Tripping…final chapter

My twisted leg, ingloriously earned when I fell in the last ten minutes of the last hike of the week, put me at a disadvantage compared to the other nervous passengers at the Saint George, Utah airport. I was no longer my agile macho self, doped up on Tylenol Plus that didn’t seem to be living up to its claims.

I hobbled into the tiny airport from the resort van only to discover mass anxiety displayed on dozens of faces jockeying for position at the two check-in counters that served United, Delta and American. One couldn’t be sure which of the two lines to use since there were no signs nor an amplifying speaker; nothing but the ability of the rather petite agents with matching tiny voices who sought to organize the increasingly unruly crowd.

Barely able to push around my suitcase, I had burdened poor Jackie with my carry-on bag housing my Apple lap-top, Kindle reader, Air-pods, several charging cords, NY Times crossword puzzles, and the NY Review of Books that had gone untouched during the last seven days of our vacation at the Red Mountain Resort.

We watched the digital clock hover menacingly on the wall behind the ticket counter. It moved relentlessly, oblivious to our need to make a super-tight connection in Phoenix. Even if things went perfectly, we only had thirty minutes to catch that connecting flight and arrive on schedule in Santa Barbara.

After what seemed like glacial movement toward the ticket counter, we were greeted by an exhausted agent. She accepted two pieces of our luggage, tagged them and sent them to the mysterious place where all baggage goes, only one miscalculation removed from the surely lost and sometimes found department.

There was still time to get to the gate before the scheduled 3:15 departure. All we needed was reasonable cooperation by TSA and a speedy trip through security. It was as though half of St. George was in line ahead of us. Perhaps, I wondered, is this how St. Georgians spend their Saturdays; a trip to the airport creating mayhem for predatory visitors?

Aging does have its benefits; people over 75 need not remove their shoes when walking through security. I have often pondered the reason for this regulation. Was it because old people are unable to bend down to unlace their triple-wide clunkers? Most old folks wear those glaring white nursing home specials with three Velcro straps; unzipping should be easy. Or do we look as though we are unable to construct and hide a shoe bomb; good thing they didn’t know that I built a Heathkit amplifier right after my college days.

I also was the beneficiary of being led around the scanners and passed through without anyone touching me. Perhaps I looked harmless as I stumbled around on my gimpy right leg. No such luck for cute little Jackie who was flagged down and body scanned three times by some TSA brute who seemed to be enjoying himself.

We cleaned up our carry-on mess and headed for one of the airport’s four gates. It was SRO at all four, but happily the electronic screen announced an on-time departure for American’s 3292 to Phoenix. We had dodged a bullet and only malfunctioning equipment could stop us now. 

And, of course, it did.

We were seated quickly without anyone beating up on the flight steward for enforcing mask wearing. The engines rumbled and the plane backed from the gate. We taxied toward the runway, the plane stopped, there was an overly pregnant pause and we waited for the captain who eventually said, “Sorry folks. We’ve got a warning light that needs to be checked out. Shouldn’t be long. Sit back and relax.”

What he really meant, I thought, was “God knows what the problem is. Never seen anything like it. You will all probably have to exit the plane on the 110-degree tarmac while we nonchalantly see what’s going on. You’re going to miss your connection in Phoenix and your bags will probably get lost too. Hang tight and don’t bother the crew with dumb questions. Oh, and this is the last flight out today.”

The captain finally just unscrewed the offending warning-light and we were on our way, but not before we had lost half of the allotted time to make our Phoenix connection on American 5332 to Santa Barbara. I was sure that the departure gate for 5332 was going to be a day’s walk from where we would deplane. For me, it would be a two day crawl.

Jackie took it in stride when we landed, summoned up her majestic five-foot-one height and got ready for battle. From our location in the way-back cheap seats she called the steward and, citing my inability to do Olympic high hurdles, asked that we be given special priority in exiting the plane. Sure.

Despite her valiant efforts, we gained little in the aisle and then began the long march up the gangway. People passed me as though my feet were in concrete. If I had been a lame horse, they would have shot me.

Arriving at the top of the gangway after what seemed like a full day spent on the Bataan Death March, we were told that flight 5332 had departed on schedule five minutes ago. With a healthy dose of hostility, I wondered why connecting flights are always on schedule when we are late. And why they are always on time when we are early.

The agent at the counter gave us good news; there was another flight to Santa Barbara today. The bad news was that it wasn’t departing until 6:30, three hours from now. No calamity, since I figured it would take me that long to crawl to the gate.

It’s times like this that I wished I had the platinum American Express card that would welcome us to American’s Admirals’ Club lounge. There I would be pampered and get moderately smashed at no additional cost beyond the annual AMEX card fee (reputedly equal to what I paid for my first house.)

Jackie did her best to do a hail Mary around the menacing hounds guarding the entrance to the cushy VIP lounge. I admire her boldness but find it hard to watch; as a result, I usually lower my head and turn away from the spectacle as though I didn’t know this woman.  Shamefully, I did my part by imitating a Viet Nam veteran returning home with a war-torn leg. But they had seen that ploy before and sent us away to lick our wounds. In retrospect, maybe a row of medals on my sweatshirt would have done the trick.

The adjacent Escape Lounge beckoned us. No need for the platinum card as it was only $35 a person to enter this non-sectarian Valhalla of airport lounges. Well, maybe not Valhalla, but better than the airport’s blue plastic seats designed by Torquemada for the Spanish inquisition.

We paid the lounge fee, settled into our chairs, ate bite-sized mystery sandwiches and drank as much wine as needed to mindlessly pass the three hours before our 6:30 flight time.

We faced a wall displaying airline departure times including our new best buddy, American 3677 coming from Cleveland. With great trepidation, I occasionally raised my head from my glass of cheap wine to assure myself that our departure time had not changed.

It did. As if punishing us for our unpatriotic attempt to surreptitiously enter the Admirals’ Lounge, our Cleveland connection was now delayed; two more hours were tacked on resulting in a planned 8:30 departure.

The plebian Escape Lounge was closing at 8pm, thirty minutes before our new departure time. Bidding it a fond adieu, we dragged ourselves to our new digs, gate 12, and waited for the Cleveland express.

The Greek god Hermes, in furtherance of his assignment to deal with travelers, determined that we had not been punished sufficiently for our lounge indiscretions and tacked another hour onto our fickle departure time, now 9:30. The advancing electronic clock became our enemy, and the airport began an ominous path toward complete silence.

The only remaining airport passengers were huddled around gate 12. We were really alone, feeling like Ernest Borgnine and Shelly Winters struggling to escape a capsized ship in the Poseidon Adventure. Would the airport shut down completely, discarding us on the street and leaving us to find our own salvation in some depressing motel with thin towels and a broken air conditioner?

But salvation was at hand when Air Cleveland arrived much like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill. We were unceremoniously stuffed into its bowels and lifted off at 10pm, seven hours after our original departure time. I almost didn’t care where we were going as long as we got there on time.

Miraculously, both our bags and our bodies arrived together in Santa Barbara. A tired Jackie drove us home where we poured ourselves into bed at 1:30am.

It was a great vacation.

Tripping…Part 5

It’s Saturday, the seventh day of our Red Mountain Resort adventure; by Jewish biblical standards a required day of rest.

Oblivious to that standard, Jackie had asked me the night before, “So what’s your plan for tomorrow? I’m going hiking, how about you? Maybe you should rest and get ready for our departure. It’s ok, I won’t think any less of you.”

I had given serious consideration to skipping the morning hike. After all, I had done the six previous daily death marches and had survived to tell the tale. But her question was really a challenge, one that I was determined to accept. No slouch, me. I’m going to be at the front of the pack, setting the pace even if I’d prefer hanging out on the patio with a latte and bagel with cream cheese.

We were scheduled for a 1pm bus ride to the St. George airport leaving us just enough time for a three-hour hike, a shower and packing up all the complimentary toiletries that Jackie had cleverly accumulated during the past week.

Our morning began benignly. We had our usual dish of six pieces of cut-up fruit and limited our coffee intake to half a bladder full. After a precautionary trip to the rest room, we proceeded to the Gazebo where we found our hiking guides, Julie and Mark.

In contrast to leader John, yesterday’s father figure, these young people were barely out of diapers. Kind and welcoming, they nevertheless had a frightening air of repressed confidence and a “let’s get on with it” attitude. One other person, a matronly shy woman named Joan, completed our band of adventurers. It was a small group in comparison with prior days and eased my concerns about any impetuous daredevil hiking. The prognosis for my survival until our 1pm departure was good, and I felt reasonably smug about taking up the gauntlet thrown at my feet by Jackie.

First impressions are often unreliable. Joan was an animal.

As she shed her matronly demeanor, Joan urged our guides to traverse steeper terrain at a faster clip. My confidence level moved toward the red zone; I should have opted for the bagel.

The hike almost over, I was congratulating myself at surviving the demands of the she-devil Joan. Only ten minutes remained before I could shed my macho exterior, remove my fake water bottles and shelve my hiking shoes for the next decade. While I would secretly lick my wounds, Jackie would tell our experiences to all who would listen, especially about how she had transformed a 78-year-old wimp into an 82-year-old Hercules.

We were 200 feet from the end of the trail descending a ladder-like cluster of rocks that the angel Moroni had surely placed there to punish the wicked. I stepped down to the next level, slipped, and my right foot attempted a dance move that was popularized by the Royal Ballet’s Margot Fonteyn in The Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps it could be best described as a pirouette on top of an arabesque.

I failed to emulate Ms. Fonteyn as my leg tried to complete a 180-degree turn. My right knee was now at the back of my leg. For an instant I thought that my right foot was facing in the opposite direction of my left foot.

Having little experience with this move, I adopted a survival mode and skipped forward on one leg, pirouetting in a manner that would have been unrecognizable to Ms. Fonteyn. Failing that attempt, I slammed into Jackie who had miraculously been positioned to keep me from falling on my ass. Fortunately, my leg remained attached to my hip, but my ligaments were screaming something other than encore, encore.

My companions stared at me as though they had never seen anything like it. Reasonably solicitous, they asked me if I needed help. “No, I’ve done this before. Piece of cake. A little sore. It’ll pass. Let me walk it off.”

In reality, I felt that even the surgical prowess of Christina Yang and Derek Shephard of Grey’s Anatomy couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Far from experiencing the reputed benefits of walking it off, hobbling back to the van only intensified my discomfort.  Adopting the well-used role of the suffering hypochondriac, I envisioned amputation as the probable result of my refusal to stay on our patio with a warm latte.

We hobbled back to our room where I assumed a fetal position on the bed while Jackie finished packing. We called the tram that shlepped us 200 feet to the visitor center. I found a couch and tried to find a comfortable position that let me believe that my leg still was attached to my hip. Carefully attended to by Jackie, who offered a non-stop course of Tylenol and bottled water, we waited for the 1pm bus to the airport.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 3:15. We were assured by the resort mavens that two hours were more than we needed to comfortably make our flight from St. George to Phoenix where we had a connecting flight to Santa Barbara.

Our bus left on time. No traffic. Piece of cake.

Tiny St. George airport welcomed us with open arms and a horde of passengers waiting to check-in. I watched the processing of the passengers at the counter and calculated that the rate at which this was happening would delay our departure until the passing of Halley’s Comet in 2061.

To be continued…

Tripping…Part 4

This is the fourth of the series called Tripping

Hiking is an activity that requires a belief that the effort is worth it and, for octogenarians, exceptional bladder control. For example, breakfast coffee intake must be limited because it seems to double in volume as it passes rapidly through my system. A bottle of water can be carried in a backpack but drinking it must be strictly avoided unless heat stroke is imminent.

The hiking terrain near the Red Mountain resort resembles that of Mars. Very dry, very barren, and devoid of any privacy screens for those who might want to watch you do your business. This may be acceptable to those less shy, but it becomes a Maginot Line for those whose early toilet training precludes any thought of exposing oneself during the performance of normal bodily functions. Ergo, keep water consumption under control; you will probably recover from severe dehydration in a couple of days.

Hydration planning clicks into gear at breakfast and accelerates at 7:30am under the gazebo adjacent to the restaurant. The resort’s guests number about 200 souls and half, including Jackie and me, are assigned to the morning’s array of hiking adventures. Ours is called the Explorer Hike; a fairly basic foray into the surrounding hills that requires enough energy and working muscles to travel about five miles up and down the firmament in about two hours. Another hike, the Challenge, is the same as the Explorer but is done in less time, proving that Challengers are tougher, maybe dumber, than Explorers.

I hadn’t done much hiking until I met and wooed Jackie. A major component of my wooing was learning to hike more than 100 feet at a 4% grade without sustaining a stroke or heart attack. To date I have survived without either, but am keenly aware of the laws of probability.

The early demise of the runner and fitness book author Jim Fixx may have been an aberration, but I have always been suspicious of the claimed benefits of exercise, especially walking, jogging, climbing hills and participating in marathons. If running is so good, why did the cave man die young? After all, he spent most of his waking hours chasing or being chased by predators. Unfortunately, Mr. Fixx did not adequately cover this peculiarity in his bestseller, The Complete Book of Running.

Each of the gazebo-sheltered hiking groups is guided by two resort employees. One is the leader while the other is the tail. The leader leads while the tail picks up any dawdlers who are either seeking a place to pee or who have simply lost interest in the adventure and would rather be back at the resort, sitting on their patio drinking chardonnay, even if it’s only 9am.

The ages of our hikers is the usual…everyone is younger than me. My ability to guess one’s age deteriorates as I get older. For example, I think Jackie looks 42; but she claims I’m biased. I even think Mitch McConnell is younger than me (turns out I was right on this one, by three years). And nearly all of the Supreme Court justices are younger than me; only Stephen Breyer is older (by nine months) and the Democrats are already telling him to retire. When he does, maybe I can hike with him.

John is our leader this morning. He’s no spring chicken, working full time at the resort, hiking, biking and greeting arriving guests. Gregarious and knowledgeable, we often stop during the hike for a drink of water (I generally fake it so as not to upset John) or a story about the surrounding fauna and flora. This morning’s hike was nearly over and I found myself at John’s side near the head of the pack; I decided to ask him how old he was (you can do that when you’re my age.)

“Eighty next week”, he said. I was surprised he was that old, in light of his agility, strength and stamina. I figured I’d one up him and said “I’m two years older than you.” I hesitated and half-hoped he’d say something like, “Wow, I’m shocked. You are astounding. Your stamina is amazing. You are stronger than most men half your age.”

Instead, he said, “Wow, you’re the oldest guy I’ve ever had on a hike. Wait til I tell everyone back at the resort. Oh, and don’t forget to drink your water.”

Hiking is only one of the resort’s fitness activities that interferes with my sitting, drinking and eating. Water aerobics that invite third-degree sunburn, yoga classes designed to rearrange bone structures, and e-bike riding while avoiding a skull fracture are just a few of the other delights.

We purchased two e-bikes nine months ago and had ridden them regularly (like once a month), and had wrestled them to the ground occasionally (like once a month). The resort offered a two-hour e-bike trip that sounded kind of neat, even given my lack of enthusiasm for the bikes that sat mostly idle in our garage.

We booked the e-bikes when we made the resort reservations three months before; I then spent most of the intervening time in a state of high anxiety. I even developed a mantra to calm my nerves. “Now, Fred. You are perfectly capable of riding a bike. So, get your manhood back in your pants and quit fretting about falling and breaking your femur. It has nearly a zero chance of happening.” It was the word “nearly” that had kept me awake at nights.

Arriving at the designated bike pool, we were greeted by four other riders, all bouncy, bright-eyed young women who had far too much energy and far too little regard for their physical well being. Just what I needed, a ready-made audience to view my Evel Knievel leap for death.

Jackie had been enthusiastic about taking the ambulance provoking rides, leaving me alone to worry about the outcome. Five of the six bikes were properly sized for those with average stature while one was for the more petite. Perfect we thought, until Jackie tried mounting the beast and discovered that she was sub-petite. She wrestled with it, twisting her legs and hips in ways that bordered on the obscene.

Tired of waiting for us, the young, nubile women reved up the bikes and practiced wheelies in the adjacent parking lot. The super-charged bikes scared the crap out of me. Adding to the Nightmare on Elm Street feeling was the resort supervisor’s twice repeated caution. “Never touch this button. You’ll activate the turbocharger and the bike will throw you over the handlebars and into the ditch.”

Jackie, unwilling to simply say that she was scared shitless, said, “I just had a hip replacement and I never ride in or on a vehicle without my handicapped placard. I’m sorry I won’t be joining you on this adventure.”

And then she added, “But Fred can go if he wants. He should go. I don’t want to be an impediment. I’ll just go sit on our patio, recover from my surgery and drink a margarita.” Coming to my senses I told the supervisor, “She needs a lot of help. I’ll go make the margarita”.

We hated missing the Evel Kneivel opportunity and spent the next few hours visualizing the possible joys of flying over handlebars. In addition, we took umbrage to the fact that a bunch of Amazon women could do something that we were too chicken to try. So, we began hoping for the worst news upon their return. A feeling of schadenfreude enveloped us that fell just short of wishing bodily injury on perfectly innocent strangers.

To be continued.