24/7 Chat About Anything

[vanbrat]

There is another issue beyond just the physical inconvenience you will want to research before you make a decision about bringing along a kayak and using it in various locations on your travels.

I have a nomad friend who got an inflatable kayak. The issue he ran into while traveling is that he had to buy a special permit to use it in pretty much every state he went to. Then there are the rules about having to wash them. It is all about not bringing contaminating water weeds or small creatures from one body of water to another. He decided to leave it at home base instead of paying all those fees and doing all the special decontamination processes.

If you are going to spend the whole winter in one location and use it often it would be worth bringing along. If you are thinking you can just stop and use it here and there then do check out the rules for where you may might want to do that.

We took them to Montana last year and we had to stop at a few boat check spots' I agree it is a bit of a pain but we live close to a lake that has had to fight off some very evasions plant stuff a few years back. We do wash our boats/ and stop and get them checked. It didn't cost us anything just had to pull into a check point. Most of the boat check spots are at the state boarders. a couple old timers come out look around the kayaks ask about washing give a piece of paper and one old guy asked if we wanted good fishing spots. Another had a bathroom I could use.

 

[maki2]

The weather forecast is showing 9 days of sunny weather ahead in the forecast! Yippee, that is in my limited experience of two previous monsoon season summers in Northern Arizona a very unexpected weather pattern during the month of August. High temperature will be in lower 80s, that seems just right for the summer time when it is breezy.

It will be nice to be able to return to being able to be outside in the afternoons instead of sitting inside listening to rain and hail on the roof as the thunderstorms roll by. I am going to try and tackle a few of the remaining build chores this next week. Also time to put my shade cloth “patio “back up. I took it down a couple of days ago when a thunderstorm with very strong wind gusts blew through.

It is still going to be too hot at my favorite camping area over by the Grand Canyon but I have a good group of people where I am camping so for now I am not feeling restless.

 

[Morgana]

Gonna talk about my boring gimp ankle one more time, but this matters ONLY if the information below is useful to someone else (I hope it is -- although actually, I hope no one ever needs it ).

(1) Achilles-tendon-specific --- So for months before I had any pain, I walked really stiffly for a few minutes when I first got up in the morning. It didn't hurt or seem serious so I ignored it. But apparently this is a major warning sign for Achilles tendon problems -- which turn out to be very hard and slow to fix, especially if you're older. And that's if you get a good doc and a good PT right away -- which, don't count on it! So if you experience that weird stiff walk, get it checked out right away.

(2) More generally, coping with medical bamboozlement --- I have been through-the-roof frustrated with poor communication from one specialist after another. Today I finally took a few hours to look at actual medical articles on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed website. I wish I had done that months ago!

Medical articles can be intimidating, but all you really need to look at are the Abstract (at the top) and Discussion or Conclusion (at the end). Those are often written in pretty normal English. The abstract (for the articles on PubMed or other databases) is always free, the rest of the article may be. Skip all the technical stuff in the middle, take your time, and a lot of those articles will make sense even if you have no medical background.

One of the things I found out is that a lot of the treatments my guys have been peddling have very little research support, are not covered by insurance, and can be super expensive. And the one main treatment that everybody swears by, they haven't been having me do it at all. Head. explodes.

In an ideal world your doctor (and other health workers) would volunteer this kind of info and then help you work through decisions. But if they don't, you've got other ways to get information. Then at least you can ask better questions, shop around better, not have to take blarney for an answer, and not feel like the reins are so totally in other people's hands.

PS
For basic info, my favorite medical websites are the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, and I'm sure there are other good ones. But if you ever need to do more of a deep dive, don't be too intimidated to try PubMed. It's your tax dollars at work!

 

[INTJohn]

My favorite medical “website” is a call/text to my Dr Dawter . She’s an Internal Medicine Dr who just finished her hematologist oncologist fellowship.
When ur crowding 70, it’s damn nice to have a dawter as a doctor to run all kinds of stuff by.

INTJohn

 

[maki2]

Sometimes it takes getting to the right specialist. You often have to act as your own health care advocate. But that can be very difficult to do when you are really ill and on your own without a family member around. Staff members in doctor offices and hospitals can also cause a lot of road jam issues in getting the right cars.

 

[maki2]

It has been one of those weeks, pleasant weather and good people in the group I am camped with. But yesterday the little dog of one of the people got really sick with convulsions in the evening and a run to a vet had to be done. Oddly enough I had been helping that person with an antenna installation on her trailer. My back does not tolerate very much bending so Inwas lying down flat for a break and mentioned I usually take a dose of methocarbomal before I work on projects. Then when she was at the 24 hour vet and asked what she could give her dog to help him he told her that very same medication. So at least she did not need to go get a prescription filled. But the poor little dog had to be put down this morning. So a sad day in camp.

A few days ago a guy pulled into camp and started trying to interloper into the group. But he is a very creepy person I had run across before at the Van build a teonbyears ago but avoided direct contact with him at that time as Abnorm had warned all the women at our Pirate Camp subset group at the Van build to have nothing to do with him.

It only took two days of his creepy behavior at my current camp before he was strongly persuaded he needed to leave. Not exactly at gunpoint but a movement of the hand of one of the men who stood up moved his shirt to the side to reveal his small holstered side arm. No verbal threat was made regarding the use use of a weapon and it was never drawn or even touched, however he got the message through his brain and packed up his stuff and split. I am not the fraidy cat type of female and had already told the guy in no uncertain terms to very stay far away from me and that I knew who he was and what his game was. But I was also very grateful that our group had our own gentle spoken, mild mannered, but very competent sheriff to run that undesirable type right out of town. These things do happen now and again but they happen in urban neighborhoods and cities too. One showed up at the building I was in while doing my build in Seattle. It took a while to get the landlord to finally run him off. He took was really creepy to all the women but he was also a thief and a bully.

I much prefer my normal mellow camping times which has been what most of my three years in the road has been like other than the occasional stormy weather and the time the rats chewed the transmission wiring. Still plenty of pleasant summer weather is left to be followed by a hopefully warm and sunny winter! I am so grateful that so far this has not been a soggy monsoon season in Northern Arizona! Some rain but nothing major for causing a lot of flash flooding.

Hopefully now a return back to what to some sounds like a boring life. Going to town tomorrow to ship out mail. Seeing if I can mend the antenna wire my friend accidentally destroyed just after I got it routed into her cargo trailer. Maybe a stop at Home Depot for some wood.

 

[NctryBen]

Wow Maki... never a dull moment! Glad all are ok... I hope it stays that way.

 

[JohnnyM]

Yeah, INTJohn I hear ya!

I have a little baby girl who is a nurse practitioner, and I get to run all kinds of stuff by her. Her specialty is little babies, not geezers, but she's got us covered too. We also keep up a running conversation about the latest news from Big Med (BIg Pharma's brother in the hospital management biz). She keeps an eye on that bunch from the inside. Good to have a pro on yer team !

Johnny

 

[vanbrat]

Good thing you were able to come up with the meds for the doggy. I hate that doggys lives are so short.

 

[NctryBen]

My pup was scheduled to be put down six years ago… I nabbed her up just in time. Two years is way to short… people got angry she didn’t get put down, but we rub it in their faces all the things she’s accomplished and does. Not nasty wise… but it’s where they can see. I’ve had some awesome dogs and I dare say she’s as good as any of them… maybe not better… but as good. I’m probably her limiting factor…

 

[Happy Camper]

Maki I'm glad that situation worked out well.

 

[maki2]

A taco night potluck dinner was held in camp this afternoon. I was very amused this yesterday morning when one of the women said another group member assured her there was a predication for a 50% chance of rain with a total of .001” predicted. None of the others had previously summered in Northern Arizona near Flagstaff. They did not realize that looking at a forecast 24 hours ahead means there is a very big chance of it being inaccurate as far as thunderstorms go. That is because they are not always part of a big storm system moving into the area.

 

[Happy Camper]

So you're saying there's a chance.

 

[wayne49]

60% chance that the forecast was sarcasm. What device can record "0.001 inch" of rain?

In lower Nevada, 0.01 inch is not even noticeable neither on the ground, nor in the air.

 

[vanbrat]

It has been one of those weeks, pleasant weather and good people in the group I am camped with. But yesterday the little dog of one of the people got really sick with convulsions in the evening and a run to a vet had to be done. Oddly enough I had been helping that person with an antenna installation on her trailer. My back does not tolerate very much bending so Inwas lying down flat for a break and mentioned I usually take a dose of methocarbomal before I work on projects. Then when she was at the 24 hour vet and asked what she could give her dog to help him he told her that very same medication. So at least she did not need to go get a prescription filled. But the poor little dog had to be put down this morning. So a sad day in camp.

 

[maki2]

60% chance that the forecast was sarcasm. What device can record "0.001 inch" of rain?

In lower Nevada, 0.01 inch is not even noticeable neither on the ground, nor in the air.

.001 … just a typo from big finger tips poking at the numerals on a very small phone screen. It was supposed to be .01.

It is not all that unusual to see a figure of
.01 inches of rain in the weather predictions in Arizona. See attached photo, that is the rainfall prediction I just now did a screen capture of. It is in graph format. The first graph section seen blue for the cloud cover. The brown line is the chance of rain. The green line is humidity. The lower section with the green bars is the predicted amount of rain as you can see it does say .01 inches.

 

[maki2]

Looks like it is going to rainy everyday for the next 10 days. But at least this morning there was enough solar input to top up my battery so all is well other than the 100% humidity inside and outdoors has me wiping down the window glass and some other interior surfaces. At least in Northern Arizona it is not 100 degrees as well as 100% humidity.

I think I will plan several daytime excursions into the town of Flagstaff next week to keep from getting “cabin fever” or as it is sometimes called “stir crazy”.

 

[Morgana]

So ack, another question from the PT wars. Something is happening on the billing end that seems bizarre and inappropriate to me, but if it turns out to common practice, then I want to know that before I decide whether/how hard to fight it. Have you ever gotten a medical bill that looks something like this --

June 3 -- X service
July 17 -- X service
May 31 -- insurance payment credit
July 17 -- X other service
June 3 -- insurance payment credit
May 31 -- X service
June 3 -- X other service
July 17 -- insurance payment pending
Total due: ###

-- in other words, all jumbled up out of date order, not obvious how they arrive at the total, "insurance pending" items mixed in with "insurance paid" items, multiple "service" entries for the same date scattered rather than grouped together?

I have five pages of single-spaced gibberish like that, all to cover ~8-10 visits.

I used to pay whenever the receptionist said "hey, the computer has spit out a new charge for you," and all I noted in my records was the date of service. But then there was one large charge where they said that the credit card payment "didn't go through" and would I pay it again please. (It wasn't for lack of funds, and nobody could ever explain what it meant, and they basically refused to troubleshoot it, even though the glitch clearly happened at their end.)

Since then I have been holding out for a "proper" itemized invoice -- which they wouldn't send for >1 month, and then I got this mumbo jumbo. This very genial staff looks me calmly in the face and acts like they can't imagine why I'd have a problem with it. And then the kiss-o'-death words: "Nobody else has ever complained." They act like the billing process is totally outside their control and their hands are tied. I have been through six or eight rounds with these people already just on billing -- and that's in addition to the problems with the actual PT. It's like wandering into an alternate universe.

Is this as bizarre as it seems to me? Or is it one of those "sucks, but everybody is doing it these days" things?

If anyone has seen this kind of chaos billing before, I'd like to know about it. I feel like I need to push back against this c@rp but I don't want to overplay my hand. Thanks for listening and thanks for any insights!!!

 

[NctryBen]

That’s what AI is going to be like for us... a just shut up and pay this mumbo jumbo bill reply.
Funny... I just got done paying my bill.

 

[maki2]

I have not noticed much difference with AI other than a positive one. Less time spent waiting on hold on the phone to get to a human who has access to information to answer an inquiry. That scenario is now down to just a couple of times in a year instead of it being a normal situation.