Tag Archives: travel

Another Day In Paradise: My Crazy Myrtle Beach Christmas

Posted on by John

…except not. As I write this, I keep hearing (I think) country singer Phil Vasser singing “Just Another Day In Paradise.” The Paradise Resort hotel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, that is. We’d stayed there in 2024, and my wife enjoyed the facility particularly because she could park on the same floor as our room if we stayed on either the 2nd, third, or fourth floors. This is easy to do during the relatively low-occupancy Christmas period, so I opted to book the same hotel again thinking it would be better than some unknown property that might give me variable results. All was well until… well let me set the scene first.

Before I get into the meat of it, I should say that at no point were we in any real danger. Everything was fine as things unfolded, at least with regard to our physical safety.

Ok, so we’ve sort of established a routine for our Myrtle Beach Christmas vacations as this is our third: day one, arrive, walk along the ocean, eat at Olive Garden, buy snacks. Day two, wake, have a leisurely breakfast (preferably at Hot Stacks Pancakes though this year they were closed so we had to do Waffle House), walk along the ocean, eat at Paula Deens Family Kitchen for dinner. Day three, (usually Christmas) wake, have a light in-room breakfast, watch TV and speak with family for a while, walk the ocean, pick up food at IHOP then bring it back to the room for eating. (You can only eat out so many times right?)

So we had just wound up the last of those activities, and she was headed in to start preparing to call it a night. As she made her way into the bathroom, I settled into the somewhat squeaky couch to enjoy some of my audiobook. Suddenly, I hear… really? An alarm? The funny part is that earlier that day, my wife had played a video clip of some kind of siren that made me jump and stand, ready to evacuate the room thinking it might be the fire alarm. So perhaps I couldn’t be blamed for doubting the veracity of this new sound, even as I again stood and positioned myself for a quick getaway. A voice then came over what I assume is an ingrained PA system informing us that “the fire alarm has been triggered. You must evacuate the building.”

My wife, rapidly re-dressing, scampered over to me and told me to grab my Mantis braille display and jacket. She said she also got her purse and phone. And I’m happy we did, because we discovered on entering the hall that it was not fire, thank goodness for that, but water sounding like the ocean was gushing full-force down the hall and already entering many of the second floor rooms. As it turns out, a pipe had burst in the housekeeping area.

‘What the…” she said as we made our way pel mel to the second floor exit.

As we tore up and down ramps trying to work out the best approach, I guess because of the stress my heart rate accelerated nerve-wrackingly. So I took a grateful seat in the car and tried to breathe deeply and relax as she made her sloshing way back inside to retrieve as much of our stuff as possible. It didn’t take me long to get back under control, but man I’m way too far out of shape as I’ve already sort of discovered in just taking those brisk walks along the sea. I know I gotta start moving more.

Anyhow, I asked her to as soon as possible help me find some water, and happily sucked on a bottle once it became available. We managed to get pretty much everything out of the room, but much of it was soaked as we had it on the floor near or just inside of the nightstands. There were not many suitable places to place luggage, as these units are usually owned by individuals who can decide what is or isn’t inside of them. Fortunately, the only thing of real concern I would have lost besides my electronic equipment, which I already had, would have been my medicine. It was mostly just a giant aggravation.

After sloshing in there a couple more times to retrieve whatever else we could grab, as they had already started sucking out as much water as they could as quickly as possible, we entered the check-in area to see what we would have to do. We had to wait a while as they scrambled to find available rooms to put us all. My wife said one man in particular was doing most of the work, fielding phone calls, dealing with unhappy customers, and beginning to turn red from the strain. Once we got our turn, we were placed in a room on the seventh floor. Luckily, her sister had also come to the beach and helped us steer a cart with our sodden stuff onto the elevator and up to that new room. It was nicer, with better furniture and an actual bedroom, instead of the room with a bed we pass through on the way to the ocean-facing living room in back. At this point though, we barely cared about the upgraded surroundings. We took a little while to eat snacks, try and relax some, and again! Finally! Headed for bed. Yes, I was glad to return home after that.

So that was my wacky Christmas Day at the beach, about which we will likely be talking for years. I did receive about 20% off in compensation, though surprisingly there has been little communication from the property as this all unfolded. All they said during its happening is that “a leak” had caused the WiFi to be shut down. A leak sounds like nothing, and as we noted if I’d seen that while we were, say, at a restaurant, we would not have known that we needed to hustle over there and get our stuff. Interesting. Ah well, thankfully all is well that ends well and we only lost a couple of easily-replaceable things. Till my next travel adventure.

A Third

Posted on by John

So here we sit, April wrapping up and headed into the second third of 2025 already. I started the year off with hopes of being more verbose than I had last, but thus far it just isn’t happening. I guess to some extent the problem is I feel like I’m stuck in one big routine. Monday=Work,Home;Tuesday=Home/work,HOme:repeatedWednesdayAndThursday. Saturday and Sunday, resting up and preparing for next week’s festivities. It’s the rhythm of life, or something like that. This is not to say that nothing ever happens, it’s just mostly quiet. Let’s take a look at some of this year’s highlights, though.

Work

This year on the job has been interesting. We’ve started a rotation of regularly-scheduled classes, and April’s was a successful course on using Freedom Scientific’s JAWS for Windows screen-reader with Microsoft Outlook. I demonstrated and had my trainees try creating folders, adding meetings to their calendar, sorting messages using rules, and creating and editing signatures. It was fun, and I enjoyed working with the engaging group of Customer Service reps who opted to join me.

I’m also working intensively with someone in what we’re calling a JAWS Boot Camp, wherein I’m helping her to acquire the basic skills she can use to learn other tasks needed for a computer-based job position. This is a challenge, because it really requires me to think outside the box and come up with activities that can make harder-to-remember concepts manageable.

Travel

As far as trips go, we did take one journey right at the end of March to Virginia Beach to see my sister in law. This gave me an opportunity to break out my GPS apps, BlineSquare for GPS coordinates and a somewhat accurate listing of my surroundings; Google Maps for direction information and hotel reviews; and Ariadne GPS, because it allows me to run my finger along the iPhone screen and hear what streets it is encountering. I’m sure I’ve written about these apps before, but I just like that they let me hear so much about an area’s geography.

We also did a bit of a riding tour of Virginia Beach, traveling through Regent University which is a religious school. The best thing we did though was eat, and particularly at a place called Gus and George’s Spaghetti and Steakhouse. Although I’m still grumbling a bit about the fact that my spaghetti only had 2 meatballs in it, it and the before-dinner sallad were delicious.

Books

And of course, I’m always reading. I’ve already hit 30 as the month concludes. Currently engrossed in one called Death of the Author, by NNedi Okorafor. Split between Lagos Nigeria and Chicago USA, this story is about a young woman who has acquired a disability after falling out of a dead tree and becoming paraplegic. It addresses interesting issues of so-called accepting one’s disability, and the controversies that can arise if one chooses to modify functioning with the assistance of technology. It’s an interesting thing to ponder, and I would of course note that all of us modify our functioning in low-tech (canes, glasses, wheel chairs) and high tech (hearing aids, screen-readers, scooters) ways. Mostly this is done to achieve the highest quality of life we can manage, which constantly changes as technology improves, but hopefully it does not mean we are “ashamed” of our disability. These are and probably always will be delicate questions, since they are framed by each person’s experiences and the perceptions of those around them. In any event, it is a pretty good story.

And that’s about all I’ve had going on for these first four months. Hmmm, when seen through that light I guess there has been more going on than I thought. I hope whatever you’re up to has been relaxing when needed yet eventful when desired. More soon.

Gifts, Unwrapped

Posted on by John

And we have reached that time of year, the period for which I save to take time off work and get in some much-needed relaxation. So my vacation began on the 20th and will last till January 2nd as we aspirationally start 2025.

The first thing that happened, after our Friday holiday party, was our early dismissal at 3 instead of the usual quitting time of 4 PM. Those who work in manufacturing at my employer actually leave at 3:20, so figuring there might be a glut of people using our GoTriangle Access Paratransit service, I opted to summon a Lyft car. My driver spoke no English, which was immediately clear to me as I entered the vehicle and he didn’t respond to my initial statement and was using his GPS in Spanish. I was ok with this, except for the logistical challenge of ensuring I had arrived at the correct address. But never fear, I used basic high school spanish to convey my address’s exact numbers and we both had a laugh. It later occurred to me that I could have used my phone’s translation app. He was courteous though, waiting to see if I got inside and declining a cell phone call while driving.

I enjoyed that extra hour as a cold Friday unfolded and relief filled me at the time stretching ahead. My next task? Find a couple of good books to accompany my wife and me as we took our Christmas to Myrtle Beach to celebrate ten years since our relationship basically began. Well it’s actually part of our complicated story, one that involves an overlapping circle of friends who saw that we might connect given our similar temperaments. I’m sure I wrote about it in those early entries of 2015.

Anyhow, the two books I settled on after much deliberation were Playground, by Richard Powers, and Katharine, the Wright Sister, by Tracy Enerson. The former is sort of complex even to me, but it talks a lot about the ocean, colonization of so-called French Polynesia, and some sort of “floating city” the Americans want to build. It’s decent. The latter is an attempt to Chronicle the role the Wright sister played in getting her famous brothers off the ground. It flits between three first-person perspectives, Kate’s, Orville’s, and Wilbur’s. It’s riveting.

So after a quick jaunt to pass out and receive gifts from her folks on Saturday, we laid about on Sunday then headed for the beach on Monday. This time we opted to stay in a new (to us) property. I often find it interesting how so many of these hotels choose names meant to evoke faraway places: Tropical Seas, Coral Beach Resort, and our hotel, the Paradise Resort . We pulled in and arrived at the oceanfront king 1-bedroom suite as a cold, rainy wind blew in off the Atlantic. We were completely fine with this though, as it brought back fond memories of our trip down to Myrtle following our January 2018 wedding.

We took a couple of walks down there: a frigid one on Tuesday and a slightly warmer one on Christmas Day. She joked that this constitutes her anual “Christmas-day 5K” but she chopped it up so I could hang. Ha, well truth be told I ain’t no walker. In fact on Wednesday, my apple watch kept tapping my wrist to ask if I was doing a workout, probably to make sure nothing off was happening as my heart rate accelerated. I definitely need to exercise more. Maybe that’ll happen in 2025. Says about half the country.

So didn’t I earn the food we ate there? There was the Olive Garden, where I always get their spagheti and Italian sausage, alwayswith angel hair pasta. And then there wasPaula Deen’s Family Kitchen, a restaurant we found in Myrtle in 2018 and have visited every other time we’ve gone down there. Let’s just say you don’t go there to eat sallads. I had meatloaf, fried okra, and a mac and cheese that had been improved since I had last gone in May.

The only other noteworthy thing we did there was to exchange our own gifts. She got me a comfortable robe to drape over myself on these cold days that feels like a blanket. For my gift, I got her the Usher Confessions 20th Anniversary vinyl. “I know you didn’t spend $200 on this!” she said as she extracted it from the box. The joke was that we had been trying to get Confessions on vinyl from Amazon for some time but could not find it for less than that. I decided to just plug it in and see if I lucked up, knowing it was something she wanted and would enjoy. For the record (get it, record?) no I did not spend 200 bucks to acquire that. They’d only just released the 20th anniversary version.

So all in all we had and are having a good time. Hopefully I’ll be prepared for whatever the next year brings. At the least I hope it brings us all full hearts, full wallets, and whatever else we desire.

NIB 2024: A Day of Relaxation

Posted on by John

Ah, I meant to chronicle the rest of my time at the NIB 2024 Training Conference and Expo more quickly than I have, but alas work, cooler weather, and reading have interfered with my writing. (I’m already about to set a new record for books read [and listened to] in a year, as the old one is 79 and I’m already at 76). Anyhow, I wanted to capture at least one more day of attendance before it all becomes too distant in my ever-aging memory.

Wednesday, October 16: The day dawned crisp and cold. Most times I’ve visited our nation’s capital, the weather fluctuated crazily with temps in the 80s in the afternoon and snow at night. Granted those visits usually occurred in May, whereas October weather is more uniformly dreary. But the sun was actually out on this day as we meandered out of the hotel and across the busy street to a two-story McDonald’s. We don’t have many two-story restaurants here in North Carolina, but I guess you see them more in places where space is a premium.

I had a sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffin, while my wife probably ate a McGriddle (she likes sweet, I do savory). As we ate, she noted that there were some homeless individuals using the space probably to stay warm. I’ve also noticed that, sadly, that city seems to have a high population of unhoused individuals, perhaps because there are more services available? It’s an interesting question. Anyhow, she said there are signs that specifically say “No Loitering,” so if one wishes to remain for an extended time they must either buy food or devise other strategies to make themselves look occupied. I just hope we as a society keep moving in a direction where people will have fewer of these challenges, because the systems will work as they should.

Food consumed, we went to a little store to get snacks for later. I had a giant cup of grapes, because hey grapes are good for the brain. Back in the hotel, we milled about in the lobby for a while then decided to head down to the basement area to see what was going on in the conference. I then realized that I had missed the technology demo that was put on for the employees of the year, because at that time the app I was using to keep up with events was not sending notifications out. This was ok though, as I got to check out some of these devices in the exhibit hall. I’m always fascinated by what they have in these places, but also overwhelmed by the people pulsing from every nook and cranny. My wife had to keep me grounded and inside of the place. I held and listened to the Envision smart glasses speak. Those are nice and built specifically for blind folk, but at $2,000 I probably won’t be getting a pair. The Meta Ray-ban glasses are a likelier candidate, though I might just hold out and wait for a competitor as that market is now starting to come alive. Many of my trainees at work really want me to acquire those though, so I can show them how to use them.

Anyhow, I also checked out a Freedom Scientific workstation, equipped with a computer running JAWS for Windows and, more interestingly to me, a Focus 40 Braille Display. This is another device some of my trainees would like me to get for demonstrations, but alas. It had a whole lot of buttons and switches, and it is powered by a Perkins-style braille keyboard as opposed to my Mantis QWERTY device. I prefer the latter for writing, but the Focus does have many features that could make it desirable.

After checking those out, my wife and I decided to do a whole lot of, welll… nothing. Hey, one of the rewards of this trip was to be able to relax if one wished, and how often do you get to crawl back into bed and sleep on Wednesday afternoon. It was glorious, but I just wish I had drank more water as I tend to dehydrate easily if I do not and paid for this lacking later. Fortunately I was ok.

At about 5, we opted for another fine-dining experience and one we can no longer get in our area, and ventured to McCormick and Schmick’s. We had visited this chain in Raleigh for our “halfversary” after the first six months of marriage and fallen in love with it, at which point they took it away in favor of a Mexican restaurant. So we said whenever we got to a city with that establishment we would check it out again. Arlington did have a location.

This time, I ate some kind of salmon and mashed potatoes. It was delicious, if a little expensive. And as was the case in Raleigh, I loved the ambience of the place as it wasn’t too loud and we could easily have a conversation.

Before getting a Lyft back to our hotel, we walked around that area a bit exploring some of the ice cream shops and stores they had. You could tell we were in a different city, though of course it still had nowhere near the hustle of a New York or Philadelphia. I enjoyed the feeling.

And that was the crux of Wednesday, the midpoint of our trip. A little learning and a lot of rest. We sure needed that rest for Thursday’s tours, coming up in next post.

NIB 2024: First General Session, and Good Eatin’!

Posted on by John
The FDR statue. He’s sitting in a wheelchair. There were braille plaques nearby, too.

So, this is what happens when I am left to pack.

Tuesday October 15 dawned cold and blustery, as we knew it would. My wife had stacked sweaters on my couch that were to accompany my dress outfits so that I could stay at least minimally warm, but of course I didn’t notice they were there. This meant all I had was my sturdy jacket, which doesn’t always make the best dressing piece, comfortable as it is. So we needed to make a store run.

but first, we had to get ready. The bathroom in our room, and I presume throughout the hotel, was designed oddly. The showers had no curtains, only a half pane of glass that seemed to allow water to wet the floor more easily, and the head was of the rainwater variety, coming down from straight above. The bed was decent enough, but well let’s just say we have exacting standards about pillows that are rarely met in hotels.

These things were ok though and certainly did not cause a high degree of displeasure. Once dressed, we made our way down to the teeming ballroom for a light breakfast of yogurt with granola and peaches among other things (pretty good) and an empanada with egg and sausage. Then we made a quick trip back to the room to grab everything we needed before shoving off for Target.

I used the Lyft app to get around during this trip, and I was amazed by how accurate the locations were. For instance, it could tell me that we were standing inside of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, of course, but it also pinpointed exactly which storefront we were in while waiting for our return ride. That kind of exactness would help blind folks more easily navigate, I would think.

In the store, we joked that we were exploring by doing something we could just as easily have done while in North Carolina. But that’s the truth, perhaps sadly: almost all of the world is now a big chain. Local stuff does exist, but it’s becoming increasingly harder to find.

We quickly found two nice, relatively inexpensive and versatile sweaters, then made our way to a Barnes and Noble to await said return ride. What I hadn’t known, because I wasn’t looking as it happened, was that Lyft had switched my car because a closer driver was available. This caused some confusion as a ride that looked nothing like expected pulled to a stop in front of us, but the driver called me on the phone to clarify and my wife could hear my voice coming through the window. So we felt ok about hopping in.

Back at the hotel, we opted for another meal at Cinnabar. This time, I chose a cheeseburger. It was ok, but didn’t come with any sauce or have a whole lot going on in the way of toppings. I had some mayo added, and thus managed to consume a fair amount of it with fries that were different from those we had on Monday. Then we briefly ran to the room for some R&R and to grab whatever we needed before the main event, the general session.

The ballroom was again teeming, with nearly every chair occupied. We’d located spots kind of far back from the speakers, so I could hear decently but maybe not well. This would definitely be a theme throughout my experience, unfortunately, due to my own issues and not anything conference-related. The session itself was interesting: the usual pageantry that accompanies such events. I listened with some interest as they talked about some of NIB’s achievements, especially as relates to helping those of us who are blind experience greater upward mobility. These metrics have definitely improved, and I am, I hope, an example of that.

What I most enjoyed though was the hearty reactions that went into celebrating employees of the year. It boosts morale among the workers, making us feel like what we’re doing matters. And it certainly matters in creating more jobs for blind folks in a way that is or can be transferable to the mainstream as attitudes towards disability improve. The session was supposed to be done by 4, but it actually lasted closer to 4:30 as a long discussion continued on areas that were slightly above my head.

Then the elevator madness ensued. This was another theme, especially as not all of the hotel’s elevators were working the entire time. They slowly brought more and more of them online, but until then massive lines and surges dominated. When we did wrangle a spot, we still had to wait as stops were made at nearly every floor.

After another brief respite in our room, we headed back down to the lobby around 5:30 to have dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. First though, we had to work out how we’d get there. The two of us LCI employees who had won Employee of the Year, our guests, and the higher-ups who had come to the conference as well were to be treated to a delicious meal at this pricey restaurant. The Arlington, Va. location was only about a half mile away, but given that it was already darkening and cold out, we summoned two Ubers and made the short ride over.

Into another elevator and up to the 11th floor of some sort of office building where the restaurant was housed. My wife said it gave a great view of planes landing and taking off from Regan. Though we ate in a private room, it was so buzzing with activity that I could, again, barely hear anything. Yup, same as always. But the food was good though. I had stuffed chicken, with cheese and a sauce of some sort. It was definitely filling. I also consumed a glass of wine along with some water, because why not? I mostly just took it all in and reflected on the significance of even being part of such an occurrrence.

And that was all for Tuesday. More in our next entry.

NIB 2024: Arrival

Posted on by John
Me standing near the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool

And so it begins… This year, as I’ve noted, I had been invited to attend the annual conference of the National Industries for the Blind in Arlington, Virginia, as LCI had awarded me Employee of the Year. Well one of them, another individual with whom I’d actually done some training as it happens, also received the designation. I was allowed to bring a guest, so my wife came with me.

The good news for us is we didn’t have to leave super early. Our American Airlines flight from Raleigh/Durham International Airport to Regan National Airport didn’t depart until Monday October 14 at 10:45 AM. Having prepaid for parking the night before, we loaded the car with bags packed to the gills for our weeklong trip and headed to the Economy lot. A shuttle arrived shortly after 8:00 AM and took us to the terminal, where we then had to hoof it with those heavy bags and I was sucking air by the time we reached the check-in counter.

“Would you two like to each check one of those bags for free?” The woman behind the counter asked. I have never been so relieved to hear anything in my life. My newly acquired briefcase (I had to look businesslike, time to shed the backpack) felt light by comparison as we continued onto the security checkpoint. This was my first time flying since… well, 2020, and one thing I’d forgotten was how annoying this process could be. Or maybe my patience has just shortened over the last four years. It was belts off, shoes off, Mantis braille display out, iPhone out, and oh I forgot to take off the Apple Watch. Oh, well. They did two inspections of my stuff, having a little trouble unsurprisingly working out exactly what the Mantis might in fact be. It looks like a computer keyboard, but… where’s the screen! They also had to dust my hands I guess to see if I might have some kind of residue on them.

Anyhow, once I put myself back together again we made our way to the coffee line as my wife got a free one with the parking reservation and I wanted some in preparation for a long day.

The rest of the wait was fairly uneventful, nearly 2 hours because hey it’s better to be early than late. I thought someone else from my employer would show up, but as we sat there in the terminal no one did.

“Now boarding American Airlines Flight 5545, with service to Washington Regan Airport.” We make our way to the line for preboarding, as usual, and my wife tells the gate agent I am blind as they initially say we are not eligible to board yet. We are on an extremely narrow-body Regional Jet, so have to just about turn sidwways to make our way to seats way back on row 20. I learned something new about airplane seat configuration, too: when I first saw our tickets, I noticed it said 20A and 20c.

“Wait, someone’s gonna be sitting in between us?” I thought. But no, there are no middle seats on this aircraft. So I assume any window and aisle seats will be A and C, and F and D respectively. The middles, if there, will be B and E. Interesting stuff, if you’re a nerd like I am.

We took off pretty much on time, shortly before 11 AM, and had barely completed our climb before we began descending. We mostly just sat there and made small talk, as you really didn’t even have time to get anything out. I suppose even with those security hassles, getting there that quickly still beats driving.

As it turns out, one other person from LCI was aboard but he couldn’t catch us before we got to our seats. He did get an Uber for us all and we piled in to make the short jaunt to the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, which is an airport hotel. It took them only a few minutes to get our room ready, so we ventured up in the ear-popping elevator to the 17th floor to deposit our luggage.

Flying, even a short distance, tends to make one hungry. So the next thing we did was locate the hotel’s featured restaurant, Cinnabar. I’m not really sure why it was called Cinnabar, as it is a full-service, sit-down restaurant. Their food was delicious but expensive. I had a chicken sandwich with cheese, mayo, and tomatoes. I guess I ate too many of the fries though, as my wife regularly chides me for doing, because I couldn’t finish that entire fairly large sandwich.

Not much else happened prior to dinner. We went and officially checked into the NIB Training Conference and Expo, collecting our lanyards and my Employee of the Year swag. We also had to attend an Employee of the Year orientation at 3, where we discovered how many of us there were (like 70 people). I was excited, but parts of me became overwhelmed quickly because of my hearing problems among such large crowds.

And speaking of crowds, prior to dinner we dropped in on the Welcome Reception. This was open to all conference attendees, and it sounded like one full-on roar as we huddled in the hotel’s basement-level vault. I stood in a corner and sipped on a Corona, feeling nice and reflecting on how I got here.

And finally, there was dinner. It was a simple affair, served buffet-style, with chicken, broccoli, and potatoes. There was supposed to be a Murder Mystery presented along with our meals, and I think it did happen later, but it took them a little while to get everything together. This is because it was to involve the audience in some kind of who-dun-it, where they acted out parts based on their role in the so-called murder. My wife and I didn’t stay to hear that part though, as the day and all its activities had caught up with us. We again rode that elevator into the sky, headed into our room, and called it a night.

More in Tuesday’s post, including a description of the room and some of its features.

All Aboard for a Much-needed Weekend

Posted on by John

Do you have that person in your life who always gets you, no matter what? The one who, because of similar experience and an upbringing that involved many of the same challenges is someone to whom you always look for advice or just to vent. That person for me is my cousin: technically a year younger than me but seeming older in many respects.

For our early life, really until mid-20s, we were never that far apart. Both of us are totally blind and have significant hearing loss due to a condition called Norrie Disease, so we have to work hard just to fit in to this world. We went to college together and lived in an apartment (albeit a slum) for six years.

Then life rolled on, and we were both fortunate to marry wonderful women. That has though necessitated changes in our relationship, as is common for all adults really. Now, we usually see each other maybe three or four times a year (with the time from January of 2020 till May of 2022 being the longest we didn’t get to spend time together due to Covid).

Anyhow, that’s slowly, finally, starting to change. This past weekend, as my work life ramps up and I feel increasingly nervous about my hearing challenges, I decided to see if we could just have a marathon Saturday watching sports and talking about nothing and everything as I like to do. My cousin and his wife agreed to allow my visit, so I purchased round-trip Amtrak tickets from Cary North Carolina to Charlotte.

I had to get the 5:43 Carolinian train, being fully aware of likely delays as it makes its way all the way down from New York City. And delays indeed happened, with emailed announcements throughout the day that the train was getting later and later.

I had Lyft take me over to the Cary station after a long day at work trying to hammer out the material for our upcoming Microsoft Excel workshop. The building was cold, and I found myself wishing I’d chosen to stay outside in the beautiful Fall-like weather to wait. I sat, snacking and reading, and tried to make myself take a break so all of my devices would make it onboard with a little life left.

The train finally arrived shortly before 7, and as I feared I was given an aisle seat so couldn’t plug in as easily. I always feel weird about asking my neighbor if I can stretch the cord over their legs.

The ride down was uneventful, and we arrived in Charlotte around 10. Knowing I would want to pick up food on the way to my cousin’s house, I decided to try downloading the Jack in the Box app to see if I could place an order in advance of getting there. I get Jack in the Box whenever I visit the Queen City, because we don’t have any of those in our area. And this would have worked, if I had already entered my payment method or at least set up Apple Pay. Trying to do that at the last minute just… didn’t work. Choosing the menu items I wanted though was accessible. Anyway, the driver just rolled me close enough to the Drive-through window to put in my order and I collected the food and headed to my cousin’s house. I do love this tech that makes it so much easier to independently move around and run errands.

Because it was already nearly Saturday by the time I finally arrived, we just stayed up a little while listening to the NFL game in Brazil and scarfing down the food. Then we retired for the night. I’d already understood that we would mostly be spending Saturday together anyway.

Knowing these folks wake by 8 AM, I was crawling out of bed just as the smell of bacon and eggs permeated the air. My cousin texted me, and I headed on down to sink my teeth into it. A small cup of orange juice and a big, piping hot mug of coffee completed the morning.

As far as sports go, our Alma mater UNC Charlotte (they call themselves Charlotte in the sports world) played, and were pretty much slapped around by, the North Carolina Tar Heels. Bowling Green University gave Penn State a scare, and number 5 Notre Dame were nipped by the Northern Illinois Huskies in an awesome upset. The prime-time game, North Carolina State University versus the University of Tennessee, was a bust as State were dragged all over Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium.

While the games played, we chatted about our roles as Assistive Technology Specialists. We also noted the recent availability of high-powered, AI-driven Phonak Hearing Aids (NOTE: those may or may not be the right ones). Anyhow, I’m considering trying to get those, as they’re supposed to be really good at filtering out background noise. I have a hearing test (Oh fun! Except not), scheduled for September 18th, at which point I will begin this conversation with my audiologist. Where the money will come from for such a thing? Well… we shall see. No doubt I need it though, to help my rising career.

After our day of fun, we got food from a restaurant called the Skrimp Shack. (They mean Shrimp, but ok haha). I had a giant chicken “sammich” that I could not eat entirely, and a big styrofoam to-go plate of fries (the small is really small, the large is really large, no in-between). The food was really good, though.

And that was the crux of a great Saturday and weekend. I’m writing this as we speed back toward Cary on Sunday morning from 6:45 till 9:45. A bit of amusement: as we departed Charlotte, the conductor said we would be arriving in Cary, our next station stop, in 25 minutes. Cary takes three hours to reach, as suggested by the time I just posted, and it is not our next stop coming out of Charlotte. He meant a town called Kannapolis. I can only assume that it was too early in the morning for him, as it is for me of no or very little sleep. Although for some strange reason I feel hopped up on energy right now. Let’s hope that lasts till my Carolina Panthers (NFL) play the New Orleans Saints at 1, and hopefully start this season off right. You can’t get much worse than our 2-15 record the previous season. I do hope more of these restorative weekends are in store, and that you are able to find a way to lift your spirits when needed as well.

SHIFTING SANDS:My Much-needed Trip to Myrtle Beach Part 3

Posted on by John

Friday, May 3. I awake a little after 8 AM, because I love listening to a local radio morning show as this is one of the best ways to get a feel for the area. I can kind of simulate this on my phone with apps like OoTunes, although it’s not quite the same given that I just go in and select the city I want and find a station. And it can be hard to tell if the station is actually in Myrtle Beach and not, say, Wilmington North Carolina. Ah, sometimes I miss my good ol’ analog walkman. I suppose I need to poke around and see if I can find something that simulates that closely enough.

Anyhow, I find a station, Mix 97, that I think is local to Myrtle Beach. The only thing they really talking about was the latest celebrity gossip, but this probably stems from the fact that I didn’t find it till nearly 9. The earlier you catch the show, the better.

We head out of our hotel room just after 10 to one of our Myrtle Beach favorites, Hot Stacks. It’s an area chain of breakfast restaurants that, as far as I can tell, only operate in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach. On this trip, I go with the sausage omelet and plain grits, eschewing something they have called Trash Grits. I would get these grits on Saturday, and they were actually much better than the plain grits as they had sausage gravy and flecks of some kind of meat in them. I joke with my wife that if they’d shredded napkins and straw wrappers into the grits, we the customers couldn’t really be surprised. We have that weird sense of humor. Hot Stacks also has delicious coffee, nearly on par with that found at Waffle House.

After eating, I get to explore again with my GPS apps as my wife heads over to the Carolina Pottery to check out some arts supplies. She’s made quite a business making rag wreaths, wooden signs and the like in particular and selling them via Etsy and Her website. If you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. At this location, she finds some hard-to-locate ribbons.

After a short jaunt back to the room to get ready, we head down to the beach with my cousin and his wife for the best part of the trip. The sun is dealt out in just the right measure, with clouds thrown in so we don’t become too toasty. My cousin and I sit on the shore and chat about our similar fields of employment. He is also an assistive technology training instructor, as many of us blind folks fortunate enough to have good jobs are. I just hope our work is starting to give people the skills to open more doors, though the larger change must happen at a societal level, as still too many think non-working eyes means incapable of work.

Anyhow, our wives frolic in the water as the tides roll in. Mine says she is nearly knocked down by a big wave and decides to migrate inland. I join her briefly in the surprisingly warm surf, heard the news say it’s unusually warm which portends a bad hurricane season. Let us hope not.

We wrap up our time waterside in a deliciously warm hot tub. Only I, genius that I am, neglect to take off my shirt as I enter the water. This made for a fairly cold, drippy walk back to the room. Y’all, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Beach time is chill time, so we sprawl on the couch a bit while watching the news before heading out for supper. We join our other couple for dinner, tonight at Giant Crab. They mainly have a buffet, which is kinda pricey at $48 a plate. But it is also pretty good. I have two crab cakes, two servings of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and shrimp. As we eat, we all allow some of our unique marital inside language and jokes to come out. This is one of the joys of being with someone for a long time, the unusual way we come to understand the world and create our own world.

And finally, we head to my cousin’s room on the 16th floor, where we spend a little more time on their balcony and then inside of their much nicer suite. The balcony is up so high that the ocean is a little more muffled. And that cool breeze starts to get to me after a while, because yup, no long-sleeved shirt. But overall, the night and my trip were just the vacation I needed. They help to reset my perspective as I continue to try and help people broaden theirs.

SHIFTING SANDS: My Much-needed Trip to Myrtle Beach Part 2

Posted on by John

Isn’t it funny how much easier it to wake up wen one is planning to travel? Heck, I also find it hard to sleep, mostly because I am and will likely always be a big kid.

After Wednesday’s tire craziness, we had decided we would wake at 10 AM. I am up by 8. I make my way to my mancave, taking care to grab my hearing aid kit (if I forget it I could have a very long trip indeed as it dries out wax and other moisture) and start packing. I try to remember to get a little of everything, jeans, shors, button-down shirts. But the one thing I don’t get and should have is a long-sleeved shirt. Hey, I can’t remember everything.

Before hitting the road, we make a stop at that venerable Southern institution Bojangle’s. The sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit they give me is actually tender and well cooked, and I’ll admit that this can be hit or miss as sometimes they’re hard and not very fresh tasting. But my favorite, the seasoned fries, really hit the spot. I settle in and prepare for the roughly three hour trip.

A big reason I love travel is the ability to discover. I have three GPS apps, and they all give me slightly different information as we zip through small North Carolina towns. Good ol’ Ariadne, in addition to being the one that produces maps I can tour with my fingers, tells me the exact street addresses and even some of the neighborhoods, if they are labeled. BlindSquare makes it easy to see GPS coordinates and nearby restaurants. And the Goodmaps Explore app displays real-time information on changing points of interest as we move, to a degree that BlindSquare does not. It can almost be too much information, but it is also fascinating to really get a look at what we’re passing.

Not that we passed too much as we wound down I-40 and Johnston County, to I-95 and Cumberland and Robeson Counties. Just over the South Carolina line, after passing through a town called Taybor City (Columbus County) on the NC border, we kind of lose the direct, interstate route and are forced to navigate a series of backroads until we finally arrive at Myrtle Beach proper, in Hory County.

We arrive at the Sea Watch resort at nearly 1:30, having made good time. We enter the North Tower lobby and are jostled about by excited passersby as they to get ready to enjoy their journey. Seasoned traveler that I am, I have my credit and ID cards out and on the counter practically before the person checking us in asks for them. We are given room 712 in the South tower, which in itself is 16 stories.

I remember during our last trip out of North Carolina prior to this one, way back in January of 2020 (because of Covid) we walked through an endless hall in a Tampa boutique hotel called West Wing and had a ta-da experience upon entering an amazing, large room. This room, while fairly large, was… let’s just say a lot less ta-da-ish. My wife said it still appeared stuck in the 90s, with a dirty landline phone (ever seen one of those?) rusty hangers in the closet, and spaghetti sauce droppings in the kitchenette. The Sea Watch is really a collection of condos, or rooms that different people owned, so you get a lot of variability from property to property. But then as someone on my Facebook said “you ain’t going there for the room.” True enough, though of course one still likes to have a place that makes one feel safe and comfortable.

Anyhow, we shuck our “road clothes” and don waterwear, me putting on a pair of shorts for the first time this season. But we don’t remain oceanside too long, because even with our nice new beach chairs, snacks, and cold water, the heat soon wins. Well I am not really too hot, mostly because I’m never hot. But I knew my wife had to be getting toasty with the sun remaining out, and I know that even if I’m not feeling hot I still have to be careful of sunburn and heatstroke.

Our evening wraps up with what is now a regular pilgrimage to Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen, this time joined by my cousin and his wife. A lot of fellowship is had, with conversation having been improved by the kind hostess who saw to it that we were seated in our own section to accommodate my cousin’s and my hearing difficulties. While we chat, I scarf down some delicious meatloaf, the best fried okra I’ve ever tasted, and macaroni and cheese that was pretty decent (I’m a harsh macaroni critic). Oh, and the biscuits that arrive before the family-style entrees get there can nearly fill you by themselves, so eat with care. I don’t even need dessert after this meal.

And that makes up my Thursday. It is very much the kind of day I need, as I fully emerge from Winter’s lingering effects. And there is more where that comes from on Friday.

SHIFTING SANDS: My Much-needed Trip to Myrtle Beach Part 1

Posted on by John

We’d planned this vacation just after Christmas, as my mom, wife, my cousin, his wife, and I sat in our humble home on the southeast Raleigh. Full off of some delicious eating at Logans, a chain steakhouse, we enjoyed relative warmth inside, and contemplated where outside warmth might be had.

The idea was to take my always-hard-working mom down to the beach, as she doesn’t do a whole lot of traveling. We decided the first weekend of May, this weekend, would be a good one, as it is typically warm but the beach is not yet crowded. My cousin and his wife have a timeshare, so they booked in their property of choice, the Sea Watch Resort. I then booked a room for me and my wife in that same hotel. And I felt happier already, because having this trip to look forward to would make staying on the work grind easier. It’s always better when you feel you’re working toward something, right?

So time passed, and a week or so out my mom said she would be unable to make it due to something having come up. Also we had initially scheduled to remain out there from Thursday to Sunday, but my wife asked that I move our checkout day to Saturday so she could get us back in time to relax a little before returning to her teaching duties. This was all fine and good, and I was just happy we would get to go in some capacity.

well… sort of. Our story begins, inauspiciously, on Wednesday night with a nail. The first thing we needed to do was get the dog to my sister-in-law’s house so she could be looked after. The nice thing about our tiny Pomeranian, and I know I’ve written at least one entry about her but am assuming you won’t feel like trying to find it, is that she is easily taken care of. She only needs food and pee pads and she’s good to go, similar to a cat.

So we made the 30-minute ride across Wake County to drop our furry child off, chattering and feeling increasingly excited about the days of sun-splashed sprawling that awaited. Went inside and chatted, as the dog in residence, a biggermix of Pomeranian and some other breed, greeted our arrival. He’s older, but still hanging in there. Fortunately for us, we’d only stayed inside for about 20 minutes.

as I slid into the front seat and buckled in, my wife said she was hungry and we began the usual dance of trying to figure out where to get dinner. As she started the motor however, we heard the ominous beep that means the car is telling us something. Turns out the PSI in the back right tire was dropping fast. The other three held steady at 37, while that one had already plummeted to 25. Being the glass-half-empty person I am (I know I know, I’m really trying to work on that mentality) I feared the trip was gonna be swallowed before we even hit the highway. And worse, we were already inside of the 24-hours one has prior to arrival that the hotel reservation could be canceled. So I’d also be eating $200+. Great!

Off we went, slowly losing speed along the way as the pressure continued to drop. She swung by her dealership, already closed as it was 6:30. So she plugged in (ha, ha) a query for places to fix tires, and came across a Pep Boys that would stay open till just 8. Happily it was only a little over three miles away, so we practically limped over there as the pressure was down to 21 PSI.

“Can you help,” she asked the woman as we got there.

“We’ll take a look,” she replied (there are four cars ahead of you.”

So I collected my things and followed her inside, where the temperature was set to frigid and the air smelled so heavily of rubber that my head immediately hurt. I tried to read, found it hard to concentrate as we contemplated the possilibity that we’d be parting with a big chunk of change for new tires or significant repairs. 7 became 7:30 became 8:00, and the place emptied out. Finally, mercifully, they got to our ride. As luck would have it, we were the last customers to be seen, well after 8 as we had arrived early enough. They told us, a little before 9, that she had inded run over a rogue nail and the tire only required a patch. $25 and lot of relief, and we were good to go again! And with that, your friendly neighborhood pesimist learned a lesson again in how things can indeed work out in the end. More, hopefully, on the actual trip tomorrow. Or Monday? Sometime within the week!