Gearing Up For My Next Trip

I just ordered one of these. You can get them on Amazon. Wish I'd seen this about 2 years ago. With my bad knee, the worst pain comes from standing still for a long time. It's like my knee jams into the socket and it really hurts, not to mention that it takes a bit to start moving again.It's like it gets stuck. I didn't think I'd need to worry too much about sitting when I went on that first trip last year. I'd just find a bench or duck into a coffee shop, restaurant, or bar. I'd get off my feet for a little bit, and then get going again. But the problem with that idea, is that sometimes the people you are with either want to talk for hours somewhere  where there's no place for you to park your butt, or they don't want to spend money on even a beverage, because their travel budget is so tight, or they haven't budgeted enough time for that kind of enjoyment. I'm okay if we're moving. Walking is fine. But after about a half hour to an hour, my knees still want me to get off of them even if we're moving constantly. I have a very skinny friend with a bad knee who confirmed for me that standing in one place is the worst pain inducing activity for her also. Well, barring jumping around or running. I had actually made two trips before even thinking I needed to get something like the Walkstool. The last trip I took, there was an episode, where after walking all day, we ended up waiting for a bus for over a half an hour. It was excruciating. My knees were already hurting, and this made it so much more worse. The person I was traveling with wouldn't let me pay for the cab, it had to be split 50/50 and she didn't want to pay for even half a cab. Even when I explained to her that I had budgeted for cabs and was willing to pay the full fare plus tip. It still frosts me that she was that stubborn and unsympathetic. My other friend, the skinny one with the bad knee, told me that I needed to learn to stand up for myself when I told her about what had happened . I now know that's true. It took me a week to recover physically from that last trip. My left knee and foot were so swollen, I tried to stay off of them as much as possible. Believe you me, I can't wait until next year when I turn 65 and can qualify for Medicare. I will look into getting a knee replacement.

But in the meantime, I have a trip coming up in January and one coming up next summer and I don't turn 65 until May of next year, so I have been looking for something that I can carry with me that will make those situations where I need to get off my feet much better. The Walkstool is what I found. It weighs two pounds and comes with its own carry sack.

Even after I get my new knee, I know I will still want to bring this with me on my travels, because I'm not getting any younger. You can buy them on Amazon.com

Bad Knee Theories

How did my knee get to be this way?  It hurts sometimes when I'm not even standing. It can get sort of out of place. And when it does, it hurts like hell and I'm almost afraid to move and afraid not to move at the same time. Totally sucks. It moves around, but is also too stiff to bend. If I catch my toe while I'm walking - YOW!!  I walk fairly okay, except going down stairs. I go down stairs like I'm ninety years old.

When my knee first started hurting when I was in my thirties, I thought it was because I'd injured it a couple of times. Although the injuries were so long before then that I had no idea which knee was hurt when or if it was even the same one, the injuries were the only thing I could think of that would cause the kind of pain I had. In college I dropped from a second story window to get out of the dorm. Yes, I was stupid drunk at the time and yes, in the freaking free sixties, I went to a school that had curfews for undergraduate women. It was so stupid, the guys could roam around all night, but we had to be in a 10am on week nights and midnight on weekends. We protested and broke the rules and got in trouble. Finally when I was a senior, we lived in a co-ed dorm - although not on co-ed floors (every other floor was male) and there were no curfews for women. My first knee injury was directly related to the draconian rules for women at the University of Wyoming. When I dropped from the second story dorm window, I slipped on the ice and landed on my knee. I went to the infirmary the next morning after being in agony all night. It turns out that the one time I snuck out, there was a bed check and not only did I injure my knee, but I got caught and put on social probation. Sounds like double secret probation from Animal House, doesn't it. It meant that if I broke any more rules I could be expelled, kicked out.  At the infirmary, they gave me crutches and darvon. With darvon, I didn't need no fucking crutches. That shit was powerful.

The next time I injured my knee was playing softball with my ex-husband, George on the Boise City Leagues. Hyperextended the knee - OUCH!

Those injuries may have been part of the problem, but now I think my knee problem actually relates to my foot problems. The reason that I didn't think my feet were a problem when my knee first started bothering me was because my feet didn't hurt and they looked normal. Actually, let me rephrase that. My feet didn't hurt when I wasn't wearing high heels for a long time. But now my feet look like this: (brace yourself for a gross out picture of my left foot)

My left foot now

It took a long time for them to look this weird. At first the big toe just leaned a little bit to the left. As the years went on it got worse, but my feet didn't start to hurt until the last 10 years.  So I ignored the way my feet looked, because hey, they didn't cry out for attention other than looking hideous. Witch Feet!  I have witch feet!

The bound foot of a Chinese woman

After reading a few articles, I now realize that I hurt my feet and thus hurt my knees when I waited tables in high heels. My feet would hurt like hell after a shift and even worse after a double shift. But the next day, I'd put the heels back on, because they were cute and wearing heels made me a bit taller and I thought a bit sexier or cooler, whatever. Stupid!  My feet didn't hurt immediately when I put the heels on, but after an hour or two it was constant pain.  All because it was the style and I was brainwashed to think it looked cute. High heels are our equivalent to the Chinese practice of foot binding. The Chinese bound little girls feet in a belief that it made them prettier according to the fashion at that time. It was quite painful.


How different is that than what we women do to our feet with high heels now?  And add to that the fact that we should be more informed medically and make decisions based on ideas other than what advertising tells us. Check out this graphic:

So there you have it. Everything's connected, so if you are hurting yourself in one place, you can be sure that other parts of your body will sustain collateral damage. 

Despite all this I was determined to travel when I finally had paid leave time from work. Why didn't I go to the doctor and get my knee and/or my foot fixed? First for many jobs, I had no health insurance from my employer and no money to buy it myself. I now pay for my own health insurance, but it's catastrophic. It has a $5,000 deductible. Plus if you have no paid leave time, how are you going to recover from a knee operation, that comes out of your own pocket and add on top of that, that you'll not have any pay coming in if you just take time off, or you might even lose your job. I can't wait until next year when I qualify for Medicare!  WHOO HOO!

Military Brat Mindset

It took a long time for me to connect with old friends on the internet. First, I was dubious of the internet, afraid of getting sucked into something and paying for membership that ended up being useless. Yep, I was afraid to join Classmates.com.  Second, I'm a military brat. That means I've lost more people than the average kid just by growing up in a military family. By the time I was a freshman in college, we'd moved across the country ten times. This is in many ways a good life, but it wasn't great for making lifelong friends. At least not before the internet. When you move to a new town, you know before you even unpack that you're going to be leaving. You've been doing this before you can remember.  So maybe in some way you don't even understand, you hold a bit of yourself back.  It's easy for me to let go of people. I had to. It was just the way it was. Oh, of course, as I grew up, there were the usual halfhearted attempts at letter writing - long distance calls were strictly out of the question for a kid in my family. Friends would write, but then drift off into their lives without you and you did the same. Maybe one or two throughout the years stuck. In my case it was one. All the rest were lost. 

Then the internet comes along and maybe there's a chance that you could find some of your old friends.  You're curious and wonder about some of your old friends, but there are all these warnings about paying for things using a credit card over the internet. And then there's your military brat head trash. It goes like this. "I was only there for two years. Who's going to remember me?" So I lurked on Classmates.com.  After doing that for about a year, I finally filled in the information they allowed you to post without actually becoming a member. Nothing happened. I felt justified in all my doubts about this ever working. 

Then out of the blue about a year later, my friend Faith from the second high school I went to sent me a note through Classmates. I was astounded and yes, excited. Someone remembered me. We quickly exchanged email addresses.  I soon had a paid membership in Classmates.com http://www.classmates.com/registration/registration.jsp?isEmpty=true&communityId=0&destinationUrl=&dsource=pub|12231|styles|null|11960|1

Faster than I could have ever predicted, I was connecting with a few people from Rich Township Central Campus in Olympia Fields, Illinois. I think my friend Sabine then set up a Yahoo Group for our class especially to avoid the barrier to people connecting through Classmates and having to pay.  I found out that there is a reason you became friends with people even if you lost touch with them. After nearly 40 years of not being in touch with one another, it turned out that my friends and I watched and loved the same television shows and liked some of the same recording artists. Shows and musicians who weren't even around when we were first friends back in the sixties. The core of our friendship was still there.  It was really fun to get little snippets of what people had been up to since those days and what they were doing now. 

And then along comes Facebook and even more connections turn up with hopefully even more to come. While I'm a little wary of the internet, I've come to love the fun of Facebook. Although I don't like it's conformity of format (I still like the wide open way you could make your page your own in MySpace), it's a great way to keep in touch and find people.  I think with the internet and a little social media presence, younger military brats will never have to lose touch with their friends. What an exciting time to be living!

Plus with the Military Brat Registry on the web, older brats have another huge resource for connecting with the lost pieces of their past. 

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

The new way to make a photo album: photo books by Shutterfly.

This is a photo book created by my friend Sabine of the trip a bunch of us took to Cleveland earlier this summer.

Take Back Your Time

Did you read that last sentence?  The United States remains the ONLY industrial country without a law guaranteeing paid vacation.  That means Japan has one, and we know how strong the work ethic is in that country. After spending years not being able to take a vacation, I know how bad it is for a person's health. There are also studies that show that taking a vacation improves productivity when you get back on the job. 
This quote below is from    Happy Go Legal

"Who doesn’t want time of respite, period of suspended activity, time spent away from home in travel or recreation?  And all this being granted to you as an employee?  I’m in!

Not everyone seems to agree, since it turns out a lot of people do not take all of their vacation time.  A recent study by Expedia found that approximately 226 million vacation days went unused by American employees in 2011.  Our counterparts in Germany, France, Brazil, and Denmark are given 30 days a year, and are taking all 30 days.  What gives with Americans?  Lack of funds for travel, poor planning, having too much to do at work, and a culture of feeling like bosses don’t support the taking of vacation are cited as reasons for not taking advantage of all paid vacation time." 

What gets me is that those unused vacation days are unused by people whose employers actually paid them vacation.  And these people are probably getting no where near 30 days leave time like they do in Europe.  So why wouldn't the U.S. government at least mandate a one week's paid vacation for full time employees. That's a fourth of what many Europeans get. A week is not going to turn us into a nation of slackers. And in the long run it would save employers costs in time lost and would increase productivity. But most employers can only look at the short term effects of what it does to their bottom line and if you do get a week's paid vacation, they really think they are being overly generous to the point of babying their employees. 

This makes for a population of people whose self worth comes from how busy they are and I have to say that some of them add in work responsibility over and above what their job description is, just to keep this illusion of worth. I say bullshit. Should you destroy your physical and mental health for a paycheck?  I say no, but I was right there with everyone else, working two jobs, trying to make ends meet and literally screwing my health up royally. Yep, I was a paycheck whore, a wage slave. And I worked for some truly despicable people. But doesn't that make a government who allows that kind of treatment of employees just as despicable as the employers who take full advantage of the law which in my state of Idaho grants very few government mandated employee benefits as law.  Most of the extra hours and duties people add on is added on because of fear. Fear that they will lose their life sucking job.  I urge all you fellow whores and wage slaves to join the movement. Visit Take Back Your Time and join the movement toward healthier and happier lives. 

 I just needed to get on the soap box about this, because I was thinking how very few vacations I've taken over my lifetime. It makes me sick and I wouldn't want that for anyone else. 

Intro

Me, at my first burn.

This blog is dedicated to travelers, with special attention to the older traveler. I have a bad knee, actually two bad knees. One is just worse than the other. For a long time I didn't travel. I live in Idaho which has no law requiring employers to give a worker any paid leave time or even lunch breaks during the day. I worked with no breaks or leave time for nearly three years. Before that I worked on commission only basis which means if you're not working you're not making money.  So basically I haven't gone anywhere since 1997.  In 2010 I finally got a job with paid leave time. I scheduled my first week off in 2011.  I took my first flight since 911 in 2011 and I haven't looked back. Welcome to geezer travels!!!