Road Trip!

Wendy and I drove out to Montrose, Colorado on 7/25/08. We left at 5am with the dog and made it to Montrose at 11pm. For the first 3 hours Leu whined uncontrollably, I think he was nervous. In Baker, he finally flushed some bad mojo out of his system and seemed better after that. It's a good thing since we were contemplating leaving him on the side of the road if he didn't shut up... :-)

We spent the first few days at Wendy's parents just relaxing. A short day trip to Ouray was pretty much the only outing. The rest of the time we visited with family and played with the dogs.

On Monday my blood was expertly drawn by Alicia at Montrose Hospital. A couple hours later we had the results. My neutrophil count is back up in the normal range. My overall white cell count is still low though at 3,600. That afternoon we drove over to Wendy's brother's house in Fort Collins. We took highway 285 (through Park County, home of the infamous South Park) for the scenery instead of highway 70 through Vail. To celebrate my last night off Gleevec for the foreseeable future, we got tanked. I picked up some wine and some Odell 90 Shilling and we proceeded to drink ourselves under the table.

Needless to say, Tuesday was spent sleeping and eating and not much else. We had Big City Burrito for lunch (possibly the best burrito I've ever had). I'm officially back on the Gleevec as of tonight.

Wednesday we played on Horsetooth reservoir, just outside Fort Collins with Jeremy and his boat. I barefooted for the first time ever!

Back in Montrose on Friday we went Jeeping with my father and mother-in-law to Yankee Boy Basin (the pictures at this link are from someone elses trip) behind Sneffels mountain. It was a great ride with some amazing scenery. It's the closest thing I've seen to the Swiss Berner Oberland in the United States. Here's a shot of me at in at the end of the jeep trail posing as if I'd done anything other just ride in the jeep.



And here are Wendy and I after being bumped around for 2 hours in my father-in-law's Rubicon.


On Friday night I began to feel the familiar fatigue, nausea, light-headedness and dizzyness from the Gleevec. Saturday I spent entirely on my in-law's couch. I had forgotten how crappy I feel on this drug. We had originally planned on returning home on Saturday but decided to stay an extra day since I was in no shape to travel.

Sunday and Monday we made our way back across the Western United States to good old California. Wendy did all the driving except for 1 hour on Monday. I was too out of it to be safely behind the wheel.