{"id":1140,"date":"2016-03-11T06:08:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T14:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2016-03-10T20:13:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T04:13:13","slug":"tales-from-the-clawback-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2016\/03\/11\/tales-from-the-clawback-trail\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the Clawback Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you remember the words from that old song, Leaving on a Jet Plane? \u00a0It\u2019s an old Peter, Paul, and Mary number sung by someone who has to go off on tour, leaving loved ones back home. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t matter what kind of tour it is\u2014military tour of duty, book tour, touring musicians, or just someone who has to travel for work\u2014it\u2019s always tough when you have to pack your bags and head off to faraway places when the one who means the most to you in all the world is left behind at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Bill re-injured his back several years ago\u2014complicating an injury that was already fifty or so years old\u2014that has been our situation. \u00a0When it came time to go on book tour, I went and he stayed home. \u00a0He may have been at home in a familiar, comforting place, with a loyal dog or dogs for company, but it wasn\u2019t a time of carefree kicking back and dozing out on the patio. \u00a0It was a time of eating alone and sleeping alone, something neither of us signed on for.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, I was out on the road, doing two or three presentations a day\u2014and gaining energy and emotional charges from my audiences\u2019 reactions, but once the adrenaline faded? \u00a0So did I. \u00a0And when I\u2019d return to the hotel, I\u2019d be a goner, but could I sleep? \u00a0Generally not until the wee hours of the morning, regardless of time zone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Doing the performances AND driving my own cars was clearly not recommended, so for the past several years either my son or my daughter-in-law have stepped up to \u201cdrive Miss Daisy\u201d on tour. \u00a0I had them to make the Garmin work and to trouble-shoots problems with venues like missing microphones or semi-stalker fans. \u00a0Let\u2019s just say that, for women of a certain age, being on tour all by your lonesome is NOT a good idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over time, as Bill\u2019s back got worse and worse, and we BOTH became more and more sedentary, which is why our starting to do our \u201cstep program\u201d a year ago in April was so important. \u00a0At first Bill could only manage a max of 2000 steps a day, resting every two hundred steps or so, and using a cane to help maintain his balance as he shuffled along like a little old guy. \u00a0It would be specious to say that his back pain has magically disappeared. It has not, but he has learned to manage it. \u00a0With the help of a trainer, his muscle structure has improved enough so he can support his back better, and that, in turn, lessens the pain. \u00a0Being sixty-plus pounds lighter also makes a huge difference in the back pain department. \u00a0These days, he\u2019s still a \u201clittle old guy,\u201d but when he steps out, he strides off as though he means it\u2014without a cane in sight.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year he was depressed, and he was all about figuring out how I\u2019d get along without him. \u00a0All I can say is, \u201cWhat a difference a year makes!”<\/span><\/p>\n

This year he\u2019s on tour with me. \u00a0He understands the things that drive me nuts, and after thirty-plus years of marriage, he has some well-honed strategies for talking me down from my tree. \u00a0The tour is as grueling as ever \u2026 well, wait, maybe not quite<\/i> as grueling\u2014only one or two events a day so far rather than three. \u00a0But between events, we\u2019re in the car together saying, remember when: \u00a0Remember when we went to the B. Dalton\u2019s off that exit? \u00a0Remember when that piece of tire flew up from a passing truck and slammed into the front end of the car? \u00a0Remember when we stopped at that long dead restaurant for lunch, and isn\u2019t that the Denny\u2019s where the DEA took down a bunch of drug dealers in the parking lot while we were having dinner?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s wonderful to be on the road sharing close to a lifetime\u2019s worth of “remember whens” back and forth across the front seat and listening to familiar music on our favorite Serius channel, Escape. \u00a0They only play orchestral arrangements of songs, but that doesn\u2019t matter a bit, at least not to us, because we happen to know most of the words, anyway. \u00a0And if we do forget some of the lyrics? \u00a0No problem, we can always Google the song on our iPhone.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year we arrived in Phoenix on Sunday night only to discover that our favorite hotel had been \u201creimagined\u201d and remodeled by some hip person who has no concept that when you\u2019re on tour what you really want is something old school and familiar. \u00a0Maybe I\u2019m only speaking for myself here\u2014maybe there are plenty of people who want to go into the bathroom first thing in the morning and find a painting of a shark hanging on a clothes pin over the toilet. It just happens that I am NOT one of those people.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a single night, we removed ourselves from that once-beloved and now \u201ctoo hip” hotel to one that is \u2026 well \u2026 relatively frumpy by comparison, but one with comfortable seating for more than one person in the room; one where the bath mats don\u2019t have the admonishing words, \u201cclean up your act\u201d printed on them; one where a room service meal comes on an actual tray rather than in a paper bag! \u00a0(As I checked out of the hipster hotel in high dudgeon on Monday morning rather than staying the remaining three nights, I was assured that I could have had a plate with room service if I had wanted one. \u00a0You know what? \u00a0I assumed that plates came with room service food automatically without my having to make a special request.<\/span><\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the best part, Bill and I are together on this adventure. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t calling him from the hotel, whining because things weren\u2019t to my liking when there wasn\u2019t a single thing he could do from back home to fix whatever was the matter. \u00a0We left the hotel, we found a place that wasn\u2019t black-hole dining to have a good breakfast, and then we sat in a comfortable lobby elsewhere until it was time to check into the new hotel, where, I might add, I\u2019m sleeping like a baby.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what our year of playing what our grandson, Colt, likes to call the \u201cstep game\u201d together has done for us. It\u2019s made Bill well enough to come drive Miss Daisy on the Clawback tour. \u00a0It has given us this time and these many adventures together\u2014good, bad, or indifferent. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sort of like marriage where it says, \u201cfor better or for worse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is definitely for better.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you remember the words from that old song, Leaving on a Jet Plane? \u00a0It\u2019s an old Peter, Paul, and Mary number sung by someone who has to go off on tour, leaving loved ones back home. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t matter what kind of tour it is\u2014military tour of duty, book tour, touring musicians, or just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[148,6,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ali-reynolds","category-tour-2","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-io","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}