I should have a long list of thank-yous for folks who made donations to the Mayo in my name, but that will have to wait until next time because I left the pages with the laptop.

I'm sending Jason something to post, either here on the blog or elsewhere. It's from my brother/cousin Wilson. I thought a long time before deciding to include it. It's awfully laudatory. Besides, you don't think he writes stuff like that for free, do you?

I made it out in record time, and would have made it faster still except for a few little glitches. First off, I began having coughing jags that led to me passing out. Believe me, you do not want to hear your wife saying, "Stay with me, babe! Stay with me!" sounding like the damned medic on a medivac. Then they shunted me off to ICU for a night, and there was the incident of catheter slap-stick which resulted in me flat on the floor with a broken toe and a foot approximately one-half black, deciding that I would, after all, wait where I was until someone came to give me assistance. I reduced two groups of doctors to stitches, holding onto the wall to keep from falling down, by recounting that tale. But it's definitely rated NC-17, so not here.

In the end it all came down to sodium levels, would you believe. Mine were low, and if they didn't come up, I wouldn't be going home.

Can you say bacon?

I had no appetite, and still have no appetite, but I managed to get down five strips of bacon a couple of hours before my blood test, so I passed.

I ended up coming home on one of the Hormel Corporate jets. Not because I'm Robert Jordan or because Hormel had any idea who RJ is. There is a nifty organization in the country called Corporate Angels. Each week, corporations notify Corporate Angels of what the schedules are for their corporate jets, along with what seat vacancies they have available. CA then hooks these planes up with cancer patients, transplant patients and others with serious illness. It just so happened that Hormel's #2 man had a meeting in Charleston, so Harriet and I got free rides.

I am still fighting the appetite thing. Namely, I don't have one. Harriet has convinced me to try Ensure, which I must say is very near to the pits. I'm trying very hard to find other things to eat. I don't get very much of anything down -- I only weighed 227 this morning -- and I know I need to hit the protein, but t'ain't easy, McGee. T'ain't easy.

My cousin Wilson came down last weekend, and we went up to the big Harley shop on Dorchester Road, the one where a floor about twice the size of a basketball court is covered with new machines. The walls climb and climb and climb, and all the way up, six or seven up, they're lined with glass-fronted shelves that are full of classic Harleys, antique Harleys, you name it. Okay; they have a few Indians and the like up there, but we are talking 98% Harley here, and gorgeous. Stone cold gorgeous. And that's before you go back into the area where the mechanics work, which is about half again as large.

I'm leaning toward a Fat Boy with a Black Denim paint job (as close to matte-black as you are likely to get) and a blacked-out engine (almost no chrome showing at all!). The balance is sweet, and if I get the backroom boys to work over the engine a bit, she'll dig in and climb for the stars, I'm betting. This is the machine you ride into town sliding down the razor's edge of midnight. By the time they know you've been there, it's too late. If anybody asks you, RJ's done been here and gone. Apologies to Josh White.

Harriet's fighting me on this one. Which is to say, she hasn't said one word against the bike, but.... Those of you who are married to smart women know how this routine works. Luckily, she hasn't made this a hill. (A man who expects a long relationship needs to chose carefully the hills on which he is willing to die.) We'll have to see how it works out. Time is on my side. It will be August or September earliest before I am strong enough to actually ride. By that time, she'll assume she's won just because I've gone silent.

I will, however, be in Seattle and in Anchorage as promised, so don't worry about that. I'll post a few "boiled egg" pictures in a day or two, though I have considered them long and hard. I don't think anybody will tell me how good I look or how cool or anything like that. This is one ugly dude, boys and girls. Stone ugly. Harriet can lie all she wants to.

Well, I'm out of here for now, guys.

Take care.

RJ