I went to Las Vegas for work and it was good

I went to the Licensing Expo last week! This was my first time traveling on a plane since the diagnosis and my first trip to Las Vegas since before the pandemic started. I wore my Flo Mask Pro on the plane (I like it for travel because the seal is good and it's relatively comfortable to wear all day at an airport and on a plane) then switched to N-95 masks at the show. 

I have a little CO2 monitor I carry with me so I can see what ventilation is like in various spaces. For the show, numbers were pretty reasonable (500 or below, for context, 400 is "pretty close to outside levels" so you want numbers to be more in that range than, say, above 700) and better in the casino areas than the convention areas (which makes sense since you have air handling set up for deal with cigarette smoke in those casino spaces and not so much in the convention space). I wasn't the only person masking, but the majority of attendees were not masking. This is pretty normal at this point and I don't worry about looking weird for wearing a mask. I am very used to it. I only had one person shout something at me (couldn't hear him clearly but the tone was certainly derisive and I heard the word "covid") so that was pretty good considering the sheer number of people around. 

The expo itself wasn't too crowded most of the time. Certainly nothing like San Diego Comic Con. I was able to meet colleagues for drinks and feel fairly comfortable. I had a few meals indoors (again in those casino/resort spaces with fairly good ventilation) and managed to return from my trip without getting sick. This is incredible both from a covid perspective and from a convention perspective. "Con crud" is what we always called the inevitable illness that everyone picked up at shows in the days before covid. It was very nice to not experience that! 

I walked a lot every day, both from the hotel where I was staying to the convention and then around the strip in general. I was logging an average of 30,000 steps a day (compare this to my normal activity level of 5,000-7,000 steps on weekdays and 10,000-20,000 steps on weekends) and I had enough energy to do this comfortably (eventually my feet hurt but that's to be expected, even with comfortable sneakers). All in all a very successful experience. 

I'm very happy with how I've recovered from treatment and surgery, and again, I have to credit my occupational and physical therapists with all the work they did (and all the work they had me do) before, during, and after treatment to keep me as strong and stable as possible. I saw my OT today and we've started working on strength and stability, shifting focus from stretching and flexibility now that I've healed enough from radiation and surgery.