Retiring Retirement

by Robert LaCosta Confidence on and off a motorcycle

Confidence can be momentum or a wall.

Seniors who have been taught it, grown up with it or learned it, honed and developed it, can parlay it along with a plethora of matured talents that can bless a lot of people.

When faced with some of the challenges or inevitable unexpected variables of aging, confidence could wane. Such was the case with a 76-year-old Delmar man who, literally and figuratively, had to get up and dust himself off after a serious motorcycle accident in The Bahamas. With what would later be diagnosed as a fractured pelvis and ribs, punctured bladder and a brain bleed, our man – who wishes to remain anonymous – would be bounced around lying in the back of a pick-up truck that a policeman had flagged down. Alone, in agony and with no painkillers, he tried to rest that night even though he couldn’t turn over.

The next morning, his friends got him to the one doctor 50 miles away whose office couldn’t even loosely be called a “clinic.” Eventually, after a few X-rays, another bouncy ride in a 20- year-old ambulance with a broken backboard to an airlift to Nassau, this man found himself without a medical transport to the hospital. A kind cabby got him there, and after a few days, he was discharged so he could fly to Florida to be treated at Tampa General. In our rider’s words:

By now he deemed himself fully recovered from the motorcycle accident he had a dozen years ago. Plus, he had ridden the Queen’s Highway back and forth for many of those years.

So he should have remembered the last speed bump in the Eleuthera settlement of Lower Bogue.

But there was a willow shadow across the road as he accelerated to catch up with his buddy. He hit both brakes, skidding over the ragged bump too fast and at the wrong angle.

“This should not be happening,” he thought, as he soared over the handlebars, nose pointed to the asphalt.

TO BE CONTINUED:

In Part II, we’ll learn what he learned and how that could possibly contribute to his confidence.

Robert J. LaCosta writes a daily blog. Write him at norepcom@ gmail.com or call (518) 435- 1250. The author is a Hearing Instrument Specialist and has worked with seniors through four decades.

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