Time for a little update. On May 15-17, we again went to Adventure Skills Workshop, at Camp ASCCA in Jackson’s Gap, Al. The weather did not cooperate – thunder, lightning, rain. With the rule, “No activities until 30 minutes after the last thunder roll,” activities were limited.

The weather didn’t interfere with lunch, though :-D We really lucked out (I’m definitely not talking cuisine). Introverts, Gary and I are usually dependent on the others at the table to carry the conversation, and somehow we usually end up at a table with others who are similarly verbally-challenged. But at our table this time were a couple of Occupational Therapists from Kentucky, who were all enthusiastic about what goes on at Shepherd and want to create a “mini-Shepherd” in their small hospital. Enthusiastic is an understatement – these two were borderline ditzes :-D. Sorta reminded me of stereotypical pom-pom girls from high school (hope none of you reading this were/are stereotypical pom-pom girls), though one must’ve been at least mid-twenty and the other forties or fifties. They drew everyone at the table into conversation and kept things lively.

After lunch, Gary did “The Confidence Course.” This year, we had more confidence in the attendants – they hooked him into the harness correctly, and he managed to ascend the climbing wall (via pulley system) right side up, instead of last year’s upside down.


Gary was a regular James Bond going up the wall – I couldn’t believe how fast he got himself up that rope! He’s so much stronger than he was three years ago. But, sitting on top of that thirty-foot tower with his legs spasming, he didn’t want to attempt hopping himself to the other edge of the tower in preparation for the zip line, so got some help. They got him attached to the rope, and he flew! Unfortunately, someone stepped in front of my cell phone camera just as I snapped his picture (which I didn’t realize until after I looked at it), so no pic this year of the zipline – you’ll have to check last year’s ;-)

Next came Gary’s favorite: waterskiing! We went back to the van and Gary got himself changed into his swimsuit, then we were down to the docks. Gary as usual displayed superb form, keeping his arms low for balance, using his head (literally) to control his balance and direction. After staying right behind the boat for a while, he felt confident to go over the wake. He said he had planned to be more adventurous and move about behind the boat, but the driver only took him around the lake circuit once, whereas last year I’m sure he went around at least three times. Maybe they were trying to get in as many people as they could before the rain hit.

Though I snapped a couple shots of him waterskiing, the volunteers in the boat got better ones. You can see 11 snaps of him at http://picasaweb.google.com/adaptiveaquaticspictures/ASW2009#
He is in rows 20-22. Click on a photo to get an enlarged view. Notice the buff arms, the determination in those steely eyes.

(If you click on the waterskiing pictures here, they also will enlarge.)

I will download a couple of those snaps to the blog here. The jetski following behind him is in case he wipes out.



After the waterskiing came the highlight of the weekend: For the first time ever, Gary got his long pants on entirely by himself while sitting in his wheelchair. Only took him fifteen minutes – plus, he joked, three years. But since the only time he’s practiced this skill since Shepherd is when he’s been at Adventure Skills (meaning he’s only practiced 3 times in the last 3 years!), we thought this a historic accomplishment. Not that I’ve seen him practicing any more since – still quicker to dress in bed.

Speaking of routine, he noted that “shower mornings” now only take him about 2 ½ hours, whereas when we came home from Shepherd, they were taking 4 hours. Shower morning is only Saturday, though – the rest of the time, it’s bed baths.

After dinner, Gary played golf! Well, sorta. They had a tee set up on a dock, where you could hit balls into the water. They had a special club designed for hitting from a sitting position. I was impressed that he could hit it so far, but Gary didn’t seem all that impressed. I guess he was getting it about 50 yards with that club – said he couldn’t lift the club back any farther. Seeing that the one time I played golf (in high school), I’d either miss the ball entirely or it’d go about three inches, *I* thought it pretty cool the ball was going that far!



After that, we left for home and got caught in a torrential rain during the drive!

On Saturday, the only activity Gary got in was the ATV. Gary said there was a little excitement on the trail – the person on the vehicle that had left just before him fell off! So Gary and the Shepherd person accompanying him stopped, so the volunteer could help the other volunteer get the guy back on the ATV. The bad thing about that, Gary said, was his volunteer made him drive slower after that. :-(

Then the rain started in again. We had hoped the rain would clear up so Gary could go jetskiing, but, no go. While we waited, a young guy (maybe around twenty) talked our ears off. I found his story interesting, but he did go on (then, so do I, don’t I?). His injury is C-level, and when he woke up in the hospital (motorcycle accident), all he could move one was one finger. Then in time, another, and another . . . He’s now got about 80% of functioning back in one leg, maybe 50% of the other, and fairly good use of arms and fingers. Anyway, he filled us in on every single detail of his recovery, including how he demanded to learn how to again pee while standing upright, “because he’s an outdoorsy kind of guy.”

In mid-afternoon, we gave up on the weather, so that was the end of Adventure Skills this year.

The following week, Gary took his first plane ride entirely by himself, and went international – to Toronto! He said the trip was smooth – did a Park and Ride at the Atlanta Airport, and at Toronto was picked up by a taxi service specializing in accessible services. Gary said the only problem was, the taxi guy evidently took his tip bars off to get the chair into the taxi van, and when the guy put them back on, he put them in too far. You may recall this is what led Gary to land on the back of his head one day at Shepherd! Fortunately, for the entire day that Gary didn’t notice his tip bars weren’t correctly placed, he didn’t practice any wheelies.

However, he fell over into the gutter of a street, attached to his chair. (He informed me of this just as we were ending one of our phone conversations, as if I’m going to say, “Oh, really? Well, bye, honey.”) Evidently some of the curb cuts he encountered in Toronto aren’t well designed. He found them too steep, and as the cut enters the street, there’s a crack that runs the entire width of the cut – and his wheel tended to get caught in the cut. So, the first time that happened, his chair got stuck, while momentum carried him forward. His response was to lean to the side, which caused the chair to go over on its side. Fortunately, a husky woman was crossing the street toward him, and she simply picked up the entire chair with him in it (he had his seat belt on) and set it upright. He wasn’t hurt. His chair got stuck yet another time, but he kept his weight forward instead of to the side, and the chair didn’t tip (as he told me this, I of course am picturing him landing on his face!).

For the entire week Gary worked with another mathematician (Paul Szeptycki) at the Fields Institute, and as well shared meals with other of our Toronto math friends (Juris Steprans, Steve and Karen Watson, Frank Tall, Bill Weiss). On Wednesday, Gary gave an hour and a half seminar, and he said it went well.

On Thursday, he tried out the subway – about half the stops are accessible to those in wheelchairs. His particular stop wasn’t, but the next one down was. Other than that instance of the subway and using services to get him to and from the airport, he pushed himself in his wheelchair to his various destinations. He said he could see why many paraplegics develop shoulder problems. In our small town, he doesn’t have much need for frequent extended pushes. In Toronto, it’d take him twenty minutes to get from his hotel to Fields, and in addition he’d be pushing himself around to the various restaurants for meals. (One night, he wanted to get pizza from the place next to his hotel. He called, and they said they didn’t deliver. He said he was staying right next door and couldn’t get into their restaurant because they had a step up into it. They told him if he waited outside their door, they’d hand the pizza to him :-D ). On Thursday night, Bill Weiss hosted a party at his place. Gary underestimated how long it’d take him to push there – and it ended up taking 50 minutes! Gary couldn’t get into the house because of the steps, but people came outside into the backyard and chatted with him, and he had a meal out there. Because the weather looked stormy, Gary decided he’d better leave. People offered to drive him back to his hotel, but he hadn’t brought his slide board to transfer into a regular car, and he wasn’t comfortable having untrained people help him into a car. So he began his push back to his hotel. And got caught in the rain. He said the wind was so strong his rain poncho was nearly being whipped right off him. He pulled in under the eaves of an Indian restaurant to (hopefully) wait out the storm, and the proprietor invited him in and chatted with him for about twenty minutes until the rain died down. Then Gary made a beeline for the hotel.

So, Gary was wheeling around “a hell of a lot,” as he put it, and he said he was reminded of the very first time he pushed himself in a chair at Shepherd. We were going from his hospital room to the auditorium in the connecting building. Gary had to take numerous rest stops.

On Friday and Saturday, the Appalachian Set Theory Conference was held at the Institute, and Gary said the schedule was quite grueling: went from 9:30 to 6:30 with a two-hour break for lunch and a couple additional 10-minute breaks. Gary enjoyed the conference, however.

Gary’s trip home also went very smoothly. Something kind of funny happened at airport security in Toronto, however. This guy was patting Gary down, and he asks, “What’s that?” Gary felt where the guy had his hand and said, “My ribs. I’d like to take them with me.” Guess the security guy wasn’t used to feeling up many thin people.

Once back at home, he unfortunately came down with an other UTI, complete with fever and chills. When he sees his Shepherd doctor in July, he’s going to ask if there’s anything he can do about these UTIs, which almost always flare up right after his trips. (He is on a daily antibiotic to keep the UTIs under control, but it isn’t good enough for the trips. I suspect the doctor will tell him to take a stronger antibiotic while he’s on the trip.)

Okay, I think I’ve caught you up on Gary news. I’ve still been working on my novel. My previous drafts were likely too long for publication, and I’ve managed to cut it down from 367,000 words to about 135,000. Then I had to go through and make sure I didn’t cut out anything vital (and I did end up adding small bits back in). Gary is reading it now, and after he finishes, I’ll give it to my writing group, and hopefully they too won’t think I’ve cut anything vital and will like it even better than they liked the first draft. In late September, I’m going to a writers conference taking place about an hour a way in Columbus, Ga. There, I’m having the first 15 pages of the manuscript critiqued by an agent who also is the president of FinePrint Literary Agency. Keep your fingers crossed that that leads to something.

I sat in on a Fiction Writing course at AU in the spring, and wrote my first literary short story (I suppose Remington Steele fanfic doesn’t count ;-)). It’s a good story, I believe, and I have sent it to a highly competitive lit magazine. I think I should hear back from them by August. If they don’t accept it, I’ll send it around to other places. I also wrote my first “short short” story, aka, “micro fiction.” It’s a complete short story in under 200 words. It also was well received by local writers (and by the couple “email” readers who I’ve been sending stuff to for years for their comments), and I’ve sent that out to be considered for publication as well.

This past Friday, I did an “open mike” at our local used book store. Former topologist and current writer Jo Heath conned me into this. (I later got an email from Jo correcting me. She says she did not con me. She pressured me. Two different things entirely.) She and I both read 5-minute excerpts from our novels, and in addition I read my short short. Gary said I done good, but I have never experienced such stage fright! I have been attending a monthly writers workshop for the last half year (and Jo joined it more recently), and it was at the workshop leader’s instigation that Jo and I were giving readings. I expected the audience to be maybe four of us from the workshop, our spouses, a few friends. Well, damn, there must’ve been about forty people there! I suppose it was some combination of not speaking in front of groups of people for the last 15 years, plus it not being math talk (after all, presumably in math talks people are listening for the facts and aren’t there primarily for entertainment) that caused my nervous system to go haywire. I had to keep taking small steps around, because I was literally afraid that if I didn’t, I was going to pass out, and my heart was about to burst my chest. Jeez!

After the entire session was over, the store owner asked if I’d read at future such events, and I hesitated, and the workshop leader, who was standing right there, said “Yes.” Hmm. It is true that that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

Jo and then I were the first presenters of the evening – getting it over with – and then the rest of the evening was quite enjoyable, listening to two other readers and two musical acts.

One last writing note. While letting my novel sit awhile, I tried to write another short story, this one based on Gary and my “most frustrating day” in the course of his recovery, the day he got checked out of Shepherd. I though it’d be easy to write, since it was so closely based on experience, but it’s turned out to be very difficult to write, and I haven’t gotten anything I like yet, though I’ve been working on it since April. It got me thinking about “the blog book” – the project I’ve had in mind of turning this blog into a book. I’m not quite ready to tackle that, but am getting closer to the day, and now I’m wondering, how exactly will I organize it? Why type of book will it be? I imagine it’ll mostly focus on the first year of accident, recovery, rehab, with other milestones noted. But what of this blog of those months should be included, what deleted (besides all my complaints of my noisy hotel neighbors)? Anyway, if any of you reading this have thoughts on this subject, I’d appreciate hearing from you. If you’re getting this missive by blog and not email, just go to “View my complete profile” on the right-hand side of the page (yes, I know it’s not very complete) and then click the email tab on the left. Thanks!

All for now!