Sunshine State Redux

It feels slightly ridiculous but we are back in Florida. Not the Keys by any means, as Key West is 800 driving miles away, by a route very well known to me. However your intrepid explorers are back in the state whence they began. 

We visited a man who I can only describe as an artist. Johnny has known my wife since they first met in Birmingham Alabama quite a few decades ago and the way my wife works she has never let go. That two more friends from that era dropped in unexpectedly is part of the way that world works. An hour long visit to see the ailing artist took more than four hours and Johnny was passing out from exhaustion by the end. It was good.

Layne the indefatigable then gave Karl and Lori a tour of the van while Rusty and I caught our breath. Karl has offered us a place to moochdock when we visit Santa Cruz next Spring so I guess it was good he got to see how it works. So good he offered us our seventh moochdock of this trip and we spent the night not on the street as we had planned but in his mother's driveway in the suburbs of Birmingham.

Lori came back in the morning and over scrambled eggs and toast there was much reminiscing about the good old days where a group of young people did good work living in an old mansion they called the Kudzu Castle because it was covered in that creeping vine. Ah, youth.  Pass the bottle.

Rusty and I went for a walk on the ridge line admiring splendid mansions and vast oak trees and ...abandoned fuss ball tables?

Contemplating her lost youth possibly, or wondering about our route to Pensacola?

I often thought about coming back to Birmingham, Layne said. But I suppose by then she was entrenched in Santa Cruz. Life is all choices as the cliché goes.

While we ate Rusty met Beca and they ran around the yard like old friends. I was quite impressed as he usually freaks out when he sees dogs larger than himself. Perhaps travel is broadening his mind too.

We had a dinner date in moochdock number eight in Pensacola. We hit the road. Literally.

Cruising the backroads we stumbled upon an impossible situation, a 40 mile per hour rolling roadblock. The truck removing a well used immobile home was so wide oncoming full sized pick ups had to put two wheels in the grass or pull over if they could find space. A fired up hatch back squeezed past but we were in line behind the obstruction after the car in front of us turned off. I was pondering my options, looking for a place to pull over, walk Rusty and let the thing roll away when to my astonishment a gray cement brick appeared in the roadway. The right front wheel went over it with a loud crack which woke Rusty and Layne up and sent a jolt of adrenaline through me.

We found a forest road but there was no sign of damage and the van rode just fine. I had an intention to have to the tires rotated in Pensacola which will be an opportunity to check for damage but everything seems fine having driven a couple of hundred more miles. Lucky us. Strong Promaster. 

Rusty enjoyed the woods and was quite curious if given time to get used to the place. He is getting quite entrepreneurial in a doggy sort of way.

The sun was setting and we were outside Flomation, a peculiarly named town on the state line.  This wreck was in Alabama offered frorsale by a realtor with an area code in Florida. It must be inconvenient to straddle jurisdictions like that.

The sun started to set and give the landscape its golden color.  And then we had our second incident. Birmingham had been a tough city to navigate even in the middle of the day. Streets were clogged and it was only the laid back driving that made lane changing easy. However laid back was not the style of driving of the next logging truck we met.

We arrived at a t-junction where Google said turn right. I stopped, checked for traffic and saw none from the left. From the right there were two logging trucks coming and as I started to pull out and make the turn the second truck ignored the solid yellow line and pulled out to pass the truck in front. Had I paused to pick up my jaw we'd be dead because he came barreling at us full bore to pass the other truck. As it was I stopped hard, said nothing, and lived. Racing logging trucks; that's a first.

I told Layne about it after we arrived and she remarked she had wondered what the sudden stop was about...That one would have been a lot worse than a broken pelvis!

I think there is room for another cliché isn’t there? Making the most of the time you have or something?

I never imagined a stationary retirement, or being bored, or unmotivated to get up and go and see things. The other side of the coin is the chance of things going wrong, but better that than shrivel up from boredom and lack of motivation. Got to keep your curiosity alive I say.

Next week we cast off for Big Bend in Texas but there are a few places I want to see on the way. For now we have a real Thanksgiving to get through and more socializing. Not a bad place for it either. I thought I saw croissants and coffee prepared for breakfast before I took Rusty for a walk.

Gotta go.

Private Party

One firm date we had when we left Key West on October the 25th was to be in Tennessee on November 20th. We made plans to visit friends all over the southeast as far north as Chicago, but those stops were circling the place and date that was firm in our minds. We made it on time and in one piece. 

We pulled up at Barbara and Gary's place and parked where seemed natural. GANNET 2 stayed put for two chilly nights. The house was full, there was no room at the inside, so we stayed in our own manger which we had brought with us providentially. Gary helped us plug in so we ran our electric heater all night. We are not much good at heroics. 

It was cold, crisp sunny and happily wind free, but our old friend Jack Frost, first encountered in the foothills of North Carolina, was back.

Conditions were perfect for a coat of white early in the morning as Rusty renewed acquaintance with the backyard not seen in three years. He spotted some deer across the road which is actually a perfectly formed private driveway among this collection of scattered homes, but the deer pretty much made him look a fool, disappearing before Rusty got even close. 

There was work to do. Gary and Barbara have a family tradition of creating a special holiday to attract family members to their home at least once a year, en masse, to see each other in one place. You can imagine my social anxiety was in high gear at the thought of fifteen strangers round a table and me struggling not to spill sauce on my formerly clean shirt. 

The whole thing is actually much more relaxed and after Gary spent time beating it into me I felt surprisingly at home. It is an annual tradition to have Thanksgiving a week early, on the Saturday before the day everyone else celebrates. It sounds bizarre but if you stop and think about it, it's brilliant. Your family and friends get together and then everyone spends the actual day as they wish. 

However let there be no doubt the preparations for the lunch are as intense and heart felt as the real thing and being a stranger in a kitchen operating like a well trained circus acrobatic team leaves little room for the fumbly newcomer to risk cocking something up. Russ records the event for posterity while his niece Caroline directs operations. Seconds later Russ was up to his elbows in the sink and Caroline was chopping bacon into bits. You can't join this circus unless you manifest many useful skills. Better to be a bystander.

Layne entertained the troops while Rusty managed his social anxiety in his own way. Layne, much to my surprise found some deep interest in our tin box and ended up showing one of the family how we live. I find it hard to explain the fascination of being a nomad but I hope we pulled off at least the facade of a not too weird life to people rooted in their soil and their communities and the closeness of family.

These pictures I trust will show the normal Thanksgiving chaos especially in a family that cherishes dogs. I have no doubt most of you are familiar and will be intimately familiar in a few days with a similar dance. These people carry it off so well I got completely confused, more so than usual, and spent two days thinking it was Thanksgiving.

Quinn, the golden retriever above was abandoned in Turkey, rescued and flown to the United States. Russ said they were looking to rescue their fifth retriever and thanks to Covid there were none they could find in the US until this international rescue organization got in touch. Magnificently, the CDC has now banned dog importation from more than 100 countries as a temporary measure to prevent illegal breeding and transporting of dogs from around the world to feed  demand for dogs created by the loneliness of Covid. Rescue dogs around the world and their rescuers are so very grateful. It won't take much for temporary to become permanent no doubt. Foster below, was a foster dog until MB decided fostering wasn't enough. Rusty did okay with the crowd handling his own social anxiety as best he could from the couch.

The meal was anchored by the usual turkey which was most unusual. Barbara swears by cooking turkey in a bag and it was the best turkey you have ever eaten. I say that meaning it's the second best as my wife's is of course the best. The thing looked absurd wrapped in a sweaty raincoat but that bag created a bird that was moist and filled with flavor. 

The other dishes were what you would expect and there were were too many of them and it was all magnificent and it really was Thanksgiving. 

Covid kept the head count down to 13 but we were all there. Exchange these faces for people you love and you get the idea. 

The day was wrong but everything else was entirely normal. For some reason I was off wine and went with Old Speckled Hen in a Guinness glass in a sea of iced tea and wine. Me special.

Conversation and relaxation. 

Memories amid family photographs.

Russ started to herd hedgehogs before the traditional Thanksgiving walk. Rusty seems to enjoy being the photographer's assistant.

A leash for Quinn, an embrace for Foster and a firm grip on his collar for Rusty. All present and correct.

Then we went down the road where Gary and Barbara reminisced about their wild empty neighborhood thirty years ago, development, encroachment, change and too much traffic have all become irritants. Sounds like Key West doesn't it?

Then the carb coma and a showing of A Christmas Story that on my third viewing still cracked me up amid the cell phones and snores. It was perfect.

Gary has been an avid visitor to Key West forever and he forced himself on me more than a decade ago after reading my page online. I am notoriously shy but Gary was having none of it and invited me to lunch and kept doing it over the years. He was there for me when I was in the hospital and through  all the dramas of real life. All from this page on the Internet. Annoyingly enough I had a great time and I'm looking forward to making it back next year after Alaska. 

I suppose I do deserve a place at the table with this extraordinary family.  Thanksgiving a week early. I'm a convert. 

Driving

Wake up in a rest area in Illinois, go to sleep in a friend's driveway in Tennessee. Just another day on the road for a couple of intrepid retirees.  

We arose disgracefully late on Friday morning. I watched Layne crawl out of our very comfortable duvet bedding around 10 in the morning while I stayed behind reading my Kindle on my phone. I have been plowing through a 1200 page biography of Adolph Hitler, a surprisingly readable tome by the historian John Toland.  At a time when democracy around the world seems more in peril than recently I'd like to go back and find out what really happened. Austria is just about to be annexed and I had to leave 1938 holding my breath, and get back to the business of driving.  We had a date.

The biggest question that usually arises when I get behind the wheel is whether or not to take the freeway. Layne inclines to freeways but I don't, even when we have a date. I got support from Google maps when I noticed the blue line to Nashville turned red for some considerable distance. We took the back roads. Yay!

Southern Illinois is said to be planted in horse radish but as I have no idea what a horseradish plant looks like in the ground I couldn't say whether or not that was true. Most of the fields looked fallow for winter.

The back roads were straight, as you might expect in the great plains of myth. Paved roads, smooth mostly, and straight through the fields at 40 miles per hour, not a car in sight, completely relaxing.

We listened to NPR for a while from St Louis and as the signal faded so did our interest. Often I plug my phone into the sound system in the Promaster and scroll through my BBC podcasts and broadcasts. Layne is pretty tolerant, listening to historical discussions or old radio comedies or dramas from Radio 4.  It is the radio of my childhood, not the music but the spoken word and I enjoy listening to it. Not this day, I was watching the world go by. 

The roads were lovely and we bowled along at 60 miles an hour on the state highways, not much slower than the freeway and we had the roads to ourselves.

Small towns with a gas station, farm equipment dealer and farm supply stores, a bar a grocery and at 35 miles per hour we saw it all. We enjoyed the drive, being on the road, taking a road trip.  We had two hours to make a 90 minute journey.

We stopped to walk Rusty and stretch our legs in a field alongside the road. The air was crisp but the temperature was bearable even at 50 degrees with no wind.

In southern towns there are churches everywhere but in this part of Illinois they were noticeably fewer in number at least visible from the road. 

I think of Illinois and I don't think of this sort of scenery. Now I've seen it and I'm glad I have, as I never get bored driving these roads.

I'm not a fan of electric cars even though I know they are the future. I suppose I am a product of my time and internal combustion was what I grew up around. I feel lucky I'm still able to dream of driving over the horizon in my van, not answerable to anybody. I suppose the time will come when electrical charging will be as fast and inconsequential as filling a tank with gas and if that happens in my driving life I shall be happy to switch. For the time being electrical cars seem better suited to the commute or local trips than grand over-the-horizon expeditions. 

But this experience of the open road is quintessentially American, celebrated in movies and expressed in songs where the mere mention of a Road Trip triggers yearning. Even if you don't like to drive and you don't want to see where your neighbors live the notion of a "road trip" is completely understood.

I would watch any movie that offered a road trip as part of the plot. I saw Easy Rider in an English language movie theater in Rome in 1980 as I was planning my first trip to America. The fact that I rode coast to coast via Mexico on a 200cc Vespa motor scooter didn't detract one bit from my connection to the bad boys riding across America on their Harleys in the movie.  It didn't end well for them on their drug fueled trip, but my ride across America was excellent. And I met the very first love in my young confused life and she was maddening and excellent too. 

I've driven across country, ridden across country and even managed to sail across country from Texas to Florida after a portage from California to Texas. 

With all that under my belt I still enjoy the simple fact of being on the road. To leave late and dawdle along the way, to see something memorable and to stop at dusk and sleep in your own bed with the promise of more of the same tomorrow... That is my idea of perfect retirement.

We saw deer dickering around indecisively at the side of the road. These are full sized white tails and I can't imagine how they would deal with Rusty who finds them fascinating.

Another dip in the road, another small town, more of the same stores masking the same small town stories no doubt. Onward we go with miles till empty on the dashboard showing three hundred miles to go.

Our first two weeks on the road we paid around $300 for gas according to the expedition accountant who is keeping track of our expenses. Gas this year costs around 3 to three and a half dollars a gallon for which the President oddly gets the blame. Free markets aren't always so free when someone can make political hay out of assigning blame. If I were president gas would cost a dollar a gallon to fund my road trips. Vote for me, OPEC be damned.

Rest assured Rusty doesn't drive but he looks really cute when he takes my place behind the wheel. He doesn't seem to mind road trips at all, so perhaps he and I shared a gene pool in some distant past in the Rift Valley. Or maybe not.