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While it Wasn’t on our Schedule…

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As the immortal bard John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans.”  On Wednesday, at 12:23 pm Central Time, as we drove from Mitchell, SD to our next camp in Hot Springs, SD, our motor home broke down just before exit 225 on I-90.  It went into what is called limp mode. It is hard to imagine a more apt technical term.

We limped off the interstate in the general direction of a gas station at the top of a hill on Highway 16.  We never reached the top. What followed was a series of calls, starting with the Good Sam Roadside Assistance dispatch.  Phrases like, “holiday week, ” “remote location,” “limited options,” sprinkled the short conversation between interminable hold periods.

Other things happened too.  Two motor homes  and a guy in a pick up truck stopped to make sure we were okay.  Jordan was dispatched by Sam from Charley’s Auto Service in Kennebec , nine miles back, to see if he could determine if it was worth hauling us to his shop. He couldn’t, but not for lack of trying.

It is one of those mysterious events that befall vehicles, that I stopped worrying about at some point in the last 3,500 miles or so.  We have covered almost 30 states without so much as a hiccough from this faithful lumbering beast, and now a baffling, and possibly very expensive, ailment has her functioning perfectly as a camper and not a whit as a conveyance.

We were immediately befriended by Beth and Lauren of the New Frontier RV park in Presho, SD.  They enlisted a neighbor,  Scott part-owner of Hutch’s Cafe & Lounge in Presho, to tow our motor home with his pickup truck the half-mile or so to the campground. photo 4 July 4 Wouldn’t take anything but thanks for the effort. We can’t get anyone to look at the motor home until Tuesday, July 8. In Chamberlain, forty miles back.

Now I remember why I love blogs. It’s the immediacy. The “this is what’s happening now, won’t it be interesting to see how it turns out?” emotion of the moment.  Funny thing, last time I felt this way was when our car broke down in San Antonio.  There is a moral there.

Beth and Lauren have invited us to a Fourth of July picnic tonight in camp. Not sure what we’ll do.  It is a beautiful, idyllic setting, and quite peaceful.photo 2 July 4

I keep thinking of the thousands who’d planned to spend their Fourth on the Outer Banks, and the wrenching experience of forced evacuations for Arthur.  We hope everyone is safe, somewhere. Keep low, Jimmy B, since I am sure you stayed on the island.

Give me Presho, photo 1 July 4and the strong sense that, just today, the nation’s birth day, we are right where we are supposed to be. Happy Independence Day, to friends and loved ones near and far.  Be safe, be well. Be grateful.

And pass the potato salad!

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Lost and Alone on Some Forgotten Highway…

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At the intersection of Interstate 70 and Baltimore’s 695 Beltway, there is a sign proclaiming Cove Fort: 2,153 miles.

One day when I was a wee lad, my father took me out to the driveway of our court in old town Greenbelt, MD. Of course, then it wasn’t known as old town. Putting his arm around my skinny shoulder (I said this was a long time ago), he said to me “Son, step out on this road, and it will take you anywhere. Road 1A lot of men over a lot of years have gone to the trouble to lay it down so you can get anyplace you can imagine.  It changes names, but it is all the same road. Your road.”

At least that’s how I remember the birth of my fascination with the road.

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig to Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon,  From Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again to Arlo Guthrie’s City of New Orleans, and Travels with Charley by Steinbeck and Me and Bobby Mcgee by Kristofferson as sung by Pearl, and KIng of the Road by Roger Miller and Kerouac’s On the Road and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe and The Adventures of Huck Finn by Clemens and Eighteen Wheels by Kathy Mattea, and Toby Tyler by James Kaier and Lord of the Rings by Tolkien and Ventura Highway by America and By My Side from Godspell and Somewhere over the Rainbow by Arlen and Harburg as sung by Garland, Patti LaBelle, and, of course, Iz,  and A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Doug Adams and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins–well, it’s nice to know the yearning for the mystery of the road is fairly widespread.

Let’s not forget Country Roads and Back Home Again and Sweet Surrender by the incomparable John Denver.  Do you have your own favorite book or song of the road?

And the lesson often seems to be that, at the end of the traveling, one really, truly finds home.

Of course one has to go, anyway, to discover that.Road 2

I’d often wondered where Cove Fort was.  In a different, long-ago world, I hitchhiked every inch of I-95, and I-70 as far as East St. Louis from Baltimore.  But never Cove Fort. On a quiet, sunny morning from Cedar City to Moab, we chugged on through Cove Fort.  Nothing but sagebrush and rocky escarpment.

I am sorry to report that in Cove Fort, Utah, there is no corresponding sign reading, Woodlawn, MD Park & Ride: 2,153 Miles.  Nothing marks the western terminus of one of the great engineering marvels of the modern age.

I was tempted to wake the kids anyway. But it will keep til we get to Greenbelt.  It’s the same road.

 

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The Cousins’ Sleepovers

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IMG_1004If my kids have a favorite way to spend their time, it’s not xBox, youtube, or other forms of electronics. It’s—you guessed it—cousins’ sleepovers. My kids have lots of cousins. That’s because, in part, I have lots of siblings. In another blog I comment on my parents’ strict adherence to the Catholic Church’s stand on contraception: just say no! Being the oldest of eight was a hoot, and we all loved coming from a large family—well, liked it.  But none of us chose to try to duplicate my parents’ feat.

Only two of us have three kids, five of us have two kids, and one has none. That’s still makes 16 first cousins on my side. And, of course, one additional from Jen’s side. Go, Stella!

I am not sure why my kids love being with their cousins more than other kids they know. Maybe it’s the continuity. Maybe it’s the safety. Maybe it’s the logistics. Maybe I should ask them. And the coolest thing is that my siblings’ kids are having kids! Eight so far, and one in the oven! A girl, we hear.

Just as so many other clues exist for the end of an era, I suppose the children of my children will have much smaller sleepovers. We had so many at our final party in Eldersburg a week or so ago that we had to do the hot tub in two different shifts.

While more than a dozen kids at a sleepover might seem like parental-unit insanity, we’ve always enjoyed how much our kids are excited about it. It’s what they ask for when their birthdays are coming up. Or Christmas.  Is there a greater gift than family?

One of the many things we will miss about uprooting from a place we are so very content. My brother Mike says the cool thing about living far away is that, while you may miss family gatherings, when he does see family, it is usually for a week at a time.  I guess that’s a consolation.  Time will tell.

 

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Posting as it Happens…

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So here’s what’s exciting to me about blogging. Talking about issues that are real and unresolved, as I write. I have been tempted to not post at all, since we have waited almost a week now for our VA appraisal on the house we’re moving out of. If the appraisal is less than our asking price, it could wreck the contract we have in place, which could wreck the sale, which  could wreck the trip we’ve been talking up for awhile. Or at least shorten it considerably.

It is easy under the circumstances to rationalize that I should just wait and see how everything plays out. If it turns out to be a non-issue, won’t I feel a little silly in our next post? Maybe, but this has been a lot of what preparing for the trip has been about. Many moving pieces, some of a size that they could simply squash the plan altogether.

So cross your fingers too. We are inside 30 days of lift off, and so far, things have been working out amazingly well. I will continue to write my obscure books, and teach online. Jen, my wife, has a fulltime telecommuting job that she’ll continue on the road, and all the way to Florida! I am also the principal of our one-room rolling schoolhouse, and am in charge of reading and riting and rithmetic. Hopefully I can stay one lesson ahead of our young scholars.

We are also looking forward, very much, to seeing family we’ve not seen in a long time, and…well, there you have it!The appraisal unofficially looks good. We are closing in on very few reasons not to do this adventure.  The plan now is to hand over the keys at closing on Friday, March 14,and become officially, and happily, homeless.

This is the kind of stuff I do that drives Jen crazy: each year that we go to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Washington, DC, I think how cool it would be to do a family float.  Since the parade is only two days after closing, I signed us up. Told them that we’d have a motorhome, about 20 adults, and 25 kids doing….I don’t know what. Any ideas?  Jen’s already said I can do what I want, but she and the motorhome will be in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee on Sunday.

So who can bat 1.000?