Regarding my health, progress has happened, but it’s slow. The PHN is somewhat better, but not gone, and recently seems to have plateaued. I’m able to forego the lidocaine patches, but the scalp pain is lingering irritatingly. Literally irritating–it feels like a sunburn much of the time. But no longer like the worst sunburn you’ve ever had–now down to a run of the mill bad sunburn. I’ve tried weaning myself off the gabapentin several times in the past six weeks, but to no avail. It’s going to run out next week, so I’m going to ask my doctor for another couple of months based on how slow my progress is.
The good news is my energy level is pretty much back up to normal. Normal for 72 going on 73, that is. And I’m OK with driving, in spite of the lightheadedness I assume is induced by the gaba. I haven’t caught up with all the neglected chores and projects that have gone by the wayside during all this, but I have dug myself a tiny way out from under. The crummy thing about housework, though, is that it just keeps right on piling up. Vacuum the rug, feel really good about it, pay no attention for four or five days–and it needs it again. Hard to stay motivated.
Projects, on the other hand–ah, projects can give one a more lasting feeling of accomplishment. Let me tell you about my most recent project and its aftermath.
Just a few days before the shingles started, I had gotten this.
The motivation was the realization from my May trip that I was going through more food than usual, and getting more bored with my usual travel fare, because of not stopping for lunch while on the road. I almost never cook while traveling, though I could since I carried a portable propane burner and small tank of propane with me. But it was a pain to get them out, and set them up, and then get all the cooking things out of the van, and then clean up and put them all back afterwards. My thinking was that maybe if I had immediate, easy access to a cooktop inside the van I could and would cook more often, and that would at least add some variety to my diet while traveling in the time of covid. Or even beyond.
The cooktop is intended to be permanently installed in a countertop, and that was my original intention. I tried it out in various positions to see how it would work with everything else, like so
and even went so far as to mark the optimal location with a Sharpie (see the short black line just in front of the stove above.)
At which point, I got shingles.
Fast forward to a week and a half ago. I was feeling better, enough better that I was (am) fantasizing about taking a ten day-two week trip in September. I decided it was time to install the stove if I was ever going to. So I went back to positioning it and contemplating how having it in there was going to affect various stowage systems I’ve worked out over the years. Was screwing up my nerve to make the cut in the counter, what tools would I need, how to make it straight, and so on–and just couldn’t do it. The commitment was just too much. So I moved on to the idea of making a frame for it and having it sit on top of the counter.
The next day–Sunday August 16, to be exact; I have good reason to remember that it was a Sunday–I set out to cut a rough draft of a frame, having measured and thought and measured some more. The work was cut short–Ha!–by my own stupidity and lack of carefulness; just as I was emphasizing to myself to be careful (I was using the table saw), I wasn’t, and the saw took a bite out of my thumb. It bled rather a lot; having washed it out under the kitchen faucet, I got a good look at it and decided maybe I should get a doctor to take a look at it just in case. It being Sunday, that meant a trip to the emergency room. Fortunately for me, we have a small hospital here in Coquille, and it’s only 6-7 blocks from my house, so I put a bandaid on it, nice and tight to slow the bleeding, and headed over. They took good care of me; here’s the before and after.
Other than some advice and their cleaning and bandaging it, I could probably have skipped the trip; the doctor thought no stitching was called for (I agreed), so that reassurance and the advice was really all I got out of it. Especially since the bandage bled through before the day was over.
With advice from my retired-doctor sister-in-law, I rebandaged it. I may have gone just a bit overboard. . . .
I’m down to using a couple of regular-sized band-aids now, and it is obviously beginning to heal.
Anyway, a couple of days later I got back to it–getting myself to use the table saw again was a bit like getting back on a bike after a fall, for those of you who experienced that as a kid–and got the frame done. The second draft came together fairly easily, and once I got all the correct propane connections, it was all done and installed by that Friday–last Friday.
Here it is stowed and clamped down for travel.
Unclamped and pulled forward for use.
And opened up.
Just had to try it out, so cooked supper on it that evening.
Which all worked just fine.
So! Then I needed a trip to give it a proper test. I decided a small pot roast was doable and would make a thorough test of the workability of the entire concept, did my shopping, planned a nice three-four day jaunt, and headed off for Cape Blanco Monday right after lunch. I figured Cape Blanco was a good place to start–the weather looked good, the tides looked right, and it’s only about an hour and a half from home. To my disappointment, and consternation, Cape Blanco turned out to be one of the state parks that is closed due to covid-19. I could have just given up and returned home, but I can be stubborn, so after contemplating my options I headed up the Sixes river, knowing there are a couple of county CGs up there and hoping for a spot just for the night, after which I’d head for the mountains up above Powers. The Sixes CG was mostly empty, so after contemplating all my options, settled on this spot.
It was a little warm, and got warmer as the sun went down –I am crap at predicting the sun’s path and therefore what will happen with shade, so by five PM I was in full sun–but it hovered inside the van between 80-82° F , which is bearable. The real down side was this:
See that pretty red stuff just the other side of the fence? That’s poison oak, which meant I didn’t want to let the critters, especially the cats, loose to wander, because they would pick it up and then I would get it from petting them. As I know from experience. This was a disappointment to all of us, but especially to the cats.
Turned out that all the people in the CG when I arrived were left over from the weekend; they all cleared out by five or six and I had the place to myself, which is always nice. The CG is small, with no walking trails, so walking with Scamp was limited, but once everyone else was gone and we had the river to ourselves, Scamp discovered its possibilities, found a stick, and dropped it in front of me suggestively. I found a couple more, and threw them into the river for her for fifteen minutes or so–she didn’t want to quit, and would have gone another fifteen if I’d had the patience, and the extra sticks–she tends to chew them up or lose them after awhile.
The following picture is from Monday evening; Scamp was tied outside, and I was keeping the cats in because of the poison oak. I was taking it easy after supper, and Phantom snuggled up to me. I just thought it was sweet, and managed to get the picture without disturbing him, a bit of an achievement.
The next morning, I decided to take the most direct route to Powers, although that meant about 20 miles of gravel road. I’ll cut the story short to spare you–that turned out to be a bad decision, backed up by ill-considered stubbornness and lack of information and poor signage. The poor signage in question said “Road closed 1.5 miles”, which I took to mean 1.5 miles further down the road. The ill-considered stubbornness was me deciding to drive that 1.5 miles to see what was what (in my defense, I’ve run into “closed” signs of various kinds that turned out to be false before). The lack of information was that the road is a private road, though it appears to be just a continuation of a public road. There were signs to either side saying Private Property etc., but not any that I saw saying Private Road Do Not Enter or words to that effect, and having land on either side of a road posted against trespassing is very common out here, so I ignored them. Turned out the 1.5 miles meant at mile 1.5, which was measured from Powers, which meant it was closed 1.5 miles from Powers, and all this put together meant I drove almost all the way up there and had to turn around and drive back, which altogether wasted about two hours. But the drive was pretty–I even stopped to take this picture.
And since I’ll never drive that road again, it being private and all, at least I got to see it.
Having made an early start that morning, even with the delay I ended up back in Bandon for lunch, and found a spot in the parking lot above the beach for the view. Which I never get tired of, and so always take a fresh picture or two no matter how many times I go there.
I felt rather silly driving on through Coquille, especially since I was beginning to get tired by then and I could have just stopped and slept at home, but it was the shortest way to my destination, and my stubbornness–aided by the fact that I hadn’t cooked the pot roast the night before–had kicked in, so I persisted, and ended up here around 2:30.
Notice I parked in the shade. I moved to improve the view before bedtime.
2:30 is an OK time to make camp, but I had driven five hours, two and a half of them on gravel and another 45 minutes winding my way up to Powers, so I was well and truly tired by then. Nonetheless, I managed a short walk with Scamp, and then, being stubborn and all, managed to cook the pot roast. Did not, however, manage to get any pictures of it at any point. Besides feeding me, it served its purpose of 1) proving that cooking something that has to stay on the stove longer, and/or takes more elaborate prep than opening a can and plopping the contents into a pot, is perfectly doable and definitely less hassle than with the previous equipment; and 2) establishing that I have some wrinkles to work out. Adequate room and setup for prep was shall we say not optimal, especially since for reasons I don’t remember one or both cats were inside during the process, and also I gotta work on methods and process for cleanup. Being able to just wipe the stove down, close it up, push it back out of the way and clamp it down was nice and easy, but cleaning cooking pots not so much. But altogether, proof of concept was achieved; that’s as elaborate a cooking endeavor as I’m ever likely to do while on the road, and I managed it while very tired (and having had wine) and therefore, shall we say, not at my best.
The next morning I had recovered somewhat, enough to enjoy watching the light develop on the pond. Here’s a selection of pictures of that process.
One more story. Scamp absolutely loves the forest, and gets very excited when we walk or camp in a forested area, especially if she can run free. One of the ways she manifests her delight is by refusing to come to me when she knows my agenda is to catch her and get her into the van. But one of the benefits of this particular area is there’s little to no traffic out there, so I can let her run behind the van until she’s tired enough to come to me and let me get her. Doing this was part of the plan for this trip, so in the morning when we were all loaded up, I started off slowly, windows open, calling to her to encourage her to run after. Which she did, eventually. But–I kept losing sight of her in my rear-view mirrors, so stopped periodically for her to catch up. Each time she would stop at a distance, not approaching the van, several times running back up the road toward our camping spot. She made the point very clearly that she thought we should go back and stay there indefinitely. At one point I stopped at a side road I’ve been curious about, and decided to walk down it a ways to see if it was maybe something to explore for another camping spot some time in the future. It looks pretty nice.
Scamp thought me getting out and walking with her was a great idea, to the extent that when I turned around to go back she didn’t want to come and tried to coax me back down the side road. But I persisted, and she did come, and I climbed back in the van and we proceeded as before.
Here’s my attempt to get some video of this process. Here I’ve stopped the van and stepped out to encourage her to catch up. You can see how she stops and begins to turn back at the end.
And in this one I tried to catch her in the mirror. She had run ahead a bit, so she’s in front of the van at the beginning.
After about four miles of this, she was still trying to persuade me to go back. At this point the road was all downhill, and I thought maybe this would resign her to just following along, but nope, she would turn and head back uphill and turn to look back at me every time I stopped. By this time I thought maybe she’d be tired enough to get back in the van, so this time when I stopped I tried to get her to come all the way to me, walking a ways ahead to try to trick her. Which backfired. She wouldn’t come to me, and when I turned to get back into the van, she took off at speed back up uphill, which was quite steep at that point, back toward where we had camped. I was getting tired of the tug of war over who was in control, and headed on down, calling her, driving very slowly, but didn’t stop again for another half mile or so. No Scamp. Continued this way on down to the Big Tree*, probably another three miles or so, calling while I drove, stopping and calling some more, and getting progressively more worried and more pissed and more unsure of just what I should do.
I had figured the Big Tree would make a good place for lunch, and debated having lunch before going back to look for her, or just staying there overnight to see if she’d show up, or just going home and coming back the next day to look for her. Did I mention I was just a bit pissed? But decided to drive back at least a few miles and see if I could find her, though I was bound and determined not to go all the way back at that point. Fortunately, a couple miles back up the road, here she came, headed down. I stopped and got out, and this time she did come to me when I knelt down; I think she had begun to get a bit worried and was relieved to see me. But she wasn’t ready to give up yet. I grabbed her collar and led her around to the side door, and she pulled hard trying to head back uphill. I think she would have run several more miles, but I couldn’t take the uncertainty, so I held onto her and got her in the van, found a place to turn around, and went back to the Big Tree for lunch. Where I got this shot.
With no further adventures, I went on home.
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* The Big Tree is (claimed to be) the biggest Port Orford cedar in the world. You can google it and everything. It’s still an official Recreation Area, though very neglected now.
She is aptly named! I wish you were feeling all the way better, but am happy you have recovered enough to have some adventures. Hope we get to adventure together someday soon.
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Scamp is definitely a scamp! I am a bit scared of saws, and wouldn’t trust myself with one. You are fortunate that it was a small cut. My late husband (a carpenter) made several trips to the ER over the years. Your trips look like they led you to some beautiful places. You got great pictures!
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Ah, pets and their personalities. Animals certainly make life more interesting. Thanks, as always, for sharing this excursion into nature’s beauty with us.
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