August 31, 2023
Appointments
Thursday Morning
It’s raining! This must be the first really wet day in Portland for quite a while, maybe the only one so far this summer. It’ll be too wet for either of us to be tempted to bike or even take a walk today, which suits me well enough- with two medical appointments chopping up the day I probably wasn’t going to get out on the bike anyway. It’s just for today though, and starting tomorrow the weather looks to be excellent for the remaining days until departure - significantly cooler than it has been lately, with the air of autumn about.
So, even though there’s not a lot new to report it’s a good time to catch up on the journal while I sit around the coffee shop nursing my second cup and looking out the window from time to time at the rain coming down.
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Tuesday
One thing to comment on is the crush of appointments clogging up our schedules this week. Tuesday I’m in for my dental hygiene appointment, where I’m told that I’m really overdue for a deep-cleaning treatment if I hope to keep my remaining teeth. There’s some discussion about when this can happen since we leave the country in ten days, and when we come back in November I’ll be on blood thinners after my ablation surgery. After much discussion and calendar consultation they find a solution. They’ll do half of my mouth now and the other half Thursday, skipping their lunch break so they can fit me in before I rush over to Kaiser for the CT scan needed in advance of my cardiac surgery.
None of this holds up Rachael though, who puts in her 45 miles biking out along the Columbia and back.
Wednesday
Wednesday I wake up early thinking about my knees - something that’s been happening on an almost daily basis recently. They really seem like they’ve gotten worse over the last year and are inhibiting my activity, and I’ve been lying there wondering if I’ll need surgery eventually. At this point in life I’d hate the disruption that would bring, imagining I’d lose a season or year in recovery and rehab like I did when I ruptured my quad tendon a decade ago. Who knows if we’d ever get back in the touring groove after that?
I finally decide though that it’s really time to at least consult someone about it, so I get up at about four and fire off a request to my doctor to refer me to a joint specialist. I’m thinking maybe I’ll set up an appointment for when we’re back in November, so I’m flabbergasted when I get up again two hours later and find a response from him already, with only one question: one knee or two? He’s scheduled me for X-rays and wants to order the right number. He instructs me to get myself imaged and then set up an appointment with him - and, amazingly enough, he’s got time to speak with me on Friday. Unreal.
So suddenly my plan for the day includes a trip to Kaiser to get my knees x-rayed. I decide I’ll start by heading down to Umbria for breakfast, bike over to Kaiser, and then maybe bike out Leif Erickson Drive afterwards. When I sit down at Umbria though and start unpacking the rucksack something doesn’t look right when I spread my items out on the table. I’ve got the right complement for a change, except that somehow I’ve brought along Rachael’s glasses instead of my own. She’ll want them if she takes a ride after her appointment, so I call her up and tell her I’ll wait around until she’s done at the dentist so we can meet up and hand off her specs.
Her appointment runs long - long enough that by the time she’s out we realize she doesn’t really need her glasses after all because she doesn’t have time for a ride since we both have to be back home by two for an afternoon date. And long enough too so that I don’t have time for my own ride either, especially after I end up waiting for a half hour at Kaiser to get xrayed.
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Our afternoon is outstanding, probably the most enjoyable time of our stay here. It starts with us walking down to Jakes for an excellent grilled steelhead lunch. After that we have an hour to kill so we walk around downtown looking for a department store where I can buy some new underwear (one of the items on my predeparture check list) and then head over to the cultural center for an outdoor concert, the last one in this summer’s Music on Main series. This is a weekly event on Main Street between the Schnitzer and the Performing Arts Center that runs for a couple months. We hoped to come here two weeks ago to hear Ashleigh Flynn after we got back from Astoria, but it was over 100 then and we just couldn’t face sitting outdoors in that heat for three hours.
Today is different though. It’s in the low seventies, mild, perfect. We arrive an hour early so we can get a good seat at one of the paying tables, buying our way in by ordering a beer and a watermelon and tomato salad to share. It’s really perfect, sitting there listening to the very agreeable Freddy Trujillo and enjoying the ambience. It’s the kind of evening that reminds us of how much we loved living here for fifteen years.
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8 months ago
8 months ago
Thursday evening
The day continued as it began, raining throughout save for a short midafternoon break. In the meantime I made it back to the dentist for the second half of my deep cleaning experience and then to Kaiser for my CT scan. No biking for either one of us, except that Rachael took a six and a half mile walk over to an afternoon cycle class at a gym in the Pearl District in the afternoon while I drove over to the Lab then waited around for her call to give her a ride home.
Back on the bikes tomorrow!
Today's ride: 8 miles (13 km)
Total: 194 miles (312 km)
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8 months ago
8 months ago