Saying Goodbye

I said goodbye to a dear friend last week. This friend has been with me through the turbulence of the last six months. Her bubbly personality will be missed. It was hard to say goodbye as I scraped the jar and dumped my sourdough starter down the drain. I will miss her. She was always there when I needed her. She made me feel safe in these troubled times.

Next month, on October 14th, I will say goodbye to my house, my furniture, and virtually everything I own. I sold my house as a turn key vacation rental property and I am moving on to new and better things. I have absolutely no idea what that looks like, but I must say there is a certain sense of freedom and excitement not knowing. I will start my adventure by staying with a good friend in West Kelowna where we will concentrate on drinking wine and playing pickleball. Then, on December 4th, she too becomes homeless as she also sold her home recently, and we are heading off to Tuscany (Italy) - Ville di Corsano to be exact.

It is a lovely villa that sits atop a hill overlooking the Tuscan hills and vineyards. At night you can see the lights of nearby Siena - a gorgeous, historic city. Normally I would only go somewhere warm in the winter, but this year due to covid19 I wanted to go somewhere where there is good free public healthcare, good food, and most importantly, where the wine is prolific and inexpensive. My friend Judith and I will be completing our advanced sommelier courses while there. I don't actually want to work as a sommelier. I did work in a winery this summer - for three days - but I am just not cut out for working under a manager that is younger than my kids and dumber than my big toe. Really, I just want a better understanding of wine. I have an active brain and it needs to keep busy so this is a strategy that combines my need for learning with my passion for good food...because good food is always better with good wine.

While I am in Italy it is my intent to spend much time pondering my next step in this ever changing two star retirement plan. I do not think I want to flip houses anymore and while I am intrigued by the idea of building a tiny (not tiny on wheels, but small in size) house, I need something more fulfilling. I have ignored one of my driving needs for far to long: contribution. I need to find a way to make a meaningful contribution to the world and I think it is time to add that to the retirement plan. I hope to do some networking, and talking to old friends to see what doors, if any, might be open for me to use my skills towards some cause. I understand now that retirement is more than just not working and travelling - at least not for me. I need more than laying on a beach. I need an opportunity to grow and to give.

It is for that reason I have sold my vacation rental business. I have my last customer coming this weekend in fact. It has been a surprisingly busy summer. Staycationers have kept me busy so at least I am going out with a bang. Last week however, I almost went out with a bust - and yes - this is the disaster I referred to on Facebook last week! I had several days between customers so I decided to have Joel my son and his wife over for a really nice dinner. I had cleaned the vacation suite and sanitized everything, but needed to use the kitchen and dining room for the dinner party. As we were starting our third course of food, and second bottle of wine I saw a car drive up and park in front of the house. I said aloud, "I wonder who that is?" but as I said it I got a knot in my stomach and I knew. I leapt up and ran to the vacation rental calendar, and to my horror realized I had screwed up my dates by a day. 

"Quick! Grab the dishes, grab the food  - oh my god what have I done? Everything - quick - get it out of here! Joel you move the stuff, Rachel you start cleaning. I will stall them!" I went outside and said hello and mentioned there would be a small delay due to a "wee disaster" and could I offer them a lovely 2014 Pinot Noir to enjoy while sitting on the deck? I gave them a tour of the yard, we talked about wine, and before long I got the nod from Joel that all was well. I let out a sigh of relief, and as they entered the house I entered the disaster that was my laundry room full of food and dirty dishes! That's when I remembered that we were using THEIR dishes! To make a long story short, the kids and I finished our meal sitting on my bed downstairs, and over the next two days I was finding cutlery and plates in very strange places. As I returned them to the people upstairs - apologizing for the lack of cutlery in their drawer and alluding again to the "disaster" (which I am pretty sure they thought had to do with plumbing) I had my customers begging for three days to tell them what had happened. I joked with them and said, "Not until after you post your review."

It all worked out but horrified me nonetheless to think that I had been so flighty. The last number of months have been rather stressful and perhaps I should cut myself some slack. I have been through a marriage breakup, a very bad flare requiring starting new medication that requires weekly injections and makes me nauseous, selling my house, discovering I had rented my now sold house to two people for the same space at the same time (that's another horror story for another day), and of course covid19. As we speak I am self monitoring as my son Joel - a teacher  - is at home with a cold/fever awaiting his covid test tomorrow. Given all that has been going on I am actually surprised I haven't forgotten my name! On a positive note I have lost five pounds without even trying!

Losing a little weight before Italy is probably a good thing...all that pasta is bound to add up to a significant weight gain. Christmas season in Tuscany is really eating season. 

They don't just have Christmas dinner, holiday meals include Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the 26th of December – Santo Stefano... three days in a row of culinary delights! According to the Discover Tuscany website after the above holiday meals there is "a reprieve of 4 days before everyone is back at the table for the Cenone di Capo d'Anno – the “big dinner” for New Years Eve – many times based only on fish. This would then be followed by lunch on New Year's Day. And then 5 days later the last event of the season, the Epiphany and the the arrival of the Befana, an ugly old witch who would deliver holiday gifts" and of course, more food!

It all sounds like just what I need. 

Island Paradise Day 42

Well today was one of those days: full of the unexpected. First, and most entertaining was while we were waiting for the Neptune’s ferry to take us across the lagoon, we were amazed to see five guys trying to load a golf cart onto a panga. It was hilarious. A panga is a small, flat bottomed boat - usually used for carrying people, or for fishing. Not so much for transporting other large vehicles...I was certain we would witness the boat, the cart, and all five guys going to go into the water.

It was quite a sight and they succeeded in providing equal entertainment at the other end when they unloaded the golf cart. Only in the developing world. I once saw someone in Vietnam carrying a refrigerator on a scooter.

When we arrived at Neptune's we were told to stop leaving "our dog" there when we go to town (aye yaya) and then when we got home we found a large tree had come down in our yard, landing on the corner of the small laundry bodega. I told you it has been very windy here, and apparently this almond tree had had quite enough! (So have I frankly).

Then we got the call all landlords dread...you know the one where they tell you there has been a water pipe break and your house is water logged? On the upside, most of the damage was to the basement suite kitchen, which we had intended on renovating this year when we get home, so now it will be done before we get home and paid for by the insurance company. After talking to the disaster project manager (yes, the property manager had to call in the "disaster clean up" crew), we need a new ceiling, new walls, and new kitchen cabinets downstairs. Funny, those are all the things we were going to replace anyway. The upstairs bathroom also has to be redone – except they won't cover the new shower because it was the old shower that caused the problem. That would be the shower we paid someone to redo just before we left in October. Sigh, again.

Meanwhile, here in paradise, my face is on fire - I think my jaw bone is infected - can bones get infected?? Anyway, all was well with my little periodontal surgery, I have had no pain or problems in a week, until last night, when I started experiencing pain, and seem to have small bumps and ulcers appearing all over my gums...if I didn't know better, I'd think it was mange...

Fear of Forums

Some people might think that because I like skydiving and storm chasing that I am a risk taker. I am not at all. I am actually a very cautious person. I never do anything without analyzing and carefully weighing the risks. For example, before I jumped out of the plane I knew that I was less likely to die doing that than on the drive to the airstrip to so it. Adventure Travel is no different. Before I travel anywhere I do research: I want to know what risks there are in an area before I go. I monitor news daily, have an earthquake app on my phone, check out airline safety records before I fly, get my shots, and I always register my travel plans with the government of Canada. This is encouraged by the government so that if there is a natural disaster and they have to evacuate Canadians, they know where you are.

This morning I received an email from the Canadian Government notifying me of a travel warning for Playa del Carmen, where we are headed on March 17. Playa is a favored tourist location – loved for its beautiful beaches. (It is also a place my husband and I wanted to spend some time in to check out as a possible place to live.) Interestingly, the government notice was not that they (the Canadian government) had issued an advisory for Playa del Carmen, but that the United States had. So, I checked out the American advisory, and discovered that not only did they issue a travel advisory for Playa del Carmen, stating that no American government employee is allowed to travel there, but they also made the extraordinary move of shutting down the consul in Playa del Carmen. So, what is going on?

Well, as I have mentioned in a previous post, there are drug wars going on all over Mexico right now, and the Cancun/Playa/Tulum areas are currently being fought over between the Jalisco New Generation cartel and the Gulf cartel. Sadly, on Feb 21 there was a bombing on a tourist ferry here (the one that goes between Cozumel and Play del Carmen), and then on Mar 01, they found another bomb on another ferry of the same company. The cartels are not targeting tourists – it just turns out the ferry company is owned by someone the cartel is targeting. Shortly after these events, the American government issued an advisory restricting government employees from using the tourist ferries in Playa del Carmen. That advisory was understandable, but this new one issued today struck me as odd. It cannot just be about cartel violence because there were 60 cartel murders this week alone in Guadalajara and the consular office there is still open. And it cannot be just because of the ferry bombings, because that advisory was already in place. So why did the US government suddenly shut down the consul in Playa today and make the entire city off limits? That’s the sort of thing they do in Yemen, or Syria – but Playa del Carmen? Really? It’s got my spidy sense going…

So I did a little research, and it turns out the warning is because yesterday, on March 7th, information was received by the US embassy in Mexico City that there was a “credible threat” in Playa. This warning has nothing to do with the ferry bombings. There is a new threat, one big enough to shut down the consul there. (By the way, in the last hour, the Canadian and Australian governments also issued warnings for Playa del Carmen.) At any rate, the email I got from the government of Canada stated, “Please share the following important information with other Canadian nationals in your area.” So, I immediately posted a copy of the government advisory on the Playa del Carmen expat forum, and asked for people’s thoughts. Well, what I got was certainly not expected.

Over the course of the next few hours, hundreds of people commented on my post – and most were not very nice. In fact many were hostile. I was called a “fear monger” by the xpats living in Playa and accused of “fake news.” It was bizarre and left me feeling like I must be missing something. Maybe we will never know what the threat was, but this experience has been fruitful because I now know that Playa del Carmen is definitely not the place I want to live. Strangely, this is not because I fear increasing violence and cartel crime, but because I fear a community of people that is clearly more interested in sticking their heads in the sand about what is going on here than they are about public safety.

Prickly Pear Disaster - Week Four

 

If you have been following this blog recently you know that Judith and I have been doing some foraging. Mostly we look for mushrooms but have also had some success finding wild berries and greens, and the occasional fruit. Well now that we are in Palm Springs (which is in the middle of the desert) I suggested we go pick some prickly pear.

Prickly Pear is a flowering cactus, and the entire plant is edible. The fruit has a pleasant watermelon-like flavour. The cactus has flat, rounded “lobes” called cladodes containing large, smooth, fixed spines and small, hairlike prickles called glochids. The fruit also has these spines – but they are less visible, so before Judith and I realized what was happening, we both began saying ow, ouch, ooo shit, ouch! 

When I realized the gravity of our situation (as in just how many freaking spikes were imbedded in my hands), I tried using my teeth to pull the big clusters out. This my friends, is likely the stupidest thing I have ever done.

So, for the next couple of hours, Judith and I took turns with the tweezers carefully trying to pull out the thousands of almost invisible but painful spikes from our fingers and palms - all the while my tongue is hanging out of my mouth and I am drooling. It soon became clear, however, that tweezers were not going to do the trick, so out came the duct tape! 

Nope – that didn’t work either.

Judith managed to get enough out of one of her hands that she was able to Google remedies for stupid people who picked prickely pear fruit without gloves, and that sent us off to meet our RV neighbours in search of some Elmer’s glue.

We were quite a sight – both hands covered in a gooey coat of glue – waiting for it to dry so we could carefully pull the dried glue off like dead skin – in the hopes the spiky tidbits thoroughly lodge in our hands would come out. It worked!

Then there was the issue of the tongue….Glue is water soluble (and less than delicious). Nope. Duct tape does not stick to tongues – tried it. So into the bathroom we went armed with a cell phone flashlight and the tweezers. Problem is prickly pear spikes look remarkably like tastebuds....sigh.

&%$@!

I gave up on the tweezers and moved on to my electric toothbrush…nope. Next up was rubbing my tongue and lips hard with the washcloth and much to my surprise it worked! (either that or my tongue was so numb from rubbing that I couldn’t feel it anymore). 

Either way, I convinced myself that the spines in my tongue would best be dealt with by swishing a large quantity of wine around in my mouth and swallowing.

Cheers!

Drones, Orbs, and Things that Matter

What the heck is going on in the sky?

I am sure you are aware of the increasing numbers of large drones, the size of cars, in the skies over New Jerey. And even more prolific than the drone sightings are the theories as to what they are and why they are there. Well, figuring this out is right up my ally, as I love research, and even more, I love a little excitement, but I must tell you, this drone situation is not all that is going on...

The drones are flying in a grid pattern over military installations and other high value targets, and according to many analysts, and I agree, would suggest they are either friendly drones looking for something or unfriendly drones looking for something. Trust me when I say, if they were unfriendly they would have been shot out of the sky a long time ago! So yes, the government is telling the truth - they are not a risk to the public.

The military has large drones with the capability of looking for things in the dark (through infrared technology) as well as detecting “smells” like gas leaks, and of course drones that can kill. There are also drones that look for radiation. If you filter through all the millions of commercial drones delivering groceries, the utility company drones just doing their jobs, and the personal drones doing nothing but getting in the way, I believe these are government drones, either sniffing for something or investigating something.

So the government is not lying to the people when they say that the drones are not a threat. However, what the government is likely not telling the people is that there IS a threat: the thing they are looking for! Rumour has it there is a missing nuclear bomb that has been smuggled out of Europe and into an eastern seaboard port. Missing bombs is not a rumour, it is a fact, easily verified. The rumour is that one of them has made it stateside.

As a senior strategic communications specialist, I worked for the Canadian military and have been involved in the training of senior military officers by “war gaming” how to handle a dirty bomb in the port of Montreal. We war gamed this because the possibility is very real, and it is a nightmare scenario the US and Canadian (and other) governments have been planning to manage for a very long time. They have planned for it, and practiced it because they know how insecure the ports are and that is is just a mstter of time before a dirty bomb gets through.

If (and this is a big IF) there were a nuclear bomb hidden somewhere in the most populous state in America, and IF I were the communications advisor, I would certainly advise the powers to be to NOT tell the public. Why? Because a) it would create such panic that  the entire NE would shut down. This would not only create chaos, but it would also crash markets word wide and open the door to American enemies to take further advantage. The logistical nightmare of people trying to flee the area in panic would be a disaster, and b) the government needs time to find and disarm this thing if it exists, and to inform all levels of government and first responders as to what the plan is if the bomb detonates.

Having said that, do I think there is a bomb hidden there? Not sure, but I don't think so. But if there was even the slightest possibility, the government must act by bringing out the drones, so they can either find it and neutralize it or rule out that it exists. 

In the meantime, there are the orbs….WTF are the orbs that have been seen on BOTH coasts initially, and now, around the world?

Some say the orbs are cloaked drones, others are mystifying them into ancient symbols. One video shows a lady talking to the orb about Jesus. Most of that is crap. But I am telling you, there ARE orbs out there! Orange/red orbs that are being seen, not just by people on the ground, but by many commercial and military pilots. Recently in Oregon, just west of Eugene, 4 pilots and the control tower spent 13 minutes discussing the orbs, describing them (there was more than one), and trying to get video of it (the audio recording is now available online and has been verified as legit). The orb is described as red and corkscrew like, travelling at supersonic speeds between 1000 and 50,000 feet – moving up and down, back and forth between the ocen and inland, unlike any known aircraft can. 

On the east coast there are two scientists with some amazing equipment that have been recording orbs there – and I gotta tell you, I find this all freakier and scarier than the drones looking for a bomb. Perhaps the government drones are investigsting the orbs becsuse they have been literally thousands of sightingd in the last month - and not just in the U.S. These orbs are being seen around the world. Is it time that we must aadmit we are not alone in this universe? 

When I watched some of the videos that are circulating online (after weeding through the fake ones), I had the same feeling as when I watched the hazmat suited guys in China spraying the streets at the beginning of Covid. You know, that feeling of, Oh my God, is this really happening?

The legitimate orb sightings have been discussed in Congress and in Senate hearings, which are now public. This is way beyond conspiracy theories now. Unfortunately, all of the legitimate sightings have given way to thousands of misleading and false sightings, mostly stars being distorted by bad cameras, and Starlink satelites. (This probably makes the government happy, as it allows them to brush off all of this as mass hysteria and again, it buys them time to figure out what the heck these things are).

One particularily eery video, which has not been verified yet, is a young American military man, with tears running down his cheek, telling the world tht they are UFOs, that they are not friendly, and that we will all be told what is going on in the New Year. Most chilling were his ords, when "we will need to evacuate." Not sure how we evcuate the earth??

At the end of the day, I believe it is quite possible we are at the beginning of a new era. Something good? Something bad? I don’t know. But my instinct is to take stock of what really matters.

For me, that is living an authentic life in pursuit of fulfillment – something that is different for everyone. Fulfillment for me it is about living my dharma – that is, to spend quality time with those I love, limit my footprint on this planet, inspire people to grow their own food and medicine (something that suddenly seems more apropos than it did two years ago when I started Global Village Permaculture), and to spend my resources on experiences rather than on things.

Might I encourage you all in this coming New Year, and possibly New Era, to simplify your lives, value your relationships, and be kind to the earth. 

Who knows, maybe the orbs are here to help us do that - cause God knows, the drones are proof we need all the help we can get!

Going Home - to Stay or Not - that is the Question?

Part of our “two star” retirement plan includes growing our net worth by buying and renovating a house or two (or three) over the next 10 years. I have done this many times with good success and know I can usually increase the value of my homes by $60K-$150K after expenses. I am pretty good at design, sourcing affordable and unique materials, knowing what NOT to spend money on, and coordinating various contractors. The hardest part is finding a house in original condition with great potential that also has the potential to generate income. The rental income provides travel money without dipping into our savings. Then, when we are done travelling we can renovate, live in a nice newly renovated house, and when we are ready to travel again, we can sell it and start all over again.

I have three rules I have always followed when buying a house:

1) I have to get the house for a very good – below market value – price
2) I have to be able to make good rental income on it
3) It has to be the ugliest house on a nice street

We lucked out last summer and found a perfect property in a superb, lake view location, that really needed some love. We did some quick renos to it to put in the basement suite, and we found some tenants for up and down before we left in October, with plans to return home at the end of March 2018 to start the big reno. Within three months of being in Mexico though, we decided we wanted to travel longer, so we applied to BC Health Services for the two year away plan they offer. Once every five years BC residents are allowed to go away and live somewhere else or travel for up to two years and maintain their coverage. Upon returning there is no waiting period to be covered at home. The only rule is that you cannot come home during that two years for more than 30 days. So when we come home in two weeks, we either have to leave again within a month, or give up our two year out of town coverage.

We are not sure what to do, as our "plan" has not exactly worked out so well. Our main floor tenants quit paying rent shortly after we left and trashed the place. Then the basement tenant did an exit in the night and avoided her last month’s rent. We decided then to hire a property manager who was pretty good at finding good tenants but shortly after they moved in there was some water problems and both sets of good tenants were moved out. By the time we paid the manager and the disaster clean-up crew, we basically have made no money on the property. All in all the house will have been vacant for five of eight months, the grass is dead, the trees and bushes need pruning, we have to renovate the bathroom when we get home, and I am pretty sure our new neighbours hate us and think we are slum landlords.

We will arrive home on July 22, and if we want to continue our travels, we can only stay until August 22. So in 30 days we have to meet our neighbours and convince them we are not bad people, prune our trees, clean up the yard, fix the master ensuite, and try to find decent tenants we can trust. We are not feeling very confident that we can manage all that. The temptation to just give up and stay home is very strong. However, there is a bit of a glitch to staying home…

We have already bought and paid for September and October at great ocean front places in Puerto Vallarta and we have a deposit down on our pickle ball place in Bucerias for November 01 onward. We can get out of Bucerias as there is a 3 year waiting list to get into that place, but we are not inclined to walk away from the PV accommodations we have already paid for.

As an alternative to longer term renters, we are considering looking for House Sitters to live there just until next spring. The advantage to House sitters is we can have them there short term without having to follow the new BC residential tenancy rules – which are not very landlord friendly. The downside, of course, is that we will be living on our savings instead of on our rental income and I am just not sure we can afford to do that.

Flexibility has become a necessary factor in this two star retirement. Situations arise and plans have to change. (Not to mention we have changed our minds regularly about what it is we want to do next.) All of this is O.K. because we are retired, we are free to do as we please for the most part, and we are loving life - whatever challenges it brings.