It has been a long time between posts but being a homeless person takes a lot of my time. It’s hard to be creative when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from or where you are going to sleep. Here in America, no matter what you say, fifty percent of the people will disagree out of hand. Another twenty five percent can’t read above a sixth grade level. The main reason is that this blog and website, which is complete but not online, it is my only line of defense should the police successfully complete their threat to make me “the next veteran suicide”. Hopefully, this blog and website will tell my side of the story instead of whatever the police manufacture. Hopefully it will also be proof to the Veterans Administration that I am not mentally ill. I really was in a terrible accident from which I did suffer injuries and where I wound up homeless.
Since the last post, I have traveled from the desert southwest back to the Pacific Northwest. In the six years I have spent time in the desert, the situation there has really deteriorated. Like everywhere else, the weather has gotten more extreme, much hotter and much windier. Six years is a short time. To see the climate change so dramatically and so quickly, is rather shocking.
Also, like everywhere else there are political issues. This is one of the places in the United States where there are people chomping at the bit for political violence. I recognize it because we have the same people in the Pacific Northwest who believe using violence will get them what they want. Also like the Pac NW, the government is closing down recreational land and converting free recreational areas into fee recreational areas. I’m not sure what is going on, but public land is for and, supposedly, owned by the American people who hire the government to manage it for public use. When the government says they are not going to do what they are supposed to do, I think there will be a problem.
The “snowbird” phenomenon, senior citizens getting in the motorhome and spending the winter in the Arizona desert are over. Elderly Americans have been killed off by the American economy and poor health care. So much for the “Golden Years”. Replacing the snowbirds are elderly Americans who live in the motorhome full time because they had to sell their home. Lots of homeless veterans. Many other Americans, including families, living full time on the road because they can’t afford anything else. Now, courtesy of the United States Supreme Court, all of us are criminals. I really don’t want to go back there, but I have nowhere else to go. It could be America’s first refugee camp. This is America, so even refugees pay rent.
I stopped by my friend’s house in Oceanside, CA. I lived in this area for a long time and was in business here for more than twenty five years. Today, I can’t afford to drive through there. After being a homeowner for more than thirty years, he had to sell his house because he just couldn’t afford it any longer. He was working seven days a week, but the cost of living left his income in the dust. It’s a tough thing, but as somebody who has lost everything, twice, I understand what he’s going through. It takes a while for big shit like that to pass through your system. Following the semi truck accident in 2018*, it took me at least six months to fully process what had happened and that everything was gone. Not an easy thing, but I think a lot of Americans are going to be going through the same thing very shortly.
Back in the Pacific Northwest, I camped in the mountains and when it wasn’t raining, I rode my bike. The way things are going, this may be my last time camping and riding my bike here. This area continues to change without direction. It has gotten more expensive to live here, impossible for most. Businesses are running at half speed because they can’t pay employees a living wage. Pay to park nearly everywhere. Almost all the recreational areas that were free five years ago are either closed, fee areas or time limited. Like in Arizona, it seems like the United States government is shutting down, starting with the places they think nobody will notice.
Mother Nature has also come to the Ball of Confusion party hosted by the human race. While millionaires build mini mansions and the guy working at the grocery store is living in a van, every August, the Pacific Northwest catches fire and burns hundreds of thousands of acres, upsetting people’s lives and livelihoods and filling the skies of the entire region with smoke. Summer doesn’t really start here until July, so you have seven or eight months of 40°F and rain, with occasional blizzards and ice storms. August through November is fire. A month or two could go either way. That leaves one month of nice weather. The great outdoors here isn’t that great when its 40° and raining or on fire. This year, a fire burned where I’ve been camping for the past fifteen years. Very sad to add to the pile of sadness I use as a mattress every night.
I wish I did have a pile of something to sleep on because the injuries I sustained in the truck accident more than five years ago without any kind of medical treatment, are getting much worse. I have not had a full night’s sleep since the accident because of pain in my hips and left side that were crushed when the forty ton semi hit me at fifty miles an hour. The pain is getting much worse and now I have pain almost all the time. I can only sleep for 30-45 minutes until the pain wakes me up. I don’t have the luxury of getting up and walking around the master bedroom to stretch out, so the pain gets progressively worse until it wakes me up for good around 4:00 AM each morning. I’m riding my bike and doing everything I can, because at the rate the pain is progressing, I might not even be able to walk a year from now.
I went to the Veterans Administration for my annual checkup. Medical care is one of the only reasons I have for returning to Washington. I’ve had the VA for healthcare five years now. The “checkup” is tele med, that is a doctor(in my case a physicians assistant, or PA) via computer. It’s all that’s available so it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. In order to receive medicine I need from the VA, I have to have an annual checkup. Every year I tell them I got hit by a truck and I’m having some difficulty, I’ve been ignored. Except for this year. After telling the PA about my physical problems and how I got them, he told me it “sounded like a movie” and recommended that I see a psychologist. Following the tele med checkup, I sent a link of “the movie”* and message stating that I was not mentally ill. Ignore problem > ignore problem > ignore problem > mentally ill is a program I do not want any part of. After my first VA visit, where I was prescribed the medicine I need, I was the newest homeless veteran in the Arizona desert. I did not understand because a lot of them did not trust the VA, now I do. I am in the exact same position now that I was five years ago. My health has gotten worse but the only treatment I receive is the prescription from five years ago. My primary care physician doesn’t believe what I tell him and thinks I have mental problems. I’ve been telling them for five years that I’ve been homeless. Ignored for five years. That puts my trust at right about zero. I need to find another way to get the medicine I need before it’s one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
I feel the need to say whatever it is I need to say because I have the feeling that I don’t have much time to do it in. Without going into the infinite number of ways that can work out, I have some things I feel I need to say, otherwise I would be doing something else.
1-20-2025 ronbosroad.com website is online. Links updated.