Why do days always go so differently than originally planned?? That’s the curiosity for me today. Other than breakfast and the start of a walk, nothing else happened as planned.

The walk is probably the main culprit. We’ve been trying to take walk every day for the past couple of weeks. Usually they’re between a half-hour and an hour and something around or less than two miles. Today we started and Nina said I was in charge of figuring out the route. So, we started along a new route. I was ready to turn around at the one mile mark, but Nina thought we were doing well and we were in a pretty area. At 45 minutes I suggested turning around, but since we hadn’t ever been in this area before, it was possible to make the walk a big loop, and neither of us knew how long the big loop would be, we continued.

Clicking on the image will show a full-sized map of the route … it turned out to be a long, long, long walk that included a fairly serious uphill at the end.

The “grey” marks on the map are where we stopped, sat down on a bench, and recuperated. The Runkeeper app allows me to “pause” the walk when we were not actually walking, so the two-hour time doesn’t count the half an hour we spent on a bench somewhere along the route.

We got back to the motor home about 11:30am; the day was close to half over and we were both somewhat beyond exhausted, sore, sweating, and even a bit grumpy. Showers helped, but as I write this, I have both feet up as I don’t want any weight on them at all. The day wasn’t completely downhill from there, but at times felt like it!

Life remains good!

Mondays now have turned into the day when we take care of a whole bunch of little things. Take, for instance, cleaning the motor home. Four small rugs to shake outside, the kitchen and bathroom floors to mop, and the living area to sweep. If it takes more than twenty minutes, then we’ve been slacking.

Errands take quite a bit longer, however. Since we’re very limited in storage, refrigerator, and freezer space, Nina has to go shopping once a week and then usually pick up one or two small things during the week. We’ve enough clothes for a week, so laundry is quite imperative on Mondays. The campground has four washers and four dryers. We usually have a load of whites and a load of dark colors, both of which can go into one dryer. Four bucks later, we’ve got clean clothes.

My errands today included checking on the status of my motorcycle, checking on the status of the window replacements, and checking on the status of my glasses. I essentially struck out on all three.

I took the motorcycle into the dealership on Friday afternoon because I didn’t think it was idling right and the exhaust smelled like it was running very rich (this after having had the gas tank drained and the carburetors flushed). I hadn’t heard back from them, so I went over this morning to find the place all closed up. Noon and no one there at all.  That was very strange. Me phone call went unanswered and eventually the system said the mailbox was full. Very discomforting.

The glass shop said that the side window glass would probably take 3-5 weeks, but he’d check on the status. If it was going to take more than another week I told him we needed to cancel the order. The glass across the front, however, might be able to be cut here in town, and he was going to check on that and call me back. Haven’t heard back.

The glasses are the worst story. Flandro Optical here in Pocatello is a well-respected and highly rated company and Dr. Flandro is an excellent optician. However, in my current case, their customer service has absolutely sucked. We’ve used his services since we arrived in Pocatello ten years ago. My mother and dad have both been his patients. Since I was retiring and my optical insurance would expire at the end of September, I decided to get my prescription updated and get new glasses.

So, on August 8th, my Friday off, I went in to get the eyes checked and new optics ordered (just the optics, I didn’t need new frames). Ten days they said. Three weeks later when I called, they said the lab was having problems and I needed to come in again to have the current frames “traced”. I reminded her that she had done that already. She checked, sure enough they had been traced, she just hadn’t sent the tracing to the lab. Finally, after several more reminders, the eyepieces for one of the glasses had arrived.

I have two sets of glasses. One for normal, everyday wear, and a second set specifically for using at the computer and at the organ. This second set hadn’t arrived yet, but supposedly the first set had. I went in, and the glasses had been made incorrectly. The lenses were sized for the computer frames, but with trifocal lenses. That didn’t work. It’s now four weeks later. I went in this morning. The person who would know is out to lunch, but she’ll call me “for sure” immediately after lunch. It’s now four hours later. She must be taking a very long lunch. Nine weeks … almost ten … just for lenses. And, of course, no insurance any more. I’m also on hold. Again.

I correspond with a good friend who has also stayed in a motor home at the Cowboy RV Park in Pocatello, Idaho. In his last letter he referred to our accommodations as a “shoebox on wheels”. What an accurate description! While we’re getting pretty settled in, we’ve had to make quite a few trips to the storage unit to swap things out. We’ve pretty much decided on our schedule, however. We’ll be driving away from here on Friday, October 17th and make our way to Green River, Wyoming to spend the weekend with my favorite brother and his family. That weekend is their Stake Conference, which will be great for all of us. We enjoy Stake Conferences and this one is also a broadcast from Salt Lake, rumored to be presided over by Elder Bednar. That will be especially delightful.

I’ve got to get some inoculations … including Hepatitis A and B as well as a flu shot. Nina also needs her flu shot. She’s going to have her last craft class at the Pocatello Women/s Correctional Center on the 16th. We’re trying to get a couple of windows replaced in the motor home. We’ve got the motor cycle to finish getting sold (it’s sold pending a final checkup by the Kawasaki dealer’s service department). Nina and I need to make a visit to Nina’s cousin-in-law in Boise. There are a few other minor things. That’s what’s dictating the departure date. By then we should have everything where it belongs to make the break for the east coast.

Tomorrow and Sunday are General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Life is great!

We did have a few hours of sunshine on Monday as we left Park City and made our way back to Pocatello. Our first stop was at the Outlet Mall in Park City where we did spend a little money. I need some nice white shirts and the Van Heusen store worked well … I scored 5 shirts that’ll wear well on our mission.

We had decided we wanted to stop at Trevor’s gravesite on the way back. The first issue was finding a flower store! The nice shop near the cemetery is now a restaurant. Dang! The was followed up by not being able to find his grave. We were in the right area, but enough had changed that we couldn’t quite zero in. Even after checking with the office, we still were wandering around the general area until Nina discovered the place. We’ve now drawn maps, taken pictures, stored waypoints, and built a web page so we should never have that problem again (hopefully).

We’re spending the weekend in Park City, Utah, spending time with some of our grandchildren. We’re enjoying a few days of downtime and easing into the retirement life. We left on Friday afternoon, later than we had planned, as a few other things came up. The mail gets put in our mailbox around 3pm each day, so we went past the UPS store to check the mail, and the Big White Envelope was there! So, we brought it with us and arranged to get several of the family online while we opened and read the mission call. Interestingly, there were two letters in the envelope: One to me and one to Nina. They read almost identically. I kind of thought the letter would be addressed to both of us.

Now that we know where we’ll be living and what we’ll be doing starting March 9th, we can figure out what we’ll be doing between now and March 9th. We have some vague ideas, but now need to solidify what, when, and where.

We’ll first do an eastern tour. I’m kind of thinking we can be ready to leave by the end of this coming week. A major task to be completed this week is to sell the motorcycle. I have two very interested parties … one wants to come and buy it on Monday, the other person is out of town and can’t get there until Thursday. I need to get that sorted out as I’d like very much to have the bike sold before we leave.

For the tour … we’ll be stopping first in Green River, Wyoming and spend some time with my Favorite Brother. That could possibly be over Conference Weekend (haven’t asked him, yet). We’ll want to be somewhere to be able to see conference. We’ll be stopping by Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Ohio for sure. Highly possible that we’ll go to South Carolina and Connecticut depending on whether or not people will be there that we want to see. Looking at RV rental sites in Arizona, it looks like there are a lot of options at very affordable prices.

Decisions, decisions. Life is good!

I took some obligatory video of opening the envelope and reading the mission call:

We now know where and when! We’ve been assigned to the Hawaii Honolulu Mission to serve in the Visitors’ Center. We’re to report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on March 9, 2015.

We can now do the clothes shopping! I think I’ll need a few short-sleeved white shirts and the second suit will be a light suit rather than a heavier, wool suit. I wonder how much it costs to ship a car to Hawaii??

Life is very, very good.

We’re spending a couple of days in Park City! Our daughter Jaelene suggested that we get together at the Marriott  Summit Watch Hotel as it’s a very family friendly location. That has proven to be true. Jaelene is here with her significant other and their four kids. Heather’s kids have come up as well along with a couple of other of Jaelene’s friends. There’ll be some fifteen people here for a very informal dinner this evening.

It has been raining all day, occasionally very hard. There’s plenty for the kids to do at the hotel, so the weather hasn’t been much of an issue.

The mission assignment paperwork has arrived. It was in the mailbox yesterday when we stopped for the mail as we drove out of town to Park City. We’ll open it up later this evening when everyone interested in the event is available, including our daughter Heather in Mumbai, India. We’ve been taking guesses as to where we’ll be going. We said in our application that we had no preference as to location and were available for the maximum length of 23 months. So far the guesses have been:

New Jersey
Ohio
Philippines
South Korea
Ghana
Berlin (or anywhere in Germany)
England
South America

Well, when the envelope is finally opened and the assignment revealed, it’ll be time for another blog entry!

Pocatello’s Mountain View Cemetery is across the street from where we have our motor home parked. The past several days, Nina and I have started our day off with a walk in the cemetery. I’ve taken a few pictures….

Today’s walk in the cemetery included a bluebird sky and just about perfect weather. The weather will be changing this evening with a cold front coming through; tomorrow will be 20° cooler than today. It’s a mile from our camper (bottom right of the image) to the far end of the cemetery (top left of the image). We usually walk for about an hour, meaning that we get around 2.5 miles in the walk.

The roads and pathways in the cemetery are well maintained and nice to walk on. The whole place is well covered with trees and the walk is nice and shady. In a week or so the leaves will start coming down with real intent and the walking may be less pleasant than it was today and earlier this week!

Fortunately there are a number of benches available throughout the cemetery. Most are placed on or around graves and put by the family. There are a couple of big benches under fir trees put there by the cemetery officials. In any regard, they are welcomed sights! This bench, however, has particular interest in that it is not only a bench, but also the headstone. The bench itself is very comfortable and Nina likes it because her feet are flat on the ground when she’s sitting on the bench. I rather like the photograph built into the back of the bench as well. I wonder what a bench/headstone like this would cost? We’ve got grave sites in Utah beside Trevor’s grave….

There are a number of family plots in the cemetery. In the oldest part of the cemetery many of the family plots are outlined with fences or cement blocks. This particular family plot is likely to be very Catholic! It’s well maintained, so there are living family members taking care of the graves and keeping thing in place, clean, and tidy.

This set of graves are distinctive! The writing on the headstones is in a very Greek font, but in English rather in Greek. The headstone on the right says that the family immigrated to the United States in 1925. There is a fairly large Greek community in Pocatello along with one of the oldest standing orthodox churches in the United States. The building is getting a much-needed facelift which is almost completed.

In the cemetery is a large section of Japanese graves. This site is not in that section (perhaps a picture in the future), but rather in a newer section. A large number of Japanese came to Pocatello in the late 1880’s to work on the railroad. There is a Japanese garden out at the airport maintained by the Japanese community here in Pocatello. And, many of these families were dramatically impacted by the (highly unjust) Japanese internment actions by the US Government during World War II.

In the center of the cemetery is the James H. Brady Memorial Chapel. The chapel is only open on Memorial Day. The rest of the year it is closed and not open to anyone. I’ve no idea why…. It seems like a delightful place to hold funerals or other events. We’ve visited on Memorial Day and found it to be a very inviting place.

I took this picture of the front door of the chapel on our walk earlier this week. The chapel is a “portal” the world-wide game called “Ingress“, to which I am a very recent recruit. Jared and Tania are fully engaged in this game and we had fun playing it while they were here visiting us in Pocatello. So, as I hacked the portal, I took a picture!


Still no mission call. We’re waiting patiently!!