Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Back from Vacation, still Illin'

Continuing from the Carmel post, the next day, Paul and I indeed went to Point Lobos, named for the barking of the Sea Lions on the rocks out there (for those who don't know, "lobo" is Spanish for "wolf" -- sea wolves, I suppose.

We started out on a nature tour of the area, but it was going slow and there wasn't much new the guy had to say after a while. I learned the limitations of using the 1.4x teleconverter. I got a lot of bad shots on that outing but a few decent ones. I'm going to be lazy and send you out to the flickr site for the rest of the trip photos. There are around 80 of them :-)

We went to lunch most days in the early afternoons to nice restaurants in the area, which usually meant limited outings in the mornings and afternoons. Mom is 89 -- and healthy for 89, but she's still 89 and there are just things she's not up to. This trip was probably more about her than us anyway -- getting her out there to see Paul & Barbara's new place -- not that it wasn't a nice visit and vacation for us as well. Point being we didn't spend a lot of time outside along the coast.

Paul's computer system was experiencing some problems -- either OS corruption from a full hard drive (we took care of that problem first) or it could possibly be a memory chip going bad. So we spent some time working on that off and on.

Thursday morning Paul, Barb, Vicki and I went to Garrapata beach, which Barbara calls "The Noisy Beach". It has really consistent well-formed waves that crash loudly on the beach and rocks. We spent a couple of hours there with our shoes off, letting the cold Pacific water spread out over the sand and cover our ankles. I even got up on a big rock that was ocasionally being hit by a couple of feet of water and a couple of bigger waves hit it and splashed water all the way up to my sunglasses.... but I wore the quick-dry hiker clothes that day on purpose.

Some surfers were surfing toward the north end of the beach, and just past them was a group of nudists hanging out ... literally. We didn't get up that far :-)

It was nice to just walk along the beach and feel the waves and listen to the surf and breathe the salt air. Not excactly Jimmy Buffett Tropical Island Paradise (what with the cold water and dangerous surf), but beautiful all the same.

We hit a winery up Carmel Valley and did a tour there, and went to another's gift shop. Paul and Barbara are wine lovers and we had some wine every day.... it was awesome. I'm going to have to get me one of those Vinturi thingies.

We ate at Fishopper Wednesday evening on the pier on Cannery Row, and the next night at a place on Monterey bay whose name escapes me right now.

Paul showed me their Wii/Wii Fit. Pretty cool. I might even have to look into that, too. Although this bum shoulder needs fixin' first.

Friday evening we got a motel room in San Jose so Paul (and us) wouldn't have to get up at 0 Dark Thrity to make the drive in (an hour and a half). We ate at a seafood place there, too - the Fishmarket. Went to bed, caught the shuttle to the airport, flew to Pheonix.

We never got over the illness that befell both of us within a day of arriving in California. We'd hoped it was allergies to something blooming out there. We figured that if we left and it got better quick, that would be it.

I felt great at the Pheonix airport (... er... "Sky Harbor")

However, it was all back by the time we got to Indianapolis at 9:10 PM. Got out of the airport and drove the two hours to Fort Wayne. Got up at 7:00 the next morning, an hour later than we'd planned. Vicki went to the store. I replaced a light bulb on the front porch. Ate a couple eggs, made some coffee and Vicki threw the eggshells in the garbage disposal....

It had been getting noisier for a while. Well, it got noisier still and made awful clunking noises. Vicki turned it off and reached in there (that's my girl!) and could tell the whole spinn-ey thing was loose. I reached in and felt as well.

Went to Lowe's, got a new garbage disposal, and spent about 15 minutes putting it in. I've probably done 5 of those now. I pretty much know the drill. So ... a little inconvenient for us, but it saved a huge inconvenience for Mom trying to have it fixed ... get a handyman and all. Big headache and no garbage disposal. And we got out of there only an hour and a half later than we expected.

We're still sick. I was actually worse today than yesterday. We had Trenton tonight... I bought hand sanitizer, changed my shirt, and took every precaution to keep from exposing him to this. He got his flu shot and something else today. Poor guy.

My physical therapist sent me back to my doctor for my shoulder (rotor cuff). She said it should be healing faster than this. I see the doctor tomorrow morning. My guess is she'll send me to some ortho person to get a cortisone shot. Then more physical therapy.

And that noise my car was making a few weeks ago is back. I may need to take that by the garage and have them give it a listen.

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