Real Life On The Road

Any thought that starts out by saying this is a slice of real life is not going to end well. For someone like me who lacks the gene that gives you stamina in the face of disinterest the past three days have been a pain in the ass. I am terrible at paperwork simply because I find it boring. In the face of this stark self knowledge I defer to my wife, the math teacher, when it comes to dealing with the paperwork of daily life. It just goes better that way and I reserve to myself the blue jobs that include navigating and looking after GANNET2 and minding the details of van life.

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, the day I was brought up to call Armistice Day as illustrated by the rather stirring display of flags in the mountain town of Burnsville outside Asheville. It is a healthy reminder that for some people with the best intentions life took a turn that led some of them to a dead end, undeserved and completely by chance, while others had to go away and face all sorts of peril again by chance and pretty much at random. Therefore my aggravations caused by real life need to be seen through that lens and in proportion. However I have very little patience with the notion that paperwork should impinge on daily living, and the memory of the sacrifices of those who went before need constant stirring as I struggle in a mesh of endless paperwork.

We have moved to a driveway in Asheville the hip mountain town in Western North Carolina where my wife's nephew lives with his family in a self designed eco home. It is actually rather brilliant as it is self heating using a concrete pad under the house that absorbs heat and cools at night with no energy use and at no cost. It has the usual complement of solar and water heating in the roof and with a vegetable garden and pay as you go Jacob has created a secure home in a town that suffers the usual vagaries of high cost housing that we all know and love so much. He grew in Asheville and loves his life here, one of those people I envy from time to time who don't get itchy feet, Happily his driveway is large enough to accommodate a 21 foot Promaster, another sort of eco home with solar panels enjoying the burst of November sunshine and heat.

It's been six weeks since I retied and I have received a retirement check. Weird. I have also moved from city health insurance to Obamacare and to receive the federal discount I need to prove my income. Difficult to do with that retirement check receipt. Something is wrong. Phone calls, messages the usual routine and there is a paperwork glitch. It's my problem and I need to squeak to get the wheels in motion to straighten it all out. I hate being the squeaky wheel but happily my wife is made of sterner stuff: call city hall she decrees, so I do. Perhaps it will take a few more toe cringing calls to the worker bees I left behind but perhaps soon the problem will be solved.

Asheville isn't a difficult place to enjoy especially when the sun is shining and it's more than 70 degrees and outside seating is widely available. If it weren't for my irritant desire to be moving and seeing roads and forests I could be dawdling quite happily here. We tried to open a joint bank account with my sister-in-law, part of my wife's long term plan to have back up while we are on the road. The bank forgot to ask for a signature so yes, we will be on the road, but only back up to the mountains whence we came on Tuesday to fill in this next piece of irritating mislaid paperwork. Damn, I deserve to be a grouch some days.

After the bank business I took Rusty for a walk Monday as the sisters settled on a lunch place. It was a lovely day high in the Blue Ridge mountains, dry crisp air that makes my hair stand on end and makes my nails feel dry like balsa wood and my lips chap spontaneously as they never would in Florida's soggy climate...

Lunch was at the Garden Deli, the ideal restaurant for Layne's outdoor dining needs under a flower filled patio supplied with quantities of beer and sandwiches. I got a monster pastrami.

That was the good news. Better yet I could get a booster shot at the nearby pharmacy that was dispensing Moderna boosters to the elderly and near elderly. I waltzed in and waltzed out two minutes later properly boosted and ready for further adventures. Thats when the trifecta struck and I found much to my annoyance the booster shoot had the short of wipe out effect I got from the second shot I received in Key West in February. I managed to show up at work but it made me feel like crap. The booster it turned out had a similar effect and I slept aboard Gannet 2 while the family walked themselves and their dog while my patient hound elected to stay close to me in my near delirium. The joy of being boosted took its toll as always and required a period of fever-like rest. 

Foodies abound in Asheville and my appetite was not affected luckily so I did crawl out for pork belly banh mi a Vietnamese sandwich with proper American fries just like Jacob's. Every meal was luxurious and a reminder of how lucky we are even though our paperwork might be a mess!

We did good stuff too, a visit to Trader Joe's and their tiny squished parking lot where I squeezed the big Promaster out of everyone's way. I got an oil change, Layne had to cancel an at home hair cut as the stylist wasn't vaccinated which was a shame. We showered, did laundry and dumped our trash. Utterly unexciting events that needed to be done as I slowly recovered from my non 'flu. Today (Wednesday) was the day we were going back to the road and a planned wilderness camp out on our way to Chicago. A visit to a teacher friend along the way had to be canceled as her school has a Covid outbreak and thus we faced the possibility of infection. And so on.

Don't be fooled, we are having. good time. Sure the plans keep changing and even though we did our best to have every duck lined up before we left, I feel more alive than I have in a long time. We will look back to theses visits with all the deadbeat bits cut out, and as much as we look forward to breaking loose from our familiar places we know enough to enjoy them as they unfold. Time for lunch I think, but my breakfast biscuit was so huge I am thinking more about tea than food. The luxury of choice, the luxury of time, the luxury of bending to other people's needs. We are lucky, no doubt. Whatever you re doing you should feel the same way as joy is no way dependent on ridiculous living in a tin box.

Celo 2021

I have posted many times on this page about my visits to my sister and brother in law who have lived on the Celo Community near Asheville North Carolina most of their adult lives. It's an unusual "intentional community" where the land is owned in a co-op and homes are built with community approval. None of this appeals to me, the sturdy individualist but it has worked very well for them. Use the search function at the top left corner of the page if you want to read more about Celo and life in the mountains.

Pretty much any time we roll up in winter they tell us they are having an unusually cold spell and here we are, with temperatures below freezing and us living contentedly in our tin box at their house. Our bed is more comfortable than the torture rack in their spare room, so there is that.

This year the colors are extraordinary as Fall has come late to the Blue Ridge mountains, so when Rusty, on his third or fourth visit was anxious to renew acquaintance with his favorite trails and smells I was ready to brave the cold to see what was what.

We parked the van by their shed which gives Rusty quick access to the woods and trails through the fallen leaves. On our first visit he was so scared of the noises in these strange woods he wouldn't go beyond the garden for the first few days. He was a long way from the alligators and mangroves and tangled roots of his familiar turf in South Florida.

Rusty running and hiding and sleeping on a busy Celo morning. He will make the most of the next few days before we tackle urban Illinois in winter.

Stay Frosty

I have long been an early riser, partly because of work and partly also because I enjoy being up early while the world sleeps but these days I am loathe to get out of bed at all. I took the photo below at ten in the morning on Friday, our last morning at the winery harvest host shortly after we got out of bed.

We ran the engine for fifteen minutes until the interior of the van was warm enough to feel like a sauna and then got dressed and I ventured out with the ever impatient hound. Our machinery said it was 28 degrees, four degrees below freezing and the coldest we had ever had the van in, so it was all new.

It was new for Rusty too, who seemed utterly unfazed by the temperature or the crispy white grass. I will say he is just like us and is utterly disinclined to get up early on these cold mornings. He stays curled up on a corner of our bed snoring happily and apparently not the least bit cold. I have tried to put a blanket over him and he gives me a pained look before shaking it off. I guess despite his south Florida upbringing he is a wild dog all the way, any climate anywhere.

We walked for a while and I made some pictures because, let's face it, this is the new and different world I left the Keys to see and photograph. My dog walking through white stuff.

Just another morning hunt for interesting smells for the Carolina Dog in the family. Apparently this non breed of arcane American bloodline lives in the wilds of South Carolina and I have no idea how cold the wild packs of Carolina Dogs have to survive but my dog was quite happy to sit out on the gravel and watch the late morning develop.

He looked at home in the woods above the winery but don't be fooled. He prowled around a short bit and decided he wasn't interested and preferred breakfast among humans.

I had my tea, Layne had her chai, Rusty had his chicken strip and then we left the winery, Midnight Magdalena in Yadkin Valley.

 I drove Layne into Jonesville and dropped her off at her sister's Hampton Inn where she went to the gym. Rusty and I had other plans.

We went to Elkin, a pretty little town next door to Jonesville where I planned to walk Rusty through downtown but as I drove across the bridge toward the urban area I saw evocative mists rising off the waters and a sign pointing to a riverside park. Oh well, change of plans: let’s go there instead! 

The park was of course empty at that hour on a weekday in the cold crisp winter sun. I am of the opinion that winter travel in the eastern states may be cold but public spaces sure are under populated, a compensation of sorts. the grassy area below is designated a tent camping area, one night only and as far as I could tell it's free. Pretty decent of the town, and the business district is but a five minute walk away.

The Main Street was my original destination because we had visited it briefly the night before while getting dinner from Southern on Main, a restaurant with a deserved stellar reputation. However the park the next morning  kept us away from Main Street by daylight. 

I drove with brother-in-law Bob in their Prius to get dinner which Layne and I were paying for in Elkin. I told Bob to get the food and handed him an American Express and just in case a Visa card, if they didn't take AmEx. They did and two large dinners cost just $33 which was amazing for someone from Key West. Beat that Square Grouper!

The problem I later discovered was that by removing two cards from the holder on the back of my phone when I used the phone as a camera the remaining two cards were so loose as to slip out onto the sidewalk roughly where Rusty is standing in the picture above...I didn't notice at the time. My First State Bank debit card and my driver license with my new mailing address were left lying on the ground nearly an hour I'd say.

Anyway Rusty and I went on our merry unaware way and enjoyed this very pretty very quiet (Thank God!) town and I snapped a few quick frozen pictures. The old Tribune newspaper building above.

On we went enjoying the cool night air and left over Halloween decorations.

I like Elkin a great deal one way and another and of my photographs are a bit scattered I can only blame my frigid fingers for a less than decent job of capturing the old fashioned and beautifully kept downtown.

Small town America, I want to get my medications here not at a chain:

Bob the Bandit hauling away our crab bisque and fried trout and all the rest of it:

When we got back to the hotel and aid out the feast I put the cards back in my phone holder and of course the others were missing. I went downstairs to check the car and found nothing so impulsively I jumped in the Prius and gave myself a five second class in learning how to drive a hybrid.

Starting it was confusing as pressing the button got no sound at all and then I realized the little live action drawing of a car driving over a hill was the message that we were live. The gear box was a weird little stump with some side action required to get the thing in gear and off we went. I object to being told how to drive by a machine as I've been doing it long enough for me to make my own mind up how I want to drive. This thing fires off statistics and beeping noises like nobody's business but it got me back to Elkin rapidly enough. The glint of plastic on sidewalk showed me where I was as lucky as I ever deserved to be and I got back in the yelping Toyota and sped back to my congealing yet excellent dinner.

Back to the park where Rusty and I walked and wandered along the riverbank. I have a feeling if I took hormone pellets, whatever they are, something dire might take place but I'm not exactly sure what. The faces on the billboard were smiling though so perhaps I am overly cautious.

On the road with no deadlines I find these spots to be gifts. An hour spent here with my dog for company was as good a way to start a frosty day as any I can think of.

I had work to do so I wrote an entry for this page sitting at my van desk then I emptied my portable potty into the public toilet in the blue building. That was quick clean and easy as the toilet tank comes with a discreet bag carrier I carried over my shoulder. Then I emptied our tiny trash can, swept the van and was ready to be recalled to family duties.

The call came too soon for Rusty or I and it was time to go make conversation eat cheese ands a little wine. We could have hung out all afternoon in this quiet unobtrusive spot. We made in a winery later: