Life With One Hand

Today I thought I would write a post with reflections about living one-handed.  It has been two and a half weeks since my surgery and I've got another week and a half to go before I meet with the surgeon again. My instructions up until that time are to avoid any "weight-bearing activity".

My hand is sore but not really painful -- more of a nuisance then a big problem. But if I try to do anything at all with it it sends me very definite messages to stop immediately! So I'm really okay but for the time being I can't use my left hand at all. 

My first observation is that being one-handed is a real pain in the neck!  There are lot of things that I would like to do or need to do that I'm unable to do, or that I can't do without help. And that's frustrating. There other things that I can still do but which take much longer than they normally would, and sometimes doing one of those things for very long makes my right arm or hand sore and I have to stop and rest it. The last thing I want to do is to get a repetitive strain injury on the right side so that I can't use either hand!!!  It is often hard not to be grumpy, as my husband and son can verify :)

But I should follow by saying that I have a lot to be thankful for as well. My surgery was on my left hand and I am right-handed. There are many things I can do easily with my right hand that I can't do it all with my left hand: writing, using scissors, etc. Plus there many others that I'd normally do with both hands that can manage with my right hand alone even though it's slower and more awkward -- like getting dressed or making a sandwich.

Another thing that I had not  thought about ahead of time is that losing the use of a hand is not as serious as losing the use of a whole arm. There are lots of things you can do with an arm even when the attached hand is not useful: moving inside doors around, holding things down while your right hand does something with them, shoving stuff with your elbow, leaning on something to keep your balance, etc.

And really if I had to make a choice I would rather have a hand out of commission that a foot.  It would be awful to need help just to get from one place to another. Right now I'm very grateful to be able to take walks around the neighborhood because it clears my mind and distracts me from irritation with my hand. I'm happy that moving around inside the house is not an issue at all. I don't have to ask for help every time I want to get to a different room or move across the room. I don't need help going to the bathroom or showering -- those are really important!.  When I need help from a family member or just want to talk to them it's easy to find them and get to where they can hear me.

So I'm doing my best to be a Pollyanna about how things could be a lot worse and it's certainly true. However, not being able to use a hand, even my left hand, is an incredible nuisance. My job is done almost totally at a keyboard and even though it's summer right now I have quite a bit of course planning and email communication to be done before September. And yes, it's quite possible to type with just one hand but it's much slower than two-handed touch typing and I make a lot more mistakes and my right shoulder gets tired so I have to take a lot of breaks.  I haven't invested in dictation software for my computer because it's expensive and not a lot of help with computer code and technical terms.  However, I have a nice free dictation tool on my phone and I'm composing a lot of this blog post with that.  As my husband pointed out, this is pretty "meta": dictating about dictating!

When I'm not typing two of my favorite things to do are playing the piano and knitting. The piano is obviously completely out and even after I regain some use of my hand it may be a long time before I get back to where I was. The best way I  have found to cope with that is to be diligent about reminding myself that I can move all my fingers in spite of being warned about that thumb tendon. I do expect to get back to the point where I can play the piano and organ at church again and my dream of working as an accompanist after I retire from my teaching job is still quite possible.

Knitting will probably come back sooner but it still may be a while.  Knitting is something that makes a great difference to my mental state; whenever I'm nervous or unhappy or worried sitting down and knitting helps a whole lot. We often spend time after dinner in front of the TV and I've always got a knitting project handy to go with that. I've discovered lately that I have lost my ability to sit quietly with my hands folded and just watch something.  A couple of crabby days after my surgery David very kindly drove me to Michaels so that I could buy a knitting loom - probably just as important to his sanity at that point as to mine! It took me a little while to figure out how to use it and originally I needed to weigh the thing down on my lap with my left arm as I knitted with my right hand but I have progressed to the point where I don't need my right arm at all. I'm still sticking with very simple stuff and it's not as creative as some of the fancy kinds of knitting that I like to do, but it feeds that part of me that likes the feel of the yarn and needs to be making something. By the time my hand recovers I'm going to have a big pile of nice warm hats for charity. That's a good feeling to have something productive come out of this time when there are so many things I can't do.  Here is a picture of the almost-5 hats I have made so far since the surgery:

 

Hand Surgery

I had surgery on my hand yesterday!  Quite an interesting experience and all is well.  Many friends have asked for details so I thought I'd type the whole story here and refer anyone who asks.  For obvious reasons I am not typing quickly!  In a nutshell, it was minor and I am fine.  The following will contain no pictures or gory details but just the story of what happened.  It might get a little long, but read what you want.  It is therapeutic to write about significant events so this is my diary today -- write it all down and move on!

And another disclaimer: I have no medical training and I'm explaining  my layperson's understanding.  If anything I write is wrong or doesn't make sense the fault is mine not the doctors'.  I suspect that most or all of the "surprises" I got along the way were due to my misunderstandings. 

A little over a year ago I noticed a little hard hard lump on my left hand near the base of my thumb.  It was near a spot where I had been a klutz and banged my hand a while before.  I showed it to my doctor and he referred me Dr. A, an orthopedic surgeon.  It just happens that I already knew Dr. A. because she is part of the same team of surgeons as the doctor who did David's major elbow surgery last year and she handled several of his post-op visits.  So nice to have a familiar friendly face. She told me that sometimes the body gets confused by internal bleeding and thinks it needs to grow new bone to support this "new body part".  There was a long unpronounceable name for this but I didn't retain it.  She said as long as it didn't grow I could just leave it.  Removing it would basically be trading a small lump for a scar and also that it would involve a small risk of nerve damage.  So I said no thanks!  She did warn me that sometimes these things do grow -- the body getting carried away with building this nifty new bone -- and if that happened we should talk again.

A few months ago I started thinking the thing might have grown a little and then I had a few friends ask me "what's' the matter with your hand?" so I knew I needed to have it seen again.  Work was nuts and I didn't make the appointment as quickly as I should have but I eventually met with Dr. A again.  She said yes, it needs to come off and she'd set it up.  Like most non-critical  surgery in Ontario there would be a wait and she predicted late June or July.  She said I'd probably have my hand in a splint for "a few days".  She told me they'd use a nerve block and sedate me and that made me a bit nervous but she assured me I would be kept calm and comfortable.

On Tuesday when I still hadn't been given a surgery date I called and the admin person I talked to gave me a little lecture on the need for patience -- shortage of OR time, this is non-critical, etc.  I did tell her about my job, which is 90% keyboard but just Sept-May so healing in the summer would really be nice.  Still I resigned myself to waiting quite a while and maybe having to either take some leave or get some typing help during the fall term.

Then two hours later I got a call from the hospital saying "we just had a cancellation for Thursday; would that work for you?" and I said YES!!!!!

So that's the back story.  Yesterday was Thursday and it involved several surprises, some of them quite unpleasant emotionally, but in the end all is well.

On Thursday David and I got to the hospital for my 12:30 call time and I had my intake interview.  And then the first surprise: they told me Dr. B, not Dr. A, would be doing my surgery.  I still don't know the reason for that, but it probably had to do with this being a last-minute cancellation.  Still, not a problem at all.  Dr. B is the head of  Dr. A's surgical group and he did a wonderful job of David's elbow repair last year.  I had met him at some of David's post-op check-ups.  Plus he is both a practicing doctor and a researcher and has collaborated with several members of my department who do research into biomedical computing.  There are a huge number of ways computers are involved in surgery in this day and age.  After David's accident several of these profs independently dropped by my office and asked who would be doing his surgery and assured me that he was in very good hands.  So no problems with that change of plans.

Another fun thing is that when we met Dr B he remembered David and asked after the elbow.  David gave him the usual answer, which is that it's working well except he can't quite touch his shoulder.  He did the usual accompanying gesture of bending his arm up and for the very first time one finger actually bumped his shoulder and he was able to do that again and hold it.  A very nice surprise!

After some waiting I got called in for a conversation with the anaesthesiologist.  Actually most of the talk was with a resident, with the attending listening in.  They were very friendly and fun.  The resident said "I do most of the work, but he's the one they pay".  And then he started referring to general anaesthesia and when I questioned him about that there was some conferring and they told me I could have it either way and I said "I want to be asleep!". They said that was probably fine but they'd check it with the surgeon -- who did confirm it later, so that was another pleasant surprise.

Then I met with Dr. B and that wasn't so pleasant after the pleasantries about David's elbow were over.  Dr. B is quite nice, but some of what he had to say was not.  He looked at my hand and said "hmmm, what is this???"  Not what you want to hear.  I passed on what Dr. A had told me and he said "I'm not so sure" and he'd have to see what he found when he got inside and started talking about a biopsy, at which point it took some effort not to panic.  I also told him I am a pianist and he explained very nicely about the way things connect up in the hand. My layperson's summary is that the nerves probably wouldn't be hard to avoid BUT the lump was right under the tendon that connects the thumb to the arm muscles that control it.  He said he would do his best to avoid it but he couldn't make any guarantees.  At that point I really had to think about my breathing.  Losing the use of my thumb would have meant not only no piano but a lot of difficulty with typing, knitting, and almost everything I enjoy or need to do.  And then he said that this might have to be the first of two surgeries with this first one being "a fancy biopsy".  I was not a happy camper, to put it mildly!

Fortunately everything moved very quickly after that -- basic medical questions and check-up, confirming I was good to go for general anaesthesia without staying overnight, getting into the humiliating gown, etc, and finally the anaesthesiology tag team joined me again and walked me over to the OR.  Their kidding around did a lot to help my nerves and I appreciated it a lot.  My favorite part was when they started putting in the IV and I turned my head away.  They said "are you OK?".  "I said "yeah, I just don't like watching that".  The doctor who was putting the needle in said "I know what you mean; I'm not watching either" and we all three giggled and I fell asleep with a smile on my face and the difficult part of the day was all over with.

Later I drifted back up to consciousness and slowly figured out I had had the procedure and must be in the recovery room.  Before I even opened my eyes I cautiously wiggled each finger and I could feel them and control them.  Big "thank-you" prayer and I opened my eyes.  A nurse came over and told me that the doctor said he got the whole lump out and said it looked benign.  Another big thank-you!  They're still doing a biopsy to make sure but I am much less worried.  I don't think they say something that positive unless they're pretty sure.

So it was an exciting day but it looks like all is well.  Nothing much more to tell except the wonderful fact that as of 1pm on Friday (the day after the surgery) I have absolutely no pain.  They gave me some narcotics to take home and told me to try tylenol first and I haven't even needed that.  Yays!  I am feeling good enough that I have already talked David into taking me to Michael's tonight to look for a knitting loom or some other kind of craft to do with one hand.  I miss my knitting!!!  I figure if my knitting addiction is the top thing on my mind I must be doing very well :-)

Change of Name and Some "Stuff"

I made a decision today: this blog isn't only about travel.  I have enjoyed blogging about travel and want to continue doing so, but I also enjoyed posting about seeing Prince Charles and I think I'd like to blog every now and then to post some random pictures I like or to write about whatever random thing is on my mind.  So instead of a travel blog this is now officially a random blog!  Nothing regular and no real unifying theme, just random ideas and pictures now and then.  I've left the URL alone but the title has changed.

There used to be an NPR call-in radio show called "Talk Talk" which claimed that its purpose was just to talk about stuff.  People would call in about anything that what was on their minds, from politics to jokes or anything at all.  So from now on, this blog is about stuff.

I have three bits of stuff today.  The first is a cute little visitor I saw a few days ago on the rail of our back porch as I was looking out the kitchen window.  He seemed really comfy and stayed put even when I walked out on the porch with my camera.

In the background you can glimpse my struggling garden and see that the basil and tomatos are finally starting to grow.  But the weeds seem to grow much faster....

The second thing is a pair of socks I just finished and am happy with:

I am happy with these for two reasons. First, I like the crazy colors. Hurray for self-striping yarn! Second, I tried a new way of doing the heels and it worked out really well.  They fit my feet better than many other socks I've made.

My last thing is also a finished knitting project of a different kind: a little toy I made for the daughter of a friend of mine.  She is about to become a big sister and I made a little sweater for the baby so I thought she deserved a present too and I decided to try a little hedgehog toy I found on Ravelry.

This toy was a lot of fun to make because included a lot of interesting knitting -- which I like -- and a very minimal amount of sewing pieces together -- which I don't really like. But the important thing was that my little friend and her mom both liked it.

Knitting (and occasionally crocheting too) is one of my very favorite things, so a reasonable amount of my "stuff" here may be knitting-related.  For fellow knitters, I'm marglamb on Ravelry.  I will add these two projects to my Ravelry "project" page soon with details if you care.

A Royal Encounter

First, the pictures, then the story....

I was not nearly as close to Prince Charles as the first picture would imply.  He chose the opposite side of the street on the walkabout and I had to crane my neck to see him, but I managed to get a good shot between people's shoulders and my new cell phone has a very nice camera with high resolution so it looks like he was right next to me.

The Duchess, though, really was very close.  (She prefers the title "Duchess of Cambridge" instead of "Princess of Wales".)  She walked down my side of the street shaking lots of hands, including mine!  That was a thrill.  She seemed to want to greet as many people as possible, so no real conversation -- she said "hello" and I said "welcome" and then she was on to the next person.  She had a nice smile and it was exciting to see her so close.

Even though I didn't see Prince Charles close up I could see the way he was interacting with people.  He stopped for fewer people than the Duchess did, but seemed to be having little conversations with them.  He had a way of leaning forward with a very intent, interested expression on his face as though he really cared about what they were saying.

By the time they arrived I had struck up an acquaintance with many people standing near me and we all agreed that the choice of light colored clothing was really helpful, as it helped us spot the guests of honor in the midst of the sea of security people and dignitaries who were all in dark suits!

OK, now that that you've seen the pictures, here are a few more details for anyone who wants to keep reading...

Prince Charles and Camilla crossed the pond to help celebrate Canada's 150th birthday on Saturday, July 1.  They were in Ottawa on that day, of course, but on the day before they made an appearance in Wellington, Ontario, about 100 km from where we live, and that's where I took these pictures.

I have been a fan of the British royal family for many years, from back before I ever expected to be living in a Commonwealth country.  I admire the Queen very much and was thrilled to have a chance to see her near Kingston during her trip to Canada in 1984, shortly after we moved to Kingston.  In spite of all the horrible publicity Prince Charles has endured since then I'm also very interested in his career.  I'm fascinated by what it must be like to be the heir to an ancient throne in this modern era and I've read a lot about him and admire him for the hard work he's been doing for years.  One of the things I found the most interesting in my reading was the fact that he has used his position as Duke of Cornwall (a secondary title of each Prince of Wales) to promote organic and sustainable farming practices. He converted his large farm there to organic farming and invites farmers to visit and learn about the methods used there.  I admire him for using his influence to help promote a safer and more natural way of producing food. This interest in sustainability and eating locally is one of the reasons Prince Charles decided to visit Prince Edward County, the home of many organic farms and vineyards.  He visited the Wellington Farmer's Market and also at least one winery, but only the former was a public appearance.

Another reason to have picked Prince Edward County is that it's named after a Prince Edward who was one of the many sons of George III and lived in Canada for many years as the commander of the British military forces there.  He was also the father of Queen Victoria, which makes him an ancestor of Prince Charles -- through his mother Queen Elizabeth, of course, but also through Prince Philip who is himself a descendant of Queen Victoria along a different line.

Prince Edward County is a large peninsula that extends into Lake Ontario.  It has beautiful fresh-water beaches and pretty little towns, including Wellington, and is a favorite day trip for many residents of Kingston.  So I was looking forward to a nice drive out to see the royal visitors. Wellington is a small town on the opposite side of Prince Edward County from us and has a lovely farmer's market.  It normally is only in business on Saturdays, but they set up a special Friday market just for the Prince to see.  When we visit the area we usually meander over by way of a cute small ferry, but in view of the expected crowds I used one of the bridges from the much more boring highway 401.  Not as fun a drive, but no traffic jams or long waits for the ferry.

I was disappointed to wake up on Friday to find that the weather forecast had been correct and it was grey and miserable and raining.  I considered giving up on my plan to drive all the way out there,but decided to go anyway and hope for the best.  The drive out was dreary, but just as I parked the car (in a very waterlogged unpaved country parking lot) the rain stopped and by the time the royal couple arrived the sun was out.  I'm really glad I decided to take a chance and go!

On Friday morning, before the Wellington visit, Charles & Camilla visited Canadian Forces Base Trenton.  For my family in the U.S. and anyone else who might happen to read this and not be familiar with this area, here's a quick geography lesson.  Trenton, Ontario is roughly halfway between Kingston and Toronto.  The Trenton military base holds the same importance as Andrews Air Force base in the U.S. because when a soldier dies in action their body is taken to Trenton for the "repatriation" ceremony.  Highway 401 between Toronto and Trenton is now officially called the "Highway of Heros" for this reason.  So the base was an important place for Prince Charles to visit -- not just as a royal but as someone who served the British military for years.

Prince Edward County is a large peninsula that stretches into Lake Ontario from the Canadian side near Trenton.  Here is a map to explain this better (you can click on it to see the details better):

Some Last Notes

I had a wonderful time on my July trip!  Not being able to go to Paris was a big disappointment, but I managed to find other things to enjoy that week and I'm proud of myself for not just collapsing in a puddle and moping for that time.  It's the longest trip I've ever taken and two weeks of it were on my own (one of them unexpectedly) and it all was wonderful.  It gives me a lot of confidence about my ability to travel, either by myself or with others.  It's nice to be home now, but I have lots of great memories to treasure.  I know I'll be looking over my photos and recalling and sharing stories for a long time.

As my trip progressed, I made a note of some general ideas that occurred to me that weren't really specific to a particular day or event.  I've saved that list to share in this last post relating to my 2016 summer trip.  So here they are, in no particular order:

• When I was packing for this trip I looked at my large suitcase and thought about pulling it around for every change of hotels, possibly up and down stairs if I got a hotel without a "lift".  I made a last-minute decision to borrow my son's smaller suitcase and leave a few things out.  I was so glad I did that!  I was planning to use a small backpack as a carry-on anyway and I really didn't need all of that suitcase room.  Next time I take a trip I'm going to think hard about how I might downsize even more. 

• In spite of the above, the next time I travel in the summer and am not sure I'll have air conditioning I might pack one of those tiny little fans they sell for offices.  It would have been really nice to have along....

• If you like to do read as I do, an e-book reader is an excellent way to carry around weeks worth of books without adding much volume or weight to your load.  I have a first-generation kobo and it can hold more books than I would read in a year.  It was always in my purse and during the time when I was on my own I'd pull it out and read a chapter when I stopped for a meal.

• A question: why does the U.K. not believe in water fountains??  I noticed this the other time I traveled in Great Britain too.  The British are such lovely people in general and I think they implemented recycling long before we did in North America, but they seem to have a blind spot when it comes to water.  In hot weather there are lots of warnings posted about staying hydrated and I agree it's very important, but the only way to do that while traveling in the U.K. seems to be to keep buying little plastic bottles of water.  I have a nice refillable bottle that I use at home and my workplace has drinking fountains with high spouts so that I can fill it up when it gets low.  But in the U.K. it was fairly rare to find a drinking fountain or even a bathroom sink that would deliver water in a way that I could drink out of it or fill up even a small container.  I wasted a lot of money and created a lot of trash buying plastic water bottles.  The one exception was the hotel at Canterbury, which had a "water station" in the hall, where you could fill water bottles with your choice of still or sparkling mineral water.  I chatted with another North American guest at this water station and instead of discussing the cathedral or other things about the hotel we just raved about how happy we were to find all this free water!

• British grocery stores sell very good nutritious sandwiches.  And there are often grocery stores at the center of town -- even small ones in downtown London and in train and tube stations there.  This is such a nice way of getting lunch when you're traveling.  It's cheap and convenient.  I usually don't want to spend the time and money for a sit-down lunch when I'm sightseeing.  Restaurant meals are fun but you can get tired of them on a long trip.  I love being able to walk into a grocery store and buy a sandwich and a piece of fruit and maybe a bag of "chips" and then eating it in a park.  Or packing it away in my bag until later when I want it. 

• I wish we had trains like the British trains in North America!  They are great for long distances and short ones too.  David and I took trains from London to York, then York to Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh back to London and each one made only a few stops.  They were comfortable and quiet and very pleasant.  They even had someone with a "trolly" selling drinks and snacks.  They stopped in the middle of town instead of an airport that was far away from everything.  There were several choices of times every day.  A very civilized way to travel.  And when you're only going a short way they've got great trains for that too.  We took a train for our day trip to Stirling Castle from Edinburgh and I took trains from London to Dover to Canterbury and back to London.  Those stopped at more places, but were still quite comfortable and convenient and with frequent choices of times.  I noticed people who got on at one town and got off one or two towns later and they just paid cash to the conductor instead of buying a ticket at the station.  That must be really convenient.  So much nicer than driving to a nearby town and having to find a parking spot.

• One more thing about trains: my only complaint is that some of the trains running the smaller routes don't have enough room for luggage.  They have small overhead racks that are fine for a backpack but no place for suitcases.  I was lucky that when I used these trains they weren't full and I was one of the few people with a suitcase, so I could just put my suitcase on the seat next to me.  But what do they do when the trains are more full?  A train going from Dover to London can't count on all of its passengers being on day trips....

• One of the challenges of a long trip is laundry.  During the miserable heat wave in London I was sweating through clothes so fast that I took a bag of icky, sweaty clothes over to a nearby laundry service.  I felt very pampered getting them back that evening beautifully clean and folded better than I've ever folded them in my life.  But it was expensive and not something I wanted to do all the time.  For the rest of the trip, I managed to wash my clothes in my hotel room.  Here are some tips:

• Wash a few things every evening; don't let them all pile up
• If you're going to be moving around, pack a few plastic bags in case you need to carry damp clothes in your suitcase.
• Try out something like Eucalan -- a hand-washing soap that doesn't need any rinsing. I have been using it for my hand-knits for years and it works just as well on other kinds of clothes.  It just takes a capful in a bathroom sink full of room-temperature water.  Dump in a shirt or two and some underwear and let it soak for 20-30 minutes, maybe turning it over once if some of it wants to float.
• The trick is getting things dry afterwards.  I drain the water out of the sink and then gently squeeze out each item until I can't get any more water out of it.  Then I roll them up in a towel and squeeze that.  And then I hang the clothes up to dry.  Almost everything will dry after that treatment in one or two nights, depending on the weather.  Sticking a couple of extra clothes hangers in the bottom of your suitcase is a great idea in case there are no hangers where you're staying.  
• If you're lucky enough to have a hotel room with a heated towel rack, drying is even easier.  I worry that these things get too hot to be safe with some of my clothes, so what I do is put a towel on the rack and put clothes over the towel.  It still speeds up the drying process quite a lot.

• This gripe may be a little silly or a specifically North American hangup, but What is the point of toast racks???  Every place I stayed included breakfast and in general the food was good, but in every place but one my breakfast included very cold, very dry toast served in a toast rack. If you live in North America, you may not even know what a toast rack is, so I put a picture beneath this point.  It seems to be an appliance that is perfectly designed to take nice warm toast and make sure it turns into cold, dry, unappetizing toast as quickly as possible.  Why????  I normally really like toast, but this ruins it.  I understand that if you're serving breakfast to lots of people in the morning it may be difficult to make sure everyone gets theirs when it's warm, but why would you spend money and space on these little gadgets that make absolutely sure everyone's toast will be stone cold and all dried out?  Do they really like it that way? Or do they just think it's a fancy way to serve toast in spite of the consequences?  There, just had to get that off my chest.  A great mystery....

• This next thing may sound odd coming from a Computing professor, but I tend to be a late adopter of some kinds of technology.  I think I use so much of it at work that I'm not always eager to acquire it in my personal life.  I was one of the last people I know to get a cell phone and then one of the last to upgrade from a simple cell phone to a "smart phone".  The last time I went on a major trip I had just bought my Android phone and hadn't really progressed beyond using it for phone calls and messages.  So this was the first trip I took with apps on my phone and I must say I'm finally a convert.  I carried much less paper and found many apps that saved me a lot of time and bother.  I did bring along my laptop, but I didn't do much with it except writing this blog.  Before the next time I travel I may try to get comfortable with the blogger app and save a lot of space and weight by leaving the laptop at home!  (Although maybe I still would want a regular keyboard for blog and e-mail....)  Here are some of the apps I enjoyed using during this trip.   My phone is an Android, but I believe most or all of these have equivalents for Apple phones.
  • The camera!  I suppose that goes without saying, but it's a better camera than the little point-and-shoot I own.  I brought the latter along as a backup but never used it.
  • The calendar to keep track of our travel reservations and other plans
  • Dropbox to manage some files that I wanted to have on my laptop as well as my phone.  These were mostly notes about times and places and directions.
  • hotels.com to keep track of our hotel reservations
  • VIA rail to keep track of our train reservations in Canada (getting to & from the Dorval airport)
  • The British Airways app -- electronic boarding passes and up to date flight information.  
  • trainline for managing our British train trips
  • Transport for Edinburgh, which helped us navigate the bus system in Edinburgh.  Really wonderful to have this kind of help when you're in an unfamiliar city!  If you tell it where you are and where you want to go it will display complete information about times and bus stop locations.  You can even buy and use electronic bus tickets -- completely paperless.  You just buy tickets with your credit card on the app and let the app show them to the bus driver when you get on the bus.  I hope the London tube system will figure out something like this to replace Oyster cards.  Maybe even Kingston Transit someday....
  • The London Tube Map: You tell it what station you're close to and what station you want to go to and it tells you all the details: what line to get on in which direction, what stops you'll pass, where to get off to transfer, how long each step will take, and so on.   The tube system is complicated enough that this saves a lot of time and error.
  • Games on cell phones are really nice ways to combat boredom during those little bits of dead time that happen while traveling -- waiting for a train or a flight, etc.  My favorite ones that I've got on my phone are Ken Ken and a solitaire game but there are millions to choose from.  I like to read and knit, but neither of those are very comfortable for small bits of time.
  • Google maps: Most people probably are familiar with this program and the app is great too for figuring out how to get places when you're in an unfamiliar city.  It's possible to download an area and use the app version of the program offline, but there are limits to the offline use.  In particular, it won't give you walking instructions, just instructions for driving, which are not always what you really want if you're on foot in a European city.  Still, it's helpful for planning out an excursion ahead of time or for getting an idea of how far away something is.
  • I've saved my very favorite app of all until last: Here We Go.  The next time I take a trip if you told me I could take along only one of my long list of apps I would probably  choose this one.  I use it at home too when I'm walking to a place I've never been before or when I decide to explore a new neighborhood or a new route when I'm walking for exercise.  It is a fairly simple mapping app.  It's not as fancy as Google maps, but its advantage is that it works much better offline without using up data (which is so expensive, especially when you're overseas).  Before you go on a trip you download maps for places you're planning on going.  After that, this app will work with the saved maps even when you're away from both wi fi and data.  You tell it where you want to go (from your current position or from another position if you're planning ahead) and it gives you a map showing your location and the suggested route to your destination.  You can change the scale and move around on the map to suit what you need.  It knows about footpaths as well as roads.  It will also give you directions (such as "walk 80 meters and then turn left on Elm Street").  It vibrates your phone when it's time to make a turn, so you can shove it in your pocket and not have to watch it all the time.  And -- my favorite feature -- if you take a wrong turn it will help you recover in the most efficient way without insisting that you retrace all your steps.  (I tested that feature very thoroughly on this vacation and can vouch for it!)  It occasionally acts up or is slow to update the map, but it still works very well.  If it misbehaves just restart it.  My family will tell you that I have a terrible sense of direction and am very talented at getting lost, but this app got me all around London and helped me walk to Dover Castle and lots of other places on this trip all by myself.  It's so much easier and more convenient than constantly unfolding a paper map and finding your place on it.  On the last day of my trip the app updated itself and announced some extra features, such as public transportation, but I have never used them; I have only used it for walking.  For walking in an unfamiliar place, though, I recommend it very highly.

• After that long list of apps, it's obvious that I used my cell phone heavily on this trip.  Taking pictures and making it show maps for long walks really does run down the battery.  I tried to start out each day with the phone fully charged, but even so there were many days when the battery couldn't last through everything I wanted to do.  So I'm very, very glad that I brought a good portable charger along with me -- one of these, although I'm not sure this is exactly the same model number as mine.  There are a lot of chargers like this out there and I can't recommend one over another, but I highly recommend having something like this.  I carried it in my purse all the time and if my phone (or ipod or kobo reader) started to get low on power I just plugged it in and left it in my purse with the charger and let it charge back up for a while, then plugged the charger in at night so it would be ready to help out again the next day.  Spend enough money to get one that can store enough charge to charge your phone (or other devices) several times before it has to be charged up again, just in case.

• It's fun to have some kind of pedometer when you go on a trip like this that involves a lot of walking.  I've already mentioned my fitbit in this blog and I really enjoyed having it along.  It's a watch that doubles as a pedometer so it's no extra trouble to take along.  I got one that measures my heart rate as well and I find I don't use that feature and I'm not sure how accurate it is.  If I had it to do over I would go with a simpler, cheaper model.  But the important thing is that at the end of the day when you get back to your home or hotel room with tired feet you can look at your step count and feel very virtuous!  Sometimes when you tramp around on a trip (or at home doing errands) you don't realise how many miles you're going.  

• If you do have a pedometer, let me recommend a fun web site to go with it: Walking 4 Fun.  It was created by someone who does a lot of long-distance walking trips.  You create an account and every day you enter the number of steps you have taken (or the number of miles you walked if you prefer).  You select one of the hikes the writer has done and each day the web site will tell you how far along you are on your virtual hike and show you pictures of what you've passed on your way and some of what the writer wrote on his blog about that area.  It's fun!  I've already "hiked" the whole Camino de Santiago (the French as well as the Spanish section) plus the West Highland Way and the Great Glen Way in Scotland and have started on the Appalachian Trail.  During my vacation the beautiful and interesting things I really did pass were enough of a motivation, but sometimes when I'm walking in my own familiar area the thought of adding to my virtual hike can add an incentive to go a little farther.  And the web site is certainly giving me ideas for hikes I'd like to take in person someday.

• I want to end by sharing a few more thoughts about walking.  It's the only form of exercise that I really enjoy.  It's a lot easier on the body than running but it has many benefits.  I was very pleasantly surprised the last time I went to the doctor.  He asked if I was exercising regularly and I braced myself for a lecture, but told him I liked to walk and was getting 10,000 steps on my pedometer most days.  He smiled and said that was excellent for my cardiac health and I should keep it up.  No lecture!  Besides the benefits for physical health, I have often found that a walk can do wonders to clear up my thinking.  If I'm having trouble with a person or situation in my life and I take a walk I'll often find that a solution or at least a possible strategy will have popped into my mind by the end of the walk, even if I wasn't consciously thinking about the issue.  Or if not, I will usually at least feel a little calmer about it.  The same goes when I'm stuck on some kind of technical issue at work.  I recently did a google search for the two words "walking" and "brain" and it came up with several pages that confirmed my feeling that walking is good for our cognitive health and can even help to combat the effects of aging on our brains and lower our risk of dementia.  So if you are like me and have a tendency towards couch-potatohood, try taking a little walk several times a week and once that has become a comfortable habit try going just a little farther.  You'll be surprised how far you're going before long and how much better you feel.

Happy Walking!

July 29: Last Day in London

It's probably obvious that I have been writing up a lot of these posts after the fact and not on the same day.  For most days I've needed at least an hour to organize my photos and write up a blog entry and many days during the trip I just didn't have enough time and/or energy.  It's now almost a week after I got home and I'm just getting to my last day in the U.K.  I still wanted to complete the blog because it has been a great way to organize my memories and I hope at least a few other people are enjoying it too and maybe getting ideas for wonderful trips of your own.

When I was a kid we'd come back from a trip and take our film in to be developed and then stick them into photo albums and write little notes reminding ourselves about dates and the people/places in the the pictures.  I tend to take a *lot* of pictures now, since I no longer have to think about the cost of film or developing.  It's great to have that freedom, but all those pictures tend to just sit in folders on my computer without any structure beyond their dates.  I'm losing the benefit of all of those little notes I used to write, reminding myself of where I was when I took pictures and who some of the people are.  I'm also not taking the time to weed out the bad pictures (blurry, badly framed, etc) and the duplicates.  Keeping a blog is one way to make all of this happen.  I'm not going to continue this into a blog of my daily life, but I'm resolved to do it every time I take an interesting trip and maybe occasionally just to document a pretty day that called for some good pictures.

OK, back to my trip....  Last Friday, July 29, is a week ago now and it was the last day of my trip.  I woke up a little sad about leaving London but also looking forward to being home with my family again after such a long time away.  My flight was scheduled to leave Heathrow at 6:15 p.m.  I had been getting e-mails from British Air warning me that Heathrow had been pretty crowded and suggesting I allow lots of time for the check-in process and suggesting I get there 3 hours early, which meant 3:15.  I figured things were backing up due to additional security after all the terrorism lately so I took it seriously and planned to catch the Heathrow Express from Paddington by 2:30.

That still left me a chunk of time in London and I didn't want to waste it.  I decided that a walk would be the perfect thing to drink in one last taste of this great city and to get some exercise to help offset the long hours of sitting on the airplane.  So I packed up and left my luggage at the hotel and headed out.

On my first day alone in London I walked from Westminster to the hotel I was staying in then.  Today I decided to make a similar walk -- from this hotel to Westminster but by a different route.  I wanted to go through Kensington Gardens this time because I really loved it when David and I walked there.  I counted backwards and figured out how long it would take me and added in some extra time for lunch and delays and decided I had plenty of time, so off I went and it was a truly wonderful walk and a great way to say goodbye to London.  It drizzled a little from time to time, but not enough to spoil the fun.

Goodbye to the pretty neighborhoods around my hotel:

The middle picture above shows a van in London advertising the U.S. television version of the very British story of Sherlock Holmes (which my family enjoys watching in Canada).  I found that amusing.

Goodbye to the "Round Pond" in Kensington Park, with its many birds, including swans (who can be very graceful but also so goofy looking sometimes!) and those funny ducks (geese?) with the eye patches.

Goodbye to Queen Victoria and the much-lamented Prince Albert:

Goodbye to the quiet pretty paths in Hyde Park:

Goodbye to the over-the-top fancy stuff on the London streets, like Wellington arch:

At this point I have to digress just a bit to explain a special surprise I got on this last walk.  I am very interested in all things royal, but I didn't attempt to see the iconic Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.  I've been told that you have to show up hours early to stake out a spot to see it and that even then it's not really all that interesting, so I gave it a miss.  I didn't even find out what days and times it took place.

On this walk I went past Buckingham Palace and approached it from the back.  I walked along the sides of the palace gardens, which are surrounded by some high, scary walls:

I'm glad the royal family has someplace green they can walk in private.  

As I rounded the corner to the side of palace, I saw crowds outside the gates, which is normal, but I also heard music and wondered what it was.  And I noticed that the crowds weren't wandering around casually but seemed plastered to the gates.  Right at the corner there were just a few children peering in.  I looked over their heads and saw a lot of guards marching around, and the front gates were actually open.  I thought "no, it couldn't be!" and asked one of the kids "is this the Changing of the Guards?" and they looked at me and said "yeah" as if I were the stupidest grown-up they had encountered in their entire lives.  So I watched the whole thing right over their heads.  The people who told me the ceremony isn't super interesting were right, but still it's famous and it was fun to see it once.  And I got it "for free", with no lining up and waiting or having to plan my whole day around being there at the right time.  A nice goodbye back from London to me!

After the ceremony finished, the guards who were finished with their shifts and, I think, some who arrived just to beef up the ceremony, headed back out and up the Mall.  I was headed in a different direction to get to the Westminster tube stop and I saw four of the mounted guards split off and head down the street I was on.  There was a wide median area in the road and they were walking along it with traffic in each side of them.  Very calm, well-trained horses!  I think they must have been going to the guard's museum up the street.  I was close enough to see that three of these four guards were women, which was cool.

Finally, I got to Westminster, for my last view of the Parliament buildings:

Goodbye, Big Ben, and thanks for the time!  It was just past 12:30, which gave me two full hours to get back to the hotel and drag my bags to Paddington and grab a sandwich.  The timing worked out perfectly and I got to the check-in area in Heathrow just before 3:15 as planned.  Everything went smoothly at the airport and I had lots of time to sit by the gate and do some reading and even a little blog work.  Then they announced the flight and we lined up and then everything stopped.  The line didn't move.  And they told us that the flight was going to be delayed.  Back to our seats.  Finally the explanation came:  a piece of equipment on the plane was malfunctioning and needed to be replaced or repaired before we could take off.  Not very reassuring.  Later on they filled us in on the details: it was the microwave that wasn't working, not something safety-critical, but they still weren't allowed to take off on a long flight without a functioning microwave.  I suppose that makes sense if all of our food was frozen.  It wasn't possible to repair the microwave quickly, and their requests to replace the microwave were turning into mountains of paperwork.  Reminds me of Queen's!  They had another plane handy near the gate (complete with working microwave), so they started the process of switching around the planes and moving all of our meals from one to the other.  The flight was postponed from 6:15 to 9:15 and they gave us vouchers to buy "light refreshments" while we waited, which was very nice of them.  So I bought myself a sandwich and sat down for more reading and e-mails.

Finally, we boarded, and ended up taking off closer to 10 than to 9:15, so almost 4 hours late.  We had a late dinner and I managed to doze for a few hours.  We got to Montreal just before midnight their time, but that's 5 a.m. London time and I felt extremely groggy.  I waded through Customs & Immigrations half-asleep but very happy my visa situation had been straightened out before I got there so that there were the usual annoying lines to stand in but no problems.

Luckily, I already had a hotel room reserved near the hotel.  Even if the plane had not been delayed I would have arrived in Montreal too late to get a train back to Kingston that night.  So I hopped on the hotel shuttle bus and checked in to my hotel and slept like a log and woke up feeling pretty good.  I hung around and read and worked on the blog a little until it was time to catch my train and had a comfortable and uneventful ride home.   It was wonderful to get here and see David and Ian again!

And that's the end of the story of my trip.  It was an amazing adventure and I'm glad I did it.  I had much more time alone than originally planned and while I'm still very disappointed about Paris I've learned that I can handle being on my own and can re-group and change plans when I have to.  That's very nice to know for the future.  And the trip has given me many, many beautiful memories to carry with me for the rest of my life.

I am going to try to make one more post in this blog (maybe tomorrow) with some notes about practical things I learned about traveling, and then that will be it.  If you've gotten this far, thanks for hanging in here with me.  If you go someplace interesting and keep a blog, please let me know about it.  I like to hear about other people's adventures and see their pictures!

July 28: Two Museums and a Wall

I started out my day with a trip to the British Museum.  I've heard a lot of different opinions about this place.  Some people I know have raved about it and all the wonderful things on display there.  Others complain that it's crowded and overwhelming and difficult to find things in.  I have to say that I agree with both!  It was a nice day outside so I hoped the indoor museum crowd wouldn't be so awful, but it was.  And it didn't feel like such a nice crowd; people were pushing and shoving to see things and the place just had a bad vibe for me in spite of all the incredible things to see.

I bought a map that had a list of the ten "top things to see".  The first one was the Rosetta Stone and that was definitely on my own mental list and it was near the main lobby.  I managed to find it and it took me at least 10 minutes to work my way into the crowd enough to actually see it and the information about it.  I think this museum needs to consider some kind of crowd control around the more popular sights like I've seen in other museums -- such as a roped off "path" to lead people past the object in single file.  As it is, having to elbow my way in and be shoved by others took a lot of the thrill out of seeing this very famous piece of rock.  I made myself think about how old it was and the exciting role it played in historical research, but still I was glad to get out of the room.  I even considered beating a quick retreat out of the museum and finding something different to do today.

I cooled down, though, and decided to pick some galleries and wander through them and enjoy what I saw along the way instead of targeting those top sights.  That was a much more productive approach and I started to have fun.  I decided that since this was the British Museum I'd start with some of the galleries with artifacts from Britian.  It was still crowded, but not impossible, and I was able to take a few pictures and I'll share some of my favorites.

This gold "cape" was found in Wales and was from the early Bronze Age (1900-1600 B.C.):

Here are some artifacts from the 2nd century A.D., during the Roman occupation.  The statue in the middle is Mars:

This is part of a floor mosaic from a 4th century Roman villa in Dorset.  Because of the letters and symbols in the whole mosaic, it is thought to be a depiction of Jesus, which makes it "one of the most important early Christian remains from the Roman Empire".

This helmet is part of the "Sutton Hoo ship burial" from Anglo-Saxon times, probably belonging to a 7th century king:

One of my very favorite things I saw in the British Museum was the "Lewis Chessmen", found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and thought to date from around 1200 A.D., a period when the western islands of Scotland belonged to Norway -- so they are thought to have been made in Norway.  They are beautifully carved out of ivory and whale's teeth.

In another section of the museum I saw some beautiful sculptures from Rome:
and a whole gallery full of interesting clocks.  The latter included this incredible "automaton" from 16th century Germany.  It would "sail" across a banquet table to announce the start of dinner.  It includes a tiny clock at the base of the mast that you can't really see from my pictures:


So I did enjoy the British Museum after a bit of an adjustment to the size and crowds.  I had lunch there and stayed until mid-afternoon.

Afterwards, I went to the Museum of London.  I was interested not as much in the museum as in the fact that the museum was advertised to have a section of the old London wall inside it or next to it -- I never was sure which. It has been so interesting to see the old medieval/Roman walls in York and Canterbury on this trip that I thought it would be cool to see the remnants of London's wall as well.

I got to the museum and didn't see an old wall.  I would have gone in and asked, but there was an enormous and noisy school group entering the museum.  After the crowds at the British Museum I didn't think I could take that.  I walked all around the outside of the museum with no luck and gave up.  I did see something else interesting, though: a plaque marking the approximate spot of John Wesley's conversion:

I wouldn't have noticed that if I hadn't been looking for the wall, so it seemed like a fair trade.  I started heading back to the tube stop to go back to my hotel.  However, this was one of those times when my very bad memory for directions worked in my favor.  I took a wrong turn and got all mixed up about where to find the tube and found this instead:

How's that for serendipity?  I had to give up on finding the old London wall to walk right into it a few minutes later!  And I'm not done yet.  Here's a separate piece of the wall I encountered further down the street:

This second piece was accompanied by a sign explaining that this part of the wall was revealed by German bombing during World War II:

I love the idea that some good thing came out of the Blitz besides all the horrible damage it did!