Ooops!

I managed to walk 500 miles through desert and mountains, often over uneven terrain, without falling over once.

Within five minutes of getting off the train in San Francisco, walking down a perfectly smooth pavement, I tripped over a kerb and after a few comedy staggering steps trying to right myself, down I went.

My chin took the impact. My cheek took the friction as I continued forward. Happily (if there could be any happiness in such a situation) I had my backpack on, and thus had a first aid kit at hand. As I sat dripping blood all down my (clean!) clothes and over the pavement, Mick pulled out the butterfly stitches, mopped up the blood and patched me back together.

We continued on our journey to our motel (I insisted on walking; it took a while) but when we got there I was still dripping blood, from behind the butterfly stitches, over the clothes that I really had thought would stay clean for more than half a day now that we're out of the wilds. A taxi was called and off to the hospital we went.

It was far from an emergency, but where else do you go (moreover on a public holiday) to get wounds closed up? And so we got to experience an emergency room.

It was super-fast and efficient and within half an hour I had been checked in, looked at and glued back together. Mick's handy work with the butterfly stitches was praised.

The cut looks quite pathetic now that it's closed. As for the graze on the cheek: "some women pay a lot of money for dermabrasion like that" said Mick!