Maybe it’s the pandemic or all the jet setting we’d been doing in the half decade it became our new “normal,” but I’d forgotten how much I love the open road until we pointed the nose of the White Whale southbound toward California on the interstate Saturday morning. The 33-foot, fully accessible 2008 Winnebago Vista…
Category: What a trip
The Next Chapter Begins…
If my first four decades on this spinning rock have taught me anything, it is that my life rarely goes according to plan. From calamitous road trips to disastrous air travel fiascoes, we’ve long since established that the hard-earned lessons learned on life’s detours are just as important as our intended destinations. After all, that’s…
Retracing Our Steps
Three years? How is that possible? I’m finding it hard to wrap my head around the fact that it was exactly three years ago tonight that Claire, the Bobbsey’s, and I were laid up in the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan, collectively shell-shocked after my first legitimate attempt at post-injury air travel went so sideways…
The Revolution Will Not Be Paralyzed
Last week’s trip to DC was our shortest yet, but we packed quite a bit into those four days in terms of advocacy, growth, and memories made. Being my third year at the ROCH, I wasn’t as awed by the idea that I was about to be rolling through House, Senate, and Capitol buildings. Granted, not…
Spent.
The bottom line of my drive screen says it all. Another day on Capitol Hill with my tribe of squeaky wheels. Too many connections to count and just enough hijinks to keep it weird. It all ended with a three-block push from Mama Dreadlocks & The Mrs. on brand-new batteries that couldn’t make it three…
When in Rome
Maybe it was the lack of chaos that made everything feel so simple or perhaps we’d soaked in just enough of the whole atmosphere over the last couple years by osmosis. Either way it was a little surprising how easily we seemed to slip into advocacy mode today. Much of of the morning and afternoon…
Here We Go Again
It’s interesting, these paths The Universe chooses for you. It was two years ago tonight that my first trip to the East Coast for United Spinal’s Roll on Capitol Hill went from disastrous to borderline absurd. What was supposed to be an epic vacation down the eastern seaboard to see the sights and advocate on…
The Airlines Broke My Legs… Again
Just wanted to thank everyone for the outpouring of support over the last 24 hours. It took about a million zip ties to put my chair into something passable for a seating system to get me home late last night. We were able to piece together the chair United broke last year so that I…
Full Circle
There is a Kierkegaard quote that says, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” After taking a couple days to decompress from our travels, it’s time to take a look back at the last few days of this trip and see what I can learn. The first and most obvious lesson: What a difference a functioning…
Consistently Inconsistent
Day five started off quite similar to its counterparts from previous road trips with the whole crew nursing a bit of a hangover. I suppose it is the expected outcome from a late-night out chasing drugs earlier in the week, only there were no hazy memories of wild times with which to partially justify the feeling. Even sleeping in a bit later than…
Kenny Salvini 