This week marks a major attempt to return to as much of a normal life that a 78-year-old with bad knees, a pacemaker in the lower cavity of his heart and a half-dozen recommended surgeries by Carilion orthopedics on hold can manage.

I returned to contract work with The Floyd Press and other Southwestern Virginia newspapers owned by a chain that is struggling to keep news on paper alive, covering Circuit Court. For the first time in two years, I a walking, gingerly, without a walker, crutches or a cane.

Tuesday night, fellow motorcycle enthusiast Nick Piazza, helped me climb onto his wife’s Harley-Davidson Tri-Glide bike for a ride down to Roanoke to attend a monthly meeting of the Roanoke Valley Harley Owners Group in the basement of the dealership on Peters Creek road.

I walked into the meeting room, without assistance, to warm greetings from members. I am a life member of HOG and served as the chapter’s webmaster for more than a decade and edited the newsletter for several months. It was the first time in many months that I had been to a meeting.

Hopefully, weather permitting, I plan to ride wife Amy’s CanAn three-wheel motorcycle to the October meeting on the HOG chapter. It will take a while for met to recover ride my 2009 Harley two-wheeler. I put 100,000 miles on that bike in its first year of riding before a black steer wondered into my lane on U.S. 221 near the bottom of Bent Mountain in 2011. Injuries from that crash put me in the hospital for two months, along with six more months of recovery.

I thought I was back on my feet again but problems with the leg that was shattered and broken in several places cropped up with infections that put me back in the hospital again. Then a stroke two years ago put me under again and I spent more time in hospitals and medical rehab than at home before being released in late January of this year. I had to use crutches, then a cane to get around before I was able to start walking, unassisted last week at home and was able to venture out this week.

A follow up exam scheduled for Sept. 16 should say if I can continue to walk, return to the gym and seek other rehab options. Postponed surgeries for a left shoulder replacement, new knees, a medical implant to bring my hearing back to normal, repairs to my right shoulder and a possible surgical repair of my right ankle will start next year, if my health allows them.

Right now, being back on my feet is a major step. When I left the medical rehab at Carilion Community Hospital on Roanoke in 2012, the orthopedist wrote “patient is a walking miracle.” Let’s hope I can be that again.

As a recovering alcoholic, 32 years, two months and 29 days, Alcoholics Anonymous taught me to approach life and sobriety “one day at a time.” I will try to do so in this recovery.