Hiya, folks 🙂.
Hope y’all have have enjoyed your day this lovely Sunday wherever you are and have been. 😊
Speaking of have been… the day:
Woke up about 5 something at the Aloft Hotel in San Jose this morning. Couldn’t fall back asleep that well, so I dozed a bit.
I called United Airlines because supposedly I needed an actual copy of my positive test result for Covid in order to return to the states with documentation of recovery. The lady I spoke with was a bit confused. I don’t think she understood well what I was saying, given her strong foreign accent and misunderstanding what i was saying. I was concerned because according to rentry requirements, i need either a negative covid test within 24 hours of returning to the States, or I need the positive test documentation and a letter from the doc saying I’ve recovered.
But this was my dilemma, and it would appear they didn’t think their policies through very well given my circumstance, which would seem reasonably common?
My nephew, who lives with me, tested positive and got sick with Covid. I get sick a couple of days later with Covid. In order to get the documentation they want, I being sick with Covid, would need to go to the doctor in order to be able to get a positive test that i can later use for travel documentation.
Ummm… So you’re saying you want me to leave my house while significantly contagious and expose others to Covid, just so I can get proof that I was covid positive?
😶
Of course, yes, there is another option. Pay $65 to be tested within 24 hours of my departure flight. But… there’s a problem there. It’s quite possible to continue to test positive months after you’ve recovered, so if I take the test and test positive, I have to stay quarantined in Costa Rica for two weeks, even though I’ve had, recovered from, and don’t have Covid.
😬
Right. So… after talking to someone else in her office, she assured me that I would be ok with just the letter from my doctor saying I had recovered from Covid.
Phew!
So from there, we went to breakfast in the hotel, grateful it as another all-you-can-eat offering. Then we checked out, and I drove John to get his Covid test. I dropped him off, days goodbye, and drove to the car rental place to return our car.
It took me a while to clean the car out, which I did in the hotel parking lot across the street from the rental place. I pulled all the stuff out of it, separating trash from keeper stuff. I had more stuff than i could fit in my pack. In the end, my flip flops, the shoes I bought in La Fortuna, the baby powder that saved my rear, and a bunch of oranges, crackers, and plasticware got voted off the island dueto lack of space.
The car rental return went smoothly, and I headed to the airport, where I bumped into John again waiting for Spirit Airlines to open their desk. I went over to the United counter to get checked in, handing them my documentation and everything, only to be denied, because even though the United customer service representative said I’d be fine with just my doctor’s letter, it was a no go.
I was rather frustrated by that, honestly, having gone to the trouble to check with them before going to the airport. Had i known, I’d have just gotten my test right there with John. Fortunately, I had plenty of time to get the test. It would just cost me $65, and i had to hope I’d test negative. 🤞
Otherwise, I might just travel by land through Central America back to the states. That was a serious option I had put on the table before myself. 🙃
Took the shuttle bus to the testing place, took the shuttle back to the airport, and waited for my covid test results. Again… 🤞.
Probably about 20-30 minutes later, my test came out negative. Wahoo!
I got myself checked in, and went and hung out with John, as I had 4 hours before my flight, and he only had two. We chatted a tad bit, and I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what happened to my phone. It decided to stop playing media out the speaker, making it so I could only play it with my headphones on.
It also would hang up phone calls even the headphones were pulled out of the jack mid call. 🤔 Hmmm…
Restart didn’t help. Clearing all cache and whatnot didn’t help. Resetting all settings to default didn’t help. Deleting a bunch of apps that had media access didn’t help… The speaker worked just fine. It would let me put it on speaker phone out that speaker. Just not for media. For media, only the headphones would work
The only things out of the norm were that I got the phone a little wet and that we tried hooking the phone up to the rental car, and it was being really finicky.
It would be easy to point the finger at it getting wet and causing physical damage, except that I downloaded an app that could force it to play out the speaker, and it would do it for and 3 seconds before suddenly cutting it out again. I could re-force it again and again, but it would only last about 3 seconds. So I proved it could work, but it was like something was overriding it.
So… I’m stumped there. I removed insurance on my phone just recently, so that bites. The phone is under warranty, I think, but I don’t know if the issue my fault or not. It’s…a weird issue. I even scanned for malware, but it was clean as a whistle.
Anyway, guess I’ll figure that out when i get home. Currently, I’m in the air on board flight 1099 from San Jose to Houston, we’re on our final approach, and I’m trying to take advantage of the time I have now to write, as I won’t get home until late tonight. Gonna pause for now. Will be back in a bit.
…
Holar. 🙂
Plane about to take off in Houston. Didn’t have much time to make it through immigration and customs, but, gratefully, it went quickly, and then the plane got delayed anyway to wait for late connecting flights.
So here I sit, small regional jet. One seat on one side of the plane, two on the other, about to go rolling down the runway (and hopefully elevating into the skies above. 🙃)
…
Back in the big NWA. 🙂 Mama just picked me up. Heading home now. Gonna catch a drink and fall into bed. Been a wonderful trip in most ways and a hard one in others. I’m ready to go get this auto mechanic business wrapped up. Might buy a little piece of land over by El Castillo, Costa Rica. Who knows. 🙃
Love to all y’all.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 