I am packed and ready to leave on my bike ride from San Francisco California to Florida. I was going to leave today but rain was coming down and is predicted for tomorrow also. Looks like I will leave on Friday March 2 now. I will post as I go.

My Bags are Packed

My bags are packed and I am ready to go on my cross country bike ride. I was going to leave tomorrow from the Golden Gate Bridge but the weather forecast is for three quarter to an inch of rain. The rain I am not so worried about because I am well prepared for rain but the first leg of my trip starts out with a dangerous narrow highway that has already claimed quite a few bikers so I do not want to ride it in poor visibility conditions. I can wait a day for safety's sake. If I was already on the road and the same thing came up I would wait so why not delay the start.

My bike is a a Novara Randonee from REI with front and rear panniers from Ortlieb. I loaded it with the things I wanted to take then went out for a 30 mile ride to test it out. When I got home from the ride I took a whole lot of things out of my bags. They were just too heavy. I have a tent, sleeping bag and pad, camera, rain gear, clothes, phone and computer with chargers, spare inner tubes and tools and my meds etc. It all was too much. Less clothing is going to be the way to go. The deodorant, shaving lotion and shampoo were not needed and can be bought along the way. I can buy anything I need as I go rather than carry it all.

I did have a small seizure on Sunday which is causing some residual pain problems for me. It is making it very hard for me to walk at all right now. It must be my body's way of warning me that I am after all, just a geriatric disabled man planning an almost impossible ride. The seizures could be the problem that ends my trip somewhere along the way. I could have a seizure and tumble in front of a big truck or car or fall and just seriously injure myself. It is a risk I am willing to take. I do want to push myself. I can barely walk to the back of a grocery store to buy milk and here I am planning on pedaling across the country on a bicycle. Kind of a stupid plan I know. Other people have overcome even more difficult situations so I will get to see how I do when the proverbial shit hits the fan along the way.

Tomorrow will be a day of rest and reading. No big drinking party send off for me. My Irish roots might handle a hangover on day one but I just don't do that anymore. I would rather be well hydrated and rested, at least to start the ride.

Lots of friends are trying to talk me out of this ride but I just smile thank them for their concerns and ignore their advice. I am taking a big risk and that is all there is to it. If I don't leave I just might take the 250 foot trip from the bridge instead. The ride is clearly the better option for me right now.

I will be missing my family and friends. My daughter and grandson are moving to CA it looks like now. Her husband finished his tour in Afghanistan this month and will be stationed at Fort Irwin in the Mohave desert which is near where I was living in Bakersfield. I planned this trip before I heard they might be coming to a base so close to where I lived. I can't delay the trip because I need to get through the desert before the temps hit 115 to 120 degrees and I am cutting it close already. If I am delayed due to health reasons or some other unforeseen problems then I might need to abort or jump a train to get through the heat. What happens happens, I am just going to give it my best effort and then roll with whatever comes along. There is no failure except not starting at all.










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Pushing My Limits

I have been struggling with high pain for going on 20 years now. I can barely walk to the back of a store to pick up milk and eggs. I can ride a bike. So I have come up with a crazy or maybe insane plan to test myself and my limits. I am jumping on my bike next week and heading South from the Golden Gate Bridge. If I make it to San Diego then I will head East. I will just go as far as I am able to. I may only make it one day or one week or one month or maybe I will keep riding for the rest of my life. I do love being on the road and seeing the world go by. I plan on stopping to smell the roses so to speak.

I had planned on going to the Golden Gate last week for a different reason. As I mulled the circular thoughts over and over in my mind a stray current swept over me and I just decided to take off instead. Maybe if I have a goal I will keep going until I reach that goal. That is how I survived as long as I have with all my other crazy insane things I have done like climbing mountains, walking across Africa, and traveling through scores of war zones from Africa and Asia to Central and South America. I need goals in my life. Bucket lists are all the rage since the movie brought the subject up but I have been making and finishing bucket lists for my entire life. For the last three years or so I have not had a goal in my life, something to live for. Pain rewires the brain and can make life unbearable to endure. I need this goal to wire my brain on my terms not my pains terms. Sometimes the rewards of living seem so small compared to the price of pain. My only reward will be my own self satisfaction.

I don't care if I make it to the Atlantic or not because that is not the point of this stupid plan. The point is to push myself to a new limit. If my bike breaks down I am not able to walk to the next town to get it repaired. I will need to trust that the general public will help me if I am in need. So far in my wandering around the world people have been overwhelmingly generous to me giving me shelter and protection when I needed it and also the warmth of a fellow human.

I have some mountains to cross. Some of them are real like the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies but some of the mountains are more symbolic like pushing myself on despite my pain deranged brain telling me to quit. I have read lots of inspiring books about humans pushing their physical and mental limits to climb mountains like Everest or to get to the North or South Poles. Crawling on hands and knees snow blinded and frost bitten but pushing on to make it to the top and back again through shear determination is not about getting to the top of the mountain. It is something else. Sure there are people that start out to be the first to do this or that because they want the publicity but the vast majority of those types either turn around or die because they lack that inner strength. I have been missing inner strength lately. Basically I hit empty last week. I need to refill my tank of inner strength.

I will be posting my progress as I go along. I am posting it for myself though not for the "glory" or to impress anyone. I don't care if I get a big fat zero readers. It is good in my struggle with my own brain to put thoughts on paper so that I can look at it and keep a perspective on where I stand in my war to overcome pain and depression. I am sure a lot of my recent posts (since I quit posting about my travels well over a year ago) have been hard to read and understand by some of my followers. I have been depressed and angry as well as struggling with pain and lack of mobility. I don't like to grovel for medical care or shelter or food or anything else for that matter. I have given up on those struggles for now. I am focused on my new goal and I prefer that.

During my ride, I am going to try to survive on my $900 social security so I will need help from people as I go. I will be looking for places to spend the night and some wifi to keep in contact with my family and friends. If anyone along my route wants to help me out send me a note. I have a credit card and I am sure it will fill up quickly what with my bike costs and the inevitable shelter expenses along the way. I will not consider it a failure if I don't make it to Florida, after all I can't walk a block and I am thinking about riding a bicycle over 4000 miles by myself. The only failure is if I don't start the journey, because then I will take a journey from the Golden Gate that is only about 250 feet and there will be nothing to post about that journey.

Packing up to hit the road

I am preparing to leave California. I can no longer access medical care in this state. I have an income of $900 a month and medicare but no doctors or hospitals accept only medicare anymore. You are required to have Medi-Cal in California which is the state run part of medical care. California has been refusing me medi-cal for eight months now. With my long list of health problems I won't survive without medical care so I am packing my solo bag and hitching a ride to somewhere else.

My first thought was to just commit suicide right here and now but I have decided to try one last time to settle down somewhere else in a different state where it is warm. I need warmth to help me keep my high chronic pain a bit lower. In cold and wet weather my pain just skyrockets up to levels I can no longer take. When I get to where ever I end up I will attempt to get settled and find health care. If it does not work out this time I will revert to my previous plan.

I have been thinking about the sun belt states like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Florida and a few others. As I went over the list I have sort of decided to avoid states that have valley fever so Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are out. I have had enough of valley fever problems for one lifetime. That narrows the list down to the bug infested states East of Texas. I am not too fond of all the bugs either.

I really would prefer a place like the Canary Islands where the weather is nice and warm and there are almost no bugs at all. The problem is the federal government will cut off my social security if I leave the country. Then as a sick disabled old man I will have no way to survive. My choices are limited to somewhere along the sunbelt. Any ideas of locations from anybody? Warm, cheap, and not too many bugs with some basic medical care available is all I want. Does it exist? Or do I need to revert to my backup plan?

Not much going on

My life has been like a dead corpse lately. I got nothing going on. My health sucks big time and it is keeping me from doing the most basic things.

I still get out for about a five mile bike ride almost everyday but I was doing around 60 miles a day just a few months ago. I have to stop about every mile to catch my breath. I used to ride 17-18 miles per hour but not I struggle to stay above 10 miles per hour.

I have a cough that won't go away and my throat is on fire. My chronic pain swings up and down. I have been illegally denied medical care by Kern County for the last 8 months. I transferred to Kern County from Alameda County and they are supposed to make a smooth transition with no break in coverage but Kern County is ignoring the laws and delaying my coverage. I have given up trying to get care now. I wish I would just get something fatal and end this charade of life I am waddling through.

It is no fun being a poor disabled grumpy old man. That poem I posted earlier hit a chord in my brain. I try to relive the good old days to keep me going but I feel like dementia is starting to set in. I try to exercise my brain to keep it alive but without keeping the rest of my body fit I will slowly sink into that abyss of not remembering anything. If and when that day comes the only thing I can say is at least I should be happier like that. Most dementia patients go through an angry stage and then just forget and become happy. So here's to a quick slip into dementia for me....

Winter Blues

My health has not been very good lately. My chronic pain is bouncing up and down on a regular basis and my mental health has basically just been going more and more South. I have been in Bakersfield for a long time now and I have no access to medical care. I have been bounced out of the clinics without care. The hospital had a doctor see me but he did it just as quickly and coldly as he could then they chucked me out and told me not to return again. The problem is my Medi-Cal has not transferred from Alameda County to Kern County. It is supposed to happen by just giving them the new address and in six weeks you are supposed to be hooked up with Medi-Cal and an HMO for care. It did not work out that way.

For the first six weeks I waited like they told me and then went in to ask about it. I got my head chewed off for asking. I waited a few more weeks and then I started to call around to see what was going on. One worker at legal aide was told that Alameda County was holding it up by not responding. She told me to go back to Alameda County and demand that they forward my papers. I finally got to talk to the worker in Alameda and he told me he never received a request to transfer. I gave him a request on the spot. He told me to wait six more weeks and I would have it in Kern County. He never sent anything.

I got an attorney at Bakersfield legal Aide to help me. He talked to the supervisors in both Alameda and Kern Counties and they told me I would have it done in 45 days. He told me to go ahead and apply for Healthnet the Kern County HMO. I applied for the HMO and they sent me out a card and copious explanations of how to obtain care. Then in the seventh month of my attempt to change my address I received a Notice Of Action saying I was declined for Medi-Cal because Alameda County never forwarded the papers. I will not appeal. I will not fight anymore. I would rather just be dead than take any more abuse from those people in the Medi-Cal office.

So now I have no coverage. The clinics and hospitals will not help me out and no doctors accept just Medicare. So I get to just sit and suffer. No one cares that I am on the verge of death. The strange thing is a poor Mexican could walk into the same clinics and hospitals that are declining me and the Mexican could get care. The whole system sucks and I have totally given up on ever obtaining any more medical care. I would rather just die than live in a world this cold. The entire system can just go to hell as far as I am concerned now. I will get my affairs in order and then let nature take its course.