We fly out of San Diego on Sunday landing in Shannon Ireland Monday. The trip is a survey touching on most of the  sites one would hope to see with the usual wonderful OAT stops to meet locals and encounter how they live. For the record we return to San Diego on June 7 and will return directly to Jojoba Hills SKP Resort.

For a first step towards packing, I retrieved the travel duffels from the coach storage bay and transferred them to the shed. I verified that my basic travel clothes are packed away ready to go. In thinking about extended travel by air I decided to replace my travel CPAP with a new machine that fits in my palm and is very automated. It is a bit noisier than my  primary machine but less so than most of the old models I have used over the years.

I have been very busy in the park with some activities that surprise even me. We started a project a year ago to make internet available to every site in the park included in our monthly maintenance fee. That passed in February and ever since we have been working to implement the service. In short we needed to get more bandwidth available to us, provide more connections to that bandwidth and rewire the entire phone room to make it all work. On May 1 the bandwidth came online and the internet tech showed up to replace the connection equipment (I am avoiding talking about the Dslams). He left with some people connected at higher speed and the rest of us waiting until the next day when the phone tech arrived to rewire the phone room. 

Each of 300 phones needed to be rewired to the phone system and to the internet source (Dslams). Since there are 4 connections for each line of two wires  that is 2400 connections or possibilities for error. Many of our volunteer tech team “JCATS” have left the park for the summer and several more of us – see paragraph #1 above – will be leaving soon. Since Friday we have been tracing missed connections, crossed connections and just plain internet nonsense. I will put in a couple of more hours tomorrow then leave it to the few who are staying on. This is going out over the new system 🙂

With all of this I have found time to play Bridge, take walks with Carol and have Happy Hour with friends. Love this place!

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Quiet is a relative term. The coach has stayed on site at Jojoba Hills since we got back from Redlands. Mostly I have been attending to my interests in the park, Finance , Marketing and digging into an understanding of our infrastructure has been very important to me. Along with that I have played a lot of Bridge

and gone on several hikes with our hiking club.  I noticed that I am getting up most weekday mornings to get to one sort of activity or another by 8, except on Thursday when the ROMEOs go out for breakfast, leaving by 7:30. It seems I was never up and out this early when I was working. 

This weekend we are at our family’s apartment in Los Angeles supervising (loosely) the activities of Azriel and Avi, our grandsons, while their parents are in Las Vegas for a conference and some fun. Yesterday while the boys were in school we went to the Nethercutt Museum

which we had first heard about while watching Huell Howser reruns on the local PBS channel. Although we have now seen more old cars than is normal for any time period, today we will go to the Petersen Automotive Museum , at least the boys and I will go, Carol has had enough cars.  

Although I love the Bridge and enjoy the committee work, I find the most interesting activity is the hiking. It takes me to areas I might not otherwise visit and gets me out and active. After overcoming all the excuses I could come up with I joined in on the hikes and find I am unhappy when I can’t go because of conflicts. The group is very congenial and while we have different levels of capability no one is ever left behind and it is seldom that the faster hikers get very far ahead of the group. We generally hike about 5 to 7 miles and have faced elevation gains of 400 feet to 1,800 feet. The latter is quite strenuous but all of us survived. One hike-Cedar Falls -was “upside down” starting with a long descent to the base of the waterfall

and then returning up that same grade. Entering on a 2 1/2 mile climb after descending that distance is very different than starting with the climb and then descending. Several of us were at or beyond our limit upon our return to the trail head. It was a very quiet ride back to Jojoba Hills.

The very next day Carol and I set out in the Jeep to climb a nearby Jeep trail which turned out to be closed part way up so we turned around and I drove out to the prior day’s trail head near Julian. 

We came to Redlands, part of the Greater Los Angeles  metro area, for some repair to the coach. We have spent time in Redlands Truck and RV Performance campground waiting for work to begin and then we took some time to get to see Redlands.

Our search turned up a big surprise, a Lincoln Shrine, the only such west of the Mississippi. I thought maybe a statue in a park, but this is what we found:

Originally built in 1932, the center section contains a wonderful marble bust of Lincoln and some memorabilia. The two wings were built in 1998 and contain a timeline of Lincoln’s life a tremendous library and many more memorabilia from his life and from the Civil War. There is also a Norman Rockwell oil commemorating Lincoln. The center building is painted by Dean Cornwell who did a major interior at the Los Angeles Library. I could not do the dome and murals justice with my phone. For much more detail about the shrine here is a link  http://www.lincolnshrine.org/

The shrine is on the grounds of A. K. Smiley Public Library dating back to 1898.

We toured the interior and were very impressed with the collections in addition to the books. A local stained glass worker has been adding windows as recently as last year. For a VRtour http://www.akspl.org/about/#360vrtour will also provides links to history. The architectural detail is very attractive as well:

This is just one of the many columns.

We did a bit of shopping – food mostly – and returned to the coach for a bit. We found one of the doors restored and work proceeding on the rest. We elected to go out for dinner and returned to the center of the city to Eureka Burger. We enjoyed our meal, Carol found a veggie burger made of beets with more salad than she could contemplate eating. I had a specialty burger and enjoyed it a lot. We would go back . A warning, it is noisy.

Today, Wednesday, we have a museum and a mansion on the agenda after lunch. The rain has cleared and painting is proceeding.

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Catchy title isn’t it. After sitting in one place since November 25 we  have moved a short distance to Redland CA. Here we will have some minimal bodywork done on the coach, mostly a door that has delaminated and needs to be fixed. Maybe some scratch repair too. 

We spent last night in Oceanside just north of San Diego. We had Thai dinner at I Love Pho and went on to Miracosta College Performance Hall where Kronos Quartet were playing. We were excited to find the Walkers who were happy to share our love for the kind of music Kronos performs. It seems Kronos have moved well into what I would call hybrid forms mixing live performance with recorded material. The Mahalia Jackson number incorporated spoken and sung words drawn from air checks of her on the Studs Terkel show. It is very powerful. The trip entailed an hour drive in the rain each way. I was indeed tired when we got home, but too exhilerated from the evening to get right to sleep.

Staying focused on day to day activities and in park politics does a reasonable job of keeping me from dwelling on national and world politics. I read a bit in the NYTimes and listen to NPR in the morning just to assure myself that the world was not come to an end and it is worth moving on with my own daily actvities. Working with the tech crew to keep TV, Internet and phones working in the park. Now, paying attention to all of the infrastructure systems to be sure they too are mintained and working. When there is a spare moment I still play bridge in the card room, give tours and escort guests to their rental sites. 

Amidst all of this activity I am thinking about travel. We are blessed to be able to travel, just talked with a friend in the park whose wife is ill and they have not been able to travel for a year, they are in their 50’s. Others have come off the road and settled into Jojoba HIlls until their children have called them home. And yet others, like us keep traveling and hiking and learning new pastimes just because. These are the people we emulate. We have been drinking from the fountain of youth, and it isn’t the local wine, good as it may be.  It is the constant activity keeping our brains alert and our bodies in shape. 

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In our time on the road we continue to stay in touch with friends from all parts of our lives. An important part of my life was four years at Brown University. From those years several friendships endure. Among them are Toby and David London. It happens they come west each year and are within an hour of Jojoba Hills. One year they visited with us here in Aguanga and last year we visited them in Palm Desert. This year we decided to meet half way in Idyllwild. The following is a sample of pictures from that visit:

We met at Dores Mountain Art Garden on CA 243 on the way to Idyllwild. We were joined there by Shari, the daughter of friends from Rochester. We spent a long time with Dore looking at the sculpture he has all over his land and then at the small gallery housing photography on metal by his wife Trish Tule. We will soon have a piece of Dore’s work to mount on our shed.

We drove in to Idyllwild and found lunch at Gastrognome, a place that we had excellent reviews for. For a wonder there was a table for 5 available. We enjoyed the meal and were allowed to stay on at the table with no pressure. Finally we took a walk around town and left in plenty of time to be off the road before sunset.

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Well February 1st was an interesting day. Ballots had been rolling in for the board election since mid December. They were opened and counted and then the announcement that I came in fourth for three positions. To a certain extent there was a whew emotion as our plans for travel open up. A board position requires more time spent in the park and devoted to the park. I my most immediate comment to myself was “I can go on the Tuesday hike this week after all.” While I was going through that process I was approached to take on a major committee chair position. Then I was further propositioned for it and by late afternoon I was on the phone with the board member who is liaison to the committee verifying that it was okay to submit my name to the board . More when the board gives its approval.

Carol is happy with the new project and my not being on the board. My well wishers all say “next year” and I am saying we’ll see about next year when the time comes.

Carol is still is Covesville, where it is cold and has snowed some. The kids(!) should be boarding their flight out of Jo’burg soon. They land in Dulles sometime Tuesday AM and will decide how to get back to Covesville when they are on the ground. Carol flies out of Charlottesville on Thursday. 

I have been playing a lot of Bridge, helping put up a TV antenna on the top of one of the water tanks (if you follow me on Facebook you may have seen these pictures):

And otherwise staying busy and out of trouble. This was the kind of volunteer project that happens regularly around the park. If it needs to be done those who know how work with those who don’t to make it happen. I call it fun. If I had to do it, I might call it work.

The patio is almost done. I will post pictures in a day or two of the finished, but incomplete patio. Carol and I still don’t know  how we will furnish it.

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We have been married 53 1/2 years. In that time we have each traveled on our own from time to time. The longest time may have been eight days when I flew to Israel for meetings while Carol flew to Long Beach to welcome a new grandson. I made it for the Bris, 8 days. A couple of weeks ago we got a call from Dan and Malena that they needed to go to South Africa for a memorial for Malena’s brother from another mother. Could we chaperone and chauffeur the boys in Charlottesville while they attended and then did some touring  since they were already there for 16 days.

I couldn’t go. Months ago I put my name in to run for the board of directors of Jojoba Hills and I made some commitments to continuing board members and to myself to be present. Our election is tomorrow – there are 4 candidates for 3 seats and board training commences on Monday February 5. Carol is off in Covesville VA providing adult presence and driving the boys to their classes and events. She won’t be back until late night Thursday the 8th. I am lonely and I miss her. Even as I write I am looking up to where she normally sits to see what she is doing and when I finish I will miss her final edit and comments.

I am in community and the only time I have alone is in the evening. I am continuing to go on hikes, go to JCATs meetings and play Bridge. Tonight our neighbors had a Howling at the Moon event and I went and met some new members and guests in the park and even got to talk to people I know, but have never gotten the chance to talk with. I looked over my shoulder a couple of times to see who Carol was chatting with.

Tomorrow is our annual meeting and election day. The sealed ballots have been submitted and will be opened with appropriate pomp and security and counted, in secret. I will attend the meeting which will continue with other matters including a floor vote on the budget. By mid afternoon I will know the results. I expect that Carol, running unopposed as of now, will be elected to Co Chair of the Social organization – Hilltoppers – and everyone tells me I am  sure to win, but I’ve heard that before and will wait for the count.

As I said at the beginning I am alone and lonely, yet I am surrounded by some of the nicest, friendliest people I would care to know. They aren’t letting me feel lonely when I am in their midst.

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Most mornings in the past month or so we have heard a couple of owls calling from a tree right behind our coach here in Jojoba Hills SKP Resort. At 5:30 or 6 in the morning I am not likely to jump out of bed and run outside to look for them. Recently I have heard them at dusk when sitting quiet. Usually by the time I react it is too dark for viewing or photos. A few days a go I went out, without a camera and before I could see them I spooked them into flying off, it was a pretty sight, but brief and no camera.

This afternoon I heard them and grabbed my Cannon G16 and ran out the door. Here are two photos of one of the two owls:
The other owl flew off while Carol and I were watching, we never saw it until it took wing. You can enlarge the images by clicking on them.

It would appear that some part of our world is not affected directly by the insanity in our government. 

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I am the grandson of an immigrant from a despised country. My paternal grandfather left Russia, or more likely Belarus in today’s terms to seek a better life in America. He landed here in 1905 and got work in Rochester NY in the men’s clothing industry. He was a cutter, the first step in the process of making a coat is to cut the pattern from the raw material. Eventually he started his own shop cutting men’s coats. The story is long and convoluted and not particularly germane to the next step, My grandmother came over and met him and they married and had my father, Emanuel (Mannie).  Mannie got a Bachelors Degree and Master of Science in Chemistry from the University of Rochester. After serving  in the army in England in WWII, which was after I was born, he started up a a couple of businesses. Ultimately he created Nalge Co to manufacture plastic bottles and other equipment for laboratories of all sorts. You may be familiar with the Nalgene Water Bottle so many people carry around. That was a byproduct of the business. 

His siblings went on to degrees as well, his sister became a nurse and served on the hospital trains from the front in the European Theater and his younger brother graduated from PT Boat training as the war ended. He went on to get a PhD in Physics and has had a remarkable career, he continues to attend meetings now into his 90’s 

Mannie’s two children have advanced degrees and have continued to contribute to the welfare of the communities they belong to. The grandchildren sport PhD’s and and their own successful enterprises. Needless to say the country would be poorer in some small measure had Isadore Goldberg, nee Sklaroff, been prevented from immigrating because he came from a “shit hole” country. 

Another point, drive through Appalachia and you will find people living in conditions no better than those other places he was condemning. Coal miners work the mines because there is no other work for them, not because they love the mines. Take a tour of a mine that has been cleaned up for tourism and tell me how much you would have to be paid to spend your working life down there, and a short life it would be. Read about life in Appalachia and tell me that immigrants from there would be welcome in the country envisioned by him.

I have avoided politics in this blog for a long time. I cannot be silent like the Republican leadership, I cannot contain myself any longer.

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We drove to Flagstaff AZ in the Jeep to meet the latest addition to our greater family. My sister has a new granddaughter and we wanted to be part of the party. 

More later.