February 22nd weekend we took a day off for a trip to San Francisco. We've been told that once the baby comes, it won't be quite so easy to just up and leave for a weekend, so we figured we should definitely take advantage of the time we have. It was a fantastic weekend, but not without it's hurdles.
We took Friday off and flew in early Friday morning to SFO. Ahna had surprised me and rented a car so we could drive to the Jelly Belly factory (about an hour north of San Francisco). I have a bit of an addiction, so that was definitely a pleasant surprise. The rest of Friday was great. With the car we were able to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and down Lombard street, which is always fantastic.
Friday night, however, was when we would learn of the aforementioned "hurdles" on our trip. We were getting off the bus on the way back to our hotel when Ahna misstepped and sprained BOTH ankles. It was pretty scary when it happened but once the initial shock wore off, we were able to think more clearly and figure out what we needed to do to render first aid. With two-thirds of our vacation yet to come, we had to figure out a plan that would accomodate my wife's newly handi-capable status.
The next morning we found out that the hotel had a wheelchair we could borrow - PROBLEM SOLVED. I think we probably doubled the miles on the wheelchair just on Saturday alone. We DEFINITELY could have taken the bus to the farther reaches of our adventures, but I was just getting used to people on the streets staring at me pushing my wife in a wheelchair, so I wanted to avoid trying to use the wheelchair lift on the bus. Even without a wheelchair, I'm pretty sure the socially acceptable bus-boarding time is probably somewhere between 5 and 9 seconds, and when you take longer than that, you hold up everyone who is trying to get wherever they are going, therefore becoming a giant inconvenience in the whole process. It was much easier to push her for 11 miles around the city - the uphill parts were the hardest, but there was NO guilt about not being able to go to the gym all weekend!
The rest of the trip was just as great as it always is. We have definitely decided that we will try to make it one of our regular places once the little one is a little older. We have a whole bunch of pictures in our web albums for your perusal.
