On The Road Again!

I have had a lot of trouble with counting chickens before they are hatched lately. I will spare you the details, but many times in the last month we thought that we were leaving Houston and beginning our road trip "in a couple of days" or even "tomorrow is the day!". Do you know the words to "Hotel California"?

’relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

That concept has been often mentioned for the last month.
Well, at this instant we think that today is the day and we are waiting for the last load of laundry to dry.

Most of the disappointments involved our 2000 Dodge Caravan that I inherited from my mom. She kept it in a garage and rarely drove it, so it is in better than average condition. It just turned 70,000 real miles, not 170,000 or 270,000 and a lot of those we put on it since arriving in Houston in April 2010.
The most recent car problem was


1) annual safety inspection that when we drove away from the dealer, we had a "check engine" light. The free reading of the car's computer was not very useful. But, the light went away.         And then came back.       And then went away.    And so on.

2) routine oil change and ask about "check engine" light. $695 later the light is out, but there is a large puddle of oil under the car in the parking lot.

3) Back to the dealer. They need to keep the car for several days, but we were to leave the next AM and only had enough food in the motel room for that. Prognosis was a week to fix. We had to rent a car (and were shafted on the fees) to get our groceries. We drove our little roller skate to the motel to get the things we needed for shopping. As we got into the roller skate to go shopping, we were talking about the lyrics:

You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

Then, exactly like in a movie, when the car started, the radio began playing the first notes of Hotel California! We laughed a lot and perhaps a few tears, not of joy. We need some 'grins'.

4) $1,028 later and a new oil pan, the drip seems gone, and we have hope (again).

So, I am writing this at the motel and we have not actually left, BUT I will remove it from the blog if disaster strikes again.

Wish us luck. The song that we prefer is "On The Road Again" by Willie Nelson. A friend also sent us a link to it online. We hope to be hearing it soon.

Dave & Hairy

Our plans July 6

We have not posted for a while, because we are not sure when we will
begin our road trip. We are thinking San Antonio, Austin, Dallas,
Texas Panhandle, New Mexico, AZ, CA, OR, WA, BC.

Well, we hope to get out in the next day or two, but are delayed
waiting for some places that we are sending things, to get back to us.
We have some vintage Inuit/Eskimo carved ivory, to send to an auction
house and some historical Air Ship info that is waiting for the museum
to answer us.

But, it will be soon. Watch this space.

Now, will the rest all fit in the van????

Dave & Janet

Our friends on 'Tomboy' in the South Pacific

We met Tom & Janis on Tomboy in the Gulf of California back in about
1983. They had a smaller Tomboy then. They bought their present
Alajuela 33 'Tomboy' in the 1980's also and have cruised a lot on her,
but this is their first South Pacific Trip. They left Mexico this
Spring for the Marquesas, Tuamotus and are recently at Tahiti. They
recently posted photos on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63269583@N06/

With a few exceptions, the newest are the first ones that you see.
Leaving Mexico is at the far end. The numbers, like 4-16 are the
dates. Click on a photo if you want it bigger.

Janet, Dave, Mike, Olga and Brad were there in 1978 aboard Alegria and
it looks much the same.... BEAUTIFUL!

Dave & Janet

Nice web article about Turkey

I don't always agree with Huffington Post. Heck, I don't always agree
with any website. But, I really like this nice piece about Turkey.

And I would add to the "Cradle of Civilization" part that MUCH older
ruins of civilization were found in Turkey. Try 13,000 years before
present.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

But be sure to read this

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ronen-paldi/10-surprising-facts-about-turkey_b_863035.html

Dave & Janet

Janet is Fuzzy now.

Hi!

Sorry to make some of you wait so long, but we are really busy and
there have not been many clearly defined changes to report. We are
both doing well.

Janet is clearly Fuzzy now. Think Marine Corp Boot Camp haircut
without the tattoos. Her eye lashes are coming back and even the
eyebrows are starting to be more than 5'oclock shadows. This is all
much too slow to suit her, but what else in new?

Dave is really feeling the pressure to get the remaining important
items sold or sent to good homes. For example, Dave's dad was also
interested in Lighter Than Air (LTA). Not the Hindenburg, but more
intelligent designs like the ZMC-2. This was greatly stimulated when
he met and became close friends with Ralph Upson, one of the major
pioneers of LTA. It was like knowing one of the Wright Brothers.

Ralph gave my dad a large roll of blueprints for the ZMC-12, yes 12,
not 2. (This is what Google is for, right?) and a thick packet of 8.5
x 11 papers, and two plates (like dinner plates, with beautiful glazed
paintings of important pre-1700 balloon flights) that were made in
about 1710 and were prizes Ralph had won in balloon racing.

Most of you that don't just say, "So what?" will say, "How can you
RACE unpowered balloons?"

Well, few can. Janet & I went on a hot air balloon ride in Central
Turkey. I already knew how, from my dad and Ralph, but even I was
amazed at how our balloonist was able to cause us to fly over to a
miniature Grand Canyon and descend into it and even deliberately get
so close to the walls that we could and did touch them with our hands.
All was done with a balloon that he can ONLY make go up or down or
stay the same. Only!

Basically, the idea is that the wind at different layers is usually
going in different directions. The Balloonist must know which way
these layers are going in advance and put the balloon in the correct
layer for the correct amount of time to get the desired result.
Hopefully, you see that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like
saying that I am going to invent from scratch a 300 miles per hour
Ferrari, because I was just told that when I burn something, it causes
the air to expand.

If none of that makes any sense, don't feel bad, There is no quiz and
it won;t be on the Final Exam.

And, I need to get back to being busy,

Dave & Janet

Selling Dave's Folks personal items

I just noticed that 2 weeks has gone by without an update. FYI: That
usually means not much to report. Of course, it could mean that we are
working flat out on some sort of disaster, so I will try to not go
toooo long between messages, if I can just remember to do them.

Apr 20, Janet had her "Final Exam" with her Oncologist. She did great!
Of course she always wants to do better. To get a lower CA-125, to
have her hair already long, black & curly. She always lusted after her
Toni Doll's hair. I mean, her dog had hair like that. Why not her.

This lust for "If I only had blah blah, then I'd be happy." is wide
spread. It drives commerce, at least in America.

Well, she has a case of it. Who doesn't?

Dave continues to have rottweiler duty with the medical bills. One
example of many: The skilled nursing facility that Dave's mom was in
wants $500.00 more, but Dave can find no mention of why that is a
legitimate charge in the rules of his mom's insurance "Evidence of
Coverage". He asked the Insurance Company and they had no idea either,
so they are thinking about it and promised to get back to him within
30 days with an answer.

Most of our time recently is spent trying to sell Dave's Folks
personal items that were not really garage sale sorts of things.
Mostly we are using eBay. The items currently for sale are shown here.

http://shop.ebay.com/dave-on-alegria/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

Please frequently check that link. It changes.

We are challenged by the esoteric nature of some of these items.
Dave's dad, John Heath, was, most of his life, a BIG frog in a very
small pond. He tried to get people to appreciate the extensive
knowledge of the Arctic Peoples. Mostly as it pertained to kayaks, but
they obviously knew many other things.

I use Arctic Peoples as while we used to lump them all into "Eskimos"
which some say should now be Inuit, they were several ethnic groups,
and I am told that many of the Alaskan groups still prefer to be
called Eskimo. Most agree that the Arctic Peoples that we used to call
Eskimo were NOT what we used to call Indians, even though their lands
adjoined. Often the 'Eskimo' and the 'Indian' were enemies.

We all pretty much agree that 'Indians' is a dumb name for the people
of hundreds of nations that inhabited the New World. A Public
Relations artifact of Columbus (who's real name might have been Colon)
pitching his 'discovery' of a New World for the Europeans to rape and
pillage. But in no way related to India.

I am NOT an authority at all, but I was told that Europeans were being
guided further north with 'Indian' allies and when they first saw a
new to them and clearly 'different' people in the distance, they asked
their guides, "What do you call those people?" They were told a
pejorative. Some have said that Eskimo means "disgusting, barely
humans, that eat raw meat". Well, if you Google > Eskimo wiki < you
will see that that was probably a made up story. Sort of like the
viral emails that are nearly all nonsense, with just enough truthful
sounding stuff to make your eyes get big and forward it to all of your
friends. (Thank goodness for Snopes.)

Anyway we are trying to find homes for weird things like a large
library of spell binding books like these:
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland Vol. XVII 1912
Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology - Smithsonian Institution
The Ammassalik Eskimo
Ethnography of the Egedesminde District with Aspects of the General
Culture of West Greenland
Watkin's Last Expedition
Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology -
Smithsonian Institution
La Civilisation du Phoque
Qaannamik Pinnguaatit
Instruction in Kayak Building

And some more ordinary dishes and hats and stuff.

But, if we want to be done in about 30 days, something needs to
change. One might be for Dave to not write long blog posts. <grin>

It has been said that "Dave doesn't know any Short Stories."

More info about john Heath at
https://alegria1976.wordpress.com/davids-father-john-heath/

Or explore the upper right hand part of our WordPress blog.

Clowning Around 1

I sent this email about the perils of chemo 8 minutes ago, but it has not arrived on our blog, so I will try again.
>>>>>>>
A friend of ours sent Janet some clown noses and as part of her last day, a chemo friend and Janet tried them out. When the chemo nurse was out of the room, they put them on and called out, "Could you come back in? Janet's nose is turning red!"

Actually, getting red in the face is a common danger of this type of chemo if it is administered too fast.

However, in this emergency, a good time was had by all.