15 minute break - double wide wheelchairs

The family took the long weekend to use up a vacation package that was expiring, so we drove up to Orlando and went to Disney World. I've been to DW enough to not want to go again, but my position is in the minority. Some people in the family, who shall not be named, see a trip to DW as an excellent opportunity to regress.

Anyway, my only interest in sharing this with you is the one observation I find to be universal about amusement parks - it is the perfect place to see just exactly how obese America is becoming. I'm no lightweight, but going to DW makes me feel positively slim.

Because of my recent hip operation (see below), I was able to make use of a wheelchair at the park, far easier to do than you'd think. It came in handy many times to get preferred treatment in various attractions, but I found it was only truly useful in the Magic Kingdom.

When we did the Disney/MGM park on Sunday I went to the wheelchair rental place near the entrance and was asked if I wanted a large one or a small one. Not having been asked this the day before I considered my size and said large. After all, there are all those handicapped kids that don't need as much hip room as me. There must be a smaller size than the one I used on Saturday. No, there is not. They wheeled out this enormously wide wheelchair with at least six inches more butt room than even I need. Presumably this is to accommodate the enormously wide butts of so many Disney visitors who have grown so large that they cannot propel themselves on their own legs. There's an awful lot of these people, but there were no more small ones so I got stuck with the big one. It was so wide as to make self propulsion, by using my hands on the wheels, difficult. I think they had the big ones available because the really big people seem to have really big family members and companions so they rent the motorized scooters instead, since they don't have anyone to push them around. The couple of women ahead of me gladly shelled out $40 apiece to avoid pushing each other's mass around. Pathetic. They could use the exercise.

10 minute break - NJ "Terrorists"

Just a note to say I had a thought with regard to the six individuals that were caught recently trying to buy guns, and target practicing, in preparation to attacking Fort Dix. The media insisted on labeling them terrorists. It seems to me that they don't really fit that definition. Doesn't a terrorist attempt to create fear by attacking seemingly random targets and innocent civilians? That's my definition.

But these guys were going to attack our military. Doesn't that make them militiamen or something more military in nature? Of course I think fools would be a better term for them. Exactly how much intelligence was at work when these six guys decided to attack an American military base. They may not have been suicide bombers, but they sure seemed bent on suicide. At least they planned to attack armed people. That was darned decent of them if you ask me.

12 minute break - Miami road rage

The other day, one of the major national news items was the announcement by some obscure group that Miami had been named the number one city in the country for road rage, followed I believe by New York and Boston.

All I have to say is that Miami's position justified. But the problem is not the people who get enraged here, it is the incredibly poor driving skills of the people on the road here. A competent driver will go insane.

Sunday I had a great example. I was driving with traffic down the middle lane of a three lane boulevard when I spotted a small car turning into the right lane. Ordinarily such a person would proceed to enter the right lane and maybe manage a safely executed lane change using appropriate speed, judgment and signaling. Instead this person simply pulled, very slowly directly into my path. No signal or indication whatesoever either before or after that he had even seen me. I was able to steer around him, seeing that he was probably about 80 years old - no surprise there.

My wife wanted me to pull up alongside him and yell at him. I brushed it off, this time, resigned to the fact that he was so typically oblivious to his poor driving that yelling at him would only give him some reason to figure I was afflicted with unjustified road rage.

Old people aren't the only ones capable of this kind of aggrevating driving, but they are the most common. Others worth mentioning in particular are people who can't drive worth a dime while talking on their cellphone. Don't get me started on them.

5 Minute Break - Hurricane forecast update

As a Florida resident, hurricanes are a very real threat. Today, the NOAA, some government weather agency, issued a prediction of an "active" storm season. Oooh! Run for cover! Frankly, these guys are going to predict active storm seasons for the next dozen years, just so they don't get caught off guard again. Of course, last year they predicted an active storm season and we got one puny tropical depression passing over Florida, and it turned into what could best be called a windy day. It hardly even rained. So, now that we're getting another prediction of an active storm season, I suspect my reaction is similar to that of most Floridians: Show me the radar. If it's not on radar, it's not a problem.

Hip Op Update

Tomorrow is three weeks since my surgery. To my great satisfaction, it is going better than projected. I am now back to work full time (and then some), and I generally hobble around without even the use of my cane. I haven't really mastered the synchronization of the cane and my leg, so I end up looking like a cross between House (the TV doctor) and a drunken Emperor penguin. Without the cane, I just look like a sober penguin.

The surgeon was duly impressed with my progress, saying most people come in after two weeks barely able to move on their own with a walker. He did insist that I don't drive for another couple of weeks, for reasons that were not quite logical to me. I nodded as if I was agreeing. (I didn't drive home from his office, but I did drive to the grocery store later that day.)

I am still unable to bend over my left leg enough to put on a sock or tie my shoe so I am sticking with bare feet in loafers. I no longer have a therapist coming to my house, as my insurance won't cover it since I am working again - gotta be "house bound." I still do my exercises and I take short walks. With time I will lose the limp and be able to bend over more. Although I have only a little struggle getting up the 21 steps to my bedroom, I will soon be relatively oblivious to that too.

I don't know what to tell other people contemplating the same operation, but I'd suggest getting some muscle tone in your appropriate leg/butt before the surgery rather than afterward. Don't expect to skip rope the next day either.

And try to figure out some kind of 10 point scale of pain. The nurses and therapists kept asking me what my pain level was, on a scale of 1-10. My answers varied widely depending on what I was thinking was the pain in question. They always seemed so disappointed that I'd give such a high number, so I was apparently doing or saying something wrong.

If a 1 is the pain of a pin prick (my definition), then when I was resting comfortably for a while, I would answer 2 because I could only perceive the pain as a modest but persistent ache. On the other hand, if I had just been trying a straight leg lift, my answer was a 7. The leg lifts are very painful at this point, but if I think of the torture scene in the 007 movie Casino Royale, with the big knotted rope swinging at his jewels under the chair with the seat cut out, I feel like a sissy complaining too much. What number would Jack Bauer give them for something like that? 5?