Not just the potential title of a coquettish and probably underwhelming porn film, it describes the status of my right wrist.

This blog has a reference to the Crazy 88, as I love Tarantino movies. The reason for this specifically was it was the number of days I had on career break in total. For 83 of those days, I was wearing the same plastic bracelets as caught/scrambled from the Drivers’ Parade at the Le Mans 24 hours:

It was a lovely momento of the first week of the journey, as well as a way of feeling a little closer to J while I was away from him, and became a marker of the freedom I had to choose every day of what I did on the career break. I said to myself that I would wear them until the end of the last day (Sunday just gone), and I did.

With me, they have:
– Travelled to 9 different countries
– Caught 55 trains in those 9 different countries
– Flown on 3 aeroplanes
– Taken numerous trams, bus, metro, funicular and Schwebebahn rides in 8 different cities
– Cruised on or around 3 lakes
– Run 100 km across 20 locations
– Rented 2 bikes and ridden 100 km
– Walked in mountains and home Wolds, circa another 100 km
– Toured 64 museums and art galleries
– Visited 2 Roman amphitheatres
– Marvelled at one Roman throne room, now a Protestant church
– Cricked one’s neck in one bridal suite
– Stood next to one of the world’s first factories
– Played on the mixing desk in Queen’s studio
– Stayed in 17 rooms, from 1 star hostels with soggy bathrooms all the way through to a 4 star hotel with a private balcony
– Done laundry in 8 different launderettes
– Stood where men have been killed (Communist jails) and numerous lives saved (Hospital in the Rock)
– Spoken 4 languages with a degree of fluency again and attempted 2 languages in short, almost sentences
– Ahoyed there at 2 maritime museums
– Made engine and train noises at 5 transport museums
– Cried at paintings and music in 2 locations
– Read 18 books
– Volunteered 12 times
– Watched concrete dominoes tumble across Hull from 2 different locations

It’s been an utterly incredible and enriching time. It’s reminded me to take stock and be grateful every day, and I intend to continue doing this, going on adventures and writing about them here, in hopefully not a nauseating way.

Here are a few more photos from those 88 days:

Next adventures – some exhibitions in That London, a weekend in Paris and some long-distance challenge walks. Plus life as an NHS manager catching up on several on-call slots that I swapped out for the career break . . .

It’s been emotional.