The day before leaving for our Europe trip, I posted about COVID cases in Italy and France. At that time, it appeared that the case count in each country was trending downwards. I did not continue checking during our trip. After testing positive for COVID upon our return from Paris, I just updated the case data.
ItalyFrance
Coincidentally, the COVID case count started to increase just as we left for our trip on June 5th. I am unsure whether I would have changed anything if I had this data available, since I am unsure where I contracted the virus. Perhaps be more careful and wear a mask on the flights back from Paris?
For LA County, the case count was stable to slightly decreasing. It does seem that the US lags European trends by a few months so maybe the count will decrease then spike up again?
This is important because my work wants everyone to return to the office. I thought I had an exemption due to taking immunosuppressive medication, but HR said I now need a doctor’s note. This is after spending over a decade as part of company management.
On our last day in Paris, we visited the flagship Louis Vuitton store on Champ Élysées. As you can see from the photo, there are at least five stories of luxury goods. I am a typical cheap Chinese male, so I do not own anything with a high-end designer label. There was a line to get in the door, only because each party was assigned a personal shopper to assist you in choosing your perfect purse, wallet, clothing, or whatever.
Here is the line at the side of the building. It moved quickly; we were in line for only about 15 minutes. I was a bit worried that they would not let me in the door.
Here is the entrance from the inside. I did not take a lot of pictures as no one else was, and it seemed inappropriate. But I did get a pic of some shoes. There was no price tag, but I would not buy them.
My sister’s family bought some stuff. My 15-year-old niece bought a small $1,300 purse. Wow, I know it is a long time ago, but all my possessions did not cost even $500 when I was fifteen. They also had some issues with payment since you needed a passport for VAT refunds, and I believe the store reports sales to the buyer’s national tax authorities. Initially they did not bring their passports, then they did not have matching passports and credit cards for the same person. I ended up having to get all their passports and wallets from the hotel so the purchase will go through. In total, it took about three hours. We were offered beverages but none of us asked for anything. I wonder if they have Dom Perignon available.
I am back from my 16-day Europe trip. The trip went mostly well except for one “day from Hell” where we could not get a taxi or van to our Eiffel Tower tour, and we missed our Louvre tour since the tour agency changed the meeting place without notifying us. We also had to walk forty minutes back to our hotel at midnight after a night tour since all the taxis were full during that time.
The food in Italy was great, but we ate a lot of pasta and pizza. We did not eat any French food since our schedule was so packed, and most French restaurants near our hotel were expensive and had non-children-friendly menus. We did eat dinners at a Japanese and a Vietnamese restaurant; prices were like what we have here in Orange County.
We also walked a lot. Some of it was due to the many walking tours, but there was also walking in airports, train stations, and just in general since we did not have our cars. Here is the log from Apple Health app.
On WFH days, there is not much walking since I am in my house all day. Starting June 5th, you can see a significant increase in the daily number of steps. The 17,688 day was the night walking tour and having to walk from Notre Dame to the Louvre (hotel area) at night.
On the health side, I was mostly okay except for two medium intensity neuropathy attacks. We did spend $1,500 on travel insurance, but it was worth the peace of mind. My sister’s entire family tested positive for COVID this morning (day after trip), but I tested negative so far. I still need to test for a few more days, and self-quarantine due to close-contact or exposure to COVID infected persons.
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One other health related item. I packed the wrong medication before the trip, so I had way too much Rosuvastatin and no Metoprolol. Since i did bring Losartan, it was not a big deal to miss the medication for two weeks.
Since our flight is tomorrow night at 9:20 pm, we were able to go online to check-in and print boarding passes. Or so we thought. My sister tried to get it at their house and got sidetracked by a request for COVID vaccination verification. I have been getting several emails from British Airways and it is very unclear what is happening. The oddest thing is that I received an email from BA, but the content is different on my iPhone and browser on my Mac. Timestamp and message subject are the same, but the text is different. I do not even understand how that happens. One message said to sign in and verify documents, while the other says verification failed and I need to do it at the airport tomorrow. When I do go online, the website says still processing. Weird.
Since my sister booked a code-sharing flight on American Airlines, we must do some of the check-in on British Airways website. I believe my seat is okay, but my sister’s seat was reassigned. However, if you look on the BA website, the confirmation and the seat selection pages show different values for her. Also, if you go to the AA website, there are also different seat assignments, plus the seat assignment page has a third seat number. How can that be? We also cannot find the seating map on BA’s website. The original booking said the plane was a 77W. That designation does not exist on BA’s website, and none of the plane seat maps matches what we see when we go to choose seats. We did see a seat map on Aerolopa that matches the seat selection diagram on BA’s website but was for a 77H.
It is not an exaggeration to say that evne though we are checked in (I think), we do not know where our seats are. I would guess the boarding pass if most accurate, but both airline’s websites do not agree.
I used to fly a lot pre3-COVID and pre-dialysis. I have never see so much confusion about seat selection and online check-in. My sister is waiting for a callback from American Airlines; the wait time was 90 minutes. Fairly sure they will tell her to call British Airways tomorrow.
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My sister said she was able to talk to someone from British Airways. They did say she and one of my nieces were bumped from their confirmed seats, though they could not or would not tell my shyster why. They also said there was a row of reserved seats at the back of the section used for this purpose. Unfortunately, the first row of business class is right next to the bathrooms, and the back row has basinets behind the bulkhead. We are going even earlier to the airport tomorrow to see if we can get our original seats back. I think someone with their top tier frequent flyer program wanted the seats we had, and British Airways went ahead and screwed their non-status customers. Makes business sense, but shitty custome5r se5rvice neverthless.
This is a form that all visitors to EU countries had to fill out previously. However, most countries have stopped requiring this form, except for Malta, Slovenia, and France. Since we are visiting Italy and Paris on our trip, we need to fill out this form.
I started filling out this form on my iPhone using Chrome browser. Since we are stopping in Italy first, I did not know what the form wanted for origin. Italy? United States? United Kingdom (London transit)? Finally, I decided to enter all our flights, including the return flights.
The form asks for a lot of information, including flight and seat numbers. After each flight is entered, you get options to enter the next flight and [Temporary Save]. I did hit save after the first flight but skipped that step going forward. Of course, the webpage decides to crash and freeze on the fourth flight data entry, so I went over to my MacBook to continue. The app did save something, but it was missing random fields for the first flight, and all subsequent flights.
Ugh.
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Done. Luckily I could add family members traveling together so my sister’s family do not need to fill out this ugly form.
Also, whenever you see an option to temporary save on a webform, click it. It is like a save point before you encounter a boss monster in a game. You need to save because you will fail and need to return to your save point.
Since the EU case rate map is a live link, it will show the same data as the previous post. If you look at the COVID data on Google/NYT, the number of cases in both countries continues to drop.
Italy
France
Like the previous charts I snipped for both countries, Italy’s case count is still decreasing while France is holding flat. Again, for comparison, here is the case count for Los Angeles County.
Since our work is asking people to return to the office, this trend is positive as well. I have a medical exemption to work from home, but I still feel more effective if I am onsite so I will likely go back in the office two or three times a week when I return from Europe.
I am starting to pack for our Europe trip already, and one of the biggest headaches is packing all my medications. I have eight pill bottles to take with me, and only six have the prescription label still available. I am not too worried about over-the-counter vitamin D since the yellow gel capsules are quite recognizable. I am missing labeling for Tacrolimus however. and since I take seven pills per day, there is a lot of it.
The other issue is all the paraphernalia that I need to bring along. Due to the length of the trip, I will need two pens for each insulin type. Then I need to take the glucose monitor with enough test strips for three tests per day. Finally, needles. Since I am shooting myself four times per day, I will need a lot of needles. The photo above has seventeen days’ worth of needles or sixty-eight needles. I also need to carry some buffer in case i mess up or catch COVID and must quarantine. So instead of enough medication for sixteen days, I am taking a month’s worth just in case.
My sister decided we would all take one backpack and one carry-on since we have a short layover in LHR (London Heathrow), and there are a lot of inter-city travel on trains and cars. I will need to find all the dry-fit clothing I purchased for my Tunesia trip in 2014 so I can handwash my travel clothing in the hotel bathrooms.
I just posted about this about a week ago, and the EU map is already different. The most recent map has a larger portion of France in orange instead of red. Italy is still in the highest positive case rate category, but the graph is still showing a downward trend. For both France and Los Angeles County, the case rate is flattening out, though they are on the opposite sides of the Omicron BA.2 spike.
Live(?) link to the EU case rate map
I am going into the office this Thursday so I can meet in-person with a few people to delegate my responsibilities for the next two plus weeks. It does look like our trip is on; I just need to review all the COVID restrictions for each county once more and see if there is additional paperwork to fill out.
We are about a week away from our trip to Europe, and both Italy and France are in the >300 cases per 100k people per day category. I did research all the travel restrictions currently enforced in Europe, and we can still travel without any COVID tests or quarantine if we are vaccinated. I hope our cheapo CDC white cards are sufficient.
Even though case counts are still high in Italy and France, the number of daily new cases is decreasing. Here are charts for both countries over the past three months.
The big hump for both countries is likely the Omicron BA.2 variant. In Europe, there was not really a break between the BA.1 spike at the beginning of the year, and the second spike. In the US, cases died down quickly but is on the rise again from BA.2.
This is just Los Angeles County so the y-axis scale is totally different. However, you do see an increases in the number of cases while it is clearly decreasing in Italy and France above. I am hoping that cases will continue to drop in Europe during the next week so we will be a bit safer on our trip.
I do feel a bit embarrasses that I am going to a fairly high risk area for vacation, while I am working from home due to the increasing number of cases locally.
This is historical wind speed for Elsa. Right now the storm is moving into North Carolina. After passing below Hispaniola, Elsa never regained hurricane wind speeds again.
For my sister, she actually left Florida Tuesday evening after the soccer tournament was completed early. They were on the second to last flight out of Sarasota airport before it shut down for 12 hours overnight. Since it was a connecting flight, they had a layover in Dallas (DFW) for about three hours.
One think you need to know about John Wayne Airport (SNA) is that there is a curfew from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am. This is primarily due to the rich white people in Newport Beach. The airport was originally built in 1923, but then people started building houses nearby. Those houses became super expensive, rich people moved in, and they wanted to shut down the airport. So an agreement was signed that limited the operations of the airport, primarily for noise abatement. This means if your flight is delayed for any reason and your arrival time is after 11:00 pm, you are going to Los Angeles International (LAX). This happened to me once before, also from DFW, and it added about 3.5 hours to my trip.
American Airlines Airbus A319
For my sister’s flight from DFW to SNA, of course there was a delay. They boarded the plane on time, but due to some maintenance issue, their plane sat at the gate while maintenance crew worked on the plane. Finally, the were able to take off late, but still in time to make SNA curfew. Good thing since I did not want to drive to LAX late at night to pick them up. There would have been a bus to transfer them from LAX to SNA, but airport buses are no fun.
I just saw it today on the Tesla app. When you click on charging, the app shows you the nearest charging spots. Evidently, the new supercharger site in Irvine is the closest to my house now. It is located in Heritage Plaza, near Culver and Walnut. The chargers are literally right in front of Daiso and Mitsuwa; man, it is going to be super crowded all the time. Right now it is 7:00 am Friday morning, and the app says there are 10/16 stalls free. I read on Google Maps that these are 250 kW chargers. I have never had success with getting more than 50 kW of power from a supercharger. It may be higher right when I plug in, but always seem to drop down to 50 kW or lower, even though the v1.0 chargers are supposed to support up to 130 kW. I am finding that Tesla’s specs on their cars are a bit flexible when it comes to charging and range.
There are a lot of local chargers now. When I purchased the Model S in late 2016, there was only two supercharger sites on this map: Fountain Valley (lower left) and Main Place Mall in Santa Ana (not marked due to weird zoom). All the chargers were full 24/7 because there were only Model S/X available, and most included free lifetime supercharging. Now that Model 3/Y have to pay for supercharging, hopefully the new chargers will not be too full since most people should charge at home.
Since I need to drive down that way to get labs done for UCLA, I think I will leave 30 minutes early and stop by the new supercharger and see if my old Model S can charge faster than 50 kW. I have not driven the car outside of Los Angeles and Orange counties since charging is a bit slow. If I can charge fast on the new v2.0 chargers, I will feel better with longer road trips.
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My friend sent me this photo of the Harris Ranch supercharger along the I-5 freeway. This site gets a lot of traffic since it is about midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area. Tesla is going to build out the largest supercharger site with over 100 chargers. Assuming they are all v2.0, that means a maximum power draw of 100 x 250 kW or 25 MW. That is crazy! He also said they were putting in solar panels. That probably will not be enough to power even one charger.
Harris Ranch Supercharger under construction
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Well, these are not 250 kW chargers. Usually they have a small tag on the top of the charger that says 250 kW. These do not. I am getting about 35 kW which is terrible.
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I mentioned above that any new Tesla Supercharger site in Irvine will be packed since it seems every household has one. This is especially true in a shopping plaza with Asian stores. Well, here is the map from Bestla (a new Tesla app I purchased for $10). As you can see, the Heritage Plaza Supercharger I went to this morning is completely full, and the next closest site only has two stalls free; I believe this is the one by Honda Center/Anaheim Stadium. Tesla made an error offering unlimited free Supercharging for the old Model S/X. You never give Asians free shit because it will come back and bite you in the ass.
Google sent me a notification today that my May 2021 timeline is available, whatever that means. So I went to Google Maps and selected Timeline to see how Google tracks my movement 24/7 (or my iPhone anyway). I then compared last month to May 2020. Not surprisingly, there are a lot more dots on the 2021 map.
This is May 2020:
The dots are: home, work (probably when I “stole” my 30″ monitor), St. Joseph hospital/dialysis center, my sister’s house, and a local Tesla Supercharger. There is also a dot in a in a nearby park, but I do not remember that. This was early in the lockdown so I am almost certain the parking lot gate was locked.
Here is May 2021:
Same dots as May 2020, but a lot more, including UCLA (post-transplant), dentist, other medical appointments, markets, and outdoor food courts for church cell group. The dot in the upper right is the Big Bear trip from last weekend. That is the furthest I have been from my house in about two years. Pretty sad. It is only four days into June and the timeline map already has more dots than May 2020. Another sign that maybe life is slowly returning to normal.
I found a website call MapChart that allows you to pull up various maps and color map subdivision individually to represent data. The most obvious and easy one to do is travel. I mapped which countries I have been to, and also one of US states and Canadian provinces. I tried to do a California map using counties, but could not figure out which county is which.
For the maps, I use blue for my home country/state, and colored the data using yellow.
The world map is pretty sad. Most of the countries are gray since I have only been to a handful of countries. Not that I can travel again, once the pandemic subsides, I am looking forward to turning more countries yellow.
Truthfully, some of these states and provinces marked yellow are kinda fake. Like Switzerland in the world map, I only transited or drove through some of these states/provinces. These are the iffy ones: Texas, Florida, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Alberta, and Yukon. For the rest, I have spent at least one night in each country/state/province.
For the future, I have mapped out countries that I really want to visit, and those that are second priority (repeat visit included).
If I had to narrow it down to three countries on the future list, it would be South Korea, Germany, and Australia since I have not been there before. I still have a lot of relatives in Canada so that is likely 100% certain. I also have Taiwan citizenship and there is a non-zero chance that I may buy an apartment in Taipei and live there part-time. My sister’s family is also planning a middle-Europe trip, probably Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czechia, and Hungary (maybe not all in one trip).
C’mon everyone, get vaccinated so I can travel again!
So I finally finished the Harassment Prevention training that started weeks ago. It was super tedious since I have just went through the exact same material months ago. Overall, it is a good thing to bring more awareness and train people to identify and prevent harassment. However, many times I felt there was definitely a political agenda. Additionally, the material often makes statements that start with “Research shows…” but never has any references to the research. I feel if you are going to pull out the expert authority card, you need to footnote the source.
The next course is Global Trade Controls, where we learn about export controls. I did the export compliance job at a previous company for several years and it sucked. We did hire an external law firm to help, but I think the company employee should also have a law degree or background. The most interesting part of the training is a list of embargoed countries. There are the usual suspects like China (the communist one), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, et cetera, but now Hong Kong is also on the list. I am not sure when Hong Kong was added; I do not remember seeing it on the list the last time I took this course. I am pretty positive that it is in response to the insane National Security Law that was forced on to Hong Kong recently. I used to love Hong Kong, even though most of the time I was just transiting through the airport. I have only been in the city three or four times, and looked forward to visiting again. Well, that is on indefinite hold now that China has basically trashed Hong Kong. Sad…
This is my Google Timeline map if you include all the dates tracked. The data starts back in May of 2014 and Google thinks I’ve been to 542 places since then. It gives you a list of the most visited places. My list is: 1) home, 2) work, 3) St. Joseph Hospital, 4) sister’s house in Irvine, and 5) carpool partner’s house. Pretty boring and sad. I know it’s due to dialysis but it sucks to have a hospital to be your #3 most visited place, especially when you’ve only been going there since July, 2017.
As expected, most of the markers are in Orange County and the South Bay (Torrance) due to work. Here is a zoomed in map:
I’m guessing most of those are restaurants since that category probably has the most variety of destinations that are visited only once or twice. Other clusters in the main map are: 1) San Francisco Bay Area, 2) Portland (Oregon), 3) Tunisia, 4) Japan, and 5) Taiwan. I made several trips to the Bay Area awhile ago and my sister used to live in Portland; I would visit her about once or twice a year. I also went on a two week trip to Tunisia, and my sister’s family an I visited Japan and Taiwan several years ago, before I started dialysis. There are some obvious errors in the data. One marker is for Piedmont Triad airport in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’m 100% certain I’ve never been to that airport. I think it’s when I gave an extra phone to my sister to use in Canada since my plan covers all of North America, and she may have taken it to NC on a business trip while logged into my Google account.
If I had started tracking earlier, there would be even more clusters of markers near: 1) Chengdu, China, 2) Beijing, China, 3) Hong Kong, 4) Singapore, 5) different part of Taiwan, 6) New York City, 8) Mississauga/Oakville/Toronto, 9) Hawaii, and 10) if you go back 20 years, London/Paris/Rome/Florence for my honeymoon. I made this post because I missed traveling. I used to save my boarding passes on airline flights and one year, I collected 56 of them. I have not gone anywhere since starting dialysis because I only have 2-3 days between sessions, and peritoneal dialysis was everyday. Since COVID-19 hit, there has been very little travel so I didn’t miss much in 2020 but I look forward to a return to normalcy post-tranplant.
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My church cell group brothers said we should plan a celebration trip after my transplant. I casually mentioned South Korea since more of them are Korean-American, but that’s unlikely. Maybe we’ll end up at Las Vegas or something. Hopefully the pandemic will be better controlled. I really want to try the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesars Palace. It’s pretty expensive, with prices starting from $79/person; perhaps I can gain back some of the weight I lost over this past year.
Speaking of private jets and expensive toys, I received an email at work form someone selling a 2006 Gulfstream G550. These are pretty large private jets and a 14 year old used one goes for about $15 million.
Gulfstream G550
Interestingly, we (the company, not me) currently owns a Gulfstream G650ER and is in the market for a backup jet. First choice is actually a used G550 for sale by Chevron. I’m not sure how a random jet broker found my contact info… Google search metadata?
Anyway, the operating cost for these are pretty high. This website calculates it to be about $7,000 per hour assuming 400 hours per year. I think we’re looking to use it as a daily shuttle between office sites so ~2,000 hours per year at an estimated cost of ~$10 million.
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Traveling would be so much easier if I was still on dialysis and owned one of these jets. Dialysis at Sea uses Fresenius 2008K home dialysis machines on cruise ships to provide hemodialysis. I wonder if you can install and operate one on a private jet. I guess it depends on how air turbulence compares with ocean swells on a cruise ship. If you’re rich enough to own and operate a G550, you should be able to hire a private nurse for dialysis. You can hook up to the machine prior to take-off and finish dialysis while in the air. If you’re carrying your own machine and supplies, international travel should be feasible. You just need to come back to the jet for dialysis sessions.
There is zero information on the feasibility of getting dialysis while on an airplane flight. All the search results is about taking your home dialysis machine along on trips. I guess most dialysis patients don’t own a private jet.
It’s 1:30 am and I’ve been trying to sleep since midnight. The burn in my feet from neuropathy is pretty intense tonight and hard to ignore when trying to sleep.
Another crazy idea I had recently was instead of living in a recreational vehicle (RV), I would buy a yacht, live on the boat, and travel the world. A long time ago I had a coworker that actually lived in Arizona but worked in Irvine. He would fly in Monday morning, get his car from the airport parking lot, and drive to work nearby. Instead of staying at a hotel or apartment, he would sleep in his 45 foot yacht at Balboa Marina for the next few nights, and return to Arizona Thursday evening. He took a few of us out on his boat down to Dana Point and back. It was pretty cool.
Nordhavn 52
I believe my coworker had a sports cruiser so it only had a two decks, was pretty fast, and had terrible range. We probably traveled about 30 miles total and used $300-400 of fuel. The yacht was probably fine to sleep in for a few nights a week, but you couldn’t travel far in it. What I had in mind was to live on the boat long-term, and visit exotic locations worldwide. For that, you need something that has a cruising range of thousands of miles, not hundreds. Since I’m not rich, I can’t afford a superyacht with a full-time crew. The other option available is buying a smaller expedition yacht. I mentioned before that I’ve been watching a lot of yacht videos on YouTube. One brand that stands out is Nordhavn. They make expedition yachts from 41 feet to 148 feet long that can cross oceans. You can get a fairly new 52 foot boat for about $1 million. It’s not cheap, but think of it as buying a house.
On YouTube, there are lots of videos of people making thousand mile trips in Nordhavn boats. They even organized a group trip across the Atlantic Ocean in 2004.
However, unlike buying a RV and driving across the country alone, I don’t think you can operate a expedition yacht by yourself. Each boat in the above video has a multi-person crew. In a RV, if something breaks down, you can always pull over and call for help. If your boat breaks down in the middle of the ocean, you’re on your own. I also think traveling by boat is a 24/7 job so you can’t take 10 hours out each night for dialysis. It’s doable in a RV but not in a boat with 25 foot waves. So if I really want to do this, it will have to wait until after a kidney transplant. Probably need to sell my house too in order to afford a decent boat. It will likely be very expensive to operate a boat, much like owning a private jet, but it would be cool to visit the South Pacific in your own yacht.
I haven’t booked anything for this San Francisco trip I’m planning. With my peripheral neuropathy, having to sit for long time is really uncomfortable. The worst is dialysis since after you sit down, you can’t really get up and move around. I’ve seen patients disconnected during the session so they can use the bathroom, but it’s pretty rare. Also bad would be sitting in an airplane, so that is why I was looking at first-class seats on such a short haul flight. Finally, having to show up early at an airport because you don’t know how long the TSA line will be, then sitting at the gate for hours also sucks. John Wayne airport is great for this because I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than 20 minutes to get through the security checkpoint. For LAX, I’ve seen 10 minutes to an hour and a half for international flights.
Another flight option to the Bay Area from John Wayne is JSX. They have the same owners as JetSuite, a private jet charter company. JSX flies EmbraerERJ135 and ERJ145 jets, which hold 30 passengers. These jets are also flown by American Eagle. JSX advertises their flights as “private-like jet” but they’re really small regional passenger jets. They also have a very small list of destinations. However, JSX has their own terminal and operate as a charter so no TSA checkpoints. I guess that’s the “private-like” part of the experience. You go to their hanger about 15-20 minutes before the flight and just get on the plane. Easy, and less time sitting around with my numb feet.
For my planned trip, JSX flies between John Wayne (Orange County) and Oakland International airports. One way flights are as low as $129, which is $10 cheaper than Alaska Airline first-class seats between John Wayne and San Francisco International. Which is better? First-class seats in an Embraer E175 or a regular seat in an Embraer ERJ-135/145? I think JSX wins because of the ease of check-in and boarding, but they don’t have that many flights. Also, their hanger is away from the main airport terminal with public transplantation. We would have to get an Uber or Lyft to get to/from JSX, whereas BART will go directly to either SFO or OAK. So the new plan would be to fly from SNA to SFO, then take BART to Union Square. When coming home, either take BART to Coliseum Station and Uber to JSX, or ride Uber for the entire trip from Union Square to JSX, then fly JSX from OAK to SNA.
Date
Flight
From
ETD
To
ETA
Price
2/29/2020
AK 3453
SNA
3:00 pm
SFO
4:35 pm
$139*
3/2/2020
XE 332
OAK
7:30 pm
SNA
9:01 pm
$129
*First class. Cheap seats are $69.
YouTube review of JSX
This is probably the closest I’ll get to flying on a real “private” jet. My previous boss had a Gulfstream G500, and my current company owns a Gulfstream G650ER. I haven’t been on either one. The cost for buying and operating a private jet is astronomical. Our G650ER costs about $72 million and we spend a couple $ million each year on operating costs. They are also very expensive to charter or lease. Here is a G650 going for $15,469/hour. If you have 500 friends, you can get a Airbus A380 for $51,564/hour.
Can’t fly in and out of John Wayne Airport with an A380
When I was on peritoneal dialysis, I was watching a lot of other types of travel videos. Specifically, I watched videos introducing various recreational vehicles. I was mainly interested in a Class B van so it would be easy to drive everywhere. The thought was that I could retire from work, buy a RV, then travel across US and Canada while living out of the RV. Since I was doing peritoneal dialysis, I could install a PD cycler in the RV, as long as I had enough batteries or shore power to run it all night. I could have the dialysate solution delivered to different places across the country, or come home monthly to pick it up.
I was looking for these specifics features:
Separate shower instead of a wet bath
Solar panels and extra batteries to power the PD cycler overnight
Fits into a “regular” parking spot
Have additional seats in the back with seat belts
Preferably no slide-outs
A lot of Class B campers have wet baths, which reminds me too much of bathrooms in China. So something like this:
Or this:
I’m still not 100% sure why I was thinking of doing this. We never traveled by RV growing up, and most of the places I want to visit are overseas. Traveling by RV is more suited to visiting national parks and campsites; I’m more of an urban traveler, visiting large cities and cultural sites. I think it was the possibility of traveling with the PD cycler so you’re not tied down to one place for dialysis, and not having to carry the machine on airplanes and arranging delivery of dialysate solution.
Well, all that’s is impossible now that I’ve removed the PD catheter since peritoneal dialysis is not an option for me. Home hemodialysis really requires you have a helper in case you screw up and start bleeding out. I doubt it’s possible to do home hemodialysis out of a RV. I could always do RV travel if I get a kidney transplant, but then I would travel by airplane instead of driving a van everywhere.
I also watch a lot of super-yacht and private jet videos but those are definitely out of my budget.
Life with chronic diseases 