Into every life rain must fall, but why mine on Monday

Hiking group gathers on Tuesday at trailhead

If there is anything more frustrating than dealing with technical support for a computer issue I’d like to know what it is. Saturday afternoon I spent the first half of the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens game dealing with a wireless hotspot issue.

We purchased the Straight Talk wireless hot spot last year when we were here, but obviously haven’t used it for nine months which necessitated purchasing new gigabytes and restarting the hot spot. Sounds easy, right? Wrong.

The foreign computer expert barely spoke English and the English he spoke sounded like Greek. Between my exasperation at not knowing what the heck he was talking about and then not understanding his broken English explanation I was in a near rage.

Starting up into the mountains

I try not to take out my total complete frustration with folks just trying to make a living but after 90 minutes of shutting down, restarting, rebooting, resetting, I told the man, “this really shouldn’t be this hard.”

Eventually we got the hot spot up and running, but without any security key so that I can’t leave the hot spot up when I’m not using it because it means anyone within range can steal my signal and byte into my gigas.

The only downsize to the Voyager Park is that the commercial wifi offered here is next to Neanderthal in tech terms. We had nothing but trouble with it on our first visit, so determined to find an alternate on our second because the cost of the park wife is $60 a month. The Straight Talk worked well last year, but after Saturday’s adventure I’m ready to give up on the Internet altogether.

Climbing, climbing

So the rest of Saturday was spent watching football and then dancing the night away, if coming home at 10 p.m. can be considered “dancing the night away.”

They have a very good band made up of residents here and they are quite good. We try to dance like no one is watching, but I wish I had paid better attention to those dance lessons my mother paid for in the early 1960s.

My routine, because I wake up so early here (5:30 a.m.) is to go to the fitness center get in a weight and cardio workout before the place starts hopping about 7 a.m.  That is pretty much 5 days a week with the other two days covered by hiking.

Looking at hikers through the cholla

Joan and I walked to church about 9:30 a.m. and were home in time to watch the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys game. We were rooting for the Dallas Cowboys and my exact quote at the start of the game was, “I just hope the game comes down to a controversial referee’s call that goes against the Cowboys and they lose.” Talk about karma. Couldn’t happen to a better guy than Jerry Jones.

The NFL doubleheader continued with the Denver Broncos and Indy Colts which we enjoyed very much as well. Not really rooting for either team in that game, but it turned out to be a pretty good game.

Joan made one of my favorite dinners – Shrimp Louie – with her own dressing and we spent a quiet evening at home.

My hiking buddy Jim is back (right)

The RV repair guy came by on Monday morning to look over the damage, but it was raining so it wasn’t safe for him to climb on the roof but he is in the process of ordering some of the broken parts and I talked to our insurance company and they are processing a claim for us. Hopefully, all with be right with the Laredo trailer soon.

Joan was planning to go to here aquacise class this morning but the rain seemed to discourage her. I mean you’re up to your neck in water anyway, but the idea of being in a pool in the rain didn’t excite her at all. Instead we stayed home and completed the process of unpacking and storing things inside.

Heard a new attorney ad: “Been in a wreck? Need a check? Call Joe Whatever”

The rain clouds moved out of here by noon and the afternoon warmed up nicely on Monday. We pulled out the folding chairs and we sat outside reading for a couple hours in the warm sun. It was really nice.

I'm back too

Our enhanced cable was not connected by 4 p.m. and without it there was no ESPN, which meant no National Championship College Football game so we headed downtown to walk in “Meet Me at Maynards” a weekly event in downtown Tucson where hundreds of people walk 2, 3 or 4-mile courses and then eat out at one of the many downtown restaurants all of which provide nice discounts to Meet Me at Maynards participants.

Joan really likes this event and a number of folks from Voyager RV park participate. Once you’ve walked in the weekly event 8 times you get a free “Meet Me at Maynards” t-shirt and after 15 you get a hat. They also have t-shirts for those who have walked 100 of the events as well as 200 of the events.  The event has been in existence for nearly 6 years so presumably there will be additional t-shirts for 300 and so on as the event continues.

My favorite cactus

Although such an event probably wouldn’t work in the winter months in Michigan it is a great idea to bring people downtown at least once a week. Once you register each week a raffle ticket with your name on it is tossed into a basket and they give away some nice prizes. We’re still two weeks from our first t-shirt (our four weeks last year carried over to this year) but we’ll make at least that this trip.

After we failed to win any of the dozen raffle prizes we headed to “World of Beer” a local restaurant with a 10 percent MMM discount and had dinner and watched the game on the several big screen tvs.

By 9:30 p.m. the score was 35-20 and we felt it was safe to head back to our trailer. We later learned that OSU scored another touchdown with just seconds left. That was a controversy down here, but I remember how Oregon scored a meaningless touchdown when they were playing MSU early in the season so I didn’t care a bit.

A pretty part of the hike

Tuesday morning came and Joan headed off to her first aquacise class and I headed off for my first “hard” hike. This one was a 6-mile trek into the Rincon Mountains in the Saguaro National Park. It was a perfect first hike for me as the distance and elevation is relatively moderate for one of these hikes and it takes me a couple weeks to get acclimated to the altitude. “It’s all about attitude and a little about altitude” one of the hikers said today.

One of the hikers passed out at the 3-mile point of the hike so one group of us headed back down via a shortcut to make sure she got back OK. The rest of the hikers took the full trail. So actually today I only hiked five miles although I did the hardest uphill parts before heading back down.

Tuesday potluck. Joan setting up her mac and cheese

After her aquacise class Joan took a bunch of family photographs to a scrapbooking class here and came home pretty enthused about what she had learned and ready to spend a king’s ransom on scrapbook supplies, but she is looking forward to attractively displaying family photographs. She met some nice folks and had a good time.

After my hike I got cleaned up and we headed to our first potluck supper in the main ballroom. Several of the folks welcomed us like long lost friends and the food was, as always, diverse and good.

With my first hike under my belt and Joan’s active day we both expect to sleep well tonight. The weather has cooled off into the low 60s tonight and we are looking at a short stretch of days where the highs will only be in the low 60s. We’ll keep that in perspective considering how cool it has been at home.