Gary at the Spring Topology Conference, Milwaukee, March 12-16. See entry below.

Mar 16, 2008

The Mighty Hero has come home.

March 12-16 Gary went to the Spring Topology Conference up in Milwaukee unaccompanied by me. He picked up Peter Minc in our van and then drove him to Atlanta, where the two caught a plane. The plane trip went without a hitch, the only problem being they had to wait an hour (!) in Milwaukee for a handicapped-accessible shuttle (the airport made some excuse about being particularly busy or something). Gary made all the transfers to and from the aisle chair (the narrow wheelchair they use to get him from his own wheelchair to an airplane seat) by himself, though he admits sometimes awkwardly, as he doesn’t get much practice at that – but, no two-man lifts were required!

Gary also needed no help from skycaps, because Peter took over that job, lugging both his own two bags and Gary’s two bags (and one of Gary’s bags is huge!). Thanks, Peter!

The conference was held at the Hyatt Regency, which also housed the participants, so that was very convenient – no hassling with transportation. (Gary says the Summer Conference in Mexico City is out for that reason. He doesn’t speak Spanish, and he thinks there might be a problem with communicating to taxi drivers how to break down his wheelchair – and given my knee, I don’t particularly want to be breaking it down for him (not to mention the other reasons I’m not fond of traveling!)) His room at the Hyatt was satisfactory, except that he couldn’t reach the wall lamps from his bed (which he needs in order to see to do his 3 am ICs, for example), so he prevailed upon Peter to do some furniture rearranging. The room had a roll-in shower, but no shower bench. When he called room service they brought him a bench, but it turned out he had no time to try out the shower anyway! (Instead, he bathed his upper body with washcloths while sitting in his wheelchair in the bathroom, then took washcloths in a basin over to his bed, transfered to the bed, and did his legs while in bed; at home he does his entire body while in bed (except I do parts of his back he can’t reach), except on Saturdays when he takes a shower and washes his hair. Which reminds me, he’s got his shower routine down so that it takes him only twenty minutes from the time he transfers to the shower bench to the time he transfers back into bed so he can dress after the shower. When he first was taking showers, it would take him double that.)

Another point about the Hyatt – the computers in the business center were set up too high for someone in a wheelchair.

They had a dinner for the conference participants the first evening, but Gary had to skip it. He needed the time to get his room organized, to do his routine, and to plan out things like “what was he going to do for breakfast.” The conference breakfasts were too early for him, ending when the talks began at 8:15. So he found out he could buy a small carton of milk at the gift shop/coffee shop. This he kept in his ice bucket over night, and poured it on the high-fiber cereal he’d brought with him. That first evening he had a room service meal; they told him he could leave the tray outside his room when he was finished, but it turned out he couldn’t. He didn’t eat everything, and the tray was heavy, and he didn’t want to attempt trying to set it outside. The maid got it the next morning.

He said he was dead tired that night – probably having to do all that pushing through the Atlanta and Milwaukee airports contributed to that – and he slept just fine.

He enjoyed the talks at the conference, and his own talk went well – he gave a half-hour invited talk. Meals were sometimes an adventure, and in going out to them he found the weather was far colder than he was used to at home, sometimes below freezing! Gary notes that he can handle cold far better than he could while at Shepherd center.

He went to a micro-brewery with some of his former grad students on Thursday night, and Mirko Popvassilev pushed him back from that – Gary said his muscles were unusually sore, no doubt from the airport pushes he’d done. On Friday night there was a conference reception 12 blocks from the hotel, and Ronnie Levy pushed him both to and from that (Gary said he did some of the pushing back on his own, it being the easier direction). Saturday night he went to a Cuban restaurant, about 6-8 blocks away, and Alan Dow pushed him to that. Then Alan and Sheldon Davies shared in the pushing on the way back. The restaurant had a high-step up at its entrance. Gary could’ve gone around to the back, where there was a wheelchair-accessible entrance, but since there were more than a dozen in his dinner party, three or four of them simply lifted him in his chair up the step. Thanks to everyone who helped Gary out in various ways!

So, as you can see, Gary is getting along great. As you can also see, these blog entries have dribbled off. I guess that means we’ve reached “our new normal.” I will probably still make entries if there is something of note (or not, depending on your perspective ;-)). Thanks to all who’ve ever read entries. Your support certainly got us through some tough times.

Now I guess it’s getting time for the book and movie versions of the blog to come out ;-)