All posts by Paul Goldberg

Jojoba Hills, Paul Goldberg Blog, Update on Carol

Two Months Later

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It has been a very busy two months since I posted last. I am now the president of the corporation instead of treasurer. Carol has had a great opening of her photo show in our new Library and various dramas both in the park and personal have played out.

Carol got pushed around by a powerful gust of wind as she turned around a corner of our shed. This resulted in a couple of days of hospital stay and a month in rehab. In addition to the fractured vertebra in her neck some other medical issues that had been lying and waiting came to the fore. She seems to have most of it under control and is now recovering from attempting to run her rehab in an understaffed under supervised facility. She will be running her continued rehab with a staff of one very dedicated worker. 

That is enough drama of a personal nature. I must admit that I have had dinner at several neighbors and much food was brought to Carol in the rehab when she let it be known the rehab kitchen left a lot to be desired. Also flowers and cards  have filled her room. I’m now looking for space for all that stuff in the coach. 

Our plans to go to Tucson for Escapade have come to naught, it starts in two days. Our plans for a river cruise on the Rhone at the beginning of May are still in place. I have a procedure scheduled for early April and I hope that Carol is recovered enough to go and I won’t have a long recovery either, it is outpatient so I have high hopes. 

The Super Bloom is blooming all over the place.

This is just a couple hundred yards up the road from our site. I took a walk with our neighbor Bill Outlaw on the high ridges around the park to see all the bloom. It is great but this is the best picture I got. 

We have had an unexpected amount of rain and chill (I can’t really call it cold, overnight lows in the mid 30’s at worst). It certainly has not been the lovely warm winter we remember from prior years. Today is warm and sunny for the moment, but back into the wet and chill for next week. 

I would love to regale my followers with tales of governing drama, but the only really exciting stuff is confidential. Other stuff is still to come before the board and I am trying to contain my normal desire to wade in on one side or the other. I need to chair the meetings in order to let all side present their perspective before letting the board vote. Several of the questions do not engage me directly other than trying to prevent the sides from becoming inflamed. 

 

Jojoba Hills, Paul Goldberg Blog

Changes Coming

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I haven’t posted much about the goings on at Jojoba Hills SKP Resort. I’m not sure anyone is even interested, but I do need to record some thoughts. Carol I are up to our eyeballs in activities here. She is planning a first opening in a new gallery space. After we renovated and revised our center around the pool the Library has space for hanging art and it has been approved to use it as a gallery. There are a lot of new prints on metal in our shed waiting to be hung in February right after our Annual Meeting on February 2 the opening is on the 6th.

My term on the Board has two more years to run. However this year we are looking forward to extensive training for the entire Board. It is planned for three days. It should be interesting.

The resort was built over 30 years ago and much of the infrastructure has passed its “use-by-date” Fortunately our predecessors wisely set aside a substantial reserve fund and the new water tank and the repairs to the septic systems are covered by those reserves. I did say systems. There are 17 distinct systems serving the 283 sites and the public buildings. Septic 11 is the system we are on and the heavy rains overloaded the leach field for our system. We have been “camping” with our holding tank valves closed for the past week. It’s sort of like being out in the desert where there are no utilities although we do have water and electric. This should be fixed by Monday.

My work as Treasurer has been satisfying. I have managed to spread our CD investments out almost evenly – laddered – so plenty of cash will be available very 90 days. Working with the Finance Committee we have an excellent budget going into 2023. And even with crazy utility and other inflated charges it looks like we will have a small surplus to carry forward into the new year.  It does remain to be seen whether I will continue as Treasurer after the Annual Meeting. We are electing 3 new members to the 9 person board and we immediately have a meeting of the new Board to elect officers. The current President has said he will not stand for reelection to that position. Stay tuned.

Tonight we are going with a gang from the resort to Mexican dinner and a performance at Pechanga Casino of the “Fab Four”, a cover band with excellent reviews. There is a group called “Trips and Tours” that regularly puts together these events. 

I just turned down an invitation to play Bridge this afternoon because we have other plans to get together with friends in their rig, just to catch up between their travels and ours. We now have enough people to actually play Bridge fairly often and even some men, so I am no longer the only guy in the room. I hope I can find the time after the Annual Meeting to report on that and other happenings. We are not the US Congress so I do not expect multiple rounds of voting to elect the new officers. 

 

 

Jojoba Hills

Catching Up

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Five weeks  have passed since I posted. This is quite a long time since I have had good internet most of that time.  In brief, the first couple of weeks of December flew by with the usual routines of life in our coop. Finance Committee and the Board were going through the steps of preparing for a new fiscal year to be launched as always a month late with our annual meeting the first week in February. My role as Treasurer has been working with Finance to put in place a revised draft budget and preparing to support several proposals we have made for changes to the parks bylaws we have proposed. 

December 22 we boarded Konigsdam, a Holland America ship, in San Diego. The cruise was 7 days with three in port days and 3 sea days. This was a good balance for our first ever cruise. Crossing the North Atlantic on the Queen Mary in 1964 hardly fits in the category of cruise, at the time it was travel. We enjoyed it, mostly. Carol is not thrilled with the pampering, I enjoyed it. I got to play Bridge for three sea days and Carol heard music, lectures, had her hair done, danced and was exposed to repeated jewelry sales approaches, they did get tiresome. The first four nights were the last four nights of Chanukah and a room was reserved for candle lighting and we met many of the Jewish travelers including a wonderful Rabbi from San Diego whose synagogue I am sure we will visit. Whether we will cruise again is an open question.

Our return brought us back into the thick of activity in Jojoba Hills. Bridge had resumed the Board is on a busy schedule with regular biweekly meetings and executive meetings to discuss stuff that is not open to the general membership, member discipline,  employment issues and contracts.  I am also liaison to 5 active committees which means I attend their meeting, offer guidance when their work requires Board guidance and bring their motions and programs to the Board when asked. Needless to say lots of one on one time goes into this work. It keeps me busy and I have always enjoyed working with people, even those with whom I might disagree. 

We also had a wonderful New Years Eve dinner Dance, with lots of good Rock’n’Roll to dance to. Two hours of dancing. This was also a wonderful virus spreader event. We have been on lockdown lite until today to give us a chance to clear the air so we can have our annual meeting in person.  

I have not gotten lost. When I have more to write about you will see it here. In the mean time I feel the need to call out to some friends who are in need of support. Toby, we are thinking of you now as you have your procedure tomorrow. Judy B, your loss of Dave after so long an illness, both stings and I am sure bring a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering. We have missed him over the past couple of years. The trials of advancing age have taken on a new meaning as more of our friends find their lives changing and as we start to think of 60 year-olds as kids – we have a daughter-in-law getting there now. Our eldest grandson is 31, the youngest will be leaving the teens behind this year. 

Carol is chairing a project to rehab the next oldest building in the park and preparing art to display in the new gallery space that opened up with the remodeling of our activity annex. She has a new Ukulele and paints as well. 

I plan to write again in less than 5 weeks.

Jojoba Hills, Paul Goldberg Blog

Life at Jojoba Hills

Since my last post we have been staying on our site while actively participating in the social life of the park while also doing the things required by the volunteer positions we have taken on.

A day in the life is a high example of total involvement. It was a Wednesday so I got up to go to the JCATS 8 AM meeting to have coffee and learn if someone needed a tech fix. After the meeting 3 of us met in phone room to install two VDSL DSLAMS to replace one old ADSL DSLAM. Just ignore the acronyms, the translations may also be meaningless – we installed 2 smaller faster boxes to replace one older slower box. I had to leave to join a zoom from George Eastman Museum that I had signed up for. As that came to an end I got a call to take a couple on a tour of the park. Carol had the cart so I walked down to Ranch House to meet them and begin a tour that was to last 2 hours. I walked back up the hill by 3 just in time to join an impromptu Bridge game in the Card Room. By the time Carol came back from town and I walked back to the coach I was tired. 

 That may have been at the extreme end of daily activity, but it certainly is not uncommon for me to find myself participating in two or more activities in a day. All the while Carol is leading an equally busy schedule. The weather is chilly, even here it is winter,  and late afternoon gatherings on the patio even with windscreens and heaters are not pleasant, so we gather with one or two couples in someone’s coach.  Life here has a rhythm and it is easy to adopt it and go with the flow.

 

Jojoba Hills, Paul Goldberg Blog

Lost and Found

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Carol and I have been doing a lot of different things mostly overlapping at the same time. In other words we have been a bit disorganized in getting organized. Monday The chaos was peaking when I got a call to give a tour in the afternoon and rather than saying, “not really at this time” I said “sure”. 

As the time for the tour approached I was doing some paperwork preparation for our cruises which we have just booked. I was sitting on the couch with my wallet out for credit card numbers and other paperwork I keep in it. I got up to leave for the tour and I was sure I left the wallet on the couch, something I never do. When I returned to the coach 3 1/2 hours later it wasn’t there. Carol had not seen it and she had been away from the coach for 1 1/2 hours herself. Where could the wallet have gotten to?

The coach is now far better organized and clean than it was Monday morning. We have been in every nook and cranny even expecting to find the keys we lost 8 years ago in Florida. No wallet – also no keys. 

I’ve posted about this on Facebook in the park’s page just in case someone saw something. This morning I even ordered a replacement for my driver’s license. I had not seen any activity on my accounts so I was sure the wallet had not fallen into the hands of a thief (how could it have?). 

Mid afternoon, after a very active morning with meetings and lunch followed by a couple of hours of bridge, I decided to retrace my steps on Monday. I took the golf cart down to the lower part of the park – Ranch House – and walked over to the picnic table where I always begin my tours. As I walked up I saw a lump under the bench and there was my wallet, undisturbed, where it had fallen from my pocket. 

I have since removed some difficult to replace cards that are not needed very often and stored them away in an old wallet in the coach. I have vowed that the wallet will be in its usual storage place or in my pocket. Maybe I will not repeat this foolishness, but then foolishness does seem to come more often these days.

We are convinced the keys were taken by a racoon in Fort Desoto as suggested by the Ranger.

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

A Pause in Las Cruces

We have stopped in Las Cruces to visit Leora and Stuart as has been our custom over the years. After three days without pause it also has given us a chance to clean up a bit and restock groceries. Hacienda RV Resort is an acceptable campground. I can see I 10 traffic out the windshield from our site and the rail crossing nearby is quite audible. 

Last night as we were preparing dinner neither of us wanted to turn on the election day news. We went to sleep in ignorant bliss. This morning we both hesitated about turning on the local NPR station not knowing what to expect. We are still breathing evenly. I’ll let it go at that.

Our major topics of discussion are planning the next 700 miles of travel which will put us on our site in Jojoba Hills. When to stop; where to stop; how long to drive each day. I do know we will stop for fuel in Yuma, our last fuel stop before Californian. With careful planning we may be able to avoid paying California price for diesel at all. Our next planned RV outing is in Arizona and we should have enough fuel remaining to easily return there.

Our next planned travel is the cruise to Mexico from San Diego in December. That is a 7 day “practice” cruise. We continue to explore other trips for Spring after the RV trip to Escapade in Tucson AZ in March.  

I expect my next post will be from Site 801 in Jojoba Hills SKP Resort.

 

 

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

On the Move

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Our next stop after the winery was 3 nights at Tom Sawyer RV Park on the banks of the Mississippi. They claim that they are so close to the river they are sometimes IN the river. Not so much now. With drought north of Memphis the river is much less mighty than we have seen in the past. This link  will take you to two pictures of the river taken from the same place. The first was taken in May 2022 and the second was taken this month (November 2022). 

Our trip continued on I 30, I know we don’t love interstates, but we really want to get back to Jojoba Hills this year. Because we now limit travel time to about 4 hours we are stopping at new places. Last  night we chose a Boondockers Welcome place that is very highly regarded by many visitors. I still have to write a review, but WOW. Lots of room for RVs of any size and full or partial hookups available for most. The couple are older than us but are leading a very active life. The forecast included a serious threat of tornados and they warned that they might come knocking at the door at any time to come into the sheltered part of the house to wait it out. The knock came at about 7:30 as we were preparing dinner. We sat in a row with them and 4 other RVers who came in to shelter. We were listening to the TV in the other room warning that it was close, then the TV quit and lights flickered! Using our phones we could see the track as it passed 3 miles to our north! In the morning Ginny told us that one of their neighbors, just 3 miles away, had had their property destroyed. We were grateful to have escaped unscathed. 

We rolled on along I30 through the middle of Dallas, losing no more than 10 minutes to traffic slow downs. The alternative was at least an hour longer and many miles of expensive diesel. We have traversed Dallas at worse times and our experience has been similar, lots of traffic, a period of 20 mph backup and no significant loss of time. I will admit to some scathed nerves. A bit over 4 hours brought us to Coffee Creek RV Park. It seems to be a mix of longer term RVers, workers and transients like ourselves. We are just a couple of miles off I 20. Road noise? What road noise? 

Tomorrow our plan is to stop at Monahans Sandhills State Park along I 20. This is one of our favorites camping in what looks like ocean sand dunes where the ocean (Permian) left eons ago. From there on to Las Cruces NM. We won’t be staying at Siesta RV. When I called I was told the park had been sold and the new owner was looking to fill it with monthlies. I won’t miss the cramped worn out site #13 we usually stay in. We will miss the location within walking distance of Mesilla and  the shops and restaurants we enjoy. We’ll just have to drive from Hacienda RV, a couple of miles further.

 After a four night stay we will take three overnights to get to Jojoba Hills, unless we get crazy and do it in two – not likely.

On the Road, Paul Goldberg Blog

I’ve Been Busy

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That is as good an excuse as any for my failure to keep this blog up to date. Somehow we managed to pick up the car on Friday afternoon and get the coach loaded and ready to roll on Saturday morning, once Carol’s doctor gave us the go ahead to leave town for the winter. As I write we are in Red Bay Alabama around the corner from the factory where GeeWhiz was built. Our sole reason for coming this year was to have the stove cover repaired and the counters polished like factory new by the man who does that all day long in the factory!

We arrived at Malena and Dan’s in Dyke VA midafternoon and soon were set up in the driveway for our stay. We celebrated my 80th the next day with lamb chops! and Red Breast Irish Whiskey. It was a great celebration and Alexander was there for the event. For the most part they were working during the day and we went about our own lives until dinner time. Of course I helped feed the horses, well I observed and stayed out of the way mostly. I swear Galopin and Tivoly are twice as big as the Iceland horses we saw. On Friday Dan took Carol and me on a wonderful walk on a trial off the Blue Ridge Parkway. As is true of almost all BRP trails it is “upside down”. It starts out with a long descent and finishes by climbing back to the trailhead. We made it!

Travel from there started out by backing out of the long not completely straight driveway we had driven in on. With Carol at the wheel and me talking on the handsfree cellphones (for the first time) this was accomplished easily. Once hooked up, we had an uneventful drive with a stop for fuel and arriving for a pleasant stay at Fort Chiswell RV Park. I cannot believe we haven’t stayed there before. However it is less than four hours drive and we used to travel for six hours in our youth. Another 4 hour day found us at Mama Gerties Campground outside of Asheville. Imagine taking a cliff and carving roads and level campsites on the side of the cliff. We had been there before but it seems steeper than memory. We were in G2 on that trip so more than 10 years ago. 

Our friends Leigh and Patrick moved to Asheville within the year and have bought a lovely house with glorious views.We had dinner out with Leigh on Tuesday night and with both of them at their home Wednesday night. it was a lovely visit and it gave us time to wander a bit in Asheville. We wandered around in Blue Spiral Gallery, as we do every time we are there and across the street to the Mast Store where Carol found something to buy. 

Early Thursday morning (for us) we set out for a two day run to Red Bay. Since the drive is about 10 hours we planned an overnight at a Harvest Host Winery we had visited before, Del Monaco Winery outside Nashville. Plenty of parking away from the winery itself which was good since they had a large crush of guests for a college reunion arriving about 5. By 9 PM they were all gone and it was peaceful for the night.

Now I must really start preparing my Treasurer’s Report for September 30.

In Rochester, Paul Goldberg Blog

The Best Laid Plans

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Another way of saying that is “Man Plans, G-d Laughs” or “On to Plan C?” Originally we planned to leave on October 10. Then the car was creased in a parking lot while we were enjoying a meal. That pushed us back to the 11th, still doable. Then Carol’s doctor wanted one more test, now scheduled for the 13th, so we planned on departing on the 14th or 15th. Just spoke to the collision shop and the new bumper has not come in. Once they get it they need two days, the earliest would be Friday the 14th, the earliest we can leave would be the 15th which would get us to C’ville just in time for my 80th birthday on the 17th. I’m not betting on it. I’m pretty sure we will be there for Carol’s on Nov 2. I really want to get out of Rochester before any hard freezes so I don’t have to winterize the coach.

We have plenty to do here so boredom won’t be an issue. We have been moving stuff into the coach the past couple of days. I just hope we don’t need any of it in the coming week. 

Rohma and Josh have spent time with us each weekend and it has been a delight. This past Saturday they prepared dinner in advance of going to the RPO for a wonderful concert together. See Carol’s FaceBook post for more details. https://www.facebook.com/anncarol.goldberg

I’m keeping up with my responsibilities at Jojoba Hills by email and zoom and the occasional phone call.. Its fun being 3 hours ahead of everyone until they start replying late into the evening their time. I never get to see those messages until the morning. I must admit I am really impatient to see the redone Friendship Hall Annex and our site, not to mention  our friends, but it will all have to wait until we can leave here.

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Three Days Later

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Things work out, some in surprising ways. I read 8 verses of Bereshit to plaudits from some – really good friends and family – and to my own limited satisfaction. To those who do not grasp the difficulty of reading a few words in Hebrew after a lifetime of training, I’ll give a short explanation. Hebrew as we use it in the US is written with marks next to and under the letters which are the vowel sounds. In the Torah those marks and any punctuation are omitted. rd ths sntnc wth t th vwls nd y wll gt th id. Even with knowledge of the words it takes some practice. Israelis and other Hebrew speakers can do this from context. For me, first I have to learn the text in Hebrew, then I have to learn to read the Torah text. Just to make it more interesting each Torah is handwritten and among the scrolls we have at Temple B’rith Kodesh there are a few different fonts and sizes. 

That was more explanation than I planned on. We concluded the service with the 3rd soundings of the shofar each sounding is made up of 3 cycles of  3 different blasts and the last sounding ends with a blast called Tekiah Gadola or the long Tekiah. This often becomes a contest if there is more than one shofar blower. The proof is when the congregation starts to giggle and starts clapping when the last sound is finished. This is probably inappropriate but very common.

Wednesday we set out early for a task that had been put off for the duration of Covid lockdown at the Canadian border. We have Trusted Traveler passes that give access to special lanes and one particular bridge across the border. The border guards on both sides recognize us as trusted and ask very few questions. Lying to them would result in loss of the privilege forever. Two weeks before the appointment I was notified that my card was in the mail and I did not need to keep the appointment. Having received no such notice for Carol we attempted to keep the appointment, arriving at the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge a few minutes before the appointment. She was not on the appointment list! There was some discussion during which one of the agents took Carol’s card to see why. A few minutes later she returned with the card and pointed out that it did not expire until 2024. We must have renewed it in 2019 and totally forgotten. I can see the payment made  back then.

We used the cards to drive over the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge to visit Aunt Dorothy in Hamilton ON which was the reason for all of this anyhow. I may have noted earlier that Aunt Dorothy was Carol’s mother’s youngest sibling and is cruising along at 99 years of age. She was only 6 when Carol’s brother was born. 

We couldn’t resist stopping in Niagara-on-the-Lake on the way back just to wander among some of the stores on the main street for an hour. It was too late to get tickets for any of the performances in the Shaw Festival. Of the plays being performed there was not one we really wanted to see. Neither of us feels the urge to see another staging of “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde.

We continued home eventually on the Lake Ontario Parkway right on the lake. This is s favorite drive in the car. No commercial vehicles or RVs allowed, the bridge clearances are as low as 10 feet.