HOBBLED

Don't you hate it when people talk about their aches and pains? It seems that people have them or don't. In other words, most people talk a lot about them or say nothing about them. Ever.

When I came across this picture of Mont St. Michael in Northern France, I remembered the day we climbed to the top. When we got to where they parked the bus at the bottom of the , I started to say hill, but it was bigger than that, ok, mont, tel, or mountain--now it was a little mountain, I thought to myself, "well, we'll have to walk quite a bit, but I'm sure there's a lift of some kind to take us to the top". Wrong. We had to walk the elevation. And we did. With my wife suffering from sciatica, for which she has had two surgeries in the last 31/2 years to alleviate a ruptured disc. A trooper she was, and we scaled the heights to an enjoyable time in the old mont.

My doctor tells me I have a very mild case of sciatica. Mine is a pinched nerve that causes the left side of my leg at the calf to hurt kinda like a dull ache. Or as Beaver Cleaver might say, "I got a toothache in my leg." So I've laid off from playing golf now for about 10 days, done my exercises, used the old heating pad, and added smelly liniment to my leg.

But I still can't walk a long way without it barking a lot. And I have a couple of long walks to make this weekend when the Might D-backs take on the Colorado Monts at Chase Field.

Oh, I'll do ok, because I'm a junior trooper. But this getting old stuff is getting old.