Travel Tip #8: Take a friend!

I used to travel solo.

Now I rarely travel on my own.

This might be the biggest change to my travel habits since acquiring my disability.

Back at Mile 21, when I was just learning to walk again, longtime friends Jen and Polly convinced me -- and all my new equipment -- to take a road trip to Maine. 

We stuffed the trunk with a zillion supplies:

shower chair,
prosthetic pieces,
crutches,
medications,

shrinkers,
first-aid creams,
alcohol spray,
and a portable DVD player I watched at night when I couldn't sleep.

On that trip, I felt exposed and vulnerable in ways I had never imagined.

Like passing TRUCKS on the highway...

...adapting to a hotel room, walking with an ice cream cone, and sweating out of my prosthesis, exhausted, on the way back from dinner.

But I also felt -- for the first time -- a freedom that I thought was lost from my life forever.

I was traveling.

And my C-Leg was at sea!
(Or Casco Bay, anyway.)

Since that milestone trip, I've learned the value of not going it alone.  

Friends are great in case of emergency and, of course, for helping with bags.  But they also boost our confidence and help us laugh at mishaps.  (Which, for me, still happen many times a day!)

Most of all, taking a friend along reminds us that we ALL have strengths and challenges.

That we're all adaptive travelers in our own way.

Walk on,
Rebecca 

P.S. Read the postcard from Mile 21 here: The Way Life Should Be.