For Carol’s message on the death of her brother Arthur Rudin go to her most recent blog post. Yes we have experienced an expected but totally unwelcome loss. Just five weeks after venturing to New Jersey to be able to have the support of more family then was available in Florida, Arthur is gone. Natalie, his wife, remains to continue her transition to New Jersey with her son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Their daughter Erica, who lives in Florida had been their main support until the move on December 29.

We are preparing to fly East to NJ. We are doing in a day what usually takes us a month. Book flights, hotel, rental car and pack. Pack! This is the third kind of packing, something we don’t do anymore. To pack for a months long trip we have complete setups for what to take and how to pack it. Besides we start preparing to pack a month in advance. To travel in the motorhome, another form of “packing”, takes much less as it is home and has almost everything we need already stowed where it belonged when we got off for a month’s long trip. For a three or four day trip into snow in the northeast we haven’t got a clue, nor do we have the proper clothes any longer. I dug out my Vermont Barn coat which will keep me sort of warm but is not what anyone but a Vermont farmer would call dressy. I found a pair of shoes (black with laces!) that I will wear, but snow, slush and winter will destroy them and freeze my feet. I did find gloves and earmuffs and a warmish hat.

I am dithering. I am looking forward to seeing the family, I am so grateful we spent Thanksgiving with Art and Natalie in Florida. It was our last time to spend with a brother-in-law who has been family almost as long as anyone I know. I remember the first time I met Arthur in their home in Stanford Conn. I was maybe 19 and dating Carol who met me there. He gave me a pretty severe looking over, after all he was 32 and had two children and I was coming to claim his baby sister, we were not even engaged yet. It turned out well and we came to like each other and eventually to love each other. I already miss the engaging interested electrical engineer with whom I went to look at “personal computers” in Minneapolis, when personal computers were a box of parts you put together yourself. Apple had yet to bring its first Apple II to the market. The engineer who was so fascinated with the work of Salvador Dali that the last outing we had together was to return to the Dali Museum for the umpteenth time. As I write, more and more memories are flooding back, all the way to his being a groomsman for me when Carol and I got married over 52 years ago.

I had a shot of Scotch Whiskey tonight in memory of the many times we shared a drink of fine Scotch Whiskey. I’ll let it go at that before I have another and get maudlin.

Yesterday, Sunday January 24, Carol and I responded to a neighbor’s request for help to unload a 26 foot UHaul truck into a new storage unit. Along with their children and grandchildren and several other Jojoba Hills members we got the job done in 3 hours. As we moved boxes and totes into storage, building a jigsaw puzzle of containers that should not move too much in an earthquake, we saw the product of years of not being able to let go of “things.” Boxes of fabrics for a variety of projects never done, toys that the kids, now in their 50’s had played with, clothes that were not worn out yet and boxes of books “to be read.” As we closed the door on the 25 foot deep storage unit there was not room for a person to stand inside.

Then today, I came across this blog post WheelingIt about the same issue. I had a feeling of superiority about all of this, we don’t have a storage unit. Uh, well, that is . .  . unless you count the 1475 square foot apartment we keep in Rochester to store our stuff. Admittedly we couldn’t stay over night in a storage unit, but we could rent a furnished place when we want to be in Rochester, for a whole lot less than the apartment costs. This year we expect to stay in the apartment for much of August and October, maybe. Our kids used it for 3 nights in December. The lease is up this August. What to do? My best guess is nothing for now, we have a lot of travel out of the US planned and dealing with storage will occupy too much energy we would rather devote to other things. At best guess we will continue the irrational storage plan for a couple more years.

This returns to the question posited in the title, what do we really need to keep. Ultimately we get to “keep” nothing, so a better question might be when do we choose to part with things. If we do nothing, our children will have the fun of deciding what they want to keep and who gets what. I am not being maudlin, when I sit at the solid oak dining table we bought from the craftsmen in 1972 I am sitting with memories from our families earliest years. The Eames lounge chair is almost as old. The art, the pieces that remain after our first down sizing, is evocative of a period of collecting and living with fine pieces. Taking pictures of these “things” will not satisfy my desire to look at and touch the actual things. The Photography Book collection too is not something that can be enjoyed in some virtual manner. Storing these things in a storage locker will not work. they need to be enjoyed in situ when we can be there. Storage for the collectible things needs to be climate controlled too. When the boys and their families have appropriate place to keep and enjoy these items I will feel better about letting them go. Although I speak as one, those who know us know that it is really the two of us together that will continue to wrestle with this issue.

Standing outside our door looking over Palomar Mountains

We are adapting to this very different lifestyle of staying in one place and getting involved in the community. I know that is not really new for us as with Rochester natives who stayed, mostly for 60 years and were deeply involved in the community, but since we have been on the road, we have seldom stayed anyplace long enough to actually get involved. Looking back, it seems that other than visiting the kids or waiting for repairs in Red Bay we never stayed put for a month, when away from Rochester..

As I noted in the last post, I have put my name in for a couple of committees and have been accepted. I found my way to the Pool Room and then found myself in a tournament where I performed as would be expected from one who hasn’t devoted any time to the activity in 50 years, badly. I had a lot of fun and much encouragement. I need to spend much more time with cue and balls on the table to have a chance of staying in the tournament for more than two tables.

For my next adventure I sat in on a Bridge lesson and then stayed to play. My skills are rusty, but it is coming back. Then I played in an evening game with huge stakes, $.25 🙂 and came away with $.74 for placing third and only going set one trick all night. My biggest challenge for this afternoon is whether to play some Bridge, or practice in the pool room.

We have started exploring both in the region and on the land around the coop. We are mostly surrounded by BLM land, sure hope Bundy and gang don’t decide to “liberate” it. We also have acreage equivalent to the land we occupy that must be kept undeveloped within our fence.  Yesterday I took a walk to explore some of that undeveloped acreage and found plenty of animal track – large cat and coyote mostly – as well as great hiking, not to mention some steep “roads” that will challenge the Jeep just a bit. Exploration in the region has focused on breakfast with the ROMEOS (Retired Old Men Eating Out). I have been to two places I don’t need to take Carol too, more to follow, the fellowship is fun.

As we watch in consternation the shape of the Primary battles in both national parties, we are being treated to our own election contretemps in the Resort. Naturally the most contentious arena is the kitchen.I won’t regale you with the details as I am not sure I understand the issues other than that they seem to deal with personalities What a surprise in a closed community.

Alex came and went. It was an all too brief week. We tried to tour Palomar Observatory but the road was closed due to ice! Instead we toured Palomar State Park.

What a treat, we will have to return. We took the long dirt back road out, Harrison Grade, after hearing someone driving a passenger car being warned off of it. The best description I can give is a snake with indigestion. The drive home from the airport was a mountain road treat in itself. We did not return that way with the motorhome. We traveled into Temecula and found other places of interest. We also found birds wherever Alex looked. You will need to get the list from him. We left Jojoba Hills a day early and set up camp in Indian Waters Resort in Indio where Yechiel and family joined us. They had a cabin not more than 100 feet from our campsite, that was fortuitous.

On Monday we drove in two cars up the southeastern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. We almost lost control of all three boys when we got to the first pile of boulders, well maybe all five.

I guess I’ll join the mob of writers taking advantage of the end of the year to find a topic for a blog. If you have followed our blog regularly, much of this is review. You can stop reading here!

 For the past 15 years our life has focused on RV travel. We have also continued to enjoy much travel out of the country. Foreign travel in 2015 started out in Israel to end 2014 and begin the year with our sons and their families. I am not sure I want to put together such a massive undertaking again, but it surely was a wonderful experience for all of us. The greatest delight for me and for Carol, was watching the members of the family who had never been to Israel experience it for the first time.

Coming back to the US we traveled in the coach for the months of January through May and into June returning to Rochester in time for the Rochester International Jazz Festival . We spent the end of the summer in the countries that surround the Adriatic, with the exception of Italy.

Our RV travels have taken a new turn. After getting back from Israel, we headed west stopping to visit our many friends along the usual route until we got to the Tucson area where we stopped for the Escapees’ Escapade in the Pima Fairgrounds south of the city. While there we ran into John who was manning a booth featuring Jojoba Hills SKP Resort (SKP is an alternate spelling for Escapee). After talking with him and a couple of other members of the Coop we decided we really needed to pay a visit and look into the idea. We have wandered in a fairly nomadic manner with the seasons for the past 14 years. It seemed to be time to see if there was another mode to this wonderful RV life style that would work for us. We joined.

 We left Rochester in early October inspired by the desire to be with the VA Goldbergs preparing for Corey’s Bar Mitzvah. Then we turned the wheels west hoping to get to our new site in Jojoba Hills SKP Resort by mid December. With stops in St Petersburg, Tucson, and Las Cruces, documented elsewhere, we finally pulled into Jojoba Hills on December 17. And here we have been. Grandson Alex flew in from Virginia to spend the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 with us in our new home base. This will be be two years in a row for him to share New Years Eve with us. On Sunday we will take him in the coach to Indian Waters Resort in Indio. it is much closer to the airport, and we will be joined by Yechiel and clan, renting a cabin in the same campground. We hope to take a day in Joshua Tree NP and then take Alex to the airport. We have friends in the park and hope to spend some time with them as well. Then on Thursday back to Jojoba Hills. I have reported our foreign travel plans elsewhere. We may touch Rochester in August and again in October.

We joined and were assigned site 712 in April after visiting here for a week in March. since then we have traveled widely, crossing the country twice and touring 6 countries that touch the Adriatic. Now we have returned to Jojoba Hills, at last, to our site. It feels very welcoming here, like coming home. Although the people are all new to us, they are fellow RVers and have settled for the most part far from family and long time friends. It is a community of a wandering sort.

We do not know how much we will stay put here, but we do know where we will return to when we leave. The afternoon views from the patio in front of our coach will change minute by minute, but the mountains will remain:

I see that Carol just posted her Monday Blog Message in a Minute and I guess that has inspired me to write.

We had a delightful time in Las Cruces visiting with the Ketler/Zeitlin family. Thursday night we had dinner at La Posta with Marianne and then went to a concert of quartet music at NMSU where we were joined by Stu and later by Leora. The group are faculty and all from Latin America, the program was short pieces from Brazil, mostly. Marianne characterized the program as being all encore pieces. I could not disagree. It was enjoyable, but more like brief bits of candy then a substantial meal.

After weeks of travel without the time or place to wash the coach I hired a crew we had used before to wash and wax the coach and Jeep. They took about 3 hours to get the job done, the owner and crew of three worked hard to prepare us for the rain we are now experiencing in Tucson 🙁

Friday night was a wonderful dinner with song and stories for the 6th night of Hanukah and Shabbat, at Stu and Leora’s home. We have had the pleasure of sharing Purim and Pesach with them as well as Shabbat over the years. It is so nice to have such wonderful friends to visit as we traverse the country. Leora did suggest that the High Holidays would be wonderful and I am sure it would be, Next year seems unlikely as we will just be back from an OAT trip to Africa as the holiday season approaches.

Las Cruces to Catalina State Park, just north of Tucson was a moderate day’s drive. The park is half empty as much due to the time of year as to the weather. It was clear and chilly as we arrived. The temperature dropped into the 30’s overnight and as I write it is raining, windy and has not gotten over 40. Tucson? We are snug and dry in the coach and likely to stay here unless the rain abates. Tomorrow we will have dinner with Ellie and Kelly who we met on the Thailand/Vietnam portion of our extended OAT trips in 2013.

Trivia: drop the “c” from Faculty and you have . . .

From south of Mobile, in Summerdale AL we have moved on west stopping first in Poche RV Park outside Lafayette LA. We got in late and left early. It is a nice place and we have stayed there in the past, but this year it was just an overnight. Next stop was Rainbow’s End in Livingston TX where we got the Jeep and the coach inspected. Just pull into the inspection shop without an appointment and 20 minutes later after paying $14 total for both vehicles we are good for another year. We also got our mail, I needed the car to go over and pick it up, we hadn’t collected any in a couple of weeks. After two nights we were on the move again headed into San Antonio.

San Antonio was a three night stop. We had dinner with Mary and Harry, who are parents of the Assistant Rabbi at the synagogue we grew up in in Rochester. We had a lovely time and hope to see them in Rochester in the Fall-talk about planning ahead. Our other major occupation in San Antonio was time at the McNay Art Gallery. For some history http://www.mcnayart.org/ We got there at 3 in the afternoon, only to find that they close at 4 on Friday. We dashed through the special exhibit of Miro’s work from the 60’s to the end both paintings and sculpture. Although we have been fans of Joan Miro for as long as I can remember, we were not familiar with the bronzes. Oh my what a show. When I was in high school my parents had a cheap print of a Miro oil that hung in my bedroom. It went off to college with me and then with my sister Sandy and then with Yechiel and I think eventually with a nephew. Oh we could hardly drag ourselves out of the modern end of the gallery. We crossed over to the house side where the exhibits were also wonderful, but we had to leave. We returned the next day and devoted most of our time to McNay’s personal collection in her house. She was a painter herself and collected modern works of art with a wonderful eye. Photography was not allowed. If you are going to San Antonio this is a must visit. Oh yes the grounds are magnificent as well.

Sunday, oh that is today, we rolled out with a plan to be on the road bout 4 hours. We had thought about charging across I 10, but just couldn’t bring ourselves to do that so here we are back in Seminole State Park along US 90 just before we cross the Pecos River. Tomorrow we will stop early again in Marfa before continuing on to Las Cruces on Tuesday.

Following our repair at laMesa RV, we moved on across the state to St Petersburg KOA to spend the week with Carol’s brother and sister-in-law. They are significantly older than us and, unfortunately showing it. We also visited with other friends during our week long stay. We especially enjoyed lunch with Shelley and Norm who we have traveled with in our RVs over the years, going back at least to 2005. As with many RV friends that means we have been together on both coasts and many places in between. They are off the road now so we must come to them in either Block Island or near Sarasota FL. We had brunch at Bert’s home in Long Boat Key with his SO Judy. It has been a few years since we had gotten together. We go back with Bert to sometime in the ’70s when we were very active in our community in Rochester together.

Most of our time was spent with Arthur and Natalie in their apartment as they prepare for another major life change, moving to NJ to be close to their son and better health insurance than is available in Florida. This will take away our major reason for coming to Florida “on our way from Virginia to California” each year.

As I write we are back in Rainbow Plantations for the innumerable time. We are moving across the country with some speed. Tomorrow we move again with a plan of being in Livingston TX on Tuesday evening.

Just one small repair to report on. For the past 10 months or so we have been plagued with a slow draining sink in the bathroom. I have looked for help on the Tiffin Owners forum and played plumber more times than I care to think about. I have cleared the trap and unplugged the drain line more times than I can count. It seemed to have resolved itself during the summer storage until a week ago when it became very slow again. The only way I could get it to drain was to remove the stopper. Finally this morning I had about had it. I unscrewed the stopper one more time and noticed that the black liner seemed to be hanging down and obstructing the flow. I decided to compare it to an identical stopper arrangement in the bedroom vanity. THERE IS NO BLACK LINER! The inside of the stopper was loaded with an accumulation of stuff. I cleaned it out with a cuetip and the water runs down the drain freely. Another repair attributable to my mechanical aptitude and perseverance 🙂 I will admit I was just a bit slow on the uptake with this one.

It seems that every time we need an actual service center to make some sort of repair the process makes root canal seem like a more pleasant pastime. The actual repair of the Air Conditioner/Heat Pump seemed to be headed in that direction. After waiting three weeks to get a mobile tech on site, he waved his tools at it and pronounced it healed. Later that day, well after his departure, it resumed its failed ability to heat anything.

I gave up and decided to try my luck in Florida. A call to Lazy Days resulted in the information that they would deign to let us darken their threshold in four weeks or so since we had had the nerve to buy from someone else. I then remembered that we had been serviced at LaMesa RV in Sanford FL, only about 100 miles out of our way. I also remembered long and seemingly fruitless waits in an expensive campground 20 minutes or more away from the service center. Oh well getting parts can be like that. A call to Nathan, the Customer Service Rep who we had worked with two years ago got me a “sure, bring it in when you get here and we’ll take care of it.” This seemed like a bit of an over promise, but it was the best offer I had.

Monday morning we arrived from St Augustine area at about 10 AM and located Nathan. Within an hour the coach was in a service bay being diagnosed. Less than an hour later we had the news that the AC/HP needed to be replaced, and the work had been authorized by our extended service company (Good Sam). Nathan at first said it would take two days to get a new unit delivered, then he learned that he could get it the next day! Tuesday the new AC/HP was delivered late afternoon and we were scheduled to have the transplant done Wednesday morning at 9. By 11:30 we were driving the coach back to the campsite. By 1:30 we were driving it back to LaMesa as the condensate drain was spilling condensate over our door. They quickly found a kink in the drain tube that was hidden from view after installation and they installed a new more flexible tube which solved the problem. The condensate is dripping out the overflow at the rear of the coach away from the door and anyplace else it would cause us problems.

I am extending kudos to Nathan and the LaMesa crew in Sanford for taking care of a wandering full timer in an expeditious and friendly manner. Would hope I don’t have any more failures, but know I will and I can only hope that if I can’t get back to Sanford that I will find others as helpful.

I must add that despite many gripes about service from Good Sam Extended Service, this is at least the third repair they have provided coverage for in a year and at least one of those was self inflicted for which I expected no coverage at all.