Introduction (v 3.2)

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Welcome to Voyages with Parkinson’s! If you are looking for my photography store, you can find it here: C. B. Williams Photography. If you aren’t looking for my photography store, please consider giving it a go, anyway. I cover a wide variety of photographic subjects, from the Colorado Rockies to Miami Beach, from ammunition storage bunkers to marmots…if I ain’t got it, you don’t want it!

If you are a new visitor, and/or simply want the backstory, click the Menu button at upper right, then select “About This Blog”.

Also accessible via the Menu button at upper right is my new “Links” section. Here you can find links to relevant tools and web sites, both within and outside of the realm of Voyages with Parkinson’s.

In other news, I have finally compiled all of my “PD Travel Tips” into a single document. That document is accessible via the Menu button at upper right, and is just above the Search function.

If you just want to delve into the latest site content, scroll down.

Kentucky 2026 Trip Report (Day 2)

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I slept in again today. The plan was to visit Hensley Settlement in the afternoon. “What is Hensley Settlement?” you ask. Well, you’re asking the wrong guy, because I never got there. Y’see, my GPS software apparently decided it was time for another battle of wits. I didn’t have an address or longitude / latitude for Hensley Settlement; I just browsed the area on Google Maps, and tapped the Hensley Settlement icon.

The GPS started by having me take the main road out of town (Middlesboro, KY). Then it had me take a very sharp right turn (probably about 160 degrees) onto an alleged state highway. This was a seriously winding, hilly, and narrow road. After several miles, this road ended at a junction with another seriously winding, hilly, and narrow “state highway”. I drove several more miles on this road before the GPS told me to turn right onto an even crazier road. This road was also seriously twisty and hilly, but it was only one lane (and it didn’t claim to be a state highway).

I kept my eyes peeled for potential pull-out and/or turn-around spots along the way but did not spot any before the road morphed into someone’s driveway, and I was surrounded by a pack of barking dogs. As if it wasn’t hard enough to get turned around while a pack of dogs is all around your vehicle, one little shit (a schnauzer) kept darting under my vehicle. Fortunately, the lady of the household popped her head out the front door and bellowed a mighty “HUSH!” And just like that, there were no more dogs, and I cleared the Hell outta there.

When I got back to the state highway, the GPS told me to head the way I had come from. Then it instructed me to turn right (the opposite side of the road from the driveway it had just sent me on). I took a quick glimpse. This road looked even steeper, windier, and narrower than that driveway. On top of that, I hadn’t seen a single road sign mentioning Hensley Settlement. So, with tears in my eyes and my money on my mind, I decided to call it a day and just wander aimlessly around southeast Kentucky to see what I could find.

Nothing. I found nothing. I eventually returned to Middlesboro, where I had some cheap Mexican food for dinner before retreating to my hotel. Once in my hotel room, I did some stuff on my laptop. In the name of convenience (i.e., not having to move hotel furniture around), I got myself into a somewhat uncomfortable position while using the laptop. So, I was not terribly surprised when I couldn’t get to sleep due to pain in my back.

What did surprise me was the fact that the pain started spreading. I applied approximately 2.35 buttloads of IcyHot to the area where the pain seemed to be originating. This did nothing. In fact, at this point, my whole body felt cramped. I took an extra dose of Carbidopa / Levodopa and a couple of Ibuprofen tablets. Still, it got worse. Soon, not only did I feel cramped all over, I also felt like I could vomit or experience explosive diarrhea at any moment.

At this point, I started debating whether to go to a hospital. But I quite convincingly told myself it was chilly enough outside that I would need to get dressed, and I didn’t think I could dress myself at that point. So, no horse pistol for me. After hovering over the toilet for a few minutes, I actually began to feel better. Soon, only the original back pain remained. And it felt like it would be eased just by laying on my back on a hard, flat surface.

So, I put my back on the tile portion of the hotel room floor and did my best to relax … (to be continued) …

Kentucky 2026 Trip Report (Day 0)

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Over the course of the last month and a half, I have on three seperate occasions accidentally thwacked my right elbow on a door frame or door. This first two times, it hurt for a few minutes then it was OK. This last time has been a different story. I now experience a flare-up of pain in that elbow whenever I try to lift anything with that arm. This is especially ungood when you realize my right arm is my “good arm”. The left arm is already weak.

So, as I was packing for my drive to Kentucky, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to lift my own luggage. Ultimately, I ended up loading the luggage into the space between the front and back seats of my minivan, rather than in the pit behind the back row as planned. This was probably a good call. I probably could’ve gotten everything into the pit OK, but I doubt I could have lifted the big bag back out. In fact, when I got to my hotel room, I absolutely could not lift that bag onto the bed. So, for now it sits on the floor between the beds. Open…so I have to squat to get things out of it. But I need to be doing more squats, so perhaps it all works out for the better.

What a Cedric Believes (volume 1)

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Y’ever think back to your childhood and realize your understanding of some things was completely wrong? Me, too. Here are a few of the things I believed when I was a little ‘dric.

Hecklers

Thanks to The Muppet Show, I thought that a heckler was an old man who had a permanent balcony seat at a theater. More specifically, I thought hecklers were employees of the theater, and it was their job to make fun of the performers.

Electricity

I once believed that electricity had ingredients. I remember playing around my neighborhood, pretending to operate a power plant. I would scrounge around for whatever I could gather (usually just gravel and sticks) and throw it all into an imaginary machine. This machine would then grind up everything I had gathered, and I would stir it all together. Somehow, electricity was born out of this.

Mugging

Growing up in a small Nebraska city, I remember always hearing about people getting mugged in the big cities, especially New York. To me, this seemed like an oddly specific crime. Why? Because for some reason, I thought mugging someone meant that you physically pick someone up and throw them over your head. I wanna say Hong Kong Phooey had something to do with this misconception.