A few interesting things happened this month.

Like most months, it started off with daily walks and runs in the park. But there were a few times that I needed to complete a 10k run and the circuit that I use only brings in a distance of around 6.5k. So I decided to shake things up a little and did a few routes outside on the Santa Ana river. I’ve used this route for long runs when training for the Honolulu Marathon a few years ago as it goes for 26 miles to the ocean. But for February, the farthest I’ve ventured was to Starbucks in order to get cup of coffee (not too motivated to run just yet!). It’s about a 5 or 6 miler and that means I got over ‘the bridge’. Did I every tell you that I like running over bridges?

Anyway, February is a great month to be in Southern California. The mushers are out at the park in the mornings, the days are not too hot, the trees start blooming, and the evenings have amazing sunsets.

It’s also the time of year when the park’s Egyptian Ducks are getting ‘prego’. When the mothers are pregnant, they usually fly up to the top of the park shelters to give birth. I have yet to see how they get the chicks down afterwards though!

We watched the Super Bowl on the 7th. I’m not a big fan of sports on TV (except for the Olympics and may be Hockey), but after living for years in the States, there really is nothing else you can do on this day as it seems to be more important than Christmas, New Year’s or Black Friday (you notice how I didn’t say Thanksgiving -right!?). I usually like watching ‘the game’ by making chip dip and vegging out in front of the screen. It’s also the only time I don’t remind watching the commercials, because a lot goes into them for the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, this year the commercials were not as intuitive as previous years. Rats!

I also finished up may Cessna project and I must admit that I never thought I’d be finally done. Well, almost done. I’m still waiting on some magnets to attach the upper leather overhand. Nonetheless, I was impressed with the results and have been enjoying my flights over Orange Country and flying from Saint Hubert or Saint Lazard to Montréal. Hmmm… I should fly up around Lac Saint Jean where I first learned to fly gliders. You can see a quick 2 minute YouTube video of the progress in the slide show above or see it on My Home Videos page.

Our car turned 130,000 miles this month.
Ouch! Now that’s A LOT!

I’ve never had a car last so long! It’s simply amazing. I’ve (we’ve) been wanted to get an electric car (like a Tesla?), but because this one is doing so well, there’s no excuse to get another one! I always joke that the next car we get won’t need wheels. Well, with the way this car is going, that just may be possible! Anyway, I brought it in for a regular check up and it passed with flying colours (again). I did ask the dealer if they could ‘unstick’ one of the rear seat belts. It’s the only thing that’s really gone wrong, as once and a while the belt would get stuck for no reason So needless to say I was surprised when they wanted to charge me a few hundreds dollars! Ha! Luckily I read EVERYTHING and I kept all the records along with the previous ‘extended warranty’ information. When I showed them that for our car, the seat belt is covered until 150,000 miles or 15 years. he (they) were surprised. I don’t think warranties go that long anymore! LOL

We celebrated Valentines with our traditional sushi and sukiyaki (yum) and then came the 18th… A big day!

I landed on Mars!
Yes, my name was one of many that was etched into the Mars Rover called the Perseverance. I watched the Mar landing and have been following the little guy ever since. In order to celebrate the landing, I opened up a bottle of Sake that I’ve been saving since Ayano’s father passed away. I call it my ‘Happy Buddha’ sake (take a look at the photo and you’ll know what I mean). It is one of the sake Ayano’s father used to buy me as a gift when I went to Japan or when he came here to visit. So it’s kind my ‘trademark’ as far as Sake go – and I am very peculiar with Sake like other people are with wine.

The following week we flew up to Seattle, rented a car, and drove down to Camus. Camus is only 15-20 minutes from the Portland International, just on the other side of the Columbia River.  We could have flown into Portland, but there are no direct flights from our local airport (John Wayne, SNA) and with COVID popping up everywhere, I thought it best to just take a a single short flight up the coast instead of flying out of LAX or transferring in Salt Lake City.

The purpose of going to Camus was to see about buying a house. We were up there in November 2019 and decided that this was the place we wanted to move too. Unfortunately , my father passed away in December, Ayano’s father passed away the following month, and then COVID hit full force! It took us a year and a half to make it back up. But by the time we got back, all the communities we were interested in were sold out and prices were starting to go through the roof!

We looked around everywhere, but nothing was available or things were just too expensive. Everything went up at least $100-150k. So while we were looking for places to live, it didn’t seem we were going to be able to move so soon after all. We even looked at buying land and building from scratch. But things just did not look promising and it’s hard to justify spending so much more money when deep inside, it just doesn’t make sense!

Anyway, house hunting wasn’t the only thing we were doing. We spent the mornings going for walks and exploring Lacamus Regional Park. We also took a drive along the north side of the Columbia River. We even went over to Oregon to pick up some fresh smoked fish that’s caught locally… as in right in their backyard! As for oysters… we’re going to have those when we head up to the Olympia Inlet and stay around the Hood Canal from March 2nd. Yum! I can hardly wait.

See you next month!