Arrived in Red Bluff, Wednesday, Oct. 28th. There was to be an Oregon Ducks game on Thursday the 29th. I’d asked the park manager and thanks to him knew there is an Applebee’s nearby (and no other ‘sports’ bars within bike riding distance) so called them and discovered that yeah, they did have the channel the Ducks game was on, and yes, I could watch it in peace. Next evening, at 7 pm I call the local taxi, decided not to bike ride since it was a late game, and take a $5 + tip ride over and the gal I’d talked to remembered talking to me and set their main, giant bar TV on the game. And what a game. They played Arizona State, at Tempe, and the game went into triple overtime. Wow. Ducks won, 61-55. Hell of a game. Have to say, the staff at Applebee’s really bent over backwards to accommodate my interest in the game and I ended up the only one left in the place, along with the manager, because the game ran on so long. The manager actually kept the place open just for me after it had emptied out. I did have dinner there earlier, and I left a big tip, $20 just for the bartender. She had kept my game on the main TV instead of switching to the NFL game and making me move to a smaller TV. Very nice of her. Often in bars I have to fight to even watch an entire game.
Very nice weather here in Red Bluff. I did ride my bike the one mile to downtown a couple times and found a nice and just opened coffee shop with mocas, and what looked like great food…but no WiFi yet. Right across the street from the county courthouse. Pleasant restaurant in a pleasant town. But I could imagine how hot it would be during summer.
While in Red Bluff, I was waiting for my new meds from the VA pharmacy. The VA has no mechanisms in place to deal with wanderers like myself. People without homes, who perhaps wander around the country in their RVs nearly full time. As though they would rather the homeless dropped off the rolls. As a matter of fact, from my observations of the way clinics and the web site operate, that seems to be exactly what they’re trying to do. It appears to be a purposeful hassle on their part when you need or want to change clinics, or to receive meds. Even though they have an extensive online presence that could easily adjust for changes if they wanted to set it up that way. They also have a database in place so every VA clinic and hospital in the US has my records. But each one would make me fill out the entire application again, and give my ‘local address’. I can’t use a temporary address, or my address back in Gresham just for an office visit…I have to be a local resident. All I want to do is, without hassle, to be able to have my meds shipped to an address different than my permanent address, or just walk into a clinic anywhere in the US and get my flu shot after showing them my VA card. Simple with computer databases and online ordering these days, huh? Millions of online and big box retail businesses do it every day. Well, with the VA, you can’t even do those simple things.
So off I went, due south on Highway 101. It looked like this just a few miles south. 
