A Travel Day is a Good Day to be Sore

It's been two days since CKL and I had our Cahokia-Forest Park-City Museum day in Saint Louis. My inner thighs are still sore.

I knew there was some discomfort in my future when I looked up into the soaring, twisting play structures at City Museum. We'd already climbed 165* stair-steps that day, and I'd been mildly sore after the Houston Space Center tour. That only involved 119** steps.

But there were multi-story spiral staircases, tubes, hollow trees, pits, and tunnels, all for people to climb around, under, and in. I wasn't going to let a little thing like guaranteed future soreness keep me from playing in those amazing structures!

An hour later and several tubes, tree, pits, tunnels and spiral staircases later, my inner thigh buckled. We were climbing down the giant stairs in the parking lot fortress. It only hurt going down. After I finished that climb and walked around a bit, I discovered that upstairs wasn't bad at all. There were slides almost everywhere, which pretty much took care of down. No reason to stop our fun yet. So we explored until I squatted down and couldn't get back up. Then we skipped the nifty-spaceship-looking-metal-structure and went for lazy, tasty frozen custard instead.

Yesterday continued with me being able to squat, but not being able to get up again. But this time there was some actual pain too. According to the thigh anatomy charts I looked at, my Nemesis--the inner thigh muscle right above my knee--is called Vastus Medialis. It whines and whimpers every time I go downstairs. But hey... it's much better than yesterday. Yesterday, it shrieked and howled.

The lesson here? Other people might say it's something like, "Everything in moderation."

Or even, "Work out more."

I'll think about that one. But for now, I'm going with, "Hey, if you have to overdo it, plan to have an enforced rest period the next day."

Seems to be working for me.


*What can I say? I like data. In the absence of a tour guide to provide a monologue, I was making up my own. And tour guides should provide good data.

**See above re: good data. The Houston Space Center tour guide told us how many steps there were on the tour, and I wanted to see if she was right (No, but she was only two off. And, yes, I doublechecked my math. There were two opportunities to count each staircase. Up and down.)

*** Gratuitous bonus note: When we were up in the observation platform at the Arch, the Ranger told the blind lady that it was a very uncrowded day, and that he'd be surprised if there were more than 20 people up there. If anyone had told him, he would have been surprised. There were 27 people, counting Park employees. Well, 28 total creatures, if you counted the seeing eye dog. Which I did.

Five Great Things I Did Today

1. Walked to the top of a thousand-year-old, human-built structure. Okay, it was a big mound of dirt, but it was still pretty impressive.

2. Examined artifacts from the 1904 World's Fair. Also took in a very in-depth Charles Lindbergh exhibit. Didn't know his wife was an author.

3. Ate toasted ravioli and pork steak for dinner. My arteries may not be happy, but their complaints are handily muffled by sweet, nourishing cholesterol.

4. Climbed all over City Museum's giant found-art structures for hours. We would have lasted longer if we weren't so damn out of shape.

5. Enjoyed Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. So my arteries would have something new to winge about. And hey, I did a lot of sweaty exercising today.

~CKL

Okay, New Plan

Over lunch today (in Laclede's Landing, after riding to the top of the Gateway Arch), D and I hammered out contingency plans for the next few weeks of our trip. This was our original itinerary:

• May 20-24: St. Louis, MO
• May 24-29: Atlanta, GA
• May 29-June 6: Orlando, FL (Shuttle launch on May 31)
• June 6-13: Asheville, NC (D's family reunion, all week)
• June 13-17: Kitty Hawk, NC

...and continuing on up the east coast to Washington, DC, and Niagara Falls. Orlando and Asheville were the fixed points in time, since NASA isn't going to reschedule the launch for our convenience, and D's family have already taken time off from work for their get-together. It actually worked out pretty well, since Asheville is a plausible one-day drive away from Orlando.

Unfortunately, we just found out this week that D's family may not be reuniting in Asheville after all. It's a long story, but the upshot is that one sibling--the one who has the timeshare in Asheville where everyone was going to stay (except us; we'll be in a pet-friendly, child-free hotel)--may not be able to travel out from Wyoming, and they won't make the go/no-go call until June 3rd. Another sibling has offered to host the gathering at his home in Pennsylvania, but that's a bit farther than one day's drive from Orlando. And after a couple of bad stopovers*, we've struck the one-night exception from our road rules. So every stop has to be at least four days.

Here's the new plan. We have these possible conditions:

1. D's family reunion happens as planned in Asheville.
2. D's family reunion happens in Pennsylvania instead, on the same dates.
3. D's family reunion happens in Pennsylvania on different dates.
4. D's family reunion doesn't happen at all.

And this is what we'll do in each case:

1. Stick to the plan. Nothing changes; everyone's happy.

2. Leave Orlando early. We want to spend at least one day each at the Universal and Disney World theme parks, but we can leave as early as June 4th. We'd then spend four or five days at a halfway point (possible Charlotte, NC), then spend six or five days, respectively, with D's family in Pennsylvania.

3 or 4. Skip it. We are only willing to bend so far to accommodate people who can't plan ahead, even if they're family. If this happens, though, we will stop and visit individual family members later, since our plans are pretty flexible otherwise.

All we need to do at this point is check with the hotel in Orlando about their change policies (in case we check out early), and get our one-day Disney park tickets. We already have 7-day tickets for the Universal parks, so we can go hang out there (or see other sights in the area) if we do stay all the way through June 6th.

I'm sure this is terribly exciting to all our blog readers. Since it'll be a couple of weeks before we can plan the rest of our trip, I'll start by posting a map of where we've been. Later tonight, maybe.

* The cats are usually restless during their first night in a new place, and if the cats don't sleep well, D doesn't sleep well, and everyone's unhappy. Also, it's tough on us humans to do more than one day of continuous driving. If I wanted to be a long-haul trucker...

~CKL

The Spirit of Right Around Here

Greetings from St. Louis, Missouri! Well, actually Fenton, which is closer to the highway we would take to drive up to Hannibal to see the Mark Twain House. We probably won't make the two-hour schlep there, but it was a nice idea.

Because I subscribe to The Writer's Almanac, a daily email/podcast from NPR, I know that this date in 1927 is when Charles Lindbergh completed his historic, solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic. I think the actual plane is at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, which we'll be visiting in a few weeks.

Speaking of which... I know you're all dying to see our new itinerary and route map, but we haven't been able to finalize it. We know we're going to Atlanta next, and then Orlando to see the Space Shuttle launch on the 31st, but we just found out yesterday that D's family reunion may not happen on June 6th as scheduled--or, if it does, it'll be in Pennsylvania, not South Carolina. And they won't know for sure until June 3rd. So much for planning ahead.

Meanwhile, my friend Matt, who went to school at wustl.edu, was kind enough to recommend some sights for us to see around here:

Missouri is FULL of things to do. JUST PACKED. Here's my anecdote: my parents bought a "Sites of St. Louis" calendar while visiting me in college; 11 of the 12 months were pictures of the arch.

But seriously, folks... Tomorrow we're going to tour the Fox Theatre, ride up the Arch, stroll through Forest Park, and do whatever else looks interesting downtown. On Friday we'll drive out to Cahokia Mounds. And at some point we'll stop at Ted Drewes Frozen Custard and, as Matt says, "soak up the middle-america-goodness."

~CKL