Posting is always sparse around here, but I am being pre-apologetic for it this time — because of the slowness of my internet connection here in GJ (28.8 bps!), just checking email is an adventure in waiting. In the meantime, enjoy these tasty treats for sale, photographed at the Hinkle Family Fun Center last Thursday. Mmmm. Pizza. Cheese sauce.
Greetings from Grand Junction, where the weather is hot and windy, and where I’ve seen more people ride their bikes on the sidewalk against the direction of traffic than seems advisable. (Then again, given the difficulties in riding the whole mile from my dad’s house to Safeway last night, maybe these sidewalk riders are onto something.) The above photo is not from GJ, of course — it looks too appealing. The macchiato pictured above was purchased and consumed in Union Square in San Francisco about a week and a half ago. It wasn’t the greatest macchiato ever (espresso machines tend to bring out the acidic tendencies in whatever coffee bean is used, but this particular drink tasted more acidic than usual), but I drank it on vacation, and that alone gives it points that home-based drinks can’t earn.
My trip to SF was half good and half frustrating. The first few days I spent just wandering around like normal, taking pictures of interesting signs and parts of buildings and the other things I usually take pictures of. I walked through some neighborhoods I’ve spent a lot of time in, and then explored some ones that were newer to me (I have to say, if I lived in SF, I’d probably choose to live in the Inner Richmond, because of its numerous Asian restaurants and markets, the decent bookstore in the area, and the fact that the city’s ubiquitous hipsters seem less thick on the ground there than in other neighborhoods [I could be wrong about that, though]). The problem came when I was walking by the Japantown mall, fresh from shopping at Ichiban Kan, the Japanese dollar store, to catch the bus on Geary Street. I hit my shoe on the edge of some uneven pavement, and, for some reason, pain began shooting up my lower right leg, which continued until, well, it still continues (albeit in much milder form).
I broke that part of my right leg about seven years ago, when I fell off of a table after changing a light bulb. I broke my leg — both the tibia and the fibula, in a spectacular spiral break — in about five places, and had to have a long metal rob and a bunch of screws installed in it in order to set the bones. It took a while, as you might guess, for the leg to heal. I was in an air boot for nearly half a year and required either crutches or a cane for some time after that. It was my Demerol Vacation — a period of time in which I spent a lot of time not doing very much and thinking about what I was going to do in the future (this is the point in my life when I decided to both go back to school and travel more). As you can probably imagine, it had a significant impact on my health at the time, and it continues to do so — when I get really tired, I tend to limp a bit, and my right leg is usually weaker and gets more sore than the left one. It is also more susceptible to shocks and hairline fractures, and when I hit my foot against the pavement, it hurt very badly. I managed to get on the bus, though, get to Walgreens to buy a velcro leg brace to stabilize my leg, get some food, and get back to my hotel. The rest of my trip went okay — I was able to stand on my leg and walk around with the aid of the brace and plenty of ibuprofen, but it made going places and doing things much less enjoyable. I managed to go to the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market on Saturday (I wasn’t going to pass up my opportunity to eat Recchiuti chocolates or gaze on vegetables that don’t or won’t grow anywhere in the Mountain Time Zone, hobbled to nearby stores and places to eat, and successfully got to the airport without too much trouble. But, I’ll be honest, it was sort of a crappy thing to have happen on a solo vacation — although being in my hotel room with my leg propped up on pillows, with the cable TV on, wasn’t bad.
So I went to the student health center when I came back, although my leg felt much better when I got back to ABQ. Nothing conclusive resulted, though — I got an x-ray which revealed that I didn’t have any hairline fractures around the screws (which was the thing I was most afraid of), or anything wrong with the bones in my right leg at all. What I did find was that, on a slow afternoon in late May, a dramatic leg x-ray (the bones and rod are extremely noticeable) will cause the entire staff of nurses and doctor’s assistants to come in and look at the wondrous film. I had to tell the story of how I broke the thing originally a few times, while people asked me how I even walked on that thing (ignoring the fact that I successfully walked over to the doctor’s office, and have walked a few places since February 2001, when the original event occurred). The official prognosis was that it might be some sort of muscle sprain, and that I should take some pills.
It’s feeling better now, although it is still stiff and sore if I walk on it a lot. I haven’t been very good at staying off it — I had to drive 400 miles to GJ, and then there’s lots of family things to do here which require walking or standing and I’m just not that good at staying home. On Sunday, for example, which was my dad’s 60th birthday, we went down to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to see a four-ton rock that fell in a road and see some water spilling over a dam due to high spring runoff. This required some walking, as did the four-hour shopping trip (did you know there was even four hours’ worth of shopping in GJ?) that I did with my aunt yesterday. Eventually, my leg will be okay again, despite myself.
Here are some other photos from SF, taken during the mobile half:
