A(nother) Short Story about the State of US Healthcare

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Maria Langer

Who wants a “pre-existing condition” these days?

I thought I’d take a moment to share a few recent thoughts related to the healthcare situation in the United States.

I’m in my late 50s now and have, for the first time, begun spending a lot of time doing close work with my hands. Making jewelry with fine wire and small tools doesn’t put a lot of strain on my hands, but it apparently does work the muscles and joints more than I’m accustomed to.

Arthritis runs in my family. I clearly remember my grandmother on my mother’s side, who lived to be about 90, complaining about it once in a while. She had typical “old lady hands,” that included thick knuckles and crooked joints under wrinkled skin. She’d spent nearly a lifetime doing close work with her hands in a garment factory, starting work when she was as young as 13 and working until many years later when my grandfather had a stroke and she had to stay home to care for him.

I’ve had knee problems on and off throughout my life. They always got worse when I was heavier and disappeared when I lost a lot of weight back in 2012. But before they disappeared — back when I had a lot of disposable income and a decent health care plan — I went to a doctor about it. Arthritis, he said, pointing at the x-rays.

Handxray
X-ray of a hand from Wikipedia. I’ve got my own x-rays around here somewhere.

More recently, a fall off the back of my truck that sprained an ankle apparently fractured some bones in my left wrist, which I’d landed on. While trying to diagnose the occasional swelling and severe pain (caused by “floating bodies,” we later discovered during arthroscopic surgery that removed most of them), the doctor took x-rays. He pointed out the early signs of arthritis in my wrists and hands.

So yeah. I have arthritis.

It’s gotten to the point that it’s starting to bother me enough to seek medical solutions that don’t necessarily include painkillers. (I can take Vitamin I (ibuprofen) without a doctor telling me to, and I’m not interested in anything stronger.) Would exercises help? CBD creams (as everyone keeps telling me)? Heat or ice therapy? Vitamin supplements? I’m not interested in querying Dr. Google because we all know that there’s enough bad advice there to drown out the good advice. I want to visit a doctor, have her take new x-rays, and tell me what I can do to slow the progression of this very common problem.

And here’s the rub.

If I go to an arthritis specialist — provided I can get an appointment with one — I’m making a very public (on my medical records) statement that I have a medical problem bad enough to seek medical help. In other words, I’m admitting I have a condition that, once admitted, becomes a “pre-existing” condition for future health care coverage.

Now, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, AKA “Obamacare”), as it was passed by the government and enacted into law, pre-existing conditions didn’t matter. But things are different now.

Let me tell you another story about pre-existing conditions prior to the ACA.

Years ago, when I was very heavy, I was having digestive issues that included GERD, heartburn, acid reflux, and vomiting. To this day, I think it was a hiatal hernia but at the time I was unable to find a doctor to offer any advice beyond “take Pepcid AC.” Back in those days, I made the fatal error of mentioning “chest pain” as a symptom. As you might imagine, that triggered a flurry of heart tests, all of which came back negative. I did not have a heart problem, I had a digestive problem. I blogged about this in detail way back in 2010.

This profit-driven nonsense established me in medical records with a “pre-existing heart condition” that didn’t exist. All of the tests came back negative! So when my idiot wasband lost his job (again), made a late COBRA payment, and got our health insurance canceled, the insurance company refused to cover me when they started the insurance back up. I had a “pre-existing heart condition,” they said.

For six of the scariest months of my life, I had no health insurance because a couple of greedy doctors put me through a battery of unnecessary heart tests and an idiot couldn’t manage his money properly. It wasn’t scary because of my health. It was scary because if, during the time I was uninsured, I got some kind of real negative health diagnosis (think cancer) or had an accident at home (think falling down the stairs) that put me into the hospital or long term treatment, I could lose everything I owned. Medical bankruptcy is a real thing here in the United States and I was set up to become a victim.

I got limited insurance coverage back and later got my own damn insurance again so I didn’t have to worry about an idiot screwing things up for me. The ACA really helped things; it was as if those old medical issues simply didn’t exist. And, so far, I haven’t had insurance denied because of these things — although the rate has gone up dramatically since Trump took office. Next year, who knows?

So here I am in 2019. I have arthritis in my hands and want help to prevent it from getting worse quickly. But I’m afraid to make an appointment with a specialist because I’m afraid to get the condition on my medical records. So instead, I’ll keep waiting, letting the condition likely get worse. All because I don’t want to be denied insurance coverage in the future.

Is it right? Does it makes sense? No and no. But there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it other than emigrate to a country with decent health care for all. And believe me, I’ve been thinking about it.

So that’s my situation as I type this.

At least the CBD cream smells nice.

The Broody Hen

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Maria Langer

I help a broody hen hatch 12 eggs.

Right around the time I returned from my vacation in early May, one of my hens got broody. A broody hen, in case you’re not familiar with the term, is one who wants to sit on eggs so they hatch and she can have chicks.

Although I’ve had chickens on and off for at least fifteen years, I’d never had a broody hen. The trouble with a broody hen is that she doesn’t lay eggs. She just sits on them. Worse yet, some of the other hens will lay eggs where she’s sitting so you don’t get eggs from those hens either. If you have chickens for eggs — which is why I have them — you don’t want a broody hen.

But I figured I’d let her sit until she got bored. She was sitting in the upper nest closest to the coop door and was in there every day that I peeked in to gather eggs.

And then one day, she was sitting on the nest farthest away from the coop door, leaving all her eggs — about ten of them — exposed and cold.

For some reason, I decided to take the eggs and stick them in my incubator. I set it up in the garage, added water to keep the humidity sensor happy, put a box of cat food cans on top to secure the lid, and forgot about it.

Until about four days later when she switched back to the first nest.

I gathered up the neglected eggs and added them to the incubator. At that point, I had 18 eggs in there.

Becoming a Chicken Mama

Life went on. She kept sitting on eggs in that first nest. I kept trying to pull the eggs out from under her, trying to discourage her from sitting.

And then one evening about 18 days after starting the incubator (according to the incubator’s clock), I went down to check the incubator and heard a chick. I saw the broken egg but didn’t see the chick right away. Turns out it had fallen off the platform where the eggs were in their turner and fell into a tiny crevice that normally would be full of water. Fortunately, I’d put water on one side only.

I had to take the incubator apart to get it out. Then I had to set up a warm place for it to brood. I had a chicken heater and a clear plastic bin and some pelleted litter material. Within minutes, I had a place set up on my dining table for the squawking little bird. Then I went back to the garage, put the incubator back together and put the eggs back.

Here’s the first chick that hatched, along with two pipping eggs. Can you see the cracks? The black thing is a heater that won’t burn the birds (or anything else).

That’s when I noticed that three more eggs were pipping. That means they had tiny cracks caused by the chick trying to get out. I brought them upstairs and set them in the warm bin with the other chick, which had quieted down now that it was warm.

And then I thought about the work I’d made for myself: brooding another batch of chicks in my chicken coop. I had a brooding area in there that could comfortably hold 8 chicks for about a month. They had to be manually fed and given water daily. And then I had to shift them to a separate area in my chicken coop and yard so the larger birds wouldn’t kill them. I had just gone through this process with chicks I bought in March and those six birds were still separated. I was looking forward to having just one flock. These four (or more) chicks would make that tough.

But what about that broody hen? She seemed to want chicks. How about if I let her hatch one?

Worth a try, I figured. I grabbed one of the pipping eggs, took it out to the coop, and stuck it under the broody hen.

I went to bed. Around 1 AM, I was woken by squawking chicks. I got out of bed for a look. There were two more chicks with the first one. I went back to bed.

In the morning, there were three more hatched chicks in the incubator. I brought them upstairs and stuck them in the bin.

Outside in the coop, there was a fluffy yellow chick poking out from under the broody hen.

Here’s a happy mama with her first baby.

I called my friend Janet, who has experience with broody hens. I wanted to know if she thought I could stick the other chicks in with the first one. We decided on a plan of adding them one by one and keeping an eye on things. If the hen rejected the chicks, she’d kill them.

So, for the rest of the day, I worked in the garden near the chicken coop. Ever hour or so, I’d go upstairs, grab a chick, and bring it outside. I’d open the coop door, talk to the hen, pet her with my left hand, and drop the chick behind her with my right hand. I also prepped the adolescent chicken area, which was still occupied by six pullets, with a tighter screen that the tiny chicks would not get through. I even made a nest for the area and added chick food and a water bottle.

I tried getting the pullets in with the adult hens and roosters. That didn’t work out right so I herded them back into their area. I figured the mom would protect her chicks against them.

By around 3 PM, I went up for the last two chicks. More petting and dropping. The broody hen didn’t seem to mind. She’d bonded with all the chicks and they had bonded with her. They stayed together and when they got cold they snuggled up under her. It was painfully cute.

But they were in an upper nest and I wanted them in the other area. So I opened up that area and started grabbing chicks. The hen immediately started squawking, but I worked fast. In the end, I grabbed her and stuck her in there with the single egg she’d been sitting on. I closed up the area. As her chicks gathered around her and she made a spot in the makeshift nest to sit on the egg, they all calmed down.

The hen and her chicks settled into the young chicken area of my coop.

Success!

I kept an eye on the situation, visiting regularly over the next few days. I was very surprised when they went outside just two days later. The young chickens didn’t bother them — but they also stayed far away. I think the broody hen read them the riot act while I wasn’t looking.

When I saw the chicks slip through the fence from the young chicken yard to the adult chicken yard, I nearly panicked. But the adult chickens didn’t bother them at all and they slipped right back to mama quickly.

More Chicks

Of course, my chicken hatching experience wasn’t over. There had been 18 eggs from at least two batches. There were 11 left.

This was the first of the second batch of chicks to start hatching.

I checked the incubator after a day out running errands and was horrified to discover that one of the eggs had hatched and the chick had fallen into one of the water reservoirs. It was chirping away with just its head above water. In a panic, I gently lifted it out by its head and wrapped it in my shirt, then hustled upstairs to the bin, turned the heater back on, and put it inside.

Then I carried the incubator upstairs and put it on the table so I could keep an eye on it.

Later in the day, I tried introducing the new chick to the mama hen. She took one look at it and pecked it on the head. I snatched it out. Damn.

I had a little get together with friends that evening and they all commented on how cute the chick was. I explained my dilemma, which was worse than it had originally been: it looked as if I had to raise a single chick by itself.

Fortunately, my friend Alyse agreed to take it. She’d just ordered some chicks and already had some older ones. She felt confident that she could introduce it to her flock. I was thrilled. I put the chick in a yogurt container with a pierced lid and she took it home with her. The next day, she sent a photo of her significant other with the tiny chick and an older chicken sitting on his chest and belly.

Three chicks fit comfortably in a one-quart yogurt container.

Unfortunately, three more chicks hatched the next day. Again, she agreed to take them. We met up in town and I handed off another yogurt container full of chicks.

I wasn’t done yet. The next day, another chicken hatched. (If you’re keeping count, this is number 12.) This time, I set up my camera atop the bin and videoed the last few minutes as the chick finally pushed out of the egg.

Watch that last chick hatch.

Later in the day, I met up with Alyse and handed over yet another yogurt container.

And that was it. No more pipping or hatching for the next two days. I disposed of the six remaining eggs.

Meanwhile, in the Chicken Yard

Meanwhile, I took away the divider between the chickens so all of them have access to the whole coop and both chicken yards. The mama and her babies mostly stay in that first yard where I have chick feed in the feeder. They camp out at night in a tucked away spot in the young chicken area. When the hen inexplicably got out with her chicks and Penny went after them, she charged Penny several times, successfully driving her back before I got them all back in the yard.

The mother chicken and her babies. Note the young chickens to the left. They are mortally afraid of the big hen.

So I’ve got seven more chickens — for a total of 18 — and just have to hope the little ones turn out to be girls. One rooster is enough.

My Inside Passage Cruise, Part 1: Bellingham to Nanaimo

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Maria Langer

A summary, with photos, of my spring vacation.

Greetings, Cruisers!

If you’ve found this blog post while Googling for information about big cruise ships in the inside passage, I’m sorry to disappoint you. My cruise was on a 65-foot historic wooden boat. But don’t click away! Read a little more about it or at least look at the photos. And then consider a trip on the David B or another small ship like it instead of an impersonal floating city. It’ll be a trip you remember for the rest of your life.

The past nine or so months has been a crazy travel time for me. A 4-day trip to the Washington coast and Tacoma for a jewelry class in September. An 18-day trip to New York, Washington DC, and Vermont in September and October to visit family and friends and see the sights. A 3+-month trip to Arizona and California in December through March. And then a real vacation: 12 days aboard a small, historic ship called the David B as it cruised slowly up the Inside Passage from Bellingham, WA to Ketchikan, AK at the end of April and into May.

(A side note here: all this travel would not be possible if I were still married. Once again, I have to thank my wasband for freeing me from a boring life in his rut, waiting for him to get his shit together and start enjoying life. Thanks, honey!)

I’ve mentioned elsewhere why I booked Northwest Navigation‘s “Learn to Cruise – The Canadian Inside Passage to Alaska” trip late last year for this spring. It would be a learning experience, and I’ve come to realize that learning experiences are the best experiences because they stay with you the longest and can change your life.

And this trip did not disappoint me in the least. I learned a ton about navigation, small boat cruising, tidal impacts, salt water boat maintenance, customs requirements, and “camping” on the water — which is basically what we did. I see small boats like the David B and the Ranger Tug R-27 I’m considering for my own use to be seaworthy RVs — recreational vehicles for use on the water. Like a motorhome, a boat with living space is a vehicle you can use to travel from place to place with a degree of flexibility, privacy, and comfort. What makes the boat I want different from the David B (other than size: 65 feet vs. 27 feet) is that mine can be easily trailered from place to place giving it almost unlimited options for exploration in fresh and salt water. What I learned on the David B can easily be applied to any serious boating I do in the future.

Anyway, although I brought my old laptop with me on that trip with the idea of blogging daily, that didn’t happen. Who wants to bury their head in a computer when there’s so much going on outside and around you? So I’ll try to share some of my experiences now, along with photos and charts of where we went.

And don’t worry; I’ve split this into multiple parts. I hope you read them all. Lots of photos!

Getting to Bellingham

I won’t bore you with details of my pre-trip travel. The short version is that it involved a flight from Wenatchee to Seattle to Bellingham. I saw no reason to make the 4-hour drive to Bellingham when the trip wasn’t going to finish there. Instead, I bought plane tickets from Wenatchee to my starting point in Bellingham with return flights from my ending point in Ketchikan to Wenatchee.

I spent the night in an AirBnB room that was cheap and walking distance (barely) from the marina where I’d get the boat the next day. It was also the smallest room I’d ever slept in (which turned out to be good preparation for my cabin on the David B). I did a lot of walking on that Tuesday, making the trek down to Anthony’s restaurant where I ate oysters two ways and had wine and dessert — entirely too much food. I then walked along the marina until I found where the David B was parked before walking back to my lodging.

Bellingham’s marina was absolutely gorgeous that late April day.

Day 1: Bellingham to San Juan Island

The David B when I arrived on Wednesday morning.

The next day, I took a Lyft to Bellingham’s art district with my giant rolling bag, had coffee in one restaurant, and breakfast in another. I then took a short walk, dragging the bag behind me, visiting a few antique stores to buy old sterling silver and silver plate tableware that I thought might be turned into nice rings. Finally, as the time to board got closer, I called another Lyft to take me the mile or so to the pier. If my bag wasn’t so damn big, I probably would have walked.

I was a half hour early but they let me board anyway. I wasn’t the first passenger to arrive. I met Sarah, who is in charge of reservations and other office stuff in Bellingham briefly before she left. Captain Jeffrey introduced himself and helped me wrestle my bag down the stairs to where the cabins were. There were five of them, including a crew cabin, and they were tiny. Mine had a queen sized bed, a head with toilet and sink, two portholes (one of which was in the head), and enough space for me to stand next to the bed. There was space under the bed for my bag, but about a third of it was occupied with manufactured logs, which I later learned were for the wood burning stove in the galley. They bring up a whole summer’s supply of logs and one of the other cabins was full of them. I had enough space, but it would have been challenging if I was a very large person or was traveling with a friend. Other cabins had different configurations and were better suited to couples. Mine was fine for me.

My cabin on the David B, as seen from the doorway with a panoramic photo. It was cosy!

The stairs were steep and winding. The first door at the bottom was a spacious bathroom (head) with shower that we shared. My tiny head was so small that when I sat on the toilet seat, I had to put my left arm on the sink counter.

I went back upstairs to the saloon (not salon, as we later learned) and met co-captain/cook Christine, who was Jeffrey’s wife. We chatted for a while in the saloon and I told them about the boat I wanted to buy and what I hoped to learn. (They must have thought I was nuts.) Then I learned about the David B and a little about our trip.

The saloon was our central gathering and lounging place on the David B. The snacks set out on that first afternoon should have warned me of the food to come.

Before long, I met my fellow passengers: Graeme from Australia and David and Leslie from Kettle Falls. Graeme was a wooden boat fan who had made the trip the centerpiece of a visit to the American northwest and Alaska. David and Leslie had just purchased a C-Dory 22 — coincidentally, the same boat my ex-friend at Lopez Island had that got me interested in small boat cruising two years before — and David was very interested in learning more about navigation since they’d just bought a home in Bellingham and I suspect he planned to move the boat there.

And that was it: only four passengers and two crew. I expected to be one of seven passengers, so this was a pleasant surprise.

We left port that afternoon.

I followed Captain Jeffrey down a ladder to the engine room and stood out of the way while he squirted oil into more places than I could count before doing a bunch of other things and then finally bringing the engine to life. I had questions but didn’t want to ask. He reminded me of a pilot preflighting an aircraft and if there’s one thing a serious pilot hates, it’s being interrupted doing a preflight. Then we both climbed back up and I told him I’d watch again, which I did the next morning.

The David B’s three-cylinder engine.

Backing the David B out of its slip was probably the most challenging job; those of us who wanted to help were given big bumpers to separate the boat from other boats or dock parts if we drifted too close to something. But Captain Jeffrey had it covered. Backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, he inched the 65 feet of wooden boat out and into the space between the slips. Then we were on our way while various friends and family members waved us off from the dock.

The Washington Iron Works logo adorns the David B’s smokestack atop the ship. The boat was built in 1929 and had just celebrated its 90th birthday.

The day had started to cloud over and get a bit chilly, but there wasn’t much wind and the San Juan Islands area we wound through was only a bit choppy. (I had my Sea Bands on for a while, just in case.) We were all excited about starting off and, after a lunch of hearty chicken soup and salad, spent a lot of time out on the deck or in the pilot house watching the San Juan Islands drift by and chatting about the homes we saw on shore. The David B literally chugged along under the power of its 90-year-old 3 cylinder engine, averaging about 6 to 7 knots of speed. We saw a few other boats, including some large tankers and freighters when we crossed the Rosario Strait. And there were ferry boats, of course.

The pilot house is a neat compilation of early 20th century and 21st century technology. For example, the computer ran a navigation application that actually turned the big wooden steering wheel. We all spent a lot of time in this room, which had enough seating for all four passengers.

I’d prepared for the trip by downloading, installing, and subscribing to an iPad app called Time Zero (TZ) iBoat. Throughout the trip, I had tracking turned on so it kept track of our exact route. (Yes, I know I’m a geek.) Looking back at that track now, I can tell you that we passed south of Eliza, Lummi, and Sinclair Islands; between Obstruction and Cypress Island through Peavine Pass; between Orcas and Shaw Islands in Harney Channel; north of Crane Island; south of Jones Island; and then into Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. We passed the main harbor and wound through some channels before finally settling for the night at the mouth of Garrison Bay, which was named for nearby English Camp.

Here’s the view of our first day’s track as it appeared zoom-to-view on my iPad.

Captain Jeffrey slowed the boat until it was almost stopped and Christine worked some equipment on the bow to drop one of the two large anchors with enough chain to hold us in place. Then he shut down the engine and the sound we’d been listening to for the past few hours stopped.

A fully-functional replica wood-burning stove was the centerpiece of Christine’s galley.

By this time, Christine was cooking dinner in the amazing galley. I say “amazing” because she was using a wood-fired stove and I personally can’t imagine dealing with the intricacies of such a device after a lifetime of gas, electric, and microwave cooking power. Because the boat had a generator and inverter, she had all the usual appliances — mixer, blender, ice cream maker. There were several refrigerators and freezers. The only thing she didn’t have was a dishwasher, but we all took turns washing the dishes after meals.

David B’s galley.

Here’s where we sat for meals. Although Christine plated dinners, breakfast and lunch was usually family style.

We had baked salmon, asparagus, and black rice for dinner. The “bread course” — which became a sort of running joke because every meal had some kind of freshly baked bread — was sourdough. I ate more bread on that trip than I had eaten in the previous year but I simply couldn’t resist.

After dinner, we spent some time discussing the next day’s cruise, which would take us into Canada. Part of the trip was a passage through Dodd Narrows, a narrow space between Mudge and Vancouver Islands that was well known for dangerous eddies during tidal flows. We had to plan our arrival at slack tide, a narrow window when the eddies were minimized. If we arrived too early or late, we’d have to wait on the south side of the narrows. An early arrival wasn’t a big deal but a late one would have us waiting for hours until the next safe time to pass through. This was my first introduction to the concept of tidal currents and it came with a lesson on how to use various reference guides to calculate when slack tide would occur.

Not long afterward, we all turned in for the night. I quickly realized that the walls were paper thin and I could hear everything Leslie and David said to each other. They didn’t say anything embarrassing, but I made some noise so they knew how thin the walls were. I suspect they figured it out — probably from hearing me snore! — because they didn’t talk much on subsequent nights.

Day 2: Bellingham to Nanaimo

I woke up early, as I usually do, but with a very sore throat that got me very worried. I’ve been on two vacations where I was sick with a cold and it really sucks. If I was taken down with a cold on this trip, I’d be very upset.

I spent some time lounging in bed with my iPad, which is what I do at home, too. I still had Internet access — heck, we were in the San Juan Islands. Around 5:30, I heard movement upstairs and went up in my pajamas to see what was going on. Christine had stoked up the stove and made coffee. I hung around in the kitchen for a while with my coffee, then went down to put real clothes on. The other passengers appeared one by one. Christine made us a frittata with asparagus (leftover from the previous night), fruit, granola, and yogurt. (The last three would be at every breakfast.) She didn’t have any orange juice, but I did have an orange to start pumping Vitamin C into my system.

The day was beautiful and the water was glassy smooth. I launched my drone for the first time to get some aerial views of the boat. I was a little skittish about flying it over water after my Lopez Island crash, but I faced my fears. There was a big clear area on the roof of the saloon and that’s where I launched from. I did not rely on auto-land to bring it back.

The David B at anchor in Garrison Bay.

Curious about what a 3 cylinder, 90-year-old ship’s engine looks like when starting up? Check this out. pic.twitter.com/hCZu7nU761
— Maria Langer 🚁 (@mlanger) April 26, 2019

Afterwards, I went back down into the engine room to get a narrated view of the engine start. I tweeted it.

Captain Jeffrey engaged the windlass and Christine started pulling up the anchor. Once it was stowed, we were ready to go. It was about 9 AM.

We left San Juan Island behind and headed out into Haro Strait. Somewhere northwest of Stuart Island, we crossed into Canada. I spent some time trying to find a good place to sit outside while cruising. The two lounge chairs above the pilot house were windy and chilly. I finally settled — at least for a while — into one of the back facing seats on the stern which was sheltered and in the sun.

It wasn’t long before I realized that the David B was cruising slowly because the David B cruises slow. The engine, which required oiling and other attention every two hours while it was running, was set to a six knot cruise speed. We were going to cruise over 700 nautical miles at 6 knots.

No wonder the trip took 12 days.

My notes for the second day mention a lot of boats on the water in Canada, including a Canadian Coast Guard boat, tug boats, and a tug boat pulling a barge of oddly loaded logs. I took some pictures, but not many. Everything was big and far away and didn’t look very impressive in photos.

I guess this is one way to load logs on a barge. What’s interesting to me is that in the Pacific Northwest they use chain to attach the tug to the barge and the chain dips way down into the water. This is very different from the barges I remember on the Hudson River when I was a kid; they used cables that were taught when the barge was being towed.

The chart for Dodd Narrows. The red line is our path through it.

We arrived at Dodd Narrows about 30 minutes early. During our slow approach, we could see several boats waiting to enter the narrows, including a tugboat towing a bunch of floating logs tied together. Captain Jeffrey liked the way it looked so he didn’t wait and kept going. A sailboat under engine power pulled in behind us. There was current in there, but it wasn’t bad enough to cause any problems for us. I was glad there weren’t any boats coming through from the opposite direction.

We got into Nanaimo, a port city that’s commonly used by American on private boats to clear Customs into Canada, at about 4 PM. Captain Jeffrey went to shore to deal with the paperwork for himself, Christine, and their four passengers.

Day 2’s track from San Juan Island to Nanaimo in British Columbia.

When in Canada, drink Canadian Club.

I was told that there was a supermarket nearby, so I set off alone in search of orange juice and vitamin C tablets. I had $40 in Canadian money with me and the goal of not being identified as an American. I found the supermarket and accomplished my mission with a credit card so I could save the cash for someplace that didn’t take credit cards, also returning to the boat with a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey and a reusable shopping bag.

Christine made us another amazing dinner with fresh bread. She was feeding us very well. Too well, I think. I’d brought along some snacks in case I got hungry between meals but (1) I didn’t get hungry and (2) there were always snacks available (which is probably why I didn’t get hungry).

Mother nature treated us to an amazing sunset.

Day 3: Nanaimo

The wind kicked up overnight and was blowing hard by 8 AM. Captain Jeffrey decided to delay departure by 2 hours. When that time had gone by, he delayed departure again. After lunch, he announced another delay.

I really couldn’t blame him. The wind was howling and the seas that we could see through a gap in the islands nearby was full of whitecaps. A big cargo ship anchored there drifted 90° or more at anchor. Even the seaplanes based near us at the harbor weren’t flying most of the day.

I spent most of the day reading and wasting time on Twitter. I wanted to go see Avengers Endgame at a theater in town, but the only showing I could see was at 3 PM and we might leave.

In the afternoon there was some excitement when a kayaker capsized about 30 feet from the boat. He couldn’t right the boat and he was hanging on in water that had to be icy cold. We got a line to throw to him while Christine called the coast guard. One of his companions paddled back and helped him to the dock in front of the boat. Fortunately, he’d been wearing a wet suit so he wasn’t that cold. But they went into a panic when they realized another kayaker was missing. They later found him back at their starting point at a nearby island; he’d turned around when he realized the seas were too rough for him.

At 4 PM, Captain Jeffrey announced that we’d be spending another night. He went ashore to pay for our space on the dock.

I walked into town with Leslie. We stopped at a tea shop where she had him make a custom blend of Earl Grey and lavender. We also went into a very nice gift shop. I would have visited more shops — including a chart shop Jeffrey had told us about — but I think Leslie was done so I walked back with her.

Back at the boat, we did more waiting. Then dinner. I think all of us were ready to move on.

The wind started to let up before bedtime.

(More to come…)

My YouTube Surprise

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Maria Langer

I check into my AdSense account and find a bunch of money.

I’ve been publishing helicopter videos on YouTube for more than 10 years. I was always fiddling around with one kind of camera or another, getting footage in flight, and then putting that footage online. Lots of people found it interesting. I just thought it was neat to share something that had become quite commonplace to me.

In 2016, I set up my YouTube account for monetization. That means that when YouTube put an ad at the beginning of one of my videos, I’d get a cut of the money they collected from the advertiser. I didn’t expect it to be very much — after all, it wasn’t as if my videos went viral or anything. I didn’t even have that many subscribers.

That apparently all changed at least a year ago. Somehow, the Flying M Air YouTube channel attracted more than 43,000 subscribers. And one of my videos — Home to Airport, by Helicopter — got 8.6 million views.

I didn’t know this. I’d set up YouTube to contact me via a Gmail account I never check so I never got any communication from them. I actually learned all this the other day when I was poking around my YouTube channel.

Wow, I thought to myself. That’s kind of cool. But shouldn’t I have earned some money with all those views?

I poked around some more. I wanted to make sure I’d set up YouTube with the correct banking information. I had a hard time finding where the settings for that were. But before I found it, I found something else: $7,700 of earnings in my AdSense account.

Surprise!

It seems that for the past three years, Google had been collecting ad revenue on ads played at the beginning of some of my videos and had been faithfully recording my share in my account on their system.

But why wasn’t I getting paid? It turned out that I’d never completed the setup — I’d never given Google my tax ID or banking information. Duh-oh!

You can bet I handed over that information as soon as I figured out where I needed to enter it.

And the next morning, all that money appeared magically in my savings account.

Needless to say, I’m now very motivated to create new videos. I hadn’t realized it, but it had been about two years since I uploaded one. There were hundreds of comments waiting to be moderated and many were from people asking me why I wasn’t making more videos.

I’ve been doing a bit of flying lately and I set up one of my GoPros to capture video and audio of most of my flights. I put together the other day and, a day later, created a short at the end of that flight.

One of the highlights of Tuesday’s flight was an overflight of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

I just went through the new comments on those videos. Most folks are thanking me for uploading new videos and telling me they want more. It’s very rewarding — and I’m not talking about the fraction of a cent I get for each view. It’s nice to know folks are out there waiting for new content. It’s nice to have them welcome me back as if they really missed me.

I’ll do my best to record new videos while flying — including new cherry drying videos this summer — and get them online. I hope you’ll check them out and maybe even subscribe to my YouTube channel: FlyingMAir.

A Helicopter Trip to the Anacortes Boat & Yacht Show, Part 2

Posted on May 21, 2019 by Maria Langer

I fly to my helicopter to the boat show in Anacortes, see a bunch of boats, get tempting special show pricing, and fly home.

(Continued from previous post)

My goal was to be in the air by 8 AM so I’d arrive at Anacortes Airport with plenty of time to get to the Boat Show when it opened. I assumed it would take me all day to see the boats that interested me and was worried that exhibitors would start packing up early since it was the last day of the show.

Weather Woes

But the weather did not cooperate. Overnight, the local forecast had changed. Now it wasn’t expected to clear up until after 11 AM. I don’t need clear skies to fly, but I do need ceilings (cloud bottom heights) above the pass where I expected to cross the Cascades. As I went about my morning routine, the clouds seemed to drop in the west and rain began.

The view from my deck at 6:34 AM. My route would take me right through the middle of this photo.

I continued my morning routine, but without the same sense of urgency. I showered and dressed in clean jeans and a shirt that suggested it wasn’t out of the question that I might spend nearly a quarter million dollars on a boat. Then Penny and I headed down to Pybus Market, where I’d left my tables and display stuff. I was supposed to be selling my jewelry there that day and had already paid for my spot. But with sales so bad the previous day, I didn’t have high hopes for a good day and didn’t mind eating the fee to do something more interesting with my time. I packed everything up and loaded it into the back of my truck.

Back at the helicopter, I took my time setting up my GoPro, preflighting, adding oil, and settling Penny in the front passenger seat. The rain had passed and it was clearing a little. I used a microfiber cloth to dry the helicopter, which also took any dust off. By the time I was ready to head over to the airport for fuel, it was nearly 10 AM. The weather still looked iffy.

My friend Rich, who bought my friend Jim’s old R44 Raven I, was doing pattern work when I radioed my approach. He landed beside me as the fuel guys were topping off my tanks. I told him where I was headed and that I hoped to get over the ridge at the headwaters of Icicle Creek. I’d discovered on a flight to Lopez Island years ago that that particular ridge is adjacent to Stevens Pass on a more direct line from Wenatchee. If the ridge was clear of clouds and I could cross it, there was a good chance that I could drop into the valley beyond and follow Route 2 due west toward the coast. We chatted about other things and then parted company.

It was just after 10 when I did my walkaround, climbed back on board with Penny, and got my GoPro running. Mounted via suction cup over the front passenger seat, it was connected to a battery power pack and the helicopter’s intercom system. It would shoot continuous video as well as a still image every 60 seconds.

Here’s the GoPro’s view just before departure from Pangborn Memorial Airport. As you can see, the weather does not look promising.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I took off, heading northwest.

The Flight to Anacortes

One of the benefits of flying a helicopter is that there is no minimum airspeed. This makes it extremely suitable for flying in conditions where it might be necessary to slow down or make a very tight 180° turn. As I flew northwest toward the mouth of the canyon at Icicle Creek near Leavenworth, I was mentally prepared to make a turn if low clouds obscured the mountains and made it impossible for me to cross the mountains.

And it sure looked like it would be necessary as I got closer and closer to the ridge. The clouds were sitting atop the Enchantments — that’s the mountains just west of Leavenworth. I was in a relatively narrow canyon with the creek below me and cloud covered mountains on either side. If I couldn’t go forward, I’d have to stop, turn around, and go back.

Of course, you can’t see the end of the canyon from halfway down it. So although it looked very bad at one point, when I rounded a bend, it didn’t look so bad after all. Then bad, round a bend, and not bad. I was at least 1,000 feet off the creek and climbing with the terrain. I never reached the level of the clouds.

This is one of the points where it looked iffy. But when I rounded that bend, it looked much better.

Then the ground came up to a ridge with plenty of space between the treetops and the cloud bottoms. I steered over it and saw Route 2 winding down the west side of Stevens Pass. Just like that, I was over the Cascades. I didn’t even have to slow down.

These photos, taken 1 minute apart, show me approaching the ridge at the headwaters of Icicle Creek (left)and then topping the ridge where I can see Route 2 coming down the west side of Stevens Pass (right).

I descended down into the valley and followed Route 2 almost due west to Skykomish, then headed northwest toward Anacortes. The canyon opened up and the terrain dropped around me to mere hills. I flew along at a cruise speed between 100 and 110 knots, over creeks and marshes and forests, past logged terrain and waterfalls and quarries. The wind was still calm and the ride was smooth. Penny occasionally stirred in her seat or sat up as if to ask “Are we there yet?”

I crossed over a lot of wooded, hilly, and logged terrain between Skykomish and the coast.

I tuned into various nearby airport frequencies as I flew. I got close enough to Arlington and Skagit to make radio calls, but didn’t fly over either one.

Eventually, I left the mountains and hillsides behind, crossed I-5, and flew over the flat farmland along the shoreline. As I flew over various waterways, I wondered whether a boat with a 30-inch draft could navigate them. (Yeah, my boat lust had gotten that bad.)

This was shot somewhere west of Mount Vernon.

Then I was over Fidalgo Island, climbing over one last hill before looking for the airport. I found it very close to the hillside and came in for a landing on the parallel taxiway. I set down in an airplane parking spot near the fuel island, wondering whether the hose would be long enough to reach me where I was parked. I didn’t see a fuel truck.

Making the turn for landing at Anacortes.

I shut everything down and let Penny out while I gathered everything I’d need for the day. Then, after a quick bathroom visit in the Pilot Lounge, I used Uber to call for a ride. We were on our way to the Marina five minutes later.

At the Boat Show

If you haven’t read the first post in this two-post series, you probably should before continuing. It explains why I wanted to go to the boat show in the first place and the kinds of boats I’m interested in.

Andrew at Ranger Tugs had put tickets aside for me at the Will Call office, so that where I started. The event isn’t expensive — only $10/person — but I think they charge a fee to discourage low-budget lookie Lous. Let’s face it: the Anacortes Boat & Yacht Show has the word “yacht” in it for a reason. The majority of boats on display were far beyond the means of 99% of the people who attended.

A look to the right from the ramp leading down to the boats for sale.

A look to the left at the boats for sale.

I didn’t waste my time looking at boats I couldn’t afford, although I do admit looking at a few that didn’t quite fit my needs. In most cases, the problem was towing: I needed a boat I could easily tow from home to anywhere I wanted to launch it, whether that was 12 miles from home at the boat ramp behind Pybus Market or 1200 miles from home in Arizona’s Lake Pleasant. That meant it could be no wider than 8-1/2 feet, which is the legal limit for normal trailer loads. Wider than that and I’d need a special permit to tow it and would have to get Wide Load signage and possibly a pilot car. The Cutwater boats seemed to fall into this category. Other boats were lacking in the livability department and wouldn’t be comfortable for more than a few days. Some were inboard motors and I preferred an outboard. None of them had the finely honed feature set the R-27 Ranger Tug I lusted for had.

I should mention here that “looking” at a boat didn’t mean looking at it from the dock. It meant climbing on board, and looking from the stern of a boat. All the boats had ramps leading to them so it was an easy deal. In most cases I either left Penny tied up on the dock or I picked her up and brought her on board. Although it would have been quite a treat to explore the giant yachts parked here and there along the dock, there was no reason to make me want something I couldn’t afford. It was best to stick to the program and let the lookie Lous have their fun without me.

I spoke to a sales guy at the Ranger Tugs area where their five models — R-23, R-27, R29, R31, and R41 — were parked. He gave me a sales spiel that included favorable pricing on the R-27 parked there. Prices go up by $10K in July for the 2020 model year, he warned. This was the last boat off the line for the 2019 model year. I checked out the smaller R-22, which I think would be too small for me. I asked questions about the windlass — cruising on the David B had convinced me that I would be unable to pull up an anchor, especially if it had 50 feet of chain and another 100 feet of rode set out. Andrew walked up and I chatted with him about it. He gave me even better pricing. We talked about desalination and dingy storage.

Later, I walked around the marina to look at some used boats on the far end. There was a 2016 Ranger Tug for sale there at the same price as the deal Andrew offered. Jeez. Was it wishful thinking on the part of the owner/broker or did the boats really hold their value that much? Why would anyone buy a used 2016 model when a brand new 2019 model, with all its improvements, from the factory could be had for the same price?

Penny and I left the docks and walked up to where other exhibitors were gathered inside a big tent or outside under smaller canopies. I got into a conversation with a boat broker about her upcoming trip to Ketchikan on her 41 foot Nordic Tug and my recent one on the David B. Her husband joined us and we talked about financing, which I hadn’t even considered. Even though they knew I wasn’t going to buy a boat from them, they were every helpful. And they seemed impressed that I was considering an R-27; the woman said it was an excellent option for me.

I looked on as a sales guy explained a desalination system to a couple. The system was very large and convoluted — not to mention expensive — and I wandered off.

I chatted with two sales guys about a Zodiac boat to use as a tender for an R-27. Andrew had recommended them because they’re relatively light weight. Apparently they come in sizes as small as 6 feet (inside length), although they said the next size up might be better for me. One guy even described how he gets his Zodiac out of the water and stowed on his boat by himself. They seemed confident that I could handle it alone.

I had wanted to look at Bayliners — Captain Jeffrey on the David B mentioned that they had models similar to the tugs I liked — but they were not at the marina. They were in a boatyard who knows where. This morning, as I started researching links for this blog post series, I looked them up. Although they may have had boats like a tug in the past, their current lineup did not include anything remotely similar. So I’m glad I didn’t track them down. It likely would have been a waste of time.

Since I hadn’t had a thing to eat all day, I decided to have lunch before heading out. Fortunately, between the marina entrance and Anthony’s Restaurant, there was a casual dining place called the Cabana. Penny and I walked right through and I got a seat on an Adirondack style chair in the shade of an umbrella — did I mention that the weather was sunny and warm? — overlooking an unused bocce court and the marina. A short while later, I was digging into a blackened rock fish taco while Penny was stretched out in the sun for a nap.

I had a lot to think about. Too much. It was strange to me, almost as if the stars and planets were aligning for me to buy this boat. There’s no doubt that I loved it and that it met all of my needs and most of my desires. (I’ll be honest a much larger boat that came with a bunch of guys to move it around for me would be a lot more attractive but definitely not in my budget.) I knew that I’d be happy with it, perhaps for a very long time. Who knows? It — or something a lot like it — could be my next home.

But I won’t kid you: there are financial hurdles to jump. Selling the helicopter would make the boat easily affordable without any financing, but was I ready to retire from flying? Could I get a seasonal job flying for someone else? Did I really want to sell the helicopter? I’d been an owner for nearly 20 years and I honestly couldn’t imagine life without one.

But could I have both? Did I want the financial burden that came with owning both? The answer to that is no.

Meanwhile, as I sat in the shade at the Cabana, I realized that clouds were building in the mountains to the east. Was I going to have trouble getting home? Time to find out.

The Flight Home

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Getting an Uber back to the airport wasn’t quite as quick as I’d hoped. The closest car was 25 minutes away. I tried Lyft, but they didn’t have anyone at all. So I parked myself on a bench near the entrance to the show and waited. Penny found shade under the bench and took another nap.

Back at the helicopter, I decided I had enough fuel to get me home with required reserves. So I just started up — with some trouble, which will be covered in a future post — and took off.

Flying down the west side of Fildalgo Island.

The clouds were low as I approached the canyon where Route 2 wound up toward Stevens Pass.

The conditions started off nice — after all, it was a really great day out near the San Juan Islands — and then got very iffy. The cloud level in the foothills to the Cascades had definitely dropped since I’d come through that morning. Some of the cloud tops were obscured. A gusty wind was blowing out of the south, setting me up for mechanical turbulence — turbulence caused by the motion of wind over landforms. It began raining lightly.

For a while, I was worried about the flight. Because I hadn’t taken on more fuel at Anacortes, I didn’t have enough on board to do detour around weather looking for a clear passage to the other side. (Yes, I did have enough to get home with required reserves.) That meant that if I hit a dead end on my course, I’d have to go back, probably to Arlington, to get more fuel before trying again. Conditions were likely to get worse before they got better, so going back might even mean spending the night, which I really didn’t want to do.

(They say that the only time you have too much fuel on board is when you’re on fire. It’s always better to have more fuel on board than you need — unless it puts the aircraft weight over limitations. It gives you more flexibility.)

As for the weather, now you can see why I fly to the Seattle side of the mountains so seldom.

Once I got to Skykomish again, however, the rain stopped and the clouds lifted a bit. I was even sheltered from that gusty wind. I reached the ridge near Stevens Pass, climbed up, and hopped over it, down into the Icicle Creek Canyon where it was a beautiful day full of sun and big fluffy clouds.

It was a typically beautiful day on the east side of the mountains as I flew down Icicle Creek.

The rest of the flight was great and I even took a moment to record a little in-flight lecture about what it’s like to be a helicopter pilot and owner. I recently discovered that has far more subscribers than I thought and I’m now motivated to add new content there regularly.

I was back at my base by 5 PM. I spent the rest of the day gardening and doing chores around the house.

If I had driven, I’d be starting my return trip around 6 get back in the dark.

An Eclectic Mind

Web site and blog for Maria Langer, writer, video producer, jewelry artist, boat captain, and helicopter pilot. Blogging since 2004.