And more…

And then it was April…as I said last article, the VA came through with permission for me to get the eye treatment I needed for the corneal ulcer I had developed and I wanted to stick around Tucson just a few miles from the VA hospital with their 2-3 ophthalmologists on staff. So I was medically stuck there in Tucson for 2 months plus followup. That would take me into May, which is when the area would start heating up big time. But the timing did put a crimp in my plans of heading over to Yuma (even lower so even hotter then Tucson) earlier and walking into Mexico for dental cleaning and any necessary work. Once it got above 85 F there in Yuma, I would want to avoid the area. Just too uncomfortable.

One of the benefits of hanging around Tucson was that I had someone to hang out with. John and I would sit in the shade of his garage and sip beer for an hour or so messing with the dogs and enjoying the mild weather (for most of March and April) and speculating about what the distant neighbors were doing on the other side of the freeway. It looked like they were dragging bodies out of their van on the regular and tossing them in their below ground hole that may have been for a swimming pool. I was pretty sure they are vampires working for Mexican cartels. Except they came out during the day time…hmmm, weird.

The dogs are named Boo and Poppy. Boo became my friend pretty quickly. Probably because I gave him tastes of my beers and he loved them. Turned out that he would get the squirts shortly after so I had to stop doing that.

And here’s John enjoying a brew.

This was the first week in April and John hadn’t sold his RV yet. But nothing much happened the next couple weeks and then around April 20th, it was sold to a consignment lot and they drove off with it. He got $10K for it, and we guessed the lot would ask $24K and sure enough, we saw it at that not long after. We went and visited it and they didn’t even wash it and it was sold for $22K within a week or two. Really doubt they fixed any of the glaring issues it had.

But his RV was gone so now I could see up the hill better…John and I would sit in the shade just in front of that truck.

We got into the habit of every Thursday afternoon trying to find and visit a new to us brew pub and sample their beers. We never have more then two because we are old coots now who’s motto is ‘all things in moderation’.

Many of the brew pubs in this area are in those industrial strip malls you see around. Usually in less expensive areas of towns.

The beer was just okay, and the place lacked character. Borrrringgg. So we moved on to the next place…

Okay, this is more like it. Beer was better, place had character, bartender was fun, little kids running around making noise. Yea, I liked this place better.

Here’s a map of all the brew pubs in Tucson. Like I said months ago, there’s like 30 of them in and around Tucson. Look what Oregon did for you people.

Beer was tasty. I forget if we headed off to dinner somewhere after that.

And that was pretty much it for the month of April. John and I would head off each Thursday and have a nice brew and dinner. And then on April 24th I went in and had my eye looked at…the follow up of the treatment. I made the mistake of mentioning that my eye had felt bad that morning when I got up and was so persistently painful that I’d put some Visine eye drops in it. Well, turned out the senior ophthalmologist really hates Visine because it makes the blood vessels expand or something so all three of them examined my eyes and kept mumbling about the Visine. Damn, people, it’s the ULCER that’s important not some OTC eye drops I use about once every 2-3 weeks. They were far too concentrated on the use of Visine instead of the 2 month treatment for a corneal ulcer that had just ended!

Anyway, when I could get a word in edgewise (at one time there were three Dr.s in the room), I did ask how the ulcer looked…and got a non-committal type reply, “It’s doing well”. What I was looking for was, “It’s healed”. I heard that “It’s doing well” reply from two of them so gave up asking again. I’ll have it checked up in Walla Walla when I get back there.

And then in early May, since I was released from the eye care (so I guess that means my ulcer is healed except they also know I have another doctor up in Walla Walla), it was time to head north to avoid the heat. Too late in the season to go to Yuma as they were already seeing 100 F days and I wanted to avoid that so I’ll put that trip off until next year. Meanwhile I headed up to Pahrump and that’s where I’ll pick it up next time.

Thanks for reading!