On The Beach

 And we're drawing to the close of February, which means that it's been almost year since I last traveled, fourteen months since the Trip of Mystery to Namibia, and sixteen months since Jordan. Sigh. Heavy Sigh. I initially intended to post some more pictures of Namibia, in this from my last night in Swakopmund before I loaded up my rental truck the next morning and headed back to Windhoek (and a very different life). Not surprisingly, these pictures have taken on a much greater weight, especially a metaphorical one, in my mind. Life is changing (well, duh). Yesterday I found myself cancelling the MLB package and my Netflix DVD plan, and instead I'm surviving on the Criterion Channel, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and Audible. I didn't use any of the latter four services a year ago, and had maintained the MLB package and Netflix for years and years. So, a silly observation, one but that showed that the world was changing, and that I was adapting and changing with it. At the same time, not all the changes were so effortless and so painless. When you're contacting physicians with names like Interventional Spine of Vermont to arrange shots in your spine you know that one some level your life sucks. That said, during the last few months of this medical journey have passed through stages where we were, even if often only briefly and tangentially, discussing things like ALS and MS and Multiple Myeloma, the diagnosis of Spinal Canal Stenosis with concomitant nerve and muscle damage (at least this month's popular prognosis) isn't so bad. Essentially, it's not a death sentence, although it still might be a death sentence for the life I want to lead. Which brings us back to the beach at Swakopmund. It wasn't really that long ago when I could/would take off for southern Africa and drive across the desert, was it? The sun set.