July 26, 2006              Tuesday

This blogger has repositioned himself some miles from his summer home, but then that is what he does.  The only difference is that he has left his home in New York and he is now a house guest of someone else.  This is not a rare event for most people, but it is something that Connie and I do very infrequently.  We are staying with Connie’s mom so it is not a major disturbance just a minor bump on the road of our wondering lives.

The ride here was quite uneventful.  An 8 hour ride along the super highways known as Interstate 86, & 88, and 90 is not often fodder a great adventure.  Please do not ask me my thoughts about these highways.  It would lead to a very long diatribe about boredom, too many cars, to few engaging sights, and far too many bumps.  My diatribe would be far more boring than our ride out here really was.  The traffic was not bad at all until we reached Boston.  Everyone that we normally meet on the road arrived at our exit just seconds before we arrived and they were all going to Cape Cod.  We just swerved around them and headed north around Boston.  Traffic jam avoided, we thought.  Boy did we think wrong.  Mid afternoon on a Tuesday, we figured a very good time to face the 4 wheel jungle of gas guzzlers.  We made a slight error in calculation.  I can see how the high price of gas will eventually stop people from driving those gas hogging monsters - - - -   NOT.  Do you really think the price of gas will ever come back down when they can sell all they have at ridiculous prices and people still fill the highways with money wasting monsters, each with a single person comfortably snuggled inside?

Our day today was much more eventful.  We visited an art museum in Salem, and did not see one witch.  After our broom ride through the art exhibits we headed across town to a restaurant right on the ocean in Marblehead.  The food was excellent and pricey and the service was extremely lacking.  I think we got there at the end of the lunch hour and it must have been at the end of our waitress’s attention span.  As I said the food was great, the tip was equal to the value of service and we were off on a new adventure.

Our afternoon was spent getting lost in a small fishing village somewhere between where we ate lunch and where wanted to be.  We could see Marblehead light from our lunch table.  There was just a little ocean harbor between us and the park we wanted to find.  Our adventure had a happy ending and a pleasant resting spot for us to watch all of the afternoon sailors enter the harbor and place their vessels on their moorings for the night.  The gentle breeze off the ocean was enriching in many ways.  It coolness felt calming and cooling in contrast to the heat wave of this summer.  And, we all know that Connie is a water baby and most at home when she is closest to the ocean.  This afternoon I was pleasured to see Connie in her realm and she allowed me to share in its solitude and pleasure.

July 24, 2006  Monday

Today has not been an exciting day.  I did not receive any profound revelations from my church, so I have no sarcastic gibberish to cast on the absent note.  I have said good bye to our friends in their roving homes so I can not wax poetically about the comradeship we share as we gather on a parking lot or in the middle of a desert. And luckily for the one or two readers of my diatribe I have no deep felt desire to get any eloquent opinion off my ever opinionated chest.  But, there is still my blog and my promise to myself to keep it up to date.

I did manage to roll out of bed and find a lawn mower and shorten the length of grass growing on our acreage.  I even trimmed the edges of our estate so that as Connie and I venture off on another adventure we will leave a groomed site for our home to rest on as we travel to visit family.  Of course as I was toiling in our yard Connie was lounging in the comfort of our home . . . . . NOT.  I had the small chores of cleaning up our site, a monumental 50 foot by 25 foot piece of land, most of which is covered by our RV.  Connie had the simple chore of cleaning everything else and preparing our luggage to take with us tomorrow.  And still she managed to put out a club newsletter, get her hair done, stuff and mail all of the club envelopes and find time to by me a new book to take to Boston.  Who would want the sexes to be equal?  I don’t have enough energy.

As the morning prepares to break over the hills of Bath, New York we will point our little SUV east and head to the sea north of Boston I am sure new adventures will await us and I may even have new adventures to regale in my blog.  Until then I guess today was just not that exciting of a day.

Our weekend was spent at an RV dealer and that was not a bad thing.  Normally when we are sequestered at a dealership it is to get some repairs completed or routine maintenance finished on our rig.  This weekend it was to spend some time with our Newmar Kountry Klub friends at a monthly rally.  The local dealer had decided it might be in his best interest to invite the club to park in his new lot for the weekend and he would spend the time schmoozing us.  17 of our members agreed and pooff, we had a rally.

Now I was going to expound on the pleasure of spending time with like minded friends and social members of an organization that has become a very important part of our lives.  I was going to wax poetically about how souls of like ambitions coming from all sorts of backgrounds can bond and form a social family with deep and emotional ties.  I was going to do all of this until we got home and opened our mail.

In our mail was the monthly newsletter from our church.  On the cover of this six or seven page update is a note from our pastor and is something that I often look forward to reading. This month was no different than normal, sort of.  The cover did have a note form our pastor and I did read it.  There the normalcy seems to fade.  The note was about a dead squirrel he had seen near his home.  Now he could have used this to discuss some deep theological theme, he did not.  He could have used the squirrel as an allegorical reference to some hidden message in the bible and how this might, in some way, redirect our misguided lives, he did not.  I am not sure what and or where I expected his story to lead, but it sure did not get there.  He just told about seeing this dead furry tailed rat taking up space in the gutter near his driveway and how he did not find it in is interest to do a darn thing about it.  By the end of the story the squirrel had disappeared and so has my desire to wait very long for his next diatribe.

By the way our weekend was great, the rain did not dampen our spirits, and it was wonderful to receive and give the hugs and warm fellowship that we all shared.  As usual the food was plentiful, the laughs hearty, and the Wizard games ferocious.  Our weekend was a hell of a lot better than that of the poor squirrel that will, I fear, never become a Presbyterian.  

July 21, 2006              Friday

When I was a little child I think that my mother taught me pretty much all I needed to know about life.  You don’t take a toy from the biggest kid in the sand box; always check the snow for coloration before you eat it; take care of your own toys; use only words that you could use in a conversation with God; and most importantly treat others as you would like to be treated.  She may have also mentioned something about rain and not staying out in it too long, or not at all, or something.  I have never been a great student.  I did try to learn and remember most of the things my mother taught me. I do attempt to treat others as they should be, or at least like I wish they might treat me.  That part about coming in out of the rain may have eluded my educational attainment.

Last night I, along with my wife and a few friends, gathered under an awning to enjoy some fellowship and evening breezes. The fact that the skies had opened up and depositing enough water in the parking lot to surf seemed not to bother us at all.  We all proved that you do not have to be smart enough to come in out of the rain to buy one of these expensive motorhomes.

The evening was, actually, quite pleasant and enjoyable.  It was a bit damp at times, but it was, overall, very satisfactory.  Since no one was getting any wetter than I was, and no one was fight to pass me and find dryer surroundings, maybe I did not do so bad after all.  I did treat them just as I was being treated.  Mother Nature is an equal opportunity soaker.

The next time you see one of these expensive homes on wheels lumber down the highway you can now play a mind game and try to figure out if the driver is smart enough to come in out of the rain. My guess is that given the choice of fellowshipping with fellow RVers or hiding alone in their dry RV I think I know where they might be.  You will have to excuse me now as I need to go and towel off.

July 20, 2006              Thursday

As a full time RVer, some days are really exciting.  You are in a foreign area and every vista within your sight is new and soul enriching.  New people are entering your life and you might even find an old friend in a new unexpected community.  That is what it is like some days as a Full Tine Rver.  Yesterday was not one of those days.

The most exciting thing that Connie and I did was mail in our Red Cross documents and we did some shopping for dinner.  This is not the events of which long and fulfilling memories are made.  Normal people would not waste the time to trivialize a blog with such adventures.  I, on the other hand, am not normal.  I have already spent precious time expounding on the adventure that we surely experienced driving down the streets of this small upstate community searching out a mail box.  This excitement to be topped by the pure thrill of wandering up and down the aisles of the local over priced grocery store.  It is this type of excitement that makes the life style of a nomadic RVer seem really stupid.

Having said all of that yesterday was not all that bad.  I am in the process of learning how to use my new PC.  It has a large memory storage capacity and now has most of the video Connie and I took on our trip to Alaska on the hard drive.  If my brain does not over load I may even find a way to edit this 6 or seven hours of ice, mountains, water and puffins into a manageable DVD which my new PC will burn for me if I ever get to that point.  There is excitement that abounds all around us.

Our shopping trip produced a gourmet dinner of pepper crusted London broil stuffed with garlic that was cooked over an open charcoal fire.  This was served with asparagus tips in a special sauce.  The special sauce was mushroom soup.  This was served over a baked potato.  This was all complimented with an excellent vintage cabernet wine (right from our own box.) 

All in all, it was not a bad day.  It was actually quite a good day and if one chooses to they could view the day as quite special.  I was wrapped in a learning experience; Connie was wrapped in a good book; and I may soon have a DVD to make you watch over and over again.  Life is good and exciting, at its own level, each and every day.