Back Yay
We just did a week-and-a-bit long trip which I didn't post about much in advance because I am *silly* and was amazingly sick for the time leading up to us. I also did not get us cellphones before the trip which made it a lot harder logistically. Yet we survived!
Brad, aelfsciene and I went to:
* New Jersey.
* New York (several times from New Jersey).
* Washington DC.
* Baltimore.
We visited:
* My sister, cousin, and cousin's son (who is adorable) in New York.
* agrimony, who took the train down to see us, yay!
* Mysterious friend of aelfsciene in New York who I never met.
* bdeakin, who gets the "above and beyond the call of duty" award for circling Grand Central Station three times at rush hour to facilitate the pickup of a delicious cupcake. Also for driving us all over downtown New York. Wow!
* bryant and michele_blue who get the OTHER "above and beyond the call of duty" award for not only kindly taking us all in for several days and taking care of us and finding wonderful food for us but hosting an impromptu mini-WoW-fest. Thanks to them we are not completely crispy today even after a long travel day yesterday.
* trunaway, Ralnar, and kallan
* halfway_back and wemble
We saw:
* The Met. Which I thought was not going to be possible when I arrived there and was already exhausted, until I found out that they actually loan wheelchairs to people who are disabled. Yes, I knew about the ADA. I had just never fully realized that it applied to ME.
* Tiny bits of Golden Gate Park (unless we were aelfsciene who rambled over large parts of it I do believe and has pictures to prove it.
* The subway several times (it is very handy). It is less handy when one is on a cane.
* Hoboken, which is a nice downtown to walk around in.
* A crazyfast taxi driver who made Brad all nostalgic for Bangkok.
* The Empire State Building. (Tourists! Except Brad who stayed home.)
* The Ace Hotel lobby, which was full of wonderful loungy chairs to lounge in. Sadly did not have time for cocktails though they looked really good.
* Mood Fabrics which really is awesome. Angie got the Best Lace Ever there.
* The Circle Line Tour which was great fun; Statue of Liberty! All sorts of great skyline. Embarassingly, I napped on the way back. The tour guide had such a soothing voice....
* The Lincoln Memorial at night. (One of the most magical things to see I know about.)
* The Duck Tour in Washington DC. (Tourists! A great way to see the city after I blew out my knee.)
* A missing man aerial formation over Arlington cemetary, which made me choke up.
* The Vietnam Memorial. Also the Korean War Memorial because the cabbie got confused and dropped us off there instead.
* The National Aquarium in Baltimore. (Wonderful; I loved the Australian arboretum/fish/habitat room best but the rays/turtle exhibit were my second favorite and also YAY frogs.)
We heard:
* Peepers of some sort (cicadas, frogs? they sounded a lot like the night chorus I got growing up) in Washington DC, which just made me happy. We don't get much of a night chorus in Santa Cruz and I miss it.
We ate:
* Excellent diner food. ("New Jersey is the diner capital of the world.")
* The best mozarella I've ever had, made fresh daily at Fiore deli in Hoboken.
* Macrobiotic Asian fusion.
* Yummy Mediterranean food.
* Really excellent vegetarian Thai food, including Thai iced coffee, which I haven't had in way too long. I even skipped lychee Thai iced tea because I had such a jones for it.
* Way too many cupcakes. (There were gluten-free bakeries, as well as cupcake bakeries, in both New York and Baltimore. One of the cupcake bakeries gave me a card for the nearby gluten-free bakery! How awesome is that?)
* Super-yummy Creole and Southern food in at all places the train station in Washington DC. (B.Smith's was kind enough to let our raggedy selves in. We were soooo underdressed there.)
* Rowdy vegan gluten-free food ("I was thirsty!")
We played:
* Aye, Evil Overlord, a wonderful goblin minion card game with a minimal ruleset and rich play that Ralnar brought. Basically you make up excuses as to why it's not YOUR fault that the evil overlord's plans went awry, but that OTHER goblin minion over there.
We also got to assess ADA capabilities in several places as my ability to walk degraded throughout the week. (Started out okay but I did Something Bad to my knee which on top of my normal fatigue was pretty disabling.) The experience varied from atrocious to really very good. Museums were *excellent* and in fact I now feel like I don't have to automatically skip museums anymore. Transport ran the gamut and the take-home from that is that not everyone takes you very seriously if you have a cane and are saying no, you really do need extra help to get on the train/plane, so if I'm having a bad day and need to travel on it again I am going to have to insist on a wheelchair even if it makes it three times more obnoxious for everyone, just to make sure I don't get abandoned on a moving train without a seat and unable to find one again.
Resting my knee by using a cane when I had to walk put strain on my legs and arm, but by now my knee is already feeling better, and I'd MUCH rather have achy and tired legs/arm than scary hurty knee (knees are serious business, and it was getting worse and worse in a very scary way) I also have been doing lots of advil, icing it, etc. By the feel I think I injured a tendon but then got onto the interventions fast enough that I didn't do any permanent harm; at this point the injury has moved to my hamstring where I am used to it and know how fast it will heal etc. (Not very fast, thanks to the fibro, but it WILL heal and I CAN walk on it again now as long as I'm gentle.) I'm really glad I got all the heavy New York walking done with early, that I was able to manage the Empire State Building on my feet (it would have been so so so much harder on a cane or in a wheelchair) and that bdeakin was so very nice about driving us around on our last day when my knee was at its worst. bryant and michele_blue made the Baltimore leg so easy that I actually got rest on it, which meant the travel day didn't knock me out as hard as usual (it was kind of brutal, but I was able to cope with it so much better than usual.)
I am probably missing some stuff up there, but anyhow we packed an AMAZING amount of stuff into a week and even though I became more and more hobbly as the week went on, I still got to do and see all sorts of things. Wow!
Brad, aelfsciene and I went to:
* New Jersey.
* New York (several times from New Jersey).
* Washington DC.
* Baltimore.
We visited:
* My sister, cousin, and cousin's son (who is adorable) in New York.
* agrimony, who took the train down to see us, yay!
* Mysterious friend of aelfsciene in New York who I never met.
* bdeakin, who gets the "above and beyond the call of duty" award for circling Grand Central Station three times at rush hour to facilitate the pickup of a delicious cupcake. Also for driving us all over downtown New York. Wow!
* bryant and michele_blue who get the OTHER "above and beyond the call of duty" award for not only kindly taking us all in for several days and taking care of us and finding wonderful food for us but hosting an impromptu mini-WoW-fest. Thanks to them we are not completely crispy today even after a long travel day yesterday.
* trunaway, Ralnar, and kallan
* halfway_back and wemble
We saw:
* The Met. Which I thought was not going to be possible when I arrived there and was already exhausted, until I found out that they actually loan wheelchairs to people who are disabled. Yes, I knew about the ADA. I had just never fully realized that it applied to ME.
* Tiny bits of Golden Gate Park (unless we were aelfsciene who rambled over large parts of it I do believe and has pictures to prove it.
* The subway several times (it is very handy). It is less handy when one is on a cane.
* Hoboken, which is a nice downtown to walk around in.
* A crazyfast taxi driver who made Brad all nostalgic for Bangkok.
* The Empire State Building. (Tourists! Except Brad who stayed home.)
* The Ace Hotel lobby, which was full of wonderful loungy chairs to lounge in. Sadly did not have time for cocktails though they looked really good.
* Mood Fabrics which really is awesome. Angie got the Best Lace Ever there.
* The Circle Line Tour which was great fun; Statue of Liberty! All sorts of great skyline. Embarassingly, I napped on the way back. The tour guide had such a soothing voice....
* The Lincoln Memorial at night. (One of the most magical things to see I know about.)
* The Duck Tour in Washington DC. (Tourists! A great way to see the city after I blew out my knee.)
* A missing man aerial formation over Arlington cemetary, which made me choke up.
* The Vietnam Memorial. Also the Korean War Memorial because the cabbie got confused and dropped us off there instead.
* The National Aquarium in Baltimore. (Wonderful; I loved the Australian arboretum/fish/habitat room best but the rays/turtle exhibit were my second favorite and also YAY frogs.)
We heard:
* Peepers of some sort (cicadas, frogs? they sounded a lot like the night chorus I got growing up) in Washington DC, which just made me happy. We don't get much of a night chorus in Santa Cruz and I miss it.
We ate:
* Excellent diner food. ("New Jersey is the diner capital of the world.")
* The best mozarella I've ever had, made fresh daily at Fiore deli in Hoboken.
* Macrobiotic Asian fusion.
* Yummy Mediterranean food.
* Really excellent vegetarian Thai food, including Thai iced coffee, which I haven't had in way too long. I even skipped lychee Thai iced tea because I had such a jones for it.
* Way too many cupcakes. (There were gluten-free bakeries, as well as cupcake bakeries, in both New York and Baltimore. One of the cupcake bakeries gave me a card for the nearby gluten-free bakery! How awesome is that?)
* Super-yummy Creole and Southern food in at all places the train station in Washington DC. (B.Smith's was kind enough to let our raggedy selves in. We were soooo underdressed there.)
* Rowdy vegan gluten-free food ("I was thirsty!")
We played:
* Aye, Evil Overlord, a wonderful goblin minion card game with a minimal ruleset and rich play that Ralnar brought. Basically you make up excuses as to why it's not YOUR fault that the evil overlord's plans went awry, but that OTHER goblin minion over there.
We also got to assess ADA capabilities in several places as my ability to walk degraded throughout the week. (Started out okay but I did Something Bad to my knee which on top of my normal fatigue was pretty disabling.) The experience varied from atrocious to really very good. Museums were *excellent* and in fact I now feel like I don't have to automatically skip museums anymore. Transport ran the gamut and the take-home from that is that not everyone takes you very seriously if you have a cane and are saying no, you really do need extra help to get on the train/plane, so if I'm having a bad day and need to travel on it again I am going to have to insist on a wheelchair even if it makes it three times more obnoxious for everyone, just to make sure I don't get abandoned on a moving train without a seat and unable to find one again.
Resting my knee by using a cane when I had to walk put strain on my legs and arm, but by now my knee is already feeling better, and I'd MUCH rather have achy and tired legs/arm than scary hurty knee (knees are serious business, and it was getting worse and worse in a very scary way) I also have been doing lots of advil, icing it, etc. By the feel I think I injured a tendon but then got onto the interventions fast enough that I didn't do any permanent harm; at this point the injury has moved to my hamstring where I am used to it and know how fast it will heal etc. (Not very fast, thanks to the fibro, but it WILL heal and I CAN walk on it again now as long as I'm gentle.) I'm really glad I got all the heavy New York walking done with early, that I was able to manage the Empire State Building on my feet (it would have been so so so much harder on a cane or in a wheelchair) and that bdeakin was so very nice about driving us around on our last day when my knee was at its worst. bryant and michele_blue made the Baltimore leg so easy that I actually got rest on it, which meant the travel day didn't knock me out as hard as usual (it was kind of brutal, but I was able to cope with it so much better than usual.)
I am probably missing some stuff up there, but anyhow we packed an AMAZING amount of stuff into a week and even though I became more and more hobbly as the week went on, I still got to do and see all sorts of things. Wow!