On April 9th we board a Carnival ship…Should we be worried?…

Posted by worldwide-admin on February 17, 2013 with 3 Comments

This is the Carnival Liberty, the ship on which we’ll embark on April 9th.

With the influx of news regarding the horrifying nightmare for over 4000 passengers on the Carnival Triumph, we watched intently, wondering what we should do.

The likelihood of another such incident on the two back to back Carnival Liberty Cruises we’ve booked is unlikely. We’ll be staying in the same cabin on both cruises, sailing from April 9, 2013 until April 20, 2013. Upon disembarking the Liberty around 10:00 am, we’ll change ships at the same pier, on the same day, to board the Norwegian Epic at 4:00 PM to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to Barcelona on our first transatlantic cruise.

For the heck of it, we contacted our cruise guy, Joaquin at Vacations to Go inquiring as to what options are available, if and only if, a passenger wants to “jump ship” to another cruise line. (Keeping in mind we’re cruising as a means of transportation as much as possible. Plus we love it as opposed to flying).

Not to our surprise, Carnival is not offering refunds for future cruise passengers on other ships. This would bankrupt them. Based on the fact that we can’t get a full refund within 90 days of a cruise departure, diminishing on a scale the closer it gets as taken directly from our Cruise Confirmation documents.

Cancellation Charges If you cancel, the following charges will be assessed by the cruise line (per guest):

Cruise Length	Days Prior To Sailing	Cancellation Charge
2, 3, 4 & 5 nights	61 days or more 60 to 46 days 45 to 30 days 29 to 15 days 14 days or less	None (except for Early Saver, Easy Saver* and Super Saver fares**) Entire deposit 50% of total fare or deposit, whichever is greater 75% of total fare or deposit, whichever is greater 100% of total fare
6 nights and longer (including Alaska & Hawaii)	76 days or more 75 to 56 days 55 to 30 days 29 to 15 days 14 days or less	None (except for Early Saver, Easy Saver* and Super Saver fares**) Entire deposit 50% of total fare or deposit, whichever is greater 75% of total fare or deposit, whichever is greater 100% of total fare
Europe, Panama Canal and Transpacific sailings 7, 9 & 12, 14 and 17 nights in length	91 days or more 90 to 56 days 55 to 30 days 29 to 15 days 14 days or less	None (except for Early Saver, Easy Saver* and Super Saver fares**) Entire deposit 50% of total fare or deposit, whichever is greater 75% of total fare or deposit, whichever is greater 100% of total fare
All cruises purchased under the Instant Saver Fare	Any time after booking	100% of total fare

Timetables and rates are subject to change, and exceptions may apply for holiday sailings. *Early Saver & Easy Saver fares: The deposit on bookings made using the Early Saver & Easy Saver Fares program is non-refundable/non-transferable. No name changes will be permitted. There is a $50 service fee per person applicable on ship and/or sail date changes outside standard penalties.**Super Saver fares: The deposit is non-refundable.

With 51 days until we sail, we’d lose our deposits, in these cases, over $1000. Thus, the question posed: Are we willing to lose $1000 in deposits to cancel these cruises? Secondly, there are no specific dates that coincide with our planned dates of departure which would result in losing money leaving here early and paying for hotels and meals on the other end. it makes no sense monetarily.

Does it make sense emotionally? Not really. When we decided to travel the world we knew there would be risks and bumps along the way. Here we are, almost five months since leaving Minnesota and without a doubt, we’ve already had a few bumps.

1. Our luggage going on the wrong van when we arrived in Belize City on January 29, 2013, to be recovered an hour later, after a lot of foot stomping after we had specifically stated several times that they ensure the luggage goes on the tender boat with us, not ahead of us.
2. The ineptness of guest services on the Celebrity Equinox when they only arranged a one week visa for our stay in Belize when we needed 30 days (to be renewed soon when we have to go by boat to immigration in Mango Creek). It was straightened out but again, only with observation of the error and persistence in getting it resolved. Had I not checked our passports when the on board immigration officer handed them back to us, we’d have been forced to go to Mango Creek while we were living in that unsanitary water-free zone only 12 days ago.
3. The water-free house down the road, Little Cottage, with an occasional dribble of cold running water, cold dribbling showers and a mostly non flushable toilet resulting in a horrible unsanitary situation. Hot water and soap is a great sanitizer. We had soap but no hot water. We boiled it as often as we could accumulate it at a dribble’s pace in a huge pot on the dangerous gas smelling stove. (Oh, listen to me go on!).

Yes, we are uninjured. Yes, we are now safe from disease. We ask ourselves, what have we learned?
From comments above in order:
1. Incompetency prevails
2. Incompetency prevails
3. Don’t rent a marginal house with only two reviews on the website, both of which were outdated and one of which referred to another property the owner rented. I should have been more suspicious when booking the property. Lesson learned. (Bless Tom’s heart. He never blamed me!)

None the less, we are grateful we found LaruBeya by a fluke. We are grateful to have water and to be in a sanitary environment. We are grateful that we are able to walk to or be driven to (for only a tip) to a total of five restaurant in our area. Yes, we are grateful that Estevan picks us up every Wednesday to go to the grocery store for a $10 round trip (plus tip). In addition, we are grateful that we find food we can eat, although the selection is limited and the fact that its grass fed, free range and organic.

As for the upcoming cruises, we’ll continue on as planned on the Carnival Liberty. If something does go wrong, we have our portable solar charger that is powerful enough to fully charge our phones. With our phones charged we’ll be able to use the Blogger app to continue to keep our readers informed. As for Internet connection (which was not fully functioning on the Carnival Triumph, we’ll have our XCOM Global MiFi with us which works independently of the ship’s data when close to land).

See…there may be a use for all the gadgets we’ve packed which are consuming space in our bags!

Languishing in Paradise…Making a new to-do list…

Posted by worldwide-admin on February 8, 2013 with 2 Comments

There’s no free lunch. No matter where we go, how untangled we strive to be, Life is filled with responsibility.

Many years ago, my eldest son Richard and I discussed the merits of “living under a palm tree in a tropical climate, weaving baskets.” At the time, it sounded like an uncomplicated analogy of how simple life could be if one so chose, escaping from the constraints of our everyday living.

Tom and I have had no delusions that traveling the world would be a far cry from escaping responsibility. With banking, bills to pay, investments to oversee, health and personal property insurance, ongoing tax liabilities, and the time-consuming process of managing one’s household on the road, there was little opportunity to allow one mind’s freedom of letting it all go.

On top of it all is the time-consuming process of continually planning the next step: airline reservations, hotel bookings, cruise bookings, finding health clubs, arranging transportation, locating Fed Ex offices, and on and on.

Beginning our travels on October 31, 2012, after 10 months of planning, we knew the flow of responsibility would follow us no matter how much we thought we’d prepared in advance. The 10 months were only the tip of the iceberg.

Today, comfortably ensconced at our new location at Laru Beya Resort for the next two-plus months anticipating the move on Sunday into our own condo/villa, reality slaps us in the face that our days of bemoaning our waterless situation are behind us and, it’s time to get back to that which we want and must do.

Here’s what’s on the agenda for the remainder of the month:
1. Complete our excel spreadsheet with deductions and tax information for our accountant. We’re almost done when yesterday our tax documents finally arrived via our mail service in Nevada, MailLinkPlus who will snail mail the actual documents to him.

2. Complete the review and application for my new health insurance policy and both of our Emergency Evacuation policies. Pay the annual premiums for all of the policies. (Tom still has insurance until age 65).

3. Apply for visa extension for Belize. We have to take a boat to get to the immigration office on the mainland after finding our way to the boat launch area in Placencia Village. (I mistakenly thought it was on an island as mentioned in a prior post. Excuse my error).

4. Arrange for storage of our excess luggage in Miami for one year, while we’re in Europe and Africa. On April 9th we’ll embark on a cruise from Belize City (midway through the cruise) sailing to Miami, arriving on April 13th at 8:00 am.

We’ll be staying on the same ship, the Carnival Liberty, in order to embark on yet another cruise later in the day. We’ll disembark the ship in the morning with only our passports and our excess luggage grabbing a cab to go to a Self Storage 3.5 miles from the pier. They will store our bags for $15 a month plus a one time $22 service fee, in a climate-controlled space.

Once we drop off the excess luggage, we’ll have the cab driver take us to a Fed Ex office .6 miles from the storage facility to pick up our XCom Global device. While on this cab ride, we’ll stop at a drugstore to restock a few toiletries and a grocery store to restock our favorite Crystal Lite Iced Tea and our favorite sugar-free chocolate (unheard of here in Belize).

Normally, in the US a six package container of Crystal Lite iced Tea sells for around $3.49. Yesterday, we purchased nine containers priced at $7.75 US each. The owner gave us a discount of 3% for wiping out her entire inventory. Our final cost in Belize was $67.66 US as opposed to $31.41 in the US.

5. Order XCom Global MiFi device to take with us over the number of upcoming cruises, having them ship it to the Fed Ex Office near the pier in Miami so we can pick it up the same day we drop off the excess luggage at storage on April 13th, as indicated above.

6. Apply for visas for Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan from a different online company from the company we had previously used for our second passports (they don’t do visas for the Middle East), using the services of a company suggested by our cruise agent. Yet to research.

7. Search for cruises to get us from South Africa back to Europe in March 2014, from Europe to Hawaii to meet up with our kids and grandkids in December 2014. The best route we’ve found thus far is from Barcelona to Miami when we’ll pick up our excess bags from storage and then possibly head out on another cruise from Miami to Los Angeles.

Here’s the deal on the cruise from Barcelona to Miami. What a great price! We’ll book this cruise within 24 hours in order to receive the $100 onboard credit offered below.

25626

14 nights departing October 26, 2014 on
Norwegian’s Norwegian Epic

Brochure Inside	$899
Our Inside	$599
You Save	33%

Brochure Oceanview	$1,299
Our Oceanview	$829
You Save	36%

Brochure Balcony	$1,299
Our Balcony	$829
You Save	36%

Brochure Suite	$1,699
Our Suite	$1,099
You Save	35%

$$$ Two-Day Sale! Book by February 8, 2013 and receive a FREE US$100 per cabin onboard credit on select categories.

Promotions may not be combinable with all fares.

The prices shown are US dollars per person, based on double occupancy, and subject to availability. They include port charges but do not include airfare or (where applicable) airport or government taxes or fees.

ITINERARY

DAY

DATE

PORT

ARRIVE

DEPART

Sun

Oct

Barcelona, Spain

5:00pm

Mon

Oct

At Sea

Tue

Oct

At Sea

Wed

Oct

Funchal, Madeira, Portugal

9:00am

6:00pm

Thu

Oct

At Sea

Fri

Oct

At Sea

Sat

Nov

At Sea

Sun

Nov

At Sea

Mon

Nov

At Sea

Tue

Nov

At Sea

Wed

Nov

St. Maarten

8:00am

6:00pm

Thu

Nov

St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands

8:00am

4:00pm

Fri

Nov

At Sea

Sat

Nov

At Sea

Sun

Nov

Miami, FL

8:00am

Once we arrive in Miami, we’ll stay on the Norwegian Epic as it commences another cruise on November 9th, in order to “kill” another week. Invariably, cruising with the meals included is a lower cost than staying in a hotel and dining out every night plus, its our means of transportation ultimately getting us to the next destination, enjoying each day in the process.

On November 17, 2014, upon completion of the second round on the Epic, we’ll find our way from Miami to Hawaii either by another cruise or by air. It’s a toss-up: airfare and where to stay for an extra month in Hawaii which is pricey or cruise and pay more overall saving on the daily rate. Time will tell.

We’ll post the 2nd cruise which we’re working on right now with our cruise guy, Joaquin at Vacations to Go, embarking on November 9, 2014, once we book it in the next 24 hours.

Today, we’ll drive the golf cart to Placencia Village to return it, taking a cab back. The cost of the cab is estimated at $10 US. With no wheels for the next two months, we’re considering what would be the most cost-effective options. We’ll keep you informed.

Also, we found some local adventures we’ll partake in once we get situated in our new home, the LaruBeya villa, and complete some of the above tasks on our new to-do list. There’s definitely no “free lunch.”

Getting used to our new home…

Posted by worldwide-admin on February 1, 2013 with 1 Comment

Sure, when most people hear our story of our world travels they think, “How fabulous! You’re going on a perpetual vacation! How exciting!”

Yes, it is exciting and we are fortunate for this amazing experience. But, it’s living life in a new environment every few weeks or months (as few as thirteen days in Dubai in May 2013 and as many as five months in Hawaii in 2015).

If there were no bags, no laptops, no vitamins, no prescriptions, no digital equipment, no camera, no cords, no toiletries, no documents, no shoes, no clothing and boots for Africa for going on safari, no clothes including dressy clothing for formal nights on six more upcoming cruises, no bathing suits, no Pouchong tea, no Crystal Lite, no bug spray and on and on, it would definitely be easier.

The reality? We need these items. As we’ve traveled thus far, we find that we can’t even buy many basic grocery items, let alone any of the above items we’ll use along the way. A can of Crystal Lite Iced Tea priced at $2.99 in the US was $12.50 in Belize. We’re glad we brought a small portion that will hopefully last until we get to another country.

We don’t eat snacks or junk foods so the few food items we brought aren’t taking much room: Tom’s little packs of sunflower seeds (to help keep him smoke free), a few bars of sugar free dark chocolate and a few packs of gum.

We also packed a bag of coconut flour, a jar of coconut oil and baking powder in a tiny container so we can have our GF Coconut Flour Pancakes (the recipe can be found by typing in the “search” box on our homepage) which I made for breakfast yesterday. I used these ingredients plus the lightweight measuring cups and spoons I’d packed. They weren’t stocked here in the little house.

Luckily, I found the unsweetened coconut milk for the recipe. Belize is known for its coconut groves. The other ingredients were not to be found at the Maya Beach grocery store where we stopped shortly before arriving.

We have no means of transportation. We’d hope to rent a golf cart twice a week but the facility is so far away, one has to figure out how to get there to pick it up and return it. When we booked this property, I checked on the location of the golf cart rental. They said they were walking distance from our beach house. Well, its five miles each way. Hardly a short jaunt in 90 degree weather.

Rental cars are $3500 a month, for the smallest sized car. Golf carts were advertised online at $10 for a half day to find out they are $58 including lots of state and local taxes, ending up over $75. A cab ride to downtown Placencia, the five mile ride, is $40 each way plus tips.

There’s bicycles here but I haven’t been on a bike in 50 years. Do I dare upset the delicate balance of my new found pain free existence with a potential fall? I hesitate to try. Then again, part of me, wants to give it a whirl.

Tomorrow, we’ll take the bus for $1 Belizean (about $.50 US) each to downtown that runs twice a day, walk the world famous beach side sidewalk, check out the local sites, dine in a highly recommended restaurant and end up our day with grocery shopping in the bigger grocery store.

We’ll haul six jugs of purified water and all the groceries back with us in one of our wheelie duffel bags and several of the nice cloth bags my niece in San Diego gave us when we stayed at her home for two days before boarding the Celebrity Century on January 3rd. It seems so long ago.

We’ll boil water in a giant pot to use for washing dishes. We use our bottled water to make ice in the little ice cube trays I packed that held my costume jewelry while in the bags. We’ll brush our teeth and wash our faces with bottled water.

Yesterday, with poor water pressure it took nearly all day to wash two loads of laundry. There’s no clothes dryer. We hung our clothes outside on the clothesline provided using weathered clothespins (hadn’t seen those in years) while standing in sand, a few feet from the sea. They were wrinkled but smelled good, taking almost all day to dry in the humid weather.

There’s no AC. There are numerous fans. We sweat during the day. We sleep through the night. Surprisingly. We sit outside by the sea all day, walk along the beach, playing with the dogs. By 5:00 pm, we have to come indoors. The no-see-ums arrive in swarms. They can whittle their way through the screens. We shut all the windows, awaiting it to get dark to reopen them. They fly across my computer screen as I write this.

Theft is a problem here. We have to lock the doors when we walk the 50 feet to the water. Computers and all types of electronics are often stolen out of houses including in this resort town. We’re being very careful.

During the first 36 hours, we often looked at each other wondering if we’ll be OK. As I write this tonight, Thursday, its 48 hours since we arrived. A few hours ago, while hunkered down inside away from the bite of the bugs during dusk while sitting on the uncomfortable sofa, Tom writing in Facebook, me reading reviews for restaurants downtown, our fingers touched.

He said while squeezing my hand, “We’re going to be OK.”

“Yes, Honey,” I said squeezing back, “We’ll be OK.”

Photos of upcoming vacation home in Nevada!…

Posted by worldwide-admin on December 17, 2012 with 0 Comment

Pool and hot tub in Nevada house.

Living room.

Below are the photos of the Henderson, Nevada vacation rental we’ll be moving into this upcoming Wednesday after a five-hour drive across the desert. We posted these photos many months ago, doing so again today for our newer readers.

Master bedroom.

Second of three bedrooms.

A charming house with great reviews in VRBO.com located in the fabulous Green Valley Ranch area in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, will definitely serve our needs for eight days over the holidays with family and friends coming to visit for the three days between Tom’s 60th birthday on the 23rd and Christmas. We couldn’t be more thrilled.

Third bedroom.

Over the next two days, we’ll busily pack for the eight days in Nevada, finish the balance of our paperwork, pack the food and cooking supplies we’ve accumulated while in Scottsdale, and the hardest part of all, decide what we’re leaving behind in one final bin we’ll leave at son Richard‘s house.

Kitchen, dining area.

This is the hardest part. Once we leave the vacation house in Henderson on the 27th, we return to the vacation house in Scottsdale for our final packing before leaving on January 1st for San Diego to ultimately sail away on January 3rd. Any items we don’t bring to Henderson now become a part of our luggage, an impossible scenario.

Casual dining and lounge area off of the kitchen.

We have warm clothes that we aren’t bringing (Good thing we brought them along for the cold weather we’ve experienced lately), piles of papers to pass off to my sister Julie who’ll spend Tom’s birthday and Christmas with us as well.

Pool table in the living area.

Julie will keep our medical files with test results, our health care directives, and stacks of legal documents that we completed on Friday. We’ll leave our tax prep receipts in a banker’s box with Richard.

The kitchen is dated, but serves our needs.

Oh, it goes on and on. There’s so much to remember much of which I listed on a Nevada “to do” and others that require me walking around and “looking” at everything to further remind me. Thank goodness, my memory is serving me well.

Main living room.

Not only will we move into the house below, but we’ll get ready for Christmas, baking (for guests), decorating (just a little), and go to our dentist appointments for final cleanings. After the dentist, Tom has an appointment at a local travel clinic for his last TwinRix vaccine.

Hot tub as part of the pool.

Plus, we’ll complete the arrangements for the sale of Tom’s car (prospective buyer in the works), hopefully, to transpire while we’re in San Diego over the last two days. If that doesn’t work out for any reason, of course, we have a Plan B.

On January 2, we’ll take the SUV to a local dealer and sell it for whatever they’ll give us. Apparently, there’s a shortage of clean used vehicles. After pricing it at Edmunds, we feel confident that we will sell it for close to the dealer’s wholesale price. It’s a 2010 model and in perfect condition. We’re already prepared for a low offer accepting this reality as part of the process, especially after doing so poorly at our estate sale. Ouch! Nobody cares to pay what we feel “our stuff” is worth.

Here’s the link to the details and photos about the Henderson home. (Please excuse the formatting issues. It’s rather tricky copying and pasting photos from other web sites. As I’ve mentioned in the past, web design is not my forte).
http://www.vrbo.com/301335

Windows 8 pluses and minuses…

Posted by worldwide-admin on November 22, 2012 with 0 Comment

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May your day be filled with amazing food, animated conversation and an abundance of love.

After 18 days as owners of two new lightweight Acer Windows 8, 15.6, 64 bit laptops we’ve had adequate time to determine its flaws and merits as typical, not expert, PC users. (Well, not quite the typical user, as far as time online is concerned in preparation for our upcoming travels).

Back in 1991, Tom and I each had our own over sized desktop computers when we both became obsessed with an online beta game called Netplay, one of the first of its kind at that time. It took 8 hours to download the game via a phone modem. Wow, times have changed!

Over the years, we’ve updated our computers every few years, intrigued by the latest software and technology, finding ourselves enjoying their use as a tool to enhance our lives, to learn, to entertain us, to shop, to read aloud to one another, maybe spending more time online than other users.

As we planned our travels, we knew that our two old workhorse Dell Inspiron 17.3″, 7.8 pound laptops, had their day. Once Microsoft started promoting Windows 8, we decided we had to make the laptops last until the new laptops were available.

It was a long wait. My case broke and was held together by a huge plastic clamp. Tom’s monitor’s light dimmed beyond repair (believe me, I tried) leaving us both chugging away waiting out Windows 8 release date. Alas, it arrived on the market a week before we left Minnesota.

We decided to wait to purchase the two new laptops until we arrived in Scottsdale avoiding any concern of a possible hotel room thief along the way. One day after we arrived, we headed to the local Costco store, credit card in hand, chomping at the bit to get back to our temporary home to begin the process of transferring the data. Ugh!

Mistake #1: In order to get a “good deal” of $1658 (including 9.5% Arizona sales tax) buying at Costco, we short-changed ourselves in some ways. Don’t get me wrong, we love Costco, always have.

However, buying a computer from Costco resulted in zero in-person technical service, all precipitated by the desire to save a few hundred dollars. Add a new operating system of which we had zero experience with limited information online, we were in a quandary.

Desperate, a few days later, we attended a free one hour course at the local Microsoft store. Had we not had a few days to “play around with it” the course would have been way over our heads. Fortunately, by that point we knew exactly which questions to ask, coming out of the class feeling more at ease.

Mistake #2: Not purchasing a new data transfer software program or paying $69-$99 to have a professional do the transfers. The software we brought with us for this task was obsolete for Windows 8. Yes, we had transferred most of our data to the free 2 G DropBox before we left Minnesota, which we are now transferring to Microsoft’s own new cloud, SkyDrive with 25 G of free storage.

Fortunately, we had brought along the CDs for Microsoft Office and Outlook 2007, which miraculously, we were able to install. We didn’t want to buy Office 2010 when Office 2013 is coming out in February.

Fortunately, we brought along a zip drive, enabling us to transfer all of Outlook files which included all of our communication, rental agreements, receipts and instructions with the owners and managers of the many vacation homes we are renting all over the world. (I had placed the actual leases in Dropbox).

If I were to say, we each spent about five days setting up our computers, it’s no exaggeration. Finding support online was difficult with little consistent Windows 8 information available. This will change quickly. We were a few weeks ahead of the availability of reliable online guidance.

Somehow, we figured it all out while swiping our fingers across our “touch screens” trying to maneuver those pesky little tiles. Somehow, all of our data, contacts, pictures and settings are in place. Somehow, we’ve learned the zillions of nuances one will only find in Windows 8.

The biggest issue we discovered, using Adobe Flash player, supposedly pre-installed into Internet Explorer 10. Not the case, with error messages on many websites that require Flash.

After hours of looking for solutions; patches from Microsoft or new versions of Windows 8, I stumbled across what proved to be a workable download, when several downloads didn’t solve the problem. (Of course, I uninstalled the non-working version we had but even the uninstall feature had issues). Quickly, I repeated the exact same process that made it work on my laptop, onto Tom’s laptop and it didn’t work! We had the exact same computers!

Days later, after downloading and re-installing several versions, I finally got Flash to work, enabling Tom to get into his historical documents in Ancestry.com, his favorite site. At one point, I was so obsessed with finding a solution, I sat here in this not-so-comfy chair, palms sweating, until almost midnight, bound and determined to fix it.

Lo and behold, a few days later, it stopped working!

The next day, I spent over an hour on the phone with Costco’s technical support in a conference call with a rep from Acer, neither of whom could resolve the issue.

Our laptops are quietly humming along loaded with our stuff, access to our travel files, filled with new apps, mine with little blocks of tiles, categorized by topic, each a single click to what I want to do. I’m learning to love it, now that the worst is almost over with (the Flash issue remains).

Would we recommend Windows 8? Yes, tentatively, provided one has professional assistance in transferring data from the old computer, getting Adobe Flash Player working correctly which we have yet to do, attending online or in-person training, and a willingness to spend considerable time learning its unfamiliar commands and hand gestures so unlike former Windows operating systems.

We both have found that the learning and the resulting mental stimulation from acquiring and getting up to speed on the latest technology may ultimately prove to be instrumental in keeping our brains working and perhaps, in keeping us young. That would be nice.

We have lots to do today, including going out to Thanksgiving dinner at The Wandering Horse Buffet at The Talking Stick Casino in Scottsdale.

After dinner, perhaps another hour long walk to walk off the meal, as we did yesterday perusing past the 100’s of art galleries in the art district in our neighborhood. I told you, “He’d walk!”

Have a happy day!

P.S. Since writing this post this morning, I have found a solution for Flash Player. Actually Internet Explorer is supposed to be pre-installed with Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player. In both of our computers, it was non-functioning.
1. Download the patch at this Microsoft site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2770041
2. Open Internet Explorer on the DESKTOP, not the TILES START SCREEN. In the upper right hand corner is a little gear (settings), click on this and then click on Manage add-ons.
3. In the middle of the box that appears, click on Show and select ALL add-ons. Scroll down the right inside of the box and find Shockwave Flash
4. Double click on Shockwave until a box appears. Check ALLOW ALL WEBSITES. This should do it.

That fix worked on our Windows 8 computers. We now both have working Adobe Flash Players Hopefully, it will work for you. If you have trouble, feel free to comment here or email me and I will gladly respond promptly.

I don’t profess to be a Windows 8 expert, but with the lack of “free” tech support that knew how to solve this problem, we had no choice than to figure it out on our own.

Now have a happy Thanksgiving day! With both of our computers in full function mode, we sure will!

Why 2nd passports?…Visit to Nevada…

Posted by worldwide-admin on November 18, 2012 with 0 Comment

Over the past many months of writing this blog, I have mentioned the need for 2nd passports. One may ask, “Why isn’t one passport sufficient?”

Usually, one passport is sufficient for most travelers. If visas are needed for travel, one must send in their passport to the appropriate embassy along with other pertinent documents as required by the country into which one is seeking access. Doing so, would leave us in a foreign country without a passport in our possession for a week, a dangerous situation.

Visas are not required by all countries, many are only required for stays of 30 days or more, many for as much as 90 days. It is imperative that we check the requirements at the embassy of the countries we’ll be visiting, found easily online at a number of sites.

Rather than take the time and effort to apply for all the visas we will need as we need them and, based on our long stays in many countries, we have decided to use the services of VisaHQ, a company located on Embassy Row in Washington, DC. They have the ability to quickly and easily process the paperwork, not only for our 2nd passports but also for our many upcoming visas.

Unfortunately, it is necessary to wait about 30 days before traveling to a specific country, since they usually are only good for a specific period.

Of course, there are additional fees for processing each visa, usually under $79 each. Early on in our budgeting discussions we decided to include this expenses rather than taking the time and the effort at each of our locations to do the paperwork ourselves. Doing so would create stress, distracting us from the enjoyment of the experience at the time.

VisaHQ, along with other such websites, has the traveler complete a master form kept secure on their site. When a visa is needed a single page is all that is required to complete online along with sending in the 2nd passport and any necessary documents which are quickly returned.

Second passports are only good for two years. We’ll note the renewal date on our calendar upon receipt. For this reason, we are waiting until we are down to the wire to ensure we have full use of the two years.

Once we apply and have experienced the process of our first application online with VisaHQ we will report back here with the details. Of course, we already have our “first” passports, good for another nine years in our case. (US passports are valid for a of a total of 10 years).

This past Friday while here in Nevada, we had additional passport photos taken at a Walgreens pharmacy, who along with CVS are certified to take passport photos, making this process easier than in years past. The cost for each pair of photos is $10.99.

We each ordered two sets leaving us with a total of four passport photos plus a fifth we already had of an older photo. Generally, passport photos are valid for six months. (Yes, us old timers do change in appearance in six months, I suppose).

The time here in Henderson, Nevada has been low key as we continue to prepare to leave the US, visiting family, playing with family kids and dogs, Monty and Owen.

We dined in the past two nights. On Saturday while at Whole Foods we purchased a huge chunk of bison sirloin steak, gluten free of course, that I cut into two nice sized pieces to marinate. After all, we are trying “new things.”

Nah, Tom took one bite and gagged. It didn’t help that we were watching a show on TV, Extreme Cheapskates, whereby the “star” of the episodes would go “dumpster diving” at restaurant dumpsters for dinner.

That didn’t bother me! I busily chomped away on my big steak, noticing a “gamey” flavor but hungry enough to eat the entire thing. I eyeballed Tom’s plate considering attacking his steak also deciding not to “pig out.” Bison in the future? Not so much.

Undoubtedly, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to try new foods along the way as we travel the world. Later.

Our new residency…State of Nevada

Posted by worldwide-admin on November 16, 2012 with 1 Comment

It feels different living away from Minnesota, not better, not worse. Just different. No snow, no cold, predictably warm and sunny days and a mad excess of shopping and restaurants.

Yesterday afternoon, while driving the five hours to Las Vegas from Scottsdale for the weekend, we stopped for gas in the desert town of Kingsman, Arizona, a familiar stopping point for a travelers along their way to California or Nevada.

Getting low on gas with another hour plus to go, Tom pulled in to a busy gas station, right off the highway. Lo and behold, they didn’t accept credit cards, only cash a customer may have on hand or, from their cash machine conveniently positioned on the gas pump island, in order to collect a $2.75 “processing fee” from the machine for every transaction.

By avoiding paying standard credit card fees by allowing only debit cards, the gas station was allowed to line their coffers with the excess revenues they were generating from the cash machines!

What a rip off! Customers were furious as they were sucked in by this scam grumbling as they begrudgingly complied.

Not my guy! He whipped out of there so fast that his SUV’s tires were squealing, We proceeded a quarter mile down the road to pump gas at a station with no such policies. As he was filling the tank he realized that the gas he was pumping was $.50 more per gallon! Oh good grief!

Everyone had warned us about getting ripped off outside the US! Ha! It was a good reminder to be suspicious; not paranoid, to be mindful; not obsessive, wherever we may be. So we shall.

So today, situated in to our comfortable family member’s home in Henderson for the weekend, located in an ideal area, we prepared ourselves for several tasks today:

1. Go to MailLink in Las Vegas and pick up all of our accumulated forwarded mail from the past two weeks.
2. Go to a CVS or Walgreen’s pharmacy to have take additional passport photos necessary to apply for our second passports (will explain this soon) and also as required when applying for certain visas around the world.
3. Apply for Nevada driver’s licenses and voter’s registration. (We’ve been warned that the wait is horrifying. More on that in a moment.)
4. Find a good restaurant for breakfast.
5. Find our bank in order to deposit some checks that had arrived in the mail.
6. Locate a Target store to purchase a new FitBit pedometer after the most recent device fell apart. (I must get back to tracking those 10,000 daily steps, severely lacking over the past two weeks.)

OK. The Nevada DMV, a pure nightmare, we heard. We had talked to several residents warning us to be prepared for hours spent waiting in line. Of course, we had a plan. Showing up 15 minutes before they were to open at 8:00 am and getting in the growing line outside the building seemed like a reasonable solution.

Upon arriving at 7:43, we cringed as we witnessed no less than 40 people in line while a light rain was falling on a chilly morning in the low 50’s. Unprepared, arriving without jackets or rain gear we decided to tough it out. We were tempted to drive away and come back at a later time, anticipating that the line might lighten up later in the day.

Let’s stay, I coaxed Tom, he too in a lightweight long sleeved shirt. In line we went. At 7:55 they started letting us inside. Much to our surprise, there were no less than 25 stations utilizing a sophisticated numbering system, reminiscent of a computerized female voice moving the cattle-like crowd in sci-fi movie we watched years ago.

In no time at all, we were both seated in front of a DMV “officer” providing our copious documents to satisfy the state’s requirements. We were well armed.

An hour later, we were out the door with our Nevada residency in tact, former Minnesota residents (Tom, a lifelong fifth generation Minnesotan, that predates Minnesota statehood) and me, having enjoyed the frozen tundra and Minnesota nice (to be missed) for the past 40 years. Thank you Minnesota. Hello, Nevada.

And, soon, my friends…48 days…hello, world.

Technology updates…new items, photos, prices…

Posted by worldwide-admin on November 10, 2012 with 0 Comment

Note: Please keep scrolling down to the end of the post as you read. Copying photos and descriptions from other web sites prevents easy editing.

Without a normal mailing address, other than our mailing service in Las Vegas Nevada, fulfilling our needs for specific equipment not generally found at local computer stores presented us in a quandary.

The best solution was to order our equipment now, head to Las Vegas next week as planned to visit family, and get to our mailing service’s office to pick up our awaiting equipment. If, a few items don’t arrive by the time we return to Scottsdale, we can pick it up when we return to Las Vegas a month later for the holidays.

Before we arrived in Scottsdale, we contemplated a few options for receiving the items we wanted, not sure as to the situation until we actually arrived. There was a waiting list for a PO box at the Scottsdale post offices and we didn’t want to incur the cost of yet another mailing service for the short period in Arizona.

As a result, it was necessary to hustle to do the research in the past few days to determine which newer products have hit the market since researching months ago. A few new item had in fact be released, much to our delight. (Ah, my delight. Tom doesn’t seem to get so enthused over this stuff).

With the learning curve for Windows 8, transferring over all of our files we hadn’t placed in Dropbox (now to be transferred to Windows Sky Drive) and the difficulty I encountered getting all of my Outlook folders containing all of our travel information, confirmations and contracts, I was concerned.

To facilitate the process, I made an appointment and brought my old and new laptops to the Microsoft Store in the Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale for a 15 minute $49 session. Arriving on time, hauling both laptops through Nordstrom’s, I made it right at 10 am, when they opened. Tom had offered to go along and carry but, I insisted I could go alone.

Waiting for my turn for over 20 minutes, the tech seemed annoyed when I told him my plight with Outlook. He said if he couldn’t fix it in 15 minutes, I’d have to leave both laptops resulting in the price going up substantially.

OK. In a situation like this, after calculating the prospect of $196 hourly rate increasing “substantially,” I decided to recall the value of Minnesota nice with a dash of warmth and charm that I’ve called upon in the past to have a good end result in a win-win for everyone.

Fifty minutes later, after considerable chatter and chuckles the tech sent me on my way, both laptops in their respective bags, one on each shoulder ouch) and…he waived the bill! No charge! No bill! No $49 fee! Thanks, tech!

By the way, on my way out of the mall, I stopped in that Nordstrom’s store when a table of sale handbags caught my eye. All of my bags were sold at the sale, except for a few smaller bags and the awful bag I had been using since leaving Minnesota. I needed a huge fully zippered leather bag and had yet to have time to look for one suitable for travel.

My new roomy, fully zippered leather handbag ideal for travel.

Ah, success! Minutes later I walked out the door, a laptop bag on each shoulder and a Nordstrom’s shopping bag in my hand containing my new purse, on sale for $99, as opposed to its regular price of $249. Designer name, I didn’t notice. Quality and function, I did.

Hurrying back to our “home,” Tom still sitting in the same spot as when I left him, he picked up his head from his new laptop long enough to say “Hi, Sweetie” with a big grin on his face when I told him about the $49…and the new purse. He didn’t ask about the price of the new purse. He never does. I never offer it. (Its a girl thing).

Immediately getting to work online to continue the search for a few more digital items for our world travels, most of which I have mentioned in the past in this blog, knowing precisely where and what to purchase:

1. Mini portable projector, purchased for $269 (no tax, no shipping) at B & H Photo, that we will plug into our laptops, find the external hard drive and project the TV show or movie on to a wall for up to an 80″ viewing area.

The manufacturer claims the resolution is so good that one can project a movie on the back of the seat in front of you while flying in an airplane. We shall see about that.

(Please bear with the inconsistent editing on the photos and information from the three items below. Copying and pasting from other websites is discouraged and thus, doing so is cumbersome).

Price: $248.00

Product Highlights

50 Lumens
1024 x 600 Resolution
15,000 Hour LEDs
60+ Minute Battery Charge
Full Function MP4 Player
Full Size HDMI Port
1W Audio

USB Host Reader
Smaller than Two Stacked Smart Phones
Headphone Jack x 1

For the purpose of watching the many movies and TV shows we’re downloading now from Graboid, a web site that, for $19.95 a month, allows downloads of unlimited movies, TVs, and Audiobooks.

We’ve begun the process of downloading videos onto our new “My Passport,” the two terabyte external hard drive we purchased a few days ago at Costco for $159.95 with tax at 9.5% totaled (as mentioned in a previous post), $175.19.

Our new external hard drive, My Passport.

If we download videos, as opposed to streaming, we can watch them without an Internet connection at our own pace.

2. Mini Portable Scanner, purchased from Amazon.com for $196.27, no tax, free shipping. We’ll be keeping records of all of our travel expenses. Traveling with hundreds of receipts for every expense is bulky and ridiculous. Every few days, we’ll wirelessly scan (Bluetooth) all of our receipts directly into the app Evernote on my computer where we’ll keep all of our travel records going forward.

This app is also available on mobile phones. Once we get our new phones, I will download Evernote and be able to scan receipts while sitting in restaurant, right to my smart phone while we’re sitting in the restaurant. Cool, eh? (The printer and scanner will fit into my new purse!)

Doxie Go – Cordless / Mobile
Paper Scanner

by Doxie

1352565734
false
1
17
17
1

List Price:	$199.00
Price:	$196.27 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Deal Price:

Product Features

Doxie Go delivers smart and simple scanning you can take anywhere – no
computer required
Doxie’s tiny size makes it easy to scan at your desk or on the go – just
insert your paper. Scan full color pages in just 8 seconds
Scan up to 600 pages (2400 photos) with built-in memory, or insert an SD
card or USB flash drive for additional storage
Award-winning ABBYY® OCR technology recognizes the text in your document and
creates searchable PDFs
Doxie 2.0 included: Amazing scanners deserve amazing software. Doxie 2.0
syncs scans, creates multi-page stacks, and sends directly to your favorite apps

3. Portable mini printer, purchased at Amazon.com, for $176.51, with no tax and free shipping: Since we won’t be staying in hotels very often (in between cruises for a night) we won’t have access to the hotels printer to print boarding passes, itinerary and copies of our legal documents that some countries require in order to gain entry at the time of arrival. The thought of finding our way to a printer is outrageous both in cost and time. We found a tiny paper storing mini printer that is amazing.

PS900 USB ONLY MOBILE PRINTER
PAPER CARTRIDGE INCL

by Planon
Systems

Be
the first to review this item | Like (1)

Printstik PS900 Portable Thermal Printer

Battery Powered
USB Interface & Charging
Compact & Durable Design
No Ink or Toner

List Price:	$199.00
Price:	$176.51
Deal Price:
You Save:	$22.49 (11%)

We’ll share our own photos once we receive the scanner and printer. Now I am wondering if we’ll need some type of mini sound system since the external hard drive doesn’t have external speakers. But then, maybe the sound will come out of the laptop while it plays. Of course, we’ll test it all before we leave the US in 54 days. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hummm…more on the “to do” list.

Solutions as we wind down..

Posted by worldwide-admin on October 26, 2012 with 0 Comment

Although now sick with the flu, I’ve had no time to rest in an effort to speed my recovery. Forcing myself to continue running around, making phone calls and completing tasks in preparation for leaving Minnesota in five days has been trying.

Tom’s retirement party is tomorrow, Saturday at 5 PM. My voice sounds like Minnie Mouse and I’m weak, coughing and foggy headed. Perhaps, this is Nature’s way of warning me to slow down. Not a good time to teach me a lesson, Mother Nature!

The mailing service, MailLink requires notarization of legal documents with literally no daytime hours for Tom to go to a notary. After speaking with Eric at MailLink he reassured me that there was nothing to worry about.

He suggested we go ahead, sign up, pay the $156 annual fee for the largest mailbox via PayPal to get the documents notarized when we get situated in Scottsdale. In the interim, they won’t be able (due to state laws) to forward our mail until they receive the forms.

Over the past several months I’ve reduced the amount of mail that we receive by contacting the various companies requesting they only send online notifications and statements. Most were able to comply.

In the near future, it appears that snail mail will become a thing of the past as evidenced by the financial difficulties of the USPS. Today’s fast paced technological advances continue to have an enormous effect on the use of paper and mail in general. Perhaps, in time as we travel, we’ll no longer need the services of any form of a mailing service, receiving all communications by email

A portion of Tom’s income from his work will no longer be paid by direct deposit as his paycheck had been over the past many years. This in itself presents a dilemma. How do we get the paper check “mailed” to us into the bank? He requested direct deposit for these payments to no avail.

We considered asking one of our adult children to receive the payments by mail immediately depositing the checks. Realizing how annoying and inconvenient it would be for them with their full and busy lives to be watching for the checks and subsequently depositing them, we decided it was too much of an imposition. We didn’t want that inconvenience ourselves! Why would we impose this on our children?

In speaking with MailLink, they suggested we do what their other clients do in a similar situations:

Use the provided MailLink address as our mailing address
Provide them with deposit slips and mailing envelopes made out to to our bank’s department that handles incoming snail mail deposits.
MailLink opens the envelope, scans a copy of the check to our email, signs the back of the check, “deposit only” and then mail in one of the envelopes provided. No deposit slip is required per this service offered by our bank.
Within 2-3 days the deposit it made into our bank at which point they email us a receipt for the deposit.
Check online banking to verify the receipt of the deposit.

Cumbersome? Yes? Alternative? Hire an accountant or certified money manager and pay $100’s in fees each year? No, thank you.

Next task? Oh, yes, they continue. Insuring our belongings. With the documents signed on the sale of the house, we are ending our homeowners insurance on the day we leave, October 31st. At that point insurance ends on our belongings as well. Today, I will wrap up the details of our new “personal property” insurance.

The estate sale is in progress. Yesterday, the first day, was a bit challenging. It was snowing, the roads were slippery and the wind was whipping at the time the sale was to begin.

At 7:00 am yesterday morning, sick and miserable, I showed up the house to meet with the estate sale people to finalize pricing and details. The wind and sleet on the peninsula felt like a hurricane as I nearly was blown away finding my way from the driveway to the front door in the dark. Somehow, the detector for the exterior lights were turned off.

By 9:00 am, as the sale began, I was visiting with our friend and neighbor two doors down, peeking out the window to witness the caravan of cars driving down the narrow road to examine and hopefully buy “our stuff.” It was hard to watch. I left an hour later for a delightful stress-reducing lunch with the neighbors at our favorite local restaurant, as opposed to the breakfast we had planned earlier. Its so hard to say goodbye. The worst is yet to come.

Once again cocooned in this comfy leather love seat as I write today, my voice is gone, my throat less sore and the cough is slightly better as I prepare for the tasks of yet another day in limbo:

Finalize personal property insurance policy
Go to bank to get extra deposit slips and arrange for the mailing service to send them the pension checks
Pack a box of overflow to be shipped to Scottsdale and held by UPS until we arrive on November 4th.
Check on final details for Tom’s party tomorrow.
Grocery shop and prepare dinner as I have done each evening since moving here last Sunday. After all, a good house guest must earn their keep.

Yep. Five more days.

“Leaving” is bigger than “moving”…

Posted by worldwide-admin on October 22, 2012 with 0 Comment

We are now situated at Karen’s home for the next nine days. Everything for our stay here is unpacked and put away. We’re welcomed by Karen and her two sons with open arms. We haven’t been overnight guest in a friend’s home in almost 20 years. Its an odd feeling. We’d better get used to being in a home “other than our own” based on the upcoming travels.

This move was more work than any move I can ever recall. Under normal circumstances, when moving, one opens a drawer, examines its contents and in a somewhat systematic manner proceeds to fill a box with the drawer’s desired contents and the rest is thrown away. Simple.

Later, the box is moved to the new location, either near or afar, opened to reveal its contents while finding an appropriate spot in the new home. Simple. That’s called “moving.”

Nope, not us! We aren’t “moving”. We’re leaving. Big difference. Here’s how ‘leaving” goes:

Open a drawer, examine its contents
Remove all the contents from the drawer
Consider the resale value of each item
Remove all items of sentimental value
Place items of sentimental value in one of four separate boxes (one for each of our children’s families)
Determine if anything in the drawer is appropriate to travel the world with consideration for usefulness, weight and least of all, it’s desirability.
With all items out of the drawer, wash the interior of the drawer.
Place the items to be kept in containers for future packing
Return all remaining items to drawer in a neat and concise manner
Close the drawer
Scream! Go to the next drawer, closet, cabinet, storage bin, plastic bag, refrigerator, freezer, chest, trunk and repeat the same process, over and over again.

That’s leaving!

In the past few months, finalized in the past few days, we have prepared for the following considerations:

Clothes, medications and supplements, special foods, technology, cords and chargers, toiletries, cosmetics and my special pillow to last us for the nine days here.
All of the above plus comfortable clothes, jackets, cooler, beverages and snacks for the four day road trip which begins in nine days plus…the roof top carrier for the car, yet to be installed.
All of the non-perishable food and supplies purchased at Costco on Saturday for Tom’s upcoming party on Saturday for anywhere from 100-200 guests. I’ll be picking up the food and cake for the party mid-day on Saturday.
Documents, tax receipts, medical records and forms, insurance forms and additional paperwork to attend to in Arizona.
For the two month stay in Scottsdale, Arizona and Henderson, Nevada; everything listed here plus food to purchase while there.
For our upcoming world travels; six suitcases, two carry on bags, a duffel bag of med and supplements, two wheeling carts, two laptop bags, and a purse and a over-sized murse (man purse which Tom hates!).

Done? Yes. Much to our surprise. Exhausted? Yes, but will be better in a few days.

So, I sit here writing this blog in a comfy soft leather love seat, my hot tea in my mug, overlooking the calming lake at Karen’s home, her big fluffy dog Wrigley, sitting at my feet, the chill of fall in the air and for now…I am home.

Product Highlights

Doxie Go – Cordless / Mobile Paper Scanner

Product Features

PS900 USB ONLY MOBILE PRINTER PAPER CARTRIDGE INCL

Doxie Go – Cordless / Mobile
Paper Scanner

PS900 USB ONLY MOBILE PRINTER
PAPER CARTRIDGE INCL