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Blog Archive 2016 Feb

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Mon Feb 1 = The most significant part of driving home was the snow around the pass/divide at the 4100-foot elevation. I got home about sunset.

Tue Feb 2 = Prime Eye Care this morning: Dr Pyritz noticed little change from last time. Good news.
- On the way home I stopped by the Moon Valley LA Fitness for a 30-minute heavy legs and arms workout. I met and exchanged business cards with Eric Cheroske with Got You Covered, which books entertainment for events.
- I Moon Juiced my five myoporum and my peaked Silver Sage. I think it will survive, but I may have had the landscaper cut it back too much - less than half it's pre-trimming bushiness.

Wed Feb 3 = I sunned a little before noon, went to Dr Travis Lam, my dermatologist, who gave me a clean bill of skin heath, and spent the rest of the day doing a little shopping and finishing packing up to to be ready for the SuperShuttle by 10:30 this evening. This will be the first time I use my carry-on back pack with the new foam dividers I made. My wireless keyboard goes on top to the right and my
Vaio
Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 10, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD
goes under the foam panel to the left.
Foam dividers in backpack

Thu Feb 4 = Heading to the Dominican Republic, my flight to Mimi left Phoenix Sky Harbor on time at 1:55 this morning and landed on time. The plane was a new (6-months old) Airbus 321-S with power outlets at each seat and individual touch-screen monitors on the back of the seats. On the screen you could check lots of things like the plane's speed, altitude and location on a Google Map. We got a good introduction to its latest technology with the safety announcement, which was mostly unintelligible garble - even after they restarted it several times. The snack trays were double fold, which kept them above the knees, giving the illusion that you had more space than you really did.
- At the airport, POP at Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, there was a mix-up so Honey Taxi (809 320-7621 - $.03/min w Google Voice from Phoenix) did not take me to Las Terrenas for the agreed-upon US$144. Instead Bolivar Capellan of Taxi Sousua (809 772-5776), along with his wife, took me to my hotel (Playa Caribe in Las Terrenas for US$170. I gave him a US$5 tip since It took longer than expected for my grocery shopping in Cabarete.
- My hotel, Hotel Playa Caribe (1 809-240-6661, Chalet #2), is economical and interesting: a good deal in my book. The non-frost-free refrigerator had a horribly loud rattle until I wedged an empty water bottle between its condenser coil and the wall. I have my own porch with a wooden table and chairs, all painted light blue. The Great room (a large kitchen with a couch and flat-screen TV in one end) has white resin chairs and a light-blue-painted wooden table. "The CFL that swings from the ceiling fan is in a temporary light socket.
light socket Although the neutral wires are just twisted together, they went all out and connected the hot wires with a wire nut. The bedroom has one queen bed, a ceiling fan that does not work and AC that DOES work. I keep it between 25 & 28° C.
- Since my kitchen had no can opener I asked the lady at the bar if I could borrow hers.
Opened Can
She took my can of mixed vegetables to the back room where I heard her hit it with a hammer or something then came back and handed me the opened can. I'm sorry I couldn't see her in the act. I ended up buying a hand can opener the next day - the best one I have ever had!
- I Gargled & flushed my sinuses due to the proximity of people on the plane from foreign germ fields. Otherwise I could come down with a cold.
- I took tonight experimenting to figure how to sleep here. First was trying sleeping with nothing on: covers, clothes, AC or fan (which does not work anyway): got a little cool and a mosquito kept me company. Next was turning on the AC and hiding with the sheet over my head and face, and later an added light bed spread. During that time I got about four mosquito bites, including from those that got under the sheet.
- I found the apparent winning combination: Sleeping with the sheet and spread up to my neck but not over my head. I received no mosquito bites the rest of the night. I had read that mosquitoes use the exhaled CO2 of mammals to find their targets. Thus my new theory: Putting covers over my head concentrated the CO2 which made me easy to find. Breathing out in the open, allowed the CO2 to dissipate so I was not a target. I got almost 10.5 hours of sleep, but was still tired from last nights red eye flight.

Fri Feb 5 = I did a walk/jog to Punta Popy twice today, even in a little rain, looking for my friend, Alex Soto of Kite Life. I later found that he had gone out there also, looking for me. On one walk I saw 14 guys wearing Speedos, which makes more comfortable wearing my little ones.
- Things got complicated this afternoon. I walked almost a mile to a Claro cell phone store to get a SIM chip and activate my phone. They reminded me that I needed my passport. So I walked back to the hotel for it. Going back to Claro, I took a Motoconcho, but could not pay him until we first went to a bank (People's) to get RD pesos; then to Claro where I got the SIM card and bought 500 pesos of time which will give me 5000 minutes of talk time for four weeks. That will work out well since I am staying only three weeks and have Wi-Fi at the hotel. So far I am glad I tried Claro this time. It seemed to be easier than with Orange, which is the carrier I used last time I was here.
- Then I went to the One Love Surf Shack at Pueblo de los Pescadors, hoping to see Tony, the owner. He was out, so I had a smoked salmon bagel sandwich for supper while I waited. Never saw Terry, but I DID leave one of my comedy business cards with my new Dominican Republic phone number, 1 849-401-1856. After I finished eating, I made my first DR phone call: to Alex Soto. We'll plan on meeting up tomorrow around noon, after he phones me.
- I stayed up late finishing some projects on my website: adding 2 and 5-month hand pictures to the hurt hand section of my July, 2015 web page, and updating with pictures of my flight here and the hotel.

Sat Feb 6 = Got up about 11:30am, late with my phone on in case Alex called. A little after noon I went up to the third-story top deck and sunned for 10 minutes on a side. The gracious people from Santo Domingo, staying in the pent house and celebrating the mother's birthday, invited me for some BBQ pork ribs. Good food and good company. Juan Pablo, one of the 30-something guys, worked in the tech department of Claro. His brother (I think) works at a building materials company.
- Genius at work here... or maybe getting smart in my old age. There were a couple of doors in my chalet that were a pain, only latching after turning their knobs, rather by just closing them. I had no lubricant... until I thought of the waxed dental floss I had just purchased. Now those doors close like a dream, after rubbing the latch bolts and striker plates with some floss.
- I never got a phone call from Alex Soto. We were supposed to get together around noon and he was going to have someone fix a leaky bladder in my 12m Epic Screamer.
- I enjoyed a walk/jog from the hotel to Punta Popy and visiting with some Canadians on the way back. I believe their names were Cami and Jerry. I went to bed early (9:40pm) for a change.

Sun Feb 7 = I think what they were telling me is Spanish at the bar this morning that, being in chalet #2, I was not entitled to the free continental breakfast, so I fixed my nutritions breakfast with milk and Nestle Fitness whole wheat cereal instead.
- Today's trip involved a motoconcho ride to a hardware store, some walking around and a motoconcho ride back to the hotel, where I did a poo, took a shower and put some Vaseline on a bothersome haemorrhoid that reared it's ugly head about three days ago. While walking around, I had found several hardware (ferreteria) stores (most closed because it's Sunday), the good gym I went to last time I was here (closed because it's Sunday) and a number of little grocery and apparel stores and such. I did NOT find a black felt hat, cottage cheese or a vinyl repair kit.
- I took the leaky strut bladder out of my 12m Epic Screamer and found leaks around my previous patch from Phoenix. Drying out the bladder under the ceiling fan, I concluded that the fan's #3 setting is not safe due to the wobble, sound and dangling light. I sat out on the porch just long enough to read some of Chasing Daylight, eat half a sandwich and and be attacked by four mosquitoes before I came back inside. Miserable!
- This evening I went across the road to the beach side of Hotel Playa Caribe and saw some awesome Salsa dancing. How graceful, smooth and complicated. I don't know how they do it without colliding. After several short power outages, I was impressed with the hotel when they fired up their generator.

Mon Feb 8 = This afternoon I went next door to the east of the hotel and met Luiz who is with the diving school that is associated with Danny and LT Kites. Later during my beach walk/run I met Luis, one of the instructors for Kite Zone, which operates from Punta Popy. He was on an SUP, waiting for tomorrow's wind - we hope. At Punta Popy I measured the average wind at 9mph gusting to 10.
- The big project this afternoon was Sasa, coming to repair a leaky strut bladder. It took several tries, but it appears he has it. At least it is guaranteed for one week. I had had a blow-out. Tue Feb 9 = This morning I found a new gym, thanks to a motoconcho who wasn't familiar with El Gimansio Forma y Ntricion where I worked out last time I was here. The new gym, One Gym Las Terrenas, or as the sign out front says, Gym Delany does not have as good of equipment or as much space, but is 1/4 the price at RD$30 a day instead of RD$120. Also it is above a thrift store, which is cool... and close to Supermercado Lindo where I buy most of my groceries. One Gym is new, having been open a year, and is operated by Guillermo, who speaks English quite well. - Back on the street, at a little shop, I agreed to buy a bunch of bananas for 25 pesos. The guy cut the bunch off the hanging stem of a banana tree with his machete. As he was putting the bunch into a bag, he noticed that one of the bananas had a little split down the side, so he put in an extra banana for me. It is gratifying when you meat someone who tries to go out of his way to be honest and considerate. I ended up walking about a mile around down town Las Terrenas and to the tourist area near Pueblo de los Pescadores and the beach.
- Not everyone tries to go out of his way to be honest and considerate. A motoconcho agreed to take me a short distance to my hotel for RD$25, but tried to charge me RD$50 when we got to the hotel. He refused my RD$25 and drove off in a huff. If he was trying to make me feel guilty he was partially successful because guilt seems to be in my nature. I'll try to not spend my extra 56¢ frivolously.
- Around 4pm I got my stuff together and took a motoconcho out to Portillio and did about 20 minutes of kiteboarding with a harness that LT Kites graciously loaned me, since I forgot mine. The wind wasn't very good (12 avg G14mph) so I mostly just mowed the lawn. This was my first kiteboarding since I about lost some fingers doing SUP the last time I was here (PHOTOS).
- This evening I got my multi-source video/audio editing mostly figured out with Cyberlink's Power Director 14, using a 48-second test video, combining two video tracks and four audio tracks.

Wed Feb 10 = Breakfast this morning was across the road at the Hotel Playa Caribe beach-side restaurant. My usual two scrambled eggs, black pepper, hot water, toast, margarine, jam, and juice went well with the delightful conversation of John and Laurette. John, who I met yesterday morning, is American from Las Vegas, NV and Laurette is French, now living in Copenhagen. - I spent about four hours combining four audio and two video tracks into a single two-camera production - my first real such production for other than a test. Some of the audio tracks did not synchronize well. I think they were at slightly different speeds. I ended up duplicating the microphone monophonic audio in the left channel to both L & R channels and mixing that with the stereo sound from my Panasonic camera for the audience audio.
- Before supper I inflated my 12m kite outside on the grass between the trees to make sure I was not imagining things yesterday when it appeared that the strut that Sasa fixed yesterday still had a slow leak. Leak confirmed. I phoned him. He said he'll be here at 10am tomorrow to fix the problem.

Thu Feb 11 = This morning I let Jeffrey at the front desk know that the shower wand was leaking as much water out the back by the hose as it was from the sprayer. (Apparently the maids do not check the rooms to see if everything is working properly). Within an hour their maintenance guy, Thelux Damas, had installed a brand new hose and sprayer bracket. Thanks guys!
- Sasa came and took the leaky strut bladder out of my 12m Epic Screamer, took it home to repair (again) and returned with it about two hours later. He folded the bladder into a phone book, saying it needed to set until tomorrow when he would return and install it.
- It was windy enough to do a little kiting, but not enough for the only working kite I have, my 8m Best Nemesis. Anyway I walked the third mile out to Punta Popy with it and my other stuff. I rented a 13m kite from Arnold of Kite Life for an hour and had a decent ride. Not enough wind to do anything special, but enough to stay upwind from Punta Popy and mostly away from the coral reefs, on which I scraped a fin a couple of times.
- This evening I finished processing more comedy appearance audio/video combinations. I learned that my Panasonic camera and Sony ICD-PX312 digital recorder synchronize pretty well, at least with a five-minute video. Also that my CC Witness runs a little bit faster, so is only good for syncing short segments. My Samsung Galaxy SII cell phone is even faster, so does not sync well.
- I have been getting to bed a little earlier, around 11pm, a good thing for me. I made a few adjustments and believe I have found how to get the best sleep:

Fri Feb 12 = Breakfast this morning was the usual, at a table shared by Guy from Quebec. He is probably a little older than me. After breakfast, about 10:00, I took a beach walk/run to Punta Popy where I measured the wind averaging 13 G15 mph. Back at the hotel I let Jeffrey, at the front desk,s know that the left wall-mounted light in the bedroom above the bed was fluttering and making a little arcing sound. Thelux, the maintenance man, got it fixed after two tries. Thanks, guys! Thelux wrote his name for me because I was having difficulty understanding it. It appears that most everyone here writes in cursive.
- Sasa did not get my 12m Epic Screamer strut bladder repaired today. Fortunately there was enough wind for my 8m Best Nemesis. I took a motoconcho out to Portillo. The driver evidently was not familiar with the kiteboarding location so went a lot further, making it an increasingly uncomfortable ride for me holding my wake board cross-wise between us and wearing my 8m back pack with harness and helmet dangling off the back of it. When I finally got him to turn around, with my limited Spanish and his limited English, he was running low on gas. He had no money, so I paid the gas lady my RD$100 fare for his gas. When we finally got to the kiteboarding place, he had the audacity to try to charge me an extra DR$100 for his getting lost.
- The gas lady was interesting case. Her sign was a little table out by the road with a plastic gallon jug of gasoline sitting on it. She would use a little plastic funnel to pour some gasoline from the gallon jug into a wine bottle, from which she would pour it into the motorcycle's gas tank. You could tell the lady really enjoyed her work, as she took every opportunity to smell the fumes from the funnel and the wine bottle.
- Although there were more kiters there, Portillo was a good choice as opposed to the closer, Punta Popy. The wind was a little better, the launch is wider and there is not as much coral reef near the shore. The disadvantage is that I can not walk there, as I can to Punta Popy. I used my new Garmin Vivoactive for the first time kiteboarding. I rode my 8m Best Nemesis for an hour, with a maximum speed of 16.0 mph, covering 7.71 miles
- I kiteboarded, again, before supper at Punta Popy until the chicken line broke and my kite fell out of the sky. I didn't expect THAT line to break. Fortunately I was not too far from the point, was upwind from it and not over a coral reef. Several of the local kiteboarders stopped by to ask me if I was OK and one of them took my kite to the beach for me. Thanks, guys!
- I have decided to spend my comedy time working on my full-length routine rather than trying to adapt some stuff to Spanish, of which I would probably do a poor job anyway.
- After supper I went straight through my full-length routine: took 50 minutes. I think I'll concentrate on some of the rough spots and try to do it again in a day or two. I typed up some joke notes from last night's digital recordings and worked out an idea to try synchronizing audio clips of different speeds.
- Went to bed tired and happy. Tomorrow is going to be getting some line to replace the broken one my kite bar.

Sat Feb 13 = At 10:20 this morning I found out that the hotel's breakfast cuts off at 10:00. Breakfast plan B, Nestle Fitness Fiber, worked well.
- This morning Sasa brought my bladder back. We found three small leaks around the patched are. He returned later and had it down to one small leak, which he patched with my patch. Toward evening I inflated the main and leaking strut. After two hours the strut had lost a little bit of air, but was not really soft. I think I'll let well enough alone at this point.
- I snaked my kite line out on the grass, under the trees and across a sidewalk in front of my villa and removed the 12" line that broke. The line is looped back through itself three places as anchor points. I don't know if I'll be able to duplicate that - especially because the most similar line I could find has a solid core. I checked three hardware stores before I found anyone who had line at all.
- After the hardware store I went next door to El Gimansio Forma y Ntricion's, the gym where I worked out last year. They raised their rates to RD$125/day. I talked them into letting me use just the downstairs weights and machines for RD$100. It was good to see familiar faces.
- About supper time I did a walk/jog to Punta Popy, where they were having a big expo with lots of vendors and... kiteboarding. Unfortunately there was not much wind so there were only about five kiteboarders out - pros with big (15m) kites. They were pretty entertaining, though.
- This evening I downloaded my checking statement, caught up on this blog and was unable to worke out a way to synchronize audio and video from sources of slightly different speeds.

Sun Feb 14 = This morning there was a cold north wind (had to put on a T-shirt) and not much the rest of the day. I organized the new chicken line for my RRD kite bar. The 1/4" line that I bought yesterday is a little larger than necessary, but is actually two concentric braids. When I separated the two, I had two lines - the outside one perfect - even for attaching the clam cleat with its two screws at the top.
- For comedy, I tweaked and resequence my 2016 Full Show Routine and matched the order with my Trigger Outline.
- About 5pm I headed out to the point with my kite stuff, sans bar, and arrived just in time for a good little rain shower. Since they were having a special event everyone huddled under the vendors' umbrellas, tents and even under a table. I shared a big umbrella with the French-speaking group from Chilli. I met the guy yesterday. After the rain there was not much wind, so I returned home, fixed supper and went through my full show routine. Took about an hour.

Mon Feb 15 = We had two brief (10-minutes or so) power outages early this morning. Breakfast was with Guy, again, at the little hotel cafe. - The Internet here is not very good. Frequently I have to try several times to upload a single web page to my website, and it took two days of trying to finally get a Leo Laporte podcast to download. I've been working for five days on his next podcast.
- This morning in my hotel room I fell on my left butt-cheek bone from about two feet on the ceramic tile floor, trying to get up. I was sitting on the floor on a pillow working on the new chicken line for my RRD kite bar. From sitting Indian style, I swung myself forward like I used to do when I was younger, but not far enough forward and fell back down, missing the pillow.
- At noon I went up to the roof-top deck and sunned for 10 minutes on a side and then did a beach jog out to Punta Popy. On the way I visited with some old guys (all three younger than me) and measured the wind at about 8-12 mph with an average of 10. Out at the point I caught Sasa's kite for him and got acquainted with Shon, who said I was welcome to use any of their kite equipment. Good guys. I think they both are connected with Alex Sosa and Arnold of Kite Life.
- Back in my hotel I fixed lunch while I iced my left butt-cheek. Checking the mirror, I saw no bruising. I spent most of the afternoon catching up on this blog. Before supper I hiked to Punta Popy with my 12m Epic Screamer and equipment, found little wind and no kiteboarders, visited a little and returned to my hotel for supper.
- This evening I resolved my checking account ON THE FIRST TRY and filled in some new sections of my Full Show comedy routine.
- Since I will not have to stay up late for comedy, I am going to try to go to bed and get up at the SAME TIME each night for the rest of my stay here in he Dominican Republic. We'll see if I wake up with a little more energy. It's worth a try.

Wed Feb 16 = This morning in the shower I leaned over for the soap and raised up, bumping my right shoulder on the faucet and breaking the skin. Fortunately I had an occlusive bandage for it.
- I did a little comedy writing this morning and worked on my full routine this evening.
- This afternoon, instead of doing shopping, I took a motoconcho out to the Portillo kiteboarding point. The driver and I programmed our respective phone numbers. He wants to make sure I call him for the ride back.
- While I was waiting for the wind to come up, I jogged almost a mile to the next point west and visited with a French couple who was watching a single kite lesson, mostly with the kite in the water due to lack of wind.
- Kiteboarding was pretty good by 3pm when it picked up a little and lost the southerly component to its east wind. I had two sessions with my 12m Epic Screamer and AXIS Vanguard 132 x 41cm twin-tip board. The first session I worked mostly on jumps and, of course, avoiding the reefs. The second session I worked up to a few down-loop transitions and, since I remembered to put on my Garmin Vivoactive, I knew I had gone 4.78 miles in 35 minutes with a maximum speed of 11.9 mph. Lots of people out there - seemed to be more French speakers than anything else; except, of course, Spanish. A nice lady, whose son is taking kiteboarding lessons, loaded up her SUV with me, another guy and our equipment and took us into town. Thanks!
- I really need to take time to be more observant. I was carrying my kite bag and special light-weight flying sandals in my hand and almost to the lady's SUV when I switched my kite bag to the other hand and noticed I was missing a sandal. I put my kite bag down and jogged all the way back to our kiting spot and back, finding no sandal. It was on the ground under my kite bag... DUH! With my earlier jog and kiteboarding, I got more than enough exercise today.
- I am experimenting (my whole life is an experiment) with my sleeping patterns now. I was really tired about 9pm, probably from all the sun and exercise today. Instead of going to bed early, I stayed up until 11pm to keep a consistent sleeping schedule. Staying up probably wasn't a good idea, as I got up three times during the night to pee and had only between one and three hours of sleep at a stretch. Also I had a mild headache toward the last.

Wed Feb 17 = The big trip this afternoon included looking in lots of stores for a felt black hat (none in the Dominican Republic), doing a heavy full-body workout at the Gym Delany, and some shopping for groceries.
- This evening I prepared for and then did my full comedy routine from the trigger notes. The whole thing took about two hours, but the actual routine, taking out my pauses, took about 48 minutes.
- As I headed to bed I noticed that I had scraped my right shin sometime today. To bed at 11:11.

Thu Feb 18 = This morning was a working breakfast at the hotel cafe, with Joke Writing by Sally Holloway on my phone and Kindle and a paper and pen. I have read a fourth of the book and have not yet done Sally's exercises on paper, so this morning I looked up all the exercises and will start them: things like: - I found a new grocery store today, Supermercada El Pola, or Super Pola as they say on their grocery bags. It is a little farther than Supermercado Lindo, but seems to have a wider selection. A shopper from Canada said that she thought the prices were better also.
- I had two loose stools today. Can't figure what caused the condition. I'll try laying off the prunes (4-6/day) and increasing my psyllium a little. I bought the prunes on accident and you know me, hate to waste anything. Hopefully having some yogurt on a piece of bread this evening will help.
- My evening routine is to check the wind forecast and to refill tomorrow's five, half-liter water bottles from my 5-gallon jug. Drinking water costs me about 3% this way... and I save a lot of plastic containers.
- In the comedy department I worked up 16 word webs, Sally Holloway style, with words from the trigger outline of my full routine. Thus I added four jokes to my routine. I tweaked the routine and then it was bedtime, with no time to go through it.

Fri Feb 19 = One of the ladies in the little kitchen specializes in saying, "No." She is the one, when I first arrived, that said I was not entitled to my included breakfast, until Jeffrey set her straight. This morning she said that I could not have three scrambled eggs - only two. Yesterday I got three eggs that even had some tomatoes and stuff in them. This morning's two eggs were just plane.
- For my working breakfast this morning, I planned out a spreadsheet similar to what I did with graph paper two years ago to keep track of all the dates of my spring
OBX
Hatteras Island and the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina
 trip, cities and comedy stops. This coordinates dates with locations. When I got back to my villa, I created the spreadsheet and started putting in some proposed appearances.
- It was windy most of the day. I jogged out to Punta Popy where the wind was 14 average gusting to 17, so I took my 12m kite out to Portillo where the wind was 17, gusting to 19. I had plenty of power with the kite fully depowered. About 1:30pm in the first session I went 2.47 miles, was out for 27 minutes with a maximum speed of 13.0 mph. The wind decreased a little and averaged 16, gusting to 18 so I took another ride: short, lasting only about 10 minutes, because I was a little chilly: no sun and a little light rain. I got acquainted with and kited with Desmond from Toronto.
- The world is full of nice people. Franci took me, along with some young boys, the 2 miles from Portillo to my hotel in his pick-up truck. He switched to moto (motorcycle) at Kite World. Thanks, Franci.
- This evening I went through my full stand-up comedy routine using my trigger notes. The 53-minute routine took me 1:10, including pauses for taking notes. I capped off the evening with an ice cream sandwich treat: Haggen Dazs chocolate ice cream and a piece of bread.

Sat Feb 20 = Lots of effort to accomplish nothing, except some good will. This afternoon I took a motoconcho out to Portillo Point with both of my kites (8 & 12). The wind was sort of between the two, so I got my 8m Best Nemesis all set up. Before I got out with it, the wind decreased so I put up my 12m Epic Screamer. By the time I got it up in the air, there was barely enough wind to keep it up. Definitely not enough to ride.
- Heading back to town, Andre, a Frenchman on a motor scooter, took me with my two kites and board the two miles back to my hotel, as he said, FOR FREE, just to be helpful. It was particularly helpful since it was about to rain some more. Andre teaches French to Haitian kits at a school here in Las Terrenas. Like I say, the world is full of nice people.
- This evening I condensed my 3-page trigger outline down to one 4x6 card. It will be interesting to see what things I forget as a result. Going through the routine took an hour, including pauses for oral note-taking.
- I was going to start going to bed at 9:00 in preparation for Friday's early-morning trip to the Puerto Plata Gregorio Luperon Airport for my early-afternoon departure for the U.S. I got to bed a little after 9:30, with the comedy and all. Still not too bad.

Sun Feb 21 = I got almost no physical exercise today. I DID walk accross the road a couple times to look out to Punta Popy for kites. None. no wind.
- Problem solved: A man here at the hotel must be a wheeler-dealer - probably from Italy. Almost daily he carries on long, LOUD, phone conversations with his cell phone while walking around out front. It is like he is yelling so they'll hear him across the ocean - distracting, even if I can't understand anything. I thought about recording some of it and playing it back so he would realize how obtrusive he was being. Better, and simpler, was taking my computer out and working on my porch. The man took his loud conversation across the patio to the office area and even quieted down a little.
- Speaking of my computer and comedy, I spent most of this morning and half the afternoon pouring over the audio recording and going over my audio notes from last night's full show in my bedroom.
- At 4:08 this morning I got the bright idea to look in the recycle bin of my computer for the comedy business cards files that I have been unable to find for about a month. I found them there this afternoon :)
- This evening my comedy routine was 57:26, using the 4x6 abbreviated note card. I recorded it with four different media. Still working on the media angle.

Mon Feb 22 = Today I figured my exit money, the amount in additional local currency that I need to finish paying for my hotel, tips, motoconchos etc. That ammounts to RF$40,000, which I'll have to get in four withdrawals over two days, due to the limitations of Popular Bank, here.
- I found that I can make relatively inexpensive phone calls to the US and also send and receive text messages with my Claro cell phone account here in the Dominican Republd. I'll plan on arriving at my gate at the airport on Thursday with calling time left in case the flight is overbooked or cancelled. I'll try to spend the last minutes before they have us shut off our phones, visiting friends and family.
- This evening I worked on my road trip schedule for late April. Tonight I woke up with a sore throat so did a salt-water gargle with some salt that I brought on the trip.

Tue Feb 23 = Today was for getting things ready to pack. I got my two wet, sandy kites, kite bags, harness and board washed off, and even mostly dry, in spite of the rain showers a little before noon. They'll spend the rest of the day and tonight inside under the ceiling fan set on high. They should all be ready to pack tomorrow morning.
- This afternoon's full comedy routine took an hour and two minutes, even with accidentally leaving a few things out, using a 4x6 note card. I recorded the routine with five media devices. Coordinating all that will give me something to work on.
- I read some reviews and have pretty well decided to get a new, modern, smart phone, a Huawei Nexus 6P - one of the best... until the next later and greater phone comes out.

Wed Feb 24 = I spent most of the morning in the open-air restaurant area updating my website and finishing up some Internet stuff. At noon I sunned on the roof deck and then did my last beach run. In the early afternoon got my golf bag packed at 49.0 pounds.

Thu Feb 25 = I hate it when automation takes control. Especially when I don't realize it. It wasn't until 6 this morning that I checked my flight's departure time with the paper printout in my suitcase. The automatic Google calendar showed it departing at 1:30, Phoenix time. That is 4:30 local, Atlantic Standard Time! So I got up way early and got to the airport three hours early - six hours before my flight. I did meet Harold Morris, the helpful young agent who helped me get bumped with a $1000 travel voucher when I flew out from here last August 4th.
- After sacking out for 45 minutes on the floor by a wall with all my stuff, I was checking outlets for power when a little old gentleman, Vicente Polanco offered me a little desk and rickety office chair in the little CESAC office (maybe connected with security) to work on this blog and website. The world is full of nice people... or maybe they just feel sorry for old ugly guys who sleep on the floor.
- I had a lot of fun at Gate #5 with Mike and Cathy from Wisconsin and their friends, two other couples, from New Hampshire. Their flight left about an hour before mine from the same gate. We laughed a lot and talked about almost everything, including, of course, kiteboarding and comedy.
- The flight home was pretty-much non-eventful. I learned something about immigration in Miami. If you're TSA Precheck, even if you're told to, don't check in at the immigration kiosk because you will just be wasting the machine time and your own time. Go directly to the Precheck kiosk. That's what the immigration guy told me as he took my duplicated paperwork.
- In Phoenix I experienced the smoothest touch-down ever, followed by the hardest application of brakes ever. When we opened the overhead compartments, everything was packed against the front bulkheads.
- Got home just fine about 1:30am, Friday morning.

Fri Feb 26 = With this odd-ball schedule and the three-hour time difference (I had gotten up at 5:30 yesterday morning AST and gotten to bed at 2am this morning AST) I mostly relaxed today after getting up relatively early, at 8:59am MST.
- As I mentioned previously, the old blue pump for my van's running water system quit working while I was in San Diego. I couldn't find a duplicate anywhere in the world.
Pump
Today I found and ordered this little replacement pump. It will go in the modified jerry can I use to provide running water for my van.
Pump

Sat Feb 27 = In the brain department, I made a string of icon symbols for my full comedy show. If I can visualize them, it might help wean me from my trigger notes.
- Speaking of triggers, I'm pulling the trigger on a new Nexus 6P cell phone and pulling the plug on Straight talk. I did my final N6P research and requested an invite from Google fi. Here are Coverage Maps & address lookup for Google fi cell phone service coverage. Fi operates on the Sprint and T-Mobile backbones. It seamlessly switches to the network or Wi-Fi which has the strongest signal.
- Tonight I went to the House of Comedy to see Harland Williams, along with Ron Morey as the host and Court McCown as the feature. Both Ron and Court duplicated most of what I saw the next day on their websites. Repeating material is something that always concerns me. After the show I got acquainted with Ron and told him about
Duet
The organization I support which provides support for caregivers, among other things

Sun Feb 28 = This afternoon I went down to the Irish Cultural Center in central Phoenix for the Duet Partners Reception. They've got a lot of history there. We learned a lot about the significance of the Irish.
- On the way home I stopped by the Northern Ave LA Fitness for a light full-body workout to get back in the groove and then by Winco Foods and Bashas cuz I'm running out of food, having tried to use up all my food here at home before leaving for the Dominican Republic on February 4th.
- I ordered a Western Digital WD 2TB White My Passport Ultra Portable External SSD Hard Drive, WDBBKD0020BWT-NESN. It's just a little thing at 4.3 x 3.2 x 0.8 inches. My
Vaio
Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 10, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD
is sort of filling up with all the audio and video files from my comedy and I need to offload some of them.
- Speaking of the Vaio, it has become really unstable. It goes to sleep with only a few minutes of non-use, the locations of windows changes, file associations keep changing and the desktop icons move around a lot. I need to restore the computer to factory original and start over... if I can find time to do it.

Mon Feb 29 = By this morning I got my mental icon outline for my full comedy routine down to under three minutes. Hard work for me.
- Happy birthday, Sheila! That's my cousin. Today is here 20th birthday and she's 80 years old.
- I organized and sent an email off to Design-A-Shirt for an order of 12 new shirts. I am in the process of switching from 100% cotton to a blend. I'm going to try 100% polyester for myself, hoping that they will look new longer. The 100% cotton shirt that I have been wearing since I designed it nine months ago, May 19th, is getting faded and the design is cracking. It was a heat-applied stencil design. We'll see how the polyester shirts with a silk-screened design compare in my fade tests.
- I received an invite to Google fi and pursued it until their website locked up on the address screen.
- I got an email from and made phone contact with Martha Wollner, Senior Story Producer at Very Real Casting, a New York company specializing in finding stories from the lives of real people from around the world. She is working on a project for the AARP. We had a fun visit. We'll see if there is any interest in my story.
- Tonight I went through my full routine of 1:02. I had to refer to my notes about four times and was a little horse at the end. I'll have to work on those two angles.

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