Thanksgiving Week Trip

Thanksgiving was a good excuse for a test run for the upcoming cross-country trip that I've been planning. We rented a Ford Fusion Hybrid from Getaround for a week and went down to socal. It was a 1000+ mile trip spanning LA and San Diego on I5 and then US101/CA1. Yeah, I paid price for this trip and struggled when I came back. More on it later.

Day 1 - Drive all day to San Diego (7000 Steps)
It was not a good start. The trip planning was rather stressful and I fatigued out despite the preemptive rest of 2 days. I had to frequently  pull over, crawl to the backseat and lie down with my legs sticking out the window for 15 minutes at a time. How I wished the car would drive itself. You know how just  holding the steering wheel can be a struggle if you are a CFS patient. When we got to Fresno, I emailed Tesla to add the autopilot option on my order of Tesla S. An $8000 option, but it will be well worth, especially for CFS patients, if it does what it promises to do.

To make things worse, I did not account for the traffic in LA. By the time we got there it was a rush hour and the freeways were all clogged up. After 30 minutes of futile attempt, I gave up and headed to my sister's house in LA instead. We had dinner, stayed there till 8PM and then restarted to San Diego. It was past 10 PM when we got to the hotel in San Diego. Strangely, I was in a better shape than when we left San Francisco. We walked a few blocks around the Gaslamp Quarter and then went to bed.

Day 2 - San Diego (9000 Steps)
Coronado, Midway, Little Italy, Cabrillo, Mission Bay. It was a whirlwind the next day. I wasn't sick despite the ordeal the previous day. That's probably because I did not walk much; sitting up or driving is not as fatal as walking. I was pretty tired by the time we got to Cabrillo vista point though. I lied down on a bench for 15 minutes. But I felt better as the day wore on. The traffic was a mess however. It took us over 5 hours to travel 130 miles. The plan was to get to my sister's for dinner, but the traffic was so bad we had to pull over about 30 miles from LA and had a fast food dinner instead.  At the end, I not only survived 3+ hours of nonstop driving, but I still had energy left. It could've been the effect of Sudafed that I swallowed in the morning. On top of the excitement effect.

Wife commented how different people in San Diego was from San Franciscans. She thought they were more portly and less fashionable. In other words, more American. It is a military town and has number of sailors and retirees.

Day 3 - Rest in LA (7000 Steps)
I pooped out the next day. Not sick, just wiped out, despite logging 9000 steps the previous day. It wasn't a sustained walk though, so its effect must've been moderated. It was a low intensity activities spread out throughout the day, much like running errands on public transportation. My sister and her husband drove us to Griffith Observatory in the afternoon and that is all we did during the day. Then family get-together and dinner with another sister's family.

Day 4 - Hollywood and Beverly Hills (10000 Steps)
This standard affair for first-time visitors of LA was for my wife. I was in a decent shape after a day of rest.

Day 5 - LA downtown and Santa Monica (12000 Steps)
Day 4 was for me. I haven't explored LA historic sites and wanted to check out the new Expo line to Santa Monica. I've turned into a public transportation freak since I got rid of my car 6 years ago.

The Expo line was a flop. There was nothing to see; it was 50 minutes of boring scenery. Coming from SF, Santa Monica wasn't anything to write home about either. It's a cross  between Santa Cruz and Ocean Beach, only with a lot more people. We should've spent the time on LA Dart buses exploring LA downtown more.

If you are visiting LA, go to the information center in Paseo De La Plaza, pick up the Dart bus map. You can explore a lot more that way and also avoid getting ticketed for parking in LA downtown.

Day 6 - Drive to Carmel (8000 Steps)

We left for Carmel around 9AM. We drove on US 101 this time, stopping at various vista points for views and picture taking. Then we had to stop in San Luis Obispo for lunch and bathroom. We got to Hearst Castle after 2PM. There were too many people and we didn't feel like spending $50 to see the gaudy place. So we headed straight to Carmel after another bathroom break.

It must be the elephant seal mating season. There were about a million of them lounging on the cold and rainy beach or fighting each other in the water. None seems to have CFS. I suppose the sick ones died off. I sometimes imagine what would've happened if I weren't financially  independent. I probably would have moved in with one of my siblings, or died on the streets.

We got to Carmel after dark. I negotiated $50 off at the Comfort Inn and then crashed on bed for a while before going out for a dinner at La Bicicletta.

Day 7 - Point Lobos, Carmel, Monterey, Santa Clara, Home (8000 Steps)

After the breakfast at the inn, we took a stroll at the Carmel Beach. Wife did some shopping and we came back to the inn and rested for a while. Then we checked out and went back south to Point Lobos.

This was where I used to come for hiking. The last time was actually while I was sick with a bout of Over Training Syndrome in 2008 -- I had a visitor and had to take them on a sightseeing tour. I got sick in April that year. Then I recovered for a few weeks and before permanently relapsing in July.

After Point Lobo was Monterey and Pacific Grove. The last time there was in September 2007. I organized a bike ride for Stanford Outing Club from Monterey to Point Lobos through the 17 Mile Drive and then back. It must've been about 30 miles of ride. I remember a long stretch of uphill around Carmel. I struggled on it on my old rickety bike, I even wrote a poem about it.

Anyway, it was a trip down the memory lane. And it made me double my resolve  to hike and bike one more time before I go home  (in the sky) for good. (Yeah I know, setting a goal is about the worst thing you can do if you are a CFS patient)

Post-Trip
All in all, it was the longest trip I've taken since I got sick with CFS. Probably the most active trip too, with almost 60k steps over a week. On the next post, I'll report the post-trip struggle and comparison with previous trips to draw some some conclusions about my progress with CFS.