August 2006

August found me spending most of the month in Connecticut for a lot longer than originally planned. I was glad to get back to the rig at the end of the month, as after all the work I had done in CT during my stay, I was finding retirement rather fatiguing! The new carry on rules for flying made up my mind for me, and I drove back to the self storage unit where I had stored the RV while in CT. All was well, Robin and Jenna had kept an eye on it for me while I was away. In a perfect example of doing business southern style, the place where I had parked the rig said, "sure you can stay free of charge over the weekend until after the hurricane passes by. There is no tree that could get even close to it and it is the highest spot in the yard there too, so you should be all right, but we will check it as we ride the storm out here for you." Hmmmm not too sure I would have gotten that same response up in the Ulcer Gulch area. Having now been in the area of a hurricane, a tornado and a blizzard, I can say the tornado is the most frightening, and the hurricane the most painful to deal with. When that low pressure cell went by, I could feel every broken bone in my hands and feet from cows, baseball and whatnot. But worse was the feeling of the ache in my teeth at the low point. The day after was a typical day after the hurricane. Bright clear and crisp. The air itself had been scrubbed clean and was so special to breathe. Heck of a way to get a fresh breath of air though :-)

Would some one riddle me this, if I 81 has no tolls on it and is a very nice, smooth and beautiful road, why is I 95 such a rough piece of crap highway? I paid over $25 in tolls to run straight down I 95 and bounced my back and butt almost to pieces on the way down. If there is all this money coming in from the tolls on 95, just where are they spending it? For sure it is not on the I-95 corridor! Also please note, for those of you who are over 6 feet tall, be very careful when renting a Chevy Malibu. For sure that seat was NOT built for someone with long legs! In a comfortable car, I could have made the CT-APEX NC run in one day, but in that one, it was amazing I could even walk to the front desk of the hotel. Thankfully, Knights Inn had a hot tub for me to soak out the aches caused by GM's lack of engineering talent.

The month saw Mom's house shinned up like a new penny and sold for what she wanted, without the need of a realtor, a unit that had a bathtub in it became available in the lifetime care community she wanted to move into the day after the house sold, and she wowed them when she went for her entrance physical. I do not know if all of you share my beliefs (or something similar) in there being a higher power that watches and guides events for us if we will but believe and trust in it, but if every there was a case to offer as proof for the power of Spirit, but this while deal with Mom and Tryon Estates is one I would gladly offer as defense of that thesis.

It was a bit of a bitter sweet departure from all of my customers and friends this trip, even more so than the one in June. When I left then, I knew I was going to be back in August to cover for Ken for a vacation week anyway, so there was a sense of I will see every one in a few weeks. This time, when I left, it was knowing that I may never seen some of those people ever again. On the other side of the coin, any second guessing of my decision to sell the business was reinforced by the weight gain, blood pressure increase and general level of stress that just 2 weeks back in the saddle so to speak brought. BTW, it has been conclusively proven that CT causes weight gain and high blood pressure. I put back on almost 8 pounds during the time there and my BP went back up on me again. After just two weeks down south, I had lost all of the weight I put on (maybe a pound or two more too) and my BP was back down too. My legs reminded me the first night out for a bike ride that I had not ridden in a month, but things are getting back to where they were before I headed north.

I am in Tennessee, in a town called Baileyton for this week, and then I am going to hop over to a park just outside of Nashville for next week. The week after that I will stay in the Ozarks. Beyond that, I will either make a bee line for Amarillo and stop in at Dan & Gulnurs if Doc G's schedule doesn't have her stretched too thin, or I will head up to MO and out to Colorado via I 70. We will see what happens in a couple of weeks.

I have decided that I need to get a small pocket size digital camera. So very often, there are things that I would like to take a picture of, but there is no where to stop and the Canon SLR Digital just is not something one can one hand and get a good picture. Yesterday morning I topped over the Eastern Continental Divide under a BEAUTIFUL full moon that I would have loved to been able to get a picture of. Next town I hit with something like a big store, I will get one. This town, while lovely and quite and beautiful, is a tad small to have good prices. Yesterday when I rode my bike up to the country store (groceries, feed and tack and contract US Mail station) I had to wait for a man to get on his horse before I could chain my bike to the hitching rail while I shopped. We did have a discussion on who got better gas mileage. BTW gas down here is in the 2.49 to 2.59 per gallon range, compared to the over 3.00 in CT and NY.

I am slowly finding things here in the RV again. Between being out of it for a month and the fact that right before I left, I rearranged things, I can not find anything here. I am going to be using some more of the vacuum bags to sort out my clothes pile and sort of the warmer clothing that once I leave Colorado I will not need again until I go back to CT in December to help Mom pack up and drive her down to NC on the 27th.

More later, I am going to take advantage of the recent rains and go white water rafting

From the road, somewhere in TN