Karlshamn...Yesterday was a very long day. I traveled by train or trains (4) the whole day, from 10:30 to 5:30. The train personnel were very helpful, getting me from one train to the other and up their accessible lifts. The most difficult part of the day was getting across the 7 pairs of railroad tracks with two bags on my lap after arriving to Karlshamn. My little front wheels immediately dug into the gaps beside the tracks. The bags went crashing onto the tracks. "Oh, Shit," I thought as I looked both ways down the track, "This is the scene in the movie where the train comes rumbling down the tracks and hits the stalled car or runs over the fair maiden who hasn't been saved by the hero." No one else was around to ask for help. I scrambled as quickly as a quadraplegic can scramble to drag the bags between the sets of tracks. Then I took each bag meticulously to the other side of all the wheel-eating tracks.

After getting the bags loaded up again, I started pushing to the center of town where the hotel was. About a mile later, I figured I better ask someone if I was going the right direction. The first person I asked was from out of town and had no idea where the First Hotel was. The second lady, pushing a walker, didn't speak much Swedish, no English, but lots of the Bosnian language.

An emergency room doctor who was biking around named Raffid helped me out. I was going the right direction. He pushed me up the incredibly steep hills and over to the hotel. Now I could relax!