On The Road Again

I left Elma this morning after a great six day visit. I was able to spend a good bit of time and share lots of laughs with Long Time Harborite, my neighbor and very good friend of 30 years; visit with a few other Elma folks I wanted to see; ate and/or drank at Saginaw’s just about everyday; shared a couple of beers at Fred’s with Shu; and enjoyed a bit of Fred’s special sweet bread.

I am now sitting in a Super 8 motel in Buely, ID just North of the Utah border.

Last Tuesday I drove to the Mexican consulate in Seattle, where I arrived about 8:30 AM and took number 51 while the staff was serving number 21. My number came up after only about 45 minutes and I submitted the paperwork necessary to secure a visa which allows me to take into Mexico the household goods I had in storage in Elma. Amongst the paperwork was a detailed list of the items I wish to take to Mexico which I was told was in the wrong format.

So I walked a block to a restaurant where I reformatted the list on my laptop, in Excel spreadsheet format, while I ate. Then walked two blocks to Kinkos where I plugged my laptop into their docking station, printed the list, and got the copies I needed. The docking station was pretty cool, included a credit card reader, and put a little screen on my computer screen informing me of the running charges, which came to $ .78.

In about an hour I was back at the consulate, handed in my revised list, and was told to return at 4:30. I returned and received my “menaje de casa” visa. The service was great and the fellow at the consulate who helped me was very pleasant. With the receipt of the visa I had no further responsibilities except to load my truck which I did yesterday.

During my visit to Elma I stayed at the Elma Microtel Inn and Suites, and since I am an honorary employee of WSCO Petroleum, the owner of the hotel, I received the employee discount rate of $25 per night. Upon my arrival at the Microtel last Sunday I pulled into a parking space right next to the van you see in the picture and upon which you can see a reference to the Osgood Brown Conference Center.

As some of my very few readers know, during my last job, working for the City of Elma, I was responsible for processing the land use and building permit applications for the construction of the hotel and inspected its construction. During the grand opening ceremonies of the hotel, after I had left employment with the city, Mayor Osgood and I were informed that WSCO Petroleum was naming the conference center after the mayor and me and naming one of the two rooms in the conference center for the mayor and me.

I always had thought that building are only named for dead people. Also during the ceremony I was informed that WSCO was designating me an honorary employee.

I promise you that nobody at WSCO or their architects, engineers, or contractors ever even suggested that they should not be required to comply with all applicable regulations or in anyway received any special treatment from the city with regards to applicable regulations. What city staff did do, however, was to provide excellent service in reviewing and approving all necessary permit applications. The whole project was a great experience for me and, as it happened capped my career as a local government regulator.