I hope to be better in time to make this event. Love the location and the locals are great.

I've come down with a strange illness however, and after a week in the ICU, I don't know if I will feel up to racing cats any time soon. I can only hope for a speedy recovery, but my Doctors don't want me doing squat.

Last month, end of April, I had a trip to Kuwait. This was while the big swine flu scare was going around, so when we arrived at the KWI airport from the States, they rounded up the entire crew (4 pilots, 11 flight attendants) and made us fill out medical data cards that said we were not sick. Easy enough. BUT, on the back of the card, it also said we were going to have to go to one of their clinics and be seen by a doctor to be sure we were not sick. So, next day, about noon, we gather the 15 of us in the hotel lobby and take a short bus ride to the local clinic, to mill about for nearly an hour, to be seen one at a time by one of their doctors. Of course there are a few sick locals in the waiting room with us...

So we finish up and return to the hotel, and 3 days later, we depart for Atlanta. I got home on about May 2. The next few days, I start to develop a slight headache and a slight fever, which grew a little worse, day by day, until on May 10, Mother's Day, I could not get out of bed to give my wife the day she deserved, she was sure I was just ducking it, but in fact, I was buring up. I don't know what my fever was, but very high, woke up in a puddle of sweat, took advil, couldn't knock it down, pounding headache, etc.

The next morning, Monday, early, I was scheduled to drive one of my daughters up to the Orlando airport so she could fly up to her boyfriend in Syracuse, NY, and drive his car back here. Believe me, I was in no mood. But it would have been a logistical nightmare to change it all so I said, Look, you drive up there, I will sleep in the back seat, then drive home when I feel like it. It's a 90 minute drive from my house to the airport.

So, we get up at 0200, depart at 0300, and are very nearly at the airport when she said I became "unresponsive". We had been talking about which exit to take to the airport, how much the toll booth was going to be, etc, she said my eyes rolled back in my head, my head flopped over and I was out, mid sentence. She pulled over, called 911 and the ambulence showed up 15 minutes later and took me to the hospital.

Well, they had lots of fun poking me with about every kind of needle you can imagine. They did a Cat scan, MRI of my brain, EEG of my brain, EKG of my heart, lots of blood taken for tests, even a spinal tap to get some spinal fluid, brain swelling, viral menegitis is what they think I have, from a bug I must have picked up in Kuwait. They said I was talking like a 2 yr. old and making no sense. The doctors said it was nothing they had ever seen here, so it must be something I got over there.

I was in Intensive care for a week, just got released last night to come home, and here I sit, nothing to do for a loooong time. They won't let me drive, or fly of course, or much of anything else. My head is still pounding with a pretty severe headache which gets worse any time I move my head quickly. At least it's finally raining out, the lake has gotten so low and the lawn so dead, it was very depressing. Now I've got something to look foreward to; a lake if it fills back up soon. Don't know when I'll be able to sail again, especially Uni. My wife is affraid I'll pass out, fall off the boat and drown.

Pete can probably fill us in on the details of viral menegitis, he's in the business, but it's not good, that much I know.