Diabetics live lives that are in some fundamental ways separate than those of non-betics. Diabetics can do anything – indeed, it’s a mantra of this website – but we exist in what is often a separate reality. There’s an element of planning that tends to go with any activity, for instance: how much exercise will it be? What’s the food supply going to be like? Will my insulin get too hot or cold?
These questions must be considered and then addressed if diabetics are to keep reasonable control. Once they are, then you can go out and do anything.
This alien dynamic was brought to mind today when Masayo and I touched down at LAX (a.k.a. “I’m Ready For My Closeup Now Mr. DeMille International Airport”). I am American and lived and worked in Tennessee and Georgia until I was 30. But now I live in Japan, and the reverse culture shock of returning to the US makes even small transactions and realities very strange. Again, I’m living in a different world than those around me.
Makes things interesting, if nothing else.
Quick initial impressions are, of course, item number one on the list of surprises when setting out anew into the American landscape. So at the airport, within ten minutes of exiting the plane, I noticed no fewer than three people in various places standing around with great white clouds of smoke billowing around their heads. They each clutched intricate silver candlestick-looking things near their mouths.
Ahh, so this must be vaping. I’ve heard the term but never really knew what it was. I’ve never seen it in Japan. I guess it remains the rage here in the US. I still don’t know what it is; from the outside it just looks like a less-pleasant and more-annoying method of smoking cigarettes. One shrugs.
Another thing I quickly took notice of was the casualness of people doing jobs that approaches a shocking level of disregard. At LAX we asked three different people in uniforms how to get to the bus center and got three different answers; only the third seemed interested in actually helping us and had the correct information. (A fourth cut me off with a raised hand before I could even say anything, avoiding eye contact and not breaking stride as she snapped that she was off work and that I should go talk to someone else. Excuuuuuse me lady!)
Sunrise over the wing, high above the Pacific Ocean.
Aboard a bus in Santa Monica, I watched a girl get on and swipe her fare card. It didn’t work and she tried again, drawing another big beep from the machine. As she tried a third time the driver stuck his hand in the way and yelled at her: “Why do you keep doing that? I told you just go sit down!” The girl apologized (for trying to pay!) and sat down. It didn’t seem weird to anyone else.
That would probably turn into a national scandal if it happened in Japan, I remarked to Masayo. The CEO would get on TV and bow in apology but the company’s stock would still fall to irreversible lows.
Coming from a land (Japan) where your personal feelings are not important while you’re doing a job – customer service is paramount – it’s bewildering to see such naked hostility bubbling under the surface here. Who yells at their own customers? I was hoping the girl would sock him one in the face.
Tired Masayo changing buses.
Of course the other side of that is that so many people are so friendly – the ones having good days. The guy at the car rental shop was personable and generous and chatty. Our first bus driver pointed out our stop as we approached; he didn’t have to do that. Just being supportive and neighborly. The good part of America.
Maybe you can’t have the good without the bad.
Welcome to (cough) L.A. Photo I took from the plane.
But I’m the odd one out here so far. Other little things keep happening. I couldn’t figure out the phone in the hotel room (dialing 9, like the sticker said, wasn’t working) so I used Skype to call a local place called Winner’s Pizza for delivery. The guy was friendly but mystified when I said I didn’t have a cell number to give him. My ordering mojo, too, was lacking; it’s a simple act but you’d be surprised how not being used to ordering pizza can make you seem like an imbecile who’s never done this before. (For the record I’ve ordered lots of pizzas in my life!)
I asked if he had drinks, though I wasn’t sure that pizza places delivered drinks in the US. He said he had soft drinks and beer. I wanted to get a non-sugar Coke but didn’t know what that would be called – I’ve been all over the world and have seen products called Diet Coke, Coke Light, Coke Zero, etc, and couldn’t (especially in my jet lag haze) remember what they had in the US. I tentatively murmured, “Can you give me… a… Diet (gulp) Coke?”
This car has to take us ten or fifteen thousand miles.
It worked; I had been lucky. But see how even the tiniest things can be stressful.
So I’m basically an immigrant to this country, going by what I know of the rhythms of life in the Old World until I get acclimated to what’s going on. Making my situation more embarrassing of course is the fact that I’m from here and used to do this mundane stuff all the time without problem.
This view unfolded before us as we pulled the new car onto California 1.
Living abroad has widened my scope of references and the now-narrowed sliver that is America’s has become indistinct and unfamiliar, or at best a distant recollection. And people here aren’t used to dealing with such a confused, neophyte customer. I’m sure I’ll get into the swing of things pretty soon – the hotel check-in went smoothly, after all. I’m not a totally lost cause.
Good start to the road trip
Whining about irritable bus drivers aside, the trip is off to a roaring start. Today was a big day and a lot had to go right. It all did:
- The flight
We left Japan over a half an hour late but still arrived at LAX on time. The plane was only half full and Masayo and I ended up sharing three seats between us so that was some unexpected comfort. The touch screens worked well, unusually, and they had my favorite airplane game, Trivia, plus a large selection of on-demand movies including a bunch of classics like my beloved Blazing Saddles. (I spent most of the flight reading a book about The Velvet Underground on my Kindle instead though.)
One of the in-flight video options: “America’s National Parks”. I took it as an encouraging sign.
- Getting to the car rental place
I had to patch together vague info from the internet about getting from LAX to the car rental place using a series of local buses. Once we finally got out of the airport (none of the staff there seemed to have ever heard of a “bus”) it all went smoothly: correct route numbers going to expected places. - THE CAR
This was the big one. We’re spending three months driving around the US to visit National Parks and that’s a lot to ask of a car rental place. The Enterprise location was fantastic though. They made sure the contract stipulated (unusually) that we could drive to any of the 48 states, upgraded us for free to a slightly bigger and more comfortable ride, and said we didn’t actually have to return here halfway through to swap out the contract; we can do it at any Enterprise location. No hassles and unexpected good news. Viva Enterprise.
“HILL”. Thanks, California. How about signs telling me where the bus station at the airport is?
- The hotel
We took a scenic route up part of California Highway 1 along the coast, then turned right up into the mountains to get to the town where our hotel is. It was an excellent drive and the hotel had our reservation (that I made through booking.com) and again, there was no nonsense.
Could be better, could be worse
After starting my European trip a couple of years ago with consistently high blood sugars, and then gradually improving them over the course of the 4+ month trip, I’m looking forward to having much better numbers during the next three months of this road trip. Day 1 was spent flying mostly, and while there were bright spots it was mostly bad-ish news.
Before the trip even began, as I rode to the airport in Osaka, I was 336. Brought on, no doubt, by the excitement of the trip and the attendant fitful sleep the two previous nights. At the airport I had a sandwich and salad and took a large shot.
After a short fight to Tokyo I checked in that airport and was pleased to be in the 100s again (167). It’s always a good feeling to wrassle a high back down to diabetic respectability.
On the longer Tokyo to LA flight (about nine hours) I had American Airline’s tasty shrimp noodle lunch, with a roll, salad, and cake. I calculated a dose of Humalog, which I discreetly injected while in my seat through my Bluff Works pants.
High on a plane.
It didn’t work as well as I thought: 275 later on. This was especially disappointing in light of the good work I’d done earlier getting my high down. I sighed as most of the other passengers slept and a flight attendant handed out boxes with tiny sandwiches and a mini-Kit Kat to those of us who were awake. I took seven units and ate it all.
And that was my last check of the flight; a breakfast soon followed and I took a separate shot for it, despite the fact that the sandwich shot was probably still working. This didn’t work out too well: wandering around LAX trying to find the bus center I stopped to check on a concrete wall outside, as people and vehicles swarmed by. My lowness, the California sun overhead, my tiredness, and the bright readout on my One Drop meter made it hard to see the number, which was 59. I downed a few packs of glucose powder I’d bought the night before in Osaka – the first time I’d actually tried them out. (One pack is 5g of carbs.)
They worked, and a few hours later we found ourselves driving along Highway 1 up the coast in Santa Monica, where I checked again while we sat a red light and was please to find I was 139.
202 in the hotel room. Could be worse.
But stress from the time zone change (and maybe from overdoing the glucose powder; I had five packets for 25g) proved a bad influence on me; after a two-hour nap I got a reading of 202 just before diving into some pizza we had delivered. (I also got a bottle of Mexican beer called Pacifico). The pizza was thick in the typical American style – thicker than I’m used to in Japan. (I rarely eat pizza there anyway.) This was going to be a diabetic challenge!
I had three slices of the deluxe pizza, calculating about two units per slice plus one for the beer (and three because I was already high). In fact I ate four slices, so I waited a little and took another five units, to take care of the extra slice and also because the pizza was thicker than I expected. And of course high-density carbs like this often spend all night attacking your blood sugar.
Hours later, head bleary by the jet lag and the exhaustion of the long day, I was 219. Not good but not bad at all considering what pizza and flying have often done to me in the past. I took two extra units and hit the sack.
Good points: When I was high, it was understandable (pizza and lack of sleep), and not too terrible. I took a nap, woke up still tired and discombobulated from the flight, and made it through several slices of thick pizza and beer without even reading 250. A couple of years ago I’d have ended up at 350.
Part of the credit for this goes to Tresiba, which I took a partial dose of at 5:00 pm in preparation for getting back on my regular 8:00 am daily routine tomorrow. And part of the credit goes to my intelligent dosing of Humalog, including the double shot for pizza which worked out better than a single shot would’ve.
Diabetics always have to find good points to take inspiration from; despite some highs there were many promising things that happened on Day 1.
‘Twas nice to have a perfect day of logistics. Had some BG ups and downs but I don’t mind that so much on flying days. We’ll hang out here another few days getting used to the time zone and locating our camping equipment (which should be waiting for us at a local post office, having been shipped from Amazon) and then start the road trip itself.
But I can’t be having pizza every night, I’ll get huge.
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Welcome back to America. Haven’t kept up with every post in your blog, so I don’t know if you have a post that details the trip plan other than the national parks tour of the USA. Have a great time.
Thanks Steve. Actually I don’t think I ever did make a dedicated post about all the details of the trip; I planned to but ran out of time. I’ll try to do that when I get a few spare moments here. Planning on seeing the first National Park today, high BG be damned!