pissing over pickup trucks and prostate surgery

Where to start -- the reason for this procedure I guess. Couldn't piss. Ultra sensitive to the medications, so it was surgery or nothing.

Couple of tips and personal observations if you are ever faced with this:
If you don't normally wear "tighty whiteys", send your wife to buy some and some Always "Infinity" overnight panty liners ---- you're gonna need em.

It ain't a quickie in and out thing. Overnight stay in hospital (at least). Check your dignity at the door on the way in and hope for pretty nurses who know what the hell they are doing. I had one who tried three times and still could not get an IV line in. 4 days later now and I'm sporting a hairless patch and a nice purple bruise on my left arm. Make 'em shave the spot where they tape the IV down -- hurts like a sonofabitch when they pull that godawful sticky fuckin tape off, and all your hair with it. Can you spell "Brazilian Wax"?

Best thing about the procedure was the Versed shot prior to the operation. Hidy ho boys, best file a flight plan.

Then you wake up thinking, well, that wasn't too bad, until you get a look at the "foley" catheter hooked up to your nether regions. Looks like a drunken plumber had his way with you. Tubing everywhere. Plugged into places you don't want to think about. Shit running in and out of you that you really don't want to look at. I was sure I was bleeding to death as I watched the nurse dump container after container of yuck that had run into and out of me.

You're gonna lie flat on your back regardless of how you usually sleep. Get used to it. There's just too much shit plugged into your front to allow a rollover.

Not a whole lot of pain, if you don't wiggle your dickie, just uncomfortable as hell. Sorta feels like somebody crammed a baseball up your ass. This feeling of needing to take a dump may hang around for a few days - did with me. So far.

Not a lotta pain, until the cute little nursie bounces in at 6:00am - after you have laid there all night, spread eagle, with your eyes locked in the open position scared to death of what's coming next and proceeds to pull out, what, by now, seems to be about a one inch diameter piece of pex pipe from that little dickie you've always been so proud of. They should offer you a stick to clamp between your pearly whites so you don't clip the end of your tongue off as this happens. Dignity, hah! -- like I said -- check it at the door.

Now that you have been unchained, so to speak, from the bed, and you can move around a bit by dragging your IV around, the new shift nurse, the cuties had gone home by now, will bring you a series of specimen containers to fill as soon as the urge strikes, and strike it will. You can go home when you pee 200cc's. In my case the first cup held 4 drops of viscous red. No joy. The second was going slowly until I blew a clot and the Lake Lanier dam broke and let the Chattahoochee run free. My ticket outta there.

The pardon was complete except for one final thing - got to take the IV out - I shit a line of little blue monkeys as the day nurse slowly peeled what felt like a yard and a half of 200 mph duct tape off my forearm. I kid you not, that was the worst pain of the whole shooting match.

Now I'm sitting around bored just waiting for the six weeks of recuperation to pass so I can get back to living again, all the while hoping I don't develop incontinence, impotence, urgency or any kind of infection or leakage.

NO lifting, NO sex, NO straining, NO sex, NO riding mower, NO sex. The only saving grace, so far, is the fact that the trajectory has changed from 22 short to a 22-250.

The possibility of a boner at this time scares the daylivin'dogshit outta me. No stimulation please - cold water only!

The mere thought of sitting on a stock Kawasaki seat right now sends cold chills up my back.

More later, or not, as the notion strikes.

Old Age

Have figured out that old age does not come upon you slowly as advertized - it arrives as suddenly as a lightning flash - the instant you realize that the things that are hurting are "NOT GOING TO GET ANY BETTER".

brain freeze

Been awhile -- had too much shit to do and moto-syckles seem to have taken a backseat. Between my bad back and the fact that I can't pee anymore without dribbling on my own feet has taken precedence over the long ride.

Have signed up for a rotor-rooter job on my prostate in the middle of February and have been promised that I will be able to piss over a pickup truck once more. Should be interesting.

Still have 5 bikes just sitting in the basement just waiting on some attention. A 1970 Triumph 250cc, a 1973 Triumph 500cc Trophy Trail(my brothers), a 1967 Honda 50cc Cub with an honest 136 miles on the speedo, a 1998 Harley Wide Glide with enough Kurriaken and Harley chrome to set your hair on fire and the trusty 2008 KLR. Not enough battery tenders though, gotta keep swapping them around.

Bored -- more later.

Sarah Palin Sucks

I have been seeing bits and pieces of Sarah Palin's speaking tour on the news and it bodes total disaster for this country if we can't produce any better quality of politician than this poorly informed awkward woman who relies on smart assed one liners to get a rise out of her flock of sheep.

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It will never cease to amaze me how easily the American public can be bamboozled by a fast talker who loves the sound of her own voice and who has nothing at all to say and uses a plethora of words to talk a circle around any subject she is ask about and to say nothing at all that makes any kind of sense at all! At all!! HAH!

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Sorry, I can't do it as well as Sarah can.

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What a waste of time.
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She really needs someone to tell her that her current hairstyle is years too young for her. It makes her look like a pathetic middle aged woman trying desperately to hang on to her youth, although, I do gotta say, her tittie pix looks kinda good. I'm waiting on the centerfold.

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The sooner she disappears from the public eye the better. There are far more important things to consider than this clown who is trying to take advantage of a situation to line her pockets with filthy lucre!!
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Go the fuck home!!

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Ain't photoshop wonderful.

BACK AT HOME SORTING OUT PHOTOS

We really enjoyed ourselves in Hawaii despite some kinks we encountered, like, a shity airplane ride, my catching a bad ass cold on the plane, no hot water in our 15th floor room at the Ohana West, getting rear ended on our second day there - in our new rental Subaru Forrester yet! Damn good thing we opted for the "loss of use" insurance.
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Hawaii has changed dramatically in the time since I was last there-45 years ago- duh! The Waikiki area is bumper to bumper traffic, both auto and foot, and like all tourist areas everywhere, is designed to separate you from your dollars as fast as possible and in such a way as to leave you feeling good about your visit. The International Market Place was much the same however, although it has a second floor now, just more crowded and faster paced. The "food court" with it's many different eateries and small stage where they put on nightly shows ranging from Hula to Steel Drums, free, by the way, and was what you might expect of free entertainment, OK, if you had never seen the old shows in the late 60's. I was really put off by the supposed Hawaiian Christmas Hula Show-- kinda sucked. Wayyy to "Las Vegas" for me. The Steel Drums were poor at best -- I don't want to talk about it!!

Enough with the bad mouth.

We ate like Princes while in Hawaii and for very little money. The Blue Water Shrimp & Seafood Co. restaurant in the Int. Marketplace was killer. The garlic shrimp was to die for - at $5.95 it was real bargain. It was served on a large platter with a great salad and a scoop of steamed rice. Liz was crazy about it but had to try their steak one night and pronounced it super also. Not to sell the many other ethnic restaurants short however. Whatever type of food you want is here, Greek to Chinese to Portuguese to Thai. All priced very reasonably.

Breakfast was across the street from the hotel and had what I guess you might call a "lost leader" of two sumptuous pancakes W/maple syrup, two eggs and two pieces of bacon -- all for $3.50 -- really satisfying and filling. Beats the crap outta Waffle House! We ate there every morning after we found it. Makes me feel all warm just thinking about it.

Went to a 24hr "Doc in a Box" with my cold/sore throat/runny nose affliction on Christmas Eve. I was dead set on not letting anything interfere with our enjoyment of our time. The Doc was in a office in the Princess Kaiulani Hotel - fancy digs. Said he had seen quite a lot of what I had and wanted to put me on a antibiotic to prevent it turning into bronchitis or something worse. A quick run to Walgreen's to fill the scrip for Levaquin and I was good to go. Had to go back to see him two days later - quick strep test - negative, and a right turn out of his office took us to Waikiki Beach where we had a great day laying on the sand baking in the sun and swimming in the warm embrace of the blue Pacific Ocean. Sigh!!

Had some super days on the North Shore watching the surfers brave the 28' waves. Sunset Beach, Pipeline, Haleiwa and points north . Sandy Beach with it's wild shore break and body surfers - where I got the scare of my life in 1965 when that same surf pounded the shit outta me and almost put fini to my story. Just a stupid Houle boy who didn't know the power and ferocity of even a small wave.

I learned a respect for Mother Nature that day that has stuck with me all my life.

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Would I go back again, hell yes, in a heartbeat.

snow ------ shit!

The weather has turned off bad, snow and freezing rain forecast for tomorrow and Liz is sick in Thomaston, Ga. where she teaches Art to 700+ little ankle biters each week. Teachers should receive hazardous duty pay as they are exposed to way more sick kids than a Doc ever is.

She started a "Z"pac today and hopefully it will kick whatever bug she picked up in the ass.

Checking the "any reason" trip insurance I bought was a downer. I sat here fat, dumb and happy thinking I had all bases covered --- not so --- the insurance only covers 50% of the total trip cost. Bummer. Hope we don't have to use it. Moral to that story --- read the fine print!

can't ride -- gotta fly

Since riding seems to be off the playbill right now, Delta Airlines will have to do, besides, it would be a wet ride to Hawaii.

We leave this Sunday for Oahu to revisit some of the places that played an important role in my early life. My two girls were born there. The oldest, Barbara Rene, at Queen Liliuokalani Hospital in Honolulu and, Traci Leilani, at Kailua Medical Center. I later was blessed with a son, James Dylan, born in Covington, Ga.

Looking for my first job in Hawaii was a real eye opener as I had never experienced racial prejudice up close and personal before and believe me, if you were a Haole (white) you were a minority and the last considered. I wound up with a job as a mechanic keeping a small fleet of taxis running. Not my first choice, but it put food on the table.

I walked the 3 1/2 miles to work until I got my first paycheck. Then I took the bus until I could afford a used Honda 50cc Cub. That was arguably the best motorcycle/scooter I have ever owned and I would buy another one today if Honda had the good sense to import them again.

The first couple of weeks in Hawaii were hit and miss as we had very little money to start off with and I was not making much as an auto mechanic. The first week we had only a loaf of bread, some butter, a box of Creme of Wheat, a quart of milk and , I think, a small jar of jelly. Janie, my wife at that time, found a job in the International Market place, and between the two of us, we scraped together enough filthy lucre to rent a place on Prince Edward street. I remember Mr. Otani,the landlord, fondly. He was a small, kind, Oriental man. It was a studio apartment in a low, pale green wooden building, tucked in at the foot of an imposing commercial building. But hey!, it was perfumed with the smell of Plumeria trees in full bloom and leavened with the color of Hibiscus and tropical foliage, two blocks off Waikiki Beach, how much better could you get.

Life was good.

I am not sure how we ran across Clate and Sigrid Sanders in Hawaii, the couple we had shared our ride across the US from Atlanta to LA with, in my '54 Chev no less. They were headed for Hawaii as a final destination while Janie and I were going to stop in LA to earn enough money to continue on to Australia. Funny how things work out.

I guess I need to back up a little here and start at the beginning of this trip down memory lane.

LA was awful - how else can I say it. It was dirty and smelly and hot and dusty and BROWN. It was poised and ready to spring and gobble up a couple of dumb ass kids from the genteel south. After dropping off Clate and Sigrid at LAX to catch a plane to Hawaii, we got a cheap motel to escape the terrible, eye burning, choking, fucking smog and we decided, first thing the next morning, we were going to haul ass out of here and escape this hell.

The only direction that seemed feasible was east, back the way we had come, east until our eyes quit burning. As it turned out Los Vegas was the place we stopped.

Jobs were easy enough for both of us to find. Me as a photographer at the Tropicana Hotel and Janie as a change girl at one of the small Casinos at the opposite end of town. Vegas was a town of perpetual motion so we worked at night and shopped in the wee hours of the morning. Slept the days away while we saved getaway money. I knew which slots were hitting at the Tropicana so at "lunch" break - 2:00am - I would go to the floor and play the nickle and dime slots and usually come home with a pocketful of coins. We took advantage of our time to ride around a bit and saw the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon and a whole hell of a lot of desert while we piled up coin.

The day finally came to sell the Chev, as I recall I sold it for $300 bucks, and catch a train bound for LA and the airport where a plane waited to carry us to paradise. The train ride was uncomfortable and Janie was bitching and moaning all the way. We did, however, wind up where we wanted to be, crossing the Pacific on another leg of our trip to Australia.

One way tickets, LAX to HNL, at that time were $99.00 each. Sigh!

Which brings us back to Hawaii.

Clate had found a job working at the "Hawaii Beach Press" , a Paulos newspaper. They published seven local rags plus the HBP. One thing led to another and I hired on as a photographer. I didn't know it at the time but they wanted to fire the photog they had and needed a replacement. Good for me, bad for him.

I have since learned this is the way the world works. It's dog eat dog out there. Loyalty is a very rare commodity and should be nurtured and guarded closely when and if you ever run across it.

A position opened at "Sea Life Park" as a staff photographer and public relations flack. Same deal. They wanted to fire the person they had and needed someone to fill that spot. I didn't realize it at the time but years later this same scenario would come around and bite me in the ass. I really felt betrayed when it did, as I had worked my ass off for Tap & Karen Pryor and expected better. Naive me. Stupid me. I know it's wrong but that episode, and one other, has colored every relationship since then - I do not trust easily - and I hate it.

My time at Sea Life Park was happy and relaxed and had things worked out better I would most probably still be a resident of Hawaii.

Which brings us to this trip - I realize you can't go back but I do want to revisit some of the places that brought me so much happiness so long ago --- plus --- it's rainy/snowy and cold here

Accompanied by my best friend and loyal partner for the last thirty years, Liz, I will share with her a rediscovery of all things Hawaiian.

Uncle Joe, my friend, we are coming to see you, thirty years late.

I will post a ton of pictures here in the coming weeks.