This essay, a surprisingly well-written one for Examiner.com, describes a new trend in health travel:
Floating For Relaxation in Scottsdale, AZ
The pods look like something from a cheesy 70s sci-fi movie, but the concept appeals to me. I like floating in salt water, and I definitely need all the relaxation assistance I can get. Perhaps I’ll check out the one in Blue Lake next time I’m wandering around in NorCal:
Posted in Spas and Luxury Travel | Tagged float pods, healing waters, health wellness travel, isolation tanks | Leave a Comment »
Gee, this sounds like fun:
Now seems like a good time to make a confession: I don’t want to go to India. Most people look at me and say “Uh, who cares?” But in the land of travel writers, the lack of desire to spend half my life in poverty ridden, war torn, Third World countries makes me a heretic.
The article above describes beautifully why a person with a bathroom related disability or illness should not attempt to travel in rural areas of less developed countries. With chronic pain and a bladder flare, I don’t know what I’d do if my toilet options involved squatting over a pile of poo in a fly-ridden outhouse. I’d probably find myself one of those boulders the author talked about and take up residence behind it for the duration of my stay in the region.
Which, come to think of it, would make a fine and noble travel article. If I did it in a number of different unpleasant places across the world, I could probably get a whole book out of it. Heaven knows that during the travel and research part of things I’d get to suffer for my art.
Oh wait…I don’t want to go to India. It might be sacreligious to my profession, but I think I’m going to stick with that as a mantra.
Posted in Bathrooms | Tagged bathrooms travel, chronic pain travel, restrooms Asia, toilets India | Leave a Comment »
Check this out–pajama jeans!
These are pajamas made to look like jeans. I haven’t gotten a chance to try them yet, so I can’t offer a comfort review. But the concept looks promising. Like so many of us with chronic pain, I can’t wear jeans for any length of time. And jeans are the ubiquitous travel garment for both men and women. So any comfort-focused facsimile of jeans grabs my attention.
If any of my dear readers have tried the pajama jeans, please post a comment!
Posted in Links | Tagged disabled travel womens clothing, pajama jeans | 1 Comment »
While this blog post by Carol Oldham O’Hara was written for folks traveling in wheelchairs or on scooters, the planning steps will work equally well for travelers with hidden disabilities:
Posted in Travel Tips | Tagged accessible travel, disability travel planning | Leave a Comment »
Doesn't this look like fun? Except for the "fun" part.
I’ve read a bunch of articles about winter camping in the last couple of months. Most of the articles make winter camping sound great, what with the uncrowded campgrounds, pristine air quality, and beautiful winter wilderness. I admit that the wilderness in winter is spectacular. A single walk through silent snow-frosted woods can change my mood for months. If I’m feeling spry, downhill skiing is one of my favorite sports in the world. Even when I feel like crap, I adore sitting in a window watching a storm blow in from the ocean.
But camping in it?
Been there, done that…here’s what winter camping really means, travel writers’ hyperbole aside:
Step 1: Drive out to a suitable campground, probably in the woods or by a beach. If there’s weather, drive through it, getting as tense and stressed as necessary to navigate treacherous slick roads, four-wheel drive and chain snow conditions, and low visibility.
Step 2: Exit the car warm, dry car into whatever weather conditions prevail. No umbrellas–it’s time to set up camp! Assemble tent and sleeping bags, secure food, and arrange anything else that’s needed for the trip.
Step 3: Build a fire. Hopefully I remembered to pack some dry wood and tinder, because reasonably combustible materials don’t always abound in soggy forests in February.
Step 3: Then it’s time to cook up a meal and eat it! Outdoors in the cold or rain or snow, I fire up my Coleman stove and heat up a nice can of beans or soup. Then I take a seat on the provided slab of chilled wood (aka picnic bench) and chow down on my feast.
Step 4: Find the bathroom. If I’m shivering my way across a formal campground, a charming concrete block building or a smelly little outhouse will be someplace within a couple hundred yards. If I’m doing the dispersed camping thing, the “bathroom” will consist of some sort of camp toilet perched behind a tree.
Step 5: Go to bed. That is, crawl into my nylon dome tent and zip myself into a super-arctic-uncomfortable-mummy-style sleeping bag that sold for cheap at the big-box discount store. The cold seeping up from the ground, the hard ground, and the sharp rocks and sticks ares not quelled by the 1/2 inch foam camping pad that lies under my sleeping bag.
Step 6: Repeat steps 4 and 5 several times throughout the night.
Step 7: Slog out of the tent, make coffee, drink coffee, eat a cereal bar. Attempt to hike, fish, or do some other outdoorsy activity. Shiver a lot.
Step 8: Over the course of several hours, curl into an exhausted, pain-racked, frozen ball of misery. Repeat steps 3, 4, and 5.
Step 9: Go home, with an optional stopover at the nearest ER for a refreshing bag of warmed IV saline and a couple of hits of Toredol. Spend the next 5 days in bed recovering from my weekend getaway.
Winter camping is NOT a viable lodging option for most travelers with chronic pain. I don’t recommend even trying it–the potential is far too high for brutal misery during the trip, followed by days or weeks in bed recovering from the so-called vacation. For that matter, winter camping doesn’t work too well even for the fittest, healthiest of female travelers. If you can’t pee out of a 1-inch unzipped gap in a tent door while your sleeping bag and jammies cover 99% of your body, winter camping sucks. Trust me.
Posted in Misadventures, Parks and Outdoor Travel | Tagged camping humor, chronic pain camping, travel humor, winter camping | 7 Comments »
The youthful city of San Francisco is known for its wacky politics, creative spirit, and out-there artistry—the Burning Man festival started on a beach right here in the City. Here are a few museums that capture and display modern art that reflects San Francisco:
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Friends and locals call this downtown art museum – with an uptown reputation and collection – the SFMOMA (you’ll see the acronym on signs all over downtown SF). Its galleries full of funky furniture, colorful photos, splashy paintings, and bizarre yet beautiful multimedia installations have been known to delight and occasionally disgust visitors. Whether you love modern art or hate it, the SFMOMA’s collections and exhibitions are always entertaining. SFMOMA lies right in the midst of the Yerba Buena Garden art district, easily accessible from the W San Francisco hotel. 151 Third Street (btwn Mission & Howard)
Traveling with Pain? Modern art museums often make great spots, if of course you can tolerate the art.
The SFMOMA has wide aisles and good wheelchair accessibility features. In all honesty, I can’t remember whether it’s got good seating in the galleries or not. It’s been a few years since I last made it to an exhibition there.
The de Young has great art and good space to move around in. But the seating is cruddy–there are few viewing benches or seats in the galleries with the art. Last time I needed to sit down at the de Young, I had to go hunting for a spot to plant myself and ended up on a hard bench in an empty hallway near the bathroom. No fun. The food at the cafeteria is awesome (grass-fed hamburgers, local vegetarian salads, daily-changing entrees), but the line gets equally awesome around lunchtime.
Because it screens films and puts up live shows, the seating prospects at the Yerba Buena Center look better than the average museum. One of these days I’ll have to check it out.
Posted in California travel, City Guide | Tagged de Young Museum, San Francisco modern art museums, SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Gardens | Leave a Comment »
Vichy Shower Room at Remede Spa, Singapore
While I could turn myself into a pain-minimized human prune just sitting in a tub of water all day, fancier water-based spa treatments abound across the world. Some of them actually have names that include the word ”hydrotherapy.”
Calistoga Mud Baths
This treatment mixes volcanic ash, organic matter, and local hot mineral water to create Calistoga’s signature spa treatment. The result is…unique. I was taken aback on my first trip to a mud bath room, what with the big tile boxes of dirt, the industrial hoses, and the drains in the floor. The next weird part was getting into the mud. The spa attendant explained how to wriggle and squoosh down into the big box of hot wet dirt, personal center of gravity (butt) first. During this wriggling, the mud found its way into every crack and crevice of my body. It took three showers and a bath to get the stuff back out and off of me.
Next time I’m in Calistoga, I’ll probably stick with a plain ol’ mineral bath.
Thalasso Hydrotherapy
Thalasso hydrotherapy involves big, lush pools filled with highly regulated sea water, plus showers and waterfalls that cascade over specially designed and placed seats to create optimal healing and relaxation. This article on a fab new blog I found last week, Health *Conscious* Travel, describes Thalasso hydrotherapy in detail. I’ve gotta check this out sometime, though apparently it’s still necessary to go to France, Spain, or Tahiti to find a Thalasso spa. Maybe I’ll try the one in Mexico–at least it’s on the same continent I inhabit. Whether it cures me or not, it looks deliciously luxurious.
Vichy Shower
A Vichy shower is a bunch of shower heads lined up in a row that hang above a spa table. The showeree lies on the table (which is usually covered in plastic) and enjoys the sensation of a full-body shower lying down.
Frankly, the Vichy shower apparatus doesn’t look all that relaxing. But the sensation makes up for the industrial appearance of the equipment–it is precisely the most relaxing multi-jet shower I ever took lying down. Plus I usually close my eyes as the shower starts up.
Posted in Spas and Luxury Travel | Tagged Calistoga mud bath, chronic pain travel, healing waters, hydrotherapy, hydrotherapy travel, Thalasso, Vichy shower | 1 Comment »
The Calistoga Ranch
So where’s a good place to soak in some vacation relaxation?
The waters of a few choice places on the planet are legendary for their healing powers. Sick people have been “taking the waters” for thousands of years at Vichy (the one in France more than the one in Ukiah), Bath, Spa (yes really–it’s in Belgium), Icaria, Taiwan, and Rio Hondo. Whether you choose to believe in the miraculous healing powers of a specific spring or not, I can tell you that soaking in a hot tub feels great to all my aches and pains.
Because I’m a California-specialist travel writer, the spas and springs I know best flow like…well, like regular water often doesn’t here in the Straw-Colored State. I’ve soaked in these spots personally:
Calistoga
Before the hip small town of Calistoga became best known for anchoring the north end of the Napa Valley wine region, the hot springs lured visitors looking for a different kind of liquid fix. Most of the spa-motel-hotel-resorts cluster around the Lincoln & Washington downtown intersection. The signature Calistoga mud bath treatment isn’t for everyone, but it’s hard not to love the swimming pools, warm tubs, and hot tubs full of local mineral water. It’s not even necessary to sign up for a spa treatment or to stay at a spendy resort to spend time soaking in Calistoga–mineral water flows from the showers and fills the pools at the spa resorts, free for use by hotel patrons.
Esalen, Big Sur
The Esalen Institute perches atop the cliffs of Big Sur, many miles from much of anything else on Highway 1. Before you book a massage or line up at the gate at 1am to gain access to the legendary local mineral tubs, be warned: Esalen is a New Age retreat center, a noted green-liberal think tank, and a place where naked hippies of all genders soak in big hot tubs together.
There’s no privacy at the Esalen tubs, and “clothing optional” pretty much means “everybody will be nekkid.” Strangers starting conversations in this situation can take some getting used to. If you’d prefer to keep to yourself, stick to the Silent side of the hot tub area where you can enjoy the amazing views and soothing water in quiet.
In fact, I find that the atmosphere at Esalen encourages meditation and guided imagery practices. The energy flowing through the hot tub area can aid in healing and soothing of spirit, if you believe in that sort of thing.
River Oaks, Paso Robles
I don’t know what it is about wine and hot springs that go together so well in California. Several springs share space with the vineyards in the Paso Robles region. The River Oaks spa lies on the grounds of a country club well outside of town and can be a pain to find, but it’s worth the time and trouble to get there. The tub rooms have a distinctive Japanese style, complete with a breezy (but totally private) indoor-outdoor feel. I admit that I don’t love the sulphur smell of the spring water, which permeates the whole spa. But I’ll deal if it means I can enjoy a long deep soak in one of the tubs.
Posted in California travel, Spas and Luxury Travel | Tagged California mineral springs, Calistoga, Esalen Big Sur, hot springs, River Oaks Paso Robles | 1 Comment »
I’ve been caught by the TSA several times carrying prohibited items. A bottle of water, a book of matches…all stuff I’ve forgotten to take out of my purse or tote bag before I pack it up for my trip. These little oversights can occasionally cause me a few minutes’ inconvenience. Of course, I don’t shoot guns as a major hobby.
If you both shoot and travel by air, word to the wise…pick out a sports or tote bag to use to transport guns, ammunition, and safety equipment to the range or to the woods. Dedicate that bag to its purpose. Never, ever throw a few things into that particular bag before hitting the airport. Else you may find yourself in the uncomfortable position of explaining to a small crowd of TSA agents how it happens that you’re trying to get through security with stray bullets in your bag.
Oops.
Posted in Misadventures, Travel Tips | Tagged travel humor, TSA tips | Leave a Comment »
Technically, this isn’t about travel. But it goes straight to my heart, or rather to my pelvis.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ic/2010/01/08/living-with-interstitial-cystitis
I plan to listen if I can, partly because I’m not a big believer in raw food diets or veganism. Neither is my holistic nutritionist, interestingly enough. And to eat that way on travel would be to add a thick layer of complication to any vacation. But…I want to know what science and rationale these ladies can provide, and the descriptions of how they’ve been helped by this diet. I try to keep an open mind, or at least an open ear for tips on diminishing my pain.
Posted in Health Information | Tagged blogtalkradio, IC, interstitial cystitis, raw food vegan diet | Leave a Comment »
