With my mother-in-law in a wheelchair and a brother-in-law in a wheelchair for almost 30 years before he died, I’m just a little bit sensitive to healthy people parking in handicap parking. It’s wrong when people with no disabilities use a space designated for the disabled.

Sometimes I see people who seem to get around as good as I do get out of a car in a restricted spot that has a disability mirror tag or a disability license plate. I suppose that some of them may have a disability not obvious to the casual observer that warrants limiting their walking distance. I suspect, though, that in some instances they don’t need the tag any longer or, even, that they are using someone else’s tag or vehicle.

The other day, I saw a young couple park an old pickup truck in a handicap spot and then walk briskly into Walmart. I checked the vehicle and it had a disability license plate. There was no way that that plate was for either one of them!

Granted, the new supercenters generally have more handicapped parking than is needed. However, the parking is supposed to be reserved for those who need it.

Handicap tags or license plates are not intended to bestow special parking privileges to anyone who happens to be driving that vehicle. They provided to make access easier for those who have more than enough difficulties in their life.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

Images from a hike that we took on January 6, 2007 have been added to the Petit Jean State Park Photo Gallery. It was a warm winter day, great for a hike, and there were quite a few folks on the trail.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

We’ve been almost completely away from internet access the last few days.

We spent a little less that a week in Texas, but a bad infection in my left leg has brought us back home again.

The good news is that it wasn’t what the emergency room doctor originally diagnosed – deep vein thrombosis – a blood clot. The ultrasound showed the vein to be clear and that it had good flow.

So I guess I’ll be on antibiotics for at least a week – more if this doesn’t clear up.

We’ll probably not hit the road again until late April or early May. With the cold going so far south, we’ve decided to skip Padre Island and Big Bend for this year. Besides, depending on how long this takes to heal, we might only have time to drive down, spend a little time down there and then turn around and come back home.

I guess the title of this post gives a hint that I didn’t swing wide enough and wasn’t watching my trailer in my mirrors.

We were a couple of hundred miles down the road from home and had just left the Texas Travel Welcome Center at Texarkana, planning to get off I30 soon to get fuel. On the first exit, I spotted a station I thought I could get into. However it was on the wrong side of the road and the lanes, combined with traffic were such that I could not get into the turning lane at the light. So, I turned into the right hand lane and, seeing some parking lots where I could turn around down the road to the right, I turned right at the light – and then left, less than a block away, into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant. I thought I had plenty of room, but…

I guess I felt it in the way the truck and trailer were moving. I really didn’t hear anything. I turned way too short and the side of the trailer just forward of the living room slide came in contact with a 1995 Pontiac – fortunately the only car on that side of the camper. The car was pushed forward over the curb, breaking off a water line and sending a fountain of water into the air.

The trailer wasn’t damaged severely. There’s some metal from the corner of the slide that is pulled up and away, exposing some wood underneath, and the plastic doorway to the waste tanks’ slide valves doesn’t stay closed. Looks like a job for duct tape. We plan on continuing on with this trip and, before we get into any wet weather, I will have that area protected to keep the wet out!

Lesson learned the hard way! – Swing Wide and use your mirrors!

My fever broke around midnight and we are slowly getting ready to hit the road. Karen wants to make sure I don’t overdo it and have a relapse. We should be out of here by 1030. Of course that means we won’t get very far into Texas today. We don’t have any desire to set up in an unfamiliar campground after dark.

Well after spending a couple hours getting the last stuff done, we decided to take a break and warm up. While sitting in the house, I started feeling really really bad, so we decided to put off our departure again! My temperature got up to over 102°F! I spent most of the afternoon dosing in and out while sitting in my recliner.

We’ll get out of here yet!

(I had been feeling poorly for a few days, but the posts related to that have gone missing – MpG 2/7/2009)

On one of my other blogs, I get quite a bit of comment spam – I need to upgrade to a more secure version of WordPress.

So I’m skimming through the comments to make sure that I don’t dump any legitimate comments – and then I see a comment that says, “Please do not delete it. I need money.”

That’s a little different approach – and, of course, I’m going to delete it.

And then a little later, I find a comment that says, “Pleasse Do not delete this urls , i need money for my child.”

Deleted!

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

No fever. I guess we’ll be working towards leaving sometime this morning unless I get to feeling worse. Still have a few last minute items before we pull out.

A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011

My intent is to post at least daily to this blog. Since my last post was 6 days ago, I’m obviously not meeting that intent.

I guess this has been somewhat of a busy week. We had planned to leave on Thursday on our first extended excursion away from home. With all that we wanted to do, that got delayed until Friday. Yet here I am late on Saturday night, we’re still not ready to go and we’re hitting the road Monday morning. The change from Friday to Monday was made to avoid traveling in wintery weather – which went north of us instead of south. Oh, well..

The nice thing about it is that it really doesn’t matter. We’re not on a schedule. We had no reservations and no definite plans. We’ll be taking several days to get down to the Corpus Christi area and will likely stay at state parks along the way. We don’t have a portable satellite internet dish and modem yet so we won’t be on-line every day.