I’ve been on most pain meds and stuff. If you haven’t tried Diclofenac, maybe ask for it or give it a go. That is a muscle relaxer with very few down sides and has made a big difference for me lately unlike anything else I have taken. It does not screw with the mind or stomach in the same way as most other things. It just needs to go with food, but like it doesn’t mess with adhd meds or other down sides really. A neighbor had hip surgery and was like, I should take this, and wow did it make a difference. My lows are much more manageable and I can do stuff I haven’t been able to do in years.

I also have poor blood flow in my legs from being a cyclist with enormous legs. If you place a heating pad under your lower thighs and calves as much as possible, it may greatly help with circulation and blood flow while accelerating your recovery significantly. That is also part of advanced recovery with endurance races, especially when combined with compression tights. If you feel cold feet at all, it will likely help in recovery to add some heat to improve blood flow and circulation. The taller you are, the more import this is too. Like I can’t even fully heal cuts or road rash on my lower legs without adding a heating pad routine, but with a daily routine of an hour or two, I will fully recover in a couple of weeks even with really bad stuff.

As far as visiting here around LA, you really need a solid plan of where you want to go and what you want to do with every link known and connected. It is not like most places where you can just wing it like a tourist in the tourist targeted way. Sure there is Disneyland, and that is all inclusive and encapsulated. Laguna Beach down here closer to me is cool to walk around. They have a big art show once a year called pageant of the masters. There is Venice Beach too. Downtown LA is a major disappointment to see. You’ve likely seen it countless times in films because of its proximity to Hollywood, but you will quickly see how it was strategically framed and often digitally augmented to make it appear much larger than it really is. The stars walk and Hollywood Blvd are in a run down neighborhood. There are no historical sites or significant things to see in the area that are relative to the past or film. You learn that all you see in movies and shows is hacked together temporary junk that looks like a dump just outside of the image frame.

I forget the name for it but there is a ringed distance around the film studios where the unions Mark the boundary for day work without the studio paying for accommodations or paying transportation costs. Almost everything you have ever seen that was filmed in Hollywood happens within this boundary. So when you’re traveling around the region you might have strange familiarity in places at random like deja vu. One of the cool things, US wise, is that so much stuff is imported through the port of Long Beach, so there are many small businesses scattered throughout the LA basin selling stuff that is only available here or places like Shenzhen. Through you probably have similar around London.

That is about all I know of use. I’m boring by most people’s standards. My interests are generally too niche to even talk about or too subtle to call a real destination, and I value the nerdy stuff over the experience and emotions.

GL and have fun!

Mine was riding a bicycle to work, and fighting two SUVs in 2014. Both of them were total losses, and they only managed to break my neck and back. Empirically, I have chronic damage to my thoracic spin between the shoulder blades that makes posture very limited. It is the rarest region for people to injure, so my back issues are very atypical. The underlying cause of my issues are unknown, which leaves me in a doomed limbo in life. I actually had very serious damage to C1 and the base of my skull that was nearly lethal. So all the neurosurgeons see is an ambiguous unremarkable radiologist’s report from an MRI, and the extremely concerning initial damage to a region of my spine that could be a ticking time bomb, and want nothing to do with the risk involved with trying to find the cause or a solution. I have had to come to terms with that and it doesn’t really bother me much any more. I was supposed to die in 2014 but I am only half dead now, so whatever, roll with it. I’m not sharing for the sympathy or whatnot. I’m always worried that asking anything personal might make the other person uncomfortable in some way that is off putting. So I often lead by example and just put myself out there to help gauge or imply my level of interest, openness, and straightforwardness.

I have never heard of disability support for a flight. What does that entail? I cannot sustain sitting upright beyond 45 degrees at the very most. Even then I need my legs up in a way the takes all tension and strain off of holding up my head, arms, and shoulders. Like lying here in bed right now, I’m proper up on pillows where my elbows rest on the bed and forearms over my torso, so that only my wrists and hands are engaged with my phone. My back is completely neutral in this position so my pain level falls to a consistent white noise where I can hear my internal dialog clearly. I can also use my bedside stand for a laptop in a similar neutral position. I can be upright and walk around just fine for an hour or so each day, but that builds stress about like lifting weights in a gym. I can actually go for much longer if I try, but I won’t be able to sleep very much for several days afterwards. Then I turn into a mindless zombie, and multiple days in a row are killers that can last for months without sleep. So I only exist in my little isolated prison safe from the killer zombie me. I don’t think the airlines have a zombie containment zone, but who knows, I had no idea they had any real disability remedies beyond midget sardine accommodations.

First of all, most new car dealerships that appear to have a used car lot too, are actually two entirely separate businesses that have no real connection. This is largely due to how used car lots work and collect bad inventory over time. They all go through a 3-5 year cycle where a new manager is hired with all of their cronies and third party services tagging along. After a few years of buying 10-15 cars at a time at auctions, they collect enough bad buys that won’t sell to where they drown from a lack of turnover and cash flow. This cycle is due to how no one gets to drive auction cars before bidding. The cars are all boxed into a lot. Some will let agents take the keys and start the cars, but many won’t because of the potential hassle and volume of inventory. Keeping keys sorted with lots of cars is a chore, especially when fobs or cars may be dead or not functioning. Mix in some careless upper middle class pretentious SoB of a Buyer and it is a train wreck.

Most auctions consist of a bunch of fools where three quarters of the agents present did no homework and did not look at the cars in advance. All they do is try and gauge those that actually may have put in an ounce of effort, and then only bid on the same cars as that person. If you’re intelligent and marked as such, the auction becomes a complex game of strategy. You’ve got to convince the rest that they have you figured out, and use it to your advantage. You might need to place bogus bids on junk cars just to have a chance later at the ones you want. Like I said, it is an insane clown show. You’re going to get stuck with one of those bogus bids at times and take an absolute junker back to the lot. You know it is going to cost you your job in a few years time, but hopefully it is worth it for some really great cars you snag from the ruse.

When the used car dealer stops making a profit, the owner will file for bankruptcy, and liquidate the entire inventory. Then a new manager is hired and the cycle continues. That new manager is just some smooth talker from across town that just got fired from the exact same scenario somewhere else, and so the game of duck duck goose continues.

Sometimes the auction agent is the manager, sometimes it is an assistant or few. The finances and planning of the used car lot is what these folks are all about. They do not take kindly to anyone forcing them to take inventory they did not seek out themselves. Like I could never pick up a Craigslist car and hawk it to this kind of lot. I could only do that with the very small used car lots where it is an owner operator with real reserve capital. Most of these tiny lots, or rather around half of these, are actually exporters that are primarily acquiring cars to sell in places like the middle east. They last long term as businesses because all the junk cars they can’t sell end up getting exported to places where anything can be fixed extremely cheaply relative to the car’s local value.

This gets into the actual way trade ins work in most large lots. Some dealers have a large enough space and enough trade ins that they will offer a first pickings like situation for the adjacent used car manager to buy cars ahead of auction. Usually though, the volume is not sufficient and it is poor time management. The general manager will just sell the car at auction, and in some cases the used car manager may even buy the car at said auction. You see, these two people are like rivals in many cases. The general manager is often some old used car lot manager that escaped the auction cycle. Getting them to agree on a fair wholesale price is just a nuclear war begging to light off. Instead these guys are usually kept separated on opposite sides of the building. The sales persons are more like independent pick pockets or thieves where the new and used car managers are two competing pawn shops, but the opposite flow of merchandise.

Then there are the exporters. Many larger lots will sell all of their trade in vehicles either to an auction house or to a large exporter. This saves a ton of time over doing anything piecemeal, and more importantly, it allows them to take in junk trade ins with no real value and still get them off the lot. When the best vehicles are kept, the auctions and exporters will not accept the junk too. This leads to most lots filling the service area with inventory which then results in a different kind of nuclear war with a service manager and team, which are often also a separate business. If done piecemeal, someone will need to handle selling the lowest end junk to a scrapper and might even need to pay for that service.

Lastly, buy here pay here lots are by-far the worst and most sleazy. Many of those are not even making a profit off the sales cycle. They are actually making their money from selling the defaulted loans after repossessing the cars. They sell the same cars dozens of times to people that have no means of paying for them and no chance of getting a car from somewhere else. This happens in states where the law is ambiguous about how cars must be auctioned after repossession, and that amount applied against the existing loan. These dealers buy the cheapest junk at auction without a care about the condition of the vehicle. Their goal is only to buy the car for as little as possible. Because of the ambiguity of the law, this amount they originally paid is always the amount applied against the repossession and defaulted loan no matter how many tines they sell the car to someone off the lot. They barely get the thing running, but are willing to go to extreme lengths to purchase the cheapest car possible. They actually compete with the 3rd (4th-9th) world exporters for rocks that might roll with a little polish.

It is rare for the real owner of a large lot to expose themselves to the risk involved with a unified business where actual trade ins stay under one business entity. These are much more picky about what they take for trade ins. It also means the capital backing the operations is much larger than is typically the case, and they are capable of fiscal planning that is at the decades scale. At that scale, return on investment and stability come into question.

The new car side has major challenges that make this difficult too. The manufacturer actually dictates a lot of the inventory of new car lots. They don’t really have a choice. They just get sent loads of cars and have to figure it out. Many must lease separate storage lots off site because they get sent more cars than they could possibly showcase. They have no room or infrastructure to deal with piecemeal trade ins. They are dealing with a hundred cars you see, and 100-500 more you don’t.

Anyways, that is how it really works.