Man Sneezes, is Rushed to Hospital

OK. Yesterday's first effort at the blog interface was not without a few bumps in the road but overall it was successful. Today comes the attempt to mimic the conditions on our trip. While out and about we will not have constant access to the internet. So we need to determine the best way to create messages in a computer then move them over to the blog site once we are connected.

Yesterday, Scott tried the following technique: He created a post in the blog's compose window. Then he copied that text into a Word document. Then he added more to it, copied all of it, and pasted it back into the compose window. For some reason, this caused the paragraph spacing to disappear completely. Odd. It is possible to post to the blog by sending an email so today Scott is creating this in Word, he'll paste it into an email and email it to the blog. We'll see how that goes. Anyone using this site for their own blogs (*cough* Ken) is welcome to chime in with advice here. (Seriously, folks, you've GOT to check out Ken's blog . . .)

As many of you know, Scott and Amy are planning to see the entire country in little bits and pieces. Last year we used Yahoo briefcase to upload text documents and images from our journey. This worked well enough for us but many people reported difficulty accessing the documents. Some gave up entirely. (If anyone's interested, they're still online.) So this year we're trying the blog. We'll start before the trip, test things out, see how they work. If it proves unreliable maybe we'll have time to make an adjustment before we leave.

Last year, Scott wrote most of the text while Amy took the majority of the pictures and did the image editing, naming, and uploading work. That seemed to work well. Loading images directly into the blog, while possible, seemed cumbersome yesterday and that was while attached to a T1. Grabbing some random wi-fi spot in Billings, MT may yield a slower connection. So we may be linking to images we upload to ImageStation, Amy's preferred online photo processor. It might work this way: If you want to see a picture of our great campsite from last year in Chamberlin, SD along the Missouri River, it's available here.

And now a little more background on this year's trip. Most of you know that we'll be flying out with a little more baggage than the airlines will typically allow. The last few months have been tough. For those who may not be entirely in the loop, here's a quick recap:

On February 22, Scott found his mother who had committed suicide in her condo (this date will forever be burned in his brain: 2/22/06 . . . 2+2+2=6). Much of what has transpired since then has been a bit of a blur for him.

Then, almost three months later to the day - on May 23 - Amy's grandmother passed away. She was 96, still living at home, and had been sick for a while. It was not unexpected. But it has not been easy either.

And Amy's mother was hospitalized at this time due to some sort of respiratory disorder which has not yet been fully explained. She is out of the hospital as of this writing, but not 100%.

The following Monday (Memorial Day), Scott fell into his father's swimming pool while attempting to clean leaves off the bottom with one of those nets attached to a long pole, pool-boy gadgets. Basically, he stepped off the edge of the pool without realizing it. There was enough water to break his fall but he hit his left rear rib cage on the steps and wrenched his right knee. The ribs and knee have been taking turns being more painful. Saturday morning, Scott stretched while lying in bed, felt a pop in his rib cage and it hurt for a while. But then it got much better. Tuesday evening, Scott sneezed. This resulted in near vomit-level pain and Amy rushed him to the Marlborough Clinic where they x-rayed his ribs, saw nothing unusual, gave him a shot of some sort of pain killer and sent him home with Percocet and some good, sound medical advice: If it hurts, don't do it. ("Doc, it hurts when I do this . . .") This morning he feels much better. Almost like he never fell. Almost. He'll be marketing his simple, two step, Stretch-n-Sneeze (TM) plan for rib pain reduction upon his return from the trip. The knee, too, has been getting better with help from the good folks at Regional Physical Therapy.

We are desperately looking forward to getting away for a while and experiencing the wide open spaces of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

Now it’s time to see how easy it to post this . . .