Plan is a four letter word.  Every time we think we know exactly what we will be doing for the next three days – a plan – something throws a monkey wrench into the works.  A friend came over for a visit and brought her own special variety of cold/flu/virus you name it.  Sure enough just three days before our departure Alexander came down with it.  Fever and all.  There was no way to take a sick child on a motorhome to a happening that would require walking around in 35 degree weather for a day trying to grasp lots of new information.

We left without him.  No point in staying around to be sure we came down with “it.”  Propane was running low and I learned a new fact (that is previously unknown to me) that a portable propane tank when subjected to cold temperatures will not flow sufficient vapor to meet the needs of an RV furnace when it is full.  We were running through the onboard tank and would need to move soon to refill that. 

We drove to Williamsburg, the American Heritage RV Park is a very nice facility only ten miles from the the Historic Area and they had propane for sale at an only moderately confiscatory price which they assured me was lower than any in the neighborhood, and only $1 a gallon more than I had been paying in Charlottesville.  But enough of my complaining.

We had a glorious day in Colonial Williamsburg, well worth the price of admission subject to advance purchase discount and Senior discount etc.  Pat’s “twin” from 1765 gave us a wonderful account of life just before the Declaration of Independence in the Governor’s Palace and the action in the courthouse was a lot of fun especially because both Carol and I took parts in the trials that were presented.  Lunch at Chownings Tavern turned out to be a very special event for us especially because they had a nice salad for Carol and the Brunswick Stew was very delicious and warmed me nicely. 

After a tour of the Capitol and the Gaol and the Coffee Shop we went to the Museum of Folk Arts and got lost for the 90 minutes that remained to us before closing.  Worth another visit for itself.  It was too late to drive back to the coach and begin the preparation of dinner so we went to 2nd Street Restaurant which I had researched the night before.  The menu looks simple, but it was all very well prepared and the pricing was distinctly modest for the quality of meal served.  All in all a superb day.

We missed Alexander, yet we were not sure how happy he would have been with the nature of the day we ended up putting together.  It certainly would have been a different day.

While we were enjoying our day, our daughters-in-law had been putting together a gathering in Los Angeles.  We will be together from February 16 to 22.  We are now booked into Dockweiler RV Park – on the beach by LAX – for then.  So now we have a PLAN of sorts.  At least there is a stake in the ground for the third week in February. 

After our too eventful trip down here, we have been content to stay with Dan and Malena and the boys.  Thanksgiving was a joy with Malena’s mother and step-mother here and her sister Simone and husband Steve along with sister Jessica.  Add in the 6 of us and it was quite a crowd.  The turkey was more than big enough and the rest of the food was plentiful so there were plenty of leftovers for lunches. 

After everyone cleared out on Friday and Saturday we took a deep breath and then Dan left on a business trip for the week.  We have picked up some chores, you should see me collecting eggs and closing up the chickens for the night.  Then I schlep firewood for the wood stove. Then I have a scotch to be followed with wine with dinner. We have had two nice visits with Ed and Gretchen Robb, the first at Devils Backbone Brewing Company and the second at Thee Notch’ed Grill in Crozet, a little quieter then DB.

We are preparing to drive to Fredericksburg tomorrow, in the car, to visit with Helen Schwartz, a classmate from high school.  Then on Saturday David Lovenheim and Tari Bradley will join us at the farm, he too is a classmate from Monroe High and we will meet another classmate Bill Freedman, MD who is a cardiologist here and his wife Lindsay for lunch in Crozet. 

The plan for next week is to leave here on Tuesday with Alexander and head for Colonial Williamsburg.  We have campground reservations, not really needed at this time of year, at American Heritage RV and will spend two days seeing the sights then we will meet the family at Malena’s dad’s place in Unionsville to hand off Alexander then off to see Mimi and Joe (Carol’s cousin) in Ivanhoe, NC.  After that there is no plan.

We’ve burned through at least 18 gallons of propane just staying warm and warming water for showers.  That’s two refills of the 30 lb tank and one 20 pound tank (30 pound tank holds just short of 7 gallons and 20 pound is a normal grill tank, holds short of 5 gallons).  I suspect that by morning our 30 lb tank will be empty or close to it again.  Fortunately I still have most of the 18 gallons the onboard tank holds so I have no worries. 

All the finicky details necessary to keep everything operating smoothly.  Since we can use the freshwater from the house and drain the holding tanks into the septic those worries are much less, although with the cold I do think about what will freeze up at the most inconvenient time.  I am grateful for the 30 amp outlet we installed here.  Plenty of electricity for our needs.

There you have a mind dump as I prepare to curl up with a book before going to sleep.

We’ve been pushing to leave earlier than ever and finally set the date for Thursday, November 18.  We hoped that the roofers would have finished all the major work on our roof and Carol had one more medical appointment that morning.  Carol took the Tow’d to the appointment and I was to meet her there with the coach and hook up for travel there.  That part worked out great, the medical facility was on the way out of town and the timing was fine.  The roofers were held up by delayed delivery of skylights and lousy weather.  As I pulled out of the driveway, they were setting shingles under a gray sky that threatened rain.

I had changed our mailing address to Livingston, TX as Escapees is reputed to do an excellent job of mail handling for RVers.  I had my doubts about our local post office and they did not prove unfounded.  I sealed the mail slot so no mail could be delivered, also no inserts, chinese restaurant menus, or HOA communications.  Our neighbor called two days after we left to report that the post person could not figure out why the mail would not go through the slot!  Called the USPS LOCAL office and were told, “oh we will start it today” They never checked the system to see that it was supposed to have started two days previous.  AAaargh

So we are away and crusin’ south on US 15 headed for I 81 through bands of rain and chill.  As I come to the turn from 147 to 15 at Tedd’s Landing (if you have never driven the route, you are blessed) there are two lanes for the left turn and I see that all the trucks are lined up in the rightmost of the two lanes.  Silly me, I forget the simplest lesson from my safe driving course, which is always take the widest turn, and try to slip down the far left lane.  I have a stripe on my rearmost awning upright from the edge of the trucker’s mirror which I repositioned for him.  Fortunately that is the sum total of the damage, another service stripe.

The next day saw me attempting to die the rug red with some very nice red wine.  I was exiting a lay by on 250 in VA and the exit was partially blocked by a car for reasons I cannot imagine.  I went behind the car and and this put the left rear wheels on a small rise which rocked the back of the coach severely.  This is not the first time this has happened in 10 years, but it is the first time that a wine bottle hit the inside of the cabinet door just right to release the Velcro strap placed there to prevent just this occurrence. It dove onto the floor and knocked off the top.  Naturally stopping and then parking on a steep downgrade did nothing to keep the spill localized.  Somehow we got it cleaned up and through Carol’s diligent efforts there is no more than a slight blush where the wine concentrated.

Enough! 

For now we are happily ensconced in Dan and Malena’s driveway and here we will stay until well past Thanksgiving.  Then we will begin our move to the Southwest.

Bill, David, Alan and Bunny, we hope to see you all sometime in the next two weeks.

My birthday is past, the visits to family in Los Angeles and the visit of the Charlottesville family is far enough past that we have restored the house to a semblance of order.  I am ready to be on the road!  I call it “itchy tires” because they need to roll.

For those who keep score of my RV maintenance odyssey even sitting in storage has resulted in some work.  I decided that I had to have a flat screen, HD, TV in the front cabinet to not watch.  This new one weighs 12 pounds vs the former hulk weighing in at 70 pounds.  I am less afraid of its falling in our laps on a rough road than the old one.  It also uses LEDs for the back light which will draw much less power, should I turn it on.  I should even be able to run it off of battery in the desert.

Just last week the coach was in again.  This time for a major recall on the brakes that I have been waiting for for two years.  Of course the pads had 73,000 miles on them and were not included in the recall.  Another ouch.  I am hoping it is now ready for the road. 

We still have a weekend drive to Shelburne VT to spend with my sister Sandy and David and family and a flying weekend to Sarasota FL for a Bar Mitzvah.  In the mean time we are waiting for the roof on our house to be replaced, again, if the weather will only relent. 

I WANT TO BE ON THE ROAD!

Oh, yes, I am retiring.  I have some work to do to make it complete, but my life insurance license is a thing of the past, on my birthday yet.  I expect to keep my securities license for a few more months and then that will be gone too.  Not sure how I will adapt to giving up those emblems of my work identity for the past 36 years.  So far I am fine with it.  I am even giving up the CLU ChFC after my name, time to take on a different identity. 

I am ready to be on the road!  My tires are itchy.

Happy New Year, L’Shanah Tova!

I could not keep writing and posting with everything hanging in the balance, so there has been a longish silence.  I have a post about a bike ride that has been pending for a month, will get that up real soon.

I seem to have been restored to my former good cardiac health, one remaining test to be sure in October, but my workout regimen and our long walks satisfy me that everything is ticking along just fine.  I will take the tests to satisfy the medical records (and provide another boat payment for the medical staff – small boat in any case).  I had my second cataract lens surgery on 8/31 and have been told that everything is healing fine.  As I type, my reading glasses are laying along side the computer.  I am told to use them as little as possible.  Reading the NY Times with good light is just fine, but books have smaller type and the light is a bit poorer late at night when my eyes are closing.  I am in better shape than when the summer began.

As we pass through the High Holiday season, I’ve blown shofar for two services already, we look forward to visits from my sister, from Dan and family and any RVers who are passing through Rochester.  Carol is looking forward to Brighton High School Class of 1960 reunion at the end of September and two weeks later I will be seeing many of my Monroe High School Class of 1960 friends.  Since the schools were rivals in 1960 and Carol and I knew many people at the rival schools we will attend each other’s reunions.  Of course I have been gathering with the Reunion Committee from my class frequently as we have worked to put it all together.

By mid October we should be ready for a break.  Our departure to the south is planned to get to Dan and Malena’s for Thanksgiving.  If we can get there a week early so much the better.  We will eventually depart from there for our annual southern and western jaunt. 

oops, I guess I didn’t make it clear.  The TEE was good and they shocked me back into rhythm and I left Strong with my heart pumpin’ the way it is supposed to.   All that remains is follow up to be sure it holds.

Although it is still July – the 31st – as I write it will be August before I post this. 

As those of you who have been reading know, I had cataract surgery on June 29 and was scheduled to have the second eye done on July 20th.  What I didn’t remark on, at the time was the immediate follow up to the first surgery.  As we prepared to leave, the nurse handed me a copy of my EKG from the surgery and said my internist was expecting me at 12:30!  The short story is that during the surgery they saw a change in my EKG and there was now am atrial flutter showing where one had never existed at any time in the past. 

I have spent July undergoing testing and waiting for this that or the other.  The next step in on Monday August 2 and if you are reading this I got the expected result from the cardio conversion I am hoping to undergo Monday afternoon.  I will have one more test, a Transesophageal Echocardiogram, and if that is good I will be treated to a “reboot” of the cardiac electrical system.  If it works out, the flutter will be gone, I will resume long, fast walks and the second eye surgery will be planned for the end of August.  If it hasn’t worked out you will not be reading this and there will another post with humorous wisecracks about how my heart flutters for Carol.  and I will await the next steps in repairing this anomaly.

Finally, thank you to all who knew I was facing this and have taken the time to email/text/call to offer me prayers and wishes for swift recovery.  I have been buoyed on the love and caring of friends and family.  I look forward to a quick recovery and I plan to be at the gym for my daily workout tomorrow and the rest of the week. 

I still need to demonstrate that my heart will stay with the revised program on its own so I can get my other eye done and prepare to roll Gee 2 this fall. 

Carol has been, as always, my strength and support through this and I hope the strain has not been too great on her.

This is not something that I had any expectation I was headed for this summer.  Last winter, as we turned east, I noticed that someone seemed to have blurred all the highway signs.  I was sure that the signs were wearing out, the reflective material was falling off, for some reason I could no longer read them until it was almost too late to make the exits.  Fortunately  the GPS was giving plenty of warning and Carol was on duty as navigator when I was at the wheel.  When she was at the wheel I did not have to worry about reading the signs, too much, besides I have the small binoculars handy to read ahead.

I’ve had the first eye done Tuesday, two weeks after the first diagnosis.  The other eye will be done in three weeks.  It will be a while before  have the full benefit of the new lens since it is capable of accommodation and some healing and practice needs to take place before I will experience that.  already, as so many have said the distant vision is wonderful and the colors have changed.  This is all the more apparent since both eyes were in about the same condition so I have a clear A-B comparison. 

I cannot talk much about the procedure as my primary memory is staring into a white light and at some point asking Dr Lindahl where he was in the procedure, at which point he said the lens had been removed and he was preparing to insert the new lens.  My next memory was Carol coming to get me out of the recovery room. 

Runnin’ out of steam

It is Sunday afternoon and I am resting at home and trying to catch up with life after taking the last nine days off.  Somehow I never even got to track our peregrinations from Friday Night so here goes, from memory.

We started at Montage again to hear Brad Shepik.  Enjoyable, long wait in line, we were very near the front when we arrived.  The music was excellent and we were rocking along with it until we both felt it was getting a bit repetitious.   So we cut out and headed over to Xerox Auditorium to hear Little Red Suitcase.  This was a WOW for us.  Two nicely matched voices with some really weird instrumentation including penny whistles, a slightly out of tune old accordion and others including a piano with various things stuffed in the strings to alter the sound.  We really enjoyed them and even thought about coming back for more, but there is already not enough time to hear everything we want to hear.

We went off the reservation a bit (half a block) to Spot for dinner.  Carol found a lovely salad, something she had been dreaming about, and I had a nice sandwich.  It was a change from food on the street.  We went on to the Big Tent for Djabe.  There were no seats to be had so we stood at the rail behind the sound setup and enjoyed the show from there.  A big treat was John Nugent’s joining the group with his sax for a couple of numbers.  He is great with the sax as well as at promoting jazz in Rochester. 

We still had some hearing left so we decided to venture back into Abilene for Bryan Lee & The Blues Power Band.  We got there in time for front row seats.  Carol could not sit still so she went to stand further back in the crowd that assembled.  Seated where I was it became apparent that loss of hearing was not going to be a joke.  At one point I shoved my fingers in my ears and my neighbor, seeing this, took out a bag of fresh earplugs and offered them to me.  Gratefully, I stuffed them in my ears and enjoyed the rest of the set immensely.

Timing was good when they wrapped up  and we headed over to jazz Street for Abbots Custard for Carol and popcorn for me.  The street was swarming as the early show of Jeff Beck had let out and the 11 PM show was filling.   We strolled up to East Avenue and the closing strains of Booker T & the MGs gave us a following wind as we began our walk home.

Add four to the count.

Saturday we set out early for the walk to Montage, again, to for Ibrahim Electric.  We met many of the same people in line that we had met before and some new people.  The activity level on the street was high as it appeared that the forecast storms had decided to go elsewhere and it was a warm, balmy evening.  There were now two stages on East one at Chestnut and the other at Alexander.  With East Ave closed off from Goodman to Main there was a lot of detouring for drivers.  Even walking we eventually had to detour to get home.  Ibrahim Electric were electrifying we stayed in our seats from the first note to the last and then begged for more.  When we recovered our breath we headed out the door and over to Java Joe’s for sandwiches.  Carol went to look elsewhere, but could not find a salad nearby so joined me for a veggie sandwich. 

Having eaten too fast we headed over to Lutheran Church of the Reformation (to give them their full name) to hear Mikko Innanen & Innkvistio.  They had had airline luggage issues and were missing their CDs to sell, a trombone and the synthesizer player’s pants – he was in shorts.  The trombonist also plays sax, very well, and they revised their program and did some improvisation to take advantage of the equipment they had.   At the end of the set we quick timed over to Christ Church to hear Dennis Rollins Velocity Trio.  We hadn’t planned it, but this was the last Club Venue we were to hear and what a way to go out. All three performers were engaged and alive to the music.  There was no sitting still for any of us and the hour flew by far too quickly.  As we headed for the door we both realized that we could not possibly go on to another venue for the 10 PM show.  We had hit the wall together and we wandered the streets of the festival, basking in the heavy bass of the three street stages and the big tent without really engaging any of it.  We met friends all doing the same thing.  Some people were talking about asking the promoters to add a tenth night next year for the tenth annual XRIJF.  I don’t think I could take it.

As we headed out East Ave we got closer and closer to the Alexander street stage with Smash Mouth.  I can vouch for it’s being loud with lots of bass.  We put in our ear plugs and detoured up the alley a half block before Alexander and worked our way over to Park Ave where peace and quiet reigned.   We got home and collapsed. 

It was a GREAT Xerox Rochester Jazz Festival.

The count: add three more venues, total 7 since night 7’s total count of 33.  Grand total of 40 venues in 9 nights, all for $105 each.  This was a great entertainment bargain, the greatest I can imagine.  We won’t forget and look forward to attending again.

A Ramble

Carol had a certification course at LifeSpan that ran until 5 so we agreed to meet at Harro East keeping up the Cuban theme we have been following, she joined me at the usual table in plenty of time to hear Pablo Menendez & MEZCLA a Cuban group here on a Cultural Exchange.  Although they suffered from the Harro muddy sound we enjoyed the set and stayed for most of it. 

We rambled over to Xerox for the early set of Joyce.  Her singing was very nice, but how much Portuguese do I need/want to listen to, besides some interesting music was to be expected at the Lutheran Church.  So we strolled over there, with a stop at Java Joe’s for sandwiches to fortify us for the rest of the night, to find the hall filling, filled, no seats available downstairs and we decided not to give up our SRO spots to explore the balcony.  Rather than my writing at length about the pleasure of the session  with Palle Mikkelborg just read Jeff Spivak’s column in the Friday Democrat & Chronicle.  We stayed through the entire set and were slow to leave when it was done. 

But leave we did.  We wandered past  the festivities on Jazz Street bypassing the jam in front of Java Joe’s this time down the alley to get on over to Christ Church to hear Get The Blessing, yet another great show.  I must admit that the names they give their pieces left one thinking about more food.  They played pieces called, Sushi, Doughnut, Starfish, you get the point.  The music was better than the names.

At 9:30 it hardly seemed likely we would get seats for Joe Locke Group Featuring Vocalist Kenny Washington in Kilbourn, people had been in line since before 9 for the 10 PM show.  We were going to walk by anyhow so we walked in the door and ended up getting seated before the show began.  It was a great show and Kenny Washington sang up a storm while Joe Locke and the group played their hearts out.  It was a great finale to a wonderful evening of music.  Check out Spevak’s column linked above.

The count: last night we were at 28 shows, we appear to have attended five shows on Thursday bringing the total to 33.

No ideas for tonight, yet.