Road Food and Fun

Easy Peasy trip today, only six hours of driving, the usual rain storms, delays due to Truck Tag, when big 18wheelers decide to pass each other on the uphill on two lane roads but nothing major. Breakfast at the hotel consisted a cup of coffee and a spoon of flax seed meal with a prune that Cindy had thoughtfully remembered to bring. Since we only had a quarter of a tank of gas, I had promised an early stop to refuel followed by a proper breakfast. We found a perfect spot and when I opened the car door the smells were promising. While I filled the tank and cleaned the windows, Cindy checked out the options. They were unfortunately sparse, but the menu offered homemade breakfast biscuits which looked promising.  Unfortunately they stopped serving those at 9:30 and it was now 9:55, bad luck.  The only other hot things were five kinds of deep fried chicken, two deep fried types of potatoes and little tubs of gravy, that unctuous mixture of fried sausage in a milky roux.  We passed and Cindy ended up with a banana and blueberry biscuit and I opted for the breakfast of champions, an ice cream sandwich. I have to tell you, a bite of banana followed by a bite of ice cream sandwich is a marvelous combination and did the trick.

We drove for another three hours, this time though really heavy squalls, and once inside of Georgia, we stopped for gas and lunch. It turned out that for me, it was gas and gas.  I gave into the temptation of a Circle K hot dog, with all the trimmings.  I enjoyed every bite but it came back to haunt me for the next two hours.  Cindy had the delightful and always tasty two day old microwaved breakfast burrito, which she declared nearly edible.  Needless to say, we are looking forward to salads for dinner!

Do you remember when the current administration said they were going to be spending bigly on infrastructure?  Given it’s been a problem for decades we were hoping something might have finally changed, but there is zero evidence of any of that money having been spent on road improvement in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia or Florida.  The roads are a mess, mile after mile of potholes and poorly painted marker stripes, and no evidence of road construction, repair or maintenance. Very sad!

We finally got proper nourishment in the Marriott restaurant where the manager told us the grouper had just been delivered and the salmon was also very fresh.  We had one of each, simply grilled with lemon - and simply delicious.  The manager is from Albania and we’d had quite an interesting conversation with him earlier, all about the EU and Brexit and the perks that Albanians get from Greece (you read that right).

Heading south again today ... Cindy and Wm

We'll miss you DVDV

The day we knew would come has in fact arrived. We begin our final journey as proud owners of our Desert Violet 1998 Ford Explorer, lovingly known as DVDV.  Valley’s family needs a reliable heavy duty car and DVDV got the nod.  I have spent the day getting her ready for the run to North Port, Florida: washing, vacuuming, polishing, gassing her up and getting an oil change service, just to make sure all is well on the trip.  We’ll not be setting any records, having decided to take our time and make it as relaxing as possible, so we’ll be spending three nights in hotels and we’ll only average about six hours of driving a day.

Smart folks would have timed this to begin in November when the weather would be much cooler, but hey, 90 degrees and frequent thunderstorms, as predicted, add a certain amount of adventure to the transfer.  As we were getting things organized for the trip, we began to discover things about the car that we either didn’t know before or forgot.  For instance, the sun visor on both the driver and passenger side has two visors so that if you move the big one to the side window, you still have a smaller backup for the front window.  Ingenious!  I’m betting that there is no one out there that has a car that has a built-in cassette player as well as a CD player and an option to connect your phone so that you can play whatever is on your playlist. Oh, and today I found out where you add the fluid for the rearview window washer, not that it matters since that wiper hasn’t worked in years.

We are all packed and the car is filled with things that the Florida kids want, which is a joy since we really would like to unload lots of our stuff. We’ve got a cold six pack of Evian, a bag of peanuts, a bag of almonds and a jug of Vecchia Romana, an Italian brandy for beddy-bye sipping. We’ll keep you posted!

We had a crack of dawn start today, that is if we lived in Hawaii!  It was to be a six hour trip Rock Hill SC but with rain, trucks and tons of traffic outside Charlotte, it turned into a 8.5 hour ordeal. No biggie, we arrived safe and sound.  Since Cindy isn’t running, she packs lighter than normal and the receptionist gave a that look like, I know what you’re here for!  We had a lovely dinner and unwound from the day’s drive and got to bed much earlier that normal.  Tomorrow to Jacksonville!!

Wheels and Deals

June has been a month of wheels and deals.  After selling our other home at the end of May, we decided to use some of the money to purchase a new car since our beloved Explorer is celebrating her twentieth birthday.  We looked at all of the usual suspects - Jaguars, Rolls Royce and Bentleys - but decided after a month of test drives that a new Ford Escape was just what we needed. We now have a Ruby Red Escape Titanium (a month ago I didn’t know that was even a thing) sitting in our garage, having displaced Cindy’s canary yellow Tweety Bird, which now adorns our driveway. Modern cars have more electronics than most houses and ours comes with an owner’s manual that makes War and Peace look like an intro. We have to sit in the car and read, push buttons, make lights blink on and off - and that is just to set the radio stations!

We also have another set of wheels for Cindy’s exclusive use.  It is a knee scooter which is a godsend for her mobility. Seems that our long distance runner done run the heck out of her foot and she has a stress fracture that will keep her off her feet for at least six to eight weeks.  We had been using a wheeled desk chair around the house but she really couldn’t do it herself and it was not as agile as the scooter. I was pushing her but the house isn’t designed for high speed maneuvers!  We are reasonably sure that Cindy had been running with this fracture for four or five days, thinking it was a spider bite causing the swelling. Finally after an ex-ray, two doctor’s visits, and an MRI it was confirmed as a stress fracture. She’ll be a hoot driving her scooter around the music camp in Seattle next week with her violin strapped to her back and her music and lunch in the scooter’s basket. 

Our new car, Petit Rouge, is like an updated mini version of the Explorer, but as mentioned, with lots and lots of electronics. It has its own wi-fi network which is faster than the one we have in the house. The pretty eight-inch screen can tell us things about the car that make me blush, they are so detailed. I honestly think that two people have to be in the car to make it safe since there are so many distractions. Bells and whistles don’t begin to describe the things that are available. While we know many of the offerings are not new to modern cars, they are all new to us. We especially like the little buttons that tell the car how to arrange the seat and mirrors for each driver.  We have never experienced Sirius XM radio, but I think I love it since they have channels with music from the 60’s, Frank Sinatra, BBC News, and Classical Symphonies, and they are always available wherever you travel. Rather cool.  No doubt most of our dear readers have been listening to Sirius radio for years - but keep in mind that the Explorer is so old it has a cassette player!  Today we are going to just sit in the car and program things like the local radio, GPS Navigation and Universal Garage Door Opener; I know how to show a gal a good time!  There was a time when all you could do in a car that wasn’t moving was make out, we might do some of that too!

Best wishes to all,  Cindy and William

Scooter Emmans

And What Can our Contestant Win?

Co-Pilot's Seat, very necessary!

Cindy's Birthday Weeks

We have just returned from a short trip to Pennsylvania to visit Falling Water as a part of Cindy’s birthday celebrations. We normally do something a bit more exciting and a bit farther away, but this has been a very trying three weeks and we just didn’t have time.  On May 14th, we had a severe storm with driving rains and heavy winds - and for fifteen terror-filled minutes the craziest hailstorm I’ve ever encountered. We honestly thought that all the windows would be smashed by the hail and ferocious winds; the noise was absolutely incredible.  I quickly closed the blinds and curtains upstairs so if the windows broke at least the glass shards would be contained while Cindy went to the center stairway.  Hmmm, maybe that was as better choice of places to wait out a storm of this magnitude?  By the time the storm stopped, we had lost electricity and daylight so I wasn’t able to do a complete walk around, but we were thankful that no windows broke and the juice came back on only three hours later so we had AC and fans and could go to bed comfortably.  The time without power gave us an excellent opportunity to find all of our flashlights and batteries and candles and re-load batteries as needed.  We’ll be ready for the next storm!

The next day I surveyed our house and found damage but nothing I thought was too severe.  We had sold our other house up the road and we were due to close on it on the 24th so I went out there and found little damage and no flooding inside, for which I was thankful.  That afternoon we headed to the airport for a trip to Florida to visit the kids, eyeball Megan to make sure she was doing well (she is), and to visit friends we had met on a cruise.  I started to get emails from the realtors handling the closing stating that I had to file an insurance claim on the house due to the $17,000 of damage from the storm.  I was confused to say the least since it didn’t look bad to me, but they said the house would need a new roof, some siding, and other goodies. Doing things at a distance is never easy, and with a deadline approaching it was rather stressful.

I called our insurance agent and set the claim in motion. I was amazed at how quickly they can move and how little pushback I received. The agent did an evaluation, priced the work at $17K, and the contractor had the paperwork for me to sign on the 23rd so that the closing could continue as planned. It was only after looking at the estimate for repairs that I realized if this house had that much damage that I couldn’t see, what damage was there to our house?  We had been told that the hail was much worse in our neighborhood, so I again called to file a claim and again everything went like clockwork. Our house has $28K worth of damage so we’ll be getting a new roof, gutters, downspouts, siding on the entire house (!), twenty screens replaced that were shredded by hail, as well as two new doors. Absolutely amazing.

That's me with the key.

We had a free thirty hours so on Sunday we headed up to spend the night at a hotel near Fallingwater I had found online that was supposed to be historic and had a good restaurant. On paper the drive was only meant to take a bit under three hours, but we had some nasty weather, again, and there were times when the rain and then the fog where so intense that we had to slow down to  40 mph for safety sake. When we arrived the place looked rather normal, but we were soon to discover that it was a cross between M. C. Escher and the Bates Motel from Psycho. They gave us a key and told us to go up the stairs, out the door, around the building, down the stairs, then up some other stairs and use the key to get into the hall and then the room.  When we did all of this, we were presented with the most depressing cheap dark motel room we have ever seen. There was enough mold to qualify as a super site, the bed was small and tossed into a corner, there was one little window, an old fashioned AC window unit and a bathroom that had a pitted mirror and more colorful mold around the toilet. The main feature of this horror was a large jacuzzi tub which took up half the room, right next to the bed! I reached for the phone to call down and get another room but there was no phone so I retraced my steps and spoke to a manager.

Somehow, he had thought that when I had asked for their best room, we would certainly want a jacuzzi.  I indicated that even if I could get into one, I doubted that I could get out and asked whether he had any other rooms.  We went up yet another staircase and there were four charming old fashioned rooms - without a jacuzzi (darn!) - but with a clean and working bathroom, four large windows, very high ceilings, a comfortable looking bed and some antique furniture. We moved in a flash and celebrated with some ice cold Champagne I had brought from home. 

Cindy’s birthday dinner was INTERESTING. It turns out that this hotel also has a world famous butcher shop attached and they are world famous for their smoked meats, grilled steaks and other meatatarian dishes. We had noted the smoke smell upon entering the hotel, so while we had brought dress-up clothes, we opted to leave them in the car so as to avoid dry cleaning charges upon our return home. Given that the other diners were dressed quite casually, our decision was the right one.  We did find a white wine from New Zealand which they brought in a proper ice bucket, points for them, and then we lingered over the menu trying to find things we could eat. As we sipped our wine we noticed a plate of something that Fred Flintstone might have ordered. Turns out it was their world famous stuffed pork chops that were each about six inches high including the stuffing. Slabs of ribs, buckets of wings, and enormous steaks were all being served to tables around us with side dishes large enough to feed several  families. We ended up ordering a salad with salmon for Cindy and I had a grilled chicken sandwich with two pounds of french fries.  It will be a birthday dinner that we’ll remember for ages, but for all the wrong reasons.  

The next day we had a very American breakfast (2 eggs over easy, hash browns, etc.) at a restaurant a mile away since this hotel didn’t serve breakfast; we found it odd that a hotel with a full service restaurant can’t manage breakfast for overnight guests.  Fully fueled, we drove through the beautiful Laurel Highlands and stopped at 2 lovely waterfalls before finding Fallingwater.  We’d reserved tour tickets, as required, but were were quite early and happy to find out that they could accommodate us on an earlier tour.  They have quite an operation with groups of about a dozen leaving the main meeting area every 5 minutes, with the guides stopping to talk in designated areas of the house and then scurrying ahead with us to the next spot before the next group catches up.  The architecture is indeed interesting and it’s amazing the way the house juts over the waterfall, although we had both had the idea that the water went through one level of the house, not just under it.  The pictures on the website are quite accurate and give you a great idea of the design of not only the house but the furniture and beautiful built-in cabinets.  We left without making an offer to buy since we found out it costs six million per year for upkeep!

Best wishes, Cindy and William

A lovely Sunday in San Diego

Two years ago I received a ‘save the date’ notice from our friends Breffni and Gladys. The date was to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary at their home here in San Diego in mid-October 2017. I’ve known them for about forty of their fifty years of marriage and was convinced that nothing would stop us from attending.  I was wrong because while they were celebrating we were where we were absolutely supposed to be: with darling Megan in Florida, doing what we could to help her get healthy and strong, which is exactly what she did!

When we knew we were coming to La Jolla this time, I called Breffni to let him pick the date and location for us to take them out to celebrate a belated 50th.  Much to our surprise, he suggested that we meet them at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park to attend the matinee for American Mariachi before heading out to dinner. It was a glorious day - or as San Diegans say, a normal day in paradise - and we rented a car to drive to Balboa Park.  We arrived early and walked around the massive park, once again mightily impressed with the beauty of this jewel. It is without question the most beautiful part of San Diego that is not on the water, and we reveled in the openness and old world beauty of the gardens, buildings and fountains. 

The play itself was absolutely delightful - as you might guess from the link above - and the Old Globe Theater itself is worth the price of admission. It is well designed to insure good lines of sight for all the seats and it is just small enough to make the production seem intimate. The acoustics are quite dynamic which is great for a play like this that has lots of wonderful music. 

We had parked rather far from the theater (we’ll blame GPS as opposed to my memory of the area), and walking back to the car at 4 pm we saw large multi-generational family outings, lots of kids and teens on bikes and scooters, and older kids with what I’m told are Smart Speakers, which are really, really loud. Unfortunately, many - no, most - of the teens were head down staring at their phones instead of the beauty of the park, but hey, they have busy lives.  It was fun to see everyone out and about and enjoying themselves and it made us miss living in San Diego, which we totally can’t afford now!

We reunited with Breffni and Gladys at an Italian restaurant in Point Loma, not far from the airport. It is a lovely spot and we had drinks in the bar and we toasted to their good fortune of having a long and strong marriage for fifty years. Soon a manager came to tell us our ‘room’ was ready. It turns out that the Barretts had reserved the private wine room for our dinner that evening. I think this link might show you the setting. It was a great evening of celebration with great wines and wonderful friends and a perfect way to end a lovely Sunday.  

Best wishes, Cindy and Wm

Challenging First Week at Casa de la Playa

Things got off to a rocky start on this vacation.  When we arrived we were told that our bed was broken and they would try to get it fixed soon, but in the meantime we were to call the front desk if we needed help getting the bed up or down. The beds in the studios here are Murphy Beds, which means that when not in use they are lifted up and out of the way into their own little compartment.  Very good space saver and for the past ten years we have had always had a good night’s sleep on them. When we arrived the one in our unit had a serious problem in that one of the cables had snapped and lifting the thing required all of our strength. Additionally, something was seriously wrong with our mattress and after two nights I relegated myself to the couch, which was marginally better for my back.

For three days, bed sales folk came in and out of our studio, measuring, probing the walls and showing the manager their slick brochures.  They finally decided on one style and on Friday it was installed while we were out. We came back and there was sawdust everywhere where they had cut moulding and drilled holes.  Additionally, the carpet had lots of wood slivers all over just begging for a bare foot. The unit they purchased has a smaller footprint and they’ll have to eventually knock out the existing frame, but for the moment it is like sleeping in a coffin, with a 2-foot recess in the frame where your head is meant to be. But wait, there’s more….

The pistons that help raise and lower the bed are right next to your head, which means that if you turn in the night, you run the risk of hitting your head, ear, eye, nose, whatever against these cold steel pistons.  What bright mind designed this??  I ended up sleeping with my feet down by the pistons, but while they did get a new Murphy Bed, they did not replace the mattress, which is still a lumpy disaster.  Of course no one works on the weekend so we are stuck with this at least until Monday. 

We tried to run the dishwasher last week only to discover that the heating element doesn’t work. Cindy patiently explained this to the manager, who sent first one handyman and then another up to see what the problem was. Between them they ran it three times only to discover that the heating element is not working!  The manager said that it cost almost as much to replace the heating element as it does to replace the whole unit.  We said we didn’t care which way he went, just get something working.  He thinks this might take several weeks.  I placed him on notice that we expect to receive full compensation for this week and if this continues, for the entire two weeks of our rather disappointing stay.  At least the weather is wonderful, so we continue to keep our spirits high.

Best wishes,  Cindy and William of Sore Back

Springtime in La Jolla

Our Delta Flight

It was a painless flight out to San Diego, mostly because I’ve come to the decision that Cindy and I shall not fly more than two hours in coach.  Our two flights on Delta in First Class were wonderful, with great service, decent food and drink and comfortable surroundings, a far cry from our usual five hours of cluttered, cramped and cruel coach. Within forty-five minutes of landing we were standing in front of our casa on the Pacific with cool breezes, a temp of 65 and bright sunshine, just what our bodies and souls needed after a particularly horrible two weeks of weather in Charles Town.

On Saturday we did a little shopping for the weekend and also a lot of walking.  Cindy wanted to order a book from the library, which we joined last year using our tax receipt for the time-share as proof of our San Diego residence. While there she found out that there was a chamber music recital scheduled for three that afternoon so she was in heaven and I was in napville.  We had what for us was an early dinner at a favorite restaurant and we were home and ready for bed by nine-thirty and sound asleep by ten. I fear that age has amplified the effects of jet-lag, as much as I would like to think I’m immune.

Great Biplanes

Perhaps MGs?

I think this is a Jag

Sunday was a grand and action-packed day. After an early run for Cindy and a walk for me, we met at a new coffeehouse downtown. Peet’s Coffee is a California standard and they make a mean espresso, so we were delighted to just sit and linger over the coffee as well as another California standard, a morning glory muffin. It was then off to the races, a quick walk to the store that carries the Sunday New York Times - which we had asked them to save for us - and back to the casa to clean up and get ready for the Air Show that was to start at 10:30.  This was part of a gala weekend event here called the Concours d’Elegance, which attracts 18,000 visitors to the small village of La Jolla. Now in its fourteenth season it is a really fancy car show with mostly high-end cars like Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, well, you get the idea. We could have gotten a VIP ticket for only $375 each, but decided to go cheap and just walked around the event, outside the temporary fences installed around the park which was filled with cars and their owners who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time buffing their beauties.

After taking photos for our friends who like cars, we positioned ourselves along the bluff overlooking the sea to afford us the best views of the planes. It was super fun with about 30 different planes, some flying in tight formation, others spewing multicolored smoke and lots of old biplanes painted in vivid colors.  They came in clumps of five our six at a time and made three passes and our positioning could not have been better.  The climax of the show was two WWII planes, a Navy Hellcat fighter/bomber and a P-38 Lightning, both in excellent condition and still able to scream across the horizon. It was really something to see and hear.

Nice Formation

We had just enough time after the airshow to walk home and get ready for lunch with our dear friends who live in La Jolla and are gracious enough to keep a box of stuff for us every time we leave, thus lightening our load for our return.  It was a grand day and the weather was more like summer than spring, which was just fine in our book.