Hi Everybody:
On November 6th, I passed the 4-month mark of my surgery - so in any ordinary universe, I'd absolutely be back to work. Instead, Laura and I are camped outside a casino just north of Needles, California. So far on our trip we've been to the Olympic Peninsula, Vancouver Island, the Oregon Coast, Napa CA, Reno/Carson City NV, Death Valley CA, Pahrump NV, Laughlin NV, and the Grand Canyon AZ. If you're a masochist, or if you're reading this at work and you're really bored, I've uploaded photos to Flickr.com.
Many of you know that one of the reasons (actually, the deciding factor) for Laura and I leaving Vancouver and going on this adventure was the murder of Jack Beauchamp in Calgary on January 16th. Jack was my very-close cousin Debra's husband, and father to Matt (23), Mike (21) and Jenn (19). Well - the case was solved, and the preliminary hearing starts today. Our thoughts and prayers are with Deb and "the kids" (sorry – "the young adults" sounds strange) - they've been through hell, and they're not out yet.
One of the wisest things I've heard in the last year came from Stu Diack (Stu's the patriarch of another family that's been thru a lot) - "Don't buy green bananas". My father-in-law, Walter, used to say "Life's too short to dance with ugly women". Joel Larson in Minneapolis gave me a fridge magnet that reads "Life's too short to drink cheap wine". I'm trying to remember all of these.
OK - health check. As I complained last time, I'm not getting enough exercise. The Grand Canyon helped - although it's clear that we need to go back and do a couple of big hikes below the rim. You'd need to be there for a few days, and I probably need to get into better shape. I'm looking forward to Las Vegas next week because there are treadmills & stair-climbers where we'll be staying. Also, walking the "Strip" can be exhausting. Also, I hate Las Vegas – so the mental anguish should increase my heart rate.
I still get sore, and I still get tired. I thought that everything would be near normal now, but it isn't. I've been told it will be at least a year before "normal", but it's hard to internalize. Everything else seems to working fine except every time Laura turns on the microwave, I pee.
Since some that receive this email are tech-nerds, I thought I'd add a couple of notes about what's working and what's not. Also, a special "Thanks!" to Norm Lang for helping me avoid some of the more expensive experiments as we travel … for every problem, Norm has 3 solutions. It's like he worked for NASA.
WiFi (wireless Internet): This is a bit of a holy grail. The free stuff tends to be crappy. The access you pay for also tends to be crappy. Sometimes, though, it's free and good (ie: you can use Skype and it's intelligible). One of the better sites we've seen was in Napa at the County Fairgrounds, stealing a signal from the local Montessori School. Too bad we chewed up all their bandwidth, and the children couldn't talk with the astronauts as they'd planned. I was playing online Doom at the time.
GPS: The managers at Agilent gave me a Garmin GPS receiver at my last meeting with them in May. We started using it for real in Northern California. It has been excellent … I'll forgive the time it steered us to a closed freeway onramp in Vallejo, and we ended up in a neighborhood of crack houses and gang warfare. Chalk it up to old firmware.
XM Radio: We picked up a satellite radio in the spring, and didn't really use it much in Vancouver. On the road, however, it's wonderful. The quality is superb, and I can now listen to "Hits of the Seventies" 24x7. Laura hates it.
Handheld FRS Radios: We bought these little Motorola FRS radios (like walkie-talkies) for when I'm out looking for coffee and Laura's in the trailer. They work OK, but they really are only good for line-of-sight (462MHz). They're all encrypted, though, so the conversations are mostly private. "Looks like we got us a convoy".
Starbucks: Living where we do (did?), and hearing that Starbucks had a plan to double or triple their number of stores seemed insane. Well – I've spent considerable time trying to find one in Nevada, Arizona and SE California. Buy stock – these people don't know about "oversaturated coffee houses" yet. Fortunately, I've a stock of 65 lbs of beans we brought from home …. I'm down to about 3 lbs now so am hoping the kids bring some with them when we meet in LA for Christmas. Do you think the drug sniffing dogs are trained to find people carrying coffee? Dave and Kath should go to the airport about 9 hours before flight time.
Wal*Mart: I've talked about this before, and how I really don't want to shop at Wal*Mart if at all possible. The problem where we are now (and have been for the last few weeks) is that it's often the only game in town. There are no other stores around (that are obvious to a visitor) that would likely sell the things you need – like FRS radios, sewage lines, garden hoses, rust paint, bananas, toilet paper, one-of-those-things-you-hang-from-the-ceiling-to-catch-flies, dog shampoo, and personal lubricant. I did notice that condoms were locked up beside the tills at an Albertson's we were at … cigarettes and porn were available for browsing (Jenn: you need to "survey" these people).
Living-in-a-Trailer: When we bought this Airstream (25'), we thought it was big. Now we're likely the smallest unit in the places we stay. Regardless, it's still really comfortable, and we don't think it's "too small" at all. We've been in here about 90 nights now – and so far we're still getting along; I sleep during the day, and Laura sleeps during the night. The dog sleeps all the time. We're practicing our watch system for when we buy a boat (don't tell Laura).
That's all I can think of for this update. I've got to trudge over to the office, take my thumb-drive with me, and upload this email onto their computer because the WiFi access sucks here. Wish me luck.
Hope you are all well, and for our US friends: "Happy Thanksgiving" (even though you celebrate it a month too late).
Platonically,
Doug