Day 4:
I had set aside Day 4 as a beach day. Just hangin’ out on the beach, reading a book, occasionally splashin’ around on the water a bit. But I hadn’t brought a beach chair with me, and I didn’t see anywhere to get one. More importantly, the temperature was only in the 60s (Fahrenheit) and it was still quite breezy. So, I was not getting in the water. But I stayed at the beach, anyway. I just went back to photographin’ waves and gulls. Like these…
Day 5: Cedric rested.
Day 6:
Well. Hm. Not exactly sure how to introduce this one…so I guess I’ll just say…
Urology Museum
Yes, I paid a visit to the Urology Museum at the William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History. And I liked it! It was actually quite interesting, while also being partially disturbing. Now, this is not the standard museum, where you are set loose to roam and interpret on your own. For this museum, you have to make a reservation in advance, and you get a tour led by the museum curator. The tour only takes about an hour, and at the end of it, the curator gave me free rein to take pictures of the exhibits. If you’ve just eaten, you may want to wait half an hour before wading through these photos.
This happy-looking fellow is a 19th-century tool for looking inside the human bladder. The needle-nose-plier-lookin’ thing was inserted through the urethra.
Doctors could look through the length of the “pliers” via an eyepiece on the “back” of the device. But there was one major problem, a problem that I think is best described by the old saying:
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
So, the doctor using this tool would insert a lit candle through the bottom to provide light up through the urethra. But this also generated unwanted heat. The invention of tiny, low-wattage electric light bulbs could not come soon enough.
The tools in this box were inserted through the urethra. Notice the wire loops on the ends. These loops were initially used just to scrape out the extra tissue of enlarged prostates. However, this operation caused serious bleeding. Some later versions applied a small amount of electric current through the loop, hoping this would cauterize the tissue. In some cases, this worked; in other cases…not so much.
This stuff just looks diabolical. I’ll let you use your own imaginations here.
This is an actual bladder stone that was surgically removed from a young man some years ago. This stone formed around a thermometer. The young man eventually admitted he and his girlfriend were very drunk one New Year’s Eve and inserted the thermometer into his urethra as a form of sexual experimentation. The thermometer was desperate to escape their shenanigans, so it worked itself all the way up into the dude’s bladder.
Alright! Now that we’ve got that imagery in our heads, let’s eat! For lunch, I wanted to go to one of the many places in town that have been recommended by some guy named Fieri. I chose “Sip & Bite” from my list. I drove to “Sip & Bite”. There was no available parking anywhere near “Sip & Bite”. So, I drove a few miles and found a restaurant called “Iron Rooster”. I interpreted this as a message from on high, due to a college experience with something I called the “Iron Chicken”. And those folks on high were right. I ordered a house-made root beer and a crab cake benedict. Both were absolutely fantastic!
I was planning to visit Fort McHenry this afternoon, so I drove there next. (Wow, what a strategy!) But when I arrived, Fort McHenry was closed due to the ongoing government shutdown. So, with tears in my eyes and a dead hitchhiker in my trunk, I looked to my itinerary to see what was next. The tears stopped. In fact, I squealed and burped with glee, as my next stop was Crab Towne, USA!
Crab Towne, USA is (of course) a seafood restaurant. But that’s not all. Attached to the restaurant is a video game / pinball arcade with 37 pinball machines! I spent the rest of my afternoon, and on into the evening, at the Crab Towne arcade. They’ve got many of my old favorite games (Twilight Zone, Addams Family) including some that I rarely see any more (Cyclone, Dr. Dude, Black Knight 2000). All the machines I played were in very good working order. But there was something more subtle that I really liked about this place.
The volume on each of the machines is cranked up. This probably makes for a very noisy place on league night. But when there are very few people in the arcade, it’s nice to be able to enjoy the audio aspect of the games for once. It also helps that the volume of the restaurant / arcade’s ambient music is kept low.
Those were the days! Days 4 through 6, that is. Next up (shockingly): Day 7…
Voyages with Parkinson's 