The Rest of the Story

White Springs, Florida

We’ve been here at Lee's Country Campground since Saturday.  Our plan was to do as little work, as possible and just relax.  That is exactly what we have done, with the exception of yesterday when we had to make a quick back to Georgia.

Al  realized that we were missing some of our scuba gear.  We decided we must have left it in the storage unit. We’re only about 100 miles from our old home, so we figured it would be better to go get it now, rather than later.  We got up early yesterday and made a quick trip back.  Fortunately the missing tub was right up front and we didn’t have to rummage through everything in the storage building.

We  decided that we don’t have enough time to go to the St. Augustine area right now.  There is a lot to do there and we don’t want to be rushed, so we have changed our plans yet again!  These are those plans set in jello that I had been hearing about.  We’re still up in the air on where to go, but likely we will be heading south towards Ocala.  We need to be in Tampa next week, so we’ll just have a few days.  We may go to Rainbow Springs State Park, or Silver River State Park, or a Passport America park nearby.  I sure like traveling this way!

Okay, now for the rest of the story, I started the other day.

As you all know, we had been working extremely hard the days before we left Georgia.  It was extremely hot and we were working and sweating like dogs.

When we left Georgia, I followed behind Al and the motor home,  in my Honda.  We got onto I-75, crossed over into Florida and stopped at the first rest area.   We had run our generator with both a/c units during the trip down, but Al said it had quit running.  We wanted to check it out. 

I got out of my car and headed over to the door of the motorhome.  I heard screaming.  Al was in the doorway of the motorhome, with the door open and he was making all kinds of noise.  I didn’t know what was going on…did a cat run out?  What horrible things would make him carry on like that?

He was standing on the upper inside step, and not moving.  I ran over and found out that when he started to walk down the steps, he got terrible muscle cramps in both hamstrings.  He couldn’t move without making it worse.  I wanted to be able to shut the door so that the cats couldn’t run outside, but he couldn’t move for fear of making them worse.

You have to picture exactly where we were both standing to understand what happened next. I was standing on the ground facing the door to the motor home.  He was standing on the top step of the motor home, facing outside with the door wide open.

I decided to try to massage the cramps for him.   I wrapped my arms around him to get to the back of his upper legs.  The muscles in both legs had formed into  huge hard knots.  No wonder he was screaming. Every movement made it worse.  I am standing there, with my head belt level (or lower) and my arms wrapped around his upper legs.  I started kneading the  hard knots in his muscles.    All the while he was yelling, “oh God, oh God….ohhh, ohhh. 

It started to occur to me that this might look a little odd, so (still kneading)  I turned my head to see if anyone was around.  I saw that the interstate was very close and many cars were zipping along right beside us with us in full view.

Uh, oh…what are they thinking?  I tried to move back a bit and still continue my massage, but it didn’t work that way. Fortunately there weren’t many people in the rest area nearby, so hopefully they didn’t hear Al’s moaning.   The spasms soon eased up enough for him to get down the rest of the steps.  I ran inside and got some Joint Flex cream and he rubbed some on his legs.  I  got him a Gatorade and he drank that down.  The spasms eased and he was okay.  I was a little concerned about him trying to drive.  I don’t know what would have happened if that would have happened while he was driving. 

Al has a lot of problems with muscle cramps, and the more he sweats during the day, the worse it is.  He had been having some problems before we left home and we started giving him lots of Gatorade, which really seemed to help.  Fortunately, he was okay the rest of the trip.  So, that is the rest of the story.