La Sagrada Familia, construction scaffold as art

Penelope Puddle, west coast umbrella artist, sees something in the ongoing construction of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia church, something which my husband and I missed. So that she and I can test her theory that the construction blends in with the church as part of its art, I am posting a few more pictures today.

Today's photo:

LA SAGRADA FAMILIA
Probably the most famous unfinished church in the world is Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, designed by Spain's famous architect Antoni Gaudi, started but far from completed when he died. Funds have continued to dwindle in over the last hundred years to pay for construction work on the building, so a bit of work gets done now and then, here and there.
No matter how many photos my husband took, it was very difficult to get one without scaffolding in it somewhere.
Photo by Richard Schear

On the trail of Don Quixote

CONSUEGRA, and PUERTO LAPICE, SPAIN
Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear
Fabulous blue skies after the fog cleared in Puerto Lapice. No rain on the plain in Spain for us.

Giant Tortoises in the Galapagos Islands

Every now and then I have to look at our photos from the Galapagos Islands, just to remind myself we really were there. Here's a long shot of two giant tortoises resting in the shade at the Darwin Research Station. A closeup of one with its mouth open -- who would have thought such a large green animal would have such a cute pink mouth? And our guide Karina got this old fella to smile for her. The rules on the islands are definitely look-but-don't-touch, and Karina knows how to get their attention without touching them.

AM I BLUE? Chapter 16 of An Unfittie's Guide

CHAPTER 16 –
TRAVEL WITH A
HIGH-MAINTENANCE
HUSBAND

You might not think it to look at him, but my tall, strong man is a high-maintenance husband, especially for an unfittie to have. Although never hovering solicitously (euww, don’t you hate hoverers?) he is at least helpful some of the time, although not all the time, or even very often, and certainly not every time he’s needed.
The trouble is, he cannot be expected to do the expected thing. When approaching an airport security check, he will go happily ahead of me, put his carry-on bags on the conveyor, and step through the metal detector without looking back. He’ll be on the other side, claiming his things, before I can even get the baggie of liquids out of my carry-on and into the plastic box. Then I’ll be struggling to lift my small (but packed to the max) suitcase up onto the metal table, while the passenger behind me is complaining about dithery old ladies who travel alone. (How is she to know the big healthy man away up there on the other side is married to me?)
If we are seated together in a plane, he is very good about slinging my stuff into the overhead bin, leaving me free to sit down and push my shoulder bag under the seat in front of me with my feet (because I can’t bend that far). But if somehow we’re seated in separate rows, I’m apt to find myself unassisted.
Recently, we were on a flight that was completely full, the only available seats being one in mid-cabin in an exit row, and another one halfway from there to the rear. Dick happily settled himself into his exit-row seat, no doubt anticipating an opportunity for heroism should it be afforded him. Of course, even if they do have room, some airlines won't let me sit in the exit row because removing a window and throwing it out of a moving plane would be quite beyond me. So, I said nothing and wheeled my carry-on down to my seat, where I stood staring at the overhead bins in dismay until a flight attendant hefted things up for me.
Only after I was seated, and beginning to get somewhat comfortable, did my husband remember he had a wife. He turned to look and, seeing me somehow seated, waved at me, but never looked at me again until the plane was at the gate and the pilot had turned off the fasten-seat-belts sign.
“I thought you had managed by yourself,” he said later, in response to my reproaches.
Strangely enough, he probably does think I can manage by myself, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Why would I say that? Because I’ve been an unfittie long enough to know how strangely the human mind can work. A part of me thinks all women my age (and older, of course) feel the same pain I feel. When a friend offers to carry something for me, I demur, because I’d rather cause pain to myself than to my friend, somehow forgetting she doesn’t have my list of infirmities and therefore can carry things without as much strain.
Following the same line of reasoning, I imagine my husband mistakenly thinks everything he can do easily is equally easy for everyone his age or younger. Erroneous reasoning, to be sure, but if I hadn’t often made the same mistake myself, I wouldn’t be able to understand what is (or isn’t) going through his head. His “I’m strong enough, so everyone else is also strong enough” makes just about as much sense as my “It hurts me, therefore it hurts everyone else.”
Unfortunately, the results are not the same.

I MARRIED A CAMEL
I’ve already discussed pit-stops in a previous chapter, but an almost equally important issue is the refreshment stop. My poor old body, circular though it may appear, requires frequent fuel in the form of food and water. My husband, however, can last for twelve hours straight with nary a nibble nor a sip. How do I contend with that? It isn’t easy.
If not fed on a regular basis, my body does peculiar things. I have chills. I get so cold my toenails turn blue. Once, when I was that cold, I waved my hands in front of Dick’s face and asked him, “What color are my fingernails?”
“Blue,” he replied casually, supposing, I suppose, I had painted them.
“That isn’t a natural color,” I said, by way of a hint.
“Oh,” said he, not at all curious about why they were blue.
“I’m cold.”
“Uh-huh.” Still no question mark. The man does not have an inquiring mind about things medical.
“I’m freezing cold, but it is a warm day. My nails are blue. My blood-sugar is out of whack. I need to eat something. My knees are wobbling and I might fall down any minute.”
“Don’t you have your cane?”
Aarrgghh!
I tell myself it isn’t his fault. Some people are just born without that kind of curiosity, the way some people are born without empathy. Not that I’m suggesting there’s a connection, but... did I tell you he still expects me to get up out of bed when I’m sick, so I can cook for him? No matter how many times I point out the unreasonableness of this expectation, he continues to wake me up when I’m unwell and he’s unfed, to let me know it’s mealtime. This, from the camel who can survive all day without eating.
However, it now occurs to me to mention one of the nicest things about travel with Dick. He likes hotels. He particularly likes hotels providing breakfast, and having a cafe for lunch and/or a restaurant for dinner. Seldom have we had to stay in a motel with a kitchenette so, although he might awaken me before dawn to catch a flight he booked with his airmiles, he hardly ever wakes me up to cook for him when we’re traveling.
Silver lining, every cloud, etc., sez I, philosophically.

Chapter 15 in the continuing saga of an unfittie's travels

CHAPTER 15 –
WONDERFUL THINGS
FOR UNFITTIES TO DO

You’re right if you’re thinking I wouldn’t be writing this if I had never found anything fun to do during one of Dick’s adventure tours. I found two things, and I go on, in hope of finding them again.

NUMBER ONE
Everyone knows hydrotherapy means movement in water, providing exercise without impact, thereby strengthening the muscles without causing them any pain.
If you’re an unfittie who can swim, I’ve got the hydrotherapy idea of a lifetime for you. Snorkeling. It’s so easy!
The most difficult part is putting the swim fins on without getting them full of sand. A spouse or friend might help you with this. My spouse didn’t, so I swam without fins, but I wore my water shoes in case of coral, and a shirt to avoid a sunburnt back. A long-sleeved shirt is best, I discovered. Photosensitivity, you know.
You don’t even have to put a lot of effort into swimming. In order to find the greatest number of colorful fish per gallon of snorkel-worthy water, you’ll probably practice this therapeutic pastime in a warm ocean, and anyone can float in salt water. Even my husband can float, although his bones are so strong and so dense he has to keep moving in order to remain afloat in fresh water.
I didn’t get up much speed, but that didn’t matter. All I had to do was hang effortlessly on the top of the water, watching exotically-colored tropical fish swim beneath me, while sea lions swam beside me, and everyone else in our group swam past me.
Snorkeling, by definition, includes a snorkel: a tube that fits into your mouth at one end and is open to the air (one hopes) at the other end. It can be a little disconcerting if waves wash over the open end of the tube. Swallowing salt water involves gagging and coughing and other unpleasantries, all of which interfere with smooth swimming, and interfere even more with enjoyment.
Eventually, one either learns how to blow the mouthful of seawater back up the tube before swallowing, or gives up snorkeling entirely.
Don’t give up.
If I could learn to do it, so can you.
I loved snorkeling in the Galapagos Islands but I understand less remote locations can offer equally exotic underwater wonderlands.

NUMBER TWO
My husband, however, loves remote locations. Therefore, somewhere in Costa Rica, in a location requiring us to leave the bus for a few days (yay!) and travel by boat to an extremely rickety dock some distance away, I discovered sea kayaking.
Gone were all my previous notions of kayaking – notions involving solitary sealskin boats in seas full of ice floes – the moment I saw two-person sea kayaks on the silky soft sand of a warm-water south sea beach.
Sigh. Very happy sigh.
I, of course, was a passenger in this enterprise. I happily let one of the local guides do all the work while I watched Dick and all those other energetic souls paddling their own lone selves to yet another area of soft sand and warm water. There, we (and I use the pronoun loosely, because I was no help whatsoever) beached the kayaks and ran back into the water to swim and cavort like a busload of children. As we laughed, and swam, and splashed, and laughed some more, our guides waded out to offer us freshly-cut pineapple, sweeter than honey, as much of it as we could eat.
I wholeheartedly recommend passenging in a sea kayak for all water-loving unfitties. The inning and the outing of the craft may be a problem and, again, a helpful husband, solicitous spouse or (in my case) a good-natured guide can make the process easier.
My husband can’t help it, I’ve decided (no pun intended). He may have voluntarily married an unfit female, but he really doesn’t know what to do with one once he’s got her, just like a small child receiving a Christmas puppy from well-meaning but uninformed friends or relations.
Still, to return evangelically to the moral of my story, it is better to go than not go.
It really is.
Dick will help when he can, if he happens to notice I’m in distress; if he isn’t 20 feet ahead of me looking at some guy’s hat; or if he knows what I want him to do. This means I have to tell him, in point form, step form, or alphabetically. He can’t intuit solutions to problems outside the grade 5 or 6 curriculum, which he taught for almost 30 years. I tell him he spent entirely too long in elementary school, and I try to remember not to yell at him. Sometimes I succeed in not yelling, and sometimes I don’t, but we’re working on it.
In the meantime, instead of staying home alone, playing computer solitaire (another solitary sport) and doing laundry (also a lonesome pursuit), I get to see bits and pieces of places I’ve never seen before and, if I’m lucky, I get to spend some time in warm salt water.

Chapters 12, 13 and 14 of An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

CHAPTER 12 – A MOSQUITO NET! OH, NO, WHY?

That’s because one wall of the shower is open to the tropical garden outside, and tropical gardens mean…tropical insects!
Yay.
Picture a luxurious mountain lodge in the jungle of Costa Rica, with a view that just doesn’t quit. You open the door to your picturesque jungle hut and see an expansive room containing two beds with mosquito nets hanging above them. Let’s hope you aren’t traveling alone, because getting into a bed and then having to drape a mosquito net above yourself to keep out flying (or even crawling) wildlife, can be a trifle difficult.
Therefore, be sure to have your spouse or traveling partner arrange your net carefully over you with no cracks, visible or invisible, so as to allow no insects, visible or invisible, into your bed or into the air above you. That leaves your spouse or traveling companion free to arrange him- or herself under the mosquito net on the other bed in whatever way he or she can. Every woman for herself, and every man for his spouse!
As Dick was arranging himself into his bed and net, I only screamed at him once, and I still say it was a fair call. There was a cucaracha on the wall near the door, so I insisted Dick get up to escort it out. On his way back to bed, he pointed out to me, ever so nicely, the fact that none of the walls reached the thatched roof/ceiling, and declared himself unwilling to rise up to meet the challenge of whatever other insects might climb or fly over the walls.
All was well and, when my terror of creepy-crawly critters finally subsided enough to let me sleep, all remained well, until a herd of howling banshees set me to howling as well. I almost ripped the mosquito netting right off the ceiling in my terror. “Rich-arrrrrrrrrrrrrddd! Wake UP! Those are the loudest mosquitos I've ever heard!”
“What? Mmm? Huh? Oh, those. Those are howler monkeys. Go to sleep.”
Easy for him to say. He’d been tromping through the bushes with our guide for almost two weeks, and had learned all about jungle warfare, while I, reading novels in hotel lobbies while watching brightly-colored birds eat bananas outside the windows, knew nothing at all.
Which brings me to the next question…

CHAPTER 13 – WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

Now, supposing all my infirmities descend upon me at once, and I find myself unable to do anything without screaming pain.
Supposing I have survived the ignominy of a 9-hour flight in the center seat of a cigar tube, only to find afterward I can’t leave the hotel, or the ship, train or whatever (I should be so lucky, a train) because of said screaming pain.
What, really, is the worst that could happen?
At the worst, I might have to spend my vacation in a hotel room with room service, or in a ship’s cabin with a balcony (and room service), reading a book.
Poor me.
I stop at my local library before a holiday, to buy what I call airplane books: lightweight (in every sense of the word) paperback books someone else has donated to the library, and which the librarian sells for a pittance. I might buy one book for every day of the trip but, as I finish one, I leave it behind for the next guest or passenger.
It sure beats staying at home, reading books while other people travel.

CHAPTER 14 – WHAT COULD BE WORSE THAN THAT?

Oh, okay, if you insist…being in that same screaming pain for two weeks in a bus in Costa Rica might be worse.
The problem on our trip was neither the driver, who was great, nor the bus, which was a brand new, bright orange, made-in-China-with-insect-ear-mirrors kind of bus, but the roads in Costa Rica, which are are unimaginably bumpy, with several huge potholes for every ten or twelve feet of narrow unpaved road. That’s Costa Rica’s back country, and sometimes even its towns.
Fortunately, we never had to sleep in the bus, so my evening and night-time survival training was mostly of the hotel-with-room-service variety, as no tents were pitched during the making of our adventure vacation.
Speaking of ‘worse’ – do you remember slide projectors and color slides? And neighbors who invited you over to watch ‘our summer vacation pictures’ in grim and gleaming color? And how many times did the neighbors say, “And this is us in front of the bus…” while showing you completely unidentifiable, completely interchangeable pictures of their two selves grinning happily (and interchangeably) in front of a tour bus?

New chapters coming soon

Did you enjoy having three chapters posted at once? Well, I did, so I'm going to do it again. Coming very soon, three more short chapters of An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel. (Note re this picture: I got to ride in the front seat, and it wasn't exactly luxurious, but it was a lot better than the ride my husband and friends had in the back of this truck at Puerto Jiminez, Costa Rica.)

I'm not humble, I'm a Canadian!

Canadians traveling to foreign lands don't have to be so humble any more. We're winners: record-setting gold medal winners at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Now it's time to get out there into the world and proclaim, "I am a CANADIAN!"
Congratulations to the Canadian athletes, and to all athletes from all countries, who participated in the recent Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Thanks to all the volunteers who kept the wheels of the olympiad running as smoothly, for the most part, as possible. Condolences to the people of the beautiful country of Georgia who lost one of their own just as the games were about to begin, and to Quebec's Joannie Rochette who lost her beloved mother at such a moment in her life, and in so public a way. I understand, because I still carry the grief from recently losing my own parents.
I also understand the people of Vancouver, and the people visiting Vancouver, who gathered in the streets, particularly at Robson Square and on Granville Street, whose joy in the hope and promise of the Games gave voice to the joy of the people all across the country. My heart was there with you, because I lived in Vancouver for several years and worked there for many more years as a commuter from the suburbs. I'm a third generation British Columbian and grateful I'm able to proclaim, "O Canada, our home and native land."

CHAPTERS 9, 10 and 11 of An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

CHAPTER 9 –
MORE ABOUT ME


My husband has read my manuscript to this point and thinks I haven’t told you enough about myself.
Although one’s self is often one’s favorite subject, I thought it over and decided this is merely a matter of misery loving company. Dick has to listen to all my woes, and has lived through many of them with me, so he thinks it would be easier for him if half the western world shared his misery.
I don’t think so.
You can tell I’m an unfittie if you can imagine a family doctor, a gerontologist, a rheumatologist, a gastroenterologist, three ophthalmologists, a podiatrist, a massage therapist, and a denturist; and if you know the pharmacist recognizes the old guy in the referee shirt as “Kay’s husband coming to pick up her meds.”
You don’t need to know the gory details. You probably have enough gore of your own.


CHAPTER 10 –
UNFITTIE FAQ

Q. What about sex?
A. Not on airplanes.



CHAPTER 11 –
BAD APPLE, WHOLE BUNCH, etc.

Don’t let a bad experience with one form of travel prevent you from trying it again.
Huh, you wonder, this from a woman forever forswearing 20- or even 9-hour plane flights?
That’s right. From me, because in this case it’s my husband who won’t try it again.
I’ve always loved train travel. It’s the only way to fly, as far as I’m concerned, so when we planned to be in Miami but also wanted to go to Tampa to visit friends, I suggested Amtrak. I showed Dick the schedule and the price, and he agreed. We arranged to have my friend Sheila meet us at the Tampa train station, and made our reservations.
We’d just (we thought) pop up to Tampa, visit Sheila and Walter for a weekend, then return to Miami in time for a cruise. Train travel would allow us to get up, walk around and stretch our legs, walk to the restrooms, walk to the dining car, then we’d reach Tampa all relaxed and happy.
We thought.
But we were wrong.
Little did we know Florida is the only state in the contiguous 48 wherein Amtrak doesn’t own its track. In Florida, freight trains have the right of way, and passenger trains are constantly being shunted onto sidings to make way for the more profitable freights.
We were hours and hours late, and Dick was fretting frantically because I had made a mistake when writing down the number for Sheila’s cellular phone. Sheila, meanwhile, knew what was happening all the time, because she was at the Tampa train terminal, with plenty of staff to provide updates.
Sigh.
Dick says we’ll never do it again, no matter how many miles of track are owned by passenger trains in whatever state or province we visit next.
For our return to Miami, we cancelled our southbound train reservations, rented a car, and drove down.
Did I say “sigh”?
Give me a train with a dining car and a sleeping car, with the rhythm of the rails lulling me to sleep, and I’m one seriously happy camper, but I guess I’ll have to travel without my spouse.

Chapter 8 -- One Step at a Time

CHAPTER 8 –

ONE STEP AT A TIME

   I have to check the weather before agreeing to a vacation.

  I don’t like to go to hot places when they’re hot. Even at home, I don’t go out much in the heat of a prairie summer, because I melt. My face gets bright red. Everything, including my hair, perspires. I’m completely miserable, so I like to stay in the house with closed curtains and air conditioning because I’m too old to be running around under the sprinkler in the back yard.

  My husband’s employers used to hold a week of business meetings in a sunny climate in February, with spouses invited along for the ride. That was fine with me, but when they decided instead to go to Miami at the end of May, I suggested Dick take one of his daughters with him and leave me home. Andrea had a wonderful time and I didn’t have to suffer from heat exhaustion. Same thing a year later: another hot-weather destination, another daughter. Whew, saved again, thanks to Monica this time, and she loved the laid-back ambience of the Dominican Republic in June.

  A VERY VALUABLE HINT

  When we went to the Galapagos Islands, we had thought we were being quite travel-savvy, allowing a few days in Quito so I could rest before our flight to Guayaquil and from there to the islands, but we were wrong. By the time I got through the first day of the journey – the first long, long, very long day – I was beyond exhausted. We had flown via Houston and found ourselves waiting in the airport for hours before our flight to Quito. Excruciating. We should have stayed overnight in Houston, we realized later.

  BREAK IT UP

  When we went to Costa Rica the following December, with a change of aircraft in Florida, we arranged to spend two days in Miami between planes. I was able to rest, yet we still had time for a Miami Heat basketball game on the way down, plus a tour of the Florida Keys on our trip home.

  Yes, if at all possible, break up your travel into four- or five-hour segments. It really helps. The next time we go to Europe, for instance, I want to fly to the east coast of Canada or the US, stop there for a couple of days, then fly to our destination.

  Unfortunately, however, if you book a guided tour complete with airfare, you don’t get the chance to plan anything yourself. When we went to China, we knew we’d have to get ourselves from Medicine Hat to Seattle, which was then the nearest gateway city, but the "airfare-included" part of our tour involved a short flight to Vancouver the next morning, to wait and wait and wait for (get this) Air Canada’s 9-hour flight to Beijing.

  No amount of pleading “We’re Canadians. We have relatives in Vancouver. Can't we pick up the flight there?” could budge the arrangements, which had, apparently, been carved in stone (probably jade) and therefore could be unset only by the exchange of a considerably large sum of money.

  As it happened, I was already in the Vancouver suburbs visiting my sick father, so I took the Amtrak bus to Seattle to join Dick, who had flown there from Calgary. We spent the night in a hotel and, as part of our tour package, flew to Vancouver early the next morning. There we waited, and waited, and waited for our flight to Beijing, just to keep us on the tour company’s schedule.

  If we return to the Orient, I want to stop in Hawaii for a week first.

  If Dick and I ever go to Australia, though, I want to break the trip into several segments.

  I flew Vancouver-Sydney-Brisbane and return, when I was a whole lot younger, and swore I’d never do it again. Now I would want to fly from Calgary to San Francisco, overnight there; from San Francisco to Honolulu, overnight again; from Honolulu to Tonga or maybe the Cook Islands for another night or two, and finally to Sydney, arriving bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not looking as if I’d been pulled through a prickle-bush backward.

  To tell the truth, I’d rather get to Oz by sea. One cruise company showed a trip from Vancouver to Honolulu, followed immediately by another from Honolulu to Sydney on the same ship. It would take a month, and would cost a fortune, but I’d sure be well-rested.

  A less expensive alternative would be traveling by freighter, but freight lines have restrictions against unfitties, discriminatory and unfair though that may appear to us. They say we have to prove we’re fit.

  Too bad, because a freighter voyage sounds like it would be wonderfully restful. There’s nothing to do except show up at mealtimes. Crew members don’t sing or dance or expect passengers to do the same, there are no Las Vegas-style entertainers, no shore excursions on camel-back, nada. I’d love it. Reading, listening to music, watching the ocean, chatting with other passengers every day or two if necessary – my idea of a good time.

  Sigh. It’s not to be.

  Freighters, it seems, have no passenger elevators, and they keep their freight elevators well hidden. I don’t think I could get our doctor to write the necessary letter about my health. “Dear Captain X, this is to certify that my patient, one Kay L. Davies by name, can go up and down four flights of stairs four times per day on a ship with no doctor, chiropractor or massage therapist on board.”

  Nope, not likely. Unless, of course, I go up and down ex-treme-ly slow-ly, stopping to rest, one step at a time.

Consulting an Umbrella Expert

Oh, the trials and tribulations of an unfittie with photosensitivity issues, ending up in a hot Shanghai summer, seeking shade under a black umbrella (photo by Richard Schear). On a cruise to Alaska, Dick's blue and white golf umbrella hid him from the rain in Juneau (photo by Kay Davies) while in the Galapagos Islands, the big beige umbrella hid both of us from the sun at the equator (photo by Karina Lopez). Now the author has decided to consult an umbrella expert, Penelope Puddle, who lives on the wet west coast of Canada and can do wonderful things with the help of her umbrella. Perhaps Auntie Kay can learn to do the same. www.penelopepuddle.blogspot.com

Look again

You may remember this picture from Chapter 6 but, unless you clicked on it to enlarge it, you might not have realized this crowd in China's Forbidden City contained me, your faithful scribe, under that black umbrella, in a wheelchair being pushed by the man in the white shirt with striped sleeves, in the foreground, just to the right of center. Did I have a pretty pink parasol? A blue umbrella to match the sky? A white one to keep the sun's rays from turning the skin on my face and arms to pizza but still keep me cool? No. I wasn't that smart. I didn't even wear a hat, although my husband did.

For details, see Chapter 7, below.

Chapter 7 — Nearly Fatal Attraction

CHAPTER 7 –
NEARLY
FATAL
ATTRACTION

I screamed as the rented wheelchair carried me out into the traffic. But my slim young helper was stronger than he looked, and he pulled me back immediately.

Neither his English nor my Mandarin was particularly good (in fact, my Mandarin is pretty much nonexistent) but I understood him to say I’d be perfectly safe crossing eight lanes of Beijing traffic to get to Tiananmen Square, then from there to the Forbidden City, former home of the emperors, their wives, concubines, and children.

“No,” I said, gesturing toward an opening in the sidewalk a half block away, through which my husband and the rest of our group had disappeared. Again, bilingual waving of hands and shaking of heads got the message through to me: No ramp, just stairs leading down to a tunnel underneath the road.

“I can walk down the stairs,” I insisted, but my pusher wasn’t about to let me out of the chair. I knew I could walk down the stairs, but he would have to carry the wheelchair. So we had reached an impasse. An impossible impasse. As our guide Arnold had promised, there had been wheelchairs for rent where our tour bus stopped, but Arnold's ‘big strong man to push it' had failed to materialize. Instead, I was left with this slim young man, while everyone else had abandoned me by the roadside.

Soon, however, a large group of Beijing citizens gathered on our side of the road, and indicated to me with gestures and words, both Mandarin and English, their ability to provide a great wall around my wheelchair to escort me safely across the street.

Thus, the impasse passed, the traffic stopped to let me by with my entourage and, in Tiananmen Square I met up with our guide, our group, and also my husband, who cavalierly dismissed my adventure through eight lanes of speeding traffic with “Oh well, at least you’re here.” Easy for him to say, after he had crossed beneath the street where there wasn’t a car to be seen.

So there I was, with my heartbeat gradually returning to normal, sitting in a wheelchair with a black umbrella to hold over my head so I wouldn’t break out in hives from exposure to the sun, contemplating a three-hour trip through China’s Forbidden City.

If you’re an unfittie such as I am, able to walk, but not very far and not very fast, by all means rent a wheelchair because there is much to see inside those walls. Along with the Great Wall, the Forbidden City is the iconic picture that calls to mind the country of China. It is the most famous attraction in the city of Beijing. But be sure you negotiate in advance with the person pushing the wheelchair. Start right now saying, “I can walk up and down stairs” in a firm tone of voice. Learn to say it firmly in Mandarin if you can.

Then have your traveling companions or, preferably, your guide, confirm this, to be sure the message gets across. Because, although there are ramps in the Forbidden City, they are not wheelchair ramps. Anyone who has seen the animated movie Mulan or its sequel will know that. They were built as ramps for the Emperor’s horsemen, with ridges to make the footing more stable, as it were, for the horses.

Those ramps are not made for unfitties to be pushed up, after a running start, in a tilted wheelchair, by a young man whose enthusiasm outweighs his strength. Trust me on this one. It is scary and it is painful. Being pulled down the ramp on the other side, with the wheelchair tilted backward again, is scarier still. And there are many, many buildings, with many, many horse ramps.

If you’re ever in Beijing in the summer, take another tip from me. Before you get to the wheelchair-renting spot, which will probably be where your tour bus stops, on the far side of the road from Tiananmen Square, be sure you are carrying a light-colored umbrella or a pastel parasol. Even people without photosensitivity problems can sustain some serious sunburn. But, although black might be fashionable for most occasions, it is not, I assure you, for this one. 

Welcome to my blog

Hi -- I hope you're enjoying the chapters of An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel that I post every two weeks (more or less), and also the photos I post in between (often at random).

If you're new to my blog, take a look at the list in the sidebar. It can take you back to my first post. Click on 2009, when I was new to this, too.

If you have a Google account, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM, Name/URL, please feel free to leave comments on my blog. You can also use 'Anonymous' on the "Comment as" list (click on comment number below to find the list.) If you're in a hurry, you can check one of the boxes at the bottom of each blog section. Otherwise, blog comments are very welcome at ourcopyeditor@gmail.com

Thanks for visiting. And thanks to Clint and Maria Davies for this photo of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

-- Kay

Something else I didn't do

My husband went with a group from the yacht Flamingo I to crawl through a lava tunnel on the Galapagos island of Santa Cruz. Another of my weaknesses is claustrophobia, so I went along for the ride but stayed in the bus, watching birds land on the side mirrors to peek in at me. Beautiful day, beautiful birds, no symptoms to speak of.

-- photos by Richard Schear

Don't you know how fierce I am, post?

My favorite blue-foot is this guy, glaring at one of the posts that outline the trail for tourists. He's probably telling it not to interfere with his mate, who is sitting on an egg in the background (right).

A field full of blue-footed boobies

All I had to do was sit on my cane/chair, under my big umbrella, and snap photo after photo of blue-footed boobies. A number of blue-foots are camouflaged among the rocks in the upper picture, and the tourists to the left are taking pictures of some we can't see here. Meanwhile, the male in the bottom picture is sky-pointing, either to impress his chosen mate or to frighten off other males. Blue-footed boobies are seldom very frightening, however, not even to one another.

Chapter 6 from 'An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel'

CHAPTER 6 –
ANOTHER LESSON
ALMOST LEARNED

There is a lot of talk these days about closing the Galapagos Islands to tourism because of the great sensitivity of their unique eco-systems. In the meantime, we’re only allowed to be there if we stay within the path outlined for that purpose. Therefore, on the smaller islands, Orlando, one of the guides from our yacht Flamingo I, would take his group clockwise around the island, while his colleague Karina took our group counterclockwise. This system worked fine until the day I got left behind.

One of the best days of my life!

Karina speaks excellent English and is a wonderful guide with a tremendous depth of knowledge about the Galapagos. Nevertheless, when she said we would see lots of blue-footed boobies one day, I was thrilled to find she hadn’t exaggerated. Just as my feet were getting sore, we came to a huge field covered with sand, rocks, twigs, a few shrubs, and a flock of elaborately-courting and minimally-nesting blue-footed boobies. With the exception of one booby protecting an egg, they paid no attention to us.

I was in heaven. “I’d love to stay here,” I sighed.

“Okay,” said Karina, “you sit here until… (I missed this part) …pick you up on the way to the beach.”

Another rule: Pay attention, or request repetition for verification. I’m not always good at this, either.

When I heard Karina say “Okay, you sit here,” I immediately unfolded my cane/chair thingie, and sat down in that wonderful field full of blue-footed boobies, without actually hearing all of her instructions.

Another communication problem existed, but I didn’t know about it until later. There I sat, with my giant collapsible beige golf umbrella shading me from the sun, and watched boobies sky-pointing in their courtship dance; looked at the ocean in the near distance; watched a group of male boobies trying unsuccessfully to intimidate one another; and looked at the ocean again in case dolphins or whales came by. They didn’t, but I enjoyed myself immensely anyway.

After a few hours, Orlando came along with the second group from Flamingo I. They all greeted me.

“Hi, Kay, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m having a wonderful time.”

“So you’re alright here?”

“Never better,” I said as I waved goodbye.

I didn’t know Karina had asked Orlando to take me back to the beach with them. I thought our group, including my husband, would be coming back for me.

Eventually, when I was beginning to get just a teensy bit tired of sitting, but not the least bit tired of booby-watching, Orlando and a man from his group came up behind me.

“We’ve come to take you to the beach.”

“Oh?” I asked, “where’s Dick?”

“He and the others are out on the Flamingo already.”

So off we went to the beach, where one of the pangas (boats) from our yacht was waiting.

Oh, yes, getting in and out of a panga. That’s another story.

But first, my giant umbrella: I searched and searched online until I found a large, collapsible, light-beige golf umbrella. For a sunny climate, a light color is best, because dark colors absorb the sun’s heat, as we all know but often forget when buying everything from clothes to cars – and then we’re sorry later, as I have learned the hard way.

My umbrella, along with my portable chair/cane, provided me with shelter and seating. My face got red from exertion, but never from sunburn, for which I was grateful because I’m photosensitive, among other awful things.

However, when we got home from that trip, I discovered some sand had found its way into the workings, so I could no longer open my wonderful umbrella. Did I order a new one? No, I forgot that, too.

Of course, the time eventually came when I needed sun protection desperately. Surrounded by tourists and locals who were carrying pastel umbrellas and parasols in the heat of a Beijing summer, I found myself holding a small black (yes, black) umbrella over my head. It might as well have been a portable oven.

Coming, Chapter 6, Another Lesson Almost Learned

Chichen Itza -- at last I got to see it

Photos by Kay Davies

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Chapter 5: Learning How

I’d love to be a tall, slim, elegant, rich person cutting an awe-inspiring swath through an expensive hotel lobby, carrying only my tiny purse and a pair of kid gloves, followed by a cadre of devoted bellboys hefting my dozens of pieces of perfectly matched luggage, met by a smiling hotel manager as he exclaims joyfully, “Oh, we’re so happy to see you again, Ms Davies. What can we do for you?”

Such people expect help to be offered, and appear to be born knowing how to accept it graciously.

But how many of us want to be plump, gray-haired grannies being pushed in wheelchairs at airports?

Mumble, grumble.

Nevertheless, I’ve been there, when my feet are so sore I can’t walk another inch lest I burst into tears of pain and frustration. Yes, I can get myself down the jet-way from the gate, onto the plane, and from there to my seat, but I now know I can’t handle the miles and endless miles of hallways and escalators eventually leading out of the airport.

In addition to the adventures engineered by my still-athletic husband, I've taken many trips alone to visit my parents, so I’m familiar with my usual airports. My Air Canada and Aeroplan online-profiles both say “assistance at terminal” but, when my plane lands in Calgary, I ask which gate we’re using before I leave the plane, so I know how much walking is involved. If I can get to the next stage of my journey by myself, I’ll do it.

YVR in Vancouver, BC, however, has been too big for years, and is much too big since they enlarged it to cope with the 2010 Olympics.

At the end of a day of travel, it can be tough to get from my plane to the baggage-claim area in time to meet the family member designated Auntie Kay’s driver du jour. So I happily accept a ride to the elevator on one of those cute golf-cart gizmos, beep-beeping through the crowds. But being pushed in a wheelchair? In Vancouver? Where someone—someone who knows me—might see me?

I dunno.

A wheelchair at London Heathrow is essential, though. I’ve seen entire cities smaller than LHR. But I was once very surprised to be among a group of disembarking passengers whisked off the plane and onto a large scissor-lift built for baggage. We reached the ground safe and sound, but very confused. From there, all of us, with our wheelchairs, were manhandled into a bus for a high-speed unguided tour through the bowels of Heathrow, after which I found myself on a slightly-less-speedy wheelchair ride through long corridors, past desks full of airport personnel. As we zipped by each desk, one of the airport employees would call out, “Are you Kay? Your husband has been looking for you.”

Really, the poor man had no idea where they’d taken me, plus no idea where he was going to catch our flight to Barcelona. He did manage to arrive at the departure gate ahead of us, but when the wheelchair attendant delivered me, Dick was the very picture of a man who didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. Still, I suspect he was actually happy to see me after his long, worried walk through unknown territory.

In large but considerably less overwhelming airports, where he can walk right beside my wheelchair, he is particularly happy. My carry-on luggage gets piled on top of me, so Dick only has to worry about his own bags – and the people who push wheelchairs know all the airport shortcuts. We get to the next gate or to the baggage claim far faster than if we had slogged along on foot, having to stop in order for me to rest every 50 yards.

STOPPING TO REST

A major big deal, for unfitties who travel, is the frequency of pit-stops. Whether stops for the use of facilities, for resting poor aching legs and diabetic feet, or perhaps just for breathing, they’re of utmost importance to the unfit traveler.

However, they aren’t always located where we want them to be.

It’s hard to remedy the placement of facilities in airports or elsewhere, but feet can be refreshed momentarily when we just sit down.

But sit where? we wonder.

Good question. That’s why I have a chair thing, which folds down into a cane, or maybe you’d call it a cane that opens up into a chair. One or the other. Not exactly a push-button massaging recliner chair, but it’s something on which to sit when the only other choice is the floor or the ground, because if I get down there, I might never get up again.

I now have my second folding cane/chair gizmo, and I outfitted it with heavy-duty rubber feet—all three of them. Yep, only three legs. It isn’t elegant nor, to tell the truth, is it wildly comfortable, but it sure beats the alternative. Practice using one in the store before you buy it, and again at home before you embark on an adventure, but by all means get one.

Some stores offer a sling-style folding travel chair with a heavy fabric seat. It may not be quite as much use cane-wise, but it certainly looks more comfortable for sitting. I’ve seen one being used by a friend, and meant to ask if I could try it out, but I forgot. So try them both, if you can.

My chair/cane was a lifesaver in the Galapagos.

Watch for Chapter 5 coming soon

"Learning How" -- chapter 5 of my non-novel "An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel" will be posted this week. You don't have to be an unfittie to read it and enjoy it, as I hope you will.

This photo... Westin Hotel in Shanghai, part of our cruise tour with Viking River Cruises.