19 - 31 March 2019
After an early dinner in Prescott I finally made it back to the valley. We started to make final preparations to head back east again. We had only planned on being gone two or three weeks, and we were approaching the high end of that range already. One of the last things on my list was to finally straighten out Heather's insurance with my dentist.
I went into their office with the laptop so I could show them various forms and answer their questions in real time. We finally got the dentist and Heather's insurance on the same page, so I tried to schedule a checkup for appointment day, which everyone knows is the Monday before Thanksgiving. They said hmm, we have a cancellation, what about this Thursday? That could work!
This was my first dentist appointment in 18 months, where I had being going every four. I didn't win the teeth lottery like Heather, but with that schedule I had been pretty good for years. Two hours before my appointment I'm brushing my teeth and a filling falls out. I went in for my appointment and they took a look and a zillion xrays. Suddenly we had another change in plans, with a flurry of last minute appointments around cancellations and other small windows in their schedule. We went to Chris's for a couple days, then back for the first crown on Monday.
We were on our way back to the valley on I10 and stopped at the McDs in Lordsburg as we commonly do. As we got back on the interstate heading west the traffic almost immediately slowed, then stopped. We crept up to the next exit and I decided to get off, bypassing Tucson for the Globe route. As we drove away we could see the line of cars and trucks pointed toward a fire in the distance. Later we found out there was a wreck several miles ahead, two semis and pickup. Two folks were airlifted out, including one teenage boy, three dead. Give those semis lots of room. They can take almost twice as far to stop as a car, and may weigh in at 40 tons. On the boat they call it the law of gross tonnage. It doesn't matter if you have the right of way; you're going to lose.
They did one crown and a double gum scrape session on half my mouth in one afternoon. It was just as fun as it sounds. The second crown was scheduled for Friday, with them trying to fit in two more gum scrape sessions during the week. I finally got one on Thursday, and another just before my second crown on Friday.
I was successful with those appointments even if they weren't fun, but the last quadrant gum scrape was just before my second crown, which was supposed to be on a wisdom tooth. Suddenly there were lots of hmming and offline conversations. As it turns out, on top of the crack in the wisdom tooth (which they thought was manageable) the number of fillings on that wisdom tooth had somewhat hidden the extent of damage. More importantly where, which was down at and proceeding slightly under the gumline at the very back of the tooth, right up against my jaw. The dentist now advised just pulling the wisdom tooth, but the oral surgeon didn't rotate through until early the next week. I got an appointment for the following Tuesday.
Back to LC we go for a quick weekend. I got the oil changed, since we had somehow put on over 8,000 miles since Xmas, and we actually got to the gym.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
The adventures of Dan and Heather as they travel on their sailboat, "Hiatus".
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 29, 2019
From Provo to Prescott in Only Three Days
16 - 19 March 2019
When I exited the Provo hotel on Saturday I finally noticed across the street was a McDonalds with a world class view. After some coffee and such I headed south. I didn't really make it that far, with just making check out time and moving like I was underwater, but it was progress.
I stopped in St. George and went to the In-and-Out Burger, which was stacked with folks. In-and-Out really does have the best burger at that price point. In watching people it was clear that many of the folks had the same kind of small town characteristics I was used to growing up in Prescott, clothing, speech, pace and such. I know how some folks feels about Mormons, but they do know how to run a town with all the appearances of wholesomeness. This would be contrasted with my experience the next day.
I checked into a hotel in St George with my now trusty electric blanket and enough OJ and rum to continue my medical treatment. I guess I travel now in the winter with an electric blanket. The next morning I grabbed some breakfast at an Einsteins Bagel. It was an interesting subset of the St. George population, that being folks not at church on a Sunday morning, having breakfast out at one of the few places open on said Sunday morning. Still pretty wholesome looking, although the percentage of folks with tattoos and piercings shot up a bit.
Fortified with some excellent coffee (with honey!) I was back on the road, hours earlier than the day before. The station I gassed up at in StG had a pretty good view as well.
As I was driving into the northern outskirts of Las Vegas maybe they were having some sort of airshow. I saw a couple of jets, one with a classic delta wing and a canard. The other one I only saw nose on, but both hauling ass at a pretty low altitude.
I felt okay still so I kept going. In fact, I was so much better that I finally noticed that I didn't have my seat cushion. I must have removed it while I was provisioning for the hotel stay, getting in and out to the car a lot, and had not noticed its absence until now. But now I definitely missed it. I must be getting better!
There was some sort of wreck south of Vegas approaching the I40. There was a several mile long backup. Once I got to the northern edge of Kingman I took a long cut over the hills the back way into town.
I needed some more OJ to continue my treatment and the entire town seemed to be anchored by the Walmart. Kingman had a noticeably different feel from the day before in StG. I went in, and as I was searching the aisles I saw some poor soul, maybe late 20s or early 30s. He had a full set of very unfortunate neck and facial tattoos, being herded along by I'm assuming his mother. These were two of the saddest people I had seen in a long time, just trying to get through their day.
The next day I stopped in Prescott to have an early supper with my mother, and reminisce about Elisabeth, four days later than I had planned.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
When I exited the Provo hotel on Saturday I finally noticed across the street was a McDonalds with a world class view. After some coffee and such I headed south. I didn't really make it that far, with just making check out time and moving like I was underwater, but it was progress.
I stopped in St. George and went to the In-and-Out Burger, which was stacked with folks. In-and-Out really does have the best burger at that price point. In watching people it was clear that many of the folks had the same kind of small town characteristics I was used to growing up in Prescott, clothing, speech, pace and such. I know how some folks feels about Mormons, but they do know how to run a town with all the appearances of wholesomeness. This would be contrasted with my experience the next day.
I checked into a hotel in St George with my now trusty electric blanket and enough OJ and rum to continue my medical treatment. I guess I travel now in the winter with an electric blanket. The next morning I grabbed some breakfast at an Einsteins Bagel. It was an interesting subset of the St. George population, that being folks not at church on a Sunday morning, having breakfast out at one of the few places open on said Sunday morning. Still pretty wholesome looking, although the percentage of folks with tattoos and piercings shot up a bit.
Fortified with some excellent coffee (with honey!) I was back on the road, hours earlier than the day before. The station I gassed up at in StG had a pretty good view as well.
As I was driving into the northern outskirts of Las Vegas maybe they were having some sort of airshow. I saw a couple of jets, one with a classic delta wing and a canard. The other one I only saw nose on, but both hauling ass at a pretty low altitude.
I felt okay still so I kept going. In fact, I was so much better that I finally noticed that I didn't have my seat cushion. I must have removed it while I was provisioning for the hotel stay, getting in and out to the car a lot, and had not noticed its absence until now. But now I definitely missed it. I must be getting better!
There was some sort of wreck south of Vegas approaching the I40. There was a several mile long backup. Once I got to the northern edge of Kingman I took a long cut over the hills the back way into town.
I needed some more OJ to continue my treatment and the entire town seemed to be anchored by the Walmart. Kingman had a noticeably different feel from the day before in StG. I went in, and as I was searching the aisles I saw some poor soul, maybe late 20s or early 30s. He had a full set of very unfortunate neck and facial tattoos, being herded along by I'm assuming his mother. These were two of the saddest people I had seen in a long time, just trying to get through their day.
The next day I stopped in Prescott to have an early supper with my mother, and reminisce about Elisabeth, four days later than I had planned.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Friday, April 26, 2019
Who's the Sickie?
14 - 16 March 2019
Well, the meetings on Thursday went well. The sections I had written were well received, even with a good number of changes, most of which made them better. I'm looking to what might be next in this effort.
I had originally planned to leave Salt Lake Thursday afternoon after the last admin meeting and get to Vegas early evening. It took a few days longer.
Once I finished the last meeting I chatted with some folks from work for a few minutes, then grabbed a lunch and snuck into the closing administrative meeting a bit late. I was kind of coming down from the meeting, and felt a little woozy, but still not that bad. After a quick informal meeting I packed up my stuff, even taking a picture of town on my way to the car.
I had come down from the meeting, but then I just kept dropping. I hadn't had much to eat and thought that might help, although I really didn't feel like eating. There was a Corner Bakery down the street, and I got some soup and half a sandwich. I finished the soup but only picked at the sandwich. Me without an appetite is definitely a warning sign.
By the time I got back into the car I knew I was in trouble. I slowly pulled out of my space, crossed the parking lot, and entered the street, but it almost immediately had a very busy intersection. I stopped abruptly just as some cars went whizzing by at more than 50 mph. I really wasn't feeling well.
I finally turned right behind a slow moving bus, and I just stayed behind it for a couple miles until I got my bearings. I could tell now I was going down hard with something in my lungs. I usually had the cold first. After having pneumonia four winters out of five I had recognized the pattern where I got to the point where I could not heat myself back up, no matter how many blankets were piled on me. At that point I had three choices, antibiotics, the emergency room, or if I caught it soon enough, an electric blanket.
At my second Target with no electric blankets (out of season? there's snow on the ground!), a helpful girl suggested Walmart and that it was also online. As we were walking away she offhandedly suggested Bed, Bath and Beyond. I checked from the car and there apparently wasn't an electric blanket at a Walmart for 100 miles. At least that saved me a few trips, and I didn't have many more in me. I then checked BB&B online and there were some at a store just a few miles away.
Once I found the electric blankets I understood why they still had some. Even on sale they were at least twice as much as they should be. By that point I didn't care, and seriously considered buying a second one. I then provisioned for an extended stay at a hotel, including a full pizza. I hate being sick when traveling, but some ways are better than others.
Heading to the Provo hotel I saw an Apache flying north, a couple thousand feet up. Or maybe not, I was pretty punchy by then.
I spent two nights at the hotel in Provo, never leaving the room. The day in between is just a blur of sleep, cable tv, Netflix, and OJ fortified with medicinal rum. I do recall I watched an embarrassing amount of Ridiculousness. I drank about 2 gal of OJ, but only had a couple peanut butter cups to eat on Friday. Just couldn't stand the thought of eating, despite all the provisions I had gathered. Every time I went to the bathroom I turned on the shower to try and steam out some of the gunk in my lungs.
By the second morning I still didn't feel anywhere near good, but I felt a little better, and that was enough to make it at least a couple hours down the road, closer to Prescott.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Well, the meetings on Thursday went well. The sections I had written were well received, even with a good number of changes, most of which made them better. I'm looking to what might be next in this effort.
I had originally planned to leave Salt Lake Thursday afternoon after the last admin meeting and get to Vegas early evening. It took a few days longer.
Once I finished the last meeting I chatted with some folks from work for a few minutes, then grabbed a lunch and snuck into the closing administrative meeting a bit late. I was kind of coming down from the meeting, and felt a little woozy, but still not that bad. After a quick informal meeting I packed up my stuff, even taking a picture of town on my way to the car.
I had come down from the meeting, but then I just kept dropping. I hadn't had much to eat and thought that might help, although I really didn't feel like eating. There was a Corner Bakery down the street, and I got some soup and half a sandwich. I finished the soup but only picked at the sandwich. Me without an appetite is definitely a warning sign.
By the time I got back into the car I knew I was in trouble. I slowly pulled out of my space, crossed the parking lot, and entered the street, but it almost immediately had a very busy intersection. I stopped abruptly just as some cars went whizzing by at more than 50 mph. I really wasn't feeling well.
I finally turned right behind a slow moving bus, and I just stayed behind it for a couple miles until I got my bearings. I could tell now I was going down hard with something in my lungs. I usually had the cold first. After having pneumonia four winters out of five I had recognized the pattern where I got to the point where I could not heat myself back up, no matter how many blankets were piled on me. At that point I had three choices, antibiotics, the emergency room, or if I caught it soon enough, an electric blanket.
At my second Target with no electric blankets (out of season? there's snow on the ground!), a helpful girl suggested Walmart and that it was also online. As we were walking away she offhandedly suggested Bed, Bath and Beyond. I checked from the car and there apparently wasn't an electric blanket at a Walmart for 100 miles. At least that saved me a few trips, and I didn't have many more in me. I then checked BB&B online and there were some at a store just a few miles away.
Once I found the electric blankets I understood why they still had some. Even on sale they were at least twice as much as they should be. By that point I didn't care, and seriously considered buying a second one. I then provisioned for an extended stay at a hotel, including a full pizza. I hate being sick when traveling, but some ways are better than others.
Heading to the Provo hotel I saw an Apache flying north, a couple thousand feet up. Or maybe not, I was pretty punchy by then.
I spent two nights at the hotel in Provo, never leaving the room. The day in between is just a blur of sleep, cable tv, Netflix, and OJ fortified with medicinal rum. I do recall I watched an embarrassing amount of Ridiculousness. I drank about 2 gal of OJ, but only had a couple peanut butter cups to eat on Friday. Just couldn't stand the thought of eating, despite all the provisions I had gathered. Every time I went to the bathroom I turned on the shower to try and steam out some of the gunk in my lungs.
By the second morning I still didn't feel anywhere near good, but I felt a little better, and that was enough to make it at least a couple hours down the road, closer to Prescott.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 25, 2019
GM
13 March 2019
Perhaps sitting in the car for a few hours at a time, and driving some of it, was not the physical accomplishment it felt like at the time, given where I had been just weeks before. In my head I was 90-95% better. In reality, I must have been closer to 60-70%, with few reserves. In addition, I was not used to working that hard on that little sleep. If Heather and I have three days in a row like that on the boat, we just stop wherever we are.
I think I first noticed getting sick with a little cough on Wednesday night at dinner at the Red Iguana. That night back at my hotel I got the call I had been dreading. My grandmother had not been doing well, and the day after the meeting I was going to stop in Prescott on my way back to Phoenix. I didn't make it. She passed while I was at dinner.
Her public life is being celebrated, and rightly so. She did many great things in historic preservation, libraries, and a hundred other Prescott, Arizona state, and even national efforts, some just weeks before she passed. She lived so long that some of the buildings and such she had help expand or to be restored needed some more of the same again decades later. But what I remember her for most is she and my grandfather taking in an angry, scared junior high kid, back when they were roughly my age now. I lived with them through graduating high school, and to their thinly veiled distress, the rest of the year after graduation. I worked at the golden arches during the week, so I could drive up to Flagstaff on weekends to be with my girlfriend, who at least had the sense to sign up for college after high school.
They gave me several critical nudges in the right direction, or at least better directions, and more than once a little bit of support just when I needed it most to pursue a better life. They taught me that there were different ways to proceed in life, to be honest not always better ones, but just knowing that different ones were an option, and that I had some level of control over that was enough most of the time.
Back in my hotel room I cried for a while, then turned out the lights to go to sleep, determined to make it through the meetings the next day. I made it, but just barely.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Perhaps sitting in the car for a few hours at a time, and driving some of it, was not the physical accomplishment it felt like at the time, given where I had been just weeks before. In my head I was 90-95% better. In reality, I must have been closer to 60-70%, with few reserves. In addition, I was not used to working that hard on that little sleep. If Heather and I have three days in a row like that on the boat, we just stop wherever we are.
I think I first noticed getting sick with a little cough on Wednesday night at dinner at the Red Iguana. That night back at my hotel I got the call I had been dreading. My grandmother had not been doing well, and the day after the meeting I was going to stop in Prescott on my way back to Phoenix. I didn't make it. She passed while I was at dinner.
Her public life is being celebrated, and rightly so. She did many great things in historic preservation, libraries, and a hundred other Prescott, Arizona state, and even national efforts, some just weeks before she passed. She lived so long that some of the buildings and such she had help expand or to be restored needed some more of the same again decades later. But what I remember her for most is she and my grandfather taking in an angry, scared junior high kid, back when they were roughly my age now. I lived with them through graduating high school, and to their thinly veiled distress, the rest of the year after graduation. I worked at the golden arches during the week, so I could drive up to Flagstaff on weekends to be with my girlfriend, who at least had the sense to sign up for college after high school.
They gave me several critical nudges in the right direction, or at least better directions, and more than once a little bit of support just when I needed it most to pursue a better life. They taught me that there were different ways to proceed in life, to be honest not always better ones, but just knowing that different ones were an option, and that I had some level of control over that was enough most of the time.
Back in my hotel room I cried for a while, then turned out the lights to go to sleep, determined to make it through the meetings the next day. I made it, but just barely.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Meetings
11 -13 March 2019
In the morning I made my way to the University Guest House for our working meeting on bonding, then the exec meeting later that afternoon. I had dinner at Wasach Sugarhouse brew pub with a few folks from the meeting. It was good to see these people again.
On my way to the meeting Tuesday morning there was a dead deer in the middle of Foothills Drive. Maybe an omen. We started the more formal meetings on Tuesday, and a big group of us had dinner at Stanza, a very nice but not stuffy Italian place. It started snowing that night.
Wednesday going in was a little sloppy. When I pasted the picture below I noticed that I seem to be following the guy in front of me a little close for conditions. What you can't see is we are both stopped at a light.
Wednesday meetings went well, and I even banged out a few pages on heat surveys and such, but I was getting tired of the long days and nights.
A good friend from the meetings named Margaret, that I've known for more than a couple decades, had spent the previous Sunday night with her husband at Sundance. In talking about their connections to Sundance, and mine (well Heather's), we started crossing over with our stories. So it turns out that Margaret's husband's ex-girfriend's sister is the very Heather we had stayed with last year at Sundance, and my Heather's namesake. I think I got that right this time. Small world.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
In the morning I made my way to the University Guest House for our working meeting on bonding, then the exec meeting later that afternoon. I had dinner at Wasach Sugarhouse brew pub with a few folks from the meeting. It was good to see these people again.
On my way to the meeting Tuesday morning there was a dead deer in the middle of Foothills Drive. Maybe an omen. We started the more formal meetings on Tuesday, and a big group of us had dinner at Stanza, a very nice but not stuffy Italian place. It started snowing that night.
Wednesday meetings went well, and I even banged out a few pages on heat surveys and such, but I was getting tired of the long days and nights.
A good friend from the meetings named Margaret, that I've known for more than a couple decades, had spent the previous Sunday night with her husband at Sundance. In talking about their connections to Sundance, and mine (well Heather's), we started crossing over with our stories. So it turns out that Margaret's husband's ex-girfriend's sister is the very Heather we had stayed with last year at Sundance, and my Heather's namesake. I think I got that right this time. Small world.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Finally to the Promised Land, the Great Salt Lake
10 March 2019
Sunday morning we packed up and I drove Heather to the airport so she could catch her appointments in Phoenix. Afterwards I had a full day planned. First breakfast at Penny Ann's, then driving all over SL trying to get my headlight fixed, on a Sunday, in SLUT. Finally at the Pep Boys south of town a guy named Mark helped me out. Apparently he had worked 30 years in Hollywood on lighting and such, and he set me up in minutes. We didn't talk quite long enough to find out how he had ended up here.
I did a triple load of laundry at the neighborhood laundromat then hit Scheels. I was unfamiliar with this store but you can't miss it along the interstate. It's kind of an REI crossed with a Bass Pro/Cabelas, but employee owned. I like that, so I got some overpriced pants (tactical pockets!).
Down the road was a Costco so I had the tires topped up, filled the tank, and got another six pack of Mobil1 to feed the beast. The only alcohol I could buy on a Sunday in SLUT was beer with alcohol content less than 4%, so that's what I got. Even got a car wash to start rinsing off a few thousand miles of road grime. I had had designs on a pizza for dinner, but The Habit burger place across from Scheels smelled so good I couldn't resist. Then I was off to check into my new, and since I was now by myself, cheaper hotel.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Sunday morning we packed up and I drove Heather to the airport so she could catch her appointments in Phoenix. Afterwards I had a full day planned. First breakfast at Penny Ann's, then driving all over SL trying to get my headlight fixed, on a Sunday, in SLUT. Finally at the Pep Boys south of town a guy named Mark helped me out. Apparently he had worked 30 years in Hollywood on lighting and such, and he set me up in minutes. We didn't talk quite long enough to find out how he had ended up here.
I did a triple load of laundry at the neighborhood laundromat then hit Scheels. I was unfamiliar with this store but you can't miss it along the interstate. It's kind of an REI crossed with a Bass Pro/Cabelas, but employee owned. I like that, so I got some overpriced pants (tactical pockets!).
Down the road was a Costco so I had the tires topped up, filled the tank, and got another six pack of Mobil1 to feed the beast. The only alcohol I could buy on a Sunday in SLUT was beer with alcohol content less than 4%, so that's what I got. Even got a car wash to start rinsing off a few thousand miles of road grime. I had had designs on a pizza for dinner, but The Habit burger place across from Scheels smelled so good I couldn't resist. Then I was off to check into my new, and since I was now by myself, cheaper hotel.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Monday, April 22, 2019
So Blowing Snow Really is a Road Hazard Thing
08 - 09 March 2019
In Manhattan we had breakfast at the Chef, then started on through the big empty towards Denver. Just west of Manhattan there was still some contour. We saw some of the largest flocks of birds I've ever seen, and big ones, Canada geese, but also large white birds of some flavor (mmmm, birds). As we head farther west it flattens out and the most common creature we see are these large hawks, tan and brown, with a white chest. Beautiful.
There is something about west Kansas and the eastern Colorado high plains that puts Heather and I to sleep, sort of like west Texas. Nonetheless, we made good time, and made it to Ft. Collins north of Denver by dark. We had dinner at the 415 Restaurant downtown and it was excellent.
In the morning I'd planned to head back downtown for some highly rated breakfast place, but it was cold and windy and Heather wasn't feeling great, so we decided to just go to a place across the parking lot from the hotel. It turned out to be an Original Pancake House, which is kind of a weird name for a chain. It was busy but Heather's omelet was very good.
So I had wanted to take the I70 again, this time with more snow in the Rockies, but a wet snow on a huge base of powder was causing there to be avalanches everywhere around Aspen, so nope. Next we tried to take a state route along the foothills to Laramie, bypassing Cheyenne on our way to the I80, but it closed right in front of us. This confused us because the sun was shining, it was sort of warm (in the 40s, same as the day before) and the roads were dry. Hmmm. Such simple desert folk.
Well, we turned around and made our way to the I25 N to Cheyenne. Just outside town I saw a sign saying that I80 was closed, but I couldn't believe it. Yup, it was, so we started down a state route that looked like it winded around, getting us close to Laramie, but when we headed down it, we saw sign saying closed in 22 miles. After checking online as best we could, we decided to proceed down the state route, half expecting to turn around. We didn't have anything else to do.
The first 15 miles or so was clear and dry, although very blustery as the weather forecast had stated. But then we started going up into some little foothills, which had more snow, and seemed to channel the wind between them. There was snow blowing across the road, which at first doesn't seem like that big a deal. But then cars drive on it, the snow melts some, then refreezes, catching even more snow. That and no visibility. Yikes. But notice the blue skies above.
Finally we got to I80, which was closed right there heading east, but we were going the other way. There were a few more patches of blowing snow and slush and ice on the interstate heading west from there, but nothing like before.
We had dinner at the original Little America in Wyoming. As we parked Heather noted we had one headlight out. After a respectable dinner at a roadside in the middle of nowhere, and some zigs and zags from the GPS, we finally made to to Salt Lake well after dark on one headlight.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
In Manhattan we had breakfast at the Chef, then started on through the big empty towards Denver. Just west of Manhattan there was still some contour. We saw some of the largest flocks of birds I've ever seen, and big ones, Canada geese, but also large white birds of some flavor (mmmm, birds). As we head farther west it flattens out and the most common creature we see are these large hawks, tan and brown, with a white chest. Beautiful.
There is something about west Kansas and the eastern Colorado high plains that puts Heather and I to sleep, sort of like west Texas. Nonetheless, we made good time, and made it to Ft. Collins north of Denver by dark. We had dinner at the 415 Restaurant downtown and it was excellent.
In the morning I'd planned to head back downtown for some highly rated breakfast place, but it was cold and windy and Heather wasn't feeling great, so we decided to just go to a place across the parking lot from the hotel. It turned out to be an Original Pancake House, which is kind of a weird name for a chain. It was busy but Heather's omelet was very good.
So I had wanted to take the I70 again, this time with more snow in the Rockies, but a wet snow on a huge base of powder was causing there to be avalanches everywhere around Aspen, so nope. Next we tried to take a state route along the foothills to Laramie, bypassing Cheyenne on our way to the I80, but it closed right in front of us. This confused us because the sun was shining, it was sort of warm (in the 40s, same as the day before) and the roads were dry. Hmmm. Such simple desert folk.
Well, we turned around and made our way to the I25 N to Cheyenne. Just outside town I saw a sign saying that I80 was closed, but I couldn't believe it. Yup, it was, so we started down a state route that looked like it winded around, getting us close to Laramie, but when we headed down it, we saw sign saying closed in 22 miles. After checking online as best we could, we decided to proceed down the state route, half expecting to turn around. We didn't have anything else to do.
The first 15 miles or so was clear and dry, although very blustery as the weather forecast had stated. But then we started going up into some little foothills, which had more snow, and seemed to channel the wind between them. There was snow blowing across the road, which at first doesn't seem like that big a deal. But then cars drive on it, the snow melts some, then refreezes, catching even more snow. That and no visibility. Yikes. But notice the blue skies above.
Finally we got to I80, which was closed right there heading east, but we were going the other way. There were a few more patches of blowing snow and slush and ice on the interstate heading west from there, but nothing like before.
We had dinner at the original Little America in Wyoming. As we parked Heather noted we had one headlight out. After a respectable dinner at a roadside in the middle of nowhere, and some zigs and zags from the GPS, we finally made to to Salt Lake well after dark on one headlight.
Friday, April 19, 2019
Midwest
07 March 2019
We had breakfast at the Gold Rush Cafe in downtown Padukah. I had a scotch egg and it was pretty good. The waitress said the miners used to eat them. It took us a minute to realize she meant coal miners.
They have a quilt museum downtown which hosts one of the largest quilting conventions in the country. The river was up 50 feet so the levee gates were closed. It seemed like it was doing pretty well for a small midwest town, but obviously struggling just the same. Hang in there Padukah.
We stopped at a Duluth Trading west of St. Louis for a break, then shared a little 5-minute pizza across the way. An hour east of KC it was just starting to get dark. It was so cloudy that we couldn't really see the sun going down, just the light slowly fading. As we were driving, out of the clouds comes a B2 bomber, a few thousand feet up. It sweeps across the interstate, then disappears back into the clouds. Cool.
We had dinner at Joes BBQ in Kansas City. This location of Joes was in the south end of town, and with one pump was technically a gas station. Since it was sort of a neighborhood, maybe this was a zoning issue, and the gas station was already there? We were lucky to get a parking space then started to wait in line. The lady behind us let us know this wasn't really busy because the line wasn't out the door. Even Heather liked the burnt ends, and the sliced brisket was exceptional. The ribs were a little hammy for my taste, but were still very good, right off the bone without being too mushy or dry. After dinner and some coffee we pressed on a couple hours farther down the road to sleep in Manhattan KS.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
We had breakfast at the Gold Rush Cafe in downtown Padukah. I had a scotch egg and it was pretty good. The waitress said the miners used to eat them. It took us a minute to realize she meant coal miners.
They have a quilt museum downtown which hosts one of the largest quilting conventions in the country. The river was up 50 feet so the levee gates were closed. It seemed like it was doing pretty well for a small midwest town, but obviously struggling just the same. Hang in there Padukah.
We stopped at a Duluth Trading west of St. Louis for a break, then shared a little 5-minute pizza across the way. An hour east of KC it was just starting to get dark. It was so cloudy that we couldn't really see the sun going down, just the light slowly fading. As we were driving, out of the clouds comes a B2 bomber, a few thousand feet up. It sweeps across the interstate, then disappears back into the clouds. Cool.
We had dinner at Joes BBQ in Kansas City. This location of Joes was in the south end of town, and with one pump was technically a gas station. Since it was sort of a neighborhood, maybe this was a zoning issue, and the gas station was already there? We were lucky to get a parking space then started to wait in line. The lady behind us let us know this wasn't really busy because the line wasn't out the door. Even Heather liked the burnt ends, and the sliced brisket was exceptional. The ribs were a little hammy for my taste, but were still very good, right off the bone without being too mushy or dry. After dinner and some coffee we pressed on a couple hours farther down the road to sleep in Manhattan KS.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 18, 2019
What the Paducah?
06 March 2019
In the morning we had breakfast at an always reliable Metro Diner. At a FedEx Office we were able to print out, fill out, then send in a picture of a form sent to us for registration of the dinghy, and next door pick up another tiny florescent light bulb for the galley. Then we hit the road again.
The roads cut through the rock, which had water weeping out, then freezing into up to 10 foot icicles.
We liked the terrain change as we headed into TN, with hills turning into little mountains.
We had dinner at Hattie B's Hot Chicken in Nashville. This time we couldn't help but notice the similarities with our favorite chicken place in St. Simon Island, Porch.
We finished the day in Paducah KY. It is believed to have been named by Clark (as in Lewis and Clark), after the Comanche people using an earlier, Spanish name. It's located where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers come together, about halfway between Nashville and St. Louis, which is the primary reason it came to our attention. Where Jeri Ryan is from, of all people.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
In the morning we had breakfast at an always reliable Metro Diner. At a FedEx Office we were able to print out, fill out, then send in a picture of a form sent to us for registration of the dinghy, and next door pick up another tiny florescent light bulb for the galley. Then we hit the road again.
The roads cut through the rock, which had water weeping out, then freezing into up to 10 foot icicles.
We liked the terrain change as we headed into TN, with hills turning into little mountains.
We had dinner at Hattie B's Hot Chicken in Nashville. This time we couldn't help but notice the similarities with our favorite chicken place in St. Simon Island, Porch.
We finished the day in Paducah KY. It is believed to have been named by Clark (as in Lewis and Clark), after the Comanche people using an earlier, Spanish name. It's located where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers come together, about halfway between Nashville and St. Louis, which is the primary reason it came to our attention. Where Jeri Ryan is from, of all people.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Packing Up for Another Road Trip
05 Mar 2019
We had a weird day preparing to leave. We couldn't really make up our mind whether to leave the next morning or not, so we just kept chugging away at our list for preparing to leave the boat. I was still moving a little slowly. We planned on being gone a little more than two weeks (hah!).
Part of the problem was the boat was a disaster. I had received the replacement heat exchanger, but by then Guy and Wayne had moved on to other jobs. The heat exchanger install on the engine was now going to happen while we were gone. They needed full access to the engine from all the sides, so most of the crap from the back cabin was moved up to the front cabin. We had never left the boat in such a mess.
Now that the fall episode is mostly done we have pictures again. The wind was blowing another cold front in. I was taking yet another load of stuff up the dock to the car when I noticed this guy hanging out behind out behind our boat. Or rather gar, since I think that is the kind of fish he is. The wind was blowing from the north hard enough to make waves in our tiny inlet, so he was hanging out on the south side, and getting a little sun at the same time. I'm guessing he was about two and a half feet long.
Finally about 4:30 we were done with our list. We decided to get a few hours down the road and take some of the pressure off of the next few days. We made it as far as Macon that night. This was our longest road trip since I tore a chunk out of my butt almost two months before. It was okay, but I was certainly ready to stop after those three hours.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
We had a weird day preparing to leave. We couldn't really make up our mind whether to leave the next morning or not, so we just kept chugging away at our list for preparing to leave the boat. I was still moving a little slowly. We planned on being gone a little more than two weeks (hah!).
Part of the problem was the boat was a disaster. I had received the replacement heat exchanger, but by then Guy and Wayne had moved on to other jobs. The heat exchanger install on the engine was now going to happen while we were gone. They needed full access to the engine from all the sides, so most of the crap from the back cabin was moved up to the front cabin. We had never left the boat in such a mess.
Now that the fall episode is mostly done we have pictures again. The wind was blowing another cold front in. I was taking yet another load of stuff up the dock to the car when I noticed this guy hanging out behind out behind our boat. Or rather gar, since I think that is the kind of fish he is. The wind was blowing from the north hard enough to make waves in our tiny inlet, so he was hanging out on the south side, and getting a little sun at the same time. I'm guessing he was about two and a half feet long.
Finally about 4:30 we were done with our list. We decided to get a few hours down the road and take some of the pressure off of the next few days. We made it as far as Macon that night. This was our longest road trip since I tore a chunk out of my butt almost two months before. It was okay, but I was certainly ready to stop after those three hours.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
All I Wanted To Do Was Change the Oil
Late February, Early March 2019
As February was fading and March started I was mobile enough to (very) slowly do tasks. We were trying to get the boat in order for leaving for our road trip. We were also preparing for departing in the boat soon after our return, heading up the coast along the ditch to the Chesapeake. For the engine my primary skills are checking the fluids every travel day, topping them up, and changing the engine oil. The latter was overdue; I really should have done it before laying up the boat last summer, but we arrived so late and left in such a rush.
Well, to change the oil you want to start the engine and get everything warm and swirling around so all the crap comes out with the oil. We started it up, and enjoying the warmer weather, sat in the cockpit in the sun, occasionally glancing at the control panel on the binnacle. One time when Heather glanced over it was still too cold, the next time, at most a few minutes later, the temp was above 200°F and climbing. The alarm had not gone off, I thought yet, but that's another story. I quickly cut the engine. Over time I checked the inlet strainer, but the raw water was spitting out strong on the side of the boat. The coolant was topped up on the other side of the coolant system, so now I was out.
We got the folks from the marina yard to come over. First was an older guy named Wayne, whose health was fading and really shouldn't be working anymore, but he had the experience. And then there was a younger guy named Guy, so that was easy to remember, who was supposed to be doing all the wrenching, and soaking up what he could from Wayne. They poked and prodded and checked, then Wayne removed the radiator cap off the exhaust manifold and stuck his finger down inside. Then to my surprise he tasted it - old school I guess. He asked me if I wanted to taste it, but I declined. He declared it was salty, and that was a no-no, since this was the fresh water side of the coolant system. The typical culprit in something like this is the heat exchanger, which does just that between the raw (salt) water and the fresh water coolant. Between them are nothing but these metal tubes, which being exposed to both heat and salt water, so corrosion is an even bigger issue than usual.
Well they removed the exchanger and took it to the radiator shop to check it out, along with the exhaust manifold, because now that they started draining and removing things there was corrosion all over the fresh water side. I think they found the root cause for our intermittent overheating problems last year. Once again, we were lucky that the engine didn't give up the ghost while we really needed it, like when it ran 24 hours straight for our return crossing from the Bahamas.
The shop determined that the heat exchanger was not repairable, but the manifold would clean up and be fine. This was good, because we couldn't even find a replacement exhaust manifold. The good news was that we could get a new heat exchanger. The bad news was that it was a grand from the manufacturer. Well, this is something I could do. I scoured the web looking for alternatives, finally arriving at Mr. Cool, who by all appearances might actually be making the exchangers the OEM was selling. Well, a new exchanger from him was a little over $400, and it was the alloy steel not the cheaper and more corrosion prone copper tubes. I ordered it, but we were running out of days before leaving for our road trip.
We were never going to the Bahamas this year, we just didn't know it until after I fell.
As February was fading and March started I was mobile enough to (very) slowly do tasks. We were trying to get the boat in order for leaving for our road trip. We were also preparing for departing in the boat soon after our return, heading up the coast along the ditch to the Chesapeake. For the engine my primary skills are checking the fluids every travel day, topping them up, and changing the engine oil. The latter was overdue; I really should have done it before laying up the boat last summer, but we arrived so late and left in such a rush.
Well, to change the oil you want to start the engine and get everything warm and swirling around so all the crap comes out with the oil. We started it up, and enjoying the warmer weather, sat in the cockpit in the sun, occasionally glancing at the control panel on the binnacle. One time when Heather glanced over it was still too cold, the next time, at most a few minutes later, the temp was above 200°F and climbing. The alarm had not gone off, I thought yet, but that's another story. I quickly cut the engine. Over time I checked the inlet strainer, but the raw water was spitting out strong on the side of the boat. The coolant was topped up on the other side of the coolant system, so now I was out.
We got the folks from the marina yard to come over. First was an older guy named Wayne, whose health was fading and really shouldn't be working anymore, but he had the experience. And then there was a younger guy named Guy, so that was easy to remember, who was supposed to be doing all the wrenching, and soaking up what he could from Wayne. They poked and prodded and checked, then Wayne removed the radiator cap off the exhaust manifold and stuck his finger down inside. Then to my surprise he tasted it - old school I guess. He asked me if I wanted to taste it, but I declined. He declared it was salty, and that was a no-no, since this was the fresh water side of the coolant system. The typical culprit in something like this is the heat exchanger, which does just that between the raw (salt) water and the fresh water coolant. Between them are nothing but these metal tubes, which being exposed to both heat and salt water, so corrosion is an even bigger issue than usual.
Well they removed the exchanger and took it to the radiator shop to check it out, along with the exhaust manifold, because now that they started draining and removing things there was corrosion all over the fresh water side. I think they found the root cause for our intermittent overheating problems last year. Once again, we were lucky that the engine didn't give up the ghost while we really needed it, like when it ran 24 hours straight for our return crossing from the Bahamas.
The shop determined that the heat exchanger was not repairable, but the manifold would clean up and be fine. This was good, because we couldn't even find a replacement exhaust manifold. The good news was that we could get a new heat exchanger. The bad news was that it was a grand from the manufacturer. Well, this is something I could do. I scoured the web looking for alternatives, finally arriving at Mr. Cool, who by all appearances might actually be making the exchangers the OEM was selling. Well, a new exchanger from him was a little over $400, and it was the alloy steel not the cheaper and more corrosion prone copper tubes. I ordered it, but we were running out of days before leaving for our road trip.
We were never going to the Bahamas this year, we just didn't know it until after I fell.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Monday, April 15, 2019
Recovery
February 2019, yeah, all of it
Continued from previous post.
Well, all that was left for me to do was to grow a new ass. At least the skin. Apparently the meat out of my butt cheek wasn't coming back. It takes longer than you might think.
I was on my back for weeks on end. It's actually pretty hard to minimize contact with your butt, or anything connected to it. Try it sometime.
We had a follow up with a doctor and an intern about four weeks after the fall. Heather joked that this was just what I always wanted, two young girls commented on how good my ass looked. Somehow this is not what I would have imagined, but I was still happy that things were healing up well.
I know you clenched your butt cheeks together at least once at some point reading this account. I did writing it months later, but here's the thing, I'm damn glad I can. You are too, whether you realize it or not. The alternative is not fun.
Well, this completely rearranged our schedule for the year. There was no way we were going to the Bahamas now. Since we were going to be stateside it looked like I was going to be able to make my M17 meeting in March in Salt Lake, since Heather's medical appointments were just then as well, although in Phoenix. All this was assuming I was going to be able to sit on my ass for a day or three.
We continued our daily routine all the way up to our approaching departure for Salt Lake for my meeting and medical appointments. The days and seasons of TV shows on disk melted into one another. At least I could go on short car trips if Heather drove.
Continued from previous post.
Well, all that was left for me to do was to grow a new ass. At least the skin. Apparently the meat out of my butt cheek wasn't coming back. It takes longer than you might think.
I was on my back for weeks on end. It's actually pretty hard to minimize contact with your butt, or anything connected to it. Try it sometime.
We had a follow up with a doctor and an intern about four weeks after the fall. Heather joked that this was just what I always wanted, two young girls commented on how good my ass looked. Somehow this is not what I would have imagined, but I was still happy that things were healing up well.
I know you clenched your butt cheeks together at least once at some point reading this account. I did writing it months later, but here's the thing, I'm damn glad I can. You are too, whether you realize it or not. The alternative is not fun.
We continued our daily routine all the way up to our approaching departure for Salt Lake for my meeting and medical appointments. The days and seasons of TV shows on disk melted into one another. At least I could go on short car trips if Heather drove.
I couldn't really drive for the longest time because if I was putting pressure on my ass it became the sole focus of my attention, traffic and pedestrians be damned. I finally took the wheel a few times for short trips starting after about five weeks. That's the longest I've gone without driving since I was about 15, or even 14 (sorry, Mom).
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
After my fall I think the "one hand for the boat, one for you" rule should be modified with - when getting on and off the boat, both hands for the boat. And screw the trash.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Friday, April 12, 2019
Farting Rules!
16 January 2019 on to end of the month
Continued from previous post.
Since they really couldn't decide just how much damage I had done to my plumbing, they kept inspecting it. I was starting to feel like additional damage was being done. Doctors also kept coming back with new questions, I'm assuming from the head of the unit, slowly circling all sides of the potential issues. Finally one set of questions seemed to settle the matter.
One of the doctors came in, and after another quick look and some perfunctory questions about how I was feeling, asked me if I had farted. I confessed to having participated in the practice. Recently? Yes, such as after one of their digital inspections (and I'm not talking about electronics). Uncontrollably? The significance of the question, and the consequences of my answer were hitting me as I answered. No, not uncontrollably.
Well, the end result was, if I still had a gas proof seal, especially with the considerable healing that had yet to happen, I was probably going to come out of this with full functionality. A huge relief, given some of the worst case scenarios we had been going through, which would have been literally life-changing.
Once everyone became comfortable with this conclusion over then next hour or so, this now became primarily an issue of dealing with a loss of skin over a significant area, in a particularly bad area for infections. They decided the closest similar injury was a burn victim, so they covered all the unskinned area with this collagen/silver sheet material that was supposed to encourage healing while protecting the surface and strongly discouraging infection while that was still happening.
The performance of these collagen sheets was as impressive as the price. Before the samples they gave me ran out I ordered more on Amazon. If you need these sheets, then you're really in no position to haggle on the price, and I think they know that. I was only ordering in square inches, while a significant burn victim has to be using square feet, every day.
Once we got back to the boat I still had weeks of recovery to go. I was in charge of showering and cleaning up the area at least once a day, but it fell to my darling wife Heather to place the new sheet over the unskinned area, then bandages and then tape to hold it all in place. Most importantly, she reported on whether the unskinned area was smaller than the day before, and its general appearance. As the fee for her services she took delight in pulling the previous day's tape off, or at least my reaction to it. Kelly Clarkson! It was the price to be paid.
The skin slowly grew in from the edges, and somehow in the middle it just recreated itself, although that took longer. Apparently the scarring isn't pretty, but the one advantage of the location is (very) few will ever see it. After a week or so I panicked when there was a slightly larger blood spot on the bandage, so I tried again to make a follow up appointment, but never heard back from Mayo. But a few days later I received a reminder that I had an appointment in a couple days.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Continued from previous post.
Since they really couldn't decide just how much damage I had done to my plumbing, they kept inspecting it. I was starting to feel like additional damage was being done. Doctors also kept coming back with new questions, I'm assuming from the head of the unit, slowly circling all sides of the potential issues. Finally one set of questions seemed to settle the matter.
One of the doctors came in, and after another quick look and some perfunctory questions about how I was feeling, asked me if I had farted. I confessed to having participated in the practice. Recently? Yes, such as after one of their digital inspections (and I'm not talking about electronics). Uncontrollably? The significance of the question, and the consequences of my answer were hitting me as I answered. No, not uncontrollably.
Well, the end result was, if I still had a gas proof seal, especially with the considerable healing that had yet to happen, I was probably going to come out of this with full functionality. A huge relief, given some of the worst case scenarios we had been going through, which would have been literally life-changing.
Once everyone became comfortable with this conclusion over then next hour or so, this now became primarily an issue of dealing with a loss of skin over a significant area, in a particularly bad area for infections. They decided the closest similar injury was a burn victim, so they covered all the unskinned area with this collagen/silver sheet material that was supposed to encourage healing while protecting the surface and strongly discouraging infection while that was still happening.
The performance of these collagen sheets was as impressive as the price. Before the samples they gave me ran out I ordered more on Amazon. If you need these sheets, then you're really in no position to haggle on the price, and I think they know that. I was only ordering in square inches, while a significant burn victim has to be using square feet, every day.
Once we got back to the boat I still had weeks of recovery to go. I was in charge of showering and cleaning up the area at least once a day, but it fell to my darling wife Heather to place the new sheet over the unskinned area, then bandages and then tape to hold it all in place. Most importantly, she reported on whether the unskinned area was smaller than the day before, and its general appearance. As the fee for her services she took delight in pulling the previous day's tape off, or at least my reaction to it. Kelly Clarkson! It was the price to be paid.
The skin slowly grew in from the edges, and somehow in the middle it just recreated itself, although that took longer. Apparently the scarring isn't pretty, but the one advantage of the location is (very) few will ever see it. After a week or so I panicked when there was a slightly larger blood spot on the bandage, so I tried again to make a follow up appointment, but never heard back from Mayo. But a few days later I received a reminder that I had an appointment in a couple days.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 11, 2019
I broke my Ass (Still no pictures, but even so, perhaps NSFW)
16 January 2019
Continued from previous post.
Well, here's what the doctors determined. The bruising on my butt cheek was already fading, leaving the wound, which I now was made to realize was more serious than I had even imagined. The initial impact with the latch, even though it was a nicely curved loop of metal with no sharp edges, had carved out, or more accurately, torn a chunk of my ass cheek out. It turns out that's not just a phrase. Not an ice cream scoop worth, think more like a melon ball. A chunk out of my ass that is apparently not going to grow back. I know you clenched your butt cheeks together a little bit reading that. I know I did, and this is now months later. But hold on, we're not quite done yet. It gets better.
I was told I was fortunate that the initial impact had not been a little closer to ground zero (I won't be any more specific than this). I didn't yet feel fortunate, but as the situation was explained to me that began to change. If you still don't understand my euphemisms you should count your blessings and move on with your life a happier, better person than me.
As I was saying, the chunk out of my ass was only near GZ. The problem was, that in tearing out the chunk of meat, the covering skin came with it. While the scoop of meat roughly mirrored the latch, the now much larger patch of skin did not stop ripping until it got to, let's say... an edge. There's another clench, and not just the butt cheeks. So yes, while I was lucky that the point of impact was not in an even worse location, the damage continued on to said worse location. I apologize for any effect this description is causing you, but the sensation I'm experiencing while writing this months later is not so good, either.
So I had a wound, which was not good but entirely manageable, but I also had some level of damage to a major piece of plumbing. They cleanly snipped off the last little bits that were keeping my dying melon ball in place and removed it. Not fun but not the end of the world.
The problem was the much larger area of missing skin. No one had really seen something exactly like this. This is another thing you don't want to hear in a hospital, although not quite at the the "we're going to name this after you" level. I really don't want this named after me.
Well anyway, the doctors certainly had not seen this affliction in this particular location. There was considerable uncertainty on just how much damage I had done to the plumbing functionality. Adding to the uncertainty, I had not used said plumbing since the fall (not the season). I think my body had just closed up that particular shop to wait for better days, and I had had little to eat since. I was not looking forward to the grand reopening, although clearly that had to happen all too soon.
After a visual assessment came the physical inspection. Yup, it's just what you think. I haven't had that many fingers up my ass since college. I had to go for the joke, but seriously, I have never had that many fingers up my ass, and certainly not all within an 18 hour period. Perhaps you missed the part where this is a teaching hospital. But the people doing it, bless their hearts, were all business. Including the interns, who were just there for practice. I'm proud to serve. I'm glad there are people out there for whom this is their life's work. I don't know how someone gets there, but I'm grateful they did it.
In the morning we met the head doctor for the colorectal unit, a tiny Scottish woman with a big presence. We took it as a good (well, better) sign that after seeing the picture in the middle of the night she didn't rush right into to take a look herself. I reverted to short, compete answers as I slowly realized what she was really asking me was, had I somehow done this to myself. Ewww, but I guess the question had to be asked.
Well, that was my very first night in a hospital (for me, not there for someone else).
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Continued from previous post.
Well, here's what the doctors determined. The bruising on my butt cheek was already fading, leaving the wound, which I now was made to realize was more serious than I had even imagined. The initial impact with the latch, even though it was a nicely curved loop of metal with no sharp edges, had carved out, or more accurately, torn a chunk of my ass cheek out. It turns out that's not just a phrase. Not an ice cream scoop worth, think more like a melon ball. A chunk out of my ass that is apparently not going to grow back. I know you clenched your butt cheeks together a little bit reading that. I know I did, and this is now months later. But hold on, we're not quite done yet. It gets better.
I was told I was fortunate that the initial impact had not been a little closer to ground zero (I won't be any more specific than this). I didn't yet feel fortunate, but as the situation was explained to me that began to change. If you still don't understand my euphemisms you should count your blessings and move on with your life a happier, better person than me.
As I was saying, the chunk out of my ass was only near GZ. The problem was, that in tearing out the chunk of meat, the covering skin came with it. While the scoop of meat roughly mirrored the latch, the now much larger patch of skin did not stop ripping until it got to, let's say... an edge. There's another clench, and not just the butt cheeks. So yes, while I was lucky that the point of impact was not in an even worse location, the damage continued on to said worse location. I apologize for any effect this description is causing you, but the sensation I'm experiencing while writing this months later is not so good, either.
So I had a wound, which was not good but entirely manageable, but I also had some level of damage to a major piece of plumbing. They cleanly snipped off the last little bits that were keeping my dying melon ball in place and removed it. Not fun but not the end of the world.
The problem was the much larger area of missing skin. No one had really seen something exactly like this. This is another thing you don't want to hear in a hospital, although not quite at the the "we're going to name this after you" level. I really don't want this named after me.
Well anyway, the doctors certainly had not seen this affliction in this particular location. There was considerable uncertainty on just how much damage I had done to the plumbing functionality. Adding to the uncertainty, I had not used said plumbing since the fall (not the season). I think my body had just closed up that particular shop to wait for better days, and I had had little to eat since. I was not looking forward to the grand reopening, although clearly that had to happen all too soon.
After a visual assessment came the physical inspection. Yup, it's just what you think. I haven't had that many fingers up my ass since college. I had to go for the joke, but seriously, I have never had that many fingers up my ass, and certainly not all within an 18 hour period. Perhaps you missed the part where this is a teaching hospital. But the people doing it, bless their hearts, were all business. Including the interns, who were just there for practice. I'm proud to serve. I'm glad there are people out there for whom this is their life's work. I don't know how someone gets there, but I'm grateful they did it.
In the morning we met the head doctor for the colorectal unit, a tiny Scottish woman with a big presence. We took it as a good (well, better) sign that after seeing the picture in the middle of the night she didn't rush right into to take a look herself. I reverted to short, compete answers as I slowly realized what she was really asking me was, had I somehow done this to myself. Ewww, but I guess the question had to be asked.
Well, that was my very first night in a hospital (for me, not there for someone else).
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
I broke my Ass and Finally Sought Professional Help
15 - 16 January 2019
Continued from previous post.
Heather took one look at my ass and took me to the Mayo in Jacksonville. That probably frightened me more than anything. It was a little over an hour ride in the car, the longest I had sat in a week. Except I really wasn't sitting. I had both feet firmly on the floorboard, pushing up, trying to levitate my ass off the seat. I was mostly successful, but the bumps in the road were all too exciting.
We got to the emergency entrance a little after 10 that night. There was a lot of construction so it was a little confusing. We told the nurse who was doing admitting that I had fallen and injured my ass, and we got the eyebrow. Practically the full one eyebrow Spock treatment. Fair enough. After a short wait, where I chose to stand, we were sent back to one of the little rooms "for some privacy".
After some more questions about how and when this had happened and a brief visual assessment the ER staff immediately punted. Again, somewhat alarming. They admitted me and sent me up to a room upstairs. While we got settled they were so concerned about infection they gave me an IV antibiotic right then, even though there was apparently only the smallest indication that there might be any infection at all. That was one of my biggest worries as well. Rightly so considering I had an open wound in a particularly bad neighborhood.
Once we were settled it was time for a more thorough inspection. As requested, I got on my stomach with my butt in the air. Heather's helpful suggestion that access to the area in question would be improved if I was I was on all fours was politely ignored by the doctors, but I swear at least one nurse was nodding her head. I looked back over my shoulder at the crowd that had gathered behind my ass. As my eyes scanned the faces of the the two doctors and at least three interns, there were various states of interest, distraction, and indifference. But there was this one intern who was clearly regretting the life choices that led her to be in this room at this time. I'm sorry to be the one to get you to switch specialties.
Here's what you don't want to hear in an emergency room in the middle of the night. "Huh... you mind if we take a picture of that?". They wanted to send it to the head of the department to see if she needed to come in now, a stern Scottish woman I had the pleasure of meeting in the morning. At least that's what they told me. Let me know if you see something on Facebook.
Continued from previous post.
Heather took one look at my ass and took me to the Mayo in Jacksonville. That probably frightened me more than anything. It was a little over an hour ride in the car, the longest I had sat in a week. Except I really wasn't sitting. I had both feet firmly on the floorboard, pushing up, trying to levitate my ass off the seat. I was mostly successful, but the bumps in the road were all too exciting.
We got to the emergency entrance a little after 10 that night. There was a lot of construction so it was a little confusing. We told the nurse who was doing admitting that I had fallen and injured my ass, and we got the eyebrow. Practically the full one eyebrow Spock treatment. Fair enough. After a short wait, where I chose to stand, we were sent back to one of the little rooms "for some privacy".
After some more questions about how and when this had happened and a brief visual assessment the ER staff immediately punted. Again, somewhat alarming. They admitted me and sent me up to a room upstairs. While we got settled they were so concerned about infection they gave me an IV antibiotic right then, even though there was apparently only the smallest indication that there might be any infection at all. That was one of my biggest worries as well. Rightly so considering I had an open wound in a particularly bad neighborhood.
Once we were settled it was time for a more thorough inspection. As requested, I got on my stomach with my butt in the air. Heather's helpful suggestion that access to the area in question would be improved if I was I was on all fours was politely ignored by the doctors, but I swear at least one nurse was nodding her head. I looked back over my shoulder at the crowd that had gathered behind my ass. As my eyes scanned the faces of the the two doctors and at least three interns, there were various states of interest, distraction, and indifference. But there was this one intern who was clearly regretting the life choices that led her to be in this room at this time. I'm sorry to be the one to get you to switch specialties.
Here's what you don't want to hear in an emergency room in the middle of the night. "Huh... you mind if we take a picture of that?". They wanted to send it to the head of the department to see if she needed to come in now, a stern Scottish woman I had the pleasure of meeting in the morning. At least that's what they told me. Let me know if you see something on Facebook.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
I Broke my Ass, by Mercer Mayer (Apologies to MM)
09 - 15 January 2019
The day after Heather left I fell off the boat and broke my ass, and just for fun, in several different ways.
This time I was by myself; I have no one else to share the blame with. I violated one of the very first, most important boat rules we learned. One hand for the boat; one hand for you. I wasn't holding onto anything to balance myself in the wind, on the rocking boat, which was bumping into the dock every few seconds. I guess I was feeling cocky, but I wasn't going to feel that way again for a very long time.
I was turning around on the side of the boat and scuffed the bottom of my right shoe on the rail which forms the perimeter of the boat deck. With that slight loss of balance I was starting to fall face forward towards the concrete dock below, and what flashed in my head was our neighbor across the dock last year who had done just that, breaking both arms. I didn't like the sound of that and windmilled my arms, didn't catch anything, but now I was falling more backwards. I landed on my right butt cheek on the side of the very gate in the lifelines I was trying to pass through. I bent the 1/4" stainless loop for the latch a good 25-30 degrees. With my butt cheek, if that wasn't clear.
I wasn't done yet. Gravity kept doing its thing, and in the trauma of the first hit I lost my footing completely, with both feet followed by legs sliding down the side of the boat. I then hit the first thing sticking out on the way down, the same, poor right butt cheek. This spun me around 180 degrees, and I landed on my feet, facing the boat, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. I only landed on the dock instead of in the water because the wind was pushing the boat so hard against the dock the fenders were almost flat.
I must have been a little bit in shock, because after the initial wave, things didn't hurt that bad - yet. After a minute or two I gathered all the crap I was carrying off the boat and trudged slowly up the ramp to shore. After ditching the trash and recycling in the appropriate receptacles, I continued up to the car and got in. My right butt cheek was very tender, but not really alarming just yet.
I wisely decided I wan't going to the gym after all, but somehow I was still set on going to pick up some dinner. A drive thru started sounding much more appealing. As the minutes went by I started feeling worse and worse, and by the time I was in the drive through I was ready to be back on the boat. When I got back to the marina and got out of the car there was blood on the seat. Now I was worried.
The bleeding stopped almost immediately after I got back to the boat, but not before a little gusher which got my attention. I think this contributed to my overconfidence that I could deal with this situation. To be fair, given the location, I couldn't see what was what, and I wasn't encouraged to feel what was what in any detail based on the feedback I was receiving.
I cleaned things up. Once the bleeding stopped, what hurt the most right then was my right cheek which had slammed into to the boat rail after sliding down the side of the boat more than three feet. Since my butt cheek hit the boat rail a few inches before my feet hit the dock, it almost completely stopped my fall. I could see that the whole cheek was one big ugly bruise, but nothing seemed broken or fractured or dislocated. It was a muscle-y, bruise-y kind of pain.
After about 36 hours the bruise kind of pain let up, and/or the wound pain shot up. This was now the primary focus of my attention if I moved the wrong way, which included sitting of any flavor, and for that matter, sometimes breathing.
I watched whole seasons of TV shows we had on board, really only pausing to briefly sleep, but I would soon move in some way and the pain would wake me back up again. I would slog up to the showers, at first twice a day, then as things slowed down, once at day. I cleaned the wound hourly if I was awake, and every time I woke up. The bleeding never really resumed, at least not in the vigorous manner it did when I first got back to the boat, and what little there was still was a little less every day.
I was still under the idiotic impression that I would just heal up and put this behind me, as it were.
I fanatically checked the size of the blood spot on the gauze every hour, and it kept getting smaller, but then after about a week it started getting slightly bigger again. Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be better in any appreciable way before Heather got back, I broke the news to her and we arranged for her fly back sooner, since I was now in greater need. She flew back that day, and caught an Uber up to Brunswick.
That'e enough for now, and trust me, you don't want any pictures, although I regret to say, eventually pictures were taken. Strictly for professional purposes. It's not like I have any pride left.
The day after Heather left I fell off the boat and broke my ass, and just for fun, in several different ways.
This time I was by myself; I have no one else to share the blame with. I violated one of the very first, most important boat rules we learned. One hand for the boat; one hand for you. I wasn't holding onto anything to balance myself in the wind, on the rocking boat, which was bumping into the dock every few seconds. I guess I was feeling cocky, but I wasn't going to feel that way again for a very long time.
I was turning around on the side of the boat and scuffed the bottom of my right shoe on the rail which forms the perimeter of the boat deck. With that slight loss of balance I was starting to fall face forward towards the concrete dock below, and what flashed in my head was our neighbor across the dock last year who had done just that, breaking both arms. I didn't like the sound of that and windmilled my arms, didn't catch anything, but now I was falling more backwards. I landed on my right butt cheek on the side of the very gate in the lifelines I was trying to pass through. I bent the 1/4" stainless loop for the latch a good 25-30 degrees. With my butt cheek, if that wasn't clear.
I wasn't done yet. Gravity kept doing its thing, and in the trauma of the first hit I lost my footing completely, with both feet followed by legs sliding down the side of the boat. I then hit the first thing sticking out on the way down, the same, poor right butt cheek. This spun me around 180 degrees, and I landed on my feet, facing the boat, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. I only landed on the dock instead of in the water because the wind was pushing the boat so hard against the dock the fenders were almost flat.
I must have been a little bit in shock, because after the initial wave, things didn't hurt that bad - yet. After a minute or two I gathered all the crap I was carrying off the boat and trudged slowly up the ramp to shore. After ditching the trash and recycling in the appropriate receptacles, I continued up to the car and got in. My right butt cheek was very tender, but not really alarming just yet.
I wisely decided I wan't going to the gym after all, but somehow I was still set on going to pick up some dinner. A drive thru started sounding much more appealing. As the minutes went by I started feeling worse and worse, and by the time I was in the drive through I was ready to be back on the boat. When I got back to the marina and got out of the car there was blood on the seat. Now I was worried.
The bleeding stopped almost immediately after I got back to the boat, but not before a little gusher which got my attention. I think this contributed to my overconfidence that I could deal with this situation. To be fair, given the location, I couldn't see what was what, and I wasn't encouraged to feel what was what in any detail based on the feedback I was receiving.
I cleaned things up. Once the bleeding stopped, what hurt the most right then was my right cheek which had slammed into to the boat rail after sliding down the side of the boat more than three feet. Since my butt cheek hit the boat rail a few inches before my feet hit the dock, it almost completely stopped my fall. I could see that the whole cheek was one big ugly bruise, but nothing seemed broken or fractured or dislocated. It was a muscle-y, bruise-y kind of pain.
After about 36 hours the bruise kind of pain let up, and/or the wound pain shot up. This was now the primary focus of my attention if I moved the wrong way, which included sitting of any flavor, and for that matter, sometimes breathing.
I watched whole seasons of TV shows we had on board, really only pausing to briefly sleep, but I would soon move in some way and the pain would wake me back up again. I would slog up to the showers, at first twice a day, then as things slowed down, once at day. I cleaned the wound hourly if I was awake, and every time I woke up. The bleeding never really resumed, at least not in the vigorous manner it did when I first got back to the boat, and what little there was still was a little less every day.
I was still under the idiotic impression that I would just heal up and put this behind me, as it were.
I couldn't drive because I couldn't sit, so I really couldn't go anywhere. I really didn't want to go to a medical facility in Brunswick, and I didn't want to call an ambulance. That still seemed excessive. But I was on my back or standing up because anything touching my right cheek, or touching something connected to my right cheek, was very painful. I suddenly found time for things I could still do while flat on my back, for example, this very blog.
I fanatically checked the size of the blood spot on the gauze every hour, and it kept getting smaller, but then after about a week it started getting slightly bigger again. Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be better in any appreciable way before Heather got back, I broke the news to her and we arranged for her fly back sooner, since I was now in greater need. She flew back that day, and caught an Uber up to Brunswick.
That'e enough for now, and trust me, you don't want any pictures, although I regret to say, eventually pictures were taken. Strictly for professional purposes. It's not like I have any pride left.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Monday, April 8, 2019
Early January 2019
First Week of January 2019
Once we had the car sorted we turned to the boat preparations. I had a long list of things to do, while Heather had a shorter list. Heather got through her list in fairly short order, while I agonized over the items in my list a bit. A little more involved and complicated, with perhaps some learning on my part. Always painful.
Since Chelsea needed some more help getting things sorted back in Phoenix, and we had some airline credit that was about to expire, Heather was flying back to PHX on the 8th, leaving me to my list for a while. We wanted to get an early start to the Bahamas this year.
I dropped her at the JAX airport, and after a few errands in the big city, got back to the boat with a pizza, spending the evening with complete control of the DVD playlist and a new stack of disks. This turned out to be important all too soon. In the morning the wind had picked up, and that afternoon I was trying to do several things at once. I was taking out the trash, the recycling, the pizza box and more, and trying to keep it all from blowing off the boat into the water. I was ready to go to the gym and pick up some dinner on the way back.
So by now some folks may be wondering how it is that I almost completely stopped the blog after injuring my hand last summer, but recently have been banging out one a work day for weeks on end. If you guessed that I injured myself again, you are correct! One injury to stop the blog, then another to start it up again. Before we get into the ugly details, here's a couple pictures of Brunswick in the fog, the morning Heather left.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Once we had the car sorted we turned to the boat preparations. I had a long list of things to do, while Heather had a shorter list. Heather got through her list in fairly short order, while I agonized over the items in my list a bit. A little more involved and complicated, with perhaps some learning on my part. Always painful.
Since Chelsea needed some more help getting things sorted back in Phoenix, and we had some airline credit that was about to expire, Heather was flying back to PHX on the 8th, leaving me to my list for a while. We wanted to get an early start to the Bahamas this year.
I dropped her at the JAX airport, and after a few errands in the big city, got back to the boat with a pizza, spending the evening with complete control of the DVD playlist and a new stack of disks. This turned out to be important all too soon. In the morning the wind had picked up, and that afternoon I was trying to do several things at once. I was taking out the trash, the recycling, the pizza box and more, and trying to keep it all from blowing off the boat into the water. I was ready to go to the gym and pick up some dinner on the way back.
So by now some folks may be wondering how it is that I almost completely stopped the blog after injuring my hand last summer, but recently have been banging out one a work day for weeks on end. If you guessed that I injured myself again, you are correct! One injury to stop the blog, then another to start it up again. Before we get into the ugly details, here's a couple pictures of Brunswick in the fog, the morning Heather left.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Friday, April 5, 2019
More Christmases 2108, Back to the Boat
25 December 2018 through 1 January 2019
We had a very nice Xmas dinner in the early afternoon with Chelsea and Travis. I did all the cooking - not (it was good). The next day we packed it up to troop over to Las Cruces for another Xmas with Heather's family. Chelsea came with us and had fun with her cousins. Another successful Christmas season!
We planned on leaving on the 29th, finally heading back east to the boat in Georgia. We woke up to a little bit of snow, but not enough to change our plans, and it was pretty on the mountains. First we were going to the El Paso airport to drop off Chelsea so she could fly back to Phoenix. After that we had some breakfast and headed out into the west Texas nothingness. To be fair, it looked like it had gotten some rain recently, because it was pretty green, for west Texas.
We continued to make our way back east, as we are now very experienced in doing, along the I10. We stayed the night in San Antonio, but the next morning Pancake Joes was closed, so we ended up fending for breakfast later at the Buc-ee's. We had dinner again at Parrains in Baton Rouge, then stayed just east of there. By New Years Eve we were in Tallahassee, having dinner at the 4 Rivers BBQ. We have a routine by now. After driving all day we are usually not feeling very adventurous.
On New Year's Day we rolled on towards Brunswick, but the damn pulley wheel squeak was back. So it turns out there's a second pulley wheel which is now bad, which we probably should have guessed, since it had the same life as its neighbor. Just as well that we took it in, because just now, after making a 2000 mile trip, the front wheel bearings are also in need of attention. It was up on the stand and the tech showed me they were clearly loose, but we also caught them just in time because they just had to be repacked with grease. We had the pulley replaced and the bearings repacked, and I swear I could feel the difference in how well the car coasted. I didn't go back through my records to see when they were last done, but it is apparently supposed to be done every 50k miles, which we've done in a little more than a year. Since the car was there overnight we rented a Sienna minivan to check it out. Heather hates the minivan-ness, which for her seems to be mostly associated with the sliding doors, but I liked the room. We'll keep the Land Cruiser until one of us drops, but if it drops first we want to have an idea of what we want.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
We had a very nice Xmas dinner in the early afternoon with Chelsea and Travis. I did all the cooking - not (it was good). The next day we packed it up to troop over to Las Cruces for another Xmas with Heather's family. Chelsea came with us and had fun with her cousins. Another successful Christmas season!
We planned on leaving on the 29th, finally heading back east to the boat in Georgia. We woke up to a little bit of snow, but not enough to change our plans, and it was pretty on the mountains. First we were going to the El Paso airport to drop off Chelsea so she could fly back to Phoenix. After that we had some breakfast and headed out into the west Texas nothingness. To be fair, it looked like it had gotten some rain recently, because it was pretty green, for west Texas.
We continued to make our way back east, as we are now very experienced in doing, along the I10. We stayed the night in San Antonio, but the next morning Pancake Joes was closed, so we ended up fending for breakfast later at the Buc-ee's. We had dinner again at Parrains in Baton Rouge, then stayed just east of there. By New Years Eve we were in Tallahassee, having dinner at the 4 Rivers BBQ. We have a routine by now. After driving all day we are usually not feeling very adventurous.
On New Year's Day we rolled on towards Brunswick, but the damn pulley wheel squeak was back. So it turns out there's a second pulley wheel which is now bad, which we probably should have guessed, since it had the same life as its neighbor. Just as well that we took it in, because just now, after making a 2000 mile trip, the front wheel bearings are also in need of attention. It was up on the stand and the tech showed me they were clearly loose, but we also caught them just in time because they just had to be repacked with grease. We had the pulley replaced and the bearings repacked, and I swear I could feel the difference in how well the car coasted. I didn't go back through my records to see when they were last done, but it is apparently supposed to be done every 50k miles, which we've done in a little more than a year. Since the car was there overnight we rented a Sienna minivan to check it out. Heather hates the minivan-ness, which for her seems to be mostly associated with the sliding doors, but I liked the room. We'll keep the Land Cruiser until one of us drops, but if it drops first we want to have an idea of what we want.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Race to Christmas
23 - 24 December 2018
Making it from SJ to Prescott in one day sounded a little stressful, so we broke it up into two. It was nice cruising through the farmland and ranches. There was one traffic backup along one of the state routes that was clearly from nothing but people slowing to admire the baby goats at the farm by the side of the road. It was dark and the traffic was heavy once we were headed up the grapevine on I5. We spent the night near Ontario.
We woke up in SoCal a little late, had some breakfast downtown, and really starting to lean towards fashionably late for getting to Xmas eve in Prescott. Then I remembered the time change for AZ, losing us another hour. We were already late!
We drove the car as fast as it had gone in at least a decade, and just kept on going. We got there about 40 minutes late, and my grandmother was tired and needed to leave not long after we arrived. We just made it. This turned out to be even more important than we realized at the time, because it was her last Christmas.
After Xmas eve in Prescott we headed down the hill to Chelsea and Travis' place for second Xmas.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Making it from SJ to Prescott in one day sounded a little stressful, so we broke it up into two. It was nice cruising through the farmland and ranches. There was one traffic backup along one of the state routes that was clearly from nothing but people slowing to admire the baby goats at the farm by the side of the road. It was dark and the traffic was heavy once we were headed up the grapevine on I5. We spent the night near Ontario.
We woke up in SoCal a little late, had some breakfast downtown, and really starting to lean towards fashionably late for getting to Xmas eve in Prescott. Then I remembered the time change for AZ, losing us another hour. We were already late!
We drove the car as fast as it had gone in at least a decade, and just kept on going. We got there about 40 minutes late, and my grandmother was tired and needed to leave not long after we arrived. We just made it. This turned out to be even more important than we realized at the time, because it was her last Christmas.
After Xmas eve in Prescott we headed down the hill to Chelsea and Travis' place for second Xmas.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Visit with Madi and Koji
20 - 23 December 2018
We got to Madi and Koji's and stayed in their second bedroom. We had not seen them since the reunion in July, so it was very nice to see them again. Somehow we didn't seem to take any good pictures with them. Sometimes we suck at this.
The noise coming from the little belt pulley wheel on the car was becoming louder again, so we decided to have it taken care of while we were in San Jose. We had ordered the part from a McDonalds as we were leaving Tahoe so it would be there when we arrived. Despite being notified by phone it had actually arrived, they couldn't find it when we arrived. After some round and round it was sitting on a shelf, right where it was supposed to be. They were very apologetic and got started on the car.
That afternoon they texted us that it was going to be done in an hour, but then another, and then another. I finally went in an hour before close, and they wanted to walk over and take a look at the engine bay. They were curious if it had any "pre-existing conditions". Not that I was aware of, other than the oil drips and leaks common for a 25 year old car. It had just been driven about a thousand miles from Phoenix with no issues but that occasional squeak from the pulley.
Apparently the bolt for the pulley was bent a little, and in applying some muscle to it the tech had placed his other palm on the radiator, specifically a little plastic tube coming out of it. It had fractured the tube at the base, and they had clearly been trying to fix the leak all afternoon. As fate would have it, the radiator was one of the very few things I had replaced at the Toyota dealership in Mesa, with a Toyota part, with that recorded in their online records, although it had been several years ago. They agreed to replace it, albeit with an aftermarket model, free of charge. It would be ready in the morning, and of course came with a fluid flush. Certainly worth a little irritation.
For Saturday Madi had made reservations to visit Muir Woods on the north side of the Golden Gate bridge.
We made some zigs and zags, missing a turn, but finally picked up one of the very last parking spaces, much to the irritation of the line of cars behind us. It was crowded because it's a pretty small space and it was a beautiful day.
The trees here can be 380 feet tall, 75 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, and average 6-800 years old, up to 1200 years old. It's hard to imagine a little sapling here doing its thing during the middle ages, and still alive today.
It was beautiful in so many ways. In the middle of all that beauty and people happy to be there was Grumpy the park ranger, seen directly below.
We already had to drive through SF anyway on our way back to San Jose, so we stopped in the city for a late lunch.
We went to Miller's East Coast Delicatessen. Amazing delis like this are one of the top reasons for living in a big city. Then we went back to their apartment in SJ for one last night.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
We got to Madi and Koji's and stayed in their second bedroom. We had not seen them since the reunion in July, so it was very nice to see them again. Somehow we didn't seem to take any good pictures with them. Sometimes we suck at this.
The noise coming from the little belt pulley wheel on the car was becoming louder again, so we decided to have it taken care of while we were in San Jose. We had ordered the part from a McDonalds as we were leaving Tahoe so it would be there when we arrived. Despite being notified by phone it had actually arrived, they couldn't find it when we arrived. After some round and round it was sitting on a shelf, right where it was supposed to be. They were very apologetic and got started on the car.
That afternoon they texted us that it was going to be done in an hour, but then another, and then another. I finally went in an hour before close, and they wanted to walk over and take a look at the engine bay. They were curious if it had any "pre-existing conditions". Not that I was aware of, other than the oil drips and leaks common for a 25 year old car. It had just been driven about a thousand miles from Phoenix with no issues but that occasional squeak from the pulley.
Apparently the bolt for the pulley was bent a little, and in applying some muscle to it the tech had placed his other palm on the radiator, specifically a little plastic tube coming out of it. It had fractured the tube at the base, and they had clearly been trying to fix the leak all afternoon. As fate would have it, the radiator was one of the very few things I had replaced at the Toyota dealership in Mesa, with a Toyota part, with that recorded in their online records, although it had been several years ago. They agreed to replace it, albeit with an aftermarket model, free of charge. It would be ready in the morning, and of course came with a fluid flush. Certainly worth a little irritation.
For Saturday Madi had made reservations to visit Muir Woods on the north side of the Golden Gate bridge.
We made some zigs and zags, missing a turn, but finally picked up one of the very last parking spaces, much to the irritation of the line of cars behind us. It was crowded because it's a pretty small space and it was a beautiful day.
The trees here can be 380 feet tall, 75 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, and average 6-800 years old, up to 1200 years old. It's hard to imagine a little sapling here doing its thing during the middle ages, and still alive today.
It was beautiful in so many ways. In the middle of all that beauty and people happy to be there was Grumpy the park ranger, seen directly below.
This is one of the few places we took a lot of pictures, so a sampling follows. It's better than the pictures convey. Go sometime (but make a reservation so you can park).
We went to Miller's East Coast Delicatessen. Amazing delis like this are one of the top reasons for living in a big city. Then we went back to their apartment in SJ for one last night.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
To Reno and Tahoe
17 - 19 December 2018
In the morning we had a quick breakfast at Mr Mamas and headed north. We made it past Creech, where a Predator drone was on approach for landing. Probably a training flight. We kept heading north and west into ... nothing. Man, did Nevada get screwed. It really makes it clear just how relatively lush the desert in Arizona is. We passed the entrance to Death Valley (another time) and kept going all day through these little dying mining towns in the desert, where the good times were long gone. We cut over to the base of the Sierra Nevadas near Mono Lake, then followed them north. Eventually we got to Garnerville, which I wanted to check out. It was pretty but a little too rural. We then continued on to have dinner in Carson City at Sassafras just after dark. CC was somehow better and worse than I was expecting. After dinner we kept going to Reno, staying at the Atlantis. You know how I feel about gambling subsidized hotels.
Reno is one of the places we had been focussing on for once we landed again. Reno surprised us. It had really grown since we had been through a dozen years before on a road trip. We had breakfast at a Peg's Glorified Ham and Eggs, but one of several now, this one just north of town. When we were here before there was just the one downtown.
We checked out some model homes with views of the mountains. We checked out this one funky old house H had found online, but turns out it was hanging off a cliff, so H said nope. We crossed over the mountain passes. Heather did not like the passes between Reno and Tahoe.
We looked at a Tahoe condo that Heather had been checking out online for some time. It was nice enough, but the best part was the wind whispering through the pines. As we checked out Tahoe further there were some beautiful views of lake we clearly were not going to be able to afford. Despite being beautiful, Tahoe seemed a little too constrained, somehow.
The next night we spent at a Tahoe casino. That night we had dinner at a pizza place in the village, walking over from the NV to the CA side. Lot's of young skiers, and a lot of young families remembering when they were young skiers, and older folks like us remembering when they had young families. After a long time of Reno/Tahoe looking good on paper for a potential landing spot, somehow this visit kind of deflated it.
In the morning we had a quick breakfast at Mr Mamas and headed north. We made it past Creech, where a Predator drone was on approach for landing. Probably a training flight. We kept heading north and west into ... nothing. Man, did Nevada get screwed. It really makes it clear just how relatively lush the desert in Arizona is. We passed the entrance to Death Valley (another time) and kept going all day through these little dying mining towns in the desert, where the good times were long gone. We cut over to the base of the Sierra Nevadas near Mono Lake, then followed them north. Eventually we got to Garnerville, which I wanted to check out. It was pretty but a little too rural. We then continued on to have dinner in Carson City at Sassafras just after dark. CC was somehow better and worse than I was expecting. After dinner we kept going to Reno, staying at the Atlantis. You know how I feel about gambling subsidized hotels.
Reno is one of the places we had been focussing on for once we landed again. Reno surprised us. It had really grown since we had been through a dozen years before on a road trip. We had breakfast at a Peg's Glorified Ham and Eggs, but one of several now, this one just north of town. When we were here before there was just the one downtown.
We checked out some model homes with views of the mountains. We checked out this one funky old house H had found online, but turns out it was hanging off a cliff, so H said nope. We crossed over the mountain passes. Heather did not like the passes between Reno and Tahoe.
We looked at a Tahoe condo that Heather had been checking out online for some time. It was nice enough, but the best part was the wind whispering through the pines. As we checked out Tahoe further there were some beautiful views of lake we clearly were not going to be able to afford. Despite being beautiful, Tahoe seemed a little too constrained, somehow.
The next night we spent at a Tahoe casino. That night we had dinner at a pizza place in the village, walking over from the NV to the CA side. Lot's of young skiers, and a lot of young families remembering when they were young skiers, and older folks like us remembering when they had young families. After a long time of Reno/Tahoe looking good on paper for a potential landing spot, somehow this visit kind of deflated it.
In the morning we were on our way, the back way, to San Jose to see Madi and Koji.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Monday, April 1, 2019
Outside Zion
16 December 2018
Once we had soaked in as much of Zion as we could, we went out the south gate, west for a bit, then took the road to the Kolob reservoir to go back into the park farther north. It was beautiful in a different way.
From one pull out we could see back into the main part of the park. Maybe it's a product of the kind of movies I used to watch as a kid in the sixties, but I half expected some dinosaurs to come strolling up out of the canyon.
The road was snowy and closed just before the reservoir so we turned around. We kept going until well after dark and we were in Vegas for the night. We had dinner at a little hole in the wall Italian place, then spent the night at the Suncoast casino. Again, yay for gambling subsidized four star hotels.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Once we had soaked in as much of Zion as we could, we went out the south gate, west for a bit, then took the road to the Kolob reservoir to go back into the park farther north. It was beautiful in a different way.
From one pull out we could see back into the main part of the park. Maybe it's a product of the kind of movies I used to watch as a kid in the sixties, but I half expected some dinosaurs to come strolling up out of the canyon.
The road was snowy and closed just before the reservoir so we turned around. We kept going until well after dark and we were in Vegas for the night. We had dinner at a little hole in the wall Italian place, then spent the night at the Suncoast casino. Again, yay for gambling subsidized four star hotels.
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