Finally, on my way!

           The journey has begun, with a bang—or rather, with a crack, but I’ll get to that in a bit. 

           My Nissan having brand new tires and being fully checked out and repaired where necessary, I left home a little before 10:00 on Saturday morning, after having carefully (as I thought) looked around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, headed to the post office, and found waiting for me a package that I’d been expecting.  Cool.  On my way.  I’d planned on visiting with my friend Carol Poulin-Taylor, who owns Esprit Equestrian Center in Durham, Maine.  I had a box of tapes and other horse articles for her, and delivered them to her barn, only to find that she was away, judging a show.  Oh, well.  I left the box and continued on to Massachusetts.

           Honestly, I don’t know why anyone lives there.  The traffic is horrendous and the drivers have no equal for rudeness—or so it seemed when the road was dividing and I had to merge left, or end up on the road to Nashua, NH.  One driver quickly pulled up beside me when she noticed there was a small space in front of her that I might take advantage of! After several attempts to get in, my signals blinking furiously, I had to put on my aggressive driver hat and pull in front of a car that didn’t really want to give me room.  Then I waved and smiled to say “thank you”.  Perhaps that abated the scowl that I saw just before I bullied my way in.

           My sister Toni was a gracious host, as she always is, and it was fun spending time with my nephews.  Soon I discovered, though, that not all was as I had supposed. The hatchback on the Nissan refused to open.  I fiddled this way and that, was able to open the glass part of the door and so reach boxes and suitcase, but no matter what I did or how I held my mouth, that hatchback just would not open.  All the fiddling did lock the car, though, and I learned an important lesson—never leave the keys in the car; the locks have a mind of their own and will gladly lock me out if given the opportunity.  What a good thing I put the keys in my pocket and not on top of one of the boxes in the back! Lesson learned.  My keys go with me everywhere.

           The next surprise was that a small box I’d filled with my external backup drive, insulated earbuds for my phone, and chargers for my Kindle, phone, and Garmin GPS module was not in the car.  Nope, not at home either and not dropped unwittingly into the box for Carol.  Its whereabouts is still a mystery.

           People in Quincy, as in most of greater Boston, live cheek to jowl, but at the end of Toni’s street is a small bit of protected wetlands where the tides fill and empty, leaving a lovely and quiet place to walk.  The town has laid out a gravel pathway which encircles the area.  A family of coyotes dwells there, and cranes can be seen on occasion.  One can see the city from the shore, and turning in another direction, the ocean comes into view.  It’s a wonderful place to walk, and walk I did, enjoying every moment as dusk drew in.

One enters the conservation area through a small gate guarded by  towering trees.

Looking across the wetlands

The path to the left

Low tide

As the dusk gathered, lights turned on across the way

       Monday morning I left early, about 7:00, and headed for Pennsylvania to see my cousin Valerie.  At Darien, Connecticut, service plaza, I misstepped on a curb and twisted my ankle badly.  “crack, crack, crack”.  That didn’t bode well, I thought, but I hobbled inside, sat for a few minutes, hobbled to the store at the far end of the building to buy some water, and hobbled back to my car, where I took Arnica, a homeopathic remedy that is a good first go-to for any kind of physical trauma.  By the time I got to Val’s, I knew I was in trouble.  The Arnica hadn’t helped the swelling a whole lot and weight bearing was almost impossible.  I headed to CVS to buy an Ace bandage, and the clerk mentioned an urgent care facility.  You can guess the rest—a fracture, a splint, and today an orthopedist.  Blah!