In Miami

Juneau is now in Miami.

Yesterday she left Nashville. Here she is outside of a Tennessee dog park.

I’ve been thinking about the kennel where she is going. It’s a pretty high end operation – I’m assuming, since I know how much we’re paying to get that dog shipped to Panama.

I can only assume that the kennel is full of high end dogs – Mayflower Dog show dogs, manicured poodles and coifed Yorkies and groomed Shelties.

And, in the middle of all that – Juneau 🙂

I’ll bet that the staff are raising their eyebrows and asking themselves – they’re paying how much to send this mutt to Panama?

I do hope that, when she is inspected by the vets at the Panama City airport, that they are….lenient. Or, at least, forgiving 🙂

She should be here early next week. One problem is that they only fly dogs on Monday-Thursday, so she’s almost certainly missed the opportunity to get here this week – they still have to do all of that (expensive) processing.

It’s an uneventful day here in Nueva Gorgona. It’s been raining a lot of the day. However, the temperature has been the same as it always is. I got a ride and run in this morning – but that’s pretty much it. I’ve had two naps. I don’t know why. I just feel tired. Maybe the last two months are catching up with me.

I’d better rest up. It’s gonna be a lickfest when that critter gets here 🙂

“Pricesmart” is Panamanian for “Costco”

We went to Pricesmart in Chorrera today.

It’s Kirkland. It has the same brands, the same signs, the same set of services, even the same fonts in the signs over the products that show the prices.

But our Costco cards mean nothing – we had to get new cards. But they were cheaper than the Costco cards, so there’s that.

And….they have boneless Ribeyes for$8.09/lb

<THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE I WILL PUT THE PICTURE OF THE EIGHT DOLLAR RIBEYES ONCE IT COMES THROUGH MY EMAIL. I SEEM TO HAVE RUN INTO A COMM PROBLEM THIS EVENING>

It’s about a 45 minute drive from here in Nueva Gorgona to this massive retail area. I stopped at Panafoto and picked up an Amazon FireStick. We’re a Roku family, but Roku has suddenly stopped working for me here in Gorgona, and Roku has absolutely no possible avenues of customer support. So, if I have to, I can be flexible. Bezos didn’t get to a trillion dollars without giving good customer support, so I’m taking a chance on this piece of hardware.

Also got a good cup of coffee, and had a very nice lunch. All in all, it was a pleasant outing.

And now we actually have things in our home – well, our temporary home – that we sort of need to be alive. Like cheeses and such. No Tillamook, but I sort of accepted that as part of the cost of moving to Panama.

Each day, this becomes a little bit more “home”. Or, should I say, “a casa” 🙂

Transmítelo

I’m actually attempting to read this.

And, surprisingly, there are many times that I can read a whole sentence without resorting to a reference 🙂

I’m doing Duolingo, daily, but this week fell off a lot from last week. I’ve hit some stuff that isn’t coming easily – the use of indirect pronouns, for instance. I get confused as to placement and, if I use those pronouns with the indirect object nouns, I usually wind up putting those in the wrong place as well.

The only time I’ve ever been shown to have an actual aptitude of any sort was when the US Army said that I had enough language aptitude to go to the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey. But – well, that was the US Army….

Language is hard.

However, I recall when I was considering going back to school, and I said something about it being almost four years, if I changed my major, until I got through, and how old I would be then – and I believe Daddy said to me “Well, if you don’t go back to school, how old will you be in four years?”

I might as well go ahead and keep studying. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” is what Arthur Ashe said. Might as well.

Don’t have too much else to do 🙂

And….she’s off!

Juneau is heading our way now, at a cost somewhere over $2 per mile.*

She’s in the back of the transporter’s car, and seems calm enough.**

She should be in Miami in five days, then there in a kennel for 4-6 days, then a three hour flight here, then she sees the government veterinarian, and – unless they realize that she’s a mutant X-dog who might infect the local perro population – she’ll be released to us.

And then her new life starts.

Our new life is started already, although there are plenty of transitions still to go before we are actually established. In three weeks, we move back into our condo in Bahia. Sometime after that, we spend five days in Panama City, one day at each government office.

Sometime in the next few months, we get our temporary visa, then our drivers’ licenses, then our permanent visa, then our e-cedula.

As soon as we get the licenses, we’ll buy a car, or cars.

This time, we’ll make sure to get Husky-colored interiors.

So Juneau’s on her way. I sure hope she likes beaches and palm trees, because it’ll be a long time before she leaves 🙂

*she started out about 3,450 miles away. It’s costing $7800 to get here here. You do the math. I find it too depressing 🙂

**if you also read Ethel’s blog, then you’ve already seen this picture. But it’s good enough to be used twice.

Costs Pile Up

So we took all of this stuff to UPS to have it shipped, via ground, to Miami, preparatory to having is shipped via ocean freight to Panama.

We didn’t think it through very well.

Now, in my defense, I had no idea that this could be this expensive. And before I could ask for an estimate, they had it shipped and out the door.

But without a doubt, it cost at least twice as much to ship this stuff – bikes, trainers, piano and guitar, a bunch of clothes and household goods – as the stuff is actually worth.

And that was just to get it to Miami. We’ll still have to pay for it to come here.

We won’t make that mistake again 🙂

I suppose I could tell them, in Miami, just to toss the stuff into the Atlantic. But there’s the question of how much it will cost now; it should be a good bit cheaper to come by boat that it was across the country. And we’ve already spent that much on it, so – might as well go all the way.

And there’s sentimental value there, as well. The piano and the guitar were both gifts. And one doesn’t ride that may miles on a bike without developing an attachment. So I reckon we’ll just absorb the loss.

We just got the stuff that we’d left here while we went back to Montana. The pile of our possessions is currently almost as large as the two-bedroom unit we’re in for the wait until our Bahia place comes open in three weeks.

When our ship comes in, we’ll have to move out 🙂

Okay, we knew it would be expensive. And we can either afford it, or it won’t make much difference in the bankruptcy 🙂

In fact, having just sold all three cars, we’re now very cash-rich – “cash” as in “money in the checking account” rather than at the investment house. So I asked Ethel if she wanted to jump on a plane and go to Tierre del Fuego – quick, before the dog gets here.

She won’t do it. SSMAS.

She never lets me do anything 🙂

Wheelless

The vehicles are gone.

Never mind being homeless – for the first time since I was stationed in Texas, I have no vehicle*.

This is the second time I have left a beloved vehicle parked in this parking spot at Don K. The last time, it was my Audi TT, when I bought this truck

Kim’s Juke is gone as well. Don loaned me his beater truck to get around in the meantime and to get to the airport.

The dog is at the kennel. That was not fun – and she didn’t take it well. She always wants to go to the kennel and play with the other dogs, and this time, she was pulling to go with us. We’re hoping that the next three weeks of stress don’t change her in some way.

We’re now packing for the trip. We’re taking six suitcases and two backpacks. We’ve shipped eightteen boxes, and we left four suitcases down there. We’ll have plenty.

We’ll be renting a car until our licenses become…..well, there’s some period when we’re not allowed to drive, after our temporary visa kicks in, and until we get our Panamanian drivers’ licenses. Then we’ll buy something – apparently, you have to have your license to buy a car.

Keep keeps looking over at me and saying “We’re really doing this. We’re emigrating to another country.” Now, I avoid the news as much as possible, but much of the news that I can’t avoid (large monitors at the gym, for instance) leave me wondering if I want to be here anyway. It ain’t the same country that I grew up in, or is it the country that I enlisted to defend.

Don’t know how long we’ll be “emigrated”. At least thirteen months. That’s when the lease runs out. Then we’ll have to figure out how to get all of this stuff back to America. It might be that we’ll wind up sharing time – Panama and Colorado or New Mexico. Or maybe we’ll move on to someplace else.

I’m really happy and excited to be going back to Panama tomorrow.

But driving away from my truck – that wasn’t easy. Walking away from Juneau this afternoon – that wasn’t easy. I’ll be saying goodbye to more friends this evening – those have been going easy, because the only person that I need is going with me.

But I don’t know if I’ll ever have a vehicle like that truck again.

*I was without a vehicle after my car was wrecked just before I got sober, until I bought a motorcycle from my sponsor. That was just over 37 years ago.

One Expensive Critter

We keep running into stuff that makes getting Juneau to Panama, and getting ourselves there with what we need for our residence visa, more difficult and expensive

Does this dog look like eight thousand dollars to you?

That number is based on the original cost (two hundred dollars) plus the $7800 that we’re paying to get her to Miami, and then from Miami through the government hoops on a plane to Panama.

That’s not including how much it’s costing us to sit here for weeks in Whitefish, in hotels, paying May rates. That’s at least that much, again.

Our trip to Nueva Gorgona, next week, currently looks like –

• a flight from here to Seattle
• Flight from Seattle to Los Angeles
• Hotel in Los Angeles
• Flight from LA to Liberia, Costa Rica
• Hotel in Liberia
• Shuttle from Liberia to San Jose, Costa Rica
• Flight from San Jose to Panama City
• Shuttle from PC to Nueva Gorgona

If I ever get home, I’m never leaving again, under any circumstances whatever.

The only thing more amazing than how cheaply we can live, as well as we can live, in Panama, is how expensive it is to get there 🙂

We may wind up just flying from here to PC in one day. Going the way above means that we can fly first class, almost for free, to San Jose, and use up our Alaska Airlines credit. But now it seems that all the rest of the trip is going to cost as much as brand new tickets on another airline, getting there in one day. (This is my mistake).*

One problem is that Alaska has very few flights to San Jose, and they take two nights in hotels; they fly into Liberia very quickly indeed. Liberia is about 50,000 people, and San Jose is about two million. No, I don’t understand that at all.

*that is, as expensive as it would have been yesterday. .Today the prices went up 🙂

Crazier and crazier

The saga of Going Home To Go Back Home is getting weirder.

Here’s the Royal Palm in Nueva Gorgona, which is where I started paying rent today, and which is where we’re supposed to be staying for the next month until our place is free in Bahia 🙂

There have been a whole lot of things going on – more than I can believe – that are involved in getting this dog to Panama. And we have given up. We have spent so much time trying to do this, and now we have given up, and we’ll be paying a service to drive Juneau to Miami, and then paying a transportation company to take her from there to Panama City.

And now we have to sit here until Sunday – or perhaps Monday – until the service comes to pick her up. And since we can’t be sure whether it’ll be Sunday and Monday, we can’t plan on leaving Sunday.

This is Tuesday.

So now we have nothing to do until Monday. And we’re spending a lot of money.

I should write down all of the things that are involved in us trying to get Juneau to Panama. But I don’t want to bore anyone reading this – and, truth be told, it’ll take too long for me to type it all. It’s just….very tiresome.

I’ve steered clear of politics ever since I got sober. But now I’m wondering if I should become a Panamanian citizen, so I can run for office on a platform of “making it easier for foreigners to bring their dogs into the country”.*

So now, we wait. Most of the things that we need to do have been done, or we are now paying somebody else to do. I’m trading money for time – but it’s time spent in a Montana hotel, and that’s just not my sort of exchange.**

*okay, I’m not really going to do that.

**and, yes, we could see Montana, except it’s May, and the passes are still closed, and the weather is awful. I’ve tried to get Ethel to go to the Northwest Territories, but she won’t do it. SSMAS.

Packed Up

Everything has been taken from short term storage to UPS, and it will be going from there to Miami to get shipped to Panama.

All that’s left is the dog and us.

The BMW has been sold. That went easier than I thought it might – emotionally, I mean. I lost money on the car – but during the period I lost money on the car, I made a whole lot of money on my house, so I’m calling it a win 🙂 Yes, I loved having that car, but that car doesn’t make sense in Panama. And, apparently, we are, indeed, moving to Panama 🙂

Right now, we think that we are selling the Ram and the Juke, as well. That’s a bit more difficult, emotionally. Every time I climb into the Ram, I am reminded of what an amazing vehicle it is. But there are tax considerations; taking the Ram becomes very expensive indeed.

And we’re not leaving any time soon.

I just realized that, just now, like a few minutes ago. The last possible flight out for Juneau is at 1 AM Thursday, from LA, because only one airline will fly dogs to Panama, and that airline requires us to show up 24 hours in advance so that they can inspect the crate.

That means that we have to leave here on Tuesday, and we can’t do that, because one of us didn’t want to start the dog process too early.

So we’re going to be sitting here for another week, doing absolutely nothing at all.

And, for administrative reasons, I can’t use the Wave gym or pool after Tuesday, at all.

I just got very, very depressed 🙂

Bonafide

The FBI has received my fingerprints, and completed my background check. I’m bonafide!

(For some reason, I see this seal, and the theme from “Dragnet” goes off in my head. Yes, I know, that was the LAPD, and the image on the screen was an LAPD badge. It’s my brain. I only claim ownership, not explanation).

I was not worried about the background check. I don’t have anything in my record other than traffic tickets – I mean, nothing, since all of the stuff I was locked up for while in the Army was military and was handled by “non-judicial punishment”, and the one time I was locked up before that was for having a bottle of booze at too early an age, and that’s sealed somewhere in my juvie record*. Even if they broke into that and pulled it out, it’s no big thing.

There were times that I was picked up by the Polizei in Germany, but no civilian charges were filed – they just handed me over to the MPs.

So, I’m bonafide.

Now things start happening – not fast enough to suit us, though. We’re almost certainly not going to be down in Panama on the 17th, which is when our bridge lease on the second condo starts. But we shouldn’t be too far behind that.

As we’ve moved ahead, we’ve found things out that make the road longer. It started off with, for instance, having to have our Social Security statements to show our guaranteed income. Then they have to be “apostilled”, which means “fancy gummit international notarized”. But now we are hearing that the letters have to be signed by an actual Social Security officer as well.

And we had thought that the apostille could be done by the Secretary of State for Montana, but now we’re being told that it has to be the US Secretary of State. I don’t know who that is, but I’ll be he’s not in Montana.

So we’ll be paying an expediter to have that done, as well – that, and having our marriage certificate apostilled, and the FBI background checks.

But the dog’s documents – those can be apostilled in Montana. Which means that we’ll still be driving to Helena, even though all the other stuff will go to Washington, DC. And that’s less convenient, but the dog stuff is a ticking clock – from the time that she gets a clean bill of health from the local vet, we have to have that certified by the nearest USDA veterinarian, then we have to have it apostilled**, and then we have to get the dog to Panama, all inside of ten days.

But I suspect that we should be in Panama within the next week. Especially since Copa only flies animals Monday through Thursday.

But, at any rate, the FBI thing is done. We sort of expected to get that done a week ago, yesterday, in Couer d’Alene or Spokane.

And I’m bonafide 🙂

*that’s how they say it in cop shows – “sealed in his juvie record”. Of course, in those cop shows, it takes no longer than a commercial break to get into that juvie record.

**before we started this Panama thing, I’d never heard that word before – now it gets said and typed many times a day. Oh – and it’s pronounced “ah-POS-tee-yay” and “ah-POS-tee-yayed”. The double ll is a y sound, just like in Spanish..although, the Spanish we’re learning these days has that y sound pronounced as something between a “j” and a “ch”. Just can’t count on anything these days.