Category Archives: Western RV/Alpine Coach

A Ride on the Coaster

It seems odd to have to plan our daily activities according to the weather for the day. We’re in San Diego where usually there’s very little variation in the weather. Of course, the rainy season comes in mid-December and runs to the end of February, but that usually means a few rainy days here and there. Lately, we’ve had a series of storms in the Pacific that bring a day or two of rain, then a nice sunny day followed by another rainy day.

Wednesday was one of the nice, sunny days. I started the day with pickleball at Ocean Beach Recreation Center. On my way home I needed to stop at a grocery store for bananas and tomatoes. I remembered a grocery store in Ocean Beach (OB) on Santa Monica Avenue and went there, but I found it was replaced by a CVS pharmacy. Then I found the Abbot Market on Google maps a few blocks away. The Abbott Market turned out to be a liquor store.

If you live in OB and want groceries, you have to go to Point Loma or Midway Drive or Pacific Beach to shop. There’s a definite lack of grocery stores in many San Diego neighborhoods. I put it down to over-regulation making it difficult to operate a small grocery store. The real estate footprint of a large store makes it very costly. I ended up stopping at Vons in Pacific Beach.

The dry weather on Wednesday was fortuitous as we had a happy hour gathering planned. Hans and Lisa (Metamorphosis Road), Tom and Kris (Open Road 365), Don and Cheryl and Sini all came over to our site. We had cocktails and everyone brought food. We met Don and Cheryl here two years ago – they’re fellow Alpine Coach owners. We sat outside and visited for a couple of hours before everyone was chilled as the evening temperature dropped. I neglected to take any photos (again).

Thursday was a dreary, rainy day. We had plans to travel up to Oceanside in the afternoon to meet up with our friends Bruce and Debbie Bednarski. The wet weather made travel a little difficult for us, but we had a plan. First of all, Kris Downey rescued us by driving us to the Metro Transit Station about four miles away in Old Town. The Metro Transit Station is operated by the San Diego Metro Transit System (MTS).

MTS has been in operation in San Diego since July, 1886 – more than 130 years ago! MTS offers mass transit through 93 bus routes and three daily light rail lines (trolley). There’s a fourth trolley line that operates on a limited basis. They have 53 light rail stations and serve about 250,000 customers every weekday. The light rail stations are also linked with a commuter rail service operated by the North County Transit District. This is a train called the Coaster – it runs between downtown San Diego and Oceanside with six stops in-between.

The Coaster runs on tracks that were originally installed by the Achison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad. These tracks are also used by Amtrak and a train called the Surfliner runs from San Diego to Los Angeles – it also makes some of the same stops as the Coaster.

The Coaster has double deck cabin cars pulled by an EMD F59PHI 3,200 horsepower locomotive. It’s capable of speeds over 100 mph, but doesn’t go that fast on the Coaster route.

Coaster locomotive

Bi-level cabin car

We bought tickets at the automated kiosk. The round trip to Oceanside and back costs $5.50 for people aged 60 or older – I qualified. Donna’s fare was the regular adult price of $11.00. Total cost of $16.50 for a round trip for two to Oceanside was not bad – and we didn’t have to deal with the traffic or rain.

Usually this would be a very scenic ride but the weather made it not so scenic. I took a few photos through the window, but the ocean views were mostly foggy.

Rainy view of De Anza Cove from the Coaster

View across the Los Penasquitos lagoon north of Torrey Pines – the ocean is obscured by fog

San Elijo lagoon

View of the Ocean near Swami’s

The trip takes a little under an hour and it was a pleasant ride. We planned to meet Bruce and Debbie at a restaurant called 333 Pacific. Specifically, we were to meet at the Vodka Bar there. They serve 100 different vodkas from around the world.

We arrived a bit early, so we stopped at the Breakwater Brewing Company for a local brew before we went to 333 Pacific. We were still a few minutes early – 333 doesn’t open until 4pm. Bruce and Debbie arrived a few minutes after us and we sat at their favorite table. We enjoyed a couple of cocktails – martinis for Bruce and me, Moscow Mules for Debbie and Donna – along with a couple of calamari platters. It was good to get together again with them – it’s been over a year since we were last with them.

The last Coaster train back to Old Town leaves Oceanside at 5:41pm. This would cut our time short. The alternative was to catch the Surfliner – our Coaster tickets would be valid on Amtrak – at 7pm. The catch was a problem with the Amtrak Surfliner schedule. There was an accident on the rail near San Clemente – apparently someone was struck by a train – which threw the Surfliner schedule off. I couldn’t be sure of when the Surfliner would actually depart. We had to say a hurried goodbye after only an hour and a half. The walk back to the station was surreal as the fog had thickened. You would think we were in London, England not southern California.

On another topic, readers of this blog know how I love high-end coaches built on Prevost chassis or built by Newell. The neighborhood here at Mission Bay RV Resort went upscale as there are four Prevosts and a Newell here now. The Newell and a Liberty Coach built on a Prevost H3 chassis are side by side in the park. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the Newell is a 2011 quad-slide. I found one similar to it online offered for $999,000. The Liberty Coach is a double slide model and I’m unsure of the model year, but I would guess it’s also in the million dollar ballpark.

Liberty Coach on the left, Newell on the right

We have a nice, sunny day again today. The weather forecast looks good for the weekend. Donna has a 15k race to run tomorrow morning. We’re planning to go to a party in La Mesa later in the day and see Hans Kohls’ band, The Sand Devils, play there.

 

 

Keep an Eye On My Bike

Last month, we had a neighbor move into the site next to us on the driver’s side. It was a young woman in a large fifth-wheel trailer – I think she said it was 43 feet long – with four kids. There were two boys and two girls ranging in age from about three to 11 or 12 years old. The oldest girl took on a lot of responsibility for her siblings. A couple of times the woman – her name is Lindis – went out for several hours and left the kids in the trailer. We could hear them running back and forth inside, but all in all, they were pretty well-behaved.

On December 22nd, she packed up her trailer. She told us they had to move and were heading up to the Thousand Trails park in Menifee. It was a rainy morning and not the ideal conditions to hook up and head out. The mom and her oldest daughter made short work of it though and got the trailer hooked up to their truck. Then the girl came to our door and knocked. She said they couldn’t fit one of their bicycles – a cruiser style bike with baby seats on the front and back – and asked if we would keep an eye on it until they came back for it.

We told her to put the bike in our site by the picnic table, which she did and we saw them drive away. That was two weeks ago. We haven’t seen them since then. I’m wondering if they’re coming back. We’ll be leaving on the 15th. I’ll check with the office to see if they have a reservation to return here.

On Monday, the neighbor on the other side of us had to leave the park overnight. He told me he was coming back to the same site on Tuesday. He asked me if they could leave their bicycles in our site rather than stow them aboard for an overnight trip. So we had a site full of bikes for a day, but they were back Tuesday afternoon and retrieved their bike rack and bikes that were left in our site.

On Monday evening, Donna made garlicky tomato-basil shrimp and served it over squid ink spaghetti. This recipe is a keeper for sure.

Garlicky tomato-basil shrimp

Yesterday our friends, Hans and Lisa (Metamorphosis Road) moved into the site next us. We’ll be able to get together a few times before we leave – starting with happy hour this afternoon.

I played pickleball for a couple of hours yesterday in Pacific Beach. I’ll head over to Ocean Beach Recreation Center to play today. The forecast calls for clear skies but the temperature will only reach the mid-60s. More rain is forecast for tomorrow.

Goodbye 2016

A series of storms lined up off the coast of southern California. The rain forecast for New Year’s Eve was accurate. It rained in the morning, then cleared up – the temperature only reached 60 degrees and it didn’t dry out before the rain returned in the evening. The high winds in the forecast never materialized though.

A lot of RVs were in the park to celebrate the New Year. You can usually watch the fireworks display at Sea World across the bay from Mission Bay RV Resort. Donna and I felt bad for the people who came here with plans to sit outside and take in the show with friends for the New Year. Instead, rain poured down from low clouds and everyone stayed inside. You wouldn’t see any fireworks even if you were outside.

On Saturday afternoon, Sini wanted to go to the store to buy a bottle of wine as a gift for her friend. I hitched a ride with her to buy Bloody Mary mix and beer. We went to Vons grocery store in Pacific Beach. This store is almost always busy – even more so around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wasn’t prepared for the New Year’s Eve crowd there. I’ve never seen the store so packed with people. Every cash register had a line of people waiting to check out that extended into the aisles.

Donna and I decided to lie low on the last night of 2016. We usually go out or join friends to celebrate, but we stayed home this year. I made Bloody Mary’s for happy hour. Donna cooked lobster tails she bought at Sprouts. They were small tails, so we had two each.

Lobster with stuffed mushrooms and broccolini

She served it with mozzarella stuffed portobello mushrooms and sauteed brocolini. It was a nice meal to end the year.

I opened a special bottle of beer that I’ve held onto since we were in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We visited the Santa Fe Brewing Company and Donna bought an oak barrel -aged sour ale for me there. Sour ale is an acquired taste, but I like them occasionally. Sours are usually relatively expensive. This was a 750ml bottle – the size of a standard wine bottle – and I think Donna paid about $30 for it.

Santa Fe sour ale

Sunday the rain moved out and we had clear weather. It didn’t warm up though, the high was only 59 degrees. Donna and her sister, Sheila, went for a run on the trails at Torrey Pines down to the beach and back. Then they went to Pacific Beach for a late brunch.

All of the 32 NFL teams had their final game of the season on New Year’s Day. I spent the day inside watching three consecutive games. There were a few twists – Kansas City ended up winning the AFC West by beating the Chargers while Denver whipped on Oakland. And on Sunday night, the Green Bay Packers won the NFC north by beating the Detroit Lions.

Also Sunday night, Dean Spanos fired the Chargers head coach, Mike McCoy. The Chargers have had two poor seasons in a row, with multiple injuries hampering the team both years. I don’t know if any coach could’ve done much better than McCoy. The team started the year with a 53 man roster – as did everyone else. Twenty of the of the original players on the roster ended up on injured reserve – unable to play. Not just any twenty, but mostly starters and key players like Keenan Allen, Jason Verrett, Brandon Flowers, Brandon Mebane, Melvin Gordon and on and on. Andre Williams played running back – I think he was the eighth running back for the Chargers this year. He never had an NFL carry before but managed to gain 87 yards rushing in the game.

Firing the head coach won’t fix that. I wonder who’ll take the job. I also wonder if Dean Spanos will move the team away from San Diego. I commiserated vicariously with McCoy by opening a bottle of IPA from San Diego’s Saint Archer brewery. This is a very good IPA made with five varieties of hops.

Saint Archer IPA

A lot of the weekend warriors started moving out on Sunday. At least they were able to pack up in dry weather. Another Alpine Coach moved in across from us in the afternoon – bringing the total number of Alpines to four in the park.

This morning we woke up to rain drops on the roof as another batch of clouds came over. There’s a 20% chance of rain in the afternoon although it isn’t raining as I type this. The mass exodus continues and the park should be relatively quiet for the rest of the week. I don’t have any special plans for the day – I’ll watch some college bowl games and maybe download another book to my Kindle.

Soggy Year End

The weather guessers do a pretty good job most of the time in San Diego. I have to wonder how hard it could be – if you forecast clear skies and warm temperatures, you’d be right more often than not. Wednesday they had it right as we had beautiful weather. The skies were mostly clear and the temperature topped out at 73 degrees here at Mission Bay.

Donna and I went to the Ocean Beach Recreation Center in the morning to play pickleball. There was a crowd there – we had more than 20 people show up – only 12 can play at a time so we had long waiting periods between games. It took an hour and a half to get four games in. That was too much waiting around for me – we left after the fourth game.

Donna had a whole chicken marinating in a Peruvian chicken marinade. I spatchcocked it before I put it on the Traeger wood pellet fired smoker/grill. I started it breast side down at 350 degrees for 35 minutes – it was a small four-pound chicken. Then I flipped it over and set the temperature control to high – 450 degrees to finish it and crisp the skin.

Whole chicken hot off the Traeger

Donna served it with roasted Brussel sprouts and garlic smashed potatoes.

Roasted chicken, Brussel sprouts and smashed potatoes

Just before I put the chicken on the grill I walked to the west end of the RV park to catch the sunset. I’ll never get tired of watching the sunset over the bay.

Sunset on the bay

Thursday we were in for another gorgeous day. Clear, sunny skies and the afternoon high reached 83 degrees! I played pickleball at the Pacific Beach Recreation Center while Donna worked on an article that was due on Friday. There were only 12-14 people there so we had very little break time between games on the three courts.

I played for about two hours. In my last game, I was getting tired and starting to make too many mistakes. At one point, the ball was lobbed over my head. I turned to run to the back of the court to return it when my feet got tangled together and I went down hard. I landed on my right shoulder and hip and I’m feeling it today. I’m usually good at rolling with a fall to minimize the impact, but I was tired and maybe I’m not quite as quick as I once was.

In the afternoon, I broke out our Porter-Cable air compressor and plugged it in at our site. Once the reservoir was filled to 150psi, I disconnected it and drove in Sini’s car to the outer lot where our trailer is. The trailer had been sitting there for two and half months and I knew the tires would need to be pumped up to the proper pressure. It’s not unusual for tires to lose pressure over time. Smaller tires lose pressure more quickly due to the small volume of air.

I found the tires to be low by about seven psi. The air hose on my compressor leaks slightly when the hose bends in a certain direction. By the time I got to the trailer, the air compressor dropped from 150 psi to 125 psi. Pumping up the first tire dropped the pressure to about 70 psi. Electricity isn’t available in the outer lot so I had to return to the park to plug the compressor in and fill it again. It took four trips to fill all four tires. I’ll check the tires again before we leave here on January 15th, but I think we’ll be good to go.

The weather guessers said rain would move into the area today. We woke up to the sound of raindrops on the roof of the coach. They get the rain forecast right most of the time too. I imagine it’s pretty easy to see what’s heading this way off the coast. Sometimes weather anomalies occur like when the jet stream dips south or moisture moves up from the Sea of Cortez – but these are pretty easy to detect also.

The forecast calls for rain through Saturday night. We’ll ring in a wet New Year. It’s also supposed to be windy on New Year’s Eve. I hope the New Year’s revelers take care on the road – heavy rain and wind could make it treacherous.

Southern California will close out the year with a wet December. We are well over the average rainfall for the month here in San Diego. I read this morning that the water level of Lake Elsinore is rising for the first time since 2011. This is a good thing.

We don’t have any grand plans for New Year’s Eve. We’ll probably stay in. Donna just brought home some lobster tails and other goodies. Have a safe and happy new year!

 

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Pelicans Fishing

We’ve had beautiful weather since Christmas here at Mission Bay RV Resort. It gets better every day. On Monday morning, Donna and I took a walk around the point that separates De Anza Cove from Rose Inlet and Fiesta Bay. There was a wide variety of ducks in the bay along the point.

Ducks on the bay

As we walked along, a brown pelican glided past us about 15-20 feet above the water. It pulled up suddenly then folded its wings and dove headfirst into the water. A few seconds later it surfaced and swallowed a fish it caught. We watched it repeat this performance four times.

As we rounded the point, we saw two more pelicans performing this fishing feat. It looked like they never miss – each time they dove they came up with a fish.

At the end of our loop, I came back to the coach while Donna continued on. She took an easy training run of four miles along the bay. I tracked her run with the Garmin Connect app – it sends a link to my e-mail and I can track her activity. (We’re thinking this will come in handy when she’s out hiking on her own.)

I’ve neglected my guitar for quite a while. In the afternoon, I plugged my Gibson ES-339 into my amp stand and worked on a song I haven’t played since we left Michigan. It’s a song by Weezer recorded in 2000 called Island in the Sun. I surprised myself – after about half an hour I was playing it better than ever.

I first learned this song when I joined a band called BackTrack. My friend, Gerhard Rauch is the leader of this group. When I joined, I was told it was a classic rock band. This sounded good to me – I was thinking the music would be Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Santana, etc.

The group had been practicing together for a while before I came along. Gerhard’s son, Ben, was playing lead guitar but he was leaving the band. I planned to take his place. They already had a play list going. Unfortunate for me, the play list was unfamiliar.

Some of the songs were more 60s pop than classic rock – like Time Won’t Let Me by the Outsiders or Gimme Some Lovin‘ by the Spencer Davis Group. Other songs were 90s music like Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears or the aforementioned Weezer song.

We played a Creedence Clearwater Revival tune I was familiar with – Lodi. We also played a couple of Tom Petty songs I enjoyed. The playlist included a song by Guess Who that was a real rocker, but I had never heard it before – Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon.

I was behind the eight ball trying to learn the song list while they were adding new songs every week. I was also working long hours in the office at the time. It didn’t work out – after a few months we mutually agreed to part ways. It was a fun time but also a stressful period. I was so looking forward to retirement and a life of leisure, playing whenever and whatever I wanted. Anyway, it was good to pick up my guitar again.

Donna wanted to rest on Tuesday – she’s on a training schedule for her 15k race a week from Saturday. I went to the Pacific Beach Recreation Center to play pickleball. I hadn’t played in over a week. It was a good time and I got some needed exercise over two and half hours.

I saw the most beautiful sunset on Tuesday evening as I drove along east Mission Bay. By the time I was able to stop and get out to take a picture, the sun had set. I was able to capture some of the color anyway, but I was few minutes behind the best display.

Looking across De Anza Cove toward the RV park at sundown

We have about two and a half weeks left here in San Diego before we move on to Arizona. I’ve been pretty lazy and I’ll have to get after a few things before we go.

The temperature reached 70 degrees yesterday. Today’s forecast calls for clear skies and mid-70s. We’ll go to Ocean Beach to play pickleball, then I’ll get out and enjoy the weather while Donna works on an article that’s due Friday.

Christmas Dinner with Friends

With Christmas falling on Sunday this year, most of the weekend’s NFL action was played on Saturday. It was was a relatively cold day here in San Diego – the high temperature on Saturday was only 59 degrees. It was windy with rain showers – a good day to be indoors and watch football.

The first game was set to kick off at 10am. I tuned in the satellite around 9:30am and had a problem. The Dish Network satellite signal was lost or interrupted every 10 seconds or so – I couldn’t stay locked on a channel. This puzzled me as the satellite was fine the last time I used it.

I thought about what had changed since Thursday night. I remembered seeing a rig with an exposed Dish satellite on the roof in the RV park and was surprised to see how high it was aimed in the sky. I assumed the satellites were lower in the southern sky, but at this latitude the dish points up at a high angle. Our actual antenna dish is hidden under a plastic dome so I don’t see where it’s pointed. I knew the Dish Network satellites here are at an azimuth of 158 and 171 degrees – almost due south.

Then I thought about the weather. On Thursday it was cloudy and raining – so no change there. But Saturday we had wind – a 20-25mph wind with gusts to 40mph. The tree at the front of our site was whipping around. I thought maybe a tree branch was blowing across the line of sight to the satellite. I hadn’t thought of this before because I didn’t think the line of sight was a high as it is.

I pulled the jacks up, fed about three feet of our power cable and water hose out then fired up the engine. I moved the coach forward about two feet to see if this would take the tree branches out of the path to the satellite. Bingo! Now I had great reception on all HD channels.

So, I was a couch potato all day Saturday. I watched football and read a book inbetween games.

Christmas morning we opened presents. The weather was much nicer – clear blue skies and the wind had abated. It was still cool out, but felt much warmer in sun. Donna went out for a long training run – she has less than two weeks until her 15k race. She ran a loop around east Mission Bay taking the path to Sea World then crossing the Ingraham Street bridges before coming back along Crown Point and over Rose Creek. It was a nine-mile loop and I was able to track her progress via the Garmin connect app that was synched with her Garmin GPS watch.

Later we joined Kris and Tom Downey and their daughter Meg in their Tiffin Allegro Bus. Tom mixed up Bloody Mary’s and we watched the Pittsburgh Steelers vs Baltimore Ravens game. It was an entertaining game. Tom had cooked prime rib on his Traeger grill and it was cooked to perfection. Donna made a side dish of maple-chile roasted Brussel sprouts with butternut squash and Kris had a side of mashed red potatoes with sweet potato.

Christmas dinner plate

I managed to snap a photo of the dinner plate but was so engrossed in the football games and conversation with Tom I neglected to take any other photos. We also had a mid-western dessert dish called seafoam salad – it was very good. It’s a tangy lime jello mixed with whipped cream over canned pears.

Tom and I sipped Woodford Reserve bourbon after dinner. It was an enjoyable evening.

Today we expect a few high, thin clouds but no rain. So far we’ve had more than two inches of rain here in December – much more than the average of 1.53 inches. I don’t have any plans for the day – we’ll see what pans out.

Blazing Noodles

The rain continued on Friday. Nearly three-quarters of an inch fell on Thursday and Friday, bringing the total for the month over 1.6 inches. This is more than the average December total in San Diego.

Donna and I drove up to Temecula to meet my step-dad, Ken for lunch. He wanted to have lunch at the Pechanga Casino. The Pechanga Casino is on the Pechanga Indian Reservation and it’s the largest casino in California. The casino floor encompasses 188,000 square feet – it’s larger than the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It’s not your typical Indian casino.

There are 11 restaurants in the Pechanga Casino. Ken wanted to meet at a restaurant called Blazing Noodles. It was an old favorite of his and my late mother. We posed for a couple of photos in front of a large Christmas tree in front of the restaurant.

Donna and Ken at Pechanga

Me and Ken

 

Blazing Noodles serves Asian style dishes. The food is good and the portions are huge. We all brought home boxes of leftover food. We exchanged Christmas gifts before we left. I may not see Ken again until we return to San Diego in April.

It’s windy here this morning with cloudy skies. It rained hard overnight and more rain is expected today. The current temperature is 56 degrees and it’s not forecast to rise any higher today and tomorrow is supposed to only reach 58 degrees.

We’re looking forward to Christmas dinner with Kris and Tom Downey tomorrow. I hope everyone has a great Christmas weekend.

Pre-Christmas Cocktail Party

It rained most of the morning yesterday. We had dry periods in the afternoon and the temperature reached 72 degrees. On the weather radar it appeared as though the storm tracked to the north of us in the afternoon. This looked good as our friends Sheldon and Jen had invited several people to their place for cocktails and hors d’ouvres at 6pm.

Donna made asparagus spears wrapped with boursin cheese spread on prosciutto to take with us. Several people huddled under the awnings on Sheldon and Jen’s Tiffin Allegro Bus. I commented on the lack of wind being a plus.

Party under the awning

The quality of my photos is poor – the lighting wasn’t ideal. About 10 minutes after we arrived, it started to rain. Then the wind picked up.

After a few minutes, Sheldon decided enough was enough and he started moving food into his coach and herded everyone inside. Their coach is 45 feet long and has four slide-outs. I was surprised to find enough room for everyone to comfortably party – someone said they counted 23 people in the coach.

Our friends Sini Schmitt, Tom and Kris Downey and Iain and Kate Gilbert were there. We had a good time with multiple conversations going on all evening.

Our hosts Jen and Sheldon

Lots of laughs in here

I bugged out when the music got louder and people began dancing. Donna stayed for another hour and came home around 9pm.

It rained off and on all night and the rain continues to fall this morning. Donna was up early to drive Sini to the airport. They had to go downtown first and pick up Sini’s son, Beau. Sini and Beau are spending Christmas in Seattle with her other two sons and daughter-in-law. Sini left her car with us – we’ll pick her up when she returns a week from tomorrow.

I found a new email in my inbox this morning. It was from Healthcare.gov. It told me I needed to finish enrolling. In bold red letters it said “Action Required!” It said I needed to pay my first premium by December 31st and had a link to the Healthcare.gov site.

This is the third time this week I’ve received this email. The thing is, I paid my premium and already received a confirmation from the insurer – Avera. I looked up Avera’s number and called to see if there was a problem. After a few minutes on hold, an agent was able to look up my account in less than thirty seconds and confirm the payment was made. She said the email I received was from the government, not the insurer.

Apparently the Healthcare.gov people send this email to everyone that applied for insurance without bothering to check if they already paid. They call it a reminder. I don’t consider an email with bold red letters telling me action is required a friendly reminder. This is government bureaucracy at work. Enough said.

Today will remain cloudy and cooler with the high in the mid-60s. It looks like it should dry out this afternoon. There are flooded roads this morning, but with the rain tapering off the roads should clear soon.

Getting Healthcare While We’re Covered

With the year rapidly coming to a close, Donna and I needed to finish up on routine health care while we still have coverage. After January 1st, we’ll join the ranks in ACA healthcare market place. For us, it basically means we’re self-insured for all but the most catastrophic events. I already posted my rant about the un-affordable debacle that Obamacare created.

On Monday, we both had appointments with Dr. Tim Van Kirk at Eye-Tech for eye exams. Donna’s prescription hadn’t changed, I had a slight change for reading. This exam included a baseline retinal photo showing the current state of the health of our eyes. My left eye is completely healthy with good color in the macular area, nice blood flow and no sign of leakage or diabetes.

Retinal photo of my left eye

My right eye is a different story. I’ve been blind in my right eye since I had a motorcycle racing accident at Spokane Raceway Park 14 years ago. The accident was pretty serious and I sustained a number of injuries including Terson’s Syndrome from head trauma that affected my right optic nerve. The retinal photo looks healthy for the most part – it’s not quite centered correctly because I couldn’t see the target for the photo. The area around the optic nerve – the circular light spot in the photo – shows the damage.

Right optic nerve damage

These photos will be useful in the future as they establish a baseline and can be used for comparison if anything changes. The eye exam was very comprehensive and took over an hour for each of us.

I made the usual Monday happy hour stop at Dan Diego’s and found another Belgian ale on sale for three dollars. This one is distributed by a French Abbey, but it’s brewed at a monastery in Chimay, Belgium. It’s an amber ale, 6% ABV and very tasty.

Mont Des Cats amber ale

I liked the Maredsous I had last week better, but it sold out.

For dinner, Donna made turmeric chicken and served it with Israeli couscous and steamed broccoli. This has become a favorite dish.

Turmeric chicken, Israeli couscous and broccoli

On Tuesday morning, I had another healthcare appointment. It was time for my annual check-up with Dr. Ryan in Point Loma. Everything went well – I just have to wait for the results of blood work – but I feel good.

Tuesday turned out to be a gorgeous day. We had blue skies and the high temperature reached 77 degrees! The wind was light and variable. It doesn’t get much better. I noticed the sail boat which is usually moored in De Anza Cove was gone. The guy that owns it takes it out every few weeks and spends a day cleaning it once a month.

We have three Alpine Coaches clustered together here at Mission Bay RV Resort. One is in the site next to us and one is across the street. They’re both front-door double-slide models while ours is a mid-door triple-slide.

Alpine Coach neighbor – we’re on the left.

In the afternoon I climbed up on the roof of Sini’s coach and took the air conditioner shrouds off again. Some water leaked through the A/C intake grills on the ceiling of her coach. These grills are directly below the A/C evaporator housings. I looked around and didn’t see anything obvious. We sealed a seam on the evaporator housing with silicone, but I’m wondering if there’s a problem with the seal below the unit where it sits on the roof.

On Tuesday night, Donna made mini meatloaves in muffin tins. They were good – she served it with blue cheese smashed red potatoes and sauteed zucchini, peppers and onions.

Mini-meatloaf plate

At sunset, clouds moved in. I wasn’t expecting this. Rain started falling around 9:30pm. It rained off and on overnight and it’s overcast this morning. This wasn’t in yesterday’s forecast. Now the weather guessers are calling for a 40% chance of rain by evening – this will put a damper on the happy hour gathering we were invited to with friends here in the RV park.

Today is the winter solstice – meaning that the sun is at its southernmost point in the sky. It’s the shortest day of sunlight in the northern hemisphere. The actual solstice occurred at 2:44am local time when the north pole was tilted at its farthest point from the sun. Days will start to get longer beginning tomorrow. It’ll be a few months before the longer periods of sunlight bring warmer weather though.

The Coldest Month

We had some weather here in San Diego on Friday. A cold front blew in Thursday evening and brought rain with it. The weather guessers said the rain would start Friday, but it started Thursday night. Over the next 24 hours or so, nearly an inch of precipitation fell. Southern California needs the water, but that was a heavy rain storm by local standards.

The cold front lingered over the weekend although the skies were clear and sunny. The thermometer hovered around 60 degrees for the daily high. Overnight lows were in the mid to upper 40s. It seems unusually cold to me, but looking at the almanac, I see the average high temperature for December is 65 degrees and the average low is 48 degrees – making December the coldest month here on average.

I looked back at this blog to December of 2015 and found it was cold last year too. This week the forecast calls for a warming trend with highs reaching the low 70s before another cold front arrives for Christmas weekend.

We had planned to drive up to Menifee in the rental car on Saturday to have lunch with my step-dad, Ken. He called me in the morning and cancelled saying he had some kind of stomach bug and wasn’t up to company or lunch. We’ll go up there next weekend.

In the afternoon, Mission Bay RV Resort had their annual holiday celebration. They decorated the little grass park area by the snack shack and served pulled pork with beans and potato salad – $7/plate.  We went over there with Sini around 4pm and claimed a table in weak sunlight. We were joined by our friends, Kris and Tom Downey (Open Road 365). There was a guy on a small stage in a white suit and gloves and hat with his face painted white. He would alternate between standing still as a statue and playing guitar and singing. He must have been freezing.

We sat together and talked while we dined and were amused by the attempts of a crew to start fires in portable fire pits. They were trying to light large pieces of wood – logs that had been split into halves and quarters. But without kindling, it wasn’t going to work. They started with newspaper, which burned hot and fast, then went out with the logs barely smoking. Then they tried cardboard – with about the same result. A guy came over with a propane burner on a long tube – it looked like a mini flame thrower – and I think he was successful after several minutes on one of the fire pits. They wanted to cook s’mores over the camp fires. We were cold and cut out of there a little past 5pm.

Donna picked up a few beers for me while out shopping. On Saturday night, I watched the football game on NFL Network and had a seasonal beer from Port Brewing in San Marcos – a town I where I bought my first house in north San Diego County – called Santa’s Little Helper. It’s an Imperial stout. Whenever you see the word Imperial in a beer description, it means it’s a strong ale. This was true for Santa’s Little Helper – it’s 10% alcohol by volume (ABV). It’s a bit heavy with notes of coffee and chocolate.

Santa’s Little Helper

Sunday was another day of NFL football for me. I watched the Kansas City Chiefs lose a heartbreaker when Tennessee kicked a field goal on the last play of the game. Then I tuned in the Chargers game. My Dish Network receiver started losing the satellite signal intermittently for a few seconds. Then the downtime got longer and longer. During the second half, it lost the signal completely. I spent about an hour and a half chatting on the computer with their technical support trying to figure out what was going on. I missed the entire second half of the game. The Dish technical support was no help at all – he had me doing the same tests and checking the same settings – which I had already done before I called them – over and over again.

I followed the play-by-play on my laptop and commiserated another last-minute loss with an IPA from Stone Brewing that Donna bought for me. It was one of their “Enjoy By” series of ale. These ales are meant to be drunk immediately, not stored or aged. Some big, high-gravity, high alcohol beers are better when aged – just like wine. This IPA had an ABV of 9.4%, but it was meant to be enjoyed by 12-25-2016. It was an unfiltered IPA with a pale hazy appearance. It was a good beer, but I think the “Enjoy By” releases are gimmicks rather than a specific brew process.

Enjoy By IPA

Today we have clear blue skies. The temperature is supposed to reach 70 degrees this afternoon. Donna and I have eye exams scheduled – other than that I have no plans for the day.