For those of you who think that, since you have this awful disease, you cannot travel and do the things you love, I would like to tell you that it is possible! My wife and I spent two weeks in Switzerland at the end of July and early August.

Finding the right tour was the most important thing for the two of us, and we did find the right tour company--Funny Farm Travel of Mt. Horeb, WI. What a great family of third generation tour guides!

We stayed in Ringgenberg, Switzerland at the Hotel Baren for the entire two weeks. That was very important to us to base camp at one place and not have to be uprooted every day to stay somewhere new every night. We were able to adjust to the room, the bed, the breakfast and dinner schedules--you get the idea. The other nice thing is that our luggage was checked from O'Hare to the Interlaken train station and the tour company picked up our bags and brought them to our hotel (they also checked us in to our plane and delivered our checked bags to the train station the day before we left. So we did not have to deal with pulling luggage all around the country.

We used a Swiss travel pass to travel all modes of public transportation the entire time we were there. That is an amazing piece of paper. If you ever travel to Europe, look into a travel pass for the country you are visiting; It will save you a lot of money for an extended stay.

We saw so much when we were there, and even with a bad knee, we hiked (at our own pace) around the mountain from the Männlichen to the Kleine Sheidigg. That was an amazing two hours!

We took the time off from the tour to reconnect with all of my wife's cousins. Now that we have a Swiss family, we are invited back any time we want to go. Nice!

Anyway, just wanted to put out there that you do not have to let this disease win over your life! Get out there and do what you can!!

If any of you want to see photos of our trip, I uploaded a bunch (unedited) to www.flikr.com/mrgvideo
(If you are OCD, start at the bottom and work your way up--that is the order in which they were taken) (-8

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!!