I’m back the emergency room for another visit; and after being poked and prodded for a few hours I’m released. Then a week later, I go see my regular Doctor who takes me off of prescription medicine prescribed while in the emergency department. Then my doctor diagnoses me with acid reflux, aka heart burn.

A week later I see my cardiologist along with my primary care physician once again, and both exclaim that my heart is good. So on 23 May 2014 I’m in Bend, Oregon cycling up Mount Bachelor prepping for my Tour.  As I was scheduled to depart on June 15^th.

May 23, 2014

Halfway up Mount Bachelor chest pains start occurring again.  I stopped on the side of the road placing my head into my lap.  I’m asking myself, what the fuck is happening to me?After months of fighting anxiety attacks, I finally figured out what was happening.  I knew I wasn’t imagining the chest pain that would appear out of know-where.  I was having muscle spasms in and/or near my incision area.  I still have them today.

After all the bad noise during the spring term, I had to do this tour.  I had to break the chain of anxiety that was causing the expensive, and scary, cycle of trips to the emergency room.

On my rest day in Prineville, Oregon, I was prepping myself for the following morning, and trying get myself to snap out some funky depression.  Things had to get better.  However, I was having a hard time getting my mind off of the past few months of going in and out of hospitals.  I had three different hospital stays in a month and a half regarding my heart disease.  And now, just before departure – my Mom had a scary cough lasting 8 weeks.  She went in for an x-ray days before I left, and the pulmonary specialists called the next day setting up an appointment.  This wasn’t going to be good.

Now there I was, sitting on the motel bed in Prineville, Oregon eating piles of fruit, and subway sandwiches, fueling my reserves for the next day.  I was continuing on.

21 June 2014 my alarm went off at 5:00am.  I was mostly packed and ready to roll.  I tried shoving my bike out the door of my dirty motel room, yet something held me back.  My stomach.  Another visit to the toilet was in order.  My insides were a mess.  I was very nervous to say the least.  Leaving the comforts of central Oregon was causing anxiety.  I was comfortable in central Oregon.  Having lived there previously, I knew how to get help, should I have needed it.

I finally made it back on the road and pedaled to breakfast.  My power meal was served to me at the nearby twenty-four hour diner.  Decaffeinated coffee, a couple poached eggs with hash-browns, wheat toast, and a short-stack.  A small orange juice, and a cardiac cocktail of medicine was for dessert.  After chow I was back on the road and trying to determine if I needed to visit a restroom before leaving town.  Na, I’ll be fine I said.

After leaving town, and ten miles down the road, I think I see a bicycle with a flag on it.  “Is that the same bike I saw outside of Subway in Sisters” I ask myself.  The bike rounds a corner.  I kick up my speed a little and round the same corner, the bikes gone.  I keep moving a clip, then suddenly there’s the bike, and it’s closer now.  It is the same bike I saw in Sisters.  How can that be, I asked; I took two days off.  I slow down keeping back a good stretch as I wanted to leave the fellow tourist in front of me.  I wasn’t alone, my somber mood is being elevated.  Then the biker pulls off to the side of the road next to Ochoco Reservoir.  I follow suit, and there’s a bathroom.

“Hello fellow biker, good morning.”

TO BE CONTINUED