The Drive from Boise

We were finally able to leave Boise just before noon on Tuesday, after having breakfast at Le Peep with our friends Jim and Patti Stevenson, who have been a tremendous help to us during our last month in Boise.   For our first night camping we opted to stay at Emigrant Springs State Parks (just south of Pendleton).  It's primary attraction to us was that it is convenient to the freeway, and it helps to break up the long drive to Seattle.

Patti & Jim Stevenson, at Le Peep.

Alea at our campsite in Emigrant Springs State Park.

The next day, we drove west on Highway 14 along the north side of the Columbia River, opting to stop at John Day Dam to let Lana stretch her legs.  By chance, The Lady of Washington happened to be motoring upstream near where we had stopped, so we took a couple of pictures.

The Lady of Washington on the Columbia River below John Day Dam,
with Native American fishing platforms in the foreground.

The Lady of Washington entering the dam lock.

Our destination for the evening was Vancouver, WA, at the home of our friends, Craig and Jodi Blackwood.  They were part of our circle of Seattle dog-walking friends that we'd run into often at Golden Gardens park (most of the rest of whom we'll catch up with on Friday in Seattle).

Jodi Blackwood and Alea, in front of Jodi's home.

From there we stopped in Chehalis to visit with Leah (Overman) Wegener.  I'd met Leah and her brother Bob in 1984 as we were all cycling south down the Oregon Coast.  At the time I was delighted to meet some other folks from Tacoma (where I was then living), and I also recall a great communal meal of East Indian food that was orchestrated by Lester Tanaka.  But eventually I crossed paths with Leah again in Tacoma, and we stayed in touch the following year as I rode solo across the U.S., and she and Bob did likewise a little later in the year (on a different route).  If cell phones had existed back then, we likely would have rendezvoused in the east, but that never happened.

Alea, me, Leah and Lana.
(Photo by Henry Wegener)

The fruits of the labor of Leah's church group as they prepare for vacation bible school.

Leah, Henry and Jacob Wegener.

We arrived in Seattle late on Thursday and we've been camping in front of the home our friends, Ken and Cary Blassingame, where there will be a potluck send-off for us this evening (Friday).  

Urban camping is yet another reason that we love teardropping!

Urban camping in Ballard.

Our Official Start

It has been a while since we had started planning our little adventure, so it is worth sending out this little reminder of the upcoming details.

To kick off our trip on Saturday, Alea and Cary will be riding the first leg, from the east side of Sedro Woolley to Marblemount.  Anyone interested in seeing us off is invited to rendezvous on the First of August at 11 am at the Central United Methodist Church in Sedro Woolley (hopefully there will be parking available there on Saturday morning).  It is located near the east end of town, at 1013 Polte Road (which parallels the Cascade Trail very near its western terminus).  To get there from Hwy 20, turn south on Township Road (there is a Dairy Queen on the southeast corner).  Head south, and Polte Road will be the first street on the left.  The church is a few buildings up the road, on the right.  Here's a map link. 


That will be where we'll offload Alea's and Cary's bikes.  It should be easy to 'spot' our polka dot van.  ;-)

This first day will be a fairly short and pretty flat bicycle ride (about 40 miles), and we are tentatively planning to have lunch in Concrete, figuring that even with a late start that Alea and Cary will be there by around 1 pm.  From there I'll go get checked in at the campground and get the camper set up, where Lana and I will wait for the ladies to arrive.  

We were too late to get a reservation at the nearby NFS campgrounds, so we'll be staying overnight at Alpine RV Park and Campground, which is located on Hwy 20 at the eastern edge of Marblemount (315 ft elevation).  You are also welcome to join us there in the afternoon/evening, and here's a Google Maps link showing where it is located.

I'll be riding the leg on Sunday, which will cross both Rainy (4875 ft elevation) and Washington (5477 ft elevation) Passes.  Our planned destination will be Lone Fir Campground on the eastern slope of the Cascades, a distance of just over 60 miles.  The past few weeks have left little time for me to train, so I expect my only strategy for getting over the Cascade Divide will be to slow down and pace myself.  The one thing working in my favor will be that the highway grades should be shallower than those that I typically ride on.  Feel free to join me on that leg, but expect that I'll be poking along and stopping at all the watering holes.  On a warm day I hit the road once the temperature gets up to around 60 degrees (the forecast low for Sunday in Marblemount is 56 degrees).

"Lost" Van Found at Corwin Ford

Yesterday I was at Corwin Ford, waiting for some cosmetic damage to the bumper of our new van to be repaired.  As I've already described in earlier posts, the van that we ended up buying was not the one that we had special ordered six months ago.  A week ago Saturday we were told that particular van had been scrapped by Ford and that the VIN no longer existed.  Well, as suspected, that was total bullshit!  Our special order van is sitting on the lot at Corwin.  

Being a bit bored after sitting around waiting for a couple hours, I started glancing around the lot and happened to notice two white Transit Connect vans on the lot.  The first one that I walked up to was the one that we had special ordered!

I went and talked to the manager (Mario Wierzchowski) about what I had found, and it seems that they had already figured out that I had put two and two together.  They quickly stated that the van had been delivered this morning, which based upon where I found the van is a plausible explanation.  And the false explanation that I had been given last Saturday was attributed to information given to them by the area Ford rep, which I think was probably truthful.  

So, they were squirming a bit over the truth being laid bare.  I related the story about our rock chip incident yesterday, and the fact that I hadn't wanted the expensive Quickclear window defroster option ($495!) in the first place, and now there was some possibility that I'd be paying for it twice, since we have a $500 deductible on our insurance (only if it can't be repaired - repairs are fully covered by our insurance).

There were lots of calls made to sort out options, first of which being that they would replace the windshield for free while I was waiting for the work on the bumper to be finished.  As the minutes ticked away at researching that possibility it quickly became clear that wasn't a workable solution (not only did it need to be a Quickclear windshield, it also needed to have the integrated rain sensor - not something likely to be stocked locally).  So instead they are cutting me a check for $500 in case the windshield is not repairable, as a way of apologizing for our experience in purchasing our van.

So I think this likely will put an end to the bad van mojo - we ended up with some extra options that we like (particularly the oversize side view mirrors with integrated blind spot mirrors), we ended not paying for the expensive defroster (which is most appropriate for climates far colder than we have any interest in visiting), and we've finally been told the truth about things.  

With that chapter concluded, it was almost time to hit the road and start having fun...

But first we stopped back at Wrap World Ink, where Casey Clair very graciously re-installed the polka dot graphics on our rear doors, which had been installed too high, resulting in the rows of dots not aligning with those on the side.  While there, another vehicle owner was having some tinting installed.  Casey and his team installed the rear window tinting more than a half dozen times before succeeding in not having a small crease in one corner.   That's probably something that a lot of installers would simply hope that you didn't notice until after you had paid and there was little that you could do. Basically, Casey and his crew do top notch work and are great to deal with.

Casey Clair admiring his work.

So we're finally on the road and will be camping somewhere in NE Oregon for the night!

A Hectic Week

Thanks to the late arrival of our van, we've crammed a couple weeks worth of stuff into just a few days.  So this is our attempt to provide an update of what we may have overlooked in recent posts.

First off, Thursday was Alea’s final day of work, which is commemorated in the photo below, showing her about to begin her last ride to work:

Off to work - for the last time!

As stated in the previous post, we were able to cram MOST of our possessions into the storage unit that we had rented in June.  I think this picture says it all.  We even stuffed the refrigerator with a couple of small boxes of stuff that wouldn't otherwise fit:

A tight squeeze.

The back of the van is now fully outfitted.  The drawer pedestal is bolted to the floor by three lag bolts.  I had to cut a small notch in the lower left corner of the pedestal to get it to fit into the opening, which also necessitated trimming a piece off the bottom right drawer.  Even with it squeezed in that tight, the front passenger seat is a bit cramped.  It works well enough for Alea, but there aren't many positions for me where one knee isn't brushing against the dash.  Fortunately, there is plenty of legroom topside:

Front dash leg room.

The next most important storage consideration in the cargo box was securing our bikes.  That has worked out exceptionally well, by simply affixing a piece of 1x4 to the back of the drawer pedestal.  Near the top of that we've attached a 2" Velcro strap to hold one side of the handlebar, positioned so that it works with either bike (since our handlebars are not the same height).  I built a simple wheel cradle out of wood and attached it to the floor (since the wheels are the same diameter, it works for both bikes).  The result is that one bike can be stowed as solidly as a rock.  When we need to carry an additional bike (or two), it can be secured by simply lashing it to the first bike.

The rest of the cargo box is outfitted with several small details.  There are some velcro fasteners on the upper rear interior quarter panel for securing our spare bike tires.  Within that, I've placed some hooks for a half dozen of my caps.  On the opposite wall we adapted an over-the-door shoe organizer to store three pairs of shoes each, and it is set up in such a way that we can store extra jackets behind it.  We've got a cargo organizer on the back of the front seats for all of Lana's things - dog bowls, leashes, harnesses, balls, etc.  We've got ratchet straps for two of the D-ring cargo tie downs - one to secure the generator, and the other for our 3 gallon Igloo water cooler.  We also have two short clotheslines just below the ceiling in the rear of the van, to air out our towels and the occasional hand washed bike clothes.  A handful of other minor details keep our other gear lashed down in case of an accident or need for a sudden evasive maneuver.

Lately, we seem to have hit a small patch of misfortunes.  On Friday night Lana hurled herself into one of the screen doors of our camper, causing a rip that I sewed up on Saturday.  So now we have a matching set, as there was a similar mishap on the opposite side last year.  ;-)

On our return home from Hell's Canyon a huge rock hit our windshield, resulting in ding with 1” long radiating cracks (somehow I managed to sleep through this event, but I've been in sleep deficit lately).  We are scheduled to have Safelite see if they can repair it, which they will do on Thursday in Tacoma (they think that it likely can be fixed, provided that it doesn’t expand beyond the size of a dollar bill).  If it has to be replaced, it will be expensive, as it has a Quickclear defroster built into it.  This was an option that was not on our special order configuration - thus it is something that we didn’t want, but could end up paying for twice.  Hopefully that will be the end of any lingering bad mojo on the van. Leaving homeowner limbo and becoming full time campers should help in that regard.

After only four days...

On Monday we take the van back to Corwin Ford to have some cosmetic problems with the rear bumper corrected, and on Monday afternoon we need to return to Wrap World Ink for some tweaks to our graphics.  

We're currently experiencing a state of being somewhere between home ownership and camping, but it is slowly starting to feel more like camping every day and we're slowly starting to get back into that routine. It helps that we've emptied all the drawers, cupboards and closets in the house, forcing us to make the final decisions of what goes in the van or camper, what gets donated and what gets tossed. We are still anticipating that we'll leave town some time on Tuesday.

Loraine's New Polka Dot Jersey

Casey Clair at Wrap World Ink did an awesome job of quickly getting Loraine's new graphics designed and installed for us.  The polka dot design is printed with solvent ink on white vinyl, which is great since the metal panels that Ford installs over the sliding door window openings are not an exact color match to the van's Frozen White Mica paint.  So it covers over that mismatch.

Loraine at the old one lane Hwy 20 bridge in Caldwell, Idaho.

The move of our possessions to our storage unit went exceptionally well, with the help and creativity of Connor and Jesse of Two Men and a Truck.  I can't praise them enough for the job that they did for us.  We'll get back to the unit this weekend and take a picture or two, so you'll see why we're so impressed with them.

We're stopped in Ontario, OR doing a loop through Hell's Canyon in order to get the last few hundred break-in miles on the van's engine.  So we'll be taking more photos at scenic spots along our route.

We are planning on pulling out of Boise on Tuesday, though it may be late in the day (we'll consider hanging around until early Wednesday, if that is the earliest that they can moving up the closing for our house).

The interior of the van is pretty much fully fitted out.  We'll offer a tour of that in a later post...

Meet Loraine, Our New Van

Our wait for our new tow vehicle is finally over, but as mentioned in the previous post, we did not get the special order Ford Transit Connect van that we've been anticipating for the past six months.  Our last minute acquisition is actually a small step up from our special order van's configuration, so we're happy enough with how that has turned out, but pretty steamed at how long we ended up waiting for an off-the-lot van.  

We're pretty thoroughly disgusted with our experience with Corwin Ford, particularly with our dealings over the past few weeks, during which time the full nightmare of this experience has unfolded before our eyes.  You would think that the worst was over this weekend, when at the eleventh hour we were able to find a suitable replacement van, and we took it in the shorts on our trade-in.  Wrong!  We were scheduled to be at the dealers at 6 pm last night to pick up our new van.  Instead, we get a call from Rob at 5 pm saying that it's not here and won't be here until Thursday afternoon! - after earlier telling us it could be here as early as Monday, but no later than Wednesday!  It was at that point that I finally lost my temper, and I still haven't cooled down from that.  The short version of what happened next is that the new manager at Corwin Ford intervened and we took possession of the van this afternoon.

At a minimum, this mess has cost us thousands of extra dollars out of pocket, due to being left with insufficient time to sell our CX-5 before we leave.  And if we'd had the van by mid-April as we had originally been promised, there was at least a fair chance that we would have come out thousands of dollars ahead on the sale of our house as well.  But on the flip side, the important thing is that it looks as though everything is finally coming together for us to start our adventure as scheduled and our Corwin nightmare is finally over.

Black Canyon Dam, east of Emmett, Idaho.

Above is a picture of our new van, taken this evening as we were adding 100 break-in miles to her.  

We finished packing today and have move into our Camp Inn for the remainder of our time in Boise.  

Our Backyard Campsite

There was sufficient time this afternoon for me to install the drawer pedestal and power inlet in the van.  The movers will be here at 8 am on Thursday.  The 7 pin wiring, battery isolator and brake controller will be installed Thursday afternoon.  The polka dot graphics are scheduled to be installed on Friday.  The FHA appraisal was performed on Monday and we heard today that they accepted our valuation.  With luck, that could mean that we'll be able to close a day or two earlier than scheduled (currently set for Thursday, June 30th).

As we stated earlier, we've come up with a name for our new van, and the following is our rationale for choosing that name.  The polka dot theme for our van is based upon the Tour de France jersey for the best mountain climber, commonly known as the King of the Mountains (in French, the jersey is called le maillot à pois rouges).  Typically, vehicles are given feminine nicknames, so our theme would more correctly be described as the Queen of the Mountains.  And that has led to the name that we have chosen for our van: Loraine.  The name Loraine is more or less a homophone of la reine, which in French means "the queen."  Officially, she is Loraine, Queen of the Mountains, a name that should be appropriate, given her engine's great low RPM torque for towing #531 up mountains and steep hills (while driving this evening, the transmission never downshifted when we'd want to quickly accelerate uphill!).

Hopefully we'll have additional pictures to share as we get items knocked off of our to-do list and start racking up miles toward the engine break-in.  Things should be happening quickly over the next few days.

Finally, A Degree of Certainty...

I rode my bike over to Corwin Ford today (Saturday), to see if there was any word on our special order van and to discuss how short our timeline is becoming.  The dealer told me that our van is nowhere to be found and offered a rather nebulous excuse - that perhaps there had been some part of the assembly line that was out of whack when our van was built, in effect resulting in a small number of defective vehicles.  Or the van had been damaged in shipment and had been scrapped.  Supposedly Ford knows, but won't give any details.  As such, it would seem to be likely that there had been some sort of manufacturing problem.  Regardless, all indications are that our van's VIN has been erased from Ford's database (if they aren't just feeding us more b.s.).  The fact that I found out on a Saturday has me wondering why I wasn't notified sooner, especially since I had told them after our last set of interactions that I'd wait to hear from them.  Something is clearly not right, and the dealer and/or Ford is not being candid about what is going on.  

After hearing this, the prospect suddenly became very real that we would not be starting our trip on time.  Our salesman figured that, after all our heartache over trying to get a van, that we'd want to go out and buy from a competing brand.  We told him that we were not interested in that, that we had far too much invested in this van, plus the competitor's vans all were inferior in one or more regards (mainly less horsepower, torque and/or cargo space).  And we had no real desire to start over with a different Ford dealer, where we would likely pay significantly more, given our need for a quick solution.

So he once again searched inventory, not expecting any great change from when he had looked a couple of weeks ago.  But as luck would have it, there is a van in Oregon that, in every aspect that is important to us, is just like our special order van.  It doesn't have splash guards and it has several hundred dollars in additional options (most of which we had almost considered adding to our build, but narrowly decided not to), but at this point we are very relieved that we lucked into finding such a close fit.  It is interesting to note that it had rolled off the assembly line a week or two after our van was put on a ship.  

This time they were willing to eat the cost of transferring the vehicle from the other dealer, and there was no hassle about getting the rebates that we qualify for, or about getting the same discount as our special order van.  We suspect Ford has sweetened the pot for them to keep us satisfied, though obviously we aren't seeing any of that (at least not directly).  But we feel lucky that, this late in the game, we'll have a van that we can be satisfied with.

The van could be here as early as Monday, but we've been told it will be here by Wednesday at the latest.  We are stuck having to trade in our CX-5, though we'll first see if an interested neighbor would be willing to buy it for roughly a thousand dollars more than what we'll net from the dealer.  It would be a fantastic deal for them and would cut our losses a bit.

So we now have a small degree of certainty.  We'll definitely be in Seattle a week from Friday and we will be departing on our adventure the following morning.  We would have liked a leisurely, week long trip to Seattle where we would have had time to catch up with several old friends, but that won't be possible.  And taking two days to get to Tacoma won't be bad, leaving us a very short trip to Seattle on Friday.

We will have a lot to do this week.  Monday afternoon is the lender's appraisal.  Wednesday is when we do the final packing before the movers show up on Thursday morning.  In addition to all that, we still hope to get the polka dot graphics applied, get the drawer pedestal and other storage items installed in the van, and find the time to put 1,000 break-in miles on the engine.  We figure we'll accomplish the latter by taking extended drives in the evening, and probably at least one long drive next weekend.

With luck our next post will feature a picture of our new van as we pick it up from the dealer...

Retiring Early, Part Two

Before digging into the topic for this post, I forgot to mention in the first post on retiring early (regarding the availability of healthcare insurance) that the fact that Alea is a registered nurse also helps with our health care costs.  A few years back, out of the blue I had an acute kidney infection.  The doctor told me that if Alea had not been a nurse (I was so sick that she was with me when I saw him) that I would have been admitted to the hospital on the spot.  Instead, I was sent home with a heavy duty antibiotic and the immediate crisis was over the next day.  So needless to say, that saved us a bunch of money, as no hospital stay in the U.S. is cheap.

Part two of this story is about the effects of current monetary policy on our retirement income.  I'm no expert on any of this and have no formal education or credentials in this area, so please do your own math and make your own decisions on these matters (or check with your financial advisor).  I'm simply laying out why, in my view, retiring early makes potentially much more sense now than it did, for instance, in my parent's era.

This is a tale mostly about inflation and Social Security.  Inflation drives wages up (or vice versa), and your wage income is used to calculate your Social Security benefits.  For most people, Social Security is their main source of retirement income.  For us, additional retirement income will come to us in the form of two small pensions.  Inflation also eats away at those pensions, since they are based upon the wages that we were earning more than a decade ago when we left the employers who offered those pensions.  Fortunately for us, inflation has been low for many years now and looks like it will remain that way for most or all of the time between now and when we turn 65.  So we are very fortunate that thus far inflation has had a fairly modest effect on our two pensions.

There's definitely some inflation out there, and most of us feel it at the grocery store and, until recently, the gas pump.  But government-defined inflation is very low, thanks chiefly to the availability of cheap money caused by massive investment in government securities, mainly by China.  And it has been that way for quite a while, so the effect of inflation on our future retirement income has been modest - that income has declined in real value, but by far less than we had been expecting. 

During most of my career, wages usually increased by 3-5% per year or more, and my future social security benefits were based upon these ever increasing wages.  But that reality has changed for most people - in the past several years wages have stagnated and it looks as though they may stay that way for at least a few more years.  If you are nearing retirement age and your wages have stayed the same or dropped, then for the most part your future Social Security benefits won't have increased (this is dependent upon several factors, but will be the case for most people).  So if your wages will be about the same in five years as they are today, working longer probably won't mean that you will get much more retirement pay from Social Security.   So there's not much incentive to stay in the workforce, if you can afford not to work until you have access to one or more sources of retirement income.  After all, someone else will get the job that you had, so there should be no decrease in the amount of money going into the Social Security Trust Fund to fund all of our retirements.  And if the person that gets your old job is fairly young, then they'll spend a higher percentage of their wages on goods and services than you would, leading to increased demand for even more workers who would also contribute to Social Security.

Of course I'm not saying that you should start drawing Social Security early (if you are eligible), as those payments are reduced by something like 7-8% for every year that you claim benefits before your normal retirement age.  There is a whole other series of things to consider in determining whether that might make sense for you, and you'll need to sort that out on your own.  But if you are able to quit working today and live off another source of income until you get to (or at least closer to) full retirement age, then your Social Security benefit will be about what it would have been if you had kept working (assuming that wages remain depressed over that time and inflation remains low).  On the other hand, if your income is continuing to rise while everyone else's has stagnated, your future Social Security benefits will likely increase for every year that scenario holds true, so for you there would be a financial disincentive to retiring early (if so, we hope that you are having lots of fun at your job).  And if inflation gets out of hand, it pays for nearly everyone to keep working as long as they can, especially since more retirement incomes now have caps on cost of living adjustments.  

So, in a nutshell, our retiring early will probably have a fairly minimal effect on our future retirement income from Social Security.  And the effect on our pensions will be somewhat more significant, but far less than has been the case historically.  If you are hanging around the workforce solely in the hopes of "maxing out" Social Security, there may not be nearly as much financial benefit as has historically been the case.  That is, unless very significant inflation occurs in the period between now and when you reach full retirement age.  That scenario is a risk, and as such needs to be weighed in your own risk-benefit analysis for determining the best time for you to retire.  For us, Social Security and our small pensions are not our only sources of future income, so the risk for us currently looks to be acceptable, since our other retirement assets appear to be sufficient to allay any fears of other foreseeable risks, such as outliving our savings or a possible future cut in Social Security benefits.  We'll discuss those other assets in a later part of this post.

Status Update

Things have been happening fairly quickly lately, so here's a quick update on what has transpired recently:

1. We do have an offer on our house.  The inspection was last week and we passed with flying colors, but that didn't preclude the buyers from asking for $1,000 to resolve some very minor wear and tear issues - the items certainly weren't needed repairs.  We completely rejected that notion, but the buyers have a couple of days to respond.  If things stay on track, then the closing will be on 30 June, after an FHA appraisal is done.
2. The location of the van is still unknown.  We've decided to just sit and wait for the dealer to tell us when it arrives, as they rarely seem to have any concrete new information.
3. We listed our CX-5 for sale late last week, not wanting to wait until the new van arrives before attempting to get it sold.  We may end up being without a vehicle for a short time if it sells before the van shows up.
4. We had a great send off over the weekend from some of our Miata friends (though not everyone still owns a Miata).  Unfortunately, we were remiss and failed to take any photos.
5. We've scheduled movers for Thursday, July 23rd to help us transfer the remainder of our belongings to our storage unit.

Some issues are up in the air:  

1. If our CX-5 sells before we receive the van, then before the house closes we need to figure out how to get our trailer moved off the property.  We can park it at a friend's house until the van arrives.  I suspect if the van doesn't arrive this week and we haven't sold the CX-5 that we'll move it this weekend.  It's pretty much packed, with the exception of stocking the refrigerator.
2. We also need to figure out how to deal with the closing if we aren't in town, but it looks as though signing the deed is the only thing that needs an original signature, and that it is something we can do before leaving town.  Anything else can be sent by e-mail, printed at a FedEx store, signed and faxed back to the title company.
3. Our exact departure date is still questionable, but we're still optimistic that with every passing day the odds increase that our van will arrive and we'll be able to get everything done in time to be in Seattle on the 31st.  

We did some more checking about the timeline for a special ordered Transit Connect.  Back in 2012 it took 7 months (!), but at that time they were being built in Turkey.  Last year, even Ford Support was saying it takes at least 20 weeks, and I suspect they were talking about when it would arrive in the country, not when it would show up at the dealer.  A guy in California received his TC earlier this year, 25 1/2 weeks after the order was placed (almost six months!).  A guy in North Carolina got his last month after a 5 1/2 month wait (about 24 weeks).  I suspect the travel time crossing the states accounts for part of that difference, though how frequently Ford ships to North America is likely the bigger variable.  Today marks the beginning of our 26th week of waiting, with next Sunday being a full six months.  

Taking Control of Your Health (off topic)

A couple of months ago I read a very interesting book entitled Brain Maker by Dr. Perlmutter (an Amazon.com and New York Times best seller), which is probably a book that anyone concerned with their health should read.  The book is well edited and thus a fairly easy read, despite the technical nature of much of what it presents.

Despite the title, it basically details the connection between your gut flora and any number of health issues, many of which begin to manifest themselves in our 40s and 50s.  Don't expect to hear about this sort of information from your doctor, as it simply doesn't pay for any of them to spend that much time explaining anything to one patient.  Besides, the whole paradigm of traditional healthcare is to simply relieve symptoms (cut it out or take a pill), not to help you prevent disease.  After all, that's what people are most willing to pay for - a quick fix.

The book basically lays out the case for how current dietary practices have caused an imbalance in gut flora in most people, which is manifesting itself in any number of diseases: it is one of the main drivers of inflammation in your body, which is the root cause of most disease.  A main premise of the book is that such an imbalance in gut flora could very well be the primary cause of the current epidemic of Alzheimer's Disease.  That's a pretty revolutionary thought - that what goes on in your gut can destroy your brain, so you can probably sense why I took the time to read the book.  In a nutshell, certain dietary elements favor an overgrowth of harmful gut flora, while also creating a hostile environment for beneficial gut flora.  So the book helps you to avoid those harmful dietary elements in order to keep inflammation at bay, and thus avoid a host of chronic diseases brought on by chronically high levels of inflammation.

For those of you that have read about the Paleo Diet and other low-carb diets, the recommendations of the book will look very familiar.  Some folks will be horrified to contemplate life consuming fewer baked goods.  But the same guidelines that Dr. Perlmutter outlines to improve your brain health have also been proven to reduce high blood pressure, reduce weight, improve blood sugar, improve cholesterol ratios, relieve depression, improve sleep, etc: all symptoms that traditional healthcare would rather have you manage with a lifetime of expensive (and often addictive) medications with nasty side effects, rather than educating you about how simple changes in diet can achieve the same thing with far better results and at much lower cost.  And more importantly, you will feel far better as a result.   

It is important to know that even half-heartedly implementing his dietary recommendations can significantly improve your health and well being, so don't take them as an all-or-nothing edict.  But the closer you can get to fully implementing his recommendations, the more your health will be restored and the better than you will feel as a result.

And, getting back on topic for a moment, Alea's final day of work is two weeks from today.

Indiana?

We had an interesting experience yesterday.  We called for a status update on our van (since we'd been blown off the past few weeks), only to be told that nobody knows anything.  We were then offered to purchase a van that could be transferred from another dealer in the region.  But the only available van that was fairly close to what we wanted had already been reserved.  There was only one other van that might suit our needs, and we were told that we could have it here by Thursday, but it would mean adding on some aftermarket accessories to get all the essential items that we had ordered on our special order van.  At first we thought, "Great, problem solved."  But then we did the math.

This transfer van needed a backup camera, so that we can easily line up on our trailer hitch.  We were quoted a cost of $975 for that, despite a new factory stereo with backup camera only costing $250!  The transfer van also didn't have a trailer hitch, but we were told we could get a cheap hitch at U-Haul.  We checked into that, and it would cost about the same as the factory hitch, but if we wanted it sooner than late next week it would cost an additional $140 in freight.  In eight days the chances will have improved that our van will be here.  Of course on top of all that, they added $562 to cover their additional expenses, plus there were additional unwanted accessories on this van that totaled over $500.  So we'd be getting a deal that was $1,000 or $2,000 (depending up how you wish to characterize it) worse than the deal that we have waited the past 169 days for (though we would have spent less out of pocket than our special order van will cost, since it has thousands of dollars of other accessories on it).

So we frantically tried to cancel the transfer and keep things on track for our special order van, but I couldn't get anyone on the phone.  Being in a bit of a panic, I worked my way up the food chain, first leaving a message with the salesman, then the sales manager and finally the owner of Corwin Ford (and I threw in a nasty-gram via their website for good measure).

After a few hours I finally got a call back from the owner, who now miraculously tells me that the van, which nobody could find yesterday, is in Indiana.  He also tells me a fairy tale about how it is being held there (presumably in Indianapolis, where Ford has a plant), possibly to add some recall item before being delivered.  That sounds suspiciously like someone is simply telling a story so that they have something to tell us.  After all, we got the same line of BS about that being the reason that the van sat in Spain for a couple of months.  So we are hoping it is actually on a railcar in transit, but we simply don't know.  But Indianapolis does happen to be on a main freight line that connects to St. Louis, Kansas City and then Salt Lake City.  If we can believe what we are being told, then it is about 1,800 miles east of here, so it's getting closer.  That could be just a few days travel time, so the van might be here by the end of next week.

Lana, the SUBMARINE Wonder Dog!

We recently purchased (for about $5) a new collar and leash for Lana that coordinates with the graphics that we are planning for our new van (whom we've named, but we aren't letting that cat out of the bag until we pick her up, though we still have no idea of when that will be).  And we also bought her a new dog tag with our old home phone number (Alea's cellphone) and my new cellphone number.  

So we figured we take a few photos of Lana, showing off her new accessories, which is also a means of sharing our phone numbers without having to worry about them being added to search engine results (the 322 number is our old home phone and Alea's new cellphone, the 960 number is my new cellphone).

Top two picture: Lana's new dog tag.
Bottom picture: Lana's new collar featuring a red polka dot dog bone design.

In order to get some additional pictures of Lana we took a trip to the Boise River so that she could cool off in the 100 degree heat.  When we got there, the river was probably up a foot or foot and a half higher than when we were there a week or so ago.  

I decided to shoot a video clip of Lana retrieving the ball in the water.  What we got was this short clip of her underwater in a very determined and successful effort to retrieve her ball.  This is all the more remarkable because she is colorblind, and the orange ball is very hard for her to see against the river rock background:

Underwater pursuit!

So there is more proof that she is truly is a Wonder Dog!