There is a very strange phenomenon when you are on crutches and attempt to cross a road. As a standard pedestrian you stand there at the edge of the road for three hours in the pouring rain while drivers aim at puddles to splash you. However as soon as you are on crutches (and the slower you are going the more it happens) cars automatically stop for you and let you cross. Now as a pedestrian this is a fantastic thing to happen, however as a slow moving crutch user you are acutely aware of a queue of cars about the same length as the queue on a motorway in mid-summer following an accident. This pressure makes you more and more anxious until you are attempting to use your crutches as monkey bars to swing across the road thus increasing exponentially the chance of said crutch user ending up flat on their face in the middle of the road (luckily this phenomenon occurs about five times as often within sight of a hospital.
Having spent many years trying to avoid eye contact with friendly drivers who will insist on letting you cross, after my first physio appointment on Monday I ended up in a deadlock situation. I had a Jeep desperately waving me across the road that I had spotted as the ideal chance to pause and rest after the agony of physio. After a few minuted of resolutely staring at the floor and waiting the Jeep was still sitting there waving me on. Eventually giving in I began to cross, going at my own speed for once, at which point the driver who is obviously used to the aforementioned monkey bar approach began to get restless and inch forward causing me to give up on my own speed and fling myself the rest of the way across the road coming to rest face first on a lovely comfortable, friendly, unassuming wall.
That was my first experience of moving around outside alone since the surgery (I was crossing the road to the pre-arranged meeting point to be picked up and delivered home so it was probably a total of about 200yards walking alone (incidentally taking about 20minutesin full). This leads me on to my second solo outing, this time with the assistance of an (almost) fully charged Rory. Now my first post-op expedition on Rory was yesterday which ended after about 5 minutes when he decided that he was actually hungry and not going to go any further (he was coaxed home with some pushing from behind).
For some reason the concept of going into town on my own was terrifying, especially as the bag that straps to the back of Rory and holds my crutches in undergoing surgery therefore leaving me devoid of crutches. All was going well until I got to the end of the road at which point I was somewhat trapped by the fact that some MORON had ILLEGALLY parked his rust bucket on the only drop curb in two streets. This was not a good start to a journey that was already somewhat stressing me out. However by the time I'd had some time zooming round and got over my irrational fear of toppling over on a slope it actually went pretty well, well up until I tried to get back up the same drop curb with the same rust bucket illegally parked (incidentally he has also been parked for more than 2 hours in a residential zone WITHOUT a residents thingy-oh and I'm not a fan of him!!!!!!!!!!!)
Having spent many years trying to avoid eye contact with friendly drivers who will insist on letting you cross, after my first physio appointment on Monday I ended up in a deadlock situation. I had a Jeep desperately waving me across the road that I had spotted as the ideal chance to pause and rest after the agony of physio. After a few minuted of resolutely staring at the floor and waiting the Jeep was still sitting there waving me on. Eventually giving in I began to cross, going at my own speed for once, at which point the driver who is obviously used to the aforementioned monkey bar approach began to get restless and inch forward causing me to give up on my own speed and fling myself the rest of the way across the road coming to rest face first on a lovely comfortable, friendly, unassuming wall.
That was my first experience of moving around outside alone since the surgery (I was crossing the road to the pre-arranged meeting point to be picked up and delivered home so it was probably a total of about 200yards walking alone (incidentally taking about 20minutesin full). This leads me on to my second solo outing, this time with the assistance of an (almost) fully charged Rory. Now my first post-op expedition on Rory was yesterday which ended after about 5 minutes when he decided that he was actually hungry and not going to go any further (he was coaxed home with some pushing from behind).
For some reason the concept of going into town on my own was terrifying, especially as the bag that straps to the back of Rory and holds my crutches in undergoing surgery therefore leaving me devoid of crutches. All was going well until I got to the end of the road at which point I was somewhat trapped by the fact that some MORON had ILLEGALLY parked his rust bucket on the only drop curb in two streets. This was not a good start to a journey that was already somewhat stressing me out. However by the time I'd had some time zooming round and got over my irrational fear of toppling over on a slope it actually went pretty well, well up until I tried to get back up the same drop curb with the same rust bucket illegally parked (incidentally he has also been parked for more than 2 hours in a residential zone WITHOUT a residents thingy-oh and I'm not a fan of him!!!!!!!!!!!)
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