"We've gone formless."
A sign I saw at a Fred Meyer store. It fits. I'm formless now too.
No daily routine, no old regulars to talk to, no familiar walking routes. Nothing much now is as it was only a couple of weeks ago.
I'm rebuilding a life.
My luggage got searched at the Quito airport because I was the last person to check luggage on that flight. They do that. If I was smuggling I hope I'd be smart enough to check my luggage a little earlier. As it is I'm not smart.
A member of the American Airlines staff pulled me off the plane shortly after I got pleasantly seated, then encouraged me to run across the terminal. Nope.
Anyway, I had to wait for the search to begin.
I've been through this once before, when I walked past my luggage, not realizing that I had to pick it up, even though it was supposedly checked all the way through from Cuenca to Seattle. That time I spent over three hours chasing it down, then got searched.
Nothing found, either time.
But by the time I got back to the loading gate, the plane had been sealed. Once they do that they don't undo it.
Maybe I should have run on the way back. Maybe I should have taken the wheelchair they offered, so they could push me real fast. But I think not.
So instead of going from Cuenca to Quito to Dallas to Seattle, it was Miami-Phoenix-Seattle for me, and 12 hours tacked onto my trip. Then I caught the last airport shuttle bus from Seattle to Olympia, mostly by accident. But I caught it.
After a few hours of sleep I woke to rain. Rain and cold. Beauty, eh?
Shivering, wet feet, leaky umbrella, but at least I had a place to stay. A terrific place to stay: Lori Lively's AirBnB hideout, so I was set. For a few days.
I had to buy a car. That worked. I got a Nissan Versa Note from Hertz Car Sales in Burien at a good price. The transaction was reasonably fast, and reasonably painless, but then I got back on the highway a few minutes past 3 p.m., which put me into the middle of the southbound rush hour.
It took me around two and a half hours to go around 50 miles. Woo-hoo, etc.
But getting to the U.S. and buying a car were the big humps to hump over, and I got those done.
After eight nights at Lori's place I was on my own. I parked in the woods. Then it rained some more, with me sleeping inside, with the windows up, because Nissan doesn't have "side window deflectors" available. They are those things that let you keep the car windows open a bit while keeping the rain out.
But I did find a place that still sells them for my 2016-model car. Though they wouldn't accept my credit card.
Night one. Check.
Night two I tried another place, one which is really nice, and closer, but gets heavily used on weekends. Less rain. Slightly better.
I did find a different vendor for the window shades, and accepted my order, but they ship via ox train, I think. Maybe due tomorrow, after about a week, just as the rain will be starting again, so I won't be able to put them on. (The weather has been much nicer the last few days.)
So now my life is more or less trying to get the car set up and stable in a known condition. First up was buying a second key, which cost me $121 plus change, and requires a battery. The old days were better, weren't they? While I was doing that, the dealer found a crack in the car's serpentine belt (what used to be called the "fan belt"). Had to get that fixed, for sure. $210 plus change.
While there they found a leak in the "transfer case". That has to be fixed too. But the serpentine belt was fixed under warranty at zero cost to me, so woot already.
Woot 2: The transfer case leak is also under warranty. While they do that I'll have the 35K service done, and get the car inspected overall, kind of like a pre-purchase inspection, post-purchase, so I know if anything else needs attention.
But I'm still sleeping in the woods.
And lost my driver's license.
Which I found was missing while reviewing mail that had piled up since December at my mail forwarder. In that batch of envelopes was one from my credit union, and inside that envelope was my new debit card, mailed on December 18, 2017. It expired on February 18, 2018, so I had to get that worked out. To do that I needed to show my driver's license, which wasn't there.
I guessed that I'd left it at the self-storage place I'd rented space from two days earlier. I let the staffer there use the address on the license, which is for an apartment I haven't lived in for five years. I was praying that she hadn't mailed it back to me. But she hadn't. She was holding it, and had called me and emailed me. I missed all that but I had my license back.
Then I high-tailed it out to my camping spot and started supper. Partway through I realized that it was going to be a night of hard freezing, so I was glad I had my heavy sleeping bag in the car. But it wasn't. I'd left it at the self-storage place.
So more driving then.
Got the bag, finished supper, nearly froze, and so on.
Things have been less interesting the last few days, but there should be rain again tonight, so at least I have something to look forward to.