70-130: Diabetes travel @70-130 - Tumblr Blog

Read my diabetes travel interview at The Alternative Ways

Read my diabetes travel interview at The Alternative Ways.

Joaquim Miro, who runs a cool website called The Alternative Ways, was kind enough to reach out to me and interview me about my life traveling the world with diabetes. You can read the interview here.

The Alternative Ways is a travel website that Joaquim started to help people travel as a lifestyle – a goal I can get behind. Joaquim is not a diabetic, but his brother, father, and a close friend…

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As Khmer kids in canoes do circles around my motorboat

Traveling in Cambodia with #diabetes, as Khmer kids in canoes do circles around my motorboat. Read about it:

There’s traveling, and then there’s traveling in style. How you define “style” is up to you, of course, but to get from Battambang, Cambodia up to the town of Siem Reap (ក្រុងសៀមរាប) Masayo and I decided to forgo a bus or taxi and take a rickety old boat up the river. It wasn’t luxury; it was better. It was traveling in style!

Battambang was nice but it was time to move on, and lucky for us the…

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Unexplained dinosaurs and psychedelic statues by the river

Unexplained dinosaurs and psychedelic temples by the river. #diabetes #travel

The morning of Day 220 (where does the time go?) was our first morning in Cambodia, and Masayo and I were looking forward to moving on from the chaotic little border town of Poipet deeper into the heart of the nation. We ended up in a place called Battambang(ក្រុងបាត់ដំបង), and it turned out to be a rather wonderful, if ragtag and bare-boned, place that we ended up spending nine days in. Calmer…

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The final National Park of the trip – man, it came so suddenly

The final National Park of the trip – man, it came so suddenly. #diabetes #roadtrip

Just like that, three months on an epic road trip winds down to its end and the final National Park in an unbelievable series of them: Pinnacles, as of now America’s newest National Park, situated down obscure roads in a desolate part of central coastal California. With heavy hearts Masayo and I spent a day on Pinnacles (it being one of those Parks with two entrances, east and west, and no road…

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"What Is High Blood Sugar Anyway?" This video says it all

"What Is High Blood Sugar Anyway?" The video that brings T1Ds and others together :D

High blood sugar: the true bane of us Type 1 diabetics. But how do you describe it to someone who doesn’t understand what high blood sugar is all about? Show them this short and oddly lovable video called “What Is High Blood Sugar Anyway?” They’ll learn a lot, or it will at least get them laughing.

Maybe you have friends who don’t really understand what high BG is, where it comes from, how it…

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To lose all sense of time in the thick mists of the sea

How to lose all sense of time in the thick mists of the sea. #diabetes #travelogue

You try driving along the coast of northern California on a tight schedule: it can not be done. Masayo and I left the grungy town of Eureka this morning with plans to tool around the Port Reyes National Seashore area most of the day, then head to a hotel just south of San Francisco for the night.

Oh it was a fine plan, and that’s basically what ended up happening, but the Port Reyes NS part was…

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"What Is Low Blood Sugar Anyway": A primer anyone can understand

"What Is Low Blood Sugar Anyway?": A quick video primer anyone can understand.

When diabetics speak of being “low”, too many people don’t understand what they mean. Low what? How does it feel? What do you have to do? Are you gonna die? Blah blah – shut up and watch this short video called “What Is Low Blood Sugar Anyway?” For it explains it all.

Type 1 diabetes is simple: “low” means low blood sugar – you need more sugar in your blood. It happens for different reasons and…

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Huge improvement in blood sugars under the redwood trees

Day 78 on the diabetes road trip and a huge improvement in blood sugars under the redwood trees :)

The trip has been particularly scenic lately – the forests and other natural wonders Oregon were inspiring – but my blood sugars have been bad. Today, as Masayo and I drove through majestic Redwood National Park, I finally had a day of comparatively excellent readings. They were all under 200, for one thing, which is a big goal for me.

We drove over the state line into California and the weather…

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"What Is Diabetes Anyway": An awesome but simple lesson

Watch "What Is Diabetes Anyway": An awesome but simple video lesson for T1Ds and lesser folks.

I’m tired of people not understanding what diabetes is. It’s so simple! Glucose vs. insulin. That’s it.

In an effort to finally reach the people that hear about Type 1 diabetes but never seem to be able to grasp just what it is, I made this wonderful video. Because another problem I have with the world is that I never see YouTube videos that really reflect my sensibilities. So I made my own.

What…

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America's most beautiful lake closed for snow on a terrible BG day

#T1D roadtrip Day 76: America's most beautiful lake closed for snow on a terrible BG day.

Every diabetic knows that their condition has its own macabre senses of humor and irony. It’s a dynamic you just get used to, so when I finally made it to one of my bucket list items – my own white travel whale – at Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon, it was during one of worst blood sugar days in weeks and I had to enjoy it anyway.

So fascinated was I by the lake, luckily, that I…

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A place in America where ice freezes under hot volcanic rocks

Day 75: A place in America where ice freezes under hot volcanic rocks. (And even BGs are humbled into behaving!)

Travel is all about the unexpected and the revealing. Today Masayo and I found ourselves in an obscure, out-of-the-way destination called Lava Beds National Monument. We were bowled over by a crazy land whose harsh charms beckoned us away from the modern world we know and toward a realm where we might reflect upon and commune with the fiery forces that created and still churn the Earth.

And you’d…

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Temperatures and blood sugars going up and down all day

Diabetes road trip Day 74: Temperatures and blood sugars going up and down in northeastern California. @NPS

Two things happened today that I bet are related: I felt less stress about this trip for the first time in a while, and my average blood sugar level from my five checks was the lowest it’s been in two weeks. Masayo and I got to know Lassen Volcanic National Parkand we had to put in some effort to do so since the main road through the Park is still partially closed for winter, but it turns out…

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To a canyon barely accessible by road

BG checks in a canyon barely accessible by road! #diabetes #roadtrip

If you aren’t hiking, it’s hard to see much of Kings Canyon National Park. The large area set aside for this natural wonder in eastern California abuts Sequoia National Park, where Masayo and I saw the largest living thing on Earth yesterday, but has quite a different feel. Kings Canyon is a huge wilderness with almost no roads. And as we are confined to the car due to the difficulties…

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Blood sugar problems in the shadow of Earth's largest living things

Blood sugar problems in the shadow of Earth's largest living things: a T1D challenge.

If an ancient, primeval forest is supposed to offer a wayward human spirit a kind of spiritual reset, a cleansing of ones soul, then I had big hopes for my visit to the mutant behemoth trees that elbow other vegetation out of the way in Sequoia National Parkin western California. Because I needed a reset, in a diabetic sense: m blood sugars have been generally pretty high lately, brought on…

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Hot, high, and happy at the bottom of Death Valley

Heat makes BG go down? Not always. Here's how I was hot, high, and happy in Death Valley. #roadtrip #t1d

Visiting Death Valley National Park can be an overheated and exhausting experience in the best of circumstances. Touting itself as one of the hottest, lowest, and driest places on Earth, this huge area on “the outer edge of life” takes up a giant chunk of California along the Nevada border.

And here we’ve been trying to take it easy in light of Masayo’s trip to the emergency room last weekfor…

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Nevada's desert: from alpine trees to the rings of Saturn

Alpine trees and the rings of Saturn over the Nevada desert. Despite medical emergencies the trip continued!

This road trip, on the brink of disaster a week ago, continues. Tentatively for now, but Masayo and I are indeed pushing forward, emerging in our rented Toyota Corolla from the ashes of the voyage that nearly burned to the ground in a hospital emergency room in southern Utah.

After Masayo’s second trip for urgent medical care in three days, brought on by exhaustion and dehydration, we spent the…

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A second emergency room visit, and the road trip hangs in the balance

A second emergency room visit and the road trip hangs in the balance. Utah can kill you! #roadtrip #t1d

It was a terrible and perhaps momentous day for the road trip. For the second time in three days, I had to rush Masayo in our rental car to an emergency room in Utah. This time was completely unrelated to her foot injury from a couple of days ago, was at least as terrifying (for me anyway), and could have big repercussions for the trip itself.

It began in our campsite at Bryce Canyon National…

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70-130: Diabetes travel