And more…

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

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.

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Even more from Tucson…

Posted on May 8, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

It’s now March ’23 in blog time and I was still in Tucson. And on March 2nd, I woke up in the morning to…

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Winter in Tucson…

Posted on April 12, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Those that are aware of my eye trouble know I was granted the right to save my eye by the VA, perhaps because they know that *something* happened during my last surgery at the Tucson VA Hospital that could have cause the problem. And the problem is a corneal ulcer. Which eats away at the cornea and can lead to blindness. And in a very few cases, the loss of sight in one eye can cause the brain to shut down sight in the other, healthy eye. No one knows why.

After weeks of traditional treatment, which amounted to 3 anti-bacterial eye drops, 2X or 4X per day, the ophthalmologist recommended Oxervate. This is a newer drug approved by the FDA that magically regrows nerves in the damaged cornea and potentially can save my eye. Took 2 months for the VA to approve it. And I’m on the 6th week of the two month treatment now. Just 2 weeks to go. I use a plastic syringe at 2 hour intervals and flood the eye with the solution. Every day. I have noticed that my eye is pretty comfortable now after 6 weeks of treatment. I hasn’t burned for a week or two and burning is a sensation caused as the nerves regrow in the ulcer area…so it’s a good burn. And every once in a while I notice I can see clearly out of that eye. Of course I’ll need a new prescription for lenses for that eye here soon. But it seems to be on the mend. At least I hope so.

Curious about it, I looked up the drug. Retail price is $48,000. For a 2 month treatment. I flood the eye using a syringe with the solution 6 times a day at 2 hour intervals. It costs $133.33/syringe which is $800/day, leading to $5600/week. I suspect drug companies are still calling it *experimental* to avoid having to pay for it for their insured. I have no idea what they are charging the VA for the treatment though the last I read several years ago, a GOP controlled congress passed a law forbidding the government from negotiating drug prices. Not sure if that’s been changed or not. My cost is ZERO. Or at least I think it is. They are slow letting me know about drug co-pay.

I have my fingers crossed that it works.

Near the end of January I left Pahrump and headed for Tucson where John is kind enough to let me stay at his home in a RV parking space that’s there that we wired up for electric last winter. I do pay him $425/month for the privilege. On the trip down I stopped for the night in Quartzsite and had another delicious Silly Al’s Pizza.

Next day drove straight to John’s property and I wasn’t feeling my confident self when I arrived and the steep hill the property is on was giving me anxiety so I asked John to park the RV for me. My reasoning was that the property was steep but he owned it and parked his RV there so he’d know best how to safely park a big rig. Well, he backed up onto a big rock and when the RV came off of it too quickly, it whipsawed the RV so most of my carefully collected Corel dishes whipped out of the cupboards and shattered on the floor. Along with 3 glass bowls and some cups and glasses. Dammit. And I now had a dent in the water bay door frame. Doesn’t prevent opening it, but it’s there.

So what I learned from that, since I’ve whipsawed the RV myself two times before and shattered dishes, is that I need to lash the cupboard doors so they can’t open. And I found a Velcro strap to do just that so now when I travel, I strap the refer doors and the cupboard doors to prevent whipsaw damage to table settings or food flying out of the freezer.

So I’m still here in Tucson where this eye issue first showed up back in Feb. of 2022 (remember it’s now Jan. ’23 in blog time) as I said earlier I’m staying at my friend John’s property. It’s a large lot, like 1/3 to 1/2 acre, with a nice manufactured home, partially fenced lot because he has two dogs, a detached garage, and a long cement driveway. And when he’d bought this property, it already had two flat graded and graveled spaces set up for RV parking by the previous owners. It has lots of cacti as its the desert, and a difficult to traverse road if an RV wants to park here. And mine did! His was already here when I arrived of course, but we decided we could easily put in another power outlet for mine.

He and I installed a 50 amp power setup in December of ’21. At that time there was only a 30 amp outlet and breaker so we’d upgraded that by adding the 50 amp setup, then there was a sewer connection and a dual water connection already there when he bought the place. The power source is at a nearby power pole so it was a low cost installation, no long wire runs needed. When we finished it is two powered RV spaces just like at an RV park, with water and sewer.

Shortly after I moved in the first time back in Dec. ’21 the neighbors complained to the county and so we’ve been going round and round with a Karen type behind us bitching to the county about my RV being here. That has come to a head and just recently John had to go talk to the county and as we suspected, it’s a complaint driven setup. If no one complains, we could have had both our RV’s here forever. But s/he did complain and last year the county came out, inspected, took pictures, but never sent a letter of non-compliance. And I left in April. The complainers home is behind my RV by 100 feet, there’s a wrap around porch there but they never use it for lounging. I’m not blocking their view to the N-S or W and the AT&T cell tower right there on the left in the next picture is in their way looking east anyway. John tried to talk to them but they are just your typical bad neighbors who think they own the entire county and that everything should be to their liking or it has to go. Fuk’em.

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Hanging around Pahrump…

Posted on March 23, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Let’s back up a smidge to the trip from Tonopah to Pahrump…and it’s 2023 now in article time.

Here’s what the road and valleys looked like as I neared Tonopah. I had left the snow free Winnemucca area and the shop just a couple hours previously. Stopped 60 miles later in Battle Mountain for fuel, but where the wind was howling and it was bone chilling cold. Even wearing my heavy shirt along with a jacket it was uncomfortable standing there holding the fuel nozzle, even wearing gloves. I was happy I had a hood on that jacket as it was needed for sure. It is beautiful down the road an hour later though.

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Back in the USA…

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Flew back into Sea-Tac airport in Seattle arriving late…around 5:30 or so. Since I didn’t have any luggage to pick up, I was outside waiting for my brother shortly after. As I said last blog post, he picked me up and we headed off to a brew pub to watch the end of the Seahawks game and have dinner. And Dan missed the turn so it took us 20 odd minutes to backtrack to the brew pub. Dammit. Missed more of the game than I wanted to.

As soon as we got back to his home in Lynnwood, I quickly checked the weather predictions and sure enough, it was supposed to snow in Snoqualmie the day after next. Snow along the I-84 route though the Columbia Gorge too, my backup route. Not looking good for sticking around. Certainly didn’t want to get snowed in though it would be likely to be no more than a couple days.

I was all packed anyway, didn’t need to stay at Paul & Dan’s place though I wanted to stick around, but it was just to dangerous. So as I said last time, I prep’ed the car, woke up around 5 AM and headed off at dawn to eastern Oregon and my home initially aiming for the pass rather then the gorge. Stopped for fuel and got a b-fast sandwich and coffee so I was on the freeway by 6AM. Heading for Snoqualmie pass. The weather prediction gave a chance for snow to start falling in the pass by 11 AM but I knew from past events that it wouldn’t likely stick until late that night, making the day after the ‘dangerous pass’ day.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of traveling through Snoqualmie pass, here’s some shots.

First, before I left the eastern area of Seattle. Grown quite a bit over the decades that I’ve taken this route:

Several miles later, getting up into the high ground of the pass. Started seeing lots of snow in the area and some rain fall on my windshield.  

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Last of Costa Rica trip…

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Didn’t get many readers for the last post so I guess Costa Rica is boring everyone…but I have all this material stored up! Okay, compromise, I’ll keep this last post about CR short and won’t post as many pictures this time.

What I found out after the catamaran trip was that a few days later was going to be El Coco’s Carnival. Now in a town of only 3,000 local residents, you can understand that it wasn’t going to be like ‘Norlean’s or Mazatlan’s world famous carnival, but I wanted to attend anyway so I headed down to the CocoNutz early, had dinner, watched soccer and waited until dark for the parade to start. And here around 8 pm it finally started. I had the feeling that they delayed things for tourists to get drunk enough that they’d think it was pretty neat. It’s okay of course, but kinda lame when compared to Mazatlan’s Carnival.

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Entered December in Costa Rica…

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

So the last post finished off November and here we are in December, still in El Coco, Costa Rica.

A few days in I’m just hanging around, going into town basically every day, enjoying the heat and the slight letup of humidity. It’s around 75% daily here now instead of the 85% it had been. I check the weather nearly every day online and so it was easy to spot the downward trend. But even that lower humidity was often uncomfortable. There were times in the mid-afternoon that I couldn’t stand it any more and retreated to my bedroom with the AC running. But these daily bike rides were fun. And sometimes in the late evening we’d get a breeze off the ocean. But unlike Mazatlan, they were few and far between and didn’t last long.

Here’s a shot of that tree again. I backed up this time for a long range shot.

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Settled in at El Coco Playa…

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Enjoying the weather with daily trips to the beach took some of the sting out of having had my credit card info stolen and multiple bogus charges applied…

I called my bank and asked point blank how much time I had to dispute the charges and the gal told me first, 30 days, then later in the convo walked back from that and said, oh, it’s 90 days. My recollection was that it was 30 days so I didn’t quite believe her. And my follow up question about that in subsequent contact with my bank never actually got a direct answer. So I searched online and found that the law is 30 days and then the bank can refuse to help. Doesn’t mean they would refuse, just that they can, I guess. In other words, they don’t or can’t walk back any bogus charges to your credit card after 30 days. But they don’t want consumers to know that.

But armed with that info I worked hard at getting this wrapped up by requesting what turned out to be 8 bogus charges to my CC reversed. What I had to do was find a legal authority (same as a notary public in the USA) to verify my signature on a form that the bank sent me via email in PDF format. My VRBO host has a printer and he printed the form out for me, I filled in all the charges I thought were bogus (the bank later contacted me about another one that I’d missed…which was nice of them) and took the form to a nearby lawyer I’d found during my daily bike ride. That lawyer had the official government stamp and he charged me $20 to verify my signature (he watched while I signed) and perused my passport, then he  stamped it and scanned it into his computer and emailed it to me. Then I used my tablet computer to email it to the bank. So this entire situation of the stolen CC info and bogus charges to my card took nearly 3 weeks to get straightened out. I am glad that I took care of it in Costa Rica rather then waiting to get home as I might have missed the 30 day deadline and have had to eat those charges. I only post this info as a warning and example that when traveling, keep a close watch on your bank charges as where and by who my CC info was stolen I only know was related to the numerous travel expenses I used my CC to pay for. ALL of them seemed legit. One of them obviously has criminals working inside the company. Twice now I’ve been hit by that one company that sells ‘shopping club’ memberships. They are criminals through and through. The first time was before another trip 6 or 7 years ago when their charges started showing up on my CC. That time though, I was savvy enough and angry enough that I got them to reverse the charges after several calls. This time I just didn’t want to bother being all tough on the phone and make multiple calls to them so I just had the bank reverse them. Fuk ’em.

Anyway, on one of my bike trips to town, I decided to ride the bike up the road straight to CocoNutz bar and as I was carefully negotiating coming off a steep hill down to a main, heavily traveled road in town I fell off the bike off a steep shoulder into a ditch. Yikes! That hurt. My foot and ankle immediately started to swell up. I limped over to CocoNutz to watch the Oregon Ducks football game and I watched it turn purple and swell. But…it didn’t hurt all that much. And I could easily put weight on it. Hmm.

North of my rental was a strip mall that I’d ride the bike to quite often. Has a mini market where I got most of my food before I found that nice big box store, and a coffee shop that had this delicious b-fast sandwich I craved. Yum. So good. Coffee was good too. What you see here is an $8.50 b-fast. They had a lending library too where I traded my finished bedtime book for “Shaman’s Crossing”. What a great story that is.

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More fun in Costa Rica…

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Settled in at Del Coco Playa and roaming around the town was fun…

of course I’m an old hand at traveling and adjusting to local conditions but what I found here in CR, near the jungle, was that the weather is oppressive in mid-November. Nearly 85F every day and 85% humidity. The heat I can get used to, the humidity? Not so much. I grew up in the dry desert area of eastern Washington state and did not have to experience humidity much. Anyway, time to roam around…and I was lucky that the owners of my rental DID have two working bicycles, and I could use one. The old fashioned one speed, rear incorporated brake where you step back on a pedal and it activates. Took some getting used to. Had a nice basket on the front. I’d seen the bikes in one of their promo pictures of the home on VRBO and sure enough, there they were.

So the left over portion of the 2nd day I was there in El Coco (note that I find it written both ways, Del Coco, and El Coco. They have different meanings, I’ll have to look it up. But basically it IDs the place) I biked down the road directly to the beach, then crossed the little stream and then onto the beach park’s pavement. Trying not to fall off the bike like an idiot. This city park borders the beach and fronts all the beach side businesses…mostly restaurants but there is one small motel.

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All the way to Costa Rica!

Posted on January 6, 2023 by Jim@HiTek

Eventually, after spending hours and hours researching the upcoming weather in Nov. and Dec. of 2022, I decided to head to Seattle on Nov. 8th in preparation of my flight to Costa Rica. I had already bought and paid for my airline tickets, $720 RT (including flight insurance, taxes, and fees), and paid rent for the entire 30 days at a home I was going to be staying at in Costa Rica, $780. Thirty days at $26/day. A bargain for that area of CR!

That timing was to avoid a problematic situation of early snows blocking or shutting down the shortest route from Milton Freewater to Lynnwood, WA where my brother, nephew, and grand nephew live along with my 101 year old Uncle, various cousins and what not. I’d have to traverse Snowqualmie pass which can be closed this time of year, in which case, I’d need to head to Portland and then north. Adding a couple hours to the trip.

As it turned out though, the weather was fine, but obviously early winter weather. I was planning on taking some pictures of that trip and my arrival at Dan’s place when I discovered that my camera’s battery was fully discharged and for a while, I wasn’t able to find any charging method. Turned out I was overlooking the obvious…the charging socket under the battery door of the camera when I had been looking at finding some way to just charge the battery with it removed. Doh!

Anyway, I had fun from Tuesday Nov. 8th until Sunday Nov. 13th working on getting Dan and Paul’s electronics fixed up. The TV settings were whacked so got that straightened out and the Cat5 cable had been smashed sometime in the past so 3 wires were broken. Once I fixed that, they had their living room wifi zone working again for their whole house system; smart TV, Alexa system, guests, and so on.

Eventually, just before I left Seattle for Costa Rica I figured out I could charge up my camera using one of the generic cables I had on hand but that was the night before I left so I have no pictures of those several days at Dan’s.

But, with that problem behind me, on Nov. 13th packed up and Dan drove me to SeaTac airport in Seattle, dropped me off at 9 PM, and at the electronic check-in Kiosk, for my 11:58 PM flight, it asked if I wanted to upgrade to business class (Alaska Airlines) for a mere $69 so I punched YES. The first leg of this red eye flight was to DFW and business class had more leg room. Turned out that there was an empty seat right next to me too. I tried to sleep but without success. After landing I’d have a stop over of a few hours then at 6 AM on an American Airlines flight direct to Liberia airport in Costa Rica. It’s the rainy season in Liberia and at the Pacific coast so the day looked like this picture below. And it drizzled a few times during the car trip to El Coco Playa where I’m staying.

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