There's an app for that...

Tonight seemed like a night for fine dining, next door to our hotel there is a restaurant on the top floor, the fifth in UK speak, the sixth in local language. This provided fantastic ocean views, though dark ones, eventually we reckoned we were watching an aircraft carrier making it's way into Norfolk.

It turns out the location of US aircraft carriers is not someone anyone attempts to conceal and were able to find out what all of them were doing and narrowed it to two possibilities. Our waiter informed us there was an app which would pin it down, we didn't bother hunting for it. There must be another a bit further out as the height of the planes as they pass over here suggests that. Fortunately they stop at night.

Afterwards we went for a walk along the board walk, I think we went about a third of a mile, then we had to turn round and come back, so that's 2/3 of a mile on outdoor terrain. No wonder my shoulder hurts now. That was entirely unassisted including ramps bumpy bits and awkward pavements.

Hopefully tomorrow will have better weather as we plan to drive down the outer banks taking in the Wright Brothers Memorial and maybe a bit further south, though Cape Hatteras is too far.

Internet and ocean views

We have internet! How our entire room in Columbus conspired to be a dead spot I do not know and now we're in Virginia Beach with a view of the ocean I do not care.

Sometimes I have ideas, often these ideas should not be acted upon. Today as we landed at Reagan National  I was reading about the early Gemini missions. Knowing that Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee are buried at Arlington National Cemetry and seeing the sun shining, I thought hey, we could detour via there before driving down to Virginia Beach.

The layout means it's not trivial to see specific graves and it turned out to be quite hilly, we did see the Kennedy Memorial, which was an odd emotion, especially seeing aside the two adults their unnamed stillborn daughter and slightly premature son who survived two days. 

We made sure to locate the Lockerbie bombing memorial. I am still amazed at the detective work they did, but also wonder if the courts did get it right.

The Challenger and Columbia memorials were priorities for me and Dick Scobee the Commander of Challenger was buried right next to that memorial. I don't remember that disaster occurring, it's possibly only months before I do have memories of outside events, I remember the Herald of Free Enterprise Disaster in 87 and whilst I haven't looked it up have recollections of a North Sea oil disaster of some kind in later 86. 

We were pretty tired with all the pushing and wheeling by that point and the clock was saying it was time to move, we probably missed things considered unmissable, but then wandering around a cemetary seems a slightly odd thing to do anyway.

Conceding games/match and asking for it from an opponent

I'm hating not having internet in room, so this is a placeholder not a real post.

I've got stuff to say about when to concede a game or match, whether you should ask and how to respond.

Still can't seem to throw off this migraine, they are usually shorter but worse and right now I'd choose that. We have tickets to a Pentatonics gig tomorrow night in this state to go would be torture, to not go is a wasted ticket which is also not great.

The world wasn't built for wheelchairs

Greater Columbus Convention Center has multiple hotels attached, such that at most times of day you can get from your hotel room to your event without going outdoors - this is more of a benefit than usual considering how much street in the area they seem to have dug up.

This seems to be just about wheelchair accessible, really obvious problems are a couple of ramps which probably don't meet gradient guidelines in other parts of the world, even if they do here (I've not checked local rules), a lift of the variety that only works when the doors are closed and one of the three times I've used it I was at the top and able to see the door at the bottom was somehow open, somewhat odd as they swung closed behind me. Other moans are; did they try and find the worst carpet for wheelchairs and the route from A to B always seeming to be longer when you need to use the lift.

I played four rounds of magic today, which was more that I expected considering how bad I felt when moving from horizontal to vertical this morning. Technically I came away with a draw and three losses, but we ran out of time on the draw with me in a winning position and needing one extra turn, knowing his deck I'd be surprised if he could have dealt with from one draw. Another loss was incredibly close with good, fun games with plenty of thought required. The next was unlucky draws for me such that it was a quick win for him in game one and I failed to bring to mind what the shell of his deck might be and even then it came with a few surprises. I conceded the next round at one game all when I concluded I'd prefer some help getting back to the hotel room.

So it was a fun morning, but I'm both pleased and disappointed with four rounds of play, the number of entrants made it a nine round event. Six would have been a reasonable target for an average day, but when you wake up and realise you acquired a migraine in the last hour or so of sleep, it's too late to do anything about it. Anti nausea drugs helped but in the end it won, unfortunately my nap this afternoon hasn't thrown it off.

Food shortage in Ohio?

Everything seems to have very restricted hours, we're staying in a hotel with no restaurant. Food and magic tournaments isn't great at the best of times so we could be very hungry by Monday.

I've made a couple of tweaks to my deck after the warm up event today and am looking forward to tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll get some quick wins, my deck can win at any speed but rarely loses quickly.

terrible wifi

A) migraine

B) free wifi that is this bad may as well not exist

C) it's possible I may be in love with an inanimate object - my wheelchair, I really did not expect this much difference on so little practice or building of strength and stamina.

Gravity - overcoming it or not as the case may be

I have a snazzy new wheelchair, why I haven't taken a picture of it, I do not know. Important things; it's officially metallic teal in colour, though it's slightly bluer than I might have imagined; it's light, about eight kilos, down from thirteen, which was already fairly light; most importantly it's rigid, combine this with a couple of other tricks and suddenly some prior obstacles are no longer obstacles.

I was very pleased with the sitting comfort of my previous wheelchair, I've tried to maintain some of those features, but the test will be using it for a full day, though realistically a full day sitting has long been a struggle. Thursday will be a part day and thus provide useful data, Friday and Saturday are competition days, hands could end up being more of a challenge than sitting.

Unfortunately it's also broken, fortunately after an hour or more in Detroit airport, a man with a set of allen keys was found and the offending part removed. I won't know until we get back to the UK if there is damage I've not spotted, though it feels ok. I was wearing my winter coat using it after removing the damaged wheel guard without problems, so given that's one of the things it's there for hopefully this trip will not be negatively effected by this. The airline immediately admitted responsibility, so no worries there.