Deceleration Day

July 24, 2025

Today is a milestone day, one I've been both eagerly awaiting and apprehensive about and maybe even slightly afraid of. I'm surprised now to look back and realize it's been nearly four weeks since I was released from the hospital with my prednisone dosage dialed down just a notch, from 40 milligrams per day to 35.

Finally it's time to taper my prednisone dosage again, down from 35 to 30. And if the transition to Tyenne goes as hoped for, the remaining transition will go quickly with another 5 mpd reduction each week until I'm off completely less than two months from now. In parallel with this I'll have weekly blood tests to confirm that Tyenne is working as hoped and the disease isn't reactivating with the lowered prednisone doses.

So on the one hand, this is very exciting for both of us because we're way beyond ready to see the last of prednisone in our lives. But on the other hand there's the anxiety and fear - what if it doesn't work? Then what? We'll know soon enough, because back in Europe I started seeing returning symptoms when I dropped to about 20 mpd.

So here's the plan for the day. Mine starts with a trip to Ovation for a first cup of coffee before biking north to Bread and Honey Cafe for breakfast when it opens at 7. After that I'll bike over to Kaiser, get tested, and then return home to continue with the Archival Project with today's goal being the removal of the dining room table.

Besides letting me see my first cup at 6, it works well to stop in at Ovation first and stay on this side of the river long enough so that the sun is higher above the horizon. It's still bright when I bike east across the Broadway Bridge, but not so bad that I can't see objects ahead of me.

It's been a couple of weeks since I last stopped in at Bread and Honey, and it's pleasing to mentally compare how I'm doing now against the last time. I'm much more in control and confident biking this time, and that feeling continues all the way to Kaiser with me having an easier time negotiating the four hairpin bends on the pedestrian freeway overpass.

At Bread and Honey I take a pass on the free rim on offer by the bike rack and settle instead for a potato leek pie.

The free rim is a definite temptation but I decide to check out the display case inside first.

Potat leek pie consumed, second cup downed, blood drawn, I'm coasting down Interstate on my way home by ten o'clock. I check in with Rachael to let her know to be available when she's needed to extract the table, and then head over to the storage unit to get to work.

Removing the coffee table yesterday was a breakthrough accomplishment, but a really difficult one. The surprise today is that getting the table out of the unit and into the car is every bit as challenging as yesterday. First, I have to haul the same raft of crap out into the hall that I did yesterday, to get everything off the table and out of the way so it can slide forward. And then I need to move the boxes underneath the table so that they don't block the legs of the table and prevent it being slid forward. And then I need to crawl under the table and unbolt the legs so the table can be disassembled. And it's every bit as hard as this kind of work was yesterday because it's still hot and humid and I'm still working in a cramped environment. I go through three shirts in three days because I'm perspiring so badly by the time I'm done.

But I get it done, and then give Rachael a call to come over while I go downstairs and pull the car into the loading bay.

In some ways, removing the heavy Oregon oak dining room table is easier than removing the plate glass coffee table. Both are heavy, but the glass table is probably heavier. And the rounded shapes of the glass table are harder to work with, and it was especially difficult lifting them straight up from the floor in the narrow space behind the oak table. Actually, it's a surprise that neither of us woke up with back problems this morning.

In other ways though the oak table is just as difficult because the dimensions of the components are wider - too wide to be loaded onto the cart and wheeled out through the doorway at the end of the hall, so we end up needing to muscle them around the corner and leaned against the wall where we lift/slide them down the hall and through the doorway where we can finally load them onto the cart on the other side.

But we get it done.

And the result when we're done is a thing of beauty - a five by ten foot storage unit with no furniture inside. It's still full of a raft of crap, but everything is easy to get to now - you can see it, and you can just bend over to examine or pick up or move things. Suddenly all remaining problems look trivial. We did it!

After carefully lifting and sliding the parts of the table into the car, Rachael heads upstairs while I drive off to the Goodwill on Ochoco again, having a much better time of it today by choosing routing for cars rather than bicycles.

And before we leave this let's look back at how we got here in the first place, when we created the blueprint for loading the storage unit seven years ago. And actually it was much worse then because we started with only a 5'by 6' unit and hadn't gotten a bike storage locker then. Reading back on it now, I'm pretty impressed that we came up with a plan that more or less worked:

One other thing to say about the day - well, four things if you include our celebration dinner at Serrato, scoops of pistachio and Turkish coffee gelato eaten staring across Tanner Springs Park and a viewing of Kind Hearts and Coronets to round out the day: Rachael Ann has new shoes!

After Rachael's maybe overly ambitious 12 mile walk yesterday she woke up this morning with her toe throbbing again. She called off plans for that Mount Tabor/Thai food loop we had planned and decided it was time to walk over to the nearby Keens outlet and see if a different type of footwear would be an improvement. Great idea, Rocky!

I often enjoy thinking back on all the magical summer evenings Rachael and I spent listening to live music performances at the Portland Zoo. For about five years the zoo concerts were an important part of our summer, and when the lineup was announced we'd go through all of the choices and pick maybe five of them to purchase tickets for and lock down our calendar for the summer.

One of those acts, Rodrigo y Gabriella, makes me think of how I am at the moment: still super-hyper, but in control.

Today's ride: 10 miles (16 km)
Total: 269 miles (433 km)

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