Saturday, July 31, 2010

A Small Highlight From Friday's Pill Counting Action, But One That Made Me Kinda Happy.

Under the order for Lovenox it was written. It was written very clearly, and even though the prescription was faxed, it was still easy to read. That alone put the prescription in the upper 80th percentile of competence.

"Patient will be holding Coumadin." it said, and I stared at the prescription and smiled. I almost wanted to take a picture. I almost cried tears of joy. I almost wanted to find this doctor and wrap him in a big bear hug until I remembered I wasn't gay.

Those of you not in the professions probably don't know that Lovenox and Coumadin are both anti-coagulants. What this doctor was doing, you see, was going out of his way to let me know he knew the patient was on an anti-coagulant from another doctor and he was on top of the situation. Taking a few seconds to make sure everything would go smoothly for everyone involved.

"A simple step" those of you not in the professions might be saying to yourselves, and you would be right. You also probably don't know it's a simple step that never happens outside the theoretical fantasy world of pharmacy school. This is how drug interaction work usually goes my friends:

You drop off a prescription for drug X from Dr. Smith and I notice you're taking drug Y from Dr. Jones. There is a chance that drugs X and Y can be taken by an individual with your particular medical problems. There is also a one percent chance the combination of X and Y will set your liver on fire. Did Dr. Smith know what Dr. Jones was up to when he wrote the prescription and explain the risks to you before he sent you on your way? Or is your liver going to catch fire and your malpractice lawyer say I was negligent? Who knows? You are nowhere to be found, having left to go have your hair done. I call Dr. Smith's office and reach the 19 year old receptionist after navigating through the voicemail forest and spending five minutes on hold. I sense the fear in her voice as soon as I say I have a question about one of Dr. Smith's prescriptions.

I explain the situation and she confidently says "It says in the chart two times a day," which is an answer to a question I did not ask. I say I better talk to Dr. Smith directly about this and she says he's busy at the moment and she'll have him call me back. She goes to hang up and I ask if she has my number. She realizes she doesn't.

Ten prescriptions and two phone calls have backed up while I was doing this. The first caller asks if we carry the blue wart stuff  she saw on TV last night. You come back and I explain the liver incineration issue.

"So it's not ready?" is all you say. Your new hairdo looks terrible.

I catch a break and you agree to let me call you if and when Dr. Smith gets back to me. An hour passes and I hear nothing. I call Smith's office again and get the after hours answering service, who patches me through to Dr. Johnson, who is covering for Dr. Smith that evening.

"It's usually given twice a day, right?" is what Johnson has to say, and I wonder what part of "liver fire" sounds like "label directions." I try again.

"Ohhhhhhhhhh....says Johnson. You know, I never prescribe this........" Then 10 seconds of silence. Like the problem has been solved. When I refuse to go away it is agreed that maybe Smith himself should give me a call.

"Yes, I'm well aware of this!!!" Smith says half an hour later, extremely annoyed to be taken away from his dinner. "The thermoeosnophillic scan we did on the 5th indicated a low probability of liver fire and the alternative has a higher possibility of eyeball explosion." If I would have had access to your complete medical record I would have known this. But I don't. So I didn't. So a 5-second problem becomes an all-day affair. That's how these things usually go. And at the end of the day all you remember is that it took forever to fill your prescription and Wal-Mart never seems to take so long.

That's because the pharmacist at Wal-Mart decided to take a gamble and not check. Because he's only charging you $4 and has to keep the prescriptions moving if he's gonna keep his corporate bean counters happy.

Which is why those five words made me so goddamn happy. I kept repeating them to myself over and over as I filled the prescription, "patient will be holding Coumadin.......patient will be holding Coumadin...." I almost didn't want to let this prescription go.

The computer flagged the next one for Voltaren because the patient was taking methotrexate.

Two different doctors.

Sigh.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Highlights From Last Friday's Pill Counting Action.

Any day that starts off with a giant pigeon is bound to be a "Highlights From Today's Pill Counting Action" kinda day. He flew across the store shortly after I opened the pharmacy gate. He stared at me as I waited on my first customer and caught up with the voice mail messages from the night before. I don't know why I assumed it was a he. Probably because I can't imagine a woman thinking something like "Hey! I wonder what would happen if I flew through that open door?" and then looking so stupidly happy about what they had done when there is obviously no long-term plan for survival. The pigeon flew through the door for the same reason Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest, because it was there, which makes perfect sense if you are a man.

I decided that doctors and nurses must think they will get paid more for giving me as little information about a prescription as possible. They guard the patient's date of birth at times like it is a bar of gold in the vaults of Fort Knox. They are surprised every time I ask if Kathy is spelled with a "C" or a "K", and are amazed that I want to make sure the prescription is for John Smith and not John Smith Junior or that I might want to know the strength of the amitryptiline he is to take. Sometimes I feel as if I am in a spin-off of the old TV game show "Name That Tune," and being able to fill a prescription with the fewest number of notes will qualify someone for a large cash prize.

While I was thinking about money, I decided that Benjamin Franklin looks like a girl, and that Alexander Hamilton's picture on the ten dollar bill totally makes it look like he's wearing makeup. I wondered if the artist who creates the money pictures is a transvestite. That would be awesome.

The computer stopped the filling of a prescription to warn me of a potential interaction between Antabuse and alcohol. For those of you playing along at home, Antabuse is given to alcoholics precisely because it makes a person sick if they take it with booze. The human/machine transfer of stupidity seems to be going well.

I got a report from the front of the store that the new clerk had scooped a fly into someones ice cream. The clerk saw the fly, said "eww!!," then scooped it into the customers cone right in front of them. The customer seemed upset. After the manager on duty told me this tale in a way that implied the new clerk might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer I asked if there was a plan to deal with the pigeon, and he looked at me like I had just said something in Swahili. He moved onto the next subject, which was a man who insisted the previous night's manager had given him the right to name his own price for cigarettes. He decided on $9.99 a carton. I wondered why not $4.99 or $1.99 and decided maybe he liked the look of Alexander Hamilton's eyeliner.

I explained to a customer that they have discontinued old-school mercury thermometers because they were worried about them breaking and exposing people to mercury. "Oh that's great!!" said a customer who overheard and felt the need to butt in. " I was exposed to a lot of mercury as a child!!" It explained an awful lot, that statement did. I wish you knew the customer who said that my friends, because that statement explains an awful lot about them.

The computer ground everything to a halt again to warn me  that doxycycline was contraindicated in pregnancy. We had filled a birth control prescription for this customer 15 days ago. I studied my ass off for 5 years in order to be able to handle these types of situations.

I looked up and a lady with a big net on a pole was walking back and forth from one side of the store to the other. About 10 seconds behind the pigeon who was flying back and forth from one side of the store to the other.

A customer asked me if we carried organic iron and I wondered if maybe he meant hydrocarbon based.

I got a "coverage expired" reject on a claim for some Viagra. The man had been covered on his wife's insurance and she had recently died. The man was very upset his newly dead wife's insurance would no longer pay for his Viagra. The pigeon finally flew out the front door, no doubt disgusted with this bizarro world he had stumbled upon.

I'm betting when they redo the one dollar bill they will make George Washington more effeminate. Thoughts like that are the only things that keep me sane some days.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

If I Lived In Arizona, I Know Exactly What I Would Do The Day SB1070 Went Into Effect.

SB1070 is the totally non-racist immigration law so much of the country has been talking about of late. I'm sure you don't need me to fill you in on the details. Legal challenges to the new law have started to work their way through the court system, but the last I heard, SB 1070 is still scheduled to become the law of the land in The Grand Canyon State on July 29th. If I lived there, I know exactly how I would celebrate this dawn of a new era. One of rededication to the rule of law and public order.

I would get in my car and drive. Nowhere in particular, but I would drive at exactly the posted speed limit. Not one mile an hour over. I mean, the speed limit is the law. And Arizonans are all about enforcing the law now evidently.

I think I would get a few of my friends together as well. However many friends as there are lanes of traffic through downtown Phoenix. For this maneuver I would be driving a little less than the speed limit, as is my right under the law, and each friend would be going a little faster. Not a lot faster. Can't break the law mind you, but just fast enough that each lane would be sllllloooowwwwwlllllyyyyyy passing the other, and the far left would be going exactly as fast as the law allowed. Then when they finally passed me, I would start this celebration of legal obedience all over again.

Have you ever really noticed the Phoenix skyline? You would if I lived there. Because I'd make sure you had plenty of time to see it all. Same way with those vast stretches of interstate in the western part of the state where it feels  like you could fall asleep at the wheel and not hit anything for an hour or two. Just imagine how much more you'll enjoy the scenery at the nice leisurely driving pace that the law mandates.

And if you don't like it, too bad. I mean, what part of illegal don't you understand? This is all about enforcing the law, just like SB1070, which is so non-racist it actually prohibits law enforcement officers from using race as a criteria to demand that someone show their papers. No word in the law as to what actually constitutes a "reasonable suspicion" that someone is in the country illegally. Maybe if they have a bumper sticker on their car that shows support of some hockey team. I hear those goddamn Canadians are crazy about hockey.

Anyway, I'm sure no one in Arizona would mind anyway, because like I said. A new era of respect for the law is about to dawn in that state:


Arizona's controversial experiment with speed-enforcement cameras on state freeways will come to an end this summer, when the Department of Public Safety allows the program to expire.
Advocates of the cameras, including some DPS officials, have released studies indicating that the cameras save lives and reduce crashes.
Those studies have been vigorously disputed by camera opponents, who argue that the cameras increase collisions while infringing upon constitutional rights.

Your constitutional right to break the law? What? Something does not compute my Arizona friends. You're either for the law or you are not. Otherwise you're the very definition of hypocrisy, yes?

Yes.

So it is settled. Arizonans are hypocrites. And what could possibly be the motivation for such blatant hypocrisy, stating that the law is of vital importance and must be upheld, except when it isn't and shouldn't? I'll let you decide that for yourselves, but a blind hatred of Mexicans would be at the top of my guess list Arizona.

Maybe someday soon I'll see you in my rear view mirror. Be sure and wave while you're back there.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Remember When "These Corporations Can Get Away With Murder" Was Just An Expression?

Because it's not anymore. They're making deliberate decisions now that can directly lead to your death.

I'm not talking about BP pretending to have a plan for a catastrophic oil spill when they didn't.

I'm not talking about Walgreen's implementing a new pharmacy paradigm that a good number of its employees say leads to more prescription errors.

I'm talking about ignoring the fact that people's hearts are stopping because looking the other way as the EKG flatlines is in the interest of the corporate bottom line.

Deliberately dead. That's what I'm talking about.

Hyperbolic you say? I'll report, you decide. And by me reporting I mean The New York Times:

In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.
Avandia’s success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new products. But the study’s results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.

I'll point out here that 1999 was 11 years ago. Around the time Big Pharma was circling the wagons around Rezulin, another diabetes drug that was to die for.

"Surely the drug industry learned their lesson from that fiasco and reported the dangers of Avandia right away!!!" those of you who have never heard of Baycol, Bextra, Duract, Posicor, Propulsid, Tequin, Redux, Trasylol, Seldane, and Vioxx are saying. Those of you who are familiar with those meds probably won't be surprised at what actually happened:

But instead of publishing the results, the company spent the next 11 years trying to cover them up...“This was done for the U.S. business, way under the radar,” Dr. Martin I. Freed, a SmithKline executive, wrote in an e-mail message dated March 29, 2001, about the study results... “Per Sr. Mgmt request, these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK,”

Could the gun be any more smoking? GlaxoSmithKline knew Avandia was causing heart attacks and strokes, and didn't say a word.

In one document, the company sought to quantify the lost sales that would result if Avandia’s cardiovascular safety risk “intensifies.” The cost: $600 million from 2002 to 2004 alone, the document stated.

Which means if they can get away with this with a penalty of less than $600 million, they win.

And they have. An FDA advisory panel voted today to let GSK continue to sell this heart attack in a bottle.

Mary Anne Rhyne, a GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman, said that the company had not provided the results of its study because they “did not contribute any significant new information.”

I think that's the part that pisses me off the most. They don't even care enough to come up with a line of bullshit that is even plausible. Your drug causes more people to die than its main competitor and that's not  significant new information? Can you at least make a little effort when you lie to me?

“When drug companies withhold data regarding safety concerns about their medicines, they put patients at risk,” said Senator Max Baucus.

Thanks. Thanks for that. 100,000 heart-related problems caused by GlaxoSmithKline's deceit. 100,000 people's lives ended or ruined. And all we get in response is a Senator with a firm grasp of the obvious. Not that he's going to do anything about it mind you.

The Unabomber only killed 3 people you know. Timothy McVeigh 168. Those masters of evil at Al-Qaeda ended the lives of 2,995 on September 11, or around 3 percent of the number of people affected by the way GlaxoSmithKline chose to act when it learned of Avandia's risks.

Which tells me, Al-Qaeda's mistake was that they neglected to sell stock before their death spree.

If you disagree, by all means, ask your doctor if Avandia is right for you.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

This May Be The Single Gayest Political Commercial In American History. Gay Like Lame, Not Gay Like Homosexual.

I don't know what to say...I really don't.

I mean...is there someone out there who actually thinks this might influence votes?

Or worse yet, someone out there who might actually be influenced by this?

I'm going to go hide now.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Rioters Prove Their Point.

Same 'ol same 'ol. White cop shoots unarmed black guy. Community unhappy with verdict. Riot ensues.

This time though, the rioters knew exactly who to go after:



You can tell that's a Rite Aid store from the sign in the corner. In a tearful video statement, Rite Aid CEO John T. Standley told the world the corporation had learned its lesson.

"Never again will this company shoot down another African American in cold blood." said Standley from the holding cell in the Los Angeles County Jail where he is awaiting sentencing on behalf of the 4,780 store chain. "I would like to express Rite Aid's sincere apologies to the family of Oscar Grant, who sadly, will never again see the smile of his mother's face, know the miracle that is holding your newborn child, or be able to take advantage of our new Wellness Rewards™ program, where loyal customers can earn up to 20 percent off all purchases for a full year."

The case has sparked comparisons to the deadly Los Angeles riots of 1992, which erupted when Walgreen's was acquitted in the brutal beating of motorist Rodney King.

Meanwhile, members of the Oakland police force spent the night of the riot being paid overtime, and most likely will use the extra money to provide a higher quality of life for themselves and their families.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Report; Interrupting Pharmacist Improves Prescription Accuracy.

OMAHA, NE (Drugmonkey News Service)- In a surprising report that may have major implications for public health, researchers at Creighton University released a new study today that shows a wide array of distractions to the prescription filling process can decrease misfiled prescriptions by as much as 90 percent.

The report surprised everyone that is, except for you, who knew it all along.

"For well over a century, pharmacy as a profession has operated under the assumption that the tasks of its practitioners would be better attended to if attention were paid to them. Calculating overdoses, evaluating the significance of potential drug interactions, accurately transcribing verbal orders and answering questions from both other health professionals and the general public, it seemed intuitive that some level of concentration should be allowed for, but now we can conclusively say this isn't the case." said lead researcher Burt Von Klaussen. "It would seem as if pharmacy customers had it right all along. The more times a pharmacist is interrupted in the process of filling a prescription, the more you can trust that prescription to be filled accurately"

The muti-year, muti-center study, funded by CVS, found that while the activation of a fax machine in the background had a significantly significant impact on prescription accuracy, it paled in comparison to the most effective method, having a pharmacist stop what they were doing, walk over to the other side of the pharmacy, and be asked by you what was taking so long. That maneuver almost completely eliminated prescription errors.

"While we would love to be able to implement a "What is taking so long?" step into every prescription we fill, unfortunately, it is cost prohibitive at this time." said CVS Chief Operating Officer Larry J. Merlo. "Fortunately, our new program of adding a full time employee to do nothing but stare at the pharmacist from the other side of the counter and sigh periodically is producing exciting results, with errors already down 25%, our corporate malpractice rates have been reduced."

Number three drug store chain Rite Aid responded to the study by installing air-raid sirens that will randomly emit 100 decibel blasts from the main computer workstation in 2,000 of its stores. Analysts said that while the extra noise ultimately should have a positive effect on the troubled retailer's pharmacy operations, the company may have erred by deciding to spend $11 trillion on the new system, and financing that amount over the next 2 years.

"I don't understand what the deal is, God I have a tee time in 10 minutes!" You said when reached for comment. You then proceeded to stand right next to the cash register while people were being rung out, increasing the chances they would be willing to ask about their medication's side effects by 15 percent.

Monday, July 05, 2010

Vacation Post Number 2: Ends And Beginnings. Mostly Ends.

Two miles into the 17-mile Redwood Creek/Tall Trees Grove loop in Redwood National Park, you cross a stream and the real fun begins. Two miles in is where you leave the hum-drum mountain meadows and start to see some actual redwoods, which is, after all, why you came in the first place. It's easy to think of your hike as actually starting about two miles in.

Which means, 13 miles later, when you cross that stream again on your way back, it can be easy to forget you have about an hours worth of hiking left to do. Which can make for a long hour when your legs have been churning since sunup. It was during this hour that the thought first occurred to me. Ever.

Maybe I should retire from this hiking stuff. Not never set foot on a trail ever again, but the first inkling that maybe the days of the 20-mile all day adventure may be numbered. I've had a personal trainer for awhile now, and the result of all her sadism over the course of the last year, the huffing and puffing and pressing and pulling and the unmentionable stuff she makes me do with those giant balls, is that my performance on the trail is about the same as it was last year. I'm 41 years old now, which means stagnation will soon become retreat, and you don't get back the ground you give up on this side of 40. Ever.

It was just the thoughts that come at the end of a tiring day I'm sure. I'll throw myself back onto the trails a few more times. But for the first time, I thought about stopping, which means there is a last time on the horizon. I wonder if I'll know when it is, or whether it will be like the last time I had Mom's scalloped potatoes. I don't know what it was that made me chow down on them so when I was a kid, but I never will again. Mom is old and frail now, and although I don't doubt she would make every effort to start peeling the spuds if I ever asked, of course I won't.

The last time I ate scalloped potatoes. The last time I heard Joe Nuxhall do the play by play for a Reds game. The last time I climbed the maple tree next to my bedroom window. The last time me and that insane crowd of ADD crazed lunatics I ran with as a teenager loaded into my friend's van and went into town looking for trouble. All occasions that surely would have been noted had I known, but as it is all occasions long forgotten.

I do remember the last time I saw my ex-wife. She came to California before the divorce paperwork was done because she wanted to see this place I had run to. "You picked well for yourself" she said, and the tone of her voice made it worse. The fact there was no yelling or screaming made watching that 737 take off, speed away, and gradually shrink into a tiny dot on the horizon that much harder. I'll never forget that feeling. That the burning down of my life, for better or worse, was now complete. That end was definitely noted.

It's been better for the most part, I'm certainly never going back to Ohioland, but,  these trips to the redwoods of mine, the way I almost obsess about seeing no one else, the manic desire to get away in order to get some peace in my head, they feel a lot like mini-burndowns. Except in the end I always end up driving back to that dot on the horizon. Maybe these trips are a good thing, a pressure valve. My legs are awful sore though. And my feet. And my knees. And this year, my hip. This was the first trip where I made sure the ibuprofen was with me at all times. What happens if/when my body can't keep up the pressure release routine?

I suppose the key is to replace the lasts with some firsts. Not sure what they'd be though. I don't think I'd be a very good quilter. Maybe stamp collecting. Of course I could stop running away. Stop fantasizing about destroying the world I built. Again. Or I could keep throwing myself into the woods until my legs fall off.

Being legless has more appeal to me than stamp collecting at this point. I'll ask myself again the next time I pass a 13 mile mark.  

Sunday, July 04, 2010

The Sequel To The Sequel To My First Redwood Trip. I Should Just Quit Kidding Myself And Move.

In hindsight, it wouldn't have been a bad way to die. I've been on vacation you see. I set up that Space Invaders post to publish while I was away. I can be sneaky like that. While you were reading about the great interplanetary war of the early 80's I was once again spending quality time with the giant redwoods.

First though, I would have to get across the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Bridges freak me out you see, which was always a great source of amusement for a past significant other. She never failed to make light of this alleged irrational fear whenever we had to drive over one. Every time I would explain to her that the fact I can't swim made my phobia the height of logic, and every time she would inevitably come back with some sort of garbage about how giant steel bridges don't just collapse into the sea. Every time we made it to the other side and she would get just a little more smug. It pissed me off.

This time though, about halfway across The Golden Gate Bridge, I got sideswiped by a guy who drifted out of his lane.  If things had gone a little differently it would have been perfect. I could have had "I told you so" carved on my tombstone and I would have been remembered as some sort of psychic. As it was, it was just a little love tap that messed up my drivers side door to the point where it would only open halfway. We exchanged insurance information and I carried on. 

Later I noticed a Quest Diagnostics car. Again. This has been my third trip to the redwoods and every single time I have passed one or more little econoboxes on the highway north of San Francisco emblazoned with the Quest Diagnostics logo. 

What's going on here? Seriously. Why is there a constant army of Quest Diagnostics vehicles making its way out of the city? Is Quest Diagnostics involved in some sort of plot to remove the kidneys from homeless people living on the streets of San Francisco in order to transplant them into the more affluent population of Sausalito and Novato? I'm not saying that's what's going on here, only that it would be far from the most irrational explanation you could come up with.  

Three-quarters of the way to my cabin I pulled over at a rest stop to pee and eat one of the sandwiches I packed. As soon as it was unwrapped a little hippie girl came out of nowhere:

"Excuse me sir, but do you have any extra food?" 

"I thought you were gonna hit me up for some change"

"No, we're saving our money for gas but we're really hungry"

By gas I suspected she meant meth, but my heart softened and I gave her a couple of my sandwiches. I knew how hard her stomach had to be sending empty signals to her brain if she could feel them past the speed, and methhead or not, she definitely looked like she could use the protein. Five minutes later she was back. 

"Do you have any mayonnaise?"  

My goal on these trips is to have more contact with elk than people, and so far the people were up 2 to 0. I think you can see why I was rooting hard for an elk comeback. 

Day 2- I rounded a curve and saw a lady pulling up her pants beside the trail. An incredibly unattractive lady. I suppose if you gotta go you gotta go, but....make an effort at discretion? Sigh. People 3, Elk 0. 

I ended up in a redwood grove named after a man who made a fortune in the lumber business. A guy who basically paid a shitload of money to slap his name on a few of the trees he couldn't get around to cutting down while he was alive. If you look closely you can kinda see a face in one of the trees in this grove:


I'd like to think that the Redwoods, being the force for good that they are, captured the spirit of the lumber baron, and that's him trying to get out.  

That night I fell in love with Jim Knipfel. Awhile back an anonymous commenter tipped me to this guy, and I owe the anonymous one at least a gallon of scotch in gratitude. Jim is a writer for those of us who realize that most of those we share the planet with are irritants and life is most assuredly not a happy ending. Check out his past newspaper columns here and go buy a copy of all his books right now. I read "Ruining It For Everybody" in one sitting.

Day 3- The night before, as I was fading into sleepyland, I heard what what sounded kinda like a chick getting nailed......aaahhh-UNN.....ahhh-UNN.....ahh-UNN!!! Over and over. As the fog descended over my brain though, I remembered I was in a cabin, and therefore didn't have neighbors in the next room. The sound also seemed to be moving, up the highway, and then back around to the other side of the cabin, then slowly away. I assumed it was just Bigfoot and went to sleep. Now though, in the bright daylight of morning, the sound was back, coming from yet another location...

aaahhh-UNN.......aaahhhh-UNN...

Maybe it was an evil spirit waiting to be captured by a redwood. I figured I should get moving. 

On the trail though,  progress. Seventeen miles and not a human to be found. Here's where I wrote a Drug Topics column you'll probably see in a couple months:

I saw my favorite group of redwoods and asked them wassssup. They asked me if it was just them, or if there was less fog around than there used to be. I said I'd get back to them next year, which is like 2 seconds in redwood time probably. 

That night I started "The Big Short" which may turn out to be the most readable account of what exactly happened during the great financial meltdown of 2008. It did not make me miss humans at all. 

Day 4- GGGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thirty minutes into the day's hike I see this guy:



Here's the view from where I spent most of the afternoon:



I read more of "The Big Short" and learned that one of the few people who saw the subprime mortgage crisis as the economic time bomb that it became was a doctor with Asperger's Syndrome who quit medicine because he couldn't handle the required contact with people, started a hedge fund he ran from a room in his house where he kept the shades drawn most of the day, bet against the big boys on Wall Street, and made 800 million dollars. My hero. Oh, and he has a glass eye. I love the fact that one of like 10 people who saw this mess coming had a glass eye. 

On the way back I ran into this:


I counted twenty of them, which put the elk back in the lead. The buck in charge took a few steps toward me, then walked alone along the other side of the meadow at the same pace as I did. Evidently he was like the small town cop who follows you to the edge of town to make sure you're just passin' through. It was the most logical interaction I had with another living creature all week. I wanted to hug Mr. Elk, but I'm pretty sure that would have gotten me gored. 

That night I faded too sleep with MSNBC's "Lockup" in the background, and I'm pretty sure I heard someone say "These kids today don't know how to act like proper gangsters anymore." I'm not sure whether to take comfort in or be terrified by that statement. 

Day 5- The last day of these trips are spent as a windshield tourist, my body usually being sore and broken and in need of a rest by this point. This is an actual sign you'll see by the road smack dab in the middle of Redwood National Park:



Uhhhhh....yeah.....thanks for that. I was definitely back in the land of the humans. I tried to keep it out of my mind as much as I could by spending most of the day pretending I was actually an elk on some sort of undercover spying mission. 

When I got home, I saw the blinking light on my answering machine and knew it was my insurance company. Sigh.

At least I have reason to be fearful of bridges now.