Road Tips

We Missed the "Storm of the Decade"

For the past few days, forecasters have been touting an upcoming winter storm that was supposed to hit the Quad Cities this week as the "most intense storm we've seen in 20 to 30 years".  It hit us on late Tuesday afternoon and lasted well through the whole day on Wednesday.  We did get about 8 to 12 inches of snow with blizzard conditions hitting our area by mid-morning on Wednesday.  While that sounds pretty bad, it wasn't as bad around here as they initially said it would be.

(As always, you can click on the pictures to get a larger image.)

It was a heavy, wet snow that fell.  Temperatures weren't too bad - hovering around the freezing mark all day on Tuesday and well into Tuesday evening.  But the intense low pressure system that was responsible for the storm went a little further north on its track, dumping heavy amounts of snow West, Northwest and Northeast of the Quad Cities.   To illustrate how powerful the storm was, the National Weather Service in Chicago recorded the lowest barometric pressure reading in 20 years as the low passed over the city yesterday morning.

Cindy was sent home from work early on Tuesday and was told that she may not have to work on Wednesday.  The heavy wet flakes that started out suddenly turned to a sleet and freezing rain mixture late in the afternoon.  That continued for a good portion of the evening as temperatures stayed close to the freezing mark through the night. 

One highlight of the storm, the trees in the neighborhood had a beautiful snow-coating on them yesterday morning.  The light mist, fog and light snow mixture gave everything a wonderful winter look.  I sort of like the first snow when everything is so white and pristine.  But it gets sort of old after, oh, about an hour. 

Because it didn't snow that much overnight, Cindy was able to get to work - even though it did take her about 20 minutes longer than usual.  The main roads in town were plowed, yet slushy.  It was a slow commute for everyone this morning.

But that's not the story out west toward Des Moines.  Upward of 12 to 15 inches blanketed the central counties of Iowa, shutting down the Interstate highways, downing power lines and wreaking havoc upon thousands who tried to get around in the deep snow and high winds.  Drifts of 5 to 8 feet shut down rural roads.  The cold air hit Des Moines around 1 a.m.  They had their daytime high at midnight on Wednesday morning and the temps had hit the single digits by daybreak. 

Being that we're about 150 miles east of Des Moines, the cold air didn't start hitting the Quad Cities until mid-morning.   I was able to get out and begin shoveling around six a.m.  At that time, the temperature wasn't too bad.  There was a brisk breeze, but it wasn't any too cold.  However, the snow was unusually heavy and wet, much more so than I've seen it in quite sometime.  I could only move a couple shovel loads of snow before I decided it was time for the snowblower. 

As I did our driveway and walks, as well as the public walks for our neighbors up and down our side of the street, it began to snow heavily once again.  Big, ol' thick, wet flakes.  It was coming down like miniature snowballs.  Once I got the walks done, it had snowed about a half-inch on the freshly blown driveway. 

I had to go out about 3 p.m. to run an errand and the temperature had dropped about 10 degrees and the winds out of West were whipping with gusts over 40 mph.  I looked out at the driveway and saw that a one foot deep drift had developed across the pavement.  I had to get the snowblower back out and hit it again.  I'm sure I'll have to get the snowblower out once again this morning before Cindy leaves for work thanks to the 20 mile-an-hour + sustained winds we had last night.  Since temperatures dropped to below zero overnight, snowblowing is not going to be as nice as it was yesterday morning.  That is, if you can call anytime that you have to snowblow as "nice". 

According to this map from Iowa State University,  places south and west of Des Moines bore the brunt of the snowfall with totals of 15 to 16 inches common in a band from just east of Omaha to just south of Des Moines.  Areas north and west of Dubuque got up to 14 inches of snow.  At the Quad City Airport in Moline about six miles due south of us, they received about 8 3/4 inches.  But the National Weather Service office at the Davenport Municipal Airport - about five miles to our north and west -  received a smidge under 12 inches.  So, I'm guessing we got about 10.5 inches of snow at our house.  Just like the past four years, winter came in with a bang. 

The Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area got nailed, as well.   Upwards of a foot of snow fell throughout the I-380 corridor.  Even though the roads were not officially closed, travel was not recommended on many roads north and west of Iowa City during the day.    

One area where there was problems all day long was a 20 mile stretch of Interstate 80 from Grinnell to Newton - right near where I grew up outside of Kellogg, IA.  Our house was a mile and a half north of the Interstate.  The Iowa Highway Patrol had closed down the Interstate between the two exits for a good portion of the day due to poor visibility, numerous wrecks and ice-packed roadways. 

As the weather deteriorated throughout the day in Eastern Iowa, the slushy roads began to turn to ice and travel began to be even more treacherous.  I was supposed to drive into Chicago yesterday, but there was no way I was going to chance it.  Authorities in both Iowa and Illinois had instituted a "towing ban" for cars who had gone off into ditches along the Interstates.  I wasn't going to try my luck.

The sun is supposed to return today, but the cold Canadian air that was ushered in after the low pressure system took off to the northeast will only allow temperatures to climb up to the low to mid-teens here in the Quad's.  Long range forecasts don't look much better in regard to the temps.  It doesn't appear we'll see temperatures above freezing for at least another week. 

So much for hoping December would be as mild as November...  

A Mild Start to Winter

Today is the day I call the first day of Winter.  But compared to the last two December 1st's, today the meteorological winter starts off like a lamb.  Today, we're expecting sunny skies, breezy conditions and a high in the mid-50's.   It will be a stark contrast to the 1st of December in 2007 and 2008 when we had snow storms come through the area.   But this is Iowa and we won't have to wait long for cold weather to come about.  Temps will immediately dip tomorrow and in 48 hours we're not expecting the daytime high to make it out of freezing.

We've had kind of a backwards fall around here.  We had cold temperatures and snow in October.  November was damp, yet warm.  We had a lot of rain in October and it carried over into November with almost half the days getting some form of precipitation.  Because of that, our roses were still blooming right up to and past Thanksgiving.  Expecting an early winter, I went ahead and put down a base of mulched up leaves and grass, then covered that with hardwood mulch.  If you remember last year, Cindy made me use a combination of dirt and straw around the rose bushes.  But the clean up in the Springtime was horrendous.  This year, I wanted to do it my way with the mulched leaves and hardwood mulch.  It's kept the plants warmer, it's kept the roots moist and we're continuing to get budding on the plants.  That won't last for long, however.

Even our window boxes continued to thrive throughout the fall.  The begonias and other greenery that we had in the boxes just kept growing and going - even after a number of frosts that we had during the fall - much to the amazement of friends and neighbors.  The begonias finally got nailed just after Thanksgiving and I just pulled them out this past weekend.  But the other plants are hearty enough and they seem to keep going.  But, like I say, it won't be long before continuous freezing temperatures nail them, as well. 

We're going to see high temperatures through the weekend in the low-to-mid 30's.  But long-term forecasts for December show that it could be a somewhat mild month.  I'm never ready for winter and as long as it doesn't snow until later in the month or into early January, I'll be able to tolerate the season a little easier. 

 

A Travel Lesson Learned

I put on a dealer up in Dickinson, ND over three years ago, Blue Hawk Audio Video.  The owner, Mike Wilkinson, told me that if I came up to see him once a year, he'd buy product from me.  I agreed to do that and while he's not a huge dealer, they do enough business to warrant an annual trip up to see the store.  Plus the fact that Mike and his guys are great people.  Being that Dickinson is an 11 hour trip - one-way - from Davenport, and they're 60 miles from the Montana border, if they didn't do the business and weren't such great guys, I would have shit-canned them a long time ago. 

With that said, I agreed to do a product training on Focal loudspeakers for them on my next visit, along with taking the crew out to dinner afterward.  Given that Dickinson doesn't have any "high-end" restaurants, it was going to likely be sandwiches, appetizers and beer.  I knew that it would be a late night and I made reservations at the Holiday Inn Express in Dickinson. 

Now, I usually go for Hilton properties (Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, etc.) first as I have well over 600,000 Hilton Honors points and am a Hilton Diamond V.I.P. member (the top tier of Hilton frequent traveler membership).  If a Hilton property is not available in the area, I'll then opt for a Marriott property (Courtyard, Spring Hill Suites, etc.).  If neither a Hilton or Marriott property is available, the third choice are Holiday Inns.  Dickinson does not have a Hilton or Marriott property, so I went with the Holiday Inn Express. 

After a very quick trip across the state from Fargo, I pulled into Dickinson at 6:15 Mountain Daylight Time.  (My territory is so huge, I have dealers in three different time zones.)  I drove into the parking lot at the Holiday Inn Express to get my room.  I went to the front desk and I gave the desk clerk my name.  He fumbled around for a bit, then went to his computer.  He said, "Ah, yes.  Here you are.   We have you coming in tomorrow night and, unfortunately, we are sold out for tonight.  And, also unfortunately, many of the other hotels in the area are also sold out." 

He offered to call a couple of hotels that he had not heard from that evening to see if they had any rooms.  He called two and both were sold out.  He said, "I don't quite understand what the deal is.  It's a Wednesday night and this is Dickinson.  There must be something going on in the area." 

He finally called a place that was across the interstate from the Holiday Inn - a hotel that I'm not even going to name because it will be disparaged at later points in this post.  He said, "They have rooms over there.  Do you want me to transfer your reservation over there?"

I told him I'd just go over and get the room on my own.  Instead, I took my bags back out to my car and drove over to Blue Hawk Audio.  As I pulled out of the Holiday Inn parking lot, I noticed a sign in front of an empty lot across the street from the hotel.  It said, "Coming soon - Hampton Inn".  A lot of good it was going to do me then. 

I went over to Blue Hawk and told Mike that I screwed up on the date of the reservation and that I was having trouble finding a room.   I told him, "I guess I can get a room at the (hotel name deleted).  Is that a nice place?"

One of Mike's guys, Jens, immediately piped up, "The Crack House Hotel?  No, man.  You don't wanna stay out there." 

Mike called a couple of the other - and nicer - hotels explaining to them that he had a good friend who needed a room for the evening.  Neither of them could help us out.  The closest hotel is 100 miles away in Bismarck.  I was going to go to Bismarck the next day to visit one of my dealers there.  I just decided to head back there that night after dinner.  It would be a late arrival, but at least I'd have a hotel room.  

I made reservations on my computer for the Hampton Inn in Bismarck, a nice hotel that I've stayed at before.  I got a confirmation number and that was that.  I did the training, we went out for a casual dinner and a few beers at an Applebee's (which, according to the guys at Blue Hawk Audio, is the best place to eat in town), then I drove to Bismarck.  I left a little after 11 p.m. Dickinson time.  About 30 miles to the east of Dickinson, you go back into the Central Time Zone.  Suddenly, it went from 11:20 p.m. to 12:20 a.m.  

I rolled into the Hampton Inn in Bismarck around 1:40 in the morning.  It had been a long day that started at 9 a.m. in St. Cloud, MN, gone on to Fargo, then out to Dickinson and back to Bismarck - a total of 575 miles driven.  I gathered my bags out of the trunk and walked into the lobby.  A young guy was sitting on one of the sofas in the lobby and he popped up and greeted me.  I said, "I have a reservation."  

He got behind the desk and said, "Well, I'm sorry to tell you that when your reservation came in, we had neglected to tell the Hilton reservations desk that we had actually oversold for the evening."

I was like, "What?"

He said, "Yes, I'm sorry.  But we had overbooked our hotel for the evening and we forgot to contact the Hilton reservation desk to tell them.  They still thought we had rooms.  We tried to contact you, but we couldn't get hold of you."

I said, "Wait a minute.  I had a reservation confirmation!"

He said, "Yes, sir.  I know that, but it was definitely our fault in not contacting Hilton and letting them know we were sold out for the evening."  

He explained to me that I had a room at a Country Inns and Suites, just around the corner.  He apologized to me and I trudged out the door to deposit my bags back into the trunk, get in the car and drive a half mile to the other hotel.  It was about 1:50 in the morning by the time I got there.  The lady behind the desk said, "You're my last one.  Can I put you down for a wake up call?"

Nope, I'm sleeping in.  

When I got up the next morning, I checked my voice messages back in my office.  Sure enough, there was a message from a lady from the Bismarck Hampton Inn.  She explained the same thing that the night desk clerk told me just hours before when I went to check in.  She told me that they did have a room for me at the Country Inns and Suites and to just go over there.  Well, while I check my office voice mail a minimum of three times a day while I'm on the road, I never check it after 6 p.m., but will check it first thing in the morning.  Yes, she made an attempt to contact me.  But I then figured out that I needed to have my cell phone listed in my Hilton profile - not my office phone. 

Although the Country Inns and Suites wasn't all that bad, I had just missed out on garnering more Hilton Honors points that are eventually going toward a vacation that Cindy and I are going to take next year to Hawaii.  I have enough points for us to stay nearly two weeks for free in Hilton properties in Hawaii.  And I have enough American Airlines points for us to fly round-trip for free, as well.   

I got on the Hilton Honors site and went to their customer service page.  I wrote a short letter via e-mail to them explaining that I had a reservation confirmation, but was told that the hotel was overbooked on my arrival.  I thought under the circumstances that I should still get the points for the stay.  I thought it was a reasonable request and didn't think more of it. 

A week went by and I finally got a reply from Hilton.  They said they were looking into the matter and that they would be in touch shortly. 

It wasn't any more than a couple hours later and I got this e-mail from the General Manager of the Bismarck Hampton Inn:

My name is Cheryl Dressler and I am the General Manager of the Hampton Inn in Bismarck, ND.  Your experience at the Hampton Inn of Bismarck is not ordinary and certainly not acceptable by my standards.  The Front Desk agent that handled this has been reprimanded and one more occurrence and she will not be employed her (sp) any longer.

I am awarding you more points than you would have received should you have stayed with us.  Again, please accept my apologies and we hope this never happens again.

Regards,

Cheryl Dressler, GM

Bismarck Hampton Inn

I immediately thought, "Wow!  That's nice."  Then I re-read the letter.  I thought, "Wow, that's kind of harsh for that girl who called me on my office line."  Really, it was sort of my fault, as well.  I should have had my cell phone be my primary telephone contact with Hilton.  (It is now, along with Marriott and Holiday Inn.) 

I felt compelled to write back to the Bismarck G.M:

Hello, Cheryl!

 

First of all, I'm not looking to get anyone fired over this.  I have my office number listed as my "go-to" number in my profile and it's probably just as much my fault as anything that she contacted my office number to explain the situation.  As I said in the communication to Hilton Honors, I usually don't check my office phone voice mail after 6 p.m. when I'm on the road.  I'll be changing my contact number to my cell phone on my profile.

 

With that said, all I was asking was an opportunity to get my points for a stay that I thought I was going to have at your hotel.  I thought it was a fair and reasonable request given that I did have a confirmation number and up until the time that I went to check in, I thought I had a room there.  I've stayed at your hotel in the past and there's a good chance I'll stay there again during my annual trip to North Dakota. 

 

I appreciate your kind gesture and thank you for your consideration. 

 

My best regards,

 

It came to pass a few days later that I happened to look up my points on Hilton Honors and I saw that I did, indeed, get my points from the Bismarck Hampton Inn.  However, I didn't get anything extra as she promised.  I do get my base points, then as a Hilton Diamond member I receive a 50% bonus on the points (1.5 points).  And for some reason, I also receive ANOTHER 50% in Hilton points (I haven't quite been able to figure that out, but I'm not complaining).  So for each stay at a Hilton property I receive, basically, double points.  That's exactly what I received for NOT staying at the Hampton Inn, even though she said she was going to add more. 

 

That's OK, though.  All of this wouldn't have started without me screwing up in the first place and making the reservation for the wrong day in Dickinson.  While I wasn't looking for any heads to roll in this matter, I was thoroughly happy with the way Hilton resolved the foul-up in Bismarck.  This is just another reason why I like to stay in Hilton properties first and foremost.  And once I use up our points next year for our trip to Hawaii, I'll probably continue to stay in Hilton properties as I travel.

Winter Comes Early

We had the second earliest snowfall on record here in the Quad Cities on Saturday.  Although it was just a trace of snow, it still qualified as snowfall.  It began around 11 a.m. and quit about two hours later.  The picture at the left was taken about five minutes after the heaviest snow was falling - big, thick flakes coming down made for a rather neat contrast versus the green grass and leaves on the trees.

We had our first hard freeze on Friday night/Saturday morning when temperature got down to 27 (-2 C) here in Davenport.  Average first date of freezing temps around there is October 15, so that's not all that bad.  But the average first snow in the area is usually in late November or early December.  The little bit we had yesterday was a wake up call that winter is really just around the corner.  

I suppose we can thankful that we weren't 300 miles to the west.  Omaha got 3 to 5 inches of snow yesterday, and further west, North Platte had over a foot!  I was talking to a good friend of mine from Omaha, Denny Duncan, on Saturday morning.  He said, "Yes, I'm calling from the winter wonderland known as Omaha this morning."  I was completely incredulous that they had all that snow.  And while I was talking to him on the phone, I looked out to see the first snowflakes falling.  

The last two years, almost automatically, we had our first snow on or around December 1.  With temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees cooler than normal forecast for the coming week, its going to feel more like late November than mid-October.  Some people love snow - I hate it.  I just hate everything about winter.  But I love living in Iowa.  I tell people, "9 months out of the year, this is a great place to live.  It's that stretch from December 1 to February 28 that you have to get through each year."

Now it looks like that stretch from October 10 to February 28 is what we'll have to endure this year. 

A New Blog?

I've been toying with developing a new blog to go along with Road Tips that will focus more on my visits to the burger joints that I've been to.  As more and more people get turned on to Road Tips (thanks to some links in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch food forums, my readership has grown tremendously over the past couple three months), I've been thinking about taking the existing posts on burger joints from Road Tips and transferring them over to the new blog that celebrates probably my most favorite food in the world - the cheeseburger.  

In all of my categories, "Burger Joints" appears to have the most entries.  When I write about a burger joint, my readership totals for that day take a precipitous jump.  It appears a lot of people like burgers and want to find good ones in the Midwest. 

Tentatively, I've named the new blog "Burger Lust", named after one of the great burger joints I've visited, Louie M's Burger Lust in Omaha.  I'm working on the format and layout, color schemes and font types.  I don't know when - or if - I'm going to publish the blog as of yet.  Like I say, I'm just toying with the idea.

One thing that I'm also trying to work in is a feature that will give people a forum to talk about which burgers I should try.  I suppose the "comments" section at the bottom would work, but I'd rather have more of an interaction forum.  I may have to see if Typepad can allow that to happen within a blog.  Or, I may move "Burger Lust" to another blog format.  I guess I have that option.  

While the entries on "Burger Lust" wouldn't be as regular as what you find on Road Tips (I don't want to balloon back up from all the weight I've lost!), they would serve as a one stop information board for the burgers I've tried, would like to try, or comments from people who recommend their favorite burgers. 

I'm pretty busy with work right now, so working on a new blog is not a high priority.  Most of my material would be a "cut and paste" from this blog to that, with new "burger joint" entries that used to go on Road Tips going onto "Burger Lust" instead.  It would be a more focused blog rather than Road Tips that sometimes meanders all over the place.  Sort of like how I travel.  

Stay tuned...     

The Sun Sets on Another Summer

If you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you'll know that I get very melancholy when Sept. 1 rolls around.  Although summer isn't officially over until Sept. 22 this year, I like to follow the meteorological calendar that states summer is over on Aug. 31 and autumn begins today. 

It's been a while since the sun's rays have appeared in our north windows.  We've had our annual August cool down with Canadian high pressure systems sitting over Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois.  The low temps were in the lower 40's the past couple of nights.  While some people think of fall as their most favorite time of the year, I look forward to fall as just another step toward winter. 

This summer went exceptionally fast this year.  After we got back from our trip to Savannah, I was released to travel for work by my doctor (although I'd already made an overnight trip to Madison before).  Since then, it's been non-stop.  I was on the road every week with the exception of last week.  Hotel rooms began to close in on me.  I was dreading getting in the car for another four hour trip to somewhere.  I had seen a number of dealers, but I still haven't been able to make it up to Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Northern Iowa.  I was damn busy.  And the time just flew.  It can't be that it's now over three months since we were in Savannah.  Seems like we were there just last month.

This year, summer didn't really feel like summer at times.  We hardly ran our air-conditioner in June and into July.  We had a few warm and steamy days in mid-August, but we really haven't had to turn on the AC for the last few days.  We set records in both July and August for days with the coolest high temperatures - about five or six days broke records for the lowest maximum temperatures this summer.  

And the rain - wow!  For some reason, we've got dumped on at our house this summer.  We've had rains of over 3 inches a couple times - including just last week - and up to about 2.5 inches on two or three other occasions.  Then we've had the spotty rains that add another half-inch to the saturated ground.  While we haven't had the flooding that inundated parts of Iowa last summer, we've had a lot of rain add up.  Our sump pump has been going non-stop since March.  Where the water empties out into our yard, I have a perpetual swamp.

Offiicially, this was the 8th wettest month of August on record in the Quad Cities.  The National Weather Service recorded just over 8 inches of rain for the month.  In our rain gauge, however, we had nearly a foot of rain for the month.   Like I say, it poured on us a lot this last month.  Total rainfall - June, July and August - was officially right at 21 inches in the Quad Cities.  I know we got much more than that in our rain gauge the last three months. 

Coupled with the cool temperatures and the wet conditions, our rose garden didn't flourish as well as expected this year.  We'd gotten a leaf blight that caused some of the bushes to lose the majority of their leaves.  We found this was a direct result of too much water.  This is the first year we've never had to water any of our rose bushes or any of our annual plants that are planted in the ground.  We've given our vegetable garden, potted plants and window boxes a splash of water when it was needed, but that's it.  We just got our water bill last week and it was down exactly 1/3 from the same time period in 2008.  And that's good because we just had a pretty substantial rate hike go into effect in early August.

Cindy and I just went into Chicago for a long weekend as our "last hurrah" for summer.  We've always said that we wanted to go into Chicago and hang out downtown in the summer, as we've done it many times in the winter.  It was fun and relaxing, even though the temps were cool throughout the weekend.  Chicago is such a great city.

The only saving grace about fall starting up is that college football begins this week.  While I'm a big college football fan, I also dread the first game of the season.  It means cold temperatures are not that far away.

A Cool, Wet Summer

It's been a cool and wet summer in many parts of the Upper Midwest and Northern States this year, as evidenced by this gentleman taking place in a nude bicycle rally in Seattle recently.  Here in the Quad Cities we've suffered through two days in a row where the temperature didn't get out of the 60's.  High temperatures for both Friday and Saturday were the lowest high temperatures recorded for those dates.  We also had record low temperatures for both Saturday morning and again this morning. 

The 4th of July was rainy and cool, severely impacting the final day crowd at the annual Blues Festival down at Le Claire Park in Davenport.  The John Deere Classic was held last weekend and we had torrential rains on Wednesday (2 inches of rain) that canceled the Pro-Am event, and again on Friday (2.3 inches of rain) that postponed the second round.  It's been a cool, wet summer so far.  And I'm all about having a good hot summer.

With all that said, the wet weather has allowed some of our plants and flowers to thrive this year.  I went out early yesterday morning to take some pictures of our yard before the clouds moved back in to make it another dreary weekend day.  Our back berm is nearly overgrown again with wildflowers.  Since we had a very wet spring, it was the end of June before the berm dried out.  But since we've had all the rain last week and cool temps the past few days, it's pretty wet again.   Cindy got some lilies from one of the neighbors to plant in the berm, but she doesn't know when it's going to be dry enough to dig back there.

Our tomato and pepper plants are doing well again this year, despite the lack of hot weather they seem to love.   I expanded the garden this year behind the garage and doubled it in size.  We could only plant either peppers or tomatoes in the garden - one or the other - because it was only 6' X 8'.  Now it's 12' X 8' and we were able to get both red peppers and tomatoes (Better Boys and Cherry) in the garden this year.  And for good measure, Cindy planted Brussel Sprouts.  They're literally taking over the pepper plants.  Our herbs in the pots behind the garage are also doing rather well.  I've got three different types of basil growing, as well as oregano and lime balm (for fun, primarily).  My parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme garden growing in the old wash tub by the deck is also going nuts this year. 

Because of the wet conditions, we haven't had to water too much this summer.  But the lack of heat has also hurt the growth of our rose bushes in the garden beside the garage.  We lost two of our rose bushes over the winter - not bad considering the amount of rose bushes we lost a couple years ago after a very warm March allowed the roses to prematurely bud, then a killing freeze for three days in a row in early April killed them off.  Actually, one of the bushes was eaten by a rabbit - which has been dispatched for his transgressions.  And it was a Mr. Lincoln rose bush that grew these big beautiful red roses.  I promised Cindy that we'd get another one, along with the Belami rose bush that we lost due to the cold weather.

Our flowers and rose bushes on the east side of the house are doing well, however.   We're sort of in between budding on the bulk of the rose bushes right now, but the bright yellow Sunsprite roses are really flourishing.  The east side of the house gets a lot of morning sun and it dries out the window box pretty quickly.  About the only thing we've had to water on a regular basis this summer are the potted plants, hanging baskets and window boxes.  With a recently proposed 25% boost in our water rates looming on the horizon, we're digging the rain we've had this year.

One of the great things about the wet weather has been how well the grass has been looking all summer long.  But it also means that I have to mow about once every three to five days.  We hire our neighbor, Steve, to come over and do the trim work on the driveway and sidewalks a couple times a year.  He did it this last week and I mowed Friday evening.  One of the things I wanted when I became a home owner was a nice yard.  It's looking pretty damn good this year. 

Oh, there are some parts of the yard that aren't too pretty - we've got an ongoing battle with growing grass on the west side of the house.   And because it's been so wet, the sump pump has been running constantly since March.  We've developed a swamp from the mouth of the drain pipe to the sidewalk, and then again in the parking area between the sidewalk and the street where the water will settle.  It's sort of embarrassing to see these tall blades of grass sticking up, but I can't get a mower in there while the yard is so wet or it would tear it up worse than what it is.  In order to cut the grass in that area, I have to get a weed whacker and skim it across the top of the ground, hoping that I don't make pock marks on the ground from getting the weed whacker too low. 

One benefit from the wet weather has been the growth of the wild flowers that Cindy has planted the past couple three years underneath our Maple tree in front of the house.   We've tried all different types of annuals under the tree, but found that we were just pissing money away.  Cindy decided to start planting perennial wild flowers, irises, Columbines and ground cover under the tree.  In fact, the ground cover was growing SO well that she had to go in and pull a bunch of it out about a week ago.  It filled up one of those 30 gallon yard waste bags that we have to use to recycle yard waste here in Davenport.

Here's a close-up shot of the back berm, once again.  With the new blooming crab apple tree that we planted last year, along with the lilac bush and a wegela bush, our ornaments are starting to get lost in the jungle.  It's tough to see the Mama Moose and her baby, and we've come to the determination that we'll probably have to move the windmill.  Cindy has already told me to get rid of the Mama Bear and her three cub cut-outs that we have along the back fence.  You can only see them in the winter time, now.  Our new neighbors who moved into the house behind us, Jesse and Amy, love to look over the fence from their pool at our backyard.  Amy is especially fond of the Mama and Baby Moose.  Except she said the other day, "I can't see them any more.  It's too overgrown!"

While it's been a cool, wet summer so far, I suppose I really can't complain.  We've only had to run the air conditioning about seven days in June and probably three days so far in July.  While it's somewhat hampering the growth of not only our plants and flowers, it's hampering the growth of corn and soybeans for the farmers.  At the local farmer's market yesterday, we saw the lady who we like to buy sweet corn from.  While other vendors had some sweet corn already, we like her "peaches and cream" variety the best.  She said, "It hasn't been warm enough for the corn to fully come to maturity.  I won't sell my corn until it's fully matured to the top." 

It's supposed to be sunny and in the mid 70's today here in the Quad Cities, with temperatures rebounding into the 80's the rest of the week.  I'm just hoping for great weather this coming weekend for the Davenport One Street Festival, of which I'll be working for the 12th year in a row.  And I'm hoping we see some dry, 80 degree days for a long period of time.  I love summer, but I don't like it when it's only in the 60's for highs.

Why Do These Things Always Happen to Me?

Here's a weird little story for you today.  It involves my 2008 Impala that I've had for right at a year. 

When I bought the car last July, I was told by the dealership, Bruce Foote Chevrolet in Monmouth, IL, that the wheels on the car were actually wheels from an Impala LTZ, the Impala with the sport suspension, and a step up from the LT model that I have.  It turns out an elderly guy bought an Impala LTZ, but liked the wheels on the LT better.  He asked if he could swap out the LTZ wheels for the LT ones.  The dealership said, "Sure, no problem." 

They explained to me the LTZ wheels are about a $1000 upgrade to my car, but they weren't going to charge me for it.  Fair enough, and I got some nice looking wheels on the car.

Everything was going along fine until recently when I took my car in to get the tires rotated and balanced.  I began to notice after a couple weeks that I was having a noticeable shimmy in the rear end at higher speeds.  I took it back to the tire place - Duck Creek Tire in Bettendorf - and told them about the shimmy.  They are good guys and they said it was probably a tire that had lost a balance weight.  They said they'd look at the car right away.

I sat and waited for a while before one of the guys came out and said, "Well, we've got some bad news.  You need a whole new set of tires."

Well, I was incredulous.  I had just over 28,000 miles on a set of high quality Goodyear tires that came on the car.  The guy at Duck Creek Tire told me that it could be that the car was severely out of alignment and that would have caused the inside of the tires to have extreme wear.  Extreme wear to the point of the belts beginning to show through the rubber.

I reluctantly agreed to get a new set of tires, but the same Goodyear's that were on the car weren't cheap - $1400 bucks!  Ouch!  He had a couple of other price alternatives including a set of Continental tires that would run about $875 before taxes and other fees.  I opted for the cheaper Continental's.  All the time, I was just completely amazed that I only got 28,000 plus miles out of a set of very good tires.

The guys at Duck Creek Tire had me come back in the next day to put on the tires.  The service manager, Matt, told me they'd do an alignment on the car to see if there was a problem with that.  He said, "If it isn't out of alignment, then you may have some bigger issues with the car.  Issues that the dealer may have to take care of." 

Well, they put the tires on and aligned it.  The rear was out of alignment, not significantly, but enough to warrant a complete re-alignment.  After a couple three hours, they were done and I drove back home. 

That evening, Cindy and I were on our way to a deck party at the house of a co-worker of hers.  We had the radio low and we were talking.  As I took a right turn to go to the house, I heard some rubbing coming from the left rear tire.  I said, "That's odd.  It shouldn't be rubbing."  I immediately wondered if they put the right tires on the car.  

When I took a look at the rear tires when we stopped at the party, I noticed right away that one of the strut coils was sitting directly on top of the tire.  On both sides.  Suddenly, it all became clear.  While the tires were probably the right ones, I had the wrong wheels on the car.

The Impala LTZ wheels are 18" wheels, the LT wheels are 17" in diameter.  I wondered if the LTZ suspension was significantly different from the LT suspension.  A trip back to Duck Creek Tire the next morning confirmed my suspicion.  

I told Matt the story of how they had swapped the LTZ wheels for the LT wheels.  Then I showed him the coil resting firmly upon the top of the rear tires.  He said, "Yep, the suspension on the LTZ is significantly different from the LT."

I said, "Can I put the LTZ struts on the LT?"

He said, "Nope, the suspension on this car wouldn't allow for it.  You need to get new wheels."  

Well, I also wanted to get reimbursed for four new tires that I suddenly didn't need on these wheels.  I asked Matt if he had my tires still around.  He thought for a second and said, "Yeah, we do."  I asked if I could have one to take down to the dealership to show the wear and tear.

He went in the back and about three minutes later he was rolling out one of the old tires.  It was one that had been on the left rear for about 25,000 miles and the belts were showing through.  I said, "This one is perfect."

I got in the car and drove directly down to Bruce Foote Chevrolet.  I like dealing with small town car dealerships, even though it appeared that Brad Deery Motors in Maquoketa didn't want to sell me a car.  (That's an incredible story that I should have told you about before - they literally didn't want to wait on me when I went in to buy a car.)  But the guys at Bruce Foote were great to work with and overly accommodating to me when I got the new and improved ROKNROL Impala.  

I walked into the dealership and immediately saw the sales manager.  I couldn't remember his name and I said, "You're the sales manager, right?"

He said, "Yes, I'm Mike.  And I remember you and the car but I'm sorry that I can't remember your name."  I told him and he said, "Oh, yes.  Of course.  How can I help you?"

I said, "Come take a walk with me."

He remembered that they had swapped the LTZ wheels for the LT wheels on this car.  I was telling him the story of having a shimmy, getting the car in to have the tires looked at and the surprise of them telling me that I had to get new tires, to the tune of over $900 bucks when it was all said and done. 

I opened the trunk and showed him the wear on the inside tread of the tire.  He said, "Whoa!  That is strange!"

I said, "This is why..."

We went around to the rear tire wheel well and I showed him the strut resting on top of the tire.  Again, he said, "Whoa!  Wow, that's not good!" 

Mike went and got his service manager who came out and looked at the one on the right side.  The service manager asked, "How long have you had this car?"

I said, "About a year.  Put over 28,000 miles on it."

Mike said, "Well, I'm certainly going to have to do my homework on this one..."

The service manager immediately spoke up.  "There's no homework to do on this one," he bellowed.  "This guy is not driving this car off this lot.  That's all there is to it.  It's a wonder he hasn't had a catastrophic blowout before this!" 

I said, "Well, I guess I'm going to need new wheels with new tires.  And I'd like to be fully reimbursed for the tires I just paid for yesterday."

Mike turned to me and said, "Well, those are all very valid requests.  But first, we're going to get you a loaner car."

I said, "How long will it be before I get this car back?"

He said, "I don't know.  A couple days, maybe."

I said, "Look, I've got to drive to St. Louis, then up to Des Moines, then up to Milwaukee."

He said, "Well, I can't give you a new car, but we'll give you something that will get you around."

He told me to gather up all the stuff in my car and he'd arrange for a loaner.  He came out after about five minutes and said, "OK, we're gonna put you in a car with a warranty on it.  Unfortunately, it's a Ford."

It turned out to be a 2009 Ford Fusion.  It had about 12,000 miles on it and I'm guessing it was a rental car.  It's an OK car, not as roomy as the Impala and only a 4 cylinder model.  But it had a sun-roof and a kick-ass stereo system.  In fact, there were some amenities in the Ford Fusion that I immediately liked that my Impala lacked. 

(As an aside - We had rented a Mercury Grand Marquis when we were on vacation in Savannah, and that car was very nice, as well.  We had asked for an Impala with the Hertz NeverLost system, but they didn't have one.  They only had the Grand Marquis.  It was roomy - much more roomy than my Impala - had some nifty creature comforts and was an impressive car.  I've been a GM man for well over 20 years after having a couple Thunderbirds in the 70's that didn't work out very well.  After driving the Montego and the Fusion, I'm starting to think that Ford definitely has their shit together in regard to their cars.)

As I was putting stuff from the Impala into the Fusion and I said, "Look, I'm going to be putting a lot of miles on this car over the next few days.  Maybe 1500 miles total.  Are you sure you want me to have this car?"

Mike said, "I don't have a choice, do I?"

No, he certainly did not.  I offered to bring the car back on Monday on my way to St. Louis and he said, "I don't think I can rectify the problem that quickly."  But he said he'd give me a call on Monday and let me know what was going on. 

As I got into the car, I noticed that it had Sirius Radio.  I asked, "Anyway you can activate the Sirius Radio for this thing?"

He laughed and said, "No, I don't think I can." 

I said, "Wow, I have to listen to regular FM.  I don't know if I can bring myself to that."  (I am literally hooked on listening to Little Steven's Underground Garage channel on Sirius XM.)

Before I left, he gave me a voucher for a free tank of gas for the Fusion.  That was nice of him.  I mean, I think he was embarrassed and realized that his service manager was probably right - they had dodged a huge bullet in that I didn't have a major incident with the tires before this.  He really was bending over backwards to take care of me.   

When I was driving back home, I was playing with the stereo system.  I hit the "Media" button on the steering wheel and it went from FM to Satellite radio.  It turned out the Sirius radio WAS activated!  Well, all right!  Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all.

While the Fusion isn't as roomy, it's still comfortable enough.  I passed a couple cars along the way home on a two-lane road and it was really poochy when I'd floor it.   After driving it home, I thought it would work, but I'd really rather have my Impala. 

Then I thought, "Wait a minute.  Why should I put miles on MY car when they're giving this one to me to drive for the week.  I'll just put the miles on THIS car!" 

A couple days later, the service manager from Bruce Foote called me up and asked if the tires on the car were brand new.  I said, "Brand spanking new, to the tune of $920 bucks." 

He then asked if the car had been aligned.  I said it had.  He said, "Well, we've seen on these Impalas that the back end can get out of alignment and that kind of tire wear can be possible on as little as 30,000 miles."

I said, "Look, let's cut out the bullshit.  You saw the strut laying on top of the tire when I brought it in.  I have one of the tires in the trunk that clearly shows the only wear on the tire is where the strut was rubbing.  Yes, it was out of alignment in the rear end, but it wasn't bad enough to cause the tire to have that type of wear where the belts are beginning to show through."

It went downhill from there.  He came back and said, "Listen, I don't appreciate you insinuating that I'm giving you some B.S. here."

I said, "I understand what you're trying to do.  To minimize the cost of what has to come out of your pocket.  I need new wheels, I need new tires and I would like to get reimbursed for the out of pocket expense on these tires that I just bought." 

He then said, "Do you think the tire place would be interested in trading these tires for new ones?  I mean, they only have Davenport to Monmouth mileage on them."

I replied, "That's going to have to be a conversation you're going to have to have with Duck Creek Tire.  All I know is that I just paid for new tires about a year before I had to." 

He said he was going to call up to talk to Matt at Duck Creek Tire and he'd get back to me. 

Well, he never did. 

24 hours came and went and I began to get sort of worried.  Cindy said, "Will, I think they're trying to give you the run-around on this deal."

I said, "Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing."

I placed a call to Mike, the sales manager at Bruce Foote Chevrolet and I said, "Hey, Mike!  I just have this sneaking suspicion that you guys are giving me the run around on this deal."

He said in a surprising tone, "How so?"

I told him of the conversation I'd had with his service manager and how he was trying to tell me that there were previous problems on Impalas with the rear end going out of alignment causing extraordinary wear on tires.  I said, "Mike, it's quite obvious that the cause of this was due to the larger wheels and the tires rubbing on the strut."  I told him that Robert was supposed to call me back on the progress of the situation, but never did. 

Mike said, "Well, here's what I know.  The new wheels are coming in today.  We're going to take the car back up to Duck Creek Tire to get the new tires put on, balanced and checked.  Then we'll bring it back down to Monmouth and wait for you." 

I said, "Oh!  Well, no one certainly told me that."  I then proposed that he just leave it at Duck Creek Tire and he makes arrangements to come up and get the loaner car.  He said, "Well, that would be two trips to Bettendorf.  I mean, if we have to come up and get the car and do it that way, I will.  But I think I'd rather have your car here so we can finalize the swap here at the dealership."

I thought it was sort of weird, but I agreed to do that.  Then I got to thinking - he wants to negotiate on the new set of tires that I had to pay for that I can't use. 

I got back from my trip that encompassed over 1300 miles in 4 days, cleaned out the loaner car and Cindy and I drove down to Monmouth to change cars.  The Impala was sitting in front of the dealership and Mike met me at the door.  It turned out that Robert, the service manager, needed my remote lock and start key fob to reset the tire pressure indicator for the car.  Don't know exactly why they needed to do that, but I handed him the key fob and off he went.  

Mike came back and I said, "OK, so what's the story."

He said, "Well, new wheels.  New tires.  The guys at Duck Creek Tires took back the ones you just put on.  You're right, they were good guys to work with."

I then said, "OK, so, what are we going to do about the new tires that I just paid over $900 bucks for." 

He said, "Well, we have new Continentals on your car.  The same kind of tire like you just bought.  This is what I'm going to propose.  You had, what?  20,000 miles on those tires?"

I hesitated for a second, fully knowing that I had 28,500+ on the tires.  I said, "Uh, yeah!  Yeah, 20,000 miles."   I'm such a shit, sometimes.

He said, "Why don't we say we give you $400 bucks for the tires."

I said, "Wait a minute.  Those were 70,000 mile tires on that car.  I wouldn't have needed new tires for another year or so.  If I'd gotten the same tires that were on the car, we'd be talking over $1500 bucks for the set, mounted and rollin' down the road!"

Mike looked at me with funny smirk on his face and he said, "Those weren't 70,000 mile tires on that car.  GM would never put those good of tires on a new car."

I said, "They sure did."

He said, "I can't believe it.  GM NEVER puts good tires on new cars." 

I said, "Well, they were on this one.  I've got the tire in my trunk, remember?"

We walked out to the car in a light rain and I opened the trunk and showed him the old tire.  I said, "See?  Goodyear RS-A.  They wanted something like $1440 for a set of fours."

He looked at me rather incredulously.  He exclaimed, "$1440 dollars for new tires?  Look, I don't want to tell you who to do your business with, but that seems exceptionally high." 

I said, "You're telling me.  I think $920 bucks is exceptionally high for Continentals!  But what was I supposed to do?  Tell 'em to put the tires back on and I'm going to go look around for a deal?"

He sort of chuckled and said, "Well, no, probably not." 

We went back inside and I made this proposal.  I said, "Let's take the mileage on the old tires and figure the percentage of mileage driven versus 70,000 miles.  Then we'll take that percentage and deduct that from $920 bucks and that's what you owe me."

Mike said, "That's fair enough.  Fax me the bill and we'll figure it out."

We shook hands and Cindy and I got into the car and drove off.  The first thing I noticed is that the mileage hadn't changed from the time I brought it in to the time I picked it up.  I said to Cindy, "Jeez, they put this thing on a trailer and took it up to Bettendorf for the new tires."

Cindy said, "Well, you said the service manager didn't want anyone to drive the car with the struts sitting on the tire!"

I said, "Yeah, that's true.  But they could have easily driven it up there and driven it back without trailering it."  I was sort of impressed they would do that. 

We stopped at a place to eat in Monmouth and I got to looking at the car.  I noticed that they had detailed the inside of the car.  I also noticed they had detailed the outside of the car, including getting all the tar off the sides and filling in the rock chips that were noticeable on the front hood.  I was just incredulous.  I told Cindy, "Jesus!  They even fixed the 'Service Engine Soon' light problem that I was having!"  (It had to do with a valve leak in some emissions control section.)  Suddenly, I felt like a complete heel for dicking around and not being truthful with Mike at the dealership.

That night, I went home and figured out that 28,500 is 40 percent of 70,000.  So, I figured that 60% of $920 is $553.  I faxed Mike a note with my figures along with the copy of the bill so he'd have it first thing in the morning. 

I waited and waited for Mike to call me the next day.  I never heard anything from him, so I gave him a call a little after 5 p.m.  I said, "Hey, Mike!  Did you get that fax I sent down?"

He said, "No, I sure didn't."

I told him I'd fax it again.  I did.  He called me back about five minutes later and said that it didn't go through.  "I got part of one page and then it was blank the rest of the way."  He asked me to try it again.  I did.

He called me back about 5 minutes after that and he said, "I don't think our fax machine likes your fax machine.  Just tell me what you came up with."

I explained to him the figures I came up with and he said, "Look, I'm just gonna take care of this right now.  We'll send you out a check next Monday for $553 dollars." 

I said, "Mike, this is why I like dealing with small town car dealers."

He said, "Well, when you're ready to trade, please come back to see me."

I told him, "Mike, I drive my cars into the ground.  However, my wife has her eye on a new Malibu. But I don't think we can afford one right now."

He laughed and said, "Don't be so sure.  There's some great deals on them right now." 

The all happened within the last 10 days.  All's well that ends well...

Back from Vacation

We just got back from a week long vacation in Savannah, GA and Hilton Head Island, SC.  I know, I know.  I have a couple hip replacement surgeries, sit at home for three months, then before I go back out on the road full-time, I go on vacation.  But Cindy had some vacation time that she needed to burn before June 1 or lose it.  We had a nice tax return this year and Cindy wanted to go somewhere nice.  We thought about going back up to Door County again, but Cindy's always had this fascination with Savannah.  So, as a small surprise for her, I booked flights to Savannah and made hotel reservations back in March. 

How was it?  Overall, it was great.   The food was great.  The hotels were wonderful.  The people we met and dealt with were overly friendly.  The weather was very nice, and we're thinking we must have been a good luck charm. 

Savannah had suffered through 14 straight days of measurable precipitation up to the day we arrived.  About an hour before we got into town, it quit raining. The first two days were warm and beautiful with great breezes coming off the ocean.  The third morning, however, right before we were getting ready to go for a morning walk, the skies opened up.  It dumped rain - twice - like a cow peeing on a flat rock.  But the air temperature remained warm.  I like warm rains.  But after about a half-hour, the rain stopped, it was foggy for a while, then it cleared off.  With the exception of a quick shower and a little wind early Friday evening, it was just beautiful the rest of the time.  It was tough to come home, believe me. 

We were going to head up to Charleston, SC for a day or two.  But we liked Savannah so much, we decided to go back for a couple more days after flying back home.  Savannah was that nice and interesting, although I did dig hanging at the beach on Hilton Head for a couple days.

We actually flew out of Milwaukee as we were in town on the 23rd of May to attend the wedding of our good friends Bob Kelly and Kasey Lussier.  Kasey was from Milwaukee and we went to a great wedding and a fun reception.  We had to get up early on Sunday morning and go out to General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee to catch a flight to Chicago, then we had a short layover at O'Hare, then flew on to Savannah. 

I got a great price on the flights from Milwaukee to Savannah - $199 plus tax and fees a person, round trip.  But get this - if we were to drive to Chicago, take the same direct flight to Savannah that we were connecting to at O'Hare, it would have cost us $319 per person.  Flying out of Moline to Savannah thru O'Hare would have cost us $458 per person.  I don't quite understand the pricing policies and procedures that airlines have. 

But I've always wanted to fly out of Milwaukee.  I heard that Mitchell was a great airport.  And it was.  It's ranked by business travelers as one of the top five airports in the nation.  The concourses are open and airy.  It's a lively place, even on an early Sunday morning.  And they have a great bookstore - the Renaissance Book Shop, one of the largest, if not THE largest book store I've ever seen in an airport.  The only problem was that we were there early and it was closed.  The Milwaukee airport also featured the Gallery of Flight Museum.   They had a lot of models of planes, interesting pictures and historical exhibits.  It was kind of neat to spend a little time in there. 

Actually, we also had breakfast at the Miller Brew House at Mitchell International.  I have to say that it was quite possibly the best breakfast I've ever had at an airport restaurant.  I had something called the Wisconsin stuffed omelet - an omelet stuffed with chunks of bratwurst and hash brown potatoes and topped with cheddar cheese.  I didn't eat any of the hash browns since I'm stil on a diet, but the omelet with cheese and the bratwurst were fabulous.  And it was huge, too!

The only problem with flying from Milwaukee THRU O'Hare was coming back.  We had an 11:35 flight on Sunday morning to Chicago.  We got into O'Hare about 12:30 local time.  Then we had a 3.5 hour layover in Chicago.  Ugh!!!  Then it's a 40 minute flight to Milwaukee (about 20 minutes of that time we were in the air).  THEN, it was a 3.5 hour drive home after collecting our bags and getting out to our car.  

More than once, I sat there in the terminal at O'Hare thinking that we could have easily checked our bags through to Chicago, taken a rental car up to Milwaukee, dropped it off there, got our car and would have been going home two hours sooner.  But to rent a car out of O'Hare is unbelievably high - $140 even for a small car!  So, that didn't make any sense.  O'Hare is not one of my all-time favorite places to have a layover in.

We had a chance to be able to fly thru Detroit.  I really like the Detroit airport.  There's a great little bar/restaurant in the Northwest Airlines terminal that has an excellent cheese burger.  Although it was a bit more cheap to fly that way,  the layover thru Detroit on the way down was longer than going through O'Hare and about the same coming back.  Also, I just couldn't see going east, then south to Savannah.  We took the more direct route through O'Hare.  Actually, it was the one that got us into Savannah the earliest - 1:30 in the afternoon.

So we stayed at wonderful hotels, ate at some great places, saw a lot of the sights, relaxed on the beach, took in some historical stuff, walked A LOT!!! and achieved seafood overload a couple three times.  But we're back to reality with about four or five pounds more on the body and having to deal with cool and rainy weather again.   I'll have all the details in the coming days on our trip to Savannah and Hilton Head.

Back on the Road Again!

I'm pretty much ready to get back on the road again after my two hip replacement surgeries.  Last week, I traveled to Madison for a dinner meeting and some morning training the next day.  While I'm still a little stiff when I get out of the car, I'm able to walk it off rather quickly. 

I'm pretty much done with physical therapy, although I may go back for a couple sessions later in the month of June.  I'm now down 43 pounds officially and thinking of joining a workout facility here in the Quads to do the elliptical and some stationary biking.   

Getting back on the road will be pretty interesting.  Since I haven't traveled in nearly three months, my first night on the road was a good indicator of how much I forgot with my ritual of packing leading up to my leaving.  Oh, yeah.  I left some things at home that I normally take with me.  But it was only for one night, so I was fine.  That's sort of what I wanted to do - have a one or two day trip with an overnight stay that would help me sort of get back into the groove of travel.

I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling in the coming weeks, especially now that the weather is starting to be nice.  We've had a cool, wet spring, so far.  A lot of the flowers and plants that would be beginning to bloom and grow have been stunted and are behind by a couple three weeks.  We lost at least one rose bush over the winter and possibly two (we still have to determine if one that was cut back by a rabbit will survive).   But the window boxes are starting to grow, some of the rose bushes are ready to open, and we're starting to dry out in the back berm area. 

OK, back to work!  Which means more observations from the road and more restaurants and attractions to find!

The Dark Side of Hip Replacements

I got some sad news last night - our friend Mike Johnson (left), pastor of the Kellogg Christian Church in Kellogg, IA, died on Monday from complications from hip replacement surgery.   Considering I'm on the downhill side from two hip replacements, this is literally like a blow in the gut to me.

According to my sister, doctors told Mike and his wife, Angela, that there was a small chance of some fat cells being released into the blood stream when they cut into the bone to replace the hip.  Evidently, that's what happened and the fatty cells ended up in Mike's lungs not long after he received the hip replacement two weeks ago.  They used antibiotics to try and contain the infection, but it ended up getting worse.  His kidneys shut down and he went on dialysis.  Then his bowels shut down and his heart finally gave out.  Along with his wife, Mike left a daughter who is pregnant with her first child, and a son who just moved to Nebraska to start a new job. You can read his obituary here.

We are not religious people in our household and when it came time to get married nearly 14 years ago Cindy and I approached Mike to do the wedding in a restored non-denominational country grange church that is part of the Kellogg Historical Museum.  He didn't hesitate when he said, "Absolutely!"  Actually, what he really said was directed to Cindy - "Wow!  You're going to marry him?  I want a front row seat for this one!"  Over the years, whenever we'd see Mike out and about, he used to joke that whatever he did during the ceremony must have worked because Cindy and I were still together.

When my father passed away a few years ago, Mike was asked by the family to officiate at the memorial service.  The memorial service was going to be held - per my father's wishes - at the Elks Club in Newton.  Once again, Mike didn't hesitate to agree to do it. 

The night before the service, Mike stopped over to my sister's house to get some ideas as to what we wanted him to say about our father.  As we're wont to do at family gatherings, we had been drinking rather heavily in my father's honor before Mike came.  When he got there, well, he got a very colorful picture of what my father was all about. 

The next day when he gave the eulogy, Mike told the overflow crowd in the Elks Club that he found out the previous evening that Jesus had a middle name (My father would always yell, "Jesus H. Christ!"), and that hell had hubs (My father would also exclaim, "What in the hubs of hell...").  Mike was always a great sport and had a genuinely good time whenever he came around our family.  Mike knew when to back off on the religion and enjoy the festivities at hand.  But he always had a knack of knowing when to step up to the forefront when he was needed. 

What freaks me out and breaks my heart over all of this is that it was complications from a hip replacement.  I feel especially bad because I just blew through two hip replacements like a breeze.  Oh, there were some minor complications along the way, and I am getting rather tired of being stiff and sore in my upper legs and butt area.  But I never came any where close to what happened to Mike.

Even though my doctor did the usual "cover your ass" speech about potential problems from a hip replacement, I don't ever remember him talking about the possibility of fatty cells being released into your system that could cause infection.  I guess there is no such thing as a "routine" hip replacement surgery.

Seriously - it feels like someone punched me in the stomach.  As Cindy said in anguish before bed last night, "People don't die from hip replacement surgeries!"

Well, I suppose they can.

The next time I make some little complaint about how sore or stiff I am in regard to my hip replacements, I'll think of Mike and realize that things could be a lot worse...

Update #3 for Hip Replacement #2

It's approximately 1 a.m. on Saturday and for the third consecutive night, I can't sleep due to a throbbing pain in my left big toe.  Thanks to almost simultaneous suggestions from my wife and Mr. Coleman, a long-time "Road Tips" reader, I looked up the symptoms of toe gout.  It turns out that is exactly what I have.

My doctor concurred that the symptoms - which are many, but include recent surgery, taking aspirin (twice a day as an anti-coagulant), dieting, and the fact that I'm a middle-aged, somewhat overweight male (but quickly losing weight again) - were pointing toward gout.  Gout has to do with a build up of high levels of uric acid in the body that crystallizes in the joints.  I've had small bouts of gout before - it feels like I've sprained my big toe - but it's never hurt like this.

One other cause of gout is something that I can safely say is not the cause of this major bout - drinking beer.  Alcohol - especially beer - reduces the body's ability to process the uric acid.  I haven't had a beer since two days before my surgery - about 12 days ago.  As one of my friends told me on Friday, "Maybe a beer is what you need!"  

Right now, I'm taking another anti-inflammatory drug that is designed to help with gout.  So far, it's not working.  I can sit up and the pain somewhat goes away.  But once I lay down, the throbbing, burning pain in the big toe area comes back.  I fell asleep downstairs in a chair in the family room, but woke up an hour later because my hips and back were so uncomfortable.  But the pain in the foot was nearly gone.  I went back upstairs, jumped in bed and almost immediately the dull throbbing began.  I wasn't in bed anymore than 90 minutes before I had to get back up and retire to the office.  What a pain in the ass this has been.

Cindy has been - as always - a complete saint through all of this.  She sincerely feels bad for me not only for the pain in my foot, but for the fact that I can't sleep.  And I know I've been somewhat of a bear to her lately because I've been so tired and she - bless her heart - knows that and takes that into consideration.  

In the meantime, my diet consists of a lot of liquids - primarily cherry juice - and healthy items such as blueberries, cantaloupe, celery and other foods that will help the body process the uric acid in my system.  I can't eat red meat, seafood, asparagus, mushrooms and some other staples in my normal diet for the time being. 

The pain has been so intense that it's actually helped mask some of the pain that I'm having in my new hip.  But I'm ready for the toe pain to go away and go away quickly.  This is really a bitch.

Update to the Update for Hip Replacement #2

While I'm not quite clicking my heels as the illustration shows, I'm simply amazed at the progress I've achieved over the past couple three days in regard to my new hip.  I sort of figured my right side would bounce back more quickly than the left hip, mainly because I had a lot more strength in my right leg than my left when I had the hips done.  But I didn't think I'd bounce back quite so quickly. 

I have to tell you - the excruciating pain I was in on Thursday and Friday of last week was five times as bad as what I experienced when I had my left hip replaced in March.  I couldn't get in and out of bed without help, the hip flexor and side muscles were so painful that even heavy dosages of pain pills couldn't mask the tremendous pain. 

Saturday afternoon, I was able to gingerly get in and out of bed on my own - but it was a painful chore.  By the time Sunday rolled around, Cindy decided that I was good enough to leave me alone for the day while she went to celebrate Easter with her family in Cedar Rapids.  I got out of bed and decided to make a couple eggs in the kitchen after she left.  I was maneuvering around the kitchen pretty well without my walker and I got to thinking, "Hey, maybe I don't need the walker any longer."

I took it to the back room, folded it up and grabbed my cane.  I started using my cane exclusively on Sunday morning.  That was just remarkable given how much pain and how little mobility I had just 48 hours before. 

Monday was my first session of physical therapy after the second hip replacement.  Both Nicole and Aaron agreed that we needed to take it easy on my left leg muscles as I was continually pulling the quad and hip flexor, quite probably because I was having to use the left leg as my "good" leg all of the sudden. 

Nicole thought that I had enough flexibility and strength in my leg to allow me to drive.  On Tuesday night, Cindy and I got in the car and I drove around for a bit.  I drove myself to physical therapy on Wednesday morning. 

Late yesterday afternoon, I took a walk down the block and back - about a quarter mile total.  While I carried my cane, I didn't use it at all.  As I was walking, I got to thinking, "Geez, right now, one week ago today, I was on the operating table getting a new hip.  Five days ago, I was in such tremendous pain that I would have never thought I'd be able to be doing this today." 

While I'm still black and blue and somewhat stiff in my groin area and around my butt, and the fact that I've gained about 10 pounds from water weight gain and the accompanying swelling associated with the surgery, I have to say that I'm doing exceptionally well.  Much better than I hoped (and thought) I would for the second surgery.  The weight is going to slowly peel away, just as it did after the first surgery.  I don't know if I'll hit my goal of losing 50 pounds by June 1, but I hope to be in the ballpark. 

I'm still not out of the woods yet, given that I still can't fully bend over and pick things up off the floor.  And I've developed a somewhat severe case of "turf toe" on my left foot, undoubtedly from pushing off the left foot to get up and walk around.  But I'm off the Hydrocodone - a generic version of Vicodin - and am down to just taking a couple Tramadol three times a day.  I hope to be down to one Tramadol a couple times a day by this weekend.  But if this "turf toe" keeps up, I may have to stay on the pain pills longer.  Right now, it's more annoying and painful than my leg muscles are. 

Once again, thanks to everyone who e-mailed, called or left comments on Road Tips.  I hope to be fully well and back on the road again by late May. 

Hip Replacement #2 Update

A quick update as to my right hip replacement that happened on Wednesday.  I don't want to say that I'm doing great, but I'm far from having one foot in the grave. 

I got into the surgical center around 2:30 p.m. and everything was sort of different.  I don't quite know what it was, but it was, well, different.  There seemed to be more of a sense of urgency from the time I arrived.  I was scheduled to be the last one of the day, but the prep nurse told Cindy and I that the doctor was actually ahead of schedule and it was very hectic around the center that day.  I asked her how many people were in today and she said, "There's five of you today.  It's a full house." 

Coming up to this second hip replacement, I was trying to be cool and matter-of-fact about the procedure.  The first one, well, I went into it wide-eyed not really knowing what to expect.  The second one, I had a good idea what to expect.  You would have thought that would have been to my advantage, but in all honesty, it made me much more apprehensive and anxious.

I've gone through about four weeks of physical therapy.  Although I'm seeing tremendous improvements in the strength of my left leg, I also have a lot of pain in the quad and hip flexor muscles.  It's almost like I'd been overdoing the therapy work to get my left leg strong.  As one of my physical therapists told me, "For about two weeks your left leg is going to be your strong leg."  

Well, knowing that my left leg isn't even close to being 100%, I knew it could be pretty tough for me after the surgery.  So, that made me even more anxious and stressed going into the procedure.  

When the prep nurse took my blood pressure it registered 167 over 87.  I was just freaking out.  I didn't want to have a stroke on the operating room table.  But she told me, "I'm sure you're a little stressed out from thinking about the operation.  You'll be fine."  

They got me into a small room and put an IV in me with antibiotics.  They came to get me for the operation around 4 p.m.  Unlike last time when they waited until the antibiotics were fully in my body, they went ahead and took me in to the operating room.  The anesthesiologist came in, marked on my back where the spinal tap was going to go and then gave me the "happy juice" and I don't remember a thing until they woke me up a little before 6 p.m.  Just that quickly, I was back in the room watching the 6 p.m. news

After the first hip replacement, it felt like someone had hit me in the left butt cheek with a 95 mile an hour fast ball, and that a horse had kicked my left thigh.  This time, I didn't have any pain in the thigh, and it felt like someone had hit me in the right butt cheek with a hard thrown softball.  Maybe my hope that the right one would go better was coming to fruition.  That was until I got up to walk around 10:30 that evening. 

Almost immediately, my knee buckled inwards when I put weight on the leg.  I had little to no strength in the side to side movement of my leg.  When I was able to keep the leg straight, I seemed to be fine.  But then when I would make any side movement to the leg, the knee would buckle in or out.  And that frigging killed me!! 

When I got back to bed, I had trouble moving my right leg onto the bed.  The got me strapped back in to this foam brace they put between my legs and gave me a couple of Tylenol.  I had a fitful night of sleep - the third night in a row where I didn't sleep well.

After working with the physical therapists for a little bit and being able to scoot around the surgical center with my walker, I was cleared to go home at 9:30.  They took all my vitals and my blood pressure was more like me - 117 over 73.  Cindy came to pick me up about 9:45 and I was home at 10 a.m.  Amazing.

But from right off the bat, I knew I would have trouble getting in and out of bed.  The muscle pain in the right leg was excruciating - even more so than the first hip replacement.  I couldn't pick my leg up or move it across the bed when I tried to get in or out of bed.  It was much more pronounced in my hip flexor.  In fact, it's very black and blue in my groin area. 

And to top it off, I pulled my quad muscle in my left leg yesterday when I tried to move too quickly when a sharp pain shot through my right leg muscles getting out of bed.  Suddenly, I have two very sore legs.

After the last surgery, Cindy's sister, Anita, came to sit with me on that Friday while Cindy went to work.  Actually, it turned out at that I really didn't need her.  I was getting in and out of bed *OK*, still some pain in doing so, but I was able to get around OK.  Today, I made Cindy stay home.  She has to literally lift and move my legs with sideways movements to get them on and off the bed.  It's real hell compared to the first go around. 

But, if this is the worst I have to endure, I'll be fine.  I just hate being a burden on on Cindy but she's been a real trooper through all my complaining, yelling and screaming.  I hope by Sunday the excruciating pain in my leg muscles merely turns into a manageable dull pain.

Hip Replacement - Round 2

Today is the day when I go for my second hip replacement.  I've been getting along pretty well lately with the new hip on my left side, other than my left leg is 7/8's of an inch longer than the right one.  But that will get rectified later today when they put the new titanium hip joint in my right side.  I was told by my doctor that they usually don't pay much attention to the leg length on the first hip replacement, but they take extra care in making sure the two legs are as close to equal length with the second hip replacement. 

I was getting used to walking around with the weird little "hop" to my step with one leg being longer than the other.  It's kind of funny showing people how I can keep my right leg perfectly straight and have a bend in my left leg at the knee and I'm standing straight. 

Physical therapy is going well.  I feel like I'm getting stronger all the time in my left leg.  The two physical therapists - Nicole and Aaron - have been great to work with.  I usually do all the exercises on my own with the help of a P.T. assistant, Megan.  Then Nicole or Aaron work on stretching my muscles in the leg to help with increased flexibility and mobility, as well as some resistance exercises.  Lately, they've been working me a little harder, adding more exercises, more weight, and more repetitions.  I'm actually kind of looking forward to not having to go to physical therapy for a week just to help rest my left leg.  Sometimes, I feel just wiped out and really sore after the therapy. 

But strength and flexibility in the leg is what I need.  Because they actually cross your legs to dislocate your hip to take it out of the socket during the procedure, you're not supposed to cross your legs after the surgery.  When I asked the doctor at the post-op exam when I can begin to cross my legs, he said, "Never." 

Never again.  Well, in order to put on my socks and shoes, I have to cross my legs.  Right now, I have to have Cindy put on my left sock.  I've been working on putting on the right sock without crossing my leg and I can do it pretty well.  But with little flexibility in the left leg, I can't even come close to being able to put on a sock.  That's really disconcerting because I don't know how the hell I'll be able to put on socks and shoes if I'm on the road by myself.  I told Cindy she may have to go on the road with me just to put on my socks.  She said, "I'll do it!" 

Unless I get about a 50% raise in the next couple months, that's not going to happen.  And with business as slow as it is right now, any raise is not going to happen anytime soon.

But I've also been told that some doctors are overly cautious when it comes to the hip replacements.  One of the physical therapists where I go told me that in all the years he's been involved in hip replacements, he's never seen a hip dislocate after surgery.  In fact, my doctor told me that one lady in her 40's who had a hip replacement came in for her post op exam and  excitedly told him, "I can do the splits again!  Do you want to see me do the splits?!"

He said he was horrified,  He said he told her, "No, no, no!!  I don't want to see you do the splits!  You shouldn't be doing the splits!  No matter if you can do them again, don't do them!"

But I'm guessing that lady was still doing the splits showing off how great her hip replacement was. 

I've lost nearly 30 pounds since I went on my diet a little over three months ago.  I'm a little behind on my schedule as I got to about 28 pounds down for over a week, then fluctuated up and down a couple three pounds.  I really wanted to be down 35 pounds by the second hip replacement.  I'll gain some weight back with the swelling over the next couple of days, but I hope to be down 40 pounds by May 1.  Hopefully, the weather will turn nice in the coming days that will allow me to get out and walk three or four times a week during my recovery. 

Most of the weight I've lost has been in my upper body.  My neck has lost an inch.  I've noticed that some shirts are beginning to hang on me a little bit.  Cindy said that she's noticed that I've lost a lot of weight around my shoulders.  I can tell that many of my shirts aren't quite so tight on me. 

I had bought a couple pair of larger waisted jeans back in the fall.  I can't wear them without looking like I'm some sort of a rap star.  They now fall down when I walk up or down stairs.  I put on my old *smaller* jeans last week.  They haven't fit that well since, well, I don't know if they've ever fit that well.  They were always sort of tight on me to begin with.  But buttoning them up and pulling up the zipper was the easiest I've ever had with them.  So I guess I am making some progress. 

The one problem through all of this is something my doctor cautioned me about before my first hip replacement - that the pain in my left hip has been masking the pain in my right hip.  He said, "You may begin to feel some pain in your right hip after we take care of the left one." 

Well, he was certainly right.  I notice - especially during physical therapy - the right hip has that same dull pain in it that the left one had a couple three years ago.  The doctor told me the right hip wasn't too far behind the left hip in deterioration.  That's why he decided to do both of them five weeks apart.  "You're going to eventually need to do the right hip," he told me during my initial visit with him last December.  "We may as well get them both taken care of and out of the way." 

I'm anticipating the recovery for the right hip replacement will be a little easier and quicker than the recovery time for my left side.  Because of the muscle atrophy in my left leg from favoring my hip - plus severely pulling my quad and hip flexor muscle in a slip in a St. Louis hotel bathroom over a year ago - my left leg had little to no strength before the surgery.  As the physical therapists have told me, the longer the leg has had little to no strength, the longer it's going to take to get the strength back.  But I will say that I'm able to lay flat on my back and do straight leg lifts - 3 sets of 10.  Even though I can't do them with any weight on them, it's still a long way from a couple weeks ago when I couldn't lift my leg an inch off the table.  Yes, it's still a bitch, but I have this sense that things are getting better every day.

As my cousin in Los Angeles told me after my first hip replacement, "Hip replacements are becoming the tonsillectomies of the 21st Century.  Everyone's getting them."  Well, I don't know if everyone is getting them, but the procedure and recovery seem to be almost too easy.  Even though there still is some periphery soreness from time to time, plus I don't have full flexibility as of yet, I certainly didn't think I'd be doing as well as I have.  I'm hoping to be done with physical therapy by mid-May.  That would be sweet.

The Joy of DirecTV

Today is Opening Day for the 2009 Major League Baseball season.  Even though there was a game played last night, today is generally regarded as Opening Day as there will be 13 games played in both the American and the National Leagues.  For me, Opening Day is sort of like the first day of Spring.  The weather is getting warmer (although you couldn't tell it with the wintry weather we had across the state on Sunday with blizzard conditions in parts of Northern and Central Iowa), the grass is turning green, and the trees and flowers are beginning to get buds on them. 

Just in time for Opening Day, we recently made the switch from Mediacom to DirecTV.  I was paying $191.00 a month for cable and high-speed Internet.  I'd been contemplating the switch for quite sometime, considering Mediacom was slow to get more HD programming (they only have something like 25 HD channels available).  DirecTV advertised over 130 channels available on HD.  I decided to pull the trigger just before my first hip replacement a little over a month ago. 

I'm not going to get into the sordid details of the initial problems we had with the local installer, Quad City Satellite (they blew off the initial installation appointment), but they made up for it a couple days later by doing a nighttime install and offering to pay for the 3rd and 6th month invoice of my DirecTV billing.  They didn't throw in some programming they said they would for free - actually I'd heard the place was sort of shady and rough, so I wasn't really expecting them to follow through on their promise.  It will be interesting to see if they don't keep their promise of paying two months of my bill. 

Other than the problems with getting DirecTV installed, ever since then I've been in television heaven.  The signal on DirecTV is so much better than anything we ever got on Mediacom.  The HD channels are much more clear and vibrant.  And there's much more of them on DirecTV than Mediacom - one of the big reasons why I pulled the trigger on the deal.  We seem to be enjoying the Samsung TV in the family room a lot more.  

One of the things that I wanted was to have high-definition satellite receivers in four locations, downstairs in the family room (along with a DVR - I'll talk about that a little later), one in our four-season room (also known as "The Lodge), one in our bedroom and one in my office where I could record television programs directly onto my desk top computer.   I can edit out commercials and make DVD's of my more favorite shows and watch them on the portable DVD player I have.  The video quality isn't great (they don't look good on larger televisions), but they do OK for my little Panasonic portable DVD player that I bought a year or so ago.  

Speaking of recording - we went with the Digital Video Recorder option for our family room.  A number of years ago, the company I worked for distributed Tivo in the Midwest.  I sold the first Tivo units to many dealers in the market place.  I got to play with the Tivo on many different levels and thought it was a pretty nifty.  The only thing I didn't quite care for was the monthly charges (I believe it started out at $12.95 - which, I believe, went down to $9.95 - or a one time lifetime subscription fee of $299).  And the other limitation was that it only had about a 15 gig hard drive, giving you only about 12 to 14 hours of recording capability.  Nonetheless, Tivo gained in popularity and today there are people who could not live without their Tivo's. 

The DirecTV DVR is much more advanced than the Tivo's I dealt with nearly 10 years ago.  You can record up to 100 hours of standard definition programming - about 35 hours of high def programming.  There are two tuners in the unit so you can record two shows at once, or you can record a program while watching another program on the television.  You can program your DVR from a remote location via either phone or computer (I haven't quite figured that function out as of yet), and you can use the DVR to pause a show or sporting event you're watching, then you can watch the program without missing any of the action.  

The quality of the recordings - especially in high-def - is tremendous.  I'm overly pleased with the quality of the playback.  Supposedly, there's some way that you can network the DVR to play in other places in your home.  And, also supposedly, there's some way to be able to hook up a computer to the DVR to download the programming onto a hard drive and - possibly - be able to make DVD's of that programming.  I just haven't taken the time to figure out how to do all of that.   

Along with the DVR service (which costs $5.95 a month - I can live with that), we have access to DirecTV's On Demand service that offers over 4000 movies and other programming.  Some you have to pay for, some you can get for free.  The only problem is that it takes a long time to download content onto the DVR - a lot longer if it's in a high-def format.  We've found that if there's something we want to see, we'll begin to download it 15 minutes or more before we sit down to watch it.  You can watch what's already been downloaded onto the DVR while it continues to download.  If you start to watch as soon as you download, the program playback is often faster than than the download - and I have the capabilities of downloading 20 megabits per second from the Internet.

(As an aside, we kept our Mediacom high-speed Internet just because it was so fast.  But paying for it on it's own without any other Mediacom services is sort of high - $74.95 a month.  Still I need it for my work and I can pull up information from our main office so much quicker than if I had to use a phone company high-speed service.  As much as 12 to 15 times more quick.)

The one thing that has become painfully obvious with the addition of DirecTV and all the high-def channels is that we need two new televisions - one in our bedroom and one in our "lodge".  And I also need a new 16X9 monitor for the office.  Our old analog televisions in the bedroom and "lodge" just aren't cutting it.  They work OK, but we have to crop the image and we end up losing a lot of the high-def picture.  I'm looking for a couple of low-priced 26" televisions to put in those two rooms.  I've got the money, but I just haven't pulled the trigger yet. 

But the amount of channels to choose from is now overwhelming.  Cindy's big on the "Do-it-Yourself Channel", something that we didn't have on Mediacom.  And she also digs the fact that we get all the movie channels - HBO, Starz, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. - on EVERY television in the house now, and not just in the family room downstairs.  This lets her lie in bed and fall asleep to some movie she lost interest in. 

(Another aside - when we signed up for Mediacom's Digital Tier programming, we got all the movie channels which included both the Eastern and Western feeds.  About 8 months ago, Mediacom took away all the Western feeds, effectively halving our movie channel choices.  And do you think they lowered our monthly bill?  HA!  DirecTV gave us back many of the West Coast movie channels feeds.  You miss a movie on the Eastern feed?  Wait a couple three hours and it will pop up on the Western feed.  Gotta love the options available from DirecTV.)

The one big interest I had was all the regional sports channels from around the nation.  The owner of Quad City Satellite, a sort of hard kind of guy, gruffly told me, "Ah, you don't want those channels.  All they show is soccer and stuff like that."

Well, he should know his program content better than that - a lot of the regional sports channels carry local sports, including college basketball and football.  I was especially interested in getting some of the collegiate conference basketball tournaments from around the nation.  With the cock-ups that went on during the installation process, Quad City Satellite told me that they'd let me have the regional sports channels for free for a couple months to see if it was something that I may like to have.  Well, the first few days of service came and went and we still didn't have access to the sports channels.  I tried calling the guy at Quad City Satellite three or four times and he wouldn't return my calls.  Once again, I wasn't surprised.  As I said, they're a little goofy over there, in my opinion.  

I just ended up calling up DirecTV directly and signed up for the sports channels as well as the extra HD channels (most of the HDNet channels) for $8.95 and $4.95 a month.   I thought, "What the hell?  I can always drop 'em if I don't like them."  So far there's nothing not to like.

Which brings us back to Opening Day of Major League Baseball.  One of the big reasons I wanted DirecTV was for the MLB Network, Major League Baseball's own network that Mediacom had refused to pick up. (Well, that and the NFL Network, which the cable provider had also decided not to pick up.  Oh, and the NBA TV network that Mediacom hadn't...  Well, you get the idea.)  And a lot of the regional sports networks provided spring training games all through the month of March, so there was another reason to sign up for those channels. 

But we would have been blacked out for channels showing teams other than the Chicago Cubs and White Sox, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Minnesota Twins, the St. Louis Cardinals and some Kansas City Royals contests.  I wanted to see some games from the East Coast and West Coast, too.  In order to do that, I had to sign up for the Major League Baseball Extra Innings package of games.  I can get up to 80 out of market games a week, and many of them will be available in high-def.  It's costing me $189 (split up in 4 payments), but I want to see if it's worth it.  I'm hoping it is, especially catching some West Coast teams like the Angels and Dodgers. 

I already sprang for the NCAA Men's Basketball March Madness package last month.  It cost me $69 bucks, but I was able to get every NCAA tournament game live.  And, to me, it was worth it.  First of all, I didn't have to go to a sports bar and pay for overpriced food and $2.75 beers to watch the games.  Secondly, I could watch what I wanted to watch without having to constantly glance at other games.  And last, I got to do it in the comfort of my home with my high-def television.  I'm sure I caught all or bits of every NCAA tournament game this year.  I may do it again next year. 

Coming up this week is The Masters from Augusta, GA.  I didn't even think much about it until I realized that it's starting the day AFTER my second hip replacement.  I don't think I'll be able to get up and down the stairs very easily to be able to watch much of the tournament in high-def.  That's kind of a bummer because I know that some of the most beautiful shots in sports come from The Masters.  Maybe I should go out and buy a new TV for the bedroom before I go in for surgery on Wednesday.

And to add to this, DirecTV is offering enhanced coverage of The Masters on a multi-screen channel in both standard definition and high definition.  The screen will be split up to allow for the viewer to get up to the minute stats and scoring, another split will be the action that's either being shown on ESPN or CBS, another split shows golfers on the famed "Amen Corner" of the 11th, 12th and 13th holes at Augusta National, and the fourth split screen will show golfers getting through the 15th and 16th holes, probably the two toughest holes at Augusta.  

Geez, I may need to have Cindy set me up downstairs so I can catch all the action.  But if I can't, hey, that's why we have a high-def DVR!  

Winter's Last Gasp

When I was a little kid, my grandmother always said not to get lulled by early Spring's warmer temperatures and longer days - there's always one last big snow storm that will hit us before winter is finally gone.  Over the years, I found that to be somewhat true more often than not.  Well, the last big one for the winter of 2008-09 is scheduled to hit us later today.

Forecasters say a narrow band of snow that could produce snowfall totals of 6 to 8 inches - and possibly more if some areas get thundersnow - will fall directly over the Quad Cities.  The weather is supposed to start out with some rain this afternoon before changing to some sleet to a wet, heavy snow sometime late in the afternoon.  Accumulations of snow overnight will pile up at the rate of over an inch an hour. 

This is the same weather system that is responsible for heavy rain and tornadoes in the south and heavy snow in western and southern Kansas. The low pressure system will scoot northeast from Oklahoma later today with the center passing up near Chicago.  And being on the cold side of the low puts us smack dab in the middle of the heaviest snow that will hit later tonight. 

We've actually had a pretty nice late winter and early Spring so far.  While it hasn't been as warm as last year, the temperatures have consistently been in the 40's and 50's, with a few days hitting well over the 60 degree mark.  It looks like our roses made it through the winter, the lilac bush is budding out already, and the grass has turned a very lush green thanks to some fertilizing and a very nice rainfall early this week. 

While we're supposed to get a ton of snow here tonight, forecasters say it won't stick around long - which is usually good with Spring snow storms.  Temperatures will moderate into the 40's on Sunday and hit the 50 degree mark on Monday.  And since it's a wet snow, most of it - if not all - should be gone by mid-week. 

I'm certainly ready for Spring to spring...

(A postscript to yesterday's entry) - The major winter storm didn't quite materialize over the Quad Cities as promised. It began to snow around 1 p.m., but it quickly turned into rain and sleet.  The sleet began to accumulate on the roofs and grassy surfaces as the temperature hovered just above freezing.  About 4 p.m., heavy, wet snow began to fall.  This is what they were predicting all along.  On the left is a picture I took of the snow falling with our neighbor's house as a back drop. (As always, click on the picture for a larger and better view.) The picture doesn't really do justice to the huge flakes that were falling.  Cindy said, "It's like little snowballs are falling from the sky."

And this snow wasn't even the heaviest that fell yesterday afternoon.  We ventured out in the weather and went to Creekside Bar and Grill to have a couple three beers with my buddy, Randy Adams, who owns the place.  While we were there, the snow was so heavy that it was almost difficult to see business signs down the street.  It was quite possibly one of the heaviest snowfalls I'd ever seen. 

But almost as quick as it began to snow very heavily, it quit.  I mean, it just quit.  Oh, there were some flurries and some sleet, but none of the heavy snow flakes that had been coming down.  It had snowed about an inch by the time we left Creekside and it was lightly sleeting when we drove home.  And it didn't snow very much the rest of the night.  It turned out that the heavy snow went to the west of the Quad Cities with Cedar Rapids getting 5 inches.  I was outside about 11 p.m. last night and there was a very fine freezing mist in the air.  Nothing that would cause major havoc, that's for sure. 

We're getting some light freezing drizzle and light snow early this Sunday morning, but it is moving out and will be gone from the area before 9 a.m. Temperatures are already breaking the freezing mark.  Skies are supposed to clear later and temperatures are supposed to get up to the lower 40's today and in the lower 50's tomorrow.  The inch or so of the combination of snow and sleet accumulation will be gone very soon.  So soon that I'm not even going to shovel the driveway or the sidewalks.  Consistently warm temperatures are just around the corner.

(By the way, if you would like to see the satellite view of the snow cover from Sunday morning and how much it melted away five hours later, click here.)

A Meaty Bracket

It's one of my favorite times of the year, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.  For three weeks, I lose myself in the great games, the upsets and the drama that unfolds each year.  For years, people from college basketball experts to just regular people - who wouldn't know that 12 seeds have a historic propensity to beat 5 seeds in the tournament - fill out a bracket before the tournament.  It usually it costs them a buck or two to enter a tournament pool at work and the person who garners the most points can take home some serious money   

I won a couple tournament pools I entered when Michigan won the National Championship in 1989.  It put a lot of money into my pocket and gave me the idea that I knew I was doing when I'd fill out the brackets.  But I haven't been close to winning another one that I've entered ever since.  In fact, I haven't filled out a bracket in something like five years - mainly because it's much easier to watch the games when I don't have an emotional attachment to a team that I have going to the Final Four getting smoked in the second round by a low-seeded team from some directional school from Tennessee. 

Cindy almost won an NCAA bracket contest a number of years ago by doing something like this when she was making her picks: "Let's see, where's Pepperdine?  Oh, Malibu?  Oh, well, we've been there before.  I'll take Pepperdine.  OK, let's see, California.  What's their team nickname?  The Bears?  Oh, I like bears, I'll take them.  Hmm, what colors are are LSU?  Purple and gold?  Those are nice colors, I'll take them."   I mean, seriously, it was literally like that.  I think she came in third or fourth in the pool. 

But thanks to my buddy, Kevin Gertsen, who sent along this bracket that you can really sink your teeth into.   This is a bracket of favorite meats to barbecue or cook on a stove top, done up like you'd find an NCAA Men's Basketball bracket.  (Click on the picture at right for a larger view.)  It actually comes from Paul Lukas who writes rather quirky columns at ESPN.com.  You can click here to link up to Lukas' site where he gives his reasons for picking one meat over the other.

It's broken down into regions - the Pork region, the Sausage region, the Beef region and the miscellaneous, or Meatcellaneous region, with different types of meats seeded in the regions. 

It's not a big surprise that the winner of the meat tournament is the Standing Rib Roast, although I think they deserved a No. 1 seeding in the Meat regional.  It really is tough to beat Bacon as a cooked meat.  Bacon-wrapped anything is just super.  I've even joked about making bacon-wrapped bacon on the grill at some point.

It's kind of fun to look at the different meats and where - in Paul Lukas' mind - they ended up in the tournament pool.   But quite honestly, I think Lukas has a lot of time on his hands to come up with this masterpiece. 

Until Further Notice...

Road Tips is taking some time off during my recovery.  Since I won't be able to travel until June, it's either finish off some of the entries I have coming now, or wait until I can start writing again like I have been.

This doesn't mean I'm completely going away.  I'll be writing once or twice a week - or it could be once every two weeks.  But I'm running out of material since I won't be able to travel for nearly three months. 

I'll continue my updates on my hip situation, which is coming on along fabulously, thank you.  And I've got some restaurants that I'd still like to talk about.  But I'm just not going to be making entries on a regular basis.  I'm still at the point where I can only sit for about 45 to 60 minutes in my office chair before I have to get up and walk or go back to bed to help stretch my leg out. 

During this hiatus, I may re-print some of my more favorite Road Tips entries.  But I have a fundamental problem with re-cycling old stories.  I'll have to see how I feel about it in a week or so.

Speaking of my recovery, I've started physical therapy and while they've started me out with a lot of stretching, I know the tough days are coming.  I still have little to no strength in my left leg - I can't even lift it from an extended position when I'm lying flat in my back.  But the physical therapists - Nicole and Aaron - are fun to work with and have the patience that I've never possessed in my whole life.  I'm going three days a week and that will continue up until I have my right hip replaced on April 8.  Then it's more physical therapy until they release me to start traveling again, hopefully in early June.

The recovery for my left hip - the lack of strength in my left hip, notwithstanding - has been going even better than I anticipated.  I'm getting a little tired of the pain, which is receding every day.  But I'm also getting cabin fever as I've not been able to get outside all that much because of cold weather.  But it's supposed to be in the 50's and 60's in the next few days, so I'll be able to get out and walk up and down the street rather than back and forth in our hallways at home.   

I ditched the walker on Monday of this week and have been walking with a cane, primarily.  That is, when I remember to take the cane.  I found myself out in our four season porch on Thursday without my cane when I took some recyclables out to the storage bin.  I turned and thought, "Where's my cane?"  I left it in the kitchen.  When I recounted the story for the physical therapists the next day, they said, "No, that's great!  If you're forgetting your cane, then that means you're getting along well without it!" 

Saturday, I went without my cane for about 90% of the day.  Sunday, the only time I touched my cane was to move it to a place where I wouldn't forget it if I needed it at some point.  That's 11 days after the surgery.  Also yesterday, I drove my car for the first time since the surgery.  While it hurts to sit in the car for any long amount of time, at least Cindy doesn't have to take time off of work any longer to cart me around to doctor and P.T. appointments.

It's also weird that I have one leg longer than the other - by about an inch.  But I know it's going to be a temporary thing until April 8.  I'm still a little shaky learning to walk with a pronounced limp.  So even though I'm getting to the point where I don't really need the cane, I'm keeping it around to help with the limp. 

The only big problem - other than getting in and out of bed, and Cindy having to put the support hose on my legs for circulation purposes until next Wednesday - has been with a drug called Lovenox that I was injecting into my stomach as an anti-coagulant medicine.  I'd been noticing that late in the day, I'd begin to get chills, nausea, got fatigued, my muscles ached, swelling in my leg increased and I had to go to bed just to feel halfway good.  Even taking pain pills or taking a long, hot shower didn't take care of the increased pain that I experienced.

Cindy's dad and his lady-friend came down to see me last Tuesday.  I injected myself with the Lovenox around 4 p.m. right when they got there.  About 5:30, I had to excuse myself and go back to bed.  The same symptoms erupted.  I began to think that maybe there was something else going on because I had felt great up to that particular point.

The next day, I got a shot about 4:30.  Around 6 p.m., boom.  Same thing.  I got to thinking, "It's got to be the Lovenox."  We looked up the side effects of Lovenox and I found that I had many of the side effect symptoms. 

I called the doctor's office the next morning and talked to one of the nurses.  I told her that I was having nearly all of the side effects of Lovenox, only they seemed to be somewhat acute.  She said, "We've never had anyone complain about the side effects of Lovenox before.  Let me talk to Dr. Hoffman and I'll get back to you."

She called me back in 15 minutes and said, "Get off the Lovenox now.  You've been on it for 7 days and Dr. Hoffman says to take a full strength aspirin in the morning and one in the evening."  

Sure enough, I didn't eject the Lovenox that evening and everything was fine.  I missed my post-op appointment on Friday (because I went to the wrong office), so I didn't find out if I was somewhat allergic to the Lovenox.  But I have a post-op appointment this coming Friday and I'm sure that will be a topic of conversation.  

My staples come out this coming Wednesday and the incision looks great.  I've had little to no problems with the incision, other than it's beginning to itch.   And one other thing that I've found out during all of this - I'm allergic to surgical tape.  I was developing blisters under the surgical tape that I had on my to hold the gauze pads.  When I got the original dressing changed on Monday, the physical therapist gave Cindy a roll of paper tape to use on me.  It's worked great.

I'd also gained some weight back, probably in the form of water weight gain to help with the swelling due to the operation.  But I've noticed that I'm getting rid of a lot of water lately and I've lost a couple three pounds over the past couple days, so I'm hopefully going back in the right direction to lose more weight.   

So, that's it for now.  Thanks again to all who have written, called or commented on my situation.  It's not that I'm going away for good, so check back from time to time for updates and maybe a couple of new restaurants or events that I've been to lately.  I am going to write very soon about my inital experiences of having DirecTV in our house for the past couple of weeks.  And, who knows?  Maybe I'll start feeling better to be able to get back into the full swing of Road Tips sooner than later. 

An Update to the Hip Replacement Story

Thanks to many of you who have called, e-mailed, or written comments on Road Tips or on my Facebook page.  I haven't been too comfortable sitting up after my surgery, so I've worked on this entry about three times over the past 24 hours.  And each time I had to quit as I became a little sore.   I think I can get finished this time.   

I've always believed in the miracles of modern medicine.  Now I believe in them more so than ever.  After going through a total hip replacement four days ago, I'm truly amazed at how mobile I really am.  Oh, I'm not out running sprints or jumping rope, but with the help of a walker and a cane, I'm scooting around the house pretty well.

First of all, I really had no idea what to expect - other than the worst - for the procedure.  And, for that matter, after the procedure.  I didn't know if I would be a big bowl of gelatin writing in pain, or if I could "man-up" and do the little things that are needed to make me fell better.

Cindy and I got to the Mississippi Valley Surgery Center a little after one on Wednesday.  I got all checked in and then it's the usual "hurry up and wait" procedures where we could have easily come two hours later and not missed the surgery.  Actually, I was told that I would be in the surgery around 2 p.m. and out by 3.  It didn't work that way - I was taken in around 4:30 and back in the room around a quarter to six. 

Now, you have to understand, this is my first major surgery in my life - not counting the tonsillectomy that I had when I was three.  And I remember many aspects of that surgery - screaming for my mom when they're trying to put me under, seeing concentric rings when they put the ether in my face, and not being well enough to enjoy any of the oodles of ice cream they offered the kids after they came out of the tonsillectomy.  I'd heard from a lot of people that I'd be sick from the anesthesia.  I was told that I'd be in so much pain I wouldn't want to eat for a week.  I was also told that the initial pain in the hip would be so excruciating that I wouldn't want to continue the rehab process. 

But I also heard that some people do well coming out of the anesthesia, that the pain may not be so bad, and, in fact, the pain from the stiffness and swelling in joint would feel tremendously better than the pain that I was going through with the bad hip.  So, in other words, I didn't know what to expect. 

When they took me in, they tried to maneuver me around and that was a chore.  Even though I've lost about 25 pounds, I'm still a pretty big guy.  They finally got me into a position where the anesthesiologist could administer a spinal tap to numb my body below my waist.  When I felt something sort of burning going into my hand via the IV, I said, "I feel something burning in my hand."

The anesthesiologist said, "Oh, that's the 'joy juice'."  And that's about the last thing I remember.  I was out. 

I woke up about 45 minutes later, the procedure was just wrapping up.  Dr. Hoffman's assistant, Dean, was putting the staples in to close up the suture.  Actually, I woke myself up singing Aerosmith's song "Janie's Got a Gun".  The song must have been on the little stereo they had in the operating room.  Then I remember saying, "Oh, you guys have such a RIGHTEOUS set of tools in this room!" 

The anesthesiologist was laughing and I heard her say, "Oh, we've got a fun one in this guy."

They put me into a hospital bed, secured a large foam rubber piece between my legs (so I couldn't either move or cross my legs) and wheeled me back in.  Cindy was waiting for me and she said, "I heard you were a model patient!"

Dr. Hoffman had come out to talk to her about the procedure and he said I came through with flying colors.  He told her it was a lot easier than he expected. 

But I still had no feeling below my waist and that was sort of disconcerting.  Cindy was playing with my toes and I told her to knock it off because it was sort of scary that I couldn't feel her pulling on my toes.

I finally got up to walk around 10 p.m. that evening before I went to sleep, and I have to tell you, I amazed myself at how easy it was to get around.  I was using a walker and the two night nurses were standing on either side of me.  I made a couple laps around the patient area and back into the out-patient surgery area before I went to bed.  To me, it was simply amazing. 

The next morning, they got me up at five and started to get me ready to get out of there.  Physical therapy was due in at 8 and all I had to do is pee and I could leave.  Physical therapy got to me around 8:15 and we went for another walk.  In fact, I was saying that I wasn't certain I needed the walker.  Well, I'm glad I said something about that (and don't ever think you DON'T need a walker if you get a hip replacement - you will) because I wanted to have them see how good I could walk with a cane. 

They found a cane for me and I started to walk with it in my left hand.  The physical therapist said, "Oh, no.  You've got it in the wrong hand." 

I stopped and said, "This is the hand they set my cane up for when I went to get fitted for it." 

The P.T. said, "Oh, no.  Always opposite hand from the injured leg."

One of the other physical therapists heard what was going on and he came over to see what was happening.  He said, "Who told you to use the left hand for the left hip?"

I said, "It was the lady who fitted me for the cane at Genesis Home Health Care.  She set my cane up to use for my left hand.  I've been practicing the past couple of weeks with the cane using my left hand."

Well, the male physical therapist was pissed.  "What was her name," he asked angrily.  "She should know better than that!" 

I was able to leave a little after 10 a.m. - 18 hours after the procedure.  I'm tellin' ya - the miracle of modern medicine.  I got home and went to bed.  Now, I have to tell you, the toughest thing about this whole procedure is getting in and out of bed.  As one of my colleagues up in Montreal told me on Saturday, "Your bed can be your friend and your enemy."  Once I get in and get settled, I'm fine.  But I have no strength in my left leg and it's been tough to get the leg up into bed.  And because of that I've strained the lower muscles in my back.  That's not fun.  

Initially, I told everyone that I felt like I took a 95 mile an hour fastball in my left butt cheek and that a horse kicked me in the thigh.  A couple three days later, it's still pretty stiff in those areas.  But I'm getting around as well as could be expected.  The first couple days I was home the weather was beautiful and I was able to walk outside up and down the sidewalk.  Not too far, but far enough that it qualified as a good workout.  Since it's been rainy for the past couple days, I've been able to get around our house in the hallways and walking out through the kitchen in to our four=season porch. 

Cindy has been an absolute angel through all of this.  Her biggest test is putting the TED support hose on my lower legs every morning.  I have absolutely no flexibility in my legs yet and I can't bend over at the waist to put them on myself.  And they are absolute BITCHES to put on.  She's getting better with putting them on, however.  She's been very encouraging and she's much more amazed than methat I'm getting around as well as I can.  She's rubbed my lower back and helped make me feel so much better.  She's the best.

So that's it for now.  I'm doing a lot better than I expected.  Thanks again for the concern, comments, messages and phone calls.  I'm really looking forward to each new day because I can't wait to see how much more of the stiffness and soreness has gone away.   

The First of Two Hip Replacements

Today, I undergo the first of two total hip replacements.  My left hip gets replaced today.  If everything goes as scheduled, my right hip will be replaced on April 8.  I have to tell you, with all the pain I've been experiencing, I'm ready.

I've known for some time that I was going to have to get hip replacements.  About 10 years ago I slipped on some steps and tore some muscles in my leg.  The orthopedic doctor that looked at my x-rays said, "Do your hips hurt?"

Backing up a bit, I used to play a lot of basketball up to the age of 35.  When I'd finish playing for the day, my hips would hurt to the point where I'd have to take ibuprofen or a muscle relaxer to help relieve the pain.  I told the doctor, "Yeah, they used to hurt a lot when I'd play basketball."

"Look here," he said as he pointed to the X-Ray showing some gnarly looking things protruding from my hip joints.  "You've got bone spurs in your hip.  You're going to have to get hip replacements by the time you're 50."  

I made it past 50, but it wasn't long before I began to notice a large drop in mobility, especially in my left hip.  I was having trouble putting on socks and shoes.  I couldn't crouch any longer, and I couldn't bend to pick things up very well.  I knew it wasn't long before the hip replacement would come into play.  

Beforehand, I went and got a physical and my doctor wanted me to go through a total heart test, since I'd never had one before.  And that resulted in an angiogram, which found that I had a healthy heart, little to no blockage in my arteries and full blood flow throughout my body.  You can read about that here.

With a clean bill of health, I went to see the noted local orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Ralph Congdon.  I've known Dr. C. for a number of years as his son, Craig, ran an audio/video store here in the Quad's for a few years before selling out and moving to Denver.  In fact, the Congdon's were kind enough to offer their Wisconsin north woods cabin for our honeymoon when Cindy and I got married nearly 14 years ago.  (Cabin is a loose term - the place is nicer than our house!) Dr. C. told me that he was turning me over to a colleague, Dr. Joe Martin, who was a joint replacement specialist. 

Dr. Martin saw me a few days later and ran me through some tests.  He looked at the X-rays and said, "Did you use to play a lot of court sports when you were younger?  Tennis, racquetball?"

I said that I used to play some racquetball, but I used to play a lot of basketball when I was young and in shape.  He said, "Ah!  Well, the deterioration in your hips shows that there was a lot of side to side movement."  And there is a lot of side to side movement in basketball.

Dr. Martin cautioned that he didn't want to replace the hip so soon because I was a "young" guy and he didn't know if the hip replacement would last my lifetime.  And at that point, he was just talking about my left hip only.  He said, "The last thing we want to do is have to go in and replace your hip again in 20 years." 

I went back to see him another time in the fall and he was still cautioning in getting the hip replacement at my age.  "It's your call, however," he said.  "If it gets to a point that it's getting to be too much pain, or when it begins to wake you up when you're sleeping, then it's time to replace the hip.  But my recommendation is to wait." 

In the meantime, I began to notice a loss of motion and reduced flexibility in my right leg.  I thought, "Uh, oh.  My right hip is beginning to show the same signs."

In early December, I was reading an article in the Quad City Times about Dr. John Hoffman who worked at Orthopedic Specialists in Davenport.  The article was about a 52-year-old guy who had a total hip replacement in December of 2007 and another total hip replacement in January of 2008.  Five months later, this guy was playing men's league soccer.  Well, that certainly piqued my interest - not because I was looking to play soccer after my hip surgery, but because the guy did TWO replacement surgeries in a month!

I decided to call Dr. Hoffman and make an appointment, primarily for a second opinion.  I went in three days before Christmas and met with Dr. Hoffman and his assistant, Aaron Schulze.  We talked for a while and Dr. Hoffman did some flex tests on me.  He said, "My goodness, you're so stiff in that left leg!"

He was going to contact Dr. Martin's office for X-Rays, but decided to go ahead and take some for himself.  As I was in talking with Aaron after the X-Ray procedure, Dr. Hoffman came in and put the slides on the lighted screen.  He said, "If you hadn't told me that your left hip hurt more than your right, from looking at these X-Rays I would bet a million dollars it was your right hip that needed to go first."  

He said he detected a cyst in the left hip joint and said, "We need to get that taken care of as soon as we can."

Suddenly, what started out as a second opinion became the start of the full blown procedure. 

Dr. Hoffman explained that he only did the procedure on Wednesday's and I looked at a calendar on his wall.  I said, "How about January 21?"

Dr. Hoffman said, "You know, I just finished doing a television interview with Channel 6 where they were asking me about all the broken bones and dislocated joints because of people falling on the heavy ice we've had."  He explained that I'm going to have to use a walker, then a cane to get around after my surgeries.  He said, "You're going to have to get over to physical therapy and I'd feel much better if you went out when there wasn't a lot of ice and snow.  I don't think this stuff is going to be melting anytime soon."

He was right - we didn't lose our ice or snow from December until mid-February.  

The first thing he said was, "You've got to lose weight."  Now, I'd been splurging on food and drink since I'd gotten the clean bill of health over a year ago and when I stepped on the scales I was completely surprised at my weight.  Let's say it was eye-popping.  He said, "You need to lose 50 to 75 pounds before the surgery."  He talked about bariatric procedures, but that's more for the morbidly obese.  I don't think I quite qualify as that - yet.  He talked about simple diets, including the Atkins diet.  But in order for the hip replacement to work, I had to lose weight, plain and simple.  

Dr. Hoffman left the room and a few minutes later one of his nurses comes into the room.  She said, "Dr. Hoffman wants to get you a cortisone shot in your hip to help with the pain."  She looked through her calendar and said, "How about January 7th?"

I said I was going to be out of town for a week during that time (Las Vegas).  She left for a moment and then came back into the exam room.  She said, "What are you doing at 9:45 tomorrow morning?"

A few moments later, another nurse comes in and said, "OK, I'm here to schedule you for your replacements."  I thought it was sort of odd, considering that Dr. Hoffman was telling me I had to lose 50 to 75 pounds before the procedures.  The what was really odd was that she proposed March 4 as the first surgery date.  

I said, "Wait a minute.  A few minutes ago, Dr. Hoffman was saying that I needed to lose 50 to 75 pounds before the surgery.  And I don't think I can drop that much weight in a little over two months."

The nurse sort of panicked and said, "He said that?  Really?"  I told her he had and she left the room.  

A few more moments passed and Dr. Hoffman and the nurse re-entered the room.  I said, "I guess I'm sort of confused.  You're telling me that I have to lose all this weight, but she's trying to schedule me for my surgery on March 4."  

Dr. Hoffman said, "Well, yes.  Theoretically, we'd like for you to lose the weight - eventually.  It's going to do nothing but help you with your recovery.  But we can go ahead and do the surgery as long as you keep losing weight."

So she went ahead and scheduled me in for March 4 and April 8.  Both were tentative in lieu of pre-op tests, but I passed those with flying colors and now I'm ready.

Actually, the cortisone shot was sort of an interesting segment in all of this.  I had to go over two days before Christmas to the Radiology Group in Davenport for the shot.  They put you on a table, mark where they are going to insert the needle, numb you up and then shoot the cortisone into the joint.  I thought they were going to go in from the side, but no.  They go in from the front, near the groin.  Yow!

Dr. Poor, the radiologist who administered the shot, poked the hypodermic needle into me after numbing me up and promptly hit a nerve.  I said, "I've got a tingling in my leg!"  He pulled the needle out and said, "OK, well, I've hit a nerve."  He tried again.  Same thing, major tingling in my leg.  He pulled it out, moved it a bit and tried it again.  Still tingling.  Finally, on the FOURTH try he got in OK.  The only problem was that the needle he used WASN'T LONG ENOUGH!!!  Shit!!!

So, Dr. Poor and the attending nurse were over looking through a drawer for a longer needle.  I overheard him say, "I need the longest needle possible."

The nurse said, "Well, I've got a five inch needle here."

I about came unglued when I heard that.  I said, "Hey, I can hear you guys over here!  I don't know if I really need to hear all this!" 

The procedure began again.  Through all of this, Dr. Poor was asking what I did for a living and when he found out that I was in audio/video sales and he focused on talking about that.  But he would intersperse it with some "play-by-play" of the procedure.  It went something like this - "Yeah, I just bought some new speakers down in Peoria.  I had some old speakers that I bought from an old store years ago.  OK, we're goin' in.  And they had run their course. You might feel a little heat in your leg.  And my wife didn't want to have big speakers.  Almost there..."

I was shaking because I just don't like needles.  In fact, my leg was shaking so much that the nurse had to hold on to it to keep it still.  Finally I said, "Listen, I really don't need a play-by-play here, Doc."

He said, "Oh, well, we're done here."  That was that.  He told me that I'd feel some discomfort in the joint for a couple three days, but after Christmas I should feel fine.  He was right - on Christmas Day I thought I was going to shoot out of my skin a couple of times from the pain.  But the cortisone kicked in and worked very well.  For a month.  I lost the cortisone the last week of January.  I declined to get another shot because I knew I could hold off for a few more weeks before the surgery. 

So beginning at 1 p.m. today, I get a new left hip.  A lot of people have expressed how sorry they were to hear that I was going to have the replacement and I've been saying, "No, no!  Be happy for me!  This damn hip hurts like hell!  I WANT to get it replaced!" 

I'll be on a walker for a few days and then a cane for the days up to the second surgery.  Then it's the same thing all over again in April.  I *hope* to be somewhat back to normal by June and fully recovered by this fall.  But I won't be traveling for three months and during that time I may have to put Road Tips into a semi-dormant stage sometime this spring.  I'll see how that goes, but I will have periodic updates as to my condition.  Plus I need to get caught up on some places I've visited over the past few months. 

Oh!  And I almost forgot - I've lost 20 pounds so far.  My goal was to lose 25 by the first procedure.  And that's completely on diet and with no exercise.  I'd like to lose another 50 to 75 pounds.  And physical therapy and a lot of walking in the coming months to strengthen the hip joints will help.  So I have that going for me.

The Internet Continues to Amaze

This is one of my all time favorite gag pictures.  It was taken about 2 1/2 years ago at an unknown school on the first day of school for kindergarten students.  When I first received the picture from a friend in St. Louis in December of 2006, it was explained to me that parents were taking pictures of the kids in the class on their first ever day of school.  And for one picture the kids were told to make faces or do something funny.

Click on the picture and check out the little kid in the front row in the striped shirt and glasses.  Yep, he's giving the camera the finger!  Not just the finger, but the double-barreled finger!

What gets me the most about the kid is the look on his face.  He's got that devilish look, all the while peering over his glasses at the camera.  Then it hit me - I suddenly remembered all those "Little Johnny" jokes that have been told over the years,  Like this one:

One day Little Johnny was in school and he had to go to the bathroom. So he raised his hand and asked the teacher, "Can I go to the bathroom." She said no. 

Five minutes later, he raised his hand and said, "Dammit! I have to piss!  Can I go to the bathroom?"

She said "Not with that mouth, Little Johnny.  Now go to the corner and say your 'ABC's' frontwards and backwards."

He went to the corner and said "a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z"

Then he said "z,y,x,w,v,u,t,s,r,q,o,n,m,l,k,j,i,h,g,f,e,d,c,b,a" 

The teacher said, "That was good, Little Johnny.  But where is the p?"

Little Johnny said, "It's running down my leg!"

I first heard that joke when I was probably in fifth grade.  And there's tons of great Little Johnny jokes that have been told over the years.  If you want to check out more Little Johnny jokes, click here.

Well, it hit me.  We finally found out what Little Johnny looks like!  Now, I normally don't send a lot of jokes or gags out to friends or colleagues, but this one I couldn't resist.  And I for the subject line for the e-mail I put "Finally, a picture of Little Johnny", and I sent it out to family, friends and colleagues.  Never thought any thing more about it and never saw it on the Internet again.   

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from my friend Dave Grimm in Des Moines.  He attached the picture and wrote, "That picture you sent out a while back came back around!"  He then said in a second e-mail that he checked to see when he received it from me and he confirmed that he got it in December of 2006.  So it took over 2 years for it to come back to both of us. 

I know, I know.  It's probably trivial to many, but it's somewhat fascinating to me that I'll get the same funny gag from friends in Arizona, Canada, and in the Quad Cities - sometimes all on the same day!  And something that I sent off into Cyberspace over two years ago is still making the rounds. 

I love the picture.  I placed it on my Facebook page in my "Fun Pictures" file.  In fact, I've since printed it out and put it in a frame and placed it on my desk.  Whenever I need a good laugh, I just take a glance at this picture.  I'm glad others have had the chance to laugh at it, as well.  Can you imagine the embarrassment of the kid's parents when they saw that picture?  Geez...

And a New Record! But Upon Further Review...

Even though the National Weather Service office in the Quad Cities moved to the Davenport Municipal Airport a number of years ago, they still take the official readings at the Quad City International Airport in Moline, about 15 miles to the south as the crow flies from the Davenport airport.  Earlier this morning, the temperature gauge at the Moline airport recorded a temperature of -29 (F).  That's -34 (C) for my Canadian and European readers.  That broke the nearly 13-year-old all-time low record temperature for the Quad Cities, which was -28 set on a cold Saturday morning in early February 1996. 

Now, that's cold.  I've always thought that it doesn't matter if it's -5 (F) or -25 (F) - it's just damn cold. 

Of course, there's going to be the inevitable jokes about global warming on a day like today.  While I believe there is a concern for global warming and it's effects, you're going to have to go a long way to convince me any further this morning. 

The saving grace out of all of this is that the temperature could rise as much as 30 (F) to 35 (F) degrees today, giving us a temperature in the middle single digits later this afternoon.  The temperatures are supposed to moderate through the evening on Friday night and top out in the upper 20's (F) by tomorrow afternoon.  Then they're supposed to hit the upper 30's (F) by next Wednesday.  I'll feel like taking my shirt off and running around the yard by that time. 

Now, I'm really worried about the beer in the beer fridge this morning.  I'm afraid to go out to look at the carnage...

(7 p.m., January 16 - There's no carnage in the refrigerator, thank God.  But it was a very cool 12 degrees above zero (F) in there.  It warmed up to 5 above (F) outside today and we're to have steady to rising temperatures overnight. 

However, tonight on the news, there seems to be a reversal of what was reported this morning.  It appears the official temperature gauge from the National Weather Service malfunctioned and they had to take two normal mercury thermometers outside early this morning to record the temperatures.  Both those thermometers registered -27 (F) at 4 a.m.  They reportedly didn't go any lower than that. 

However, the Federal Aviation Agency, which also has an automated thermometer at the Quad City International Airport, reported their gauge hit -29 (F) overnight.  However, it was determined that their automated thermometer was NOT official (although it was probably the same one the National Weather Service uses) and the official temperature was *only* -27 (F). 

So, we didn't set an all time record last night.  Or did we?  There seems to be some government conspiracy afloat here...

Either way, -27 or -29 is too damn cold...)

At Second Glance, Maybe Las Vegas Isn't So Bad...

As I write this morning, it's -23 (F) here in the Quad Cities.  That's -31 (C) for my friends in Canada and Europe.  It's just colder than hell out.  Well, that is, if hell is cold. 

-23 is five degrees warmer than the all-time low of -28 set back in January of 1996.  I remember that rather vividly.  I was traveling that week with a guy from Marantz and it was the most miserable week I think I ever spent in my life.  Temperatures didn't get above ZERO for four or five days.  This time around, temps are supposed to stay below zero for about 42 hours straight - that's still too many hours for me.

After my bitch fest yesterday about Las Vegas, one thing you have to say about the town is that the weather sure is nice there.  Other than the very rare snow event that hit the city in December, Las Vegas enjoys abundant sunshine and warm to very warm temperatures year round.  While it's easy to spot the tourists vs. the residents in 60 degree weather (the tourists are the ones without the winter parkas), Las Vegas certainly isn't shivering like we're shivering this morning. 

My biggest fear is not if my car will start or if our pipes will burst - it's about the beer supply I have out in the garage.  History tells me to cut down dramatically on the beer stockpiles in the winter time, just for situations like this.  But it was 20 degrees in the beer fridge yesterday and I'm afraid I'll go out this morning and see broken bottles and iced-beer on the shelves.  There's not a lot of beer in there and the rest of the beer that I have on shelves is hunkered down under heavy-matted blankets.  I think they'll be OK. 

Geez, while I've written this entry, the temperature at the National Weather Service at the Davenport Airport just dropped to -25 (F) (-32 C).  That's now only 3 degrees warmer than the all-time low.  Well, I guess the best thing about today marks the half-way point of the Meteorological Winter.  If the second half of Winter is anything like the first half, it may be time to check housing options further south. 

Naw - I love it in Iowa.  Like I say, nine months out of the year, this is a great place to live.  I can handle the cold weather.  For awhile...