In the fog in San Francisco

I was in San Francisco trying to score some drugs.
Whoa! That didn’t sound right at all.
Let’s try this: I was sick as a dog last week in San Francisco.
(That’s much better.)
The cold was one I’d picked up from my wife just a day or two before I was scheduled to fly out to California.
I’d been tapped one more time to be on a panel judging the California Newspaper Publishers Association Better Newspaper Contest. It’s a gig I’ve done several times in the past.
Basically, the trade-off is that they pick up the airfare, the hotel room, and dinner each night in exchange for two and a half days of what is roughly the equivalent of grading papers. Lots of reading, lots of writing of comments. But it’s a fair trade.
And it can even be fun.
If you’re not sick.
The first sign of trouble came on the flight from Dayton to Dallas/Fort Worth. As the plane began its descent, I suddenly felt as if steel rods were being pushed into my ears from both directions.
I did all the usual things. I swallowed. I yawned. And none of it worked.
By the time the plane landed, my head was throbbing, my ears felt as if they’d been stuffed full of flannel, and everything sounded far, far away.
And the clogged ear feeling didn’t go away.
At one point, walking through the airport to my connecting flight, I thought I was actually hearing voices.
“That’s Jack Ronald,” someone said in the far, far away distance beyond my flannel-jammed ears. “Hi Jack! Hi Jack!”
I turned in the direction of the muffled voices, and much to my surprise encountered some Jay County faces. There were Williamsons and Muhlenkamps and others who looked familiar but were hard to recognize in the context of an unfamiliar airport.
I went over to say hello, but barely made myself heard. When I spoke, it sounded to me as if I were shouting when I was actually speaking too softly most of the time. Turns out, the group was from B&S Excursions and was apparently heading home.
They may have told me where they were coming from, but I couldn’t hear them clearly. They might even have been outward bound instead of homeward bound. My ears gave me few clues.
The problem persisted into Sunday when judging began. The day stretched from about 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., though I tended to measure things in terms of Kleenex rather than hours.
A few of the other judges had the sniffles, but I was in a whole different ballpark, so I did my best to make sure contact was minimalized. I used enough hand sanitizer to remove at least one layer of skin and occasionally went back to my room when my sinuses needed to make a particularly disgusting noise.
The supply of cold medicine I’d brought along was insufficient, so at noon I checked out a nearby drugstore. Because of concerns about meth labs, California restricts the purchase of certain medications. What you do is take a card that has the information about the medicine to the pharmacist. Then you sign a legal statement and — I believe — your photo is taken before you get what you need.
That was fine with me. Trouble was, California pharmacists don’t work on Sunday. So I was out of luck.
Noon on Monday I tried again and opted for something that didn’t require the meth-lab-law procedure. That turned out to be a mistake. The medicine merely inserted an electric hand buzzer between my eyes which made the afternoon even worse than before.
Finally, on Tuesday, with the judging pretty much wrapped up, I got the right medicine — photo and all — and felt it begin to kick in about an hour later.
Just about the time I had to start planning for my return trip to Indiana.
The bad news is, the flight descents were still painful.
The good news is, the Jay County travelers weren’t still at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, so I can assume they made it home safely.
I sure hope none of them caught my cold.[[In-content Ad]]