Back in the swing

There was only a moment's hesitation.

I mean, it had been six years since I last picked up my golf clubs. That's because as much as I enjoy playing golf, I had a part-time job where I worked four hours every weekday afternoon.

Prime time tee-off time. By the time I got off work, there was either not enough daylight left in the sky, or I was too exhausted, or it was too hot, or I was just too disinterested to hit the links.

I had a list of reasons not to play longer than my unused stand-up putter, so my clubs sat in the closet. For six years.

Until Thursday, when I went to the driving range.

Kim said it was time. What was I waiting for? My part-time job had ended. For years, I'd told her I was going to play golf in my retirement. Well, here it was. In fact, here's $20. No excuses. Buy a bucket of balls.

Whenever I take a lengthy break from playing golf, I make sure I go to the driving range as a way to get my timing back. I remember a decade or so ago, when I had taken a brief respite from mass producing bogeys, I'd walked up to the tee, waggled my driver, took my swing ... and completely missed the ball.

That was never going to happen to me again. A trip to the driving range for me is always a precursor to a trip to the links.

And Thursday was it.

I bought a large bucket of balls with the money Kim had given me. I walked up to the tee box just a couple of paces from two pre-teens, who were practicing hitting hooks and slices all over the place with their grandfather. Hmm. I was pretty sure I didn't want them to see me completely whiff on my first swing of the day, but there was nowhere else to go.

They were the source of my hesitation.

I chose my 8-iron to start off. It's a club I usually have great confidence in, so I took my first ball and put it on the AstroTurf mat. I gripped my club. I relaxed my shoulders. I took a deep breath, set my feet, kept my head down, slowly began my back swing, and then, whack! Contact. I hit the ball.

It rose into the air, tracing a trajectory that was developing into a work of art. I couldn't believe it. I followed the flight of the ball until it landed near the 100-yard marker, straight ahead of me. Wha...? Did I do that?

I hit about 10 more balls, with maybe one or two mis-hits. Most went straight. Most went past the 100-yard marker. Oh, my.

Then I went with a 5-iron, an inconsistent club for me. But each ball I hit went mostly straight, landing near the 150-yard marker. It was like old times.

Then I pulled out my driver. I had a gentle hook that I couldn't get rid of, no matter how many cures popped into my head (open your stance; close your stance; move closer to the ball; mover further back, etc. It's amazing how much thinking you do standing over a golf ball). But each drive was approaching the 200-yard marker. I'll take that.

I finished up with my 7-iron. I was getting a little tired and a little less focused, but overall, I was pleased. Hitting a golf ball mostly straight and into the air was still part of my game. It was kind of like riding a bicycle, you just never forget how to do it. I think it took me a little over an hour to go through the bucket.

I don't want to give myself a false sense of accomplishment here. I know driving ranges are totally different than golf courses. A plastic mat in the tee box is a big advantage over a ball sitting on natural grass. The driving range is designed to hone your skills, not to brag on them.

But I'm thinking of playing on a little executive golf course next week. My putter will be a challenge for me because, you know,  I haven't read a putt in six years. But at least I'm pretty sure I can get to the green in two or three strokes.

Bogeys never sounded so good.

Kiiiiiim! I need $20...

Eclipsed

I want to say "Wow."

I'm not sure I'm there.

Like nearly everybody else in the path of today's solar eclipse, I waited with great expectation. At times, I watched the NASA streaming of the phenomenon on Facebook, which showed spectacular images of totality— even to the point of near mystical inspiration for me — from one location to the next.

Halo sees the sunlight dimming out, then wants something to eat.

 The corona. Bailey's Beads. Sun spots. The diamond ring.

Television was how I was going to view this thing anyway, and I saw it all.

So when the real thing finally made its way to North Carolina around 2:40 p.m., this is what I experienced:

• There was some cloud cover, but even so it still was evident something greater was blotting out the sun. We were never going to reach totality in our area — I think we were close to 95 percent of total — but there was a weird kind of sunlight out there at the peak moment. It wasn't quite dawn. It wasn't quite dusk. It was somehow muted sunlight, if ever there could be such a thing. Or maybe distilled sunlight. Or diluted. Unusual. But it was never dark. My backyard motion-sensor security light never cut on even while I was doing jumping jacks in front of it.

My friends at Mountcastle can't resist...

• The rabbits and squirrels in my yard disappeared, but maybe that's because a lawn service was running its commercial mower at neighboring Mountcastle Insurance during all of this. Or maybe those creatures really were confused. I don't know.

Birds briefly disappeared. Crickets and cicadas sounded off, although it could have been weed whackers. But I'll go with the crickets.

By 3 p.m., the squirrels and rabbits were back. But the mowers were gone. Correlation? You decide.

• I did feel a drop in temperature, but only slightly. It was a humid afternoon to begin with and it was already warm, so the dip in Farenheit was only minimal, I thought. From the high 80s to the mid 80s, I'd guess.

All in all, I enjoyed the experience, if not overwhelmed by it. When I watched it on TV, I marveled at the natural precision it takes for a total eclipse — the moon is in the exact right location, the exact right mile from the earth and the exact right mile from the sun, to make both spheres appear to be the same size in the sky as they merge. Awesome stuff. Enough to make me an astronomer in a different life, if only all that galactic mathematics didn't get in the way.

Sun spots

The last time that I can remember a solar eclipse was in 1979, I think. Or maybe it was 1984, I'm not absolutely sure. Eclipses could be seen in North Carolina both years, although only partially. But the path of the eclipse was closer to North Carolina in 1984, so....

Adding to my confusion was a quick check on Wikipedia, which told me 1979 was total and 1984 was annular.

Huh? I never heard of an annular solar eclipse. To me, eclipses were either partial or total. Turns out, an annular eclipse occurs when the moon is farther away from the earth, looks smaller, and therefore doesn't completely cover the sun on their respective journeys across the sky (see here). Or something like that.

Anyway, I'm sure I was excited during one of those years about an eclipse. They're rare celestial events (although not as rare as, say, Halley's Comet, which appears once every 76 years) and who wants to miss that?

Which brings me to tomorrow.

The great temptation, of course, is to steal a quick glimpse of an eclipse without permanently damaging the only set of eyes you'll ever own. Solar eclipse eyewear is out there (if you can find some), but they better be ISO 12312-2 approved, whatever that means.

The trouble for me is that a lot of these glasses look like the 3D viewers you can pick up in a movie theater. Hmm. Maybe not. Other glasses have seemingly transparent lenses that look like they can't filter out moonlight, much less ultraviolet light. Hmm. Maybe not.

And the Internet is filled with Boy Scout projects featuring shoeboxes, scissors and Scotch tape, which might be the safe way to go except I'm too lazy to find the materials I need to make such a viewer.

So I'm going hi-tech. I'm going to watch the eclipse on television. I can sit down. I don't have to crane my neck. I can pet my cat and eat banana chips and sesame sticks. Presumably, I won't damage my eyes.

Even if I can't remember what year I experienced my last eclipse, I do remember where I was. I was  on the way to Denton to do an athlete of the week story for The Dispatch. On the way, I noticed the sky getting eerily darker, so I pulled over to an athletic field in Southmont.

I think I recall hearing birds chirp a little more loudly, maybe a few rabbits and squirrels running around wondering what was going on with their circadian rhythms. If I can pull myself out of my recliner, I might step outside to see just how dark it gets at mid-day, to see whether birds seek shelter or if squirrels and rabbits start scratching their heads.

Heck, I might could get another blog out of this.

I guess we'll see...

To ponder

nat·u·ral law
noun
1.
a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct.


I'm not a lawyer, although I occasionally need one for my random traffic transgressions. And I'm not a historian, although I have a personal library in my house with more than 150 history books bending the shelves. I do enjoy American history. Not a bad diversion, I figure, for a guy who spent 40 years as a sports writer for the local newspaper.

So after the unbelievable events in Charlottesville, VA, last weekend, I put my brain into some free-wheeling silent running. I did that because my brain had reached critical mass and was about to explode.

I mean, c'mon, neo-Nazis in Charlottesville? Torchlight parades snaking through Thomas Jefferson's university? Stiff-armed salutes and chants of "Jews will not replace us" and "Blood and soil"?

And then, tragically, a young woman is dead.

Can this really be happening in the United States of America in 2017? When did we make that turn? Who, in 2017, makes a conscious decision to become a Nazi? I thought Naziism died with a bullet in its brain back in 1945. Do they think Eisenhower, the great defeater of Nazis, is a villain?

But 70 years later, here we are.

From where does that kind of hate arise in a nation that, defined by its very creation, supposedly embraces all?

I'm also baffled by how their reliance on Christianity comes into play here. Do some of these golf shirted, loafer wearing misanthropes wear those WWJD bracelets? OK. What would Jesus do? Tell me. I don't understand...

So the thoughts in my head swirled freely.

The ultimate aim of the neo-Nazis and other haters, as I understand it, is to transform the nation into something that is solely Christian and solely white. It echoes Hitler's Aryan philosophy, I guess, but runs counter to the natural law that guided our Founding Fathers, whose astonishing vision constructed this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Wow. There it is. All men are created equal. All men have certain inalienable rights, which I guess is a nod to natural law. And those rights were given to us by a higher power. To all men. Naturally.

A remarkable Constitution came later to protect and guarantee those natural rights.

So who decides to become a neo-Nazi in a nation where men are (supposedly) equal? How is it that torchlight parades and funny salutes are a recruiting tool? How does resentment of others fuel racism, even in a land of opportunity? When is a woman's death her own fault? Who decides to join the wrong side of history?

I don't understand...

Big Pharma

This could get a little complicated, so please bear with me as I unwind my way through my pharmaceutical experience from a couple days ago.

I'm kinda hoping this is a cathartic moment for me, but we'll see.

It all began with my annual visit to my cardiologist (Even now I can't believe I can say "My cardiologist." Holy moly. That's what old guys say.) I am being treated for atrial fibrillation, a heart condition we discovered that I had about six or seven years ago. It's where one of the atrium's in my heart beats out of sinus rhythm.

I may have had this condition forever, especially since I never suffered from any known symptoms — no fatigue, no palpitations, etc. If doctors didn't tell me I have it, I wouldn't know I have it.

But if left untreated, my chances for a stroke increase five-fold, or something like that. That's because the blood in that particular atrium isn't being pumped efficiently, could pool, clot and move to my brain. Thanks, heart.

Nationwide, this is actually a fairly common condition. Apparently, millions of us have A-fib. I am not alone.

I'm being treated with pills, including daily doses of a beta blocker called Metoprolol and a cholesterol tamer called Lovastatin. I use a 325 mg aspirin as my blood thinner. And that's it. Both drugs together (not the aspirin) cost me a total of about $5 a month. Thanks, Part D.

Here's where we go a little crazy.

Last week, my cardiologist (there I go again) told me that it's time to think about changing my blood thinner, and she suggested either Xarelto or Eliquis. It's not so much because the aspirin isn't working as it is my body is simply getting older. It's not imperative that I switch right now, but she wants me to ditch the aspirin before I'm 70. I'm currently 66.

I actually find it encouraging that we are seriously talking about being 70. 

Anyway, neither of us knew how much the new thinner would cost (I elected Eliquis) with insurance, so she made out a prescription. Go to the pharmacy in a couple days, she said, and see how much it costs.

But a day or two later I got a notice in the mail that my Eliquis request was denied because "...your Medicare Advantage plan does not cover outpatient prescription drugs."

Whaa??? Something wasn't right. To make a long story short, I flew back to my cardiologist's (ahem) office and talked to the nice woman behind the glass window named Angie, who had now morphed into my HR go-to person. She looked a little confused, too. "We took care of this yesterday," she said. "There was no denial. I don't know why they mailed you this."

Angie promptly got on the phone. She immediately talked with an office colleague. A few minutes later, she told me to go to the pharmacy.

So I did. I told them I had a prescription for Eliquis and could they tell me how much it costs?

The nice pharmacist got on the computer, banged out a few keystrokes. "It's expensive," he said. "It looks like it's about $300."

"Gulp," I replied. "With insurance?"

"Yes."

"Per month?"

"Yes."

I didn't need anymore yesses. I went home and called my cardiologist (never mind). I told Angie what the pharmacist said. She told me she'd get back to me.

In the meantime, I got on the laptop and typed in "Cost of Eliquis."

Holy smokes. Even with coupons, even at Wal*Mart, it's still in the high $300s. Some vendors were $400. It's about the same for Xarelto. My insurance actually was the low-ball price. The whole experience is enough to put me into heart failure.

Even more discouraging, neither drug has a generic. Not yet, anyway.

And I know I'm not alone. Other people have similar cost-of-drug stories, no doubt worse than mine. It was just culture shock for me to suddenly go from $5 to $305. That'll take a bite out of my Social Security. Thanks, Martin Shkreli.

Later in the day, I got a phone call from Angie.

"For the time being," said Angie, "the doctor said to keep you on aspirin."

For the time being, that's cathartic enough.