Tag Archives: divorce

Snowbirding 2018: Boat in Tow

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I finally take my little boat to Arizona and get it out on the Colorado River for the first time.

Way back in 2011, when I was spending my fourth summer in Washington State for cherry season, a friend of mine sold me her little jet boat. It’s a 1995 Sea Ray Sea Rayder F-16 and I blogged about it here. It’s not much of a boat, but it runs reliably and it does get me out on the water. What else could I ask for?

The Boat’s Aborted Travel South

My Boat at the Campground
I was living in my fifth wheel for the summer, camped out at a golf course campground when I used my boat for the first time.

I used it for the first time in May 2012, out on the Columbia River. Although I’d been expecting my future wasband to join me in Washington that summer, he had other plans that included his request for a divorce. A (misguided) friend of mine assured me that I’d be able to patch things up when I got home in the autumn and I believed him, so I continued my summer without much thought about his request, especially since he didn’t actually file for divorce.

Near the end of the summer, I emailed him about my plans to bring the little boat home for the winter. I figured I (we?) would take it out on Lake Pleasant, as we had my jet skis years before, and possibly on other Arizona lakes and rivers. Maybe we could recapture some of the fun we’d had earlier in our relationship. When I got no response from him, I started poking around and discovered that although he hadn’t filed for divorce, he’d gotten a lawyer and was living with another woman. He hadn’t filed for divorce because he was hoping to get his hands on half the money I earned drying cherries that summer. I immediately did three things: filed for divorce, changed my will, and scrapped plans for bringing any of my assets home.

So the boat stayed in Washington, stored in a friend’s garage until I could return. There was a hilarious scene during the divorce trial when my future wasband’s lawyer tried to get me to admit the boat was worth more than it was by offering me too much money to buy his half of it. I took the offer but my wasband backed down — he didn’t really want the damn thing; it was just a failed stunt cooked up by his lawyer and the old whore managing his side of the divorce. I was awarded the boat in the divorce without having to pay him a penny for it — after all, it was mine — and was back on the Columbia River in it, even before the divorce papers came through.

Thoughts of Going South

Time passed. Although I loved my new home in Washington State and used the boat there in the summer, I didn’t like the short, dreary winter days when I had no flying work and little reason to stick around. In 2014, I began wintering in Arizona, mostly in a generous friend’s guest house and in my RV on BLM land.

I started seriously thinking about bringing the boat south with me for the winter in 2016. I’d sold my big fifth wheel and had replaced it with a truck camper. This gave me the ability to tow something behind me when I went south. In preparation, I took the boat on its trailer to the local Discount Tire shop to get the tires replaced. That’s when I discovered that they were the original tires and were 21 years old. Can you say “dry rot”?

But when it came time to go south that year, I didn’t feel comfortable about bringing it. The camper was still pretty new to me and I was going to be covering a lot of miles with stops along the way. Did I really want to deal with a boat behind me on a complex trip? The answer was no. So I left it home and made the trip without it.

I began regretting that decision in January when we camped out along the Colorado River at a campsite with a boat ramp and easy access to the river. I had my kayak with me, but it was a royal pain in the ass to get on and off the roof of my truck camper. It would have been nice to launch the little jet boat and use it to explore the river.

At Walker Lake
Here’s a shot of last year’s truck camper (the Turtleback) with my kayak on top. It was a PitA to get it back up there after using it.

But what really convinced me I needed the boat in Arizona was the day trip I made to Arizona Hot Springs on the Colorado River, just downstream from the Hoover Dam. I’d rented a boat to get there and wanted to go back, possibly to camp along the river near the mouth of the canyon downstream from the spring.

The Boat Goes South

Still, it wasn’t until early October 2017 that I committed to take it south. That’s the same time I committed to getting a booth at Tyson Wells Sell-A-Rama in Quartzsite for 10 days in January. The boat would do double duty: I’d also use it as a utility trailer to haul the additional gear I’d need to set up my booth.

I had to make some preparations.

First, I had to buy a hitch extender that would enable me to hook up the boat behind the truck with the camper on top of the truck. You see, the back end of the camper extends at least a foot and a half behind the truck’s back bumper. I searched online and found an extender that would work for the boat’s relatively light load. I had to get it cut down to size at a local metal shop; the guy did the work in exchange for being able to keep the part he cut off.

Next, I had to load up the boat with all of the items I wanted to bring for my Quartzsite booth and possible boat camping along the river: canopy booth tent, extra tarps, tent camping gear (including a new tent), fresh water jugs, cooler. I also had to give the boat’s cover a good coat of water-proofing spray; although it lived in my garage, I remembered the cover getting soggy the few times it had been out in the rain. I didn’t want everything inside the boat getting wet if I hit rain or snow on my way south.

Once everything was stowed and the boat was covered, I used a pair of ratchet tie-down straps to firmly secure the boat to the trailer. I wanted to minimize bouncing which I knew the lightweight boat did when I trailered it anywhere. I had a long drive ahead of me and I didn’t want any problems back there.

Finally, I had to hook everything up. That meant getting the camper on the truck (after getting a firiend to help me get the truck’s tailgate off), and then getting the boat hooked up behind it. I wound up using my Jeep, which has a handy front tow hitch, to get the boat out of the garage and position it on the concrete driveway apron in front of my big RV garage. Then I carefully backed the truck with the camper on it to get it into position and hook it up. I needed a trailer wire extension piece to make the connection between the truck and the boat’s light system.

The last thing I did was set up my “poor man’s backup camera” so I could keep an eye on the boat while we made our way down the road. As it turned out, I only used it for part of the trip. My new truck camper had a window in the back door that made it possible for me to see out the back through my truck’s rear-view mirror. It wasn’t as good as the backup camera, but it was good enough to keep an eye on things.

And then I headed out with Penny.

My October Vacation

I know I promised a blog post about my October vacation, but I guess you can count that as a broken promise. If I don’t blog about something right after it happens, it doesn’t get blogged about.

The short version is this: I gave myself two weeks to get from Wenatchee to Wickenburg — a trip I have done in the past in just two days. We visited friends along the way: Jim and Teresa in Coeur d’Alene, ID; Ann and Robert in Torrey, UT; Janet and Steven in Hotchkiss, CO. I camped in all kinds of places, from nice riverside campgrounds to crowded National Park campgrounds, to remote roadside pullouts on BLM land. I visited several national parks, hiked for miles, wandered around prehistoric Indian ruins, and did some night photography. The boat trailered behind me like a champ, never giving me any trouble at all. Sure, I looked funny camped out in the desert southwest with a boat, but who cares? At least I gave people something to talk about.


Why yes, I did tow my boat through multiple southwest desert national parks and monuments last October. Here they are at Capital Reef National Park in Utah.

I arrived in Wickenburg at month-end, stayed in my friend Jim’s guest house for two days, and left my camper and boat parked out of the way in his yard with a new solar panel keeping the boat’s battery charged. Then I took my truck down to Gilbert and spent two days with my friends Jan and Tiffani there. I even got a chance to fly a Schweizer helicopter for the first time. By November 4, I was home, just in time to see the first snowfall for the season.

The boat and my camper and my truck waited five weeks for my return.

Take Me to the River!

I returned in early December, after my annual Santa flight. Although I’d originally planned to bring the helicopter south with me, I didn’t have enough guaranteed work to make the trip worthwhile. So I left it behind at home and flew commercial to Phoenix with Penny and a big bag of all the things I’d forgotten to pack in the camper in October.

I spent one night with my friends in Gilbert, reclaimed my truck, and met some other friends in Scottsdale for lunch and a Segway tour. (There’s a long story there that, at this point, isn’t worth telling.) Then I went back to Wickenburg and camped out for two days in Jim’s guest house again. I didn’t do much in the area other than prep my truck, RV, and boat for my winter travels. That included making sure the RV batteries were charged — they were since I’d left the rig plugged into Jim’s house for five weeks — and topping off the fresh water supply. The waste tanks had been dumped before I parked it.

I did take my friend Janet out for a boat ride on Lake Pleasant one day. I wanted to make sure the thing ran. It would be horrible to get it out to the river and then not get it started. But it started more quickly than I expected and we spent an afternoon out on the lake, tooling around, fishing, and exploring the Agua Fria Arm of the lake before it shut down for bald eagle breeding season.

It was the trip on the lake I’d envisioned five and a half years before, but with a different person. We probably had more fun.

Back at Jim’s house, I loaded the boat up again, covered it, and strapped it down.

Finally, on Monday, December 11, I had everything hooked up and headed out to the river. I was planning on staying at a campsite we called Janet’s Point which is about 8 miles south of I-10 on the Arizona side of the river. The campsite is a big flat area with its own boat ramp and access to both a backwater and the Colorado River. Unfortunately, a redneck loser was there — that’s another long story not worth telling — and I wound up in my second choice spot, which was on the same backwater about a half mile away. When Janet joined me with her little trailer and dog the next day, we launched my boat and I motored it over to our campsite.

Our First Outing

Still with me? Yes, I know my backstories can be long.

We quickly discovered that the level of the water in the river and the backwaters fluctuated wildly depending on how much water was released 70+ river miles upstream at the Parker Dam. The first morning, my little boat was mostly beached and didn’t start floating again until after noon. It was worse the next day. That’s when I got the brilliant idea of putting an anchor off the stern to keep the back end in the water. Problem solved.

Drone photo of our campsite
Here’s our backwater campsite, from the air. You can’t really tell in this shot, but my little boat was half out of the water. Oops.

When the water was full up that day, we took the boat out. It was just Janet, me, and Penny. We motored slowly in the backwater for that half mile, got to the channel, and zipped out into the river. I brought it up to full speed and we headed upriver. My logic is that if the boat’s engine is going to crap out, I’d like to drift back toward where I want to be. But the boat ran great.

The only problem was shallow water, which was really freaking out Janet. She apparently had some bad experience running aground with a sudden stop that sent things flying. I wasn’t worried about running the boat aground nearly as much as I was worried about that 120 horsepower sport jet engine sucking up sand. But the boat, when planing at speed, had a shallow draft — seriously, I should look up just how shallow it is — and never ran around, although I had my finger poised over the engine kill button more than once. We motored all the way up to where we could see the I-10 freeway bridge cross the river. Then we turned around and headed back.

Along the way, Janet got a text from her friend Steve. He’d come down to our campsite to visit us, found us gone, used his chainsaw to cut come of the wood we’d gathered into usable pieces, and had headed back toward his camp near Quartzsite. We saw his van, with the bright blue fishing kayak strapped on top, as he drove up the levee road. Janet connected by phone and soon I was motoring toward where he’d stopped along the road.

Wouldn’t you know it? He stopped right by the shallowest part of the river. The boat’s hull scraped the soft sand and I hit the kill button. We were stuck momentarily and used that time to have a shouted out conversation with Steve. Then the river’s current pushed us free and we drifted away. When the water got deep enough, I started the engine and we continued back to camp.

We were a lot more confident about the water depth on the way back. We’d both paid close attention to where the sandbars were on the way upriver and I managed to maneuver between them as we headed south. We purposely passed the opening to the channel back to camp, going an extra half mile or so just to see what it was like down there. But then I turned us around and we rode back to the channel. It was a bit tricky getting in to the very narrow channel with the river’s 6-8 mile per hour current. I had to crab the boat in. Once I was out of the current, I turned the wheel hard to straighten out, zipped through the opening, and reduced power down to no wake speed. We puttered the half mile back to camp.

A Non-Event? Maybe, but that’s not the point.

It’s funny how a boat ride I’d imagined for years turned out to be such a non-event when it actually happened. But, in hindsight, I don’t think it was the actual boat ride that interested me so much. Instead, it was the logistics and challenge of getting my little boat down to Arizona, as I’d planned to do so many years before, and finally doing it. The boat ride itself wasn’t a big deal.

And I think this long and drawn out story illustrates something about me that I’ve only recently begun to be aware of: I live for challenges. Small or large, possible or impossible — my life seems to revolve around finding challenges that interest me and turning them into reality. Or, when I fail, learning valuable life lessons along the way.

Let’s face it: I’m a smart, healthy person with money in the bank, retirement funded, and a comfortable paid-for home to live in. There are no challenges to survival and maintaining the simple status quo of my life. It would be very easy to just kick back and live a boring life at home year-round, entertained by television and punctuated by carefully planned packaged vacations.

And that’s pretty much what I experienced when I was in a relationship with my wasband.

Although it didn’t bother me when I was younger, it ate at me as I got older and heard the ever-louder ticking of my life clock. There is more to life than just waiting around for the end of it.

Finally getting my little boat down to Arizona and taking it out on Lake Pleasant and the Colorado River was a challenge — admittedly a small one — and it feels good to have tackled it and succeeded in making it happen.

Postscript

I started this blog post in December — which is when I actually got the boat out into the river — and set it aside for a full two months. I thought I should trim it down a bit and I definitely needed to add photos. But I wound up keeping just about everything I’d written before adding links and photos and getting it ready to publish.

We took the boat out one more time before the forward/reverse cable decided to seize up and limit the boat to idle speed. I was fortunate to have that; it made it possible to limp back down to the boat ramp and get it back on the trailer. It took a week in Blythe to get the parts and have it repaired. Then it was back in the water for Christmas and a few more rides on the river. I had the throttle cable replaced, too, and the boat runs more smoothly than ever.

I parked it for nearly a month in a back parking lot at Tyson Wells while I camped out there with my booth. Then, last week, I hooked it back up and headed back into the desert, finally ending up at Buckskin Mountain State Park upriver from Parker, AZ. I had it out a few times, including all the way down to Parker for lunch one day and up to the Parker Dam another day. I enjoyed the luxury of being able to park at a real dock at the campground during my stay.

My boat docked at the Cantina on the Colorado River.
Parked at the Bluewater Casino’s Cantina boat-in restaurant.

I’ll leave Buckskin for Cattail Cove State Park later today and, of course, bring the boat with me. There’s a boat ramp there that’ll give me access to Lake Havasu. Although I’d love to take it all the way up to Laughlin — as I did years go via jet skis with my wasband — I’ll likely limit my explorations to Topok Gorge.

Next weekend, I’ll be at Willow Beach Campground just downriver from Hoover Dam. I’m looking forward to taking it up to the hot springs every day during my stay.

Will I bring the boat with me next year on my travels? Probably not. Although it hasn’t been much of a burden to tow it around with me, it is a lot simpler to travel without it. I know I can do and that’s apparently enough.

Besides, I’m not sure whether I’ll be coming back to then Colorado River next winter. I have other, more challenging travel plans in mind.

A Sad Surprise in a Moving Box

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Old photos bring back old memories and feelings.

Unpacking after a move is a funny thing. If you’ve organized your things properly and packed them into labeled boxes, you logically unpack things you need most first. And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing since I moved from Arizona in May 2013 and started moving into my new home in early 2015. The kitchen and bathroom and bedroom items were first to be unpacked: pots and pans and utensils, toiletries and bathroom appliances and medicine cabinet contents, clothes and shoes and accessories. Then, as furniture locations were finalized and most of the finish work was done, I reached for boxes containing the extras: silk plants and baskets for atop my kitchen cabinets, collectibles to be arranged in new wall mounted displays, books for my library shelves, framed photographs for the walls. Each item that’s unpacked and put into its place makes my home more like my home.

Lexox Autumn
I love Lenox’s Autumn pattern, which was originally released back in 1918, but only used my set, which was a gift from my mother, three times. Make me an offer. I have service for 9 plus salad bowls and serving plates.

These days, there are still about a dozen packed boxes in my massive garage. Some will likely never be unpacked. Do I really need a set of Lenox china for up to nine dinner guests? Or real silver silverware? Why in the world did I collect all those pin-on buttons at computer shows in the 1990s and early 2000s? My matchbook collection was fun to add to after a dinner out, but who gives away matchbooks these days? And after writing more than 80 books and hundreds of articles, do I really need to keep the box of published clips I began accumulating in the late 1980s?

I’ve been going through the boxes — at least peeking inside them — in an effort to take inventory on what still needs to be unpacked and what can probably be disposed of. I’ve been shifting boxes to the shelves I built in my garage for long-term storage, separating them into three categories: store, sell, and unpack.

And that’s how I came upon the box labeled “Wall Art / Family Photos.” It had been at the bottom of a pile, slightly crushed. I peeked inside. Lots of frames, all carefully packed in bubble wrap. This needed to get unpacked. So later, when I took a break, I brought it upstairs to tend to when I had a chance.

That chance was yesterday evening. I put the box on my dining table and started pulling out the wrapped items, revealing them one after another.

First were two old framed still life prints of fruit. They aren’t very attractive, but they do have sentimental value. They’ve hung in every kitchen in every home I’ve lived in as an adult. It was good to see them. I have just the place for them in my new kitchen.

Then the framed puppy photo of my dog, Spot, who I’d gotten as a birthday present from my future wasband when we lived in our first house together in New Jersey. And a baby picture of me. And a group photo of me with my sister and brother, taken at a Sears photo studio about 20 years ago. And a photo of me standing by my first helicopter.

And then I got to the framed photo of my grandmother and her sister when they were kids. The photo was retouched, slightly enlarged, matted, and framed. It shows the two girls in sepia, sitting on the roof of their apartment building in the Bronx. My aunt Fanny is holding a small dog. I’d found the picture somewhere and had the touch-up work done, then made a framed print for my grandmother for Christmas one year. At the same time, I’d made one for myself.

Old Photo
The photo of my late father-in-law was tucked into the frame of the photo of my grandmother and her sister. I honestly don’t remember packing it, but I’m glad I did.

But it was not that photo that prompted this blog post. It was the more modern portrait of a man stuck into the side of the frame: my late father-in-law, Charlie.

I don’t remember packing the photo, but I must have. I always liked Charlie, who died suddenly and very unexpectedly of a massive heart attack only a year after he retired. He was fun and had a good sense of humor. Although he teased his wife mercilessly — which I’ve admitted elsewhere bothered me a lot — he took good care of her and stuck with her through thick and thin. She could not have been an easy person to live with and I suspect the teasing was one of the ways he dealt with it. But he was a man who understood what marriage was all about, what those vows really meant.

Unlike his son.

Early on in my divorce, when I was living alone my Wickenburg home, I put a photo of Charlie and his wife on my front door with a post-it note attached. The post-it note obscured Julia’s face, pointed to Charlie, and said something like “He would be ashamed of you.” My future wasband eventually saw the photo when he came to the house and took it away with him. I hope he got the message, but I doubt it.

But I know Charlie would have been ashamed of him. And I’m glad he was spared the pain our divorce likely would have caused him. I wish my family could have been spared the same pain.

Seeing his photo tucked into that frame reminded me of all this. It made me sad. Sad that he left so soon after his retirement, just at the point where he likely expected to relax and spend time with his family and friends. Sad that he was gone. Sad about all the things he’d missed.

And sad that his son couldn’t have been more like he was.

I’ve discarded or hidden away most of the reminders of the 29 years I spent with the man who betrayed my trust and broke my heart. But this is one I won’t put away. I’ll get a frame for Charlie’s photo and put it with the others on the table behind my sofa. Charlie is a man worth remembering.

Freedom Day Comes and Goes without Notice

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If I didn’t have it on my calendar, I’d likely forget its significance entirely.

Freedom Day
You can see how I missed it; it’s just a tiny note on the calendar.

It was Tuesday, July 30, 2013 that my very favorable divorce decision came through. Although I thought at the time that it would be the end of the bullshit my wasband was sending my way during our crazy divorce, it was just the beginning of a new chapter. Some people are seriously delusional and make all kinds of bad decisions based on their delusions. My wasband is a textbook case of this for the period starting around January 1, 2012 through (likely) today.

I called it Freedom Day because I was finally free of sad sack old man who was holding me back from moving forward with life. I didn’t realize how much I’d been held back until I was free to make my own decisions without having to compromise or, worse yet, wait for a risk-adverse “partner” to provide input. In the four years since, I not only bought the land for my new home — which I did the very next day — but built a custom home to my specifications on it, doing much of the interior work myself. I’ve tripled the amount of contract work I do each year, building my flying business far beyond I ever thought I could. I’ve met new people, made new friends, and traveled to new places.

In short: I’ve accomplished far more in the past four years than I had in the previous 10.

I’ve since settled into the kind of laid back and flexible lifestyle I always imagined having in my later years of life, free to do what I want with my time. I’m living life on my terms and if that isn’t freedom, what is?

Freedom Day is on my calendar as a recurring annual event. I put it there back in 2013 because I was so happy to finally have my poisonous relationship behind me. But unlike other people who hold significant dates close — often too close — to their hearts and minds, my Freedom Day is little more than that calendar reminder. This year it came and went without me even noticing it.

And I think that speaks volumes about where I am in my life today.

My Health Insurance Story

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If the AHCA passes, something like this could happen to you.

I’ve been self-employed since 1990. When I left my last full-time job — which did include health care benefits — I bought my own health insurance coverage. I was 29 at the time, a non-smoker, and in good health. But health insurance was something I thought everyone needed to have, so I signed up with one program or another — I honestly can’t remember any details — and stayed insured for years.

Understand that I seldom needed insurance coverage. Again, I was in good health. If I caught a cold, I went to the doctor. If my insurance covered the visit and medicine, fine. If it didn’t, I paid and didn’t complain. When I had some problems with my knee and needed several tests, some physical therapy, and finally some arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn meniscus, I ponied up the $1,000 deductible before finally getting some benefits to cover most of the other costs. I’m not rich and I’m not poor but I was usually able to afford any kind of medical attention I needed.

Each year, my insurance rates went up and I paid the new premium. It wasn’t a big deal; I made more money every year and I saw the increased expense as part of my cost of living increase. Occasionally, I’d shop around for a new policy and get one that was a little less costly. That would creep up over the years and I’d change again.

The biggest mistake I ever made

I’m not exaggerating when I say that getting on my future wasband’s health insurance was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life. Why? Because when was I diagnosed not long afterwards with a tumor that needed removal and possible cancer treatments afterwards, he told me that I might not be covered if the insurance company found out we weren’t married. Terrified of bankruptcy from medical expenses for surgery and cancer treatments, I agreed to marry him. After all, we’d been together for 23 years and “engaged” for most of that time. We’d obviously stay together forever.

I turned out to be wrong about that. But the insurance was the root of my mistake; if I hadn’t gotten on his health insurance plan, I never would have married him. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to get him out of my life when he decided he wanted a mommy more than a wife and took up with a desperate old whore he met online only six years later. (Read a few of the early posts tagged divorce if you want the details of his betrayal.)

And no, there was no cancer.

In the early 2000s, my future wasband took a job in the Phoenix area with a company that offered very good health insurance plan. Around the same time, I got a sizable increase in my health insurance premium. He told me I could get on his insurance and it would be cheaper and better. Even though we weren’t married, I assumed he knew what he was talking about when he made the offer, so I dropped my insurance and got on his.

Sometime after we married, when I was still on his insurance, I started having digestive issues. I went to a gastroenterologist connected to Wickenburg Hospital — which I will never do again — and told her about my symptoms, including pain in my upper abdomen. She translated that as chest pains and decided that I needed to get an EKG. When that showed no problem, she sent me for a stress test. When that showed no problem, she sent me for another test. When that showed no problem, she finally gave up trying to diagnose me with heart problems. She was never able to resolve the digestive issues I had. Neither was another doctor I went to see. I wrote about this in a 2010 blog post titled “Getting Quality Health Care: Apparently Impossible.”

My wasband lost the job with the great insurance got another one with good insurance. I stuck with his new plan. Then he lost that job and was unemployed for a while. He got us on Cobra, which he paid for with our joint checking account. Except he didn’t pay on time. He missed a payment and they cancelled our coverage.

He got in touch with them right away and made the payment. It was only five days late. They reinstated him immediately. But they looked at my medical records, saw the heart tests, and refused to cover me because I had a “pre-existing condition.”

Except I didn’t have the condition they claimed I had. I had never had that condition. All tests had proved negative. My heart was fine.

It took six months of fighting with Blue Cross to get insurance coverage again. For the entire time, I was completely exposed to financial loss: if I was hit with a major health problem, the cost of medical attention could easily bankrupt me. Actually, I guess it could bankrupt us — I don’t think my idiot wasband realized how exposed he was, too.

I finally got coverage under my own name, separate from my wasband, by signing papers saying I’d never put in a claim for heart-related issues. I had no trouble with that because I had a healthy heart.

And, as you might imagine, I learned my lesson and kept my insurance separate from my wasband’s no matter how good his next employer’s plan was. I simply couldn’t trust him with something that important. (That probably helped confirm my financial independence from him in divorce court a few years later.)

I have been on one health insurance plan or another since that “pre-existing condition” scare all those years ago. The Affordable Care Act (ACA or ObamaCare) made it easy to find insurance that met my requirements. Again, I’m generally healthy and I make a decent living. I have insurance primarily to prevent bankruptcy in the event of a major illness. I have assets to protect, including my home, my business assets, and my retirement funds. I’ve worked too hard my whole life to put them at risk.

To keep my premiums as low as possible, I have a very high deductible: $5,000. I take advantage of a health savings account if I can. (My new plan does not allow additional savings but I can still use the balance from my old plan.) It’s nice to have annual check-ups and special tests like mammograms covered by insurance without having to worry about the deductible. Coverage under ACA helps people who can’t afford doctor’s visits at all to make at least make one visit a year which can, hopefully, find any problems before they become serious.

I’m not at all happy with the provisions of the Paul Ryan American Health Care Act (AHCA or TrumpCare) in part because it will allow insurers to deny coverage or greatly raise rates for people with pre-existing conditions.

Will it affect me? Will I be denied coverage? Or charged some outrageous rate for premiums? Just because I had a few heart tests ten years ago? Tests that proved I had a healthy heart?

And will some test or problem you’ve had in the past prevent you from getting coverage?

And what about well-care visits? Maternity coverage? Contraception? Mental health care? Any number of items on the list of required coverages from the ACA?

(Don’t worry boys, I’m sure you’ll still be able to get your little blue pills. Republicans wouldn’t dare threaten a man’s sex life.)

With only 17% approval rating from the people, Republicans could pass the bill later today anyway. They don’t care about the people who voted them in. They care about the lobbyists and rich donors who pay for their campaigns. The people most likely to benefit from this plan.

So I guess time will tell how it affects you.

How I Became a Snowbird

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It only took eleven years.

I’m halfway through my first full week in Arizona, the place so many mostly retired Americans go in the winter to escape the cold at their northern latitude homes. With my second winter season in a warmer climate now under way, I think it’s safe to say that I’m officially a snowbird.

I also realized that I’ve been doing some form of snowbirding for the past eleven years now, although I didn’t do it the usual way.

And I think I prefer it the way I do it now.

He’s the scoop. Be advised: this blog post includes the airing of some dirty laundry, which, unfortunately, is an integral part of the story and explains what took me so long to get here.

The Reverse Snowbird

For the eight or so years leading up to my eventual divorce and move to Washington state, I was a sort of reverse snowbird. Instead of migrating south for the winter, I migrated north for the summer.

2004 was the first year I did this. That’s when I got a job as a seasonal tour pilot at the Grand Canyon. A week in the significantly cooler Grand Canyon area followed by a week at home in Wickenburg. It was a busy summer. I was just another tour pilot at the Canyon, flying over “the big ditch” up to 13 times a day, but in my home office, I cranked out the fifth (or sixth?) edition of my best-selling Quicken Official Guide and got started on an Excel book. When I wasn’t home, I dealt with the relative discomfort of life in a horse trailer’s cramped living quarters, parked on 40 acres of property I owned with my future wasband five miles from pavement. I’d leave at 6 AM to get to work by 6:45. And yes, sometimes I did fly to work; I had a R22 parked beside my Jeep at the trailer. That’s the summer I decided to “go for broke” on my struggling helicopter charter business and order an R44.

Howard Mesa Cabin
Our Howard Mesa cabin was a nice place to escape from the heat.

In 2005, I had a brand new R44 helicopter but virtually no summer flying work. (Seriously: who wants to fly when it’s 110°F out?) When the Quicken book revision was done at the end of June, I headed back to the northern Arizona property with my horse trailer and horses. In a compromise with my future wasband, we’d had a prefabricated custom wooden shed delivered to the property. While he worked at one of the many jobs he bounced between in the Phoenix area, I spent all of July at the “cabin,” fitting its walls with hard foam insulation and building an interior wall to divide the main room from the future bathroom. On weekends, my future wasband would join me, handling tasks I couldn’t do then (but can certainly do now): wiring, plumbing, cutting lumber, fitting large sheets of T111 (think plywood paneling) on walls and ceilings. Together, we turned that shed into a very cozy four-season escape in a place where the Grand Canyon was our local park. But when the work was done, it was still too hot to hang out at home. So I hopped into my 2003 Honda S2000 (which I still own), and headed out on a 19-day road trip by myself to explore points north. I visited places (and friends) in Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah, getting a real feel for a lot of the off-the-beaten-path places. I came back with a lead on a hangar home in Cascade, ID — perfect for a summer home — and even flew my future wasband up there with me to see it after I got home. (What a waste of time and money that was.)

In 2006, I made the mistake of marrying the man who would, six years later, leave me for a desperate old whore he met online. (Yes, I do realize now that the marriage was his attempt to “lock in” on the considerable financial, real estate, and business asset investments I’d been making since I had my first best-seller in 1998. But back then, I couldn’t imagine anyone I loved plotting to use family law to try to screw me over. Silly me.) I had some surgery in May and then went on a road trip with my wasband in that Honda to Napa Valley. That trip, which was the closest I’d get to a honeymoon, was probably the last fun trip we took together. Then it was back home to Wickenburg for the summer, with occasional trips to the cabin. That was also the first summer I heard about cherry drying, but my contact couldn’t guarantee me any work and I wasn’t willing to take the helicopter to Washington without some sort of guarantee of revenue.

In 2007, I worked on books, including that Quicken book again. Cherry drying was an option but again, without a guarantee of work, I wasn’t prepared to go north. But I was prepping for a seasonal lifestyle. Financially and mentally, I was ready for it. My wasband promised to join me on the road during the summer when he turned 55. In 2007, he was 51. My goal was to have enough work lined up by the time he was ready to join me to support both of us, so we could work together in the summer. Then we’d return to Arizona in the winter and he could do what he wanted to do — he’d talked about a bike shop, solar power consulting, being a flight instructor, and a few other things that interested him. Since we’d also need a place to live on the road, bought my first RV, a hybrid pull trailer that turned out to be a less than satisfactory choice. We used it at a rides event in Kingman, AZ and may have taken it on one or two other trips. In the meantime, he started learning how to fly helicopters so he wouldn’t be stuck driving the trailer all the time; when we traveled, he could reposition the helicopter and I could do the commercial flying at destinations. That was the plan. (Or at least I thought it was.)

In 2008, everything changed. My wasband bought a condo in Phoenix, closer to his job, where he began living four or five days a week. My office was in our Wickenburg home and due to the amount of computer equipment I needed to write, I stayed there with it. Between my wasband’s weekday life in Phoenix and his numerous trips to the New York area to visit his family, I didn’t spend much time with him at all. And then I got a contract for seven weeks of cherry drying work in Washington state. I left in June, making two trips to get the helicopter and RV up there by myself. I worked on my Quicken book in the trailer. My wasband joined me for a week in July. We stayed at a lakeside motel with the helicopter parked on the lawn and toured a lot of central Washington while I waited for a call out. Then he went home and I finished the season alone, making two trips to get the helicopter and RV back by myself.

Life fell into a routine from that point on, with me becoming a sort of reverse snowbird. I’d live in Wickenburg from September through May, mostly by myself, while my wasband lived in his Phoenix condo with a roommate and spent just about all of his vacation time visiting family in New York. Because his roommate was openly hostile toward me and I was still writing several books a year, I didn’t visit very often. In early June through August, I’d head to Washington alone — making two trips each way every year — for cherry drying work. I was building up a good client base, extending my season, and my flying business was finally making a decent profit. I even added winery tours and a profitable annual rides gig. In early 2010, I replaced the pull trailer with a very large and comfortable fifth wheel trailer — again, with the goal of living on the road every summer with my wasband. But in 2011, when he turned 55 and was in yet another dead-end job, he said he “wasn’t ready” to join me on the road. (It wasn’t until much later that I realized he never intended to join me, that it was just another empty promise.) That winter, I lived with him in his dark and dreary Phoenix condo, even moving my office there when he finally kicked his roommate out. Silly me: I was trying to bring us closer together. I even went to the marriage counsellor he wanted us to see.

I had my hopes up in the spring of 2012 — my fifth cherry drying season — when my wasband got what looked like might be his “dream job.” He said he could work from anywhere and that he’d join me in Washington for the summer. Finally! I began prepping the RV for his arrival with our dog. But then he called me on my birthday in June to tell me he wanted a divorce. He wanted to stay friends, he told me, as he was secretly giving my investment statements and tax returns to a lawyer to estimate his take.

What followed was the beginning of four years of insanity, with him calling friends and family members to tell them that he still loved me, changing the locks on my house and hangar, trying to lay claim to half of everything I owned, harassing me at home, sending a private investigator to spy on my future neighbors in Washington, lying and making absurd statements under oath in court, making false accusations about me trashing the house, claiming I’d hid property and money from the court, losing in the divorce decision, appealing the divorce decision, putting the house on the market without informing me or getting approval from the court, hacking into one of my old investment accounts, losing the appeal, begging the appeal judges to reconsider, and then doing everything he could to delay paying me what he owed me for the Wickenburg house that he wanted and got in the divorce. Along the way, he went through three lawyers — one of whom he neglected to pay who then put a lien on the house — drove a court-appointed Realtor and a title company person nuts, and sent me a ridiculous email threatening me with legal action that I knew would fail.

In the span of four years, he made so many often comical errors in strategy and judgement that I find it hard to believe I could ever love someone so unimaginably stupid.

Yeah, there’s definitely enough material for a book.

Anyway, the winter of 2012/2013 was the last one I spent in my Wickenburg home. When I didn’t have house guests, I was alone — at least while I was there; I traveled a lot that winter — but it really didn’t feel that different. After all, I’d been living mostly alone there since my wasband bought his condo in 2008. I spent the winter packing my belongings and discarding the things I didn’t want, waiting for the divorce trial. When the court stuff was done at the end of May 2013, I left my Wickenburg home for what I thought would be the last time, and headed north.

Real Snowbirding

The day after the divorce decree came down from the judge and I was finally free, I bought 10 acres of land in Malaga, WA, at the heart of the area where I did my cherry drying work. Over the following two years, I designed and built a home there and moved in. Ironically, my new home has all the features my wasband would have liked, from the wrap around deck with endless views to the huge garage and shop area to the limitless space for gardening. It’s perfect for me and I don’t need (or really want) to share it with anyone.

And the weather? No, it doesn’t rain all the time like it does in Seattle. Malaga (and the nearby “big city” of Wenatchee) is on the dry side of the Cascades. Annual rainfall is less than 10 inches. The weather is very similar to Prescott or Flagstaff, AZ: dry, but with four seasons. Warm and dry in the summer, sometimes reaching the low 100s for a few days with low humidity. Cold with snow in the winter, sometimes dipping into the teens at night for a few days but usually warming to the 30s or 40s during the day.

Summer is perfect, as far as I’m concerned. And that’s when I do my work there. But winter? Sure, my home is cozy and warm and the views out to the valley can be magnificent when the snow falls and the sky clears just enough to offer glimpses of brilliant blue between the clouds. But the days are short and sunlight is limited. It gets cold in December and January. And 15 years of living in Arizona taught me one thing: I like sun and warmth in the winter.

My Home with Snow
Here’s my home as it looked in late November 2015. It sure is pretty on a nice day with snow on the ground.

Late winter is not an issue. In 2013, I began doing frost work with the helicopter in central California. So I’d head south with the helicopter and RV — remember that big fifth wheel? — in late February and could stay until late April.

But early winter? The way I saw it, the winter’s “dark days” were during December and January. That’s when I really needed to head south.

It took a few years, but I finally got a routine figured out.

In January 2015, when my home was partially built, I accepted an invitation to house/dog sit for a friend in Wickenburg. That gave me an excuse to head south for two weeks in the coldest part of winter. I stayed in my friends’ comfortable guest house with my dog Penny and cared for two very large golden retrievers.

Much later that same year, as the days shortened and the air chilled, I realized that I had exactly what I needed to be a real snowbird: that big fifth wheel. Although my home was done and I was moved in, the short days were getting me down. After my annual Christmas cross-country ski trip to the Methow Valley, I packed up my rig and headed south to join some friends camped along the Colorado River south of I-10. The trip itself was a bit of an adventure — requiring me to buy a new truck along the way — but my first full-time snowbirding season was a real win. You can read about it starting here.

On the Steps of the Mobile Mansion
Here I am with Penny, on the steps of my old fifth wheel, the Mobile Mansion, last winter in Quartzsite, AZ.

I spent all of January and half of February in Arizona, in my fifth wheel and in my friends’ Wickenburg guest house. Then I moved my helicopter to the Sacramento area for frost season and made my way there with my fifth wheel by way of Valley of Fire and Death Valley. Because of engine problems, my truck and RV never quite made it to Sacramento, though — at least not in February. While the truck’s engine was replaced with a new one (under warranty, fortunately) in California, I returned home in March, prepared to fly down to Sacramento when called out. In April, I made the two trips to get the truck with RV and helicopter home.

That was last year. This year, I’ve made some equipment changes, got a reliable house sitter, and set out early on my snowbirding trip.

The big fifth wheel is gone, replaced with a slide in truck camper, the Turtleback. I’m absolutely loving the flexibility this new rig offers; learn more here. I left home the day before Thanksgiving and, after stopping at a Yakima Lance camper dealer to get a part replaced on the Turtleback’s huge sunroof, took a leisurely drive south on back roads through Oregon and Nevada. Another stop for two shows in Las Vegas and then more leisurely travel to my eventual destination: more house/dog sitting for my Wickenburg friends.

Poolside in Wickenburg
Poolside in Wickenburg where I’m house/dog sitting for some friends. I’ve got no complaints at all.

And that’s where I am now: sitting in their poolside guest house with a fresh cup of coffee beside me and three dogs snoozing after their breakfast. At 8 AM, a new friend will come by with her dogs and we’ll go for our twice-daily mile-long walk in the wash out behind the house. I’ve visited my disassembled helicopter in Chandler, seen numerous friends in the area, and even got an invitation to a pilot party on Saturday where a lot of people will be very surprised to see me.

This is only a stopping point, though. When my friends return later this month, I’m not quite sure what I’ll do. They’ve already told me I can stay as long as I want, but I’m thinking about a trip to Tucson and Tubac, which I haven’t been to in some time. And another friend was recently at White Sands in New Mexico — how far is that? Can I take a few days to visit? I’ve never been there. I’m already booked for New Years Eve at La Posada in Winslow and have a chore to attend to on the Hopi Reservation near there. And I’m definitely going to spend a good part of January along the Colorado River with my friends; I bought a new fishing pole just the other day and my kayak is ready to be offloaded when I reach our campsite. After that? Who knows?

All I know is this: my helicopter needs to be in the Sacramento area by the third week in February. So eventually I’ll be there. There’s a campground nearby on Puntah Creek where I look forward to paddling in again. And lots of wineries to explore in the nearby Napa and Sonoma Valleys. And the California coast. And San Francisco. I really do love late winter in central California.

The lack of definite plans doesn’t bother me one bit. I like making things up as I go along. And if you ask me, that’s the best part of being single: being able to make decisions for yourself without having to consult or rely on what someone else tells you they want or plan to do. I don’t have to worry about anyone letting me down again.

And when the winter is over, I’ll go home. That’s what snowbirds do.

How ironic: the lifestyle I planned for all those years ago with my wasband is basically the lifestyle I have now without him. And I’m loving it even more than I thought I would.