Hobbling In Las Vegas

I just got back from a trip to Las Vegas with my sister. I planned for five days of walking, slots, eating and viewing. I was going to see the free things, like seeing the ship sink, the volcano erupt, and the water dance. Since walking is the best way to get around, I was also planning on getting a little fitter and thinner. Oh, what a time I was going to have. Notice the "past tense" in the paragraph above? The first night I was there, my sister and I walked to a casino, sat and played some slots and then headed out to do some site seeing. As I started walking, I felt a severe charlie horse in my calf and then heard a "pop". I knew that wasn't a good sign. We shortened our evening - well, we didn't actually "shorten" it in time, since it took me about 30 minutes to walk a couple of blocks. When we got back to our hotel, I googled my symptoms and found that I probably had strained my calf muscle and that depending on the severity, it could take 2-4 weeks or longer to heal. This injury seems to be most common with runners, not with older woman who meander from slot maching to slot machine. But I had 5 days in Vegas and that wasn't going to slow me down - yeah, right. My sister was working so I had all day to do what I wanted and go where I wanted. I found that where I wanted to go depended mainly on crossing streets. And crossing streets was not as simple when one is hobbling and shuffling. I began to watch when lights were going to change so I could get a head start. Those streets are wide and the time they give you to get across them is minimal. If someone set down one of those monkey with cymbals wind-up toy next to me and started us both walking at the same time the "walk" light came on to cross the street, I know that monkey would beat me. I would get to the middle of the street and the "19 second" sign would start to flash and I would try to limp faster. Limp and fast don't go together. When I did finally get across a street I looked for the nearest casino. Casinos there are a good 2 blocks long and the entrances were usually at the end of those blocks. So basically by the time I got out of my casino, figured out which street gave me the longest time to cross and then hobbled to the closest casino, I had about 45 minutes before I had to do it all again so I could get back to the hotel before my sister finished work. I'm glad my eyesight was still intact so I could look at the cool places I couldn't get to. It's good to have a positive attitude. I envied people with crutches and canes; I even looked around to see if someone needed help crossing the street so I could lean on them and do a good deed. But I was like the old car going 35 mph on the freeway. People passed me on both sides of the sidewalk while giving me looks of disgust and pity. I wanted to shout "I have a runners injury, give me a break", but hobbling in the heat takes too much lung power. When the week was finally over, I hadn't physically seen everything I wanted to see. But I found that I did lose a little weight, since I think that limping and hobbling uses more calories than just walking. Maybe it was my lucky week.