Sunday, October 30, 2016

Random

  • My favourite to eat item on the menu at Shake Shack is their Chick'n Shake.  Sadly, I won't be flying through JFK until next spring...
  • Trying to stop my brain hasn't been easy but necessary.  It doesn't like to sit idle for very long but I do recognize that it may have been revved too high for too long.  
  • D has left for his volunteer placement.  I too will get to leave in a short while.  We'll have one day overlap in the same city before I start my last big adventure for the year.  The prep for this hasn't helped with my quest to "stop thinking" so much! 
  • Watching D go about his packing stresses me out.  Our approaches differ greatly and his scurrying around last minute gets me going despite strong efforts to ignore.  I just cannot not see and find it even more difficult not to want to engage!
  • Came very close to cancelling this last big trip.  It is going to require all the skills I've learned this year and more.  But I question my mental emotional fitness going in.  
  • Am making the above sound like such a huge ordeal.  It isn't in the big scheme of things but things tend to loom larger than they really are when you are seeing and feeling with tired eyes and frayed nerves.  Once I get going, things tend to sort themselves out, especially when I will have hours and hours of transit time to settle into it.
  • At my yearly vehicle oil change, it was discovered that the noise I had started to notice was attributed to a bearing issue in the front differential.  They actually had 3 guys listening underneath with stethoscopes to figure it out, along with a couple of test drives.  I use an independent mechanic shop vs. the dealership.
  • It will be taken care of in the spring along with a few other types of fluid changes.  If I have to leave her there for the day, I might as well get everything I can done.  This is the first large size maintenance/repair job I've needed to do.  Am waiting for the estimate to arrive.  My guess is 3K for the lot.
  • I've closed 3 of my regular savings accounts in my efforts to simplify my banking.  No longer need to subdivide things so much.  They have served their purpose.
  • After 13 years with my current financial advisor, I will be moving my registered savings to a self directed account.  The direction that has been recommended to me doesn't feel right.  I don't want to have increased layers of management.  Goes against how I wish to structure things.  She understood that my decision was in no way a reflection of dissatisfaction with the results and management leading up to this.
  • Back to Quito -- The hike from the top of the Teleferico, depending on the route, can bring you to some rough parts where the there are deep ruts in the ground that resembled earthquake fractures.  When there are long grasses obscuring the ruts, it is easy to step off the at times, only 6 inch path and sink a good foot+ down.  Perfect set up for ankle sprains.  
  • Also, had I not been lucky and had a group whose leader led the way, I would have gotten lost.  The trail that I was on split enough times to make it difficult to remember.  Especially when you look back and all you see is long grass.  Don't expect any signage other than a few arrows sometimes showing km markings that didn't quite make sense.  Just wait until you see someone who looks like they know where they are going and follow them.  
  • I definitely would not attempt this hike solo again and can totally understand how it would take the police 3 days to find someone who got lost.  It happened to a couple of solo hikers a month or so before my arrival.  Definitely bring a safety whistle.  Cell phone service is hit or miss up there.
  • Had my first experience of attempted pick pocketing occur in Quito.  A young man tried to unzip my front right pocket zipper by reaching around me as I was holding an umbrella on that side.  I felt it and zipped it up promptly as he darted off my left and pretended to become intensely interested in a jewelry store window.  I gave him the stink eye, shook my head and kept going.  He knew that I knew.

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