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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Update to 2022

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Jim@HiTek

I haven’t posted since October, but I’m still kicking. Some of the things I’ve done is fly to Costa Rica and spend a month there. It’s very difficult to edit or create a blog post outside the country or on a long trip with my carry on tablet so I just wait until I get back from any.

So, with apologies to my readers, I’m back now, it’s late December and really cold here. I’ve spent a lot of time winterizing the house, and then one night, something happened and my water pump just stopped working. It had been fine up until that night. So I’ve been working on that, and working at keeping the cold outside. So far so good as it’s 71*F in the house right now and 9*F outside.

But, here’s some stuff for you…

I was bored near the 1st of November so I took a drive and ended up going to Umapine, Oregon. A tiny historical town just 8 miles from where I’m staying in Milton Freewater but I kinda drove far afield on that day, all the way to Touche’, WA and on the way back I spent some time driving around the area of Umapine and finally went into the bar as it was late afternoon…time for a cold one. And I wanted to see what they offered as food. Anyway, first some pictures of the road to and then the area in and around Umapine…

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More from Milton-Freewater…

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Jim@HiTek

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.

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Still seeing the eye doctor…

Posted on September 5, 2022 by Jim@HiTek

You may recall that a couple posts ago I mentioned that the VA surgeon down in Tucson had used non-dissolving sutures in my eye though he’d told me face to face that they would be the dissolving type, but the other eye surgeon, the one that put the bubble of gas inside while teaming with that doctor didn’t seem to notice they were the wrong color during the post surgery visits? But the optometrist here at the Walla Walla clinic sure did easily enough. Not only was that surgery in Tucson 6 hours longer than they told me it was going to be, I woke up at 6:30 PM and had gone under at 10:30 AM, but the one doctor used the wrong sutures? And the other surgeon didn’t notice? WTH?

Anyway, now that I’m up here in Walla Walla the VA eye clinic sent me to another local eye clinic that works with veterans (no cost to me) that has an ophthalmologist (rather than an optometrist that’s available at the VA clinic), and he removed the sutures 3 weeks ago. Took 5 weeks to get in to see him. After he removed the sutures he’d found some weird green thing on my cornea and prescribed a new eye drop to be used in conjunction with the ones I was already taking. And it seemed to work right away, because as soon as I started using it, the discomfort went away. He also put a clear soft contact lens over the cornea as protection. The next visit he thought the green spot might be an ulcer so scraped off a layer of my cornea (which had also happened down in Tucson earlier in the year). This last visit, he wants me to keep using the eye drops, left the protective soft contact lens off, said the green thing is still there but looks smaller/better, and I go in again in 2 weeks rather than one. And the first couple days it seemed fine, but after a week, it’s started to really bother me again. Grr. Wondering if I’m ever going to have comfortable vision in my left eye after all this. And it all started with a torn retina that happened in my sleep, back in February.

Well, whatever, aging and stuff. Not fun.

So, I’m hanging out here in Milton Freewater, trying to do stuff with one eye, and enjoying hot weather that is in comparison to further south, balmy. Here’s a few shots of where I’m parked now, I was previously parked over in the space on the right in this picture where my LR slide abutted the fence (can’t see it here), but now both sides of the RV are clear so I’ll be able to work on the slide eventually. And I now have a tree that helps shade the side of my RV in the afternoons. I’m hoping the park manager will be able to help with the slide problem but it’s really hard getting him to commit to anything at a certain time. Oh, he eventually gets ’round2it’ it just takes a long long time. He is pretty busy though.Some things he never gets to. The park manager is now using that space I was in to park his vehicles and the park’s big work trucks.

You can see another RV in the background…we park tail to tail in this RV park. But the park was designed wrong. All the services are on the wrong side as everyone wants to park facing the street, not the ass end of another RV so we all park wrong on this side and then connect to the other side’s services however we’re able. Like I’m supposed to connect to the services at #5, but actually connect to #6’s services. It’s glitches like this that keep the owners from raising the rents too much too fast though, so that’s good. But everything, WES, all work well so I’m not complaining about having to screw around with a power, sewer, and water setup that’s a bit uncomfortable.

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