More from Milton-Freewater…

Still here in M-F, and it’s now 2nd week of October.

Usually I’d have found something cool to do by now since my last post, but my eye problems have pretty much prevented doing to many fun things. I’ve been going to a non-VA ophthalmologist now for weeks. They had me sign a document that the cost, borne by the VA, would be $2700. What that covers, I don’t know. I’ll let the VA deal with that. What the doctor did I mentioned in the last post, but since then, the ulcer on my cornea wasn’t shrinking as expected, and he did some doctor stuff directly to that. When it still didn’t heal, he ordered these weird soft contacts called a ‘corneal bandage’ that are covered in some kind of special meds. Makes everything cloudy when trying to see though it. And then I’m supposed to tape my eye nearly closed. The first time he installed that bandage on my eye, a week later it had shrunk down to 25% of it’s former size. So heading in the right direction. Then he put in a new one last week, and that’s where I am now, waiting for my next appointment in 2 days when he’ll remove it and we expect the ulcer to be healed. Yea!

Anyway, that’s been keeping me home most of the time because I have trouble seeing. In other news, I worked out how to submit a travel voucher to the VA so all my trips there and back…about 19 miles each time, I’d hoped to get reimbursement. Well, eventually, they informed me that I don’t qualify for travel reimbursement. I’d have to have less then $14K per year income, or be fully disabled. DOH! I’m neither. So even though the VA in Las Vegas paid me for several of those trips (145 miles RT), Walla Walla wasn’t and they warned me that LV may come back to collect from me…or they will just keep quiet about it…or it was covered by some special rule (like emergency surgery). There’s nearly 500 pages of rules about everything VA and I missed that one. Dammit. What bugs me about this is that if Walla Walla decides they need to send me to the VA Hospital in Seattle or Portland for treatment, that I have to pay for the travel? Gah!

So I didn’t do anything special this last month. I did work on a few things getting ready for my upcoming trip to Costa Rica. I’ll be staying for a month in a very nice villa just a couple blocks from El Coco beach on the Pacific. Here’s a picture of El Coco the town and beach. I found the picture on the internet but I don’t know who to credit for it. It’s a nice shot too.

I’ve bought my RT tickets, and paid for the villa and arranged for a chauffeur to pick me up at the airport in Liberia, CR. I’m getting excited. I’ll be there from Nov. 14th until Dec. 15th. Hoping for a great adventure. El Coco is only 3,000 people but it has somewhat of a party town reputation. That means to me that I’ll likely be able to find a sports bar that will have the NFL on and I’ll be able to watch the games.

I did do some more work on the dishwasher. I added the hose seen in this picture. The plastic pipe was just unusable, it crumbled into many tiny pieces. To replace it I used reinforced plastic hose and JB Welded it into place. That’s the kind of 2-part epoxy that’s water proof. I ground off much of the old epoxy that had worked before when I fixed it the first time and reinstalled some at the joints between the portions of plastic pipe that was still in good condition and the plastic hose that I added to replace the rotted out piece. And so far, after several washings, it’s working well. No leaks or bulges in the plastic.

I had to cut a slot in the metal of the side cover to get the hose through there without getting cut by the metal. I added the aluminum bar to hold the hose tightly so it’s not sticking up too high. The users guide is over 100 pages long so I wrote up some cheat sheets and taped them to the top.

And it’s been working fine for several weeks now. But…it’s physically too big I decided on reflection. And while I was reflecting on that, I found several DW models online that are called counter top dishwashers. The ones I’m looking at are only 17″ wide, 18″ tall, and 17″ deep. Much smaller overall then this DW but of course, they won’t wash as many dishes all at once either. But, that’s what I’m going to get and abandon this as a kitchen remodeling project. I don’t regret buying it though, it’s been handy to have.

I’ll buy one of those dorm room counter top types and sell this one, already started advertising it. I’ll need to build a stand for a counter top type, but that’ll be much easier then trying to incorporate the one shown above into my RV’s kitchen counter setup. So the remodeling expense will drop from a few thousand, to a few hundred. Something like this:

In other news, there’s a new housing development being built up on the hill to the south of town. Thought I’d go visit it and maybe climb around inside one of the builds…which I did. The builder was kind enough to put up a sign that says, “Sure, come in and look around”. Many builders in my experience don’t allow that. All the pics that follow are of that new development…some are already sold and occupied. They started on this back in 2018, then guess what happened? 2020 came along.

It sort of looks like a desert doesn’t it? That’s because this valley has been in a severe drought for 10 years now. Not as bad as areas further south since we’re above the 45th parallel and do get some rain, but still pretty severe. And if it keeps up, they might have to limit developments like this one. Not enough water for a bunch of new houses with gardens and mono-culture yards and families of 5.

And then I toured one of the buildings.

That was fun. The new owners will or may have a nice view of the valley from upstairs.

After leaving the new development on the hill, I journey down this steep hill into one of the older housing areas.

And that ended that days tour. I am spending a lot of time preparing for the trip to Costa Rica and might not be back to publish much until I’m back from there, but you never know. I do have some RV projects I still need to work on, maybe I’ll get to publish one or two before I leave.

Thanks for reading!

Jim