Hey old guy, you might want to think twice about returning to 6,200 feet

WELCOME TO 7,220 FEET.

That's a huge sign on UW's War Memorial Stadium. It's meant to psyche-out teams visiting from lower altitudes, which is any NCAA Division 1 school.

My Ireland-born grandfather was about my age now when, in the 1980s, he traveled to the Mile-High City of Denver, the place he spent most of his adult life. The day after his arrival, he was hauled off to the hospital with breathing problems and heart pains.

A few days later, a physician told him to go home. He said Colorado was his home. He also had to admit he’d spent the last six years living in Bradenton, Florida, with his second wife.

The doctor explained that most of Florida was sea level and Denver was a mile high. Grandpas knew all this. He arrived from Chicago as a 19-year-old hoping that the dry climate would help him breathe with his one lung. It did. He worked for the railroad and was a bank guard. He spent a lot of time mowing lawns and shoveling snow for his neighbors. He loved mountain treks, often exploring unpaved roads that he and his ’57 Chevy had no business on. My brothers, sisters, and cousins loved those trips, jouncing unbuckled in the back seat.

So, at 75, Colorado had become the enemy.

Go home, old man!

My Uncle John had the same problem when he (at 62) journeyed to Denver from his Naples, Fla., home. Heart issues drove him to the hospital. The doctor there said basically the same thing: go home. He was a Denver native, who lived all over the Front Range and even up in Buffalo Creek and commuted to The Flatlands every morning.

Go home, old man!

Not a good thing to hear, that you are too old and decrepit to live in a place that meant so much to you.

I bring this up because in September my wife Chris and I will move to our new home in Ormond Beach, Fla., some 10 feet above sea level (for now). What is this Florida obsession of our family? The space program took my father and uncle and their families to the Sunshine State in the mid-1960s. Work and the military took some of my sisters and brothers and cousins away, but most of them returned. I did not.  

What was I looking for? Work, mainly. Why am I returning to Florida? Retirement, mainly. My remaining brothers and sisters live in Central Florida. Chris has friends from high school and community college in the area. We met in Daytona Beach and got married just north in Ormond Beach. Many more health care choices in the area. I am a heart patient and partially disabled. Chris is a diabetic and breast cancer survivor. Our new home on the aptly named Ocean Shore Drive is close to the beach and recreational activities.

I close by saying that as a 73-year-old heart patient, I probably will not return to 6,200 feet. I might push it a bit to come for a few days to visit my two grown children and any grandchildren that eventually arrive. But who’s to say where my 30-something offspring will be in one, two, even five years? And who knows where I will be.

Go home, old man!

There is much to be thankful for. But there are no guarantees, are there?