Overcast bus ride to Rīga, Latvia

There is something true about both diabetes and travel: when times are bad, all you can do is press on and accept the badness with patience and humility. Better times await you – they must.

Which is not to say that you won’t get frustrated and even angry sometimes. Today was an excellent illustration of this: Masayo and I were still feeling uneasy here in Latvia, where we arrived yesterday after crossing over from Estonia. Plus my blood sugars continued their consistently high readings, despite what I thought were more than adequate Humalog shots.

Things aren’t clicking for us these days – so we have to grin and bear it. Even if the grinning part doesn’t come easily.

After being caught in tiny Valka, Latvia on a Sunday night – a town where nothing is open and nothing is happening – we awoke today, a fresh start on a Monday morning, with plans to find a bus further into the heart of Latvia. Masayo was feeling a little better, having been worn out from our pace of travel. Also, my morning BG was 126. Things seemed to be looking up for us, at first.

Our hotel, Otrā Elpa, was still shut down when we got up, its front desk dark and locked as it had been when we arrived. But we had asked for the included breakfast to be ready at 9:00 am and when we went downstairs, there it was, all laid out on a table for us. Lunch meats, a basket of bread, coffee, juice, yogurt, fruit. It looked great. The lady who had checked us in was there too, smiling but again not particularly chatty.

I reflected that this is what you get when you travel to a tiny town in Latvia in the off-season. You may get what you need, but things are awfully quiet.

The dining room (with only us in it) was really atmospheric – a giant map of the town was painted on the ceiling, and old black and white photos on the wall showed Valka from decades past – including the border checkpoint we passed last night when walking into Estonia for dinner, the photo from years ago when it was still operational.

The internet was sketchy on information about bus service from Valka, Latvia; it seemed like we’d have to walk 2 kilometers back into Estonian half of this town (which is called Valga) to the bus station we’d arrived at. But the conditions on the ground can still differ from what the mighty internet promises: there is in fact a little bus terminal about one minute away from our hotel, behind Valka-Lugaži Lutheran Church. More good news!

A bus was leaving for Rīga, the capital of Latvia, at 11:00 and it was cheap. We bought tickets and waited; several people were waiting to get on the bus but we seemed to be the only ones who had actually purchased tickets in advance. The driver found us, looked at our tickets, and we were ushered to the front of the line. He even spoke some English. We put our big bags underneath at a cost of €1.35 per bag. Some bus companies charge for this, some don’t.

I enjoyed the bus ride to Rīga. We were in the front seats and had a good view out the windshield, so we could watch Latvia roll by. (To be honest, it was grey and uneventful like Estonia, but I’m not here to be entertained – I travel out of curiosity, to see what things are like, so I’m never disappointed).

Also, I found a setting on our new Olympus camera that could take sharp pictures of rapidly-moving scenery shooting by the bus window. I experimented on road signs as we passed them, and the photos were surprisingly sharp. Well done, Olympus.

The bus had a sign saying “wifi” but it didn’t work. Which was fine by me – I just enjoyed watching the little Latvian towns and the fields go by. At one point on the outskirts of Rīga, an older woman on board asked the driver to pull over. He did and she got off and walked into the woods, pulling her pants down to pee in full view of the bus.

Makes my one-time stage fright in a Chinese bathroom seem even sillier.

Unfortunately my jaunty little day took a bad turn at 1:30 pm, when I checked my BG to find I was soaring at 239. My pre-breakfast reading ruined. I was angry but took insulin and ate; our lunch was some junk food we had left over and wanted to get rid of. Potato chips, orange chocolate cookies, and dried figs. And water.

It was an unhealthy but small lunch and I was sure I’d overdone my shot for it. Oh well – at least being low will be a change of pace from all the highs. I grumpily sat and braced myself.

When we arrived in Latvia’s biggest city, the mighty capital Rīga, it was relatively warm. A sign said 10ºC (about 50ºF), much different than the frigid temperatures we’d had in Estonia. I was a little disappointed; cold weather invigorates me. This 10ºC stuff may be pleasant but it’s middling. Yawn.

At the tourist info kiosk at the lively bus terminal we got directions to our hostel. It’s our first hostel with a shared bathroom on this trip — I wanted to save money. We easily found Rīga Hostel over a McDonald’s and checked in. Our private room is at one end of a hallway and we would indeed be sharing toilets and showers with everyone else.

I checked my BG in our room. It wasn’t low as I’d expected; I was 253. Now I was really getting angry. How could I be so high after taking a big shot for such a small lunch? I didn’t know, but the machine was correct, I could feel it.

Masayo was not entirely rested; the constant motion and the junk food meals are wearing her thin. And I was becoming enraged by my sluggish bloodstream that seemed to rebuff my insulin. Both of us were getting irritable for different reasons. But were are in Rīga, Latvia in the opening days of a long trip that will take us across many more countries. Things will improve, and all we can do is use our respective reasons for being upset to refine our traveling style.

And this is one of the best things about diabetes: it forces you to pay attention to things you might not want to know about, but which must ultimately be improved. It’s your own personal detailed diagnosis machine. You may be enjoying your travels, for example, and the meals and the buses and the sights, but when your BG is as consistently high as mine has been, it means something is wrong. Non-diabetics might not realize this, and would have no real reason to “fix” it. But I have no choice: I don’t like high BGs so I have to adjust my focus and refine my health, even here on the road. Sleep? Food? Insulin doses? Whatever the issue is, I’ll find it and fix it.

And my entire voyage, not just the diabetic part of it, will be enhanced and improved. I’ll owe it all to diabetes and to frequent BG checks. So while I’m frustrated now, I can only look forward to making it all better.

Sniping at one another out of crabbiness, Masayo and I eventually found a buffet restaurant for dinner near the hostel called Lido Vērmanītis. I got a big piece of fish with cheese on it, with rice and salad and a big fruitcake pie thing that we split. We both thought it was nice to finally enjoy a decent-sized meal again.

Not in the mood for any excitement, we went back to the hostel to do some laundry with our Scrubba laundry bag. And I wondered if my insulin dose at dinner would finally be the one that pulls my blood sugar down to where I want it.

The diabetic day ended badly; the post-dinner reading at 10:00 pm was 289. But of course. The bad times continue, but there is nothing I can do except take two units of corrective Humalog, try to learn from the several 200+ readings today, and try again tomorrow.

“Try again tomorrow” – surely something every traveling diabetic must repeat to themselves from time to time.

All in all, it has not been a particularly great couple of days for us so far in Latvia. It doesn’t seem to be Latvia’s fault particularly, but I do hope things improve for us soon. And as always, I say it’s better to be in a bad mood on the road than back home in the office.

Have you ever had a miserable few days while traveling?

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