Painting, Hard Carrots, and the Emergency Room

But first this . . .

Our Park Model View (Click on photo to enlarge it)

Painting, Hard Carrots, and the Emergency Room

They’re all related and in that order.

First, we plan on staying the entire Summer in our Arizona Crazy Horse park model — mostly because we want to spend some money fixing up the park model. For example, we bought a storage bed. The mattress lifts up so that you can store stuff underneath (just like the bed in our RV).

Tom at Work

Painting the park model is part of this process. I spent a day washing our unit with TSP, another day taping off areas, and two days putting on a first coat of paint.

While I tried to do most of the work early in the day when temperatures are in the 70s – 80s, on Sunday I did a lot of painting in the heat. This is Arizona 90+ degree heat with about 8 percent humidity. Not the best time to do work of any kind.

I have a feeling that the heat had a lot to do with what happened next.

During dinner — which was a tender pot roast with hard carrots — some food got stuck in my throat and I had difficulty swallowing.

It wasn’t Heimlich maneuver time because I could breath ok, but I started throwing up on our garage floor.

Meanwhile, sensing the urgency of the situation, Jan brought back an entire group of people from a nearby house party.

What a scene. I’m sure I looked like death warmed over and several of the people gave me that “Oh my god!” look while others made suggestions ranging from jumping up and down to drinking Gatorade.

After a couple of minutes, I was able to get around and crack some jokes, but Jan suggested going to the local Emergency Room. I thought it was a good idea too.

Where Can a Guy Get a Drink?

Long story short . . .

After a saline injection at the hospital, the food blockage in my esophagus cleared, and I could swallow again. Yahoo!

The Emergency Room was a trip. According to a medical tech who gave me the saline shot, it was an unusually busy Sunday night . . . heroin overdose, car crash victim, me, and a cast of others.

The ER doctor was great. If you have to end up in an Emergency Room, he’s the doc you want. He was multi-task man —  giving direction to the entire staff, finding time for every patient, and possessing a superb sense of humor. Kudos doc!

Jan was excellent during all this — she kept calm and got me to the doc on time.

So in under an hour, I was “cured”, told to eat small bites and chew thoroughly, and paid the $300 ER bill.

I took today off.

We Are Now Arizonians

The AZ DMV — Our Path to Residency

Born of necessity (i.e., lower state taxes), we decided to abandon our proud Wisconsin cheesehead past and forge ahead into the less-taxed state of AZ.

The path to AZ residency led straight to the Lake Havasu City Department of Motor Vehicles (or AZ DMV for short).

It was there that we took eye tests, obtained AZ driver licenses, registered all our vehicles (+ the park model) in AZ, paid the AZ VLT (Vehicle License Tax) — ouch! — and registered to vote.

All of this in about 2 hours.

Needless to say, we were wiped out after we left.

The AZ DMV Parking Lot was Full When We Arrived

We Bought a Park Model

The View from Our Porch (Click to Enlarge) — this is a Sunset view

Since we arrived at Crazy Horse Campground, we pretty much fell for the place. When we saw our friend’s Crazy Horse Park Model, we fell for that too.

So long story short, about a month ago we stopped into an open house for a Crazy Horse Park Model, made and offer, and closed on the sale today.

A few months previously we had looked at houses in Lake Havasu City, and even though there were some great buys, we decided to stop looking. We had heard that some retirees who had bought houses came to regret their decision because they really didn’t “fit” into their new community. They missed campground life.

We have met some wonderful people here, and though Crazy Horse is a funky campground, you can’t beat the people . . . and the views.

A Park Model is essentially just an RV with 400 square feet of living space. A park model is registered as a vehicle, not property, and the model is built on a mobile chassis so it can be moved.

Our Park Model (Click to Enlarge) — check the Kitchen dimensions

So we’ll be wintering in Arizona from October through March . . .

. . . and we’re in the process of becoming Arizona residents because the taxes are much lower than Wisconsin’s. Plus, we don’t think we’ll be buying any property there any time soon. Nevertheless, it was great to see the Badgers beat Arizona in the NCAA March Madness games.

We came very close to passing on the Park Model because of a Shed that one of our neighbors has erected on part of our property. However, we were able to get the sellers to get the shed removed before closed on the model. QED.

Our buying “spree” is over.

More photos of our dinky house . . .

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We Bought a Jeep

After Jeepin’ with other folks in the Arizona desert, we decided to buy our own Jeep — a 1993 Wrangler.

We purchased it from one of the folks who we had gone Jeepin’ with. He decided he likes his Harley better.

Anyway, for an older Jeep, it’s pretty tricked out — it has a hard top, an electric winch, large jack, great stereo, and a CB. The CB has a “PA” (Public Address) mode which allows you to talk through a speaker that’s located in the engine compartment. The PA turns the Jeep into a police car. It’ll be handy to talk to drivers in front of me or to neighbors — “Come out with your hands up”.

More Jeep photos . . .

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

2013 — It’s Back

I just added a summary of our 2013 full-timer travels.

It took me this long to learn Google Maps.