Monday, August 14, 2006

Traveling Along the North Shore


When we left St. Paul, the temperature was 68 degrees. We got to Tobie's just fine. Had breakfast. But as we drove north from there, the temperature dropped about 8 degrees, the sky clouded over, the wind came up, and it started to rain. It was as if someone had summoned the demon Bartimeus, and he was upset about it. We drove thru a stiff wind for quite a few miles. One piece of bad luck was that a car threw a stone at my windshield and cracked it. Damn! Replaced windshields never get seated like originals. Such is life. Of course, I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. So we changed clothes. Naturally, that changed our luck. As we approached Grand Marais, it started to clear up. Got sunny and warm again. Temps rose to about 65 degrees.

Well--turns out I needed some liprinosil. My Rx ran out at home, and I took it to the pharmacy for a refill, but the hours of operation at the WSP pharmacy are rather limited. So I had to leave home without the necessary supply of the drug (an ace inhibitor used in tandem with chlorthalidone for bp management). So I go into a pharmacy in Grand Marcia and ask the pharmacist how I can get my doc to get him an r's so I can get some liprinosil. He asks how much I need. Enough for Sunday, I said--five pills. He says he will sell me the five pills w/o an r's. Wow! Never thought that would happen. So he charges me $.50 for five 5 mg pills. Funny thing is, with my pharmacy benefit, I pay a $10 copay for 30 pills from my pharmacy. Are you doing the math? My pharmacy charges me over three times as much for the same drug. Go figure.

Anyway, Char and I stopped just south of Lutsen at a wayside rest for lunch. The wind was blowing fiercely off of the lake. Nevertheless, we made a sandwich and had lunch. This is what the lake looked like then. Don't know whether you can see it, but there were plenty of white caps, which form with a wind of 15 mph.

No comments: