Chad Things

It’s time to bust out my travel gear again. This time i’m going big. Here’s the plan

10/18 Wed – 10/22 Sun — Tahoe for Dusty and Laura’s wedding
10/23 Mon – 11/19 Sun — Driving Cross-Country with Shayna
11/10 Fri – 11/12 Sun — Vegas for rick (flying from chicago, back to DC)
11/19 Sun – 11/20 Mon — San Francisco !! my one pause in 2 months.
11/21 Tues – 12/13 Wed — Costa Rica (wedding 12/9)

2007 – Jan – April — Buenos Aires, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, India etc.

Updates pending …

It’s been a couple months since i updated my huge readership on what i’ve been up to and what i have planned, mainly cuz i’m not anything close to a real writer, but here it is. Basically i spent August in SF preparing for burningman, went to bman for 8 days, and been kickin’ it in SF since, except for a 3 day trip to Yosemite, which OWN3D!!

So yeah, burningman was delicious. I mean that in a rock-out with your art-out kinda way. It was my eighth year, and my best. 2003 is a close second, i prolly had more fun then, but i never really left our boombox camp. This year was well rounded: we had a nice, small camp, met new people and got closer to existing friends, had many nomad adventures where we saw lots of art installations, participated in many camps, found lots of old friends, enjoyed a beverage or twelve, and danced my ass off. Yes, my favorite moment and when i decided it was my best year was on thursday night, dancing to lorin at the root society dome (10:00/esplanade). Other highlights include the belgian waffle, serpent mother, Neverwas Haul – the jules verne steam engine car from 100 years ago, a swimming pool, the pendulum tower ride, war of the worlds, and much more ..

About a week after burningman, shayna and i decided to get some yosemite. Git sum. We came back from bman and decided this real world stuff wasn’t that great. And since shayna had never been to one of the most beautiful and most visited national parks in the country, we had to go. We drove up saturday, stayed in a tent at Curry village for $100, hiked around taft point and sentinel dome on sunday, camped in a tent at lower pines sunday night, and monday embarked on the best day hike i’ve ever done – half dome. It took us almost 12 hours, and it was teh bomb.

So thats where i’ve been. I’ll post where i’m going soon – plans are finally being ironed out this week.

Yeah, I’m insured !! Took me a couple months to sit down and decide what to do, but i finally did it a couple weeks ago and today i got my insurance card in the mail. Hurray. For the record, I spent a half day doing it – reading up on stuff, picking a plan, and applying. For a single healthy guy like me, it wasn’t that hard. Plans start around $60/month and go up past $400/month. There are also tons of sites that let you compare different plans, form the major players to smaller insurance companies. I liked eHealthInsurance.com the best – i applied on 9/7, they sent me email a week later saying i was approved, and got my card a week after that.

The plan i picked is the “PPO Share 2500” plan from Blue Cross of California. For me, thats about $127/month (price is based on location, age, and deductible – see the PDF). That’s a $2,500 deductible, with a $7,500 out-of-pocket limit, $35 copay for doctor visits, $10 copay for generic drugs, and a 30% coinsurance for most other things. That means after i’ve spent $2,500 of my hard-earned cash, Insurance will start to cover 70% of the bill on most things till i’ve spent $7,500, and then they should cover it all. Well, let’s hope so – there’s lots of fine print, not to mention blue cross is shady

Note that this does not include dental or vision – dental was about an extra $30/month, not sure what VSP would have been. I just saw dentist and eye doctor in the spring, i figure i could go a little bit without those. After all, i’m really just getting insurance for catastrophic things that might cost $100,000 or more to fix – i’m not really interested in having insurance pay for little things like teeth cleaning or another pair of glasses. Now I can go do dangerous things like burningman and hike half dome .. oh wait, i already did that.