Visiting Iwakuni and the Kintaikyō Bridge
Stepping across Kintai Bridge into the 1600s • Iwakuni
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My blood sugars today in the city of Iwakuni, Japan got high because I put too much trust in my CGM, but wandering around and some insulin choices brought it down for a mostly-respectable day.
It started last night, when my FreeStyle Libre 2 CGM told me I was 140 and falling about two hours after dinner. I thought I might have overdone my dinner shot, and this seemed to confirm it.
So I had two glucose packets (10g).
Hotel breakfast in Iwakuni
But it turned out that maybe the CGM had overstated my level, and that it was dropping. Soon I was high, but then it said I’d reached 185. I figured it would continue to slightly fall and come in for a graceful landing around 100 overnight, so I went to sleep.
Mangled English from the hotel’s washing machine
Well, I’d been wrong; it *had* come down a while, into the 130s, but in the wee hours had started slowly rising. By the time I woke up at 7:30, it was 224.
Sigh. I took a shot, took another for the excellent Japanese-style breakfast provided by my hotel, and went out to explore Iwakuni.
On the hike to the castle. Getting better, anyway
Shortly after crossing the 1670s-era wooden bridge, the famous Kintaikyō, I was in Kikko Park, and looking at the cormorants in their big cages.
Then it was up a ropeway to visit Iwakuni Castle, from the top of which you get a superb view over everything down below – the bridge, the city, and even out into the (today very misty) Seto Inland Sea.
By the time I made it back down the ropeway to the park, I was a feeling a bit low. The CGM said it was 80, and this time I believed it. I had some glucose.
After visiting a shrine dedicated to albino rat snakes, I walked back to town and stopped for some takeaway Cajun food from a place I’d seen. That was a late lunch, and dinner was from a convenience store.
Shrimp poboy in Iwakuni.
And through the entire rest of the day, BG was right in the sweet spot, usually about 80 to 180. So all in all, bad start to the day and the fresh air of a cool early summer morning in Iwakuni fixed me.
And the lesson, yet again, of today: Verify those unusual CGM readings.
