News & Articles

Tradition insists that reviewers must recount the year’s major events of the previous 12 months, when we get past Christmas and on toward New Year’s Day.
For me, 2022 was more than an opportunity to road test some astounding new vehicles, including cars, trucks, SUVs and varying manner of powertrains, but it also included a devastating personal health setback that left me battling to get back to full health the rest of the year.
The end of  year gave me the long-awaited chance to spend a week driving he Hyundai Ioniq 5 car/SUV as my weapon against a four-day, 30-inch snowfall accompanied by sub-zero cold, so driving the Ionia 5 covered three bases: first to drive what apparently is the highest-ranked pure-electric (EV) vehicle on the market right now, second to see how the battery pack worked to fight the severe cold, and third, a chance to see how the two-motor, all-wheel-drive Ioniq 5 might handle knee-deep snowfalls.

I wrote about the vehicle last week in the Reader, but as a year-end summary of the transition we’re all going to be facing in the decade to come, it’s important to appreciate the importance of all the EV’s instruments.
 With an EV, of course, you recharge the battery pack from a charging station to power the electric motor or motors for several days, instead of pouring gasoline into the tank and then not worrying about it for most of a week as the fuel gauge drops.
In the Ioniq, you can use a high-powered Level 3 charger to get up to 100 percent charge in only an hour or two, and you immediately notice that the total miles of range you’ve acquired is about 177 miles, after being about 270 miles in warmer weather.
That brings apprehensions to life about “range anxiety.” But you have to think about your gas-engined car, which might get 300 miles on a full tank of gasoline in summertime, but more like 200 miles in the harshest winter temperature.
That is just about the same ratio as the feared dropoff in electric motor range.
You just need to be sure you’re near a charging station when you get down to less than 100 miles of range, and to drive conservatively without showing off the EV’s capability for drag-racing bursts of speed, or full-on heaters, defrosters, seat heaters and steering wheel warmers, because you want to focus your electrical energy for the range of electric motors that power the car.

This passing year of 2022, however, will be remembered by me for more than experiencing the assets of EV driving. It has also been the year when I realized my hope to “live forever” might not work out quite the way I had planned.
In fact, it took four significant miracles – no exaggeration – for me to make it through the summer, to a family reunion for my 80th birthday, then on through fall, and continue riding my recovery trajectory to the point of shoveling piles of snow from our porch, sidewalk and driveway.
Briefly, my biggest surprise was that about a year after getting a thorough checkup and a doctor’s assurance that everything was looking good with all my body parts, I was with my older son, Jack, at the Midwest Auto Media Association’s Spring Rally at Elkhart Lake, Wis., wherein we get to take the latest production vehicles made for the new year on a hot lap around the storied four-mile road-racing course.

After riding for one lap on the extremely cold and rainy morning of May 23, I waited while he went to get a different car to try.
The rain worsened, so I walked briskly toward a protective canopy in the paddock area when I felt the inability to draw a full breath. I stopped and bent over, but it didn’t help. So I dropped to one knee and still couldn’t get a full breath.
Miracle No. 1 was when I dropped to one knee, I was not there any longer than 1 minute and I was in an ambulance, getting oxygen and being hustled 25 miles or so to a fantastic hospital in Fond du Lac, Wis.
Later, they told me if the ambulance from the Road America track had been 5 minutes later, I’d have been dead, hence Miracle No. 1.
At the hospital, a battery of doctors, all of them excellent and some of whom I never met, found three blocked arteries, one 100 percent and the other two partially blocked. They inserted stents in all three arteries.
During that procedure, my heart stopped and was restarted – Miracle No. 2.
Then it stopped a second time and they brought me back again – Miracle No. 3.
Then they wheeled me into the Intensive Care Unit where son Jack was waiting, but they hustled him out of the room because my heart stopped a third time and they brought me back to life once again – Miracle No. 4.
When I regained consciousness in my ICU room, I saw my wife, Joan, Jack and younger son, Jeff, plus a nurse, all looking at me.
I thought it might be the next morning. Instead, it was seven days later. I had been out a full week!
I remained in that hospital until June 18, and every doctor, nurse, attendant, supervisor, physical therapist and attendant with whom I came in contact did a fantastic job. I got started on a kidney dialysis plan of 4 hours a day, 3 days per week, treatment in order to coax my kidneys to start functioning properly, and they did.

That allowed me to come home to the emerging summer of our Lakewood seclusion.
The handoff was perfect from Fond du Lac to Duluth’s St. Luke’s Hospital, where they coordinated with Fresenius Kidney Dialysis Center for my 4-hour sessions 3 days a week for three more months. They, too, did a fantastic job in a low-key, low-pressure arrangement.
I had resumed driving quite soon after returning, and resumed writing my test-drive and sport reviews for the Reader after a month’s absence, and I was surprised how many friends found out about the whole crisis. I thank all of them for contacting me as I sat in my wonderful recliner, gazing out at our yard, and Lake Superior below.

Jim Trachsel, oldest of the legendary Duluth sports families, and a pitcher from American Legion days whose heavy curve balls and competitive fast balls made him a worthy opponent of mine, had remained friends through my sports writing and his sports officiating.
Our doorbell rang, and in walked Jim, with a package for me that contained a couple pounds of fresh salmon, something he knew would be healthy no matter what my diet called for.
A couple weeks after that, he stopped by again and brought me two pounds of wild rice. Those were fantastic and much-appreciated, and helped us through several creative and healthful meals.
But there were a couple of complications. After driving myself to dialysis, I returned home and parked in our garage. I had several things in my hands as I hurried through a drizzle that was just starting, and I spotted our morning Minneapolis Star Tribune that had been delivered in a plastic baggie and which our son, Jack, had tossed in by the sidewalk from our driveway to the house.

I bent over and picked it up, shifting the other items to my right hand, but as I started to rise, my grip on the plastic bag started to slip. Still reacting like a shortstop, I lunged for the falling paper – and lost my balance, falling the short distance to where my left eyebrow made serious contact with the concrete sidewalk.

First thing I noticed was that I could still see out of my left eye, while also seeing an extreme closeup of the concrete. About this moment, the drizzle intensified, and my instinct was that I might be able to push myself back up, but I feared I might not be capable of that.
I laid there for a couple of minutes, and became aware of a rapidly widening pool of blood emanating from my left eyelid. I came up with a brilliant idea, and barrel-rolled down the slight grade and up the other slight grade to get to our patio stairs. Then I was able to grab the railing post and pull myself upright.

I did the same to haul myself up all the stairs, realizing when I looked back I had “whitewashed” the whole sidewalk in blood, and also got plenty of it on my jeans and shirt.
Living in the country, nobody was a witness, so I pulled off my jeans and my shirt and shoes, and stumbled inside to the nearby bathroom. I was horrified to see myself in the mirror but I worked quickly to stop the bleeding, which was no small accomplishment, based on the blood thinners I was on at the time.

I made it to my chair and reclined it, with a cold, wet washcloth over my eye to keep the bleeding stopped. The actual wound was on my eyebrow, and Joan expertly got a little bandage to stick and cover the wound.
Then we headed for the emergency room, where they rebandaged it and declared all the tests were good, so I went home.
About two days later, I woke up in the night and was unable to breathe comfortably. I woke up Joan, but got downstairs to my chair. Later that morning, Joan insisted on calling an ambulance, and the emergency crew slapped an oxygen mask on me and all was well.
This time, doctors kept me hospitalized for two nights, until they could run all sorts of tests. The good news was that everything came through the tests with flying colors, and I could wear my custom sunglasses to cover up the enormous black eye that had evolved from my faceplanting episode.
I suggested I looked like I had just gone 15 rounds with Carmen Basilio, knowing that none of the attendants had any idea of who the former welterweight champ was.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty uneventful summer. Jeff flew home from Bellingham, Wash., to join the rest of the family for a surprise 80th birthday for me. Nothing fancy, but as I proclaimed it was special because it was the first birthday I had ever had where I wasn’t certain I would reach it.

I also have to give special thanks to Kenny Kalligher, who runs the boards for various radio shows at KDAL AM in Duluth, and who used to be my engineer when I did the John Gilbert Show there every morning. He had seen something on social media, and asked if he could interview me on-air about my sportswriting career in the days I wrote about the North Stars and the 1980 Olympics for the Minneapolis Tribune. I said sure, and we spent half an hour discussing my cardiac arrest and the miracles that followed.

Jon Nowacki, a reporter at the Duluth News Tribune, had seen me at a few Huskies baseball games, shooting photos and gathering information, and he called during UMD football season and did an extensive interview article that ran on the front sports page.
I had not been running around explaining it all, and these two interviews got the word out to a lot of people about the close call a Duluth-raised sportswriter, who had covered big time sports for more than 50 years, had survived.
It’s a feel-good story, alright, and mostly it feels real good to me to reflect on – every bit as  electrifying as those spectacular all-electric vehicles I’m test-driving these days to end 2022.