Big News!

This month I celebrated my 50th birthday - wow!  How is it that I’m fifty?  I keep thinking about what I asked my mom when she turned 50…”do you feel any different”.  Her answer then is the same as mine is now…I don’t feel much different…at least yet.  I remember turning 40 and although the number itself didn’t mean much, I sure “felt” 40.  I swear it was in that year that I started to feel like my body was starting to fall apart- aches and pains I never had before despite being in probably the best shape I’ve ever been in at that time.  I remember telling the doctor about some of my “new” issues to which he cheekily responded “welcome to 40!”  I’m hoping 50 doesn’t bring too many new surprises in that regard, but I realize the odds of that are pretty low ha ha.

So, what did I get for my big birthday?  Well me tell you, in addition to some wonderful gifts from family I gave myself the most amazing gift of all.  Early, no correct that …SUPER early retirement!  Yep, after being off on a leave for the past year I came to realize how much I enjoy the freedom we’ve had to travel and do whatever we want.  And, speaking of travel we’re now getting ready for a return snowbird trip to Mexico.  We’ve thankfully secured a spot for the season in the park we were at last winter in Lo de Marcos.  Many of the RV parks are full up again now that travel has returned more to normal so we feel very lucky to have this spot to return to.  We’ll hit the road after the Canadian thanksgiving weekend with plans to arrive at our little slice of paradise by early November.

The next two weeks will be filled with to-do lists, shopping and packing.  This year I have a better idea of what extra Canadian food staples we need to bring like peanut butter, jam, salsa, dill pickles, butter chicken sauce from Costco and some Stagg steak chili (chili omlettes - yum!) as well as an assortment of chocolate bars and of course our Tim Horton’s coffee and K cups.  We will also bring our KitchenAid stand mixer as we plan to bake our own bread this year.  We were less than enthused with the store bought bread we found last year.  I’ve been practicing here at home to get the recipe just right 😉 

We’ll also stop for a few days while travelling through the US so we can stock up on the higher quality dog and cat food that is harder to find and, much more expensive when you do find it in Mexico.  I’ve also spent time reviewing insurance, both vehicle insurance for Mexico and travel medical.  For vehicle insurance we’ll stick with Lewis & Lewis who we went with last year.  Their prices are much more reasonable than other providers - close to $1000 US cheaper than other insurers.  The rebate we get from ICBC for the months we are in Mexico helps to offset this additional cost, but we don’t see that rebate until we return.

For medical insurance we’ll stick with BCAA who we went with last year.  BCAA is known to be one of the more expensive policies, but it’s coverage options ($10 million) and lack of requirement for pre-approval for emergency medical treatment put it over the top for us.  I had reviewed the Costco travel medical available through Manulife, but it has pre-approval requirements and the cost for two individial policies through them was within $100-200 of the cost for the BCAA Travel Medical.  The thought of needing to call them while on the way to the emergency room and needing to get pre-approval for any medical treatment required sounded like added stress.  Of course BCAA only covers reasonable and customary expenses - like all the other plans - but there is no requirement in their policy wording for pre-approval like there is numerous times through the Manulife policy. One change we’ll make though  will be to buy two individual insurance policies instead of a family policy.  We had a family policy last year, I never thought to do quotes individually as family plans were for 2 or more people.  What I learned this year is that by purchasing two individual plans we can save close to $600 Canadian! I’m glad I stumbled on the individual option and confirmed with BCAA that individual plans is the way to go.

I also called to our BC Medical Services Plan folks to confirm the rules for the maximum time we can leave BC without losing our BC Medical.  They confirmed we had to be in BC for 153 days in a calendar year (which equates to roughly 5 months).  Any less than that and we would have to reapply and have a waiting period of up to three months for our BC Medical coverage to be re-instated.  Knowing that, we were able to confirm that so long as we didn’t leave before mid October, we’d be fine.

Some of the other preparations we’ve made are in organizing the inside of the RV.  We built and installed two new shelves which I’m already loving!  One was installed in the big awkward cupboard above the sink.  I swear the manufacturer just forgot to put this shelf in…it was such a PITA cupboard without it.  Now we have much more storage options for dishes and glassware.  I know newer models of our unit now have a shelf in that cupboard.   We also put one in the back bathroom cabinet the washer was in.  It’s a tall deep cupboard and now I’ll have much more space to store bulky items like paper towel, kleenex, toilet paper among other things up top.  For our individual wardrobe closets we put in cube shelving.  We had hanging fabric shelves that hooked to the top bar, but they didn’t hold up well in travel.  These new shelves should stay in place better.  Then we installed Reflectix bubble foil insulation in all our big cupboards.  I used spray adhesive and installed it along the exterior walls and the ceiling to help in adding more insulation in hopes to limit the hot sun beating down on those cupboards when - particularly the pantry cupboard.  And finally, we put brighter cream coloured covers on our recliners and the kitchen benches to lighten it up and also to protect from cat scratches while adding a cat tree to the living room.  See below for some pics.  To see any picture larger just click on it.

New shelves added to kitchen (left) and rear bath (right) cupboards

Reflectix foil insulation in pantry (left) and cube shelving unit in wardrobe (right)
(Check out our pic of Señor Simpson that our friend Bobby in LDM gave us. Love it!)

New cream bench and recliner covers to cover up the drab brown

We are all looking forward to getting on the road again.  Especially HeyZeus who just loves exploring new places.  Even HoseHey is venturing out for a walk now and then showing us he too is ready.  I’m going to keep blogging to capture our adventures, primarily so we can remember what the heck we did, lol!  The blog is a great memory jogger.  “How long did it take us to get from A to B?…I don’t know, check the blog.” 

This time we’re planning to take a different route down, one that will avoid the big busy traffic around Seattle, Tacoma and Portland.  It’ll take us over the Snoqualmie pass in Washington.  Leaving mid October we should hopefully avoid any major white stuff on the pass.  

It’ll be interesting to see how much different this year will be.  With the world economies, a looming global recession and the impact of inflation and our ever decreasing dollar I’ll be curious to see how much we ‘feel’ it down south.  Not to mention the unstable situation overseas.  Inflation is at 10% in Mexico so I expect things will be more expensive than last year, other than fuel which is still where it was last year as far as I’ve read - somewhere around $1.60/litre. I’m sure we’ll see some differences on prices for groceries and restaurants.  

But heh, we’ll be in sunny warm Mexico on a beach sipping a cool cerveza so how bad could it really be? 😎

Until next time / Hasta la proxima vez!