It was raining heavily when I awoke this morning in Monterey. This was predicted and I had  allowed for the possibility of staying an extra day here as Tuesday is expected to be fine along the central coast. I reserved the room for another night and planned to visit a couple of nearby state parks this afternoon and hope that the weather improved.

However, all plans have to adapt to new circumstances and I had noticed a medical issue on Saturday which seemed to be worse today and was giving me a little  pain so I decided to visit an urgent care clinic instead of the state parks to get it checked out. Although it is not currently an serious problem the doctor advised me not to wait for over a month to get a full examination as surgery may be necessary. Unfortunately the result is that I have decided to abandon the full perimeter goal and return cross-country. I do not intend to rush back and will still drive the central California coast tomorrow,  treat the rest of journey as a part of the vacation and continue to update the blog. This should allow me to get home in just over a week instead of just over a month.

I don’t want to alarm anybody as the condition is not, in any way, life threatening and I have posted more information in a separate, password protected post for those who know me well. The password is my cell (mobile) phone number: no spaces or prefixes, just the 10 digit number starting with a 7.