Again, a long time since I posted. The last time was when I was just beginning my road trip. That ended up being about 3000+ miles in 21 days. And it wore me out. Utah, Idaho, Eastern Oregon, up around the Portland area, then down to Eugene where I stuck around for quite a while. My friends join me to look for property. It was quite an education. The real estate market seems quite irrational, especially fed by the exodus of Californians seeking better places to live.… I really have to wonder why anybody would want to live in California? … Now shortly after my return to Las Vegas, leaving my friends up there to continue the property search, the very area that we were looking in basically burned to the ground. You may have seen this on the news.

They made it home safely, although they had to drive rather than fly as the airport was shut down. But the experience in the Northwest very radically changed our idea of where a good place to live might be. Again, “strong opinions, loosely held”.

Right now, if we could find a decent place in either southern Utah, northern Arizona, or northern New Mexico, I would be fine with that. High desert sounds good. Less to burn. 😊

I was also taken aback by the level of suspicion and conservatism that we found in Oregon. My friend recounted several instances where people he went up and talk to, did not give him their real names when introducing themselves. I am kind of stunned by that. And the way the low-level political entities try to control zoning shows me how deep conservatism runs here. They don’t want people moving into that state. They don’t want multifamily dwelling units being built. They want to keep people out as best they can. It was quite depressing actually. All in all, Oregon is not a place that I would prefer to live in.

And by conservatism, I am thinking about a variety of behavior patterns, mainly lack of critical thinking skills, not wanting to interact with people that don’t hold the same views that you do, being exclusionist, and a general nonscientific way of thinking.

But I have to say, that driving through this portion of the United States, especially not taking the main interstates, but rather the lesser traveled state roads, was quite the experience. What a beautiful land. And relatively speaking, so so empty. I have to admit, that having driven through a large quantity of “blink and you miss them” towns, I don’t know that I would want to live that far out in the country. There are some really isolated areas out there.

Two things prompted me to do a blog post today.

One requires a little bit of explanation… It turns out (not sure if I mentioned this before) that I have been having a thyroid issue. Hypothyroidism. I.e., I don’t produce enough of the thyroid hormones to keep my metabolism at a normal level. I found, somewhat to my surprise, that I could go back at least six or seven years and see evidence of this condition getting steadily worse in various blood tests that I had taken. However, no doctor really brought it to my attention until November of last year. And although they gave me some medication, it turned out that the dosage was woefully inadequate. So, for six days now, I’ve been on triple the original dosage, and this morning I actually feel, for the first time, more energetic. So many times, over the past few years I’ve thought to myself, “I would love to do X if only I had a little bit more energy.” Hopefully, maybe now I will.

I can only hope that this will prove to be my “new normal”. 😊

The other thing that prompted me to do my blog entry, was that a good friend, who went quiet over the last few months, get in touch with me again this morning. That really made me smile. I was so glad to hear from her. You know who you are and thank you for getting in touch. It gave me optimism. I don’t have a lot of people in this world that I consider myself close to, but she is one of them. I was so glad to know she was okay. **By the way 😊 … I love the first chapter of the book you wrote!!!**

Finally, here in the Las Vegas area, we have stopped seeing temperatures over 110°. What a relief. As I write, it is about 67° outside, a beautiful morning. And they are not forecasting any temperatures in triple digits this week. The first time in probably three months.

Once again, I will try to start posting more often. I truly hope that being on the right medication will really help me with my energy levels. If you haven’t suffered from something like this it’s impossible to really understand, but for me it’s like the difference between night and day. Most of my days were just trying to struggle to get my workout done, and after that it was basically surviving through the day. I’m not trying to sound pathetic, but it was very difficult to get anything useful done when your metabolism is fighting you every step of the way. And when you are in the middle of the problem… I guess that’s where the saying “can’t see the forest for the trees” comes from.

In my next blog post, I will discuss the terrible problem of being conflicted between minimalism and being prepared. In addition, I will discuss a little bit about my relatively recent quest to become more medically proficient. I am currently booked for a 10 day Wilderness First Responder course in Flagstaff either in December or January. I honestly am not sure that I’m looking forward to it, but I think it will be a very useful skill set to brush up on.