22 Jun 2014

Only 2 more weeks to go to safari 22 June 2014

Well its not long to go now before the big adventure,  I think I have most the things I need like insect repellant, South African Rand money, I have just paid for a lounge pass for the airport so I can relax and have a shower hopefully before the flight, but also ordered flight socks and sorted out my seat on the plane. Just found out my international plug adaptor is not right, so back to thr shops for another.
Think I have all the leads and adaptors for camera etc and hopefully have enough memory cards for my camera and camcorder. How times have changed over the years,  when we used to send postcards from our destinations and never thought of being in touch whilst away whereas now by the magic of technology I will be able hopefully, to keep you readers up to date with the help of the internet and Wi Fi.
I have yet to check everything will go in my case, I would prefer to take the one, but have a luggage allowance to take either a larger case or two smaller ones. It's going to be hard to decide just how many and type of clothes that I will need, for the variation of temperature and environment, plus sunscreen,  aftersun extra shoes and layers of clothes. I have yet to put a range of music on the tablet for the trip but have enough in E books to keep me going for a long time.

9 Jun 2014

Safari here I come 9 June 2014

Well folks the safari to South Africa is not far away, I did worry last month when I had problems with my health,& mainly my back started to play up but also I started getting something that felt like electric shocks down my right arm. Luckily due to Gail and Andrea the physios things have improved, just now have to do more exercises to prevent a re occurrence.
I have had all my inoculations, I had read about monkeys being about the lodge so decided to have the rabies one as well but after buying it was warned I could have a bad reaction to it, so at present have vaccine in my fridge, sob sob. I did contact Saga who are arranging the trip, their view was, if I dont bother the monkeys, they will leave me alone, maybe I should of contacted them first.

I have bought a camcorder for the trip, couldent believe how small it is but can be used as conventional camera also. I have had to buy extra clothes for the trip, that are dark colours for when on safari, but also needed a mixture of warm for the early and late trips out but lighter for the middle of the day, have a list of things need for the trip such as special adapter for their electrical sockets, insect repellent, luckily was able to get this trip in a malarial free zone so one less tablet and adverse reaction to worry about, but have strong painkillers from GP just in case I need them for other aches and pains.
I had decided that when I found out I was travelling with Virgin that I would upgrade on the plane to their economy plus both there and back, because it would give me a better seat and more legroom on the 10 hour flight, I also joined their frequent flyer scheme in the hope it would help for future trips, also Saga had arranged for me to be picked up from home by car and transported to London by them. It was only the other day that I realised how much travelling was involved on this trip. I am being picked up at 1 30 pm on the day, then down to London for the evening flight at 9 30pm, then there is a trip of approximately 3 hours after to the lodge so it looks like in total is will be in excess of 20 hours before I reach my destination.
Well I will close for now but give more background on the trip as I get closer.

The big trip later this year

Some time ago I mentioned about a long complicated trip I wanted to do whilst I could this year. It started with wanting to do a trip with my son to belatedly celebrate his fortieth birthday, when he said he would like to visit the Grand Canyon. This should of happened a couple of years ago but for my health problems, but they made me realise that this was a chance to fulfil some of the places on my Bucket List as well.
So on investigation it seemed we would have to travel to Las Vegas to do this, which suited me because although not a gambler I had always wondered what it was really like,  plus the shows and the Strip intrigued me. Son was only able to have a number of days holiday, plus it needed to be towards the end of the year.
I decided if I was going to do a trip such as this why not do a little more whilst away, so the plan for the big adventure started, I then thought well why not stop off at New York on the way, because previously I had not managed to see all the places I wanted and for reasons I cannot explain I had always wanted to travel on Staten Island Ferry and see the Statue of Liberty close up. I contacted son and asked would he like to add this to the trip, he did not seem to need much encouragement to do this also, so now we had two destinations.

When I looked at Google maps I thought maybe it would be a good time to travel further, so considered Hawaii and a visit to my friend Sofi, who had met up with me over here some years ago. I e mailed her a number of times but have heard nothing, so decided to cancel that but to continue the trip to Australia,  somewhere I had planned to return to many years ago but not got to again so far.
I thought about this and decided again on my list I would like to visit Sydney,  Ayres Rock and maybe the Great Barrier Reef, I then had another look at maps and decided I could indulge myself elsewhere and visit my friend in Penang which I had wanted to do for a number of years, also to see the Christmas Lights in Singapore,  which again had been on my list for many years after a brief trip there back in the 1990s when they were starting to put them up.
WOW this was going to be some trip, but I had realised if I did not do it soon, my health age and travel insurance costs, may prevent me from carrying it out, at this time I had not planned a particular length of time for the trip or a budget, so decided to contact my friendly travel agent Sue and talk it through with her as I did not think I could visit the places I wanted with conventional tours. She came to visit me and gathered information on duration of visits and the path I intended to take and went off to explore options for the trip, it now lookef as though it was on.
When I had time to reflect I thought that there were a few negatives for the trip, firstly, after my son went home I would be on my own with no travelling companion to share the experiences with.But previously when I had hoped to do it with someone special it had fallen through, so maybe doing on my own and seeing who I met on the way would add to the experience, the other things I have had to consider relate to my health, firstly how will my back and pelvis cope with all this travelling, also as I now wear hearing aids it maymake it harder to hear and fully experience some thongs, plus it may make me more vulnerable ad a lone traveller

2 Jun 2014

The Ups And Downs Of Health 2 June 2014

I am sorry readers that I have been so quiet for a while,  but my health has interfered yet again. About two months ago my back went into spasm  and I kept getting pains down my right arm that were like electric shocks. I was aware at the time that I was spending far to long on the computer trying to sort out my holiday in November,  but more of that later in another blog.

The effect on things I could do was quite dramatic, I cannot explain how troubling the pains down my arm were, luckily if thats the word I had had a similar pain in the past and that prompt physio usually resolved it. So off to my two favourite physios Gail and Andrea for treatment, these were topped by Silvain another physion if and when the others were not available, despite their best efforts the pains down the arm did not abate for some considerable time, i am still getting twinges now in fac, it was possibly six weeks or more seeing one of them at least twice per week before there was a lot of change,  but at least they managed to reduce the pain in my lower back. To help  I was taking strong painkillers but only when pain was really bad because I knew the effect they would have on my quality of life and the limited quality of life I would have, also they did little to help with the pains down my arm. The other thing I was doing was having hot and cold compresses frequently through the day to try to reduce the inflamation.

This was all a wake up call and from discussion with physios I realised that I needed to do more exercises myself at home and also to work on my very poor posture as that was making things worse. It seems my right shoulder is coming forward due to this and my arthritis and needs a lot of effort from me to slow it all down. Also I now worry about what would happen when on holiday particularly when I go for my long holiday in November.

The other thing I realised was the need to cut down on computer use and to look at using Dragon voice recognition software more often to carry out tasks. This is quite ironic as I have been doing a fair bit of work with a number of charites etc to do with Cardbox a database facility, in fact for one of them I have now been appointed as Database manager, not quite sure yet what this involves. For some reason the effect of using the tablet does not seem at present to have as much effect on hand and arm, so doing this on it.

Therefore only today I  have Sean  from Sue Jensens company to do some training with the Dragon, coming to help go through better ways of carrying out tasks on the computer. I have only just realised, that the position that I sit in when watching tv and the angle is making my back and posture worse, so I have now ordered a bracket for the wall to raise it to a more sensible height, I wonder why they make these stands so low when as I have now found the middle of the screen should be at the same height as my eyes when sitting, no wonder my posture was worse, there is nothing with the tv to warn of this. More generally when out I am trying to improve my posture,  but after a lifetime of it being so poor its hard to change and sit properly.