A letter to Kinikia

Dear Kinikia,

Thanks for visiting my blog. I think you should scroll back to the very beginning of my adventures - July 2008 - and see just how wonderful this adventure has been. To answer your immediate questions: What with the price of gas, the low miles per gallon, the cost of overnight parking in campgrounds and such, living in a motor vehicle is still a cheaper way to go than owning a house, with its attendant taxes, upkeep and mortgage.

Of course if you buy a high end motor home, you may well have a mortgage as we do, and vehicles, as you are undoubtedly aware, decline in value far more quickly than homes.

That being said, there's nothing like the freedom you can have when you are portable. We made it our business to head for all the national parks, but we saw much more than that, too, because anywhere you go in this beautiful country there's something wonderful to see, learn about and experience.

We stayed mostly in campgrounds here and in Canada, mainly because they offer the hookups we needed for electricity, water and sewage. We did however get adventurous from time to time, and ventured off the beaten path, "dry camping" as we went. We had plenty of water in storage, and a generator running off the motor gave us lights and even television if we wanted. Our gas was propane, so cooking wasn't a problem, even in a snowstorm, which we ran into twice. We stayed warm and cozy and thoroughly enjoyed being stranded for a couple of days. Having packed no winter gear to speak of, we layered up, wore two of everything and faced the weather. And this was maybe 50 miles from San Diego!

After three years of turtle living, we decided we needed dirt -- and for me, a pool -- so we bought a home in Florida. We love it here, and are enjoying the equally pleasurable benefits of living in one place and getting to know our neighbors, putting in plants and swimming in our, of course, pool.

Our only conundrum now is the fact that we have this gorgeous coach sitting idle in a storage facility. We've decided to sell our baby, and rent when and if we get the wandering bug again. Two mortgages at our age is just plan silly.

Maybe you should come and take a look at it. Better yet, I've got a whole file of pictures I can email you. It's a real beauty and I'd love to have somebody nice to take it out of lockdown for a while. What do you say?

Best Regards,
Betty

Puzzling Behavior

Flamingo Lake RV Resort
Jacksonville, FL

I just took four Advil. That’s no surprise. I am a classic overindulger. If two will make my back feel better, just imagine how much faster and how much more effective four will be.

I have my son to blame for this backache. He gave me a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for Christmas, which I have been bending over for four hours straight. John quit sorting at about 45 minutes. He’s much more of an immediate gratification type and I guess the task I had assigned him – finding edges – was not doing it for him.

The weather here in Jacksonville is gorgeous. It hit a high of 81 today, but a dry and breezy 81, so I was lured outside with my puzzle and the new felt roll-up puzzle-saver I just bought.

I labored on creating my border for most of the afternoon, stopping only when I realized I could put the stripey building together in short order. Immediate gratification. I’m not immune.

The whole time I thought I was doing a San Francisco skyline, but when I consulted the box, it turned out to be New York. What’s with these puzzle makers? They take every pretty building in a city and squoosh them all together next to the waterfront and you’re supposed to recognize your home city?

Last time I looked the UN wasn’t pink. Nobody was fishing in the East River. Trolling for bodies, maybe, but not for something you might possibly eat. And I defy anyone to photograph Lincoln Center from the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s on the other side of town, guys!

When you can’t recognize the city you worked in, played in, loved and hated your whole adult life, that’s not a picture of your city. It’s a nice picture, a colorful picture, and a fun puzzle to do. It’s just not my city.

All of which is why, having blown an entire afternoon trying to get started, I’m still not finished with the border. I do have the stripey building, but god knows where that goes. (Or where it is in Manhattan, for that matter.) For now it’s in the middle.

At five, I called it a day and rolled up my green felt cloth, stuffed it into the tube that was in the box, then read the directions and realized I should have rolled the puzzle up with the tube inside the felt to keep the pieces in place.

So it looks like I’ll be doing the border over the next time I take my puzzle out to spend a lovely day in the out of doors, with the sun and the breeze and a Diet Coke and nothing but nothing else to do but have fun. Ah well.

One More Time

Sun City Hilton Head SC

It seems only fitting that I resume this blog with a tragedy, since that’s how it started, and especially since my misadventures apparently make you all chuckle out loud. (I can only imagine how hilarious you thought granny’s funeral was, or how Uncle Hiram’s bum leg made you weak with laughter every time he fell down.)

In any event, we’ve been in New York briefly, then in Mexico for two glorious weeks, then back up to Syracuse to pick up our newly repaired motor coach after only 7 months of delays. Turns out the subcontractor was holding up sending the doors to the body shop because the maker of our coach owed them money. We paid the subcontractor directly, and the doors showed up three days later. Go figure.

We hooked up our Jeep to the RV and took off again for more adventures. The drive south – believe me, the only place to head when it’s nineteen degrees everywhere else – took us through Tennessee, where we stopped for a rest, enjoying the 60 degree weather, shucking our coats and even contemplating riding our bikes. Not riding, just contemplating.

We got up the next morning to snow and a 22-degree freeze. Brrr. We put the coats back on, then another coat on top of that and decided to wait until the sun melted the snow. It didn’t, so two days later, we slipped and slid our way out of Tennessee.

We stopped overnight in Charleston, SC, and had dinner with our good friend Jimmie Moreland, then proceeded towards Hilton Head. We decided to have a look at one of Del Webb’s Sun City retirement villages and were going along a lovely palm tree-lined street, at 5 mph I swear, when John suddenly announced, “The bumper’s gone.”

Hello, what? What bumper? Gone where? From where? I hadn’t heard or felt a thing, and believe you me, you do get tuned in to trouble when you’ve had as much as I have.

I looked out the front window of the bus. “No," John said, “Not the bus, the Jeep.”

I jumped out of the coach and ran to the rear. There, trailing along behind us, was the Jeep’s bumper. To be more correct, the bumper wasn’t gone. The Jeep was.

Almost. It was holding on by a shred of plastic and in another five seconds would have been on its merry way, alone.

No sooner had we assessed this latest catastrophe than four men appeared out of nowhere and offered to help. “No face plate,” one intoned. “Bad installation,” said another. “Gimme that, “ said the third, taking the sledge hammer out of John’s hand and proceeding to tap out the connecting bolts.

Now this is a fact. I’ve seen it more than a few times in these eight months. Retirees are the most willing, helpful, generous people in the universe. It’s as if they sit around waiting to put all the skills they ever learned in life to good use. Have a breakdown and they fight each other to be first to offer assistance. Got questions about life in this community? How much time have you got to listen? Need directions? Hell, they’ll take you there, buy you a meal and wash your car while you’re eating.

Of course, they won’t hesitate to tell you why what you’re doing, or where you’re going, or how you were doing something is wrong, but that’s because they’ve done it all before, many times. It’s just the price you pay for the expertise.

We paid it gladly. They had the bumper shored up, the tow bar removed from the RV, and the Jeep ready to roll in a matter of minutes. Then they gave us directions to the Jeep dealer, information on where to park the RV for the night, and a baloney sandwich.

Okay, I lied about the sandwich, but you get the idea.

The RV park turned out to be a boat and RV storage lot, but it’s quiet, at least, and we do have water and electricity. And just because we love spending the big bucks, we’re going to rent a car while the Jeep is in the hospital and go see Hilton Head Island.

What, one little tragedy and you think we’d sit here in dry dock feeling sorry for ourselves, doing crossword puzzles, eating potato chips, and calling our friends to complain?

Actually, that sounds like fun. Talk to you later.

That Kind of Day

Cape Hatteras National Seashore
Outer Banks, NC

It’s the kind of day where you put a sweatshirt on over your pajamas for your morning coffee. You take a shower and get dressed, then put your sweatshirt on to walk the dog.

Coming back in for that second cup of coffee, you don’t bother to take your sweatshirt off, and before you know it, you’ve worn that shirt inside, outside, driving, exploring, lunching, shopping and walking the dog again.

It’s a sweatshirt kind of day.

The sky is a riot of kites. The ocean teams with windsurfers and sailboats. Parasailors launch themselves from water to heaven and back again. People with cameras litter the shores, trying to capture the pageantry. Everybody wears sweatshirts except the ones in wetsuits.

It’s useless to comb your hair. The gusts are non-stop. The sun competes with the wind for your soul: one warms you up, the other cools you off. As a result, you are neither hot nor cold. But your nose is almost icy and you find yourself sniffling a little.

It’s not a fall day, at least not the kind of fall I know. No leaves have turned, except for one variety of sea grass, so no fall colors are apparent. You don’t smell fire, or autumn decay anywhere. You smell beach, salty, clean and crisp.

You don’t wear fall clothes. You’re still in flip-flops, although you’ve traded your shorts for jeans. You’ve pulled on the usual tee shirt, but over it you’re wearing a sweatshirt.

It’s that kind of day.

It’s the kind of day you drive 40 miles just to look at a lighthouse. You stop on the way back at a crab shack for lunch and discover that the food is beyond delicious. Then you jump on your bike and look for things to photograph. You buy a new pair of your favorite sandals just because they’re on sale.

You launch your kite, only to have the wind whip it relentlessly about, and watch helplessly as it winds itself around and around the one the only lamp pole within a thousand yards of where you’re standing. And you abandon it there, because it’s kind of pretty and you think others will enjoy it while it lasts.

That’s the kind of day I’ve had. A sweatshirt kind of day.





Camp Hatteras

The Sickie

I’m writing this as much for me as for you. I want to document a miracle.

On September 15, after a season of traveling through deer country, starting in upstate New York and continuing north through eastern Canada, then south through all the East Coast states (we doubled back and caught Vermont after Long Island), John was diagnosed with Lyme Disease.

He had six big red circles, including a row of four on one leg, so we both thought he might have been the target of a nasty spider. But no, it was more like a deer tick. He was given three weeks of doxycycline and told to take Advil if he had pain. If? The aches and soreness kept him up at night, and during the day he would crash. In very short order, I learned to plan for solo afternoons, as John snoozed away the day, recovering his strength in order to eat dinner, watch half a TV show, then crash again and call it a night.

Nevertheless, we continued to travel, even going so far as Nashville to catch the Eagles in Concert. In fact, the concert was only three days after his diagnosis, so that must have been a real effort for him.

But Lyme Disease is certainly not the miracle.

Two weeks later, he started to have pain in one side, then developed a nasty rash around his torso. Ah, I sagely diagnosed, a reaction to the medicine. I’ve seen this before! So we made another visit to another doctor. He came out of the examining room looking stunned. I pulled away from my People Magazine long enough to catch the look of shock. “What?” I said.

“Shingles,” he mouthed.

Now Shingles hurts. It is a nasty little afterthought, a virus that hides in the body after you’ve had chicken pox. When the immune system is compromised (see above), it can flare up along the nerve pathways, often traveling from one side of the spine, around the torso, and ending in the middle of the belly. Bingo.

John is classic. Ask his friends.

Two nasty things at the same time. The miracle? Wait for it, wait for it.

In all this, John has managed to keep his good humor. He crashes and burns, but apologizes for falling asleep in the middle of … whatever. Use your imagination. He makes fun of his weakness and says he’ll do the dishes, vacuum our tiny rug, wash the buggy windshield. Soon. Not now, but soon.

He’s also gotten behind the wheel of our big rig and driven upwards of three hundred miles at a stretch, then done all the set-up when we arrived. He’s trying to keep up his part of the work. And he’s doing it all with grace and good humor.

Now that’s the miracle. A sick man who makes jokes. Hallelujah.

So I’ve decided we’ll stay longer in Cape Hatteras, spending our days at this heavenly place, sitting in the sun, lying in the shade, reading, resting, watching football and movies and eating out on occasion, until he’s decidedly better.

It’s a sacrifice, but that’s the way I am.

I know. I’m a saint.

Betty

Go Fly a Kite

Camp Hatteras
Outer Banks, NC

I have never in my life had success flying a kite. The highest kite I ever flew got six feet off the ground and collapsed, dead, four seconds later. But today, I flew a kite.

Not only that, I flew it right into the sun. On a string so long it took me almost ten minutes to reel it in.

When I was little, the kites we had were paper. They came disassembled, with their balsa frames in two pieces. You spent a good fifteen minutes trying to put them together, creating aerodynamic tension by slipping the frame into the string that was glued inside the edges of the paper, and it wasn’t unusual to break either kite or frame before you even tried it out.

More often, however, you crashed on your first or second attempt to get it airborne, and some vital part of the kite’s anatomy was forever damaged. We tried everything – scotch tape, glue, bracing the broken limb with a toothpick, but nothing worked very well and the deceased kite was abandoned to the garbage pail, not to be replaced until the next special occasion.

We were blue-collar kids. There wasn’t extra money for breakables. We shared one kite. Nobody had a personal kite unless it came on a birthday, and even then, there was a lot of wheedling and cajoling. “Please, pleeeeze, let me try. C’mon Rich. You can have half my Popsicle. Puhleeze!” Of course, that’s when you broke the kite and still had to give up half the Popsicle anyway.

The boys were better at getting the kite up. Maybe we girls were dynamically challenged, I don’t know. But my mom couldn’t do it either. My dad, of course, was a major flyer. He could even make a kite out of newspaper. It wasn’t as airworthy, but it was an acceptable substitute when we had nothing. He stopped making them after a while, probably because he was sick of the tears and drama when it would crash, as it inevitably did.

Later when I was into dating mode, a kite-flying date would present itself, and I invariably embarrassed myself with my klutziness. I’d break the kite, or fall while running, or run into the lifeguard’s stand (once) or step into a hole. I couldn’t maneuver and look where I was going at the same time. I was a lost cause.

My kids could fly kites. They never asked me to start a kite on its way. Enough said.

But yesterday I went to the Kitty Hawk Kite Shop and bought an airfoil, a lightweight poly-something kite with a baffle construction that is easy to launch because each baffle traps air and pulls it aloft. All you need is a little breeze.

It’s breezy here in Cape Hatteras – or more correctly, Camp Hatteras in Rodanthe at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. I got my kite up in approximately five seconds, and it would be up there still if I hadn’t gotten the idea to come in and shout my good news to the immediate world.

Look at me! I’m flying!

Betty

I Used to Be President

Greensboro Campground
Greensboro NC

I am struck by the way retired people refer to themselves, and it occurs to me that one of the quirks of being retired is the loss of one’s identity.

We live in a world where we are defined by the shape of our bodies and the age we project (younger is better), the toys we can accumulate and put on display (diamonds, boats and Jaguars do say something) and not only the work that we do, but the heights we achieve in the work that we do.

What happens when we put one-third of our identity on the shelf? When we are no longer the president of, or the owner of, or the speaker on the dais, or the manager, section head, or whatever grounds us in the social structure?

It’s not easy defining yourself to the world when all your life you’ve been doing that in terms of your work. I find myself telling people that I am a writer before anybody asks the question. Then I think, “Who cares?” It’s as if I can excuse this lack of employment, this extended vacation or whatever it is that I am doing, by letting people think that the only reason I’m sitting in my motor coach and exploring the country is that I intend to write a book about it. I’m not retired. I’m on a mission.

Hoo-hah. I am too retired. I am not 45 anymore. I don’t own an advertising agency anymore. I am not the president of, the owner of, the speaker at. I’m just me and I’d better get used to it. But what is me?

That’s what we recent retirees have to discover. I suspect it takes a while, and for some of us, it will never be more than what we used to be or do. But I’m trying.

Meanwhile I’m trotting out the bling, telling people that my other car is a Lexus, and mentioning that” I used to be.” And not only that, I still am. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to the place where I can say, “I don’t DO anything. I’m retired.” It sounds too old and useless to me right now. But I sure would love to be loved and respected for who I am, not what I’ve accomplished.

So even in retirement I have a growth goal. Being. Not used-to-being. Now there’s a challenge.

Betty

Shifting Perspectives

The thing about traveling in an RV is, everything shifts. What you had tucked securely and tightly away comes flying at you when you open a cabinet. Your pills, for instance. The top was on, securely. The bottles were lined up, tightly. So why did the Liptor smack you in the forehead and spill its contents into the (wet) sink, which then eased slowly and inexorably towards the drain before you could gather the pills up, drying each of them individually on paper towels, and reinsert them into the bottle?

I’m having a power struggle with my dog. Who belongs in the passenger seat, the seat that reclines comfortably and lets you enjoy the ride from the catbird perspective? The one who got there first? (Zeus) Or the one who paid half the price of the motor home?

Having spent a week alone with his person, John, where he was the equal partner in just about every endeavor, Zeus seems to feel that I am the intruder. And that I should LIE DOWN in the dog bed while he enjoys the view. Which, I should point out, cost $39.95 and has a lining that softer than my best cashmere sweater.

He’d be fine with sitting on my lap, as long as I scratch his many itchy places non-stop. Take one five-second break, and I find myself gently but firmly reminded that the bargain has been broken, and he has been scratchless longer than is acceptable.
Betty