Tag: california

Warning – this post is more like a short story. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything and it just sort of flowed out of my head for a page or three. 

After my flurry of posts during and after the Alaska trip, I find myself in what I’ve referred to as the “dreaded in-betweens”, the time between trips when I have to find things to keep myself busy, and hopefully find something to write about. Writing is one of my hobbies, and an important tool for keeping my mind from wandering down that black hole of grief. Yeah, I do mention that “widower” part of the blog title once in a while. Sorry.

I was lucky this time around when I returned from Alaska in early September, in that I had a short adventure to Yosemite planned, someplace I love to visit, and also an opportunity to meet with close friends I have not seen in ages. And of course, gave me another topic to write about. Since returning from that trip, I’m back to my rather boring, lonely life at home. So the question I’m quite certain you have is what does a “traveling widower” do when they are not traveling? Sounds like a good topic for a post.

Most of the solo travelers I’ve met in the past two years have families at home – some are married with spouses that are not interested in communing with grizzly bears, widows and widowers usually have children and grand-children to fill their lives (whether they want to or not), and most have a well developed social life, after living in the same location for a long time. For me, returning home to the “Farm to Fork” capital of California, especially for a long stretch of time, is quite different – no kids, no family close by, and very few local friends. Other than one couple, all of my closest friends live in other states. Sometimes shopping at REI, Mike’s Camera or Whole Foods is my big social event of the day. Especially if I do all three. Now that is exciting.

But it’s not all that bad. Really. I’ve been back home since September 14th, and I’ve been quite busy most of the time. Here are some of the activities I’ve been doing with all this spare time ticking away. (I’m a big Styx fan if you can’t tell).

Remembering How to Cook

Cooking was one of my wife’s favorite hobbies – she subscribed to almost every cooking magazine, and maintained an extensive library of incredible recipes. She loved to try new things, especially recipes from different parts of the world. We used to make some very strange African dishes when we first moved to Dallas – Bobotie (South African) was one of our favorites. Most of them were great, but did not go over too well with the traditional ‘meat & potato’ Texans we socialized with. I always enjoyed cooking, and we evolved into a pretty good team – she was the head chef, and I did all the dirty work. Since she passed, I have been cooking relatively simple dishes, but have avoided any of the wonderful, more complex dishes we used to make. If you can grill it, I’ll make it. Fast forward to a few days after I returned from Yosemite. I belong to a men’s club – a bunch of retirees that get together every few weeks at a member’s house, and talk about our lives in general plus a topic chosen for that session. We started out with veggies and pizza early on, but the meals have evolved into some culinary masterpieces. I decided to pull out the recipe for one of our favorites – Wild Mushroom Risotto. I knew there was quite a bit of prep work involved, but mostly I remember the rich flavor, the great aroma, and my wife stirring the big pot of rice for a long time. How tough could it be?

What I did not remember, or consider, was how long all of the prep would take with only one person. Duh. And then how long it takes to clean up with only one person. There were pounds of mushrooms to cut, dried mushrooms (those are really expensive) which need to be soaked and puréed, prosciutto to crisp, all the while the rice and shallots needed to be browned, and various ingredients added in sequence. I had decided to make one batch the evening before, and a second batch cooked in the morning to be served warm on the stove when the guests arrived. Great plan, but poor execution. The evening batch was great, but I finished cleaning around midnight. I started cooking the next batch at 7AM next morning – fortunately, I learned from my evening mistakes, and was able to get through the process, including cleanup, well before the group showed up. And yes, it did taste great, and I have all of the first batch in the freezer, to be enjoyed some evenings when I don’t feel like cooking. Which is often.

I’m going to pick something a lot easier for my next venture into gourmet cooking. Either that or just stick to baking bread.

Heart Surgery

I’m not kidding…doesn’t everyone want to do that in their spare time? 

Seriously, I’ve been living for years with a not too uncommon condition, Superventricular Tachycardia (SVT), where the heart’s electrical system goes haywire, racing along at a very high beats-per-minute (BPM). This is what sent me to the E/R and the very long trip back by car to San Diego on my whale petting trip to Baja. I had seen a specialist (electro physiologist) who recommended I get that fixed, to avoid having a recurrence in another remote part of the world. I’m not sure I’d want to be in a hospital in Madagascar. There was another good reason for getting this done – alcohol was a trigger for the tachycardia events. I might venture to have an occasional glass of wine if this procedure worked. So, since I had over a month with nothing better to do before my Patagonia trip, I managed to get on the surgery schedule the Monday after my cooking adventure.

Basically what the cardiologist does is thread a bunch of tools up the femoral veins from the groin to the inside of the heart, and then run a series of tests to identify the problem nerve. Once they find it, they zap the spot either with heat or cold, which deadens the nerve. This is called an ablation procedure. No big deal right? Just jamming a bunch of wires and tools into the heart and running some tests, while you are out cold, breathing on a ventilator. The procedure lasts anywhere from two to four hours, depending on how long it takes to identify the problem nerves, and then you have 2-3 hours in recovery before they let you go home. According to the cardiologist, it takes 2-3 days for recovery – just a little sore from the groin incisions (they had to go into both sides of the heart… left and right femoral veins). 

Surgery day went well – a very good friend drove me to the hospital, and volunteered to drive me home and stay overnight, a mandatory requirement from the hospital. I woke up in the recovery ward, and managed to make it through the next three hours of nurses coming by to poke and prod me and take continued measurements. I did get some kind of food, all of which was unappealing and tasteless. Probably better than the alternative of having really bad taste. I ate it anyway. I was feeling pretty good that evening, and pretty much conked out early. But the next few days did not go quite the way the cardiologist described. Beginning on Tuesday night I had:

• Extreme pain and discomfort breathing – sort of felt like I had broken ribs. I wound up calling the on-call cardiologist who said it was pericarditis, and inflammation of the heart lining. It was not fortunately.
• That went away in a day, but I then had shortness of breath and periods of very high heart rate. 
• Followed by a moderately high fever.

I had a continuous text message conversation with the cardiac nurse, and I probably got a little bit snarky at times. Most of the problems were gone by Saturday, but that evening, I woke up with my heart racing at 170 BPM. I was moments away from calling 911, but decided to tough it out until the morning. By Sunday afternoon, everything settled down, and I’ve been fine ever since. I’ve even started going to the gym again. Bring on that glass of wine. Really good wine.

My sister-in-law (who is a  physician) told me I should wear one of those medical bracelets that warns physicians that I’m a walking disaster and a pain in the ass. I might do that.

 

Exploring new restaurants

Back in the good old days, my wife and I used to eat out at least once a week, always going to our “Cheers” type of restaurant on weekends, and usually had hamburgers. Since she passed, the only time I go to restaurants is when I’m traveling, so I rarely get to satisfy my hamburger cravings. But I have had some good burgers on the road – the arachnid Hilton in Seattle is a favorite, on the way to Alaska. 

At any rate, I was invited to join my friends for lunch, at a restaurant which advertised what looked like a really good hamburger. It comes with a big knife holding it together. Very manly. The Greenhouse Restaurant is in Penryn, right off I-80. Never heard of it or Penryn either, but it’s only a 30 minute drive from my house. The burger (picture below) was quite good, but it was a “smash burger”, which means you can order it cooked the way you want it, but it will come out medium-well. I did like the knife presentation though.

What really made the meal was the appetizer. The restaurant apparently specializes in brunches and breakfast, and serves some amazing pancakes and waffles. They offer these up as sweet appetizers with any meal, so we went ahead and shared the daily special – huckleberry pancakes. OMG – these were the best pancakes I’ve ever had. Not really the best accompaniment for burgers and fries, but what the heck. They were too good to stop eating. I never got a chance to take a picture – three of us inhaled the stack. You can see the last few morsels in the photo.

I managed to eat half of my burger, and the rest made for a nice meal the next day. I’d go back there for breakfast next time and skip the burger. I’ve already got some local restaurants for burgers, if I ever get around to going out locally again. Doubtful. Other than the Palladio Luxe theatre – movie and a burger, in the dark. A bit messy, but it is always nice evening out for me.

Downsizing Redux 

I’ve made a few passes the past two years, at reducing the volume of “stuff” my wife and I accumulated in 49 years. I managed to empty out our storage area last year, and really helped out the Thrift Store at my church with a lot of high-end donations. Lot’s of clothing, crystal and silverware. I’m waiting for the weather to cool off before tackling the garage and attic, so I’m taking a pass through the closets, cabinets and console furniture – we used to entertain a lot, and there’s lot’s of stuff I’ll never use again. The first closet I’ve hit was the pantry – during the pandemic, my wife ordered what seems like cases of specialty rices (orzo, couscous, risotto) and pasta’s. These things do have a shelf life – and some of it was dated back to 2018. I may have dumped about 20 pounds of stuff out last week. It was a good start. I really want to have my moveable footprint down to a reasonable size by year’s end. That should keep me busy the next few months. 

Fighting the Tax Man 

Should five percent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman

Taxman, The Beatles

So many fun things to do in my spare time. Sacramento County sent out the 2026/2027 property tax bills this past week, and I’ve been preparing for this exciting moment for quite some time. We purchased our house during the pandemic, and overpaid a lot since we were moving from Colorado, and desperate for a place to live. Since then, the county has assessed our little house way over the other, much larger homes in our community, and has of course increased the bill by the maximum allowed by Prop 13 each year. I decided to protest this year, and with the help of my realtor, and ChatGPT, pulled together a nice package with the appropriate forms and supporting information, to hopefully get the county appraisers to look at the market value instead of relying on whatever software package they use to annoy the county residents. At least the staff at the appraisers office were really friendly and helpful. They probably keep all the nasty tax accountants in the back rooms, away from people. Wish me luck.

Trip Planning & Preparation 

It seems like I’m always in either planning or preparation mode for a trip – that’s the traveling part of my life I guess. As of October, I’ve just got two trips remaining for this year to prepare for, but I’m at that point where I have to start making travel arrangements for the upcoming trips in 2027. And some of those are complicated. The first trip is in February, the Northern Lights trip to Churchill Manitoba. I had the travel arrangements nailed down for that a few months ago, but Delta Airlines sent me a message the other day with some minor flight changes. They cancelled my afternoon flight from Minneapolis -> Winnipeg, and replaced that with one that leaves at 10:10PM. I will now get into Winnipeg at 12:10AM. And I’ll be stuck waiting in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport for 10 hours. Wonderful. There are no other options to get there, other than staying overnight in Minneapolis. You’d think the very least the airline would do, would to offer a pass to their airport lounge. Nope. I haven’t quite figured out what to do about that, other than bringing a book or two along.

The only other trips I need to complete travel arrangements for in the next few weeks are the Amazon River cruise, and the Monument Valley Photography Workshop – neither is overly complicated, other than just having four days between trips. And the photo workshop is in a very obscure place in Southern Utah…Bluff. Should be fun getting there.

And of course, I have found some things I need to buy for the Patagonia/Igauzu Falls trip in November, so I’ve been ordering more gear from Amazon, and yes, visiting REI. Sometimes you wanna  go where everyone  knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.

Tick, Tick, Ticking Away

None of the above have solved my social isolation unfortunately, although I did get to chat quite a bit with the nurses at the hospital, and even picked up a new subscriber to the blog. Woo hoo. And as of today, I’m just a month away from my Patagonia trip, where for the first time, I’ll know two people (from a previous NatGeo trip) out of the 100 or so strangers. That takes the initial pressure off the first meal on the boat. One less thing to stress about. 

Add two  doctor appointments, a couple of photo classes, some other photography related events, and of course prepping and packing for Patagonia, And I think I’ll make it to November without having to resort to Doom Scrolling, or binge watching some TV series I’ve managed to avoid watching the past two and half years. I’m going to take up online Mahjong and purchase a few new books – I spend too much time online or watching the tube when I’m home. Serious brain drain.

Hopefully I’ll have travel or photography related stories to tell the next time I post. I’m not planning on focusing quite as much on photography this trip – I’ll take a lot of pictures for sure, but I think I just want to relax and enjoy the adventure this time. And maybe enjoy a glass of wine or two.

Peace