Hint, Not Here:

More on notaries in Day 40 below.

Travel Log: Day 38 (8/4), Jaco Costa Rica

Today was leg workout day, and it went much better than last week. I think all of my struggles last week were probably due to recovering from my sunburn, which I still have peeling skin from. Also I’ve been back on creatine for the past several days and I function better on that in general.

We all went to the pool during the day, and then I took BC again later while JC was cooking dinner. We also walked to the beach in between that to catch the sunset but got rained out.

Travel Log: Day 39 (8/5), Jaco Costa Rica

JC and I woke up energized to get to the Guam flight planning. The energy faded as the brutal travel time and cost really began to sink in related to me round-tripping twice with mom. I started thinking about the airport butler service since that would eliminate most of the confusing aspects of flying. Ran that by my sister and she confirmed what I was already thinking, that it would stress mom out. I put that plan out of mind and focused on how best to manage the travel.

I think the plan we are leaning toward is for me to fly directly from Japan to Denver, mom and I will have identical round-trip tickets from DEN->GUAM, and then I will fly directly from Denver to Manila. JC will have to take the kids alone from Japan to Guam and from Guam to Manila. We will also have to get a notarized letter that we both sign saying either of us can travel with the kids alone. That’s all a hassle, but it will save about $1,600 in flight costs.

We fought off the urge to watch a movie tonight. Instead BC went out and played with some kids on the playground. We also took a stroll around the perimeter of the complex. We found a bull frog and heard some weird noises from the swamp area that we couldn’t identify.

Travel Log: Day 40 (8/6), Jaco Costa Rica

Condo Cleaning

Our condo was scheduled to be cleaned this morning, so we had to leave the house for a few hours. We had reviewed a few coffee/breakfast places and picked one to kill some time. When we got there we realized it wasn’t open until Thursday, I guess because things are pretty dead here in the early part of the week. The strip club across the street even shuts down on Monday and Tuesday nights. We then walked to a couple backup options which also didn’t pan out. One because it didn’t really have anything to eat and the other because it was in the middle of a resort we didn’t have access to. I was carrying a heavy backpack with all of our valuables, and BC was pouting and acting like he was on the verge of a starvation death. Due to that we decided to Uber to our next attempt, Jet Fuel Coffee.

The coffee and breakfast at Jet Fuel were really good. There was some difficulty in the broken Spanglish between the server and us but it all worked out. After that we Ubered back to the condo but still had another hour to kill, so we went swimming.

How To Notarize A Document

In the afternoon JC and I continued working through the complexities of the post-Japan leg of travel. We finished drafting the document stating that either of us can travel alone with the kids. Then we used notarize.com to get it notarized, and I highly recommend them. The time from initially loading that site to having the notarized document in hand was about five minutes.

That’s a stark contrast to our experience at our local Chase branch when we tried to get our virtual mailbox form notarized. At Chase we had to field a hundred questions about our financial situation and then listen to lectures about the importance of savings goals and receiving upselling of services. I had some tolerance for that because they are providing a notary service, but then the notary turned out to be somewhat to fully dumb. He didn’t understand which fields we needed to sign, and invented some issue with the notary sign/seal page that was provided (which was identical in substance to his stock form). In the end we spent 30+ minutes there and didn’t even get the god damn document notarized. I pulled the eject coord as the evidence of dumbass piled up, and as it became clear he was going to fuck things up. I told him we’d go research those issues and come back. We had no intention of going back and notarized that form online as well (not sure which service).

Travel Logistics

With the consent letter now in place, we are free to have me break away from the group if that turns out to be easier or cheaper when I need to escort mom for Guam. We came up with a new idea today that we are leaning toward. We might go from Japan to the Philippines to squeeze that in before Guam. We’re afraid of our time in Japan feeling too long and would like to err on the side of too short. We would still get about six weeks in Japan.

I’m starting to see a pattern here in our thoughts when we plan a new leg. It always starts out feeling like there are too many options. We then start to narrow things down by remembering our objectives for this year. For example with the Philippines I started thinking of all the islands we should be seeing in addition to the city of Manila that we originally planned. However, we are not influencers who can go island hopping. We have kids, the kids have school, and we need a little bit of stability in this unstable year. We are also on a budget and we refuse to YOLO with our money. Those constraints are our north star and they simplify decisions. As we dial this into focus I remember that oh yeah, living a month primarily in Manila is still an amazing adventure of its own.