The Sun is Out in Tucson

The fun-o-meter on vacay is still not all that high, but it is off zero.  The sun is out, the skies are blue, which always helps a person's mood.  Today we took the car in for an over due service.  Oil, tire rotation, and who knows what else.  We had been promised a loaner (Lexus always has loaners) and then were told we'd have to wait.  Nope, either find a car or we'll reschedule.  They found a car.  It's very low slung, I'm having to haul myself up and out of the door.

Then is was off to the furniture rental place.  AirBnBs are sort of known for their crappy furniture.  When we were in Prague we had a giant sofa that was so hard that it hurt after awhile to sit on it.  This furniture is worse.  I'm in the chair, and for some reason they decided to put protruding things on the arms that are very uncomfortable to rest on.  The chair is also butt sprung, so I'm sitting on a large decorative pillows.  The pillows on the table are for our feet to rest on.  The loveseat is less terrible, but the seat pan is too deep, and a large pillow behind the back is required.  So, I've rented a recliner.  All they had for me to test sit were models that operate with a control, and it has the capability to lift a person to their feet.  Apparently if you want a recliner, you must be old and too infirm to haul your butt out of a chair.

Then we were off to Target where we saw this truck parked in front.  The security guards were carrying Glocks (9 mm handgun) and tasers.  Their outfits mimicked those worn by Customs and Border Patrol.  They were wearing body armor.  This does not fill me with confidence, one wonders how much training in de-escalation they have had.

They are the International Protective Services.  Se the red lettering on the back most side window?  It says "armed response unit."  Like this is a good thing!

So.... that was interesting.

Monday night it finally occurred to us that maybe it's not a cold.  This is Jim's test.  I tested negative.  Then we read that if you have excessive snot, or blood in your nose from excessive nose blowing, you'll get a false positive.  Still in denial!

Tuesday morning we went down to CVS for a lab test, which takes 24 to 48 hours.  Jim was rapidly reaching the end of his window for anti-virals. So when we got home we did two more home tests.  Jim's made the red line in seconds, I got a faint pink line after 15 minutes.  The doctor's office we used to go to saw Jim at 1:00 for an outdoor appointment.  They looked at our tests and prescribed antivirals for us both,  even though I had not really been seen.  So that was cool.  Getting them filled was painful, we had a guy running the drive through window who was unaware that the government pays for these drugs and wanted us to pay for them (Paxlovid is $500, Lagevrio is $259).  Jim's was ready, mine was not, so we had to go through the line twice.  When Walgreen's melts down, they do an excellent job of it.

Then when we got home, Jim announced that he'd lost his sense of smell and taste.  This is really bad.  Jim's job is to decide if the milk has gone bad, or if the cold cuts are past their good date.  Now I will have to do these things.  If I lose mine, then we're in real trouble.  Some people's senses come back 3 or 4 weeks after the worst part of the Covid.  Other people take 18 to 24 months to recover, and some never do.  We're hoping for the best case scenario.

How did we get this?  No idea.  After the Christmas Eve day brunch we literally did not leave the house, because I did not want to risk exposure.  Jim started feeling bad late on Thursday night, so it may have come from a neighbor  at brunch, although they all looked good.  Or it could have been aerosols hanging in an elevator, the breakfast areas, who knows.  We were always masked, but no one else was. 

People have quit masking, I don't understand it.  Currently XBB.1.5 is sweeping the nation.  It's even more contagious than the older variants, but it is less likely to kill the host than Delta was.  However, research is telling us that even a mild case of Covid can cause T cell exhaustion, which means your immune system is not what it was, and it's not likely to recover.  Long Covid remains a risk.  If everyone would mask, we'd all be a lot better off.  But - Muh Freedumb!

Finally, we were wearing N95s everywhere we went, we aired out the car before turning it over to the dealer, and so have attempted to mitigate risk for all of the non-maskers. 

In Tucson

We're in Tucson.  As of this writing, satisfaction with the vacay is pegging zero on the fun-o-meter.  Jim is sicker than a dog.  There is cough, snot and now a sore throat.  Thus far I have not come down with it, but I wouldn't let him in the car with me today, he had to stay home.  It's cold, cloudy and windy.  I am so happy I brought my rain jacket with me, it has a hood; we have not yet found the umbrellas in the car.  Tomorrow is supposed to be bad, then the warm up will start.  

Food prices here are interesting.  When we moved to Spokane, I was shocked, I say shocked, at food prices.   In Tucson, Safeway is selling eggs for $10 a dozen.  Basha's has them for $7 or $8.  Apparently there were months that there were no eggs available at all.  I guess eggs are back, but still very expensive.  This is because of having to cull flocks of chickens due to the avian flu outbreak.   Having said that, it seems over all food prices are higher than Spokane.  We're in a wealthy part of Tucson, so I wonder if prices are high because of where we are.  Perhaps we should go back to the south end and shop there.  

The drive from Kingman was kind of awful.   We drove through squalls the likes of which I have never seen.  The ruts in the road on a downgrade (!) were full of water.  We survived, and the rain slacked off when it was time to unload the car.  There was this, however.  This was taken off our deck.

That's it!  That's all I've got.

Tucson, Arizona

 We're in Tucson.  It rained pigs and chickens all day.  At one point the ruts in the highway were full of water.  Anyway, we're exhausted, will post pictures tomorrow.  I got an excellent rainbow off the deck earlier.

Oh yes, and Happy New Year!

Kingman, Arizona

Tonight finds us in bucolic Kingman, Arizona where the wind is howling.  That is Kingman's claim to fame, the wind always is blowing.  It's also cold, and it appears that it will rain tonight and in to tomorrow.  Oh joy. Jim has picked up some sort of a virus, coughing and nose blowing thus far.  I've told him he can't die on me until we get the car unloaded.   This is Jim last night, we were so happy to be out of the car.

   We departed Beaver this morning with high clouds and some blue sky.  It was just lovely.

Then it became like this.  Those are clouds pretty much sitting on the ground.

Notice defined the notch in the cloud is.

Now we are driving in to it.

Eventually the clouds cleared out, but it remained overcast.  That was really unfortunate because we went through the Virgin River Gorge, which is one of the most spectacular places there is - when the sun is out.  I took all of these pictures through the windshield, so there is some glare, try not to notice it.

When you cross from Nevada into AZ, you see this painted on the side of a mini-mart and gas station.  Big letters, really scary.  It's the Last Stop, we better stock up!  They were charging $9 for the exact same sandwich we bought in Nevada for $6, which we thought was a rip off then.

Additionally, they were charging $5.49 for gas, and $4.59 for diesel.  These prices are just stupid.  Up the road about a mile or two, gas was $3.89, which is bad enough.  They're preying on people driving through and freaking out before heading out into the great wide open. 

So that was today.  Tomorrow we will arrive Tucson.  I think maybe we can quit wearing polar fleece shirts and pants as we drop to a lower altitude.

Beaver, Utah

Tonight we're in lovely Beaver, Utah.  It's another one of those places that makes you wonder why it exists.  Beaver was settled in 1856 by Mormons following the Mormon Road.   I think now it's here supporting local agriculture.  We're at a Best Western that is not terrible, with one exception.  When I book rooms, I always look for internet, a microwave and a refrigerator.  What I don't think I need to check for is an elevator.  Tonight we have stairs; it's an old motel, the kind that has a big window that looks outside, and people can look in your room if the curtains are open.  Since we're incapable of packing light, getting up the stairs was an effort, also because we're at 6,000 feet of elevation.  It's noticeable.  

This is a cool boat, I've never seen one like this.  Our theory is that it's used for (literally) hiding in the weeds on the water and shooting birds.  In this weather, you really have to want to do it.  That's fake grass attached to the sides with zip ties.

When we left Pocatello, it was snowing sideways.  With the exception of a short section, the roads were clear.

The phone camera was focusing on the windshield, but you can see how visual conditions were not great.  Fortunately, it did not last long.

Here we are near Salt Lake City.  Those are the Wasatch Mountains in the background.  They're a nice looking range.

Downtown Salt Lake.

The road construction we've encountered over the years is complete.  There is an Easy Pass/2+ transit lane now.  People in the transit lane were going slower than the other lanes, but I'll bet at rush hour that is not the case.  It was a pleasant drive through Salt Lake today.

Now we are here, and I'm really happy to be out of the car.  There are two more days of driving.

By now, everybody is aware of the epic meltdown experienced by Southwest Airlines due to winter storm Elliot.  Juan Browne, who is a pilot, did an excellent youtube detailing how the meltdown came about.  CLICK HERE for the link.  The link may not work, if not, type in youtube.com to go there, and put the word blancolirio in the search box.  This is the title you're looking for: The Largest Airline Meltdown in Aviation History.  It's really interesting how it was a system of cascading failures.  The comments are also interesting, talking about what it's like to work for Southwest.  

So, that's it, I'm tired now.

Pocatello, Idaho

 We have arrived in beautiful Pocatello, Idaho.  Today it did not rain.  We had blindingly bright sunlight, ice fog, regular fog and then more sun.  Yesterday I was grumbling internally about how cloudy and dismal it was.  Today I was grumbling out loud about how bright the sun was and how I couldn't see anything.  Never happy.....  Being up north, as we are now, although not as far north as Canada, the sun doesn't get very high, so it was underneath the sun visor a lot of the day.  We're thinking we'd like to quit wearing our heavy waterproof boots tomorrow, perhaps we'll get the sneakers out of the car.  

So that was day two of the trek.