full of stars with a crescent moon before turning in for the night.

The next morning, I was on the road at 7 AM, continuing west on Route 190. After fueling up just outside of Lone Pine, I continued north on Route 395. I didn’t realize that route was so mountainous. After leaving Bishop, the truck did a lot of climbing, eventually reaching over 8,000 feet elevation. (This was the day after descending to -230 feet in Death Valley.)

On the urging of my friend, Rod, I detoured to the Ghost Town of Bodie. That required me to negotiate 14 miles of narrow, windy road, the last three of which were unpaved. I was extremely pleased to see that the parking area was large enough to make a U-turn in without having to back up. I put Alex in the camper while I went to explore the townsite on foot with my camera. I’ll likely write about that in another blog post, when I get the photos off my camera.

I met Rod for lunch in the Reno area, not far from where route 395 intersects with I-80. Rod lives in Georgetown, CA; I’d visited him and his wife, Liz, there by helicopter several times in the past. This time, I was on the other side of the Sierra Nevada mountains and wasn’t planning on crossing. But Rod made the 2+ hour drive from Georgetown to Reno to meet with me. Rod’s also a helicopter pilot — he flies fires in twin-engine helicopters like Hueys — in the summer. The rest of the year, he does odd jobs around home. We had a very late lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Sparks, NV.

Then I continued my drive north on route 395, ending up here in Susanville.

Highlights of the Trip

I’ve driven through some beautiful scenery over the past two days. Snow-capped mountains, sheer granite cliffs, dry lake beds, sand dunes, layered rock thrust up on an angle and eroded to expose lines of color. Blue lakes, rushing rivers, puffy white clouds in otherwise clear blue skies. Herds of wild burros, pastures full of horses and cattle, deer. The ruins of a town in the middle of nowhere that once was home to over 10,000 people.

It’s all a blur. A trip like this on a route like this shouldn’t be crammed into a few days. It should be slowed down and savored, with stops here and there to take in the sights and sounds and smells. This isn’t quality sightseeing — it’s motoring. I may as well be on a freeway.

Later today, I’ll drop down from the mountains to I-5 near the Oregon border. From there, I’ll follow the Interstate north into Oregon. After another lunch with another helicopter pilot friend, I’ll make my way north to the Seattle area. I’ll camp out in yet another helicopter pilot friend’s yard. Whether I can get there today depends on how twisty and mountainous the roads between Susanville and I-5 are; I’ll know by lunchtime.

Two Kinds of Road Trips

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Reflections on traveling long distance by car.

The TruckThis past week, I traveled with my sister as part of a convoy of vehicles moving her from New Jersey to Florida. The other vehicles included my dad in a Budget rental truck (see photo) containing the contents of my sister’s recently sold condo and my dad’s wife in an SUV. We buzzed down I-95 at highway speed, stopping only for food, fuel, and bladder demands.

If you’ve ever driven I-95 — or most freeways, for that matter — you know how mind-numbingly boring the trip can be. You’re moving at 55 to 75 miles per hour down a corridor that’s often straighter than an arrow shaft. Although there are occasional scenic vistas, they’re usually ruined by the tractor-trailer trucks you’re passing (or passing you). The main points of interest are the billboards and the variety of fast food joints and hotel chains at exits. The only excitement comes when some jackass cuts you off or something falls off the trailer in front of you.

The benefit of the interstate highway system is speed, of course. If there’s no construction or accidents or rush-hour traffic in a major metropolitan area, you can zip right along to your destination. We travelled almost exactly 1,000 miles over a day and a half. My dad routinely makes this drive to/from farther south without an overnight stop. It’s a lot of driving, though. And it just isn’t fun.

Each year, I drive from the Phoenix area to Central Washington State and back towing a travel trailer. It’s about 1,200 miles each way. Although Google Maps tries to put me on freeways for the entire trip, I don’t go that way. Instead, I take the back roads that criss-cross the western states. Last year, I was mainly on Route 93. This year, I was mainly on Route 95. These are long two-lane, so-called “blue highways” that pass through small western towns and cities. Along the way, you can get a feel for the landscape and the way folks live. There’s seldom any traffic and the speed limit is often as high as 65 mph so you can move from place to place at a reasonable pace. You can stop just about anywhere along the way and although your choices for meals and fuel and hotels might be limited, they’re not just the same chain establishments you’ll see along the freeway. It’s a whole different way to travel, a whole different experience.

What I like about the blue highways is the opportunities to stop at interesting spots along the way. Instead of pulling into a McDonald’s for lunch, I might stop in a parking area with a scenic view and have a picnic lunch there. Instead of staying overnight at a Super 8 motel adjacent to a truck stop or parking my camper in a Walmart parking lot, I might roll into a state park and camp alongside a creek. If there’s a historic site or roadside attraction, I can easily pull over to take some time there and enjoy it. I can change my route at any intersection. Best of all, I set the pace.

Back in 2005, I conducted what I like to call my “midlife crisis road trip.” I hopped into my little red Honda S2000 with some luggage and credit cards and hit the road for 16 days. I traveled almost every day, getting as far away from Arizona as Mt. St. Helens in Washington, western Montana, and Yellowstone National Park. I had a general idea of where I wanted to go, but no reservations and no need to be anywhere on any day. I slept in motels, hotels, rustic cabins, and even a yurt. I ate all kinds of meals, from crappy fast food and terrible coffee at drive-thru joints to fine dining at the foot of Mt. Shasta. I made side trips daily, visited parks, and talked to lots of strangers. I put more than 5,000 miles on my car, got two oil changes on the road, and even replaced the rear tires after wearing them out. (Z-rated tires just don’t last very long.) I had a great time — better than most vacations — and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

While I realize that this week’s trip wasn’t for pleasure — the goal was to get my sister, her car, and her belongings from New Jersey to Florida in the minimum amount of time — it certainly did highlight the differences between my usual kind of road trip and motoring down the interstate between points A and B.

And it reminded me why I prefer the blue highways when enjoying the trip is more important than getting to the destination.

At Paradise Cove

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A story and a few photos.

I was driving down the California coast, looking for a place to stop for breakfast — preferably with a view of the ocean — when I saw a sign for Paradise Cove. I followed the arrow down a narrow road that wound down to the ocean. There was a right turn into a trailer park, but if I went straight, I’d end up in a parking lot on the ocean. A sign warned that parking was $20, but only $3 if you got your parking ticket validated in the restaurant and stayed for less than 4 hours. Ahead of me was a funky little oceanfront restaurant with a handful of cars parked in front of it. I drove through the gate and parked.

The Paradise Cove Beach CafeAnd went inside the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe.

It was a typical seaside restaurant — the kind you can imagine filled with people in bathing suits, eating fried clams, with sand and flip-flops on their feet. (That’s my east coast seaside experience talking.) But that Saturday morning was partly cloudy and unseasonably cool for southern California. The main dining room was empty. I was escorted into a kind of sundeck room with big windows facing the ocean. Although all the window tables were full, the waiter kindly sat me at a huge table nearby, where I could enjoy the view as well as the activity going on around me.

I checked out the menu, eager for a big, hot breakfast. I didn’t plan to eat again until after my flight arrived in Phoenix later that evening. Some items on the menu interested me, but it was the eggs benedict I asked the waiter about.

“Are they good?” There’s nothing worse than bad eggs benedict when you’re expecting decent eggs benedict.

“Very good,” he assured me.

I settled down to wait for my breakfast. There was nothing much going on outside the window. Gulls flying around, a few people walking out on the obligatory but short pier. It was mostly dark and cloudy over the ocean, but the sun was breaking through here and there. I watched my fellow diners get their breakfasts delivered. Everything looked outrageously good.

When my breakfast arrived, it looked good. On the plate were two eggs benedict, a good sized portion of roasted potatoes, and some melon slices. I nibbled a potato. It was cooked to perfection. And then I tasted the eggs benedict.

I’ve had eggs benedict in a lot of places — including a lot of fancy and expensive hotel restaurants. But these eggs benedict were the best I’d ever had in my life. It may have been the fact that the eggs were cooked perfectly — whites cooked, yolks still runny. Or the fact that the english muffins beneath them were fresh and not over-toasted. But it was probably because the hollandaise sauce was light and airy and obviously freshly prepared from scratch — not some thick yellow crap from a mix.

You like eggs benedict? Go on out to the Paradise Cove Cafe in Malibu and get some.

I was just finishing up my breakfast when a man about my age came in with two elderly ladies. They got a table by the window near where I was sitting. I watched them, trying not to look obvious about it, recognizing something about them. It came to me slowly. He was the grandson taking his grandmother and her friend out to breakfast.

They reminded me so much of all the times I’d taken my grandmother out to breakfast. This may have been because the woman had the same New York accent my grandmother had. She also spoke rather loudly, had trouble hearing her grandson, and asked the waiter all kinds of questions. She was concerned about whether she’d have to pay for a refill of her “mocha” — a simple mix of coffee and hot chocolate prepared by the waiter. She praised the waiter extensively about how well he’d prepared that mocha for her. The other woman was quieter but seemed to have the same accent. The grandson was attentive but, on more than one occasion, obviously embarrassed.

I knew exactly how he felt.

Before I left, I got up to say hello to them. I discovered that the women were from the Bronx — the same area as my grandmother. The quiet woman was the grandmother’s sister. She complemented me on the way my blue earrings made my eyes look bluer. I could easily have chatted with them all day.

Up the CoastAfterwards, I went outside and took a walk on the pier. I took a photo looking up the coast (shown here) and another looking down the coast (shown below). Amazing that these two photos were taken only moments apart, isn’t it? But the weather was variable and moving quickly. A huge storm front was moving into southern California that would dump rain on the low elevations and snow on the higher ones.

Paradise Cove and places like it are part of the reason I like to travel alone. When you’re traveling with companions, every stop has to be debated and measured. No one ever wants to say, “Let’s stop here and check it out,” because no one wants to be responsible if the place turns out to be rat hole. As a result, opportunities to visit interesting places are missed. Instead, a trip is a long string of predetermined “must see” places, visited one after another with few spontaneous stops along the way.

Down the CoastThere was magic at the Paradise Cove Cafe — at least for me that morning. If I’d been with someone else — someone anxious to eat breakfast before starting the drive or satisfied with a chain restaurant for a meal — I would have missed that magic.

I also would have missed out on photo opportunities. When I’m on the road by myself, I stop more often to look at what’s around me and, if I can, take pictures. On this particular Saturday, all I had with me was my little Nikon CoolPix point-and-shoot, but I put it to good use. The weather was a mixture of thick clouds and blue sky. It was the kind of place and day that calls out to photographers. The photos I’m able to include with this blog entry will help me remember this day. (I even took a stealth photo of the grandson/grandmother/aunt outing with my Treo, although I won’t publish it here.)

Anyway, I walked back to my rental car, fired it up, and paid my $3 parking fee on the way out. It had been well worth the money.

A Perfect Storm

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Why I’ve been neglecting this blog.

I don’t have much time to write this — and that’s the reason I haven’t been writing more regularly. I like to compose at least 5 blog posts a week, yet this is only my third in just over a week. The last post — a video — doesn’t really count, since I didn’t write anything.

So why the neglect? As I mentioned above: time.

Every once in a while, life throws a perfect storm at us. You know what I mean — it’s a period of time when everything seems to go crazy at once.

In my case, it was the following, which have all occurred since July 29:

  • Completion of the annual revision of one of my books (ongoing throughout this period).
  • Reposition my helicopter from Quincy, WA to Seattle, WA.
  • Reposition my camper from Quincy, WA to Page, AZ.
  • Brief 3-day catchup period at home in Wickenburg, AZ.
  • Distribute the animals among multiple boarding facilities.
  • Trip to Seattle, WA.
  • Reposition helicopter from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ.
  • Set up housekeeping in my camper in Page, AZ.
  • Entertain an overnight guest in a very tiny camper.
  • Deal with FAA, airport manager, and local tour operators in Page regarding tour, photo flight, and charter work in Page, AZ (ongoing).
  • Provide moral support for my sister, who has been laid off from her banking job.
  • Three photo flights from Page to Monument Valley.
  • Start of new book with August deadline.
  • Three trips to medical facilities in an attempt to diagnose some severe back pain.

It’s this last thing that’s really gummed up the works. I did something to my back while I was home and the pain became unbearable after the commercial flight to Seattle the next day. I was in an urgent care clinic there where I got prescriptions for drugs I couldn’t take because I had to fly. The pain has varied from annoying but bearable to absolutely crippling every day since then, with one day so bad I was in the hospital emergency room. It hurt to sit and since I need to sit to write, I couldn’t work on the new book — let alone write blog entries.

Miraz hit the nail on the head in her Twitter comment to me, when she said, “Pain is so time consuming and draining.” Wow. I’d never really thought of it like that — probably because I’ve never been in such severe pain for so long.

So now I’m behind in just about everything, racing against the clock to finish a book that’s due tomorrow. (It ain’t gonna happen.) The pain is under control — yesterday was the first day that it was tolerable throughout the day — and physical therapy starts on Monday.

Please bear with me. I do have lots to write about. When I get this book off my plate and catch up on my FAA stuff, I’ll be back with some interesting (I hope) new content here.