Travel Reference
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even as they shrank. Road wisdom leads to patience. A rider can lay back, but the near-death
tally never goes to zero.
But then other traffic comes on frightfully fast and feels like impact may be unavoidable:
decrepitude, assisted living, death by boredom. Difficult thoughts accompany the aging pro-
cess. It's natural, just as a traveler wonders how much farther, and what comes next. Nobody
wants to dwell on the end or what waits yonder. Why not pass in a Barcalounger instead of
French kissing a Mack truck at eighty?
Was I afraid of the Smoker? May be. But only a fool would mount up for a long haul
without knowing what might kill him. Fear has always seemed like a first component of cour-
age—but close calls paled next to angina, which is not where babies come from but what takes
Daddy away. What came next was not the big one but gallbladder inflammation. A big, greasy
stone jammed the bile duct at intervals, like a truck parked on the rib cage and backing onto
the sternum to offload hot oil—beep, beep, beep. A stuck gallstone feels like a coronary throm-
bosis, because the gallbladder is next to the heart and pumps bile that can't get out, because
the stone is in the way. On the bright side, a man in the pink should remain vital, with the
gallbladder removed.
“There's really nothing to it,” the doctor said. “Unless we get in there and find the thing
attached to your liver. Then we have to open things up and cut it off. It must come out.”
Most people survive a nothing to it surgery. U.S. Congressman and generally good guy
Jack Murtha was vital but did not survive. His inflamed gallbladder got infected—infection
is tough. He may have resisted surgery as many do, because gallbladder attacks come and go.
And surgery can kill you. Jack was a Vietnam veteran, seventy-seven already.
Given a time and season to every purpose at a breakneck pace, life can lock up its rear
wheel on reflection. Mind follows body sooner or later in a lose/lose process—unless you let
go, have faith and give peace a chance.
Now where were we: motorcycles, whoredom, time and relative value? Yes, and
money—George the broker in synchronous convergence called for quarterly assessment,
opening as usual on the The Materialist's Golden Rule: “The one thing you don't want to do is
outlive your money.” Except that this quarter seemed different, with so much time spent hark-
ing back to youth that had seemed eternal not so long ago.
“But I do.”
“Oh, man,” he moaned, like I wasn't getting the picture. “Listen: old age doesn't mix well
with poverty.”
“I get the picture, George. If I end up broke you think I should drop dead and be grateful.
Fuck that, George. What I don't want to outlive is my vigor.” In the pink had become my man-
tra.
George didn't want to condescend but explained age and money. “Your vigor will fade.
With money you'll have the best medical care.”
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