So… first thing when we got up was ‘how did you sleep?’. He actually slept OK, although had to get up probably to use the bathroom and take more Tylenol. But once we had coffee in hand, the big discussion was “do we pull the plug on the trip or not”?  Dad was feeling pretty good, and he didn’t want to end the trip, so we agreed to keep it going – with the understanding that we could pull the plug at any time if it turned out to be too much.

I won’t detail this, but of course the first few days after the accident were spent with me helping Dad out a lot with things like buttons and a lot of other stupid little things that were tough one-handed – but as he got used to it and more skilled, he got better and better about being able to handle stuff himself. One issue was ‘what was he going to wear’? We ended up mostly with me lending him t-shirts (mine were a lot bigger than his, and fit over his sling) and then buttoning a cardigan over that, with the left sleeve inverted so it didn’t just flop around empty. So he looked misshapen and lopsided, but it worked.

For Friday, we agreed to a leisurely day, morning off, but I went out to do a drugstore run and to see if I could get laundry done same-day (no, I couldn’t, and this laundry place advertised same-day service) and to pick up breakfast.

Once we were ready to go out, rather than tackle more museums, we decided to do ‘driving things’, so he didn’t have to move much. First out for gas for the car. I’d seen prices as high as $5.00 a gallon, but one of the magic things of Google Maps I’d never seen before (because I don’t usually drive a car) is if you search for nearby gas stations, it will display the gas prices of each. I think I tanked up at about $4.33 or so. We had to tank up several times in LA, that stop-and-go traffic really eats up gas.

We decided to check out Venice Beach, which was amusing.  We first stopped in at Venice Wharf, where they had parking and lots of restaurants and seemed to be the obvious place to be, but when we walked around, we realized we weren’t seeing the delightful seaside with cute young things and skateboarders and stuff that was in our heads from movies and TV. Oh, that turned out to the the boardwalk, about a mile north of where we were.  So back in the car and we went up there and walked around for about 15 minutes, but it was cold and dreary, not a sunny beachy experience at all, and nothing going on was our type of thing. But at least we did see it.

We then headed to the Hollywood sign.  That was funny, because if you actually go to the sign, there’s a big park and a parking area and it’s crowded and expensive, but you have to go to the edge to look down and see the sign, and we didn’t stop.  Dad did see the sign as we were driving, I did not, but we’d already seen it from the Paramount lot – there’s even a picture of Dad with the teeny tiny sign in the background. Dad was bummed out because the air was congested enough that you really couldn’t see any vistas for any real distance. (Writing this from mid-January 2025, I imagine now it’s a zillion times worse. Poor LA.)

Then to Mulholland Drive, but but we weren’t sure what were actually looking for.  Ended up not actually on the drive, but driving around rich people neighborhoods, which was cool.  Then back to the hotel.

Dad took a nap while I watched MSNBC and realized I’d totally gotten screwed up on my knitting project. Frog frog frog.  Then I woke him and we went to the Water Grill down the street for dinner (same block as the hotel). He had oysters and we split a salad and he had swordfish and I had tuna (really good and spicy, with a nifty and unusual mushroom side).  I started with a ‘maritime mule’ cocktail, then we both had wine.  A really good meal, all around, but expensive and the service was clunky in the timing.

But even though Dad was low energy (and continued to be so, quite understandably, particularly for these first few days), he got through the day just fine and was in quite a good mood for the most part, and I was far less worried than I had been at the start of the day.