Alert readers will recall a story I wrote last December for the "Journal" about a dog/house sitting adventure. The story recounted how my wife Sherry and I spent five weeks, rent free, in a very upscale Airbnb in a suburb of Seattle near our daughter and her family. That venture into 'serial pet sitting' turned out to be rather costly. Here's the previously untold part of the story.

Emergency room costs quickly added up

We took two days to drive to Woodinville, Washington. It's about 800 miles so a stop overnight helped break up the drive. The first night we got a motel room in Ritzville, Washington, an hour west of Spokane.

About midnight my wife woke me with, "I'm having some heart flutters I've never felt before." We decided to head to the emergency room. I remembered the hospital's location from walks I'd done on prior visits. Ritzville is small and we got to the ER quickly and Sherry was seen immediately.

A very savvy physician's assistant examined Sherry and concluded, "No immediate threats but you need to be checked by a specialist." We explained about being away from home for the next five weeks and the PA said to make an appointment as soon as we got back to Montana. By then it was daylight so we repacked, headed west and arrived in Woodinville as planned.

Late on the fourth afternoon at the Airbnb, same heart symptoms started again. We had no idea where the nearest hospital was located and asked a neighbor where to go. She said, "Evergreen Hospital." We'd heard of the hospital but had no idea how to get to it. The neighbor graciously said, "Let me just ride with you. Now is commute time with a tangle of dark backroads and heavy traffic to reach the hospital." Despite Medicare and supplemental health insurance, the bills are still trickling in as each department and staff adds to the total. Early on the trip began moving away from our planned "free vacation near the family.'

Scammed!

During the first week in the Seattle area I got an email from a friend in Chinook asking if I could buy some Apple Gift Cards for a cousin who was dying of cancer. I agreed and the next email asked if I could buy $400 worth of cards. That was a surprising amount but this guy is the type who would do his best to comfort someone. And, yes, you guessed it, it was a scam. Someone had hacked my friend's email and was using the hijacked email as a quick way to produce cash. I thought of the old saying: "Experience is the best teacher but usually charges the highest tuition." That was an expensive post graduate course teaching me to be more alert.

Expensive gourmet cooking pot--ruined

We were not familiar with Le Crueset ceramic clad cast iron cookware-now the rage with many cooks. The kitchen at the house was set up by a gourmet cook with all the latest appliances and utensils. Sherry was heating something in one of the fancy pans and the pan boiled dry. We soon learned the cost of this heavy duty pot-replacement value, $250. The new one arrived the day we left Washington.

A high cost of living accompanied

by lots of rain

As readers who've visited the Seattle area know, living there is expensive. Washington state has a ten percent sales tax on everything...and that adds up quickly (there's no income tax but that's not much comfort to visitors). While gasoline was selling for about $3.40 a gallon when we left home, it was averaging $4.09 a gallon in the Seattle area. Residents and visitors were paying 14.4 percent above the national average for fuel. Grocery prices were 27 percent higher. That all added up quickly.

I realize we are in drought conditions here in Montana but there was no shortage of rain the five weeks we stayed in Woodinville. Fact is, November is the rainiest month for the King County city with an average of 20 days of rain resulting in six inches of rain for the month. In Blaine County we typically average a half inch of moisture in November. The rain often added its own gloom to the short fall days. A final reminder from Washington greeted us back home. We arrived home in early December. Some mail had been forwarded but a sizeable pile remained to sort through, including two envelopes from the city of Kirkland, another suburb a few miles south of Woodinville. Curious as to why we were getting mail from Kirkland, I opened the letters to find pictures of the rear end of our car moving along a street with a school zone sign at the edge of the photo. Whoops...speeding in a school zone.

Sherry and I were in Kirkland trying to find a craft store for some supplies she needed for knitting. We got so engrossed in following our phone GPS we failed to see the warning sign for the speed limit in a school zone. They got us twice...the photos timed 11 minutes apart. That was explained by the fact we got lost, had to turn around and did a second violation on the way back to our original route. No police involved, except the certified officer reading the photos, but $380 worth of fines for the two violations.

It was possible to ask for a mitigation hearing to plead one's case and hope for some lowering of the fine. I thought, "yea, driving 800 miles both ways to attend a hearing with no guarantee of any relief doesn't make sense." Then, and you've heard or seen this a lot for the last couple of years, "Due to COVID...." The courthouse was closed but I could plead my case using some sort of a program online.

Given that second chance by COVID I pleaded my case in writing. I wanted to write, "Every time I'm doing the speed limit someone flashes their lights behind me, honks and throws up their hands in frustration or gives me the finger." Obviously, I was more circumspect pointing out we were tourists, there were no kids in the school zone (photos showed that clearly) and I was only moving with the flow of traffic. Something worked because the judge basically cut the fines in half...still pricey at $200+.

So there you have it. With medical costs, the scam, the ruined pot and the traffic violations, the free trip tipped the scales at better than $1100 in unanticipated expenses. But here's the good news, we had a lot of fun with the dog we cared for, enjoyed staying in a very nice setting and got to spend quality time with our family. What's not to like about that?