"Sailing the Seven Seas" Sidewalk Style

I believe in “Have Crutches Will Travel”, I shared what a find it was using my dog and a cobbled together wheelchair to spirit me about Prince Edward Island and Maine with my grandchildren.  But I wrote that in the middle of the trip and I feel the need to sing my dogs praises even more, for in each new place we stayed, this one-dog-open-sleigh took me to all the sights I wanted to see.  Blessings galore, on my 12 yr. old, Brittany who had the ability to race me along anywhere at wheel-rattling speed.

I also shared with you how on the coast of RI, I discovered the leash could perform just like a rudder.  If the curve of the road was tipping me one way or the other, I just had to hold the leash farther to the right or left and it would right me again. 

On the Cape, Tuck and I and a friend and her dogs were able to barrel along the beautiful Shining Sea Bikeway in Falmouth that goes right through Sippiwisset Marsh. It is one of the most studied salt marshes in the world for it is in close proximity to Woods Hole and studying marshes is what they do.  The views were stupendous, of vibrantly green marshes with osprey still circling and crying overhead. 
 

  We saw some adding fresh branches to their nest in preparation for leaving it over the winter.  It’s a touchingly optimistic thing to do, “Just one or two branches and I am sure it will hold through any Northeaster”, they must think.  Sadly, the many stripped clean platforms you see after a hard winter would prove otherwise.  Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In Baltimore where my daughter lives just blocks from the Inner Harbor, Tuck and I and a dear friend from Science Museum days, strolled and wheeled our way past tourists. Scaffolding and tents were going up everywhere in preparation for the Star Spangled week when they would celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the national anthem.  We struck two old men sitting on a bench as such “fun ladies” that we earned a marriage proposal.  I’m telling you; this dog-pulled wheelchair is a winner!

In Illinois where everything is flat, and sidewalks still exit, Tuck and I and my daughter and her newly, rescued dog, Willow would sally forth each morning.  The challenge of this walk was NOT to have my shoulder ripped out each time another lithe squirrel shot across our path. No damage done and after the Type 2 diabetes squirrels that dine regularly at my feeder, I couldn’t get over how sleek these Midwest ones were. 

They had paved a path through a native prairie park that I took my first Brittany walking through so many years ago, so how full circle it felt to not be kept from that delight now.  Even when I stayed overnight at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, I was able to hitch him up and away through the golf course we went. 

Now I am back home, in the Hill Country. And right away you might detect the fly in my ointment.  The HILL country.  A steep hill presents itself the minute I walk out my door, and another on the road to the mailbox and even steeper ones where we walked each day.  Stink.  He and I are having the same readjustment blues we had when I first moved here and couldn’t believe we were no longer walking off-leash through forests and dunes and swimming in nearby ponds.  It makes us sad.  I have months more to go in this boot and you just can’t help but lurch slowly when you try to walk, and a crutch is still needed.

I do have an amazing opportunity to return East to my husband’s reunion at West Point but this time Tuck can’t come, nor will I have my homemade wheelchair, so although it will be such an amazing thing to get to see fall and friends again so soon, Tuck will be sorely missed.  Nona just might not seem as fun as a gimping pirate as she was as a chariot of fire!  But hats off to you Tuck, for making me the coolest, fast-moving, fractured-leg Nona for a while. I will never forget it.