Stayin' Alive

I'm going to borrow the title of that famous Bee-Gees song for my column this week, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

By the calendar and the clock, I should not be here.  Sometime last year I should have run out of time, yet here I am, still kicking and enjoying life.  I have a reason for believing that negative scenario and you may call it superstition, but I call it the natural order of things.

Modern medicine has kept me going far longer than I have any right to stay on the green side of the grass.  There have been several close calls in the past few years, but good old Doctor Clark has performed his miracles on me and, like that Timex commercial used to say, (and my wife echoes it) I... "take a lickin' and keep on tickin'." 

The calendar/clock reference above is to the fact that I lost my oldest brother in 2003, my brother-in-law in 2006 and my other brother in 2009.  Hmmm, every three years one of us kicks off.  Since I'm the next oldest of the family I should be next to go, and the cycle of three years should apply. I feel like I'm living on borrowed time.

When I took my solo car trip to the northwest in 2009, I was convinced that it would be my last long road trip, and I tried to do as much as possible while I was out there.  Heck, I've taken ten road trips since then and I'm already locked and loaded for another one this month.  I keep thinking "this is my last," but then time keeps passing and I get to go on  another one.

Along the way I've crossed off a lot of my "bucket list" items, but I have also added a few to make life more interesting.  One that we'll accomplish in June is to ride on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  That one has been on there for almost twenty years, and I sure hope I finally get to do it.

You might be justified to ask what happens if I "meet my maker" while on the road.

Well, I've thought about that, and I think the solution is cremation.  Judy can transport my ashes back to Georgia, or she can take me wherever she wants to inter me.  You may recall that when I took my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my friend, Tom, we transported his father's ashes to Wisconsin.  Hence, I titled the trip "Urban's Ashes."

I prefer my ashes to be interred in the nice Bellevue Memorial Gardens right across the road from our subdivision, but I won't be around to protest if Judy chooses another location.  Of course, she could take the easy way out and just scatter them along the road to commemorate our many road trips.