Moving

[George16]

Have a safe trip Jerry.

[JERRY2KONE]

Originally Posted by George16

Have a safe trip Jerry.

Well tragity has struck. While going to box up some extra luggage yesterday my wife tripped over a newly installed car stop (curb) took a fall and broke her right arm. I did not even know she fell for a few seconds, but when our son disappeared from helping me unload the back of the van I knew something was up. She had fallen face first onto the icey asfault in the parking lot. Luckily she managed to support the full force of the fall with her right arm protecting her face and head, BUT she broke her arm near the elbow. She snapped the radius ball off the top of the forearm dislodeging it completely. So she is in a sturdy sling until we can get into see an Orthopedic surgen 0800 on Monday for evaluation. She was in a lot of pain, but after a couple percasets she is sleeping.

So it looks as if we may be in Prague for a few more days taking care of this. Surgery should be farely quick as they do not want to let the bone set where it is now. So we should be on our way some time this week. We will let you guys know. Wish us luck.

[JERRY2KONE]

Yes it does sound painful. Of course I can only imagine what it feels like personally, but they wife takes the meds like candy trying to avoid feeling it. We finally got in to meet with Orthopedic Dr yesterday, and we are going to the Hospital at 0930 for surgery this morning. Now that we have seen the Xrays more clearly and also a CT scan she must have fallen directly onto this balljoint breaking off one side of the ball. The doctor is going to do exploritory first to anylize the damage first hand, then decide how to proceed. He may repair it, or he may just cut off the entire ball and elliminate it all together. By the end of today her repair should be completed. Then we have to wait here for ten days to have the stiches removed, and have a final Xray to see that the repair is what he expects it to be. That will be on the 25th, and we should be on our way to Prague that weekend (26-27/Feb). Man what a PITA. Our household goods are already gone so we have almost nothing here. Luckily our services have setup a loaner program and we have a kit in use with sheets, towels, and a flat panel TV with DVD player. The kids are already out of the school, so they have to hang out at home during the day. Living out of our luggage, and eating out every day. Oh well it could be worse I guess.

[nastety92]

Sorry to hear about your wife Jerry. Hopefully everything goes well today and she has a quick recovery.

Good luck with everything, talk to you soon.

Nick

[JERRY2KONE]

Thank you everyone for the well wishes and prayers in this time of need. We always look at these moments in time as if things could always have been much worse. What happened is most unfortunate, but we are grateful for the gifts we are given each day.

Anyway I just brought her home after spending the night with her in the Hospital. She is in a lot of pain, but recovering. After spending nearly 5 hours in the OR the Dr had rebuilt the radial ball joint completely with a stainless steel "T" plate and seven 2.4mm screws. It looks like a nightmare in the Xrays, but the Doc appears very confident that everything went well and that she should be good to go in a few weeks time. Once the swelling and pain subside from the initial trauma of the surgery, she should begin for realize full mobility and strength in the arm in question. He has every confidence that she will make a full recovery within a few months. Now we just have to get through the therapy of forcing herself to work it out and get better. Pain is difficult to work through.

At any rate we have a few appointments over the next week and should be on our way to Europe by the end of the month. Yeppeeeeee.

[JERRY2KONE]

Well we finally made it to Prague. After several weeks of delays and injuries we arrived here last night about 6PM. We had friends meet us at the airport and drive us to our new home. Its different, but it is very nice in deed. Fully furnished with all new furniture and in fact I am sitting in our master suite with the wife sitting in our new recliners doing our laptop communications. Very much like a hotel suite with a walk in closet and master bath.

We had a quiet uneventful 11 hour flight from Seoul Inchon, Korea to the Prague International airport, and once settled into our new home we all hit the hay around 9PM to get some much needed rest. We took a walk around the neigborhood this morning to see what the place looks like, and it is a very quiet neighborhood with about 1000 private homes. The entire development centers around the international school, which is a five minute walk for the kids. All-in-all it is a very nice adventure so far.

Some friends are coming over later today to take us out on a local sight seeing tour around the area to help us get acquainted with travels around Prague and the general area. We are all excited to be here, and cannot wait to venture out and about to take in all this sights and sounds of the Czech Republic, not to mention travels to Germany, Austria, and so many other European countries. Let the journey begin.

[aqwut]

Jerry,
Glad you have arrived safely!.. Hopefully your wife is making progress on her recovery. Make sure you stay away from MGM Factory, you may not want to leave.. LOL
Anyhow, I'm sure you guys will settle in just fine.... Cheers

[JERRY2KONE]

Thank you Sir. The wife is recovering quicker than even the doctor expected, although she still has to watch how she uses it. She sometimes forgets that it is not 100% and does things that the arm is not ready for.

Trust me the MGM factory is one place I plan to spend some time in very soon. Once our van gets here and I get a chance to find my way around here, I will be looking for their location with the GPS. I have a few MGM ESC's in my collection, and hope to get a little personal training on them to start with, and maybe even some upgrades in the process. I plan to create a thread once I have spent some time with them so I can share the experience with everyone.

We got together with some friends from the Embassy today and they took us out shopping at the MAKRO, which is very much like SAMS or COSTCO. So we have had our first Prague spending spree to get the basics for the house. Plus they took us on a short tour of our area, and we had a great time.

[brainanator]

Glad you made it Jerry! Dunno how I missed all that about your wife, worst stuff always happens when it is least convenient, but glad she is on the road to recovery!
Enjoy your explorations.

[aqwut]

Hey, don't forget to update your location... :) Glad you are enjoying yourself in Prague..

[JERRY2KONE]

Originally Posted by aqwut

Hey, don't forget to update your location... :) Glad you are enjoying yourself in Prague..

DONE. Thanks for the reminder. I just went in and updated it.

Yea I love traveling. After touring around with the US Navy for 20+ years and then settling down in Orlando for 15 years I was missing this. It is good to be out and about again. My mom always told us to take advanatage of travel when it comes about, because once you get too old and cannot aford it then it is too late. She had never left Pennsylvania her whole life, and during one of my Navy postings I had her flown over to Scotland for two weeks after my oldest daughter was born in 1987. She had never flown in a plane before let alone travel outside of the USA so she was thrilled to visit with us there. She passed away a few years after that trip, but it was a real eye opener for her. She was so proud of my accomplishments and happy that I had escaped the life of my childhood.

Living in the projects near Philidephia was a pretty sorry way to grow up, and I could not wait to get out of there and live new experiences. Of course I grew up quickly and learned a lot living the street life. I had no idea that my path would take me to places around the globe, but I am loving it. We want as much international experiences as life will allow, and meeting new friends from all over is also a blessing. Settling down stateside is always on our mind, but that is still a few years off yet. So we want to enjoy this and share it with our friends as we go.

[JERRY2KONE]

Well another week has gone by here in Praha, and we are really enjoying the great weather here. The nights are still getting quite cool, but the days are beautiful. On Saturday we went downtown to do some shopping. We found our selves right smack in the middle of a demonstration about the power of electric driven vehicles. There was a motorized skategoard that looked more like a hopped up surfboard with off road air tires. They also had a regular skateboard , several different sizes of quads, dirtbikes, and four versions of two seater cars all running on Lithium Ion power. They had four versions of E-Bikes, but they all looked just a bit too weird to me.

Eventually we found our way into the Paladium Mall which is loaded with shops from around the world. The best part was the selection of foods in the food court. McDonalds, KFC, BurgerKing, UNO, and a bunch of outher favorites from India, and Japan. All-in-all we had a great time and ended up spending about 5 hours just trying to take it all in. It has been another great week here in Praha and the weather is really nice. Lots of sunshine and the city seems to be a very romantic place. There is a local Monster Truck Exabition somewhere on Monday and Tusday so we are trying to make out the Czech signs so we can get tickets and check it out. I have found two hobby shops so far, but both were very small.

[JERRY2KONE]

Finally a sign of relief. We received word today that our household goods have arrived in Europe. Apparently they arrived Tue or Wed in the port of Antwerp, Holland. If things work out we should have our stuff being moved into our new house some time in the next two weeks. So now we are wondering where in the hell our new van is, because it left Korea two weeks before our household goods were shipped. We were told that it was going to be here no later than 15/April. Time for a trace. On our last move they lost our old van for three months. Come to find out it was parked in an abandoned warehouse and they forgot to put it on the ship. The only good thing that came out of it was that the shipping company compensated us with a $2K check for the inconvenience. Then I was not so pissed for being without a vehicle for a while.

[JERRY2KONE]

This is a good week here in the Hill house. The local shipping company just delivered our van. Its a little bit dirty, but no scratches or any other damage that I can see. Plus after traveling several thousands of miles half way around the globe the electronic odometer still reads exactly 800 miles, which is what it was when they picked it up from our home in Korea. We still have to wait on all of the legal paperwork for Czech registration, insurance, Czech vehicle inspection, road tax, and highway tax, before we can drive it, but it is great to finally have it parked in front of the house. Oh and then we get to fill it up for the first time. That will be a real shock. We have been told that it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $165 for a tank full of regular gas. No discounts here, but we do get the opportunity to file a claim for the local VAT and receive the taxes back on every gallon of gas. That should be about 33%, which means we get approx $55 back on every tank fill up. So the real cost will level out at around $100-$110 per tank full.

The second piece of good news is that our household goods are being delivered tomorrow. So it looks like our weekend will be filled with trying to find places to put everything, and finally getting settled into our new home with our own stuff. I have to mount all of the flat panel TV's on the walls, and get all of the surround sound audio equipment set up. Busy weekend for us. Plus I will finally get to unpack all of my R/C stuff and try to get organized in our garage for an R/C shop. Looks like a trip to IKEA is in order for Saturday. I have to purchase and install some kind of kitchen cabinetry with a countertop so I can have a nice place to work. I am excited.

[brainanator]

sounds like fun Jerry! I've only left the country once, and that was overnight in Canada on a high school orchestra trip...haha. Still got plenty of years in head of me though, can't wait to travel around!