Travels with AURORA

Date:                           November 10, 2009

Location:                    Daytona Beach, FL

0930

            I did not accomplish a lot yesterday.  As a matter of more accurate fact I accomplished just about nothing, but I will try not to allow that small fact stop me from boring the one or two people that might stumble on to my blog heaven.  I will, however, attempt to not delve into the dark dungeons of my opinionated mind.

            Our main chore yesterday was to mail a couple of letters.  For a retired couple settled into the sedated life of snowbird Florida this could be a moment.  For us it was not, but it needed to be done.  It was on our return to the campground that we noticed a collection of 8 or 10 egrets and herons in our campground retention pond.  It is worth noting that the retention pond is not retaining much water of late and birds were wading through a very wet swamp with barely enough water to cover their feet and certainly not enough to get their knees damp.

            I must admit that seeing a shallow pond surrounded by palm trees and blue sky is a beautiful sight.  Dot the wet landscape with a handful of white birds and one or two blue ones and the picture takes on a memorable tone.  It was this memorable tone and classic Florida landscape that I wanted to capture on my camera.  Connie and I hurried back to our campsite and I gathered my camera, my bike and headed off to pretend I was a photographer.

            The wind was blowing just a bit, or so I thought.  As a peddled down the street in our campground and made the turn toward the pond I was abruptly made aware of the fact that the wind was blowing quite a bit.  My old tired bike peddling legs found it nearly impossible to power my new bike forward.  The winds seem to push me back harder than I could push me forward.  I down shifted my bike, peddled a bit harder and pretended I was a Tour De France rider and leaned into the wind.  Camera flailing, legs pumping, and chest heaving with breaths of exhaustion I did make the pond pristine in its beauty and specked with the charm of long legged white egrets and heron feeding on what ever floated on the shallow pond surface.

            As I dismounted my ride and grabbed my camera for a collection of what I hoped would be awesome pictures someone must have called ahead to the lead bird.  In unison nearly every one of the idiots took to flight and showed me nothing but their tail fathers as they soared on the winds to ever increasing heights and well out of my camera’s range.  “Thanks a lot you pain in the butt birds.  I am too old to be breathing this hard just to snap a picture of an empty pond.  Do you have no compassion?”

            I was to realize the answer to my question was all too real.  They had no compassion.  I had no brains. And, my camera was to have few pictures.  I suppose if I were eating lunch in a secluded hideaway and some lumbering oaf came huffing and puffing on a machine toward me I might jump to the conclusion that this situation might lead to no good.  And I might opt to forgo any more lunch until the area returned to its solemn quiet.  Maybe the “bird brain” there was not in white feathers.

            I did get a few pictures although they were not quite as pristine has I had first imagined.  I did get to play with my camera.  And I did get some exercise on my bike. It was, by all thoughts, not a bad experience.  It even gave me something to add to my blog this morning.  It is not totally off the wall and probably will not anger anyone.  That is a pretty good combination.

            The moral of my story, if there could be one, may be that if you have the opportunity to capture one of life’s moments of beauty, do not let it pass with out making an attempt to accomplish the task.  As we have seen this morning you may not store away the memory that you had planned, but a memory will still me made and the beauty will live on in your soul.

20 DAYS to EMBARKATION

Wfdo2@wfdo2.com

Date:                           November 9, 2009

Location:                    Daytona Beach, FL

0830

            Connie and I have been at this campground in Florida for more than 4 months and it was not until yesterday that we had a real life picnic outside at our site.  It took us over 4 months to live like a camper at our campground.  It was not an elaborate picnic, but we had our Weber cranked up and the smell of cooking beef wafted through the campground and especially through our site.  This was not the first time we have used our Weber, for it has been a work horse this summer.  The part of this charcoal smelling, meat cooking, fresh air enjoying afternoon that made this a special picnic atmosphere was that we actually ate our creations outside at our picnic table. 

            This may not seem to be too exotic, unless you are living in Florida, especially in the summer.  We have learned that 90 plus degrees in the sweaty tropical climate of living on a sand bar is not the most conducive to enjoying the pleasures of outdoor living.  I must sadly admit that we have spoiled ourselves all to much by using our air-conditioning 7 days a week and 24 hours a day for entirely too much.  It is, however, how one manages to exist in the southeast if one is normal and a wimp.  We try to be the former and I am always the later.

            The last few days have been overly delightful in Florida.  The temperature has been in the high 70s to very low 80s with just the hint of a cool breeze.  Our air-conditioning has actually been off a lot more than it has been on and our windows have been open.  We even had our heat on once last week, just to cut the chill of early morning.  With this new climate environment we decided that we should move our bodies outside and enjoy the rest of our site.  We purchased some new lawn chairs, changed our table cloth to one that fit the season and spent all day enjoying the comfort of autumn in Daytona.  It would have been nearly perfect except that the Giants lost by 1 point, but that is another sad story for another sad meandering.

            Someday I should explain how we purchased our lawn chairs from an outlet store near Camping world.  Camping world was our first choice.  Where else would a camper go for camping equipment?  After some very disappointed realization that what Camping World had was made extremely cheaply and terribly over priced, we decided that our 60  mile drive was for naught when Connie noticed an expensive specialty sporting equipment store.  A few moments later we had purchased 2 very nice lawn chairs that were better made and cheaper than anything we could find at CW.  We mentioned this to our sales person and he looked as befuddled as we were.  How could they, a specialty shop, sell a product of higher quality for a lower price?  A price that was a good 20 per cent lower on a product that was made of quality metal and wood and no plastic.  Of course it was made in China, but than nothing is perfect.

            The hamburgers we great, reading as you recline in soft cool tropical breezes is nearly heaven and with our outside entertainment center we really do have the best of many worlds.  We may begin to enjoy the rather large lawn we have at our site and escapee from the confines of our bus.  We have even taken up riding our bikes again.  I guess it is true that as the heat and humidity regress the appearance of snowbirds does elevate.

            Time to go and enjoy another beautiful, pleasant day in Florida.

21 DAYS to EMBARKATION

Wfdo2@wfdo2.com

Date:                           November 7, 2009

Location:                    Daytona Beach, FL

0900

            Writing a blog is challenging as well as interesting.  I fear that those that choose to read my cerebral wandering find it much more challenging than they find it interesting on any given day.  And yet, here I am positioned in my “throne” as my lovely wife calls my chair and I am attempting to fill a page or so of my electronic paper with thoughts of a life that may not always be exciting and of much interest to the living world. I could ramble on with my wealth of hindsight knowledge and explain how the world we see unfolding before us would be so much better if they only did it my way.  I could explain how the life others live could be so much happier if they could only see their individual problems with the clarity and in-depth perception that I understand their lives to be.  Profundity is such an easy game to play. If only the world listened to me and valued my awesome opinions.

            There are many days when I get caught up in the wealth and depth of my own intelligence and can not help but share it with the world from my little soap box called “Travels with Aurora.”  Yesterday may well have been one of those moments.  Yet as I reflect on what I have expounded upon on my page of self valued opinions I can not help but place that moment into context of today’s environment.  Might I have said something that might at a future time be determined a flag as to the unstableness of my sanity?  There are, I would presume, many people that might wonder about the state of my sanity on any given day, at any given moment as it is.  It is a salient fact in today’s electronic world that once you have a thought, decided to share that thought and actually completed these tasks your opinions are open for the world to, at any time in the future, interpret and use as a base for their opinion of either you or your mindful meanderings.  Sadly today it may not be just your friends and family that are evaluating your postulations.

            It is from this sullen perspective that I start my blog this morning and after nearly half an hour I have progressed to absolutely nowhere, and with great aplomb I might add.  Writing a blog can be challenging even if not interesting, as I stated at the onset of this mornings offering.  I have far too many opinions on what is happening in our world to dare share them on a semi public forum.  My slightly extreme pacifistic liberal ideas are not always well received and seldom as fully understood as I had hoped they might be when I tried to formulate each sentence.  I may, at times, attempt to tweak an extreme opposing idea with literary sarcasm and usually accomplish irritation instead of enlightenment.  Thus failing in what ever my original desire might have been.  I should often apologize for my literary indiscretion, but that might mean I did not mean to accomplish what it probably was I so effectively did.  Poking an opposing political or social opinion in the eye is such fun and self rewarding sometimes.  I do realize that opinions are like some body orifices, we all have them. It is just that once I have gone to the trouble of formulating my own opinion I do so want to share my intellect with the world.  It is not that my opinions are always perfect, but they are always mine and certainly right.  That is until I change my mind.

            I have accomplished my goal of a page of thoughts.  You have now wasted nearly half an hour trying to figure out what it is I am trying to say and now I must go shopping for a present for my granddaughter.  That is really quite a bit to accomplish on any given Saturday morning.  I am off to Orlando in my shorts and short sleeved shit.  The sky is blue and the air is clear.  It is a bit cool today and may only reach the lower edge of the 80s, but I think we can adapt.  I still have my opinions, I still have my advise and I still think I have my sanity all of which I will, I am sure, attempt to share with you on a future visit to blog world.  Writing a blog is challenging and sometimes interesting and so very often a good means to waste an hour or so on a beautiful warm and breezy Florida morning.  Go forth and opine.

23 DAYS to EMBARKATION

Wfdo2@wfdo2.com

Date:                           November 6, 2009

Location:                    Daytona Beach, FL

1000

            Previously I expounded on the pleasures of being a retired old duffer and the pleasure that can be found in the simplest of chores even cooking dinner.  The result of our endeavor was, indeed, all that great and worth remembering.  It was also the path to the presentation of the gourmet meal that will complete the memory in our minds.  Having the time and inclination to make the dinner meal a chance to become a memory is even a greater pleasure.  Being retired allows me to slow down enough to find these moments to enjoy.

            It is this slowed down aspect of life that was to lead me to my daily excursion into my blog world.  Having nothing important to do can cause a person to think and sometimes it can make a person think too much.  My thoughts were meandering into the realm of daily news or what ever that thing they present of TV as news really is.  It was not the specific story that was being presented, but rather the questions these events might ask of society and the health of society that caused me to ruminate a bit.

            Yesterday, the story that fueled my interest was about the house of murder in Ohio.  It was not a question, in my mind, of how a human can be that sick. For we all know that happens all too often.  It was, also, not a question of right or wrong.  There is never a right when one sick human takes the life of another and then repeats that horrific act.  The question that arose in my mind was how society can allow this to happen.

            How does a man entice multiple victims into a killing field located in the center of a large American city?  How does this happen and go unnoticed or not investigated.  I think this yells about the ills of society much more than it speaks of the ills one mind.  One mind was obviously sick and crying for help and yet society ignored the travesty that was being preformed right in front of its collective eyes.  We, as a society, seem destined to not become involved with our neighbors.  We seldom even know who our neighbors are or what they are doing.

            I was going to expound deeply and profoundly on this ill of society until I happened onto the news of the day yesterday.  An Army officer walked into a processing building on a very large Army post and killed 12 people and wounded over 30 others.  This act of terror happened on a secure United States military post.  The terrorist was allowed to infiltrate a large gathering of soldiers fully armed and bent on causing great havoc and destruction.  He seemed to do this in broad day light, dressed in full uniform and with little effort.  And yet my question is not about the total lack of security.

            My question, again, is about the status of society.  How do we allow an eighty year old feeble woman to be hand searched and embarrassed at a public airport?  We accept that we all must remove shoes in order for us board an airplane, yet we somehow allow a man to walk on to a military post armed and dangerous with little obvious thought.  It would seem, I my mind, a bit more dangerous to wave a “trained killer” through the security screening on a sensitive military installation than a it would be to allow a family to comfortably board a public transportation facility.

            I will not pontificate on my views.  I think there are many questions we should be asking ourselves.  But, they are questions that we should be asking ourselves and not fussing over how someone else might phrase the inquiries  We need to think about finding the root causes of the many ills our society is exhibiting.  I truly feel that none of these questions, much less the answers, are being postulated by anyone in the modern media or existing government.  Society needs to collectively and individually be a lot more reflective on more than the face of the problems and search for the causes of the societal manifestation of failures.

            There is a scene in “Patch Adams” that takes place in a mental health hospital where Patch Adams is asked to count the fingers on a fellow patient.  Patch answers 4, of course and the patient goes ballistic because the answer is so wrong.  He tells Patch to look beyond the problem to the answer.  Sometime have a person hold up his hand and you count his fingers.  Look beyond the “problem” or his hand and look for the root cause problem, or beyond his hand.  You will find your eyes blurring a bit and soon 8 fingers will appear.  I feel we, as society, need to look beyond the problem and find a few solutions.  But then I have always looked outside of the box.  I am afraid that I feel right now there are few solutions contained in our societal “box.”  Maybe we need to follow the advice of the mental patient in Patch Adams and not continue looking for our problems and concentrate more on searching for a few solutions.

24 DAYS to EMBARKATION

Wfdo2@wfdo2.com

Date:                           November 4, 2009

Location:                    Daytona Beach, FL

0900

            The life of a retired full time RVer can elicit stories of adventure and exploration that might make anyone enter into the realms of jealousy.  A cavalier wondering attitude of new horizons and new explorations might await the lucky people that live this life every morning and every day of their enviable life.  This can be true, but if you bothered to read the blog dated yesterday you might realize that reality is also a passenger on this bus of adventure.  Some days the sun is hidden, the clouds are gray, and the riders on this enviable bus are in a funk.  And yet, here we are fully enjoying the life we live and not yet willing or desirous of giving up the dream we are living.

            One of the pleasures of getting a bit older and not having mundane daily required chores to accomplish is that you can make a simple obligation as extraordinary as you wish.  A task that is performed by most people day after day can, if one wishes, takes on the mantle of adventure and can be a source of wondrous memories.  What, you ask, is he trying to say?  It is simple; actually, Connie and I cooked dinner last night.

            Now if I were to stop there the story would be told but he memory would be lost.  And, we all know that I do not sit in front of my laptop each morning just to keep a fact filled log of mundane daily happenings.  I would rather spend an hour and fill a page with long overly wordy descriptions of what it is we do all day aboard this bus on any given day.

            As I stated, Connie and I decided to cook dinner and, as usual this started with a conversation that went something like this;:

“What would you like for dinner?” 

“I don’t know what would you like?”

“What do we have and what would be easy?”

“The cupboards are empty so we can either have nothing or go and get something, so what do you want?”

            I am sure that most of you can visualize this exchange and see that it really has no good ending.  We decided finally to venture out on an adventure and see what materialized.  I felt like having some bay scallops and we had some left over whole wheat noodles.  With some imagination we might be able to find a dinner out of that if we could find some scallops.  Since we are near the ocean this should not be a big problem and off we head on an exploratory mission. Luckily we just happen to know about a fresh fish market just a bit down the road.

            We arrived at the market hungry and anticipating the pleasure of choosing the freshest and most tender bay scallops available.  The market had a wide variety of fresh fish, and some stuffed crabs which we purchased.  The problem began when we found that Daytona Beach does not seem to have fresh bay scallops.  They have a lot of very large ocean scallops, but we had decided on finding the smaller bay scallops.  What do we do now?  The conversation begins, somewhat like the one before, as we attempt to rethink our dinner menu.  After some pondering, some long salivating stares into coolers packed with fresh fish and an in depth discussion we purchased the afore mentioned stuffed crab and a beautiful salmon steak.  Now what do we do?

            On our way out of the parking lot and as we headed home we rearranged our menu and decided on a new gourmet feast for the evening.  Sautéing salmon in garlic butter and layering it atop some noodles may be fine, but it was not what we hungered to have for dinner.  A bed of fresh vegetables, ala Joe Aiello, some Italian seasoning and a baked salmon steak sounded much better.  It was time to head to the local grocery and search for the freshest garden produce and, of course, a nice bottle of white wine.  The only sad or negative part of our story is that Daytona Beach is not the center of gourmet cooking and as such we were relegated to doing our produce searching at the local Publix store.  Not a bad thing, but a minor glitch in our adventure.

            By the end of the day Connie and I had purchased all of the needed elements for a wonderful gourmet meal of steamed salmon cooked on a bed of fresh squash, zucchini, red and green peppers and tomatoes.  All of this was sautéed first in bath of olive oil and garlic.  For a wine we had a bottle of Blue Nun wine, our wedding dinner wine.  The vegetables were succulent and tasty and the salmon literally melted in your mouth. The stuffed crab augmented the meal with savory elements of spice and delicacy. And we balanced the meal with those leftover whole wheat noodles cooked in sun dried tomatoes.  It was an elegant meal that any chef would have been proud to present.  The colors, the aroma, the balanced presentation and the blessed taste were all out of this world.  It was special.

            The point of this story is not that we managed to cook a gourmet meal of which to be proud, all though we did.  The point was that Connie and I spent nearly a whole day planning, shopping and preparing an evening meal.  We shopped for fresh food, local produce and succulent fish.  We stood side by side as we sliced, diced and sautéed our meal together.  It is form this we will manufacture memories and it is form this that a message should arise.  When you are retired it may be easier, but we should all take a few moment so to slow down and take time to enjoy the simplest of daily chores. It is from the sharing of time with your loved ones that fond memories materialize.  Of course a dinner of steamed Italian seasoned salmon on a bed of sautéed fresh vegetables served with a wonderful bottle of wine is nice also.

26 DAYS to EMBARKATION

Wfdo2@wfdo2.com