We took the bus early from Guanajuato to Guadalajara. We arrived at our hotel, Quinta Don Jose Boutique Hotel in Tlaquepaque a suburb of Guadalajara. We scored this amazing room right by the pool. As Melissa is writing this blog she is sitting in the lounge chairs that are visible in the picture. After a few days of movin' movin' we are ready for an afternoon by the pool.
All is not heaven however. Getting back into a big city meant facing a few problems we've been ignoring. So our porcupine attitudes today are transient and have to do with lack of sleep while traveling plus just having to deal with a few frustrations and our happy selves are sure to return tomorrow. Meanwhile...
Verizon - Ok, remember the whole Verizon fiasco that Melissa won? Well, its starting to feel like a hollow victory. Last week Verizon sent a "your account is overdue" message last week. So she called Tuesday and was told she would get a call back within 24 hours. No call. She calls again Saturday. She is told the same thing, but this time they put the account in "dispute status" so the phones won't be turned off. Something about the system not allowing them to put the account in the dispute status till the bill is overdue - since until the bill is due, what is there to dispute? She is promised a call. None came, so she called again today. Same goat rodeo. 35 minutes on the phone to explain the situation to three different call center agents and beg for a status update. We don't give a flying fig when they straighten out the billing - so long as they don't turn off the phones. At one point an agent tells Melissa that the "dispute status" automatically expires sometime in the next 48 hours and then she will get another email telling her the account is overdue and she will have to call back in to put the account back in dispute status again. Huh? But wait gang, brief review - you created this problem, not us. And we've paid what we actually owe - the only outstanding balance is the amount of the credit you owe us! So eventually this gets escalated to someone who can extend the dispute status hold through next week. By which time "they are sure" the credit will be issued. Believe it when we see it.
USCG - Dave applied for his US Coast Guard captain's license. A key requirement is to have 360 days of sea time. More or less this means 360 days at the helm. Dave has this in spades. The problem is proving it. If you have sea time aboard a boat you own, you just fill out a form and "self attest". You can do this as long as you can also send a copy of the title showing you own the boat. Of course people lie about this all the time. We could have lied too. But we didn't. Instead we took our best estimate for all the ship log information we had and completed the forms. All 50 pages of documentation. And where we didn't have a copy of an old boat title (seriously do you have copies of titles to cars you owned 20 years ago?) and where the State of Washington couldn't supply them (they only keep records for a few years) instead we submitted our trip logs. As in our blog site - with pictures and detailed daily location notes. Along with letters from the people aboard the boats saying that Dave was the captain. But alas, bureaucracy is the order of the day, and logic will not win out. So they rejected Dave's application saying he is 84 days short of sea time. So will be 4 to 6 months before we can submit again - by which time Dave should have enough sea time to qualify officially. Sigh. This doesn't present any real issues - unless we wanted to take paying passengers aboard. But still...