Getting Packed

     The bus moved to our driveway on the seventh of June to get packed for a Flag Day departure. It takes a little longer for us old farts to move into a new apartment.

    As you can see by the proximity to the garage door, it consumes the entire driveway and the Corvette is blocked. The trailer hitch and towbar extend over the gutter. The Jeep is in Cindy's driveway. The driveway is too steep to use either the jacks or the refrigerator. Note in the picture that I improperly positioned the auxiliary step so that it barely extends under the front lip of extended step. That meant that when the air bags decayed overnight, the steps were jammed together. Fortunately there was no harm done.
     There was quite a bit of work done on the bus. There was some paint shop work to fix the cosmetic damages from last summer. There were six(!) new batteries, a new bespoke mattress, and a complete wash and wax. How much did it all cost? Don't ask! ProTech, a local truck and RV shop, did the honors. Now we have to load it for a summer in Maine. There have been a number of times when one of us asked, "Now, where did we store that last year?" Cindy is helping, and Mark will arrive on Monday for a few Items I have saved for him. Tuesday morning we'll repark it curbside (with safety triangles out) so that it will be level enough for the refrigerator to pull down to temperature.
     We are anxious to get rolling.

Friends

     Perhaps the most telling sign that our imminent summer move northward is getting closer is the state of our dining room table. It becomes a staging area for numerous odds and ends that are "going to go into the bus."

     There is no real pattern. You'll find dog chewys, Frogmore stew spices and some new shorts that I'm not allowed to wear yet. Not shown are two clothes baskets full of bedding and stuff. Since the loading of the bus is like moving into a furnished apartment, we old farts spread the process over several weeks. I'll pick it up on Wednesday, park it in the driveway and plug it in. We can't start the refrigerator because the driveway is not level enough. I'll park it curbside for the last day to give the refrigerator time to pull down to temperature. Cindy will be a great help, and Mark will get here two days before we depart. We are looking forward to escaping the heat and humidity of Charleston and reconnecting with all our camping friends in Maine.
     
     In thinking about those camping friends I have recently spent some time thinking about our many friendships. We all have many categories of friends and family. Durelle and I no longer have any aunts and uncles, but we each have a sibling, assorted cousins, two kids and a burgeoning assortment of descendants. We are just as close to the ****-in -laws. But beyond family, there are college classmates with whom we have stayed in touch for six decades and some high school classmates for even longer. There are friends from many Air Force assignments and from the post USAF career. There are neighbors, though they come and go more often. Many of you count close friends from church activities. In a separate category is Estelle Anderson, the neighboring teenager who carried baby Durelle into the house when she and her mother came home from the hospital. Then there is that special category of camping friends. It is not the scenery or the adventuresome cuisines that sets the RVing lifestyle apart. It is the almost instant camaraderie that forms when another rig pulls into the adjacent site and asks, "Where are you from?"

     We have been fortunate, over the last decade (+) to have spent a large part of each summer camped on the edge of Penobscot Bay in the mid-coast of Maine. For most of that time there have been six to eight couples that have been equally regular inhabitants. It frightens me to think that without the RV we would have never met. It frightens me because these several friendships seem a little closer than all the rest. While we do have some things in common, we are a pretty eclectic group with a variety of traditions and interests. Nonetheless, there is a special bond here, and it gives me pause because this may be our last summer there.

     On a lighter note, here is a picture of a picture.

     Melissa Cloutier Zotos sent many nice pictures of our second great-granddaughter, Madeleine, from Sydney, Australia. Our daughter, Cindy, selected one and had it converted into thousand piece picture puzzle. Because of large blocks of solid color, it took Durelle many hours to finish it. Now she does not want to disassemble it.

Physical Therapy

     As loyal readers know, physical therapy has been a major part of my life for at least five years. I guess the first was some basic range of motion recovery after a "bunionectomy" on my right big toe. Then there was an only partly successful reconstruction of my right rotator cuff. Hip and knee replacements followed...again on the right side. Plus, a right bicep tendon ruptured. Finally, last year, I had some scaffolding installed to fuse the 3rd, 4th, and 5th lumbar vertebrae. The PT for the mechanical aspects of my repairs have gone pretty well, but they are all embedded in the larger issue of my peripheral neuropathy. Enter The Balance Center.
     Originally operating under the auspices of Clemson University and now the Roper, St. Francis Hospital, The Balance, Mobility, and Dizziness Center of Charleston, was tailor made for my circumstance. Since the Balance Center could handle some rehab matters better than an orthopedic facility could handle the balance niche, I spent a lot of time there. Interestingly, every employee of the Balance Center is a woman. In fact, the director of the adjoining sports medicine facility, who has great respect for their expertise and professionalism, once said, "The place is awash in estrogen".
     There's an old line that says that the difference between a terrorist and a therapist is that you can negotiate with a terrorist. The implication being that physical therapists are tough, unyielding, even humorless folks. The ladies at the balance center belie that caricature, mixing gentleness with only enough discipline to get the job done. I suppose the fact that the demographic of their patients is generally older than that of most PT facilities demands it, but gentleness is evident everywhere.
     Several years ago, after a vertigo incident, I began working with the director of the center, Allison Schryver, an acknowledged vestibular expert. One day she said that she was going to hand me off to someone named "Jensen". While it is normal for the lead therapist to make the initial assessment of the patient and then assign someone else to continue the treatment, my initial reaction was, "Here comes the JV squad". Well, it wasn't a Jensen but Jensine Adams, a lovely, accomplished professional with a specialty in vestibulor pediatrics who had spent a good deal of time as a team athletic trainer. In my five years with the USAFA wrestling team I got to know and highly regard the profession of athletic trainer. Jensine is definitely not the JV squad. While I did make some physical improvements, her greater contribution was teaching me how to properly accomplish the exercises that I would have to continue in order to deal with my strength and balance in the face of deteriorating neuropathy.

     I'm the one on the right. Seriously, it's a great crew and I have enjoyed working with all of them. Your job is to write a caption for that picture.
     I'll pick up the bus in a week and leave SC in two weeks. It's definitely getting too warm here.

Tall Ships

     Charleston, of course, was the biggest and richest port on the East coast during the ante-bellum days. It is still one of the biggest players. The harbor channel is on track to be deepened to 52 feet at low tide so as to accommodate the post-Panamax container ships. They already have the cranes installed to unload them. They handled one such ship (that arrived at high tide) this week, and are expecting one a week. The key to seeing more of these behemoths on the East Coast is the "raising" of the Bayonne Bridge later this summer, I think. In addition to the port is the remainder of the old Charleston Navy Base. There were tall ships here five years ago, and they hope to make it an annual event.
     At the last minute, figuratively speaking, Cindy and I decided to go have a look. We took the Jeep, a couple of lawn chairs, the handicapped placard, and I brought my walker instead of the cane. Of course, the handicapped spaces were full. As we walked toward the waterfront, I spotted a display of small, handmade wooden boats. Being a semi-skilled woodworker, I had to stop.

     On the middle of each side, in a slightly different darkness were the images of two fish. I looked to see if they were inlayed wood or decals of some kind. They were not only decorative inlays, but also structural elements. There was a seam, amidships, in the marine plywood sheathing. Bridging the seam were these two fish. I spoke with the builder and said, "That's just like a dovetail key!". He said, "Exactly." He also had four inlays of fish on the inside of the hull.

     These were sized and shaped to represent the minimum legal keeping size for the typical sport fish in the area. So, if you reeled in one of marginal size, you could lay it on the relevant outline between your feet and be sure! A clever idea skillfully implemented.
     The reason for our excursion, however, was the tall ships.

     The Pride of Baltimore is a restored topsail schooner with a significant rake to the two masts.

     This is the Alexander von Humboldt II.
     The temperature was above 90, but we were not outside very long. 'Twas a pleasant departure from my Kindle.

A Month To Go

     A month from tomorrow (Flag Day) we are scheduled to head north. The bus is still in the shop. The final cosmetic repairs to last year's misadventures have been nicely completed. We have replaced the mattress and the dishwasher. A kilobuck here...a  kilobuck there, and you are soon talking about real money. A month to go...that means that the dining room table will begin to become the repository of "stuff that'll go in the bus". That's when it starts to become real.
     Meanwhile, life has been pleasant if not exciting. A new milestone is doing physical therapy together. Durelle still spends  a good deal of time with her puzzles. Here she is with a picture puzzle of great-granddaughter, Madeleine.

     Cindy took one of the many great pictures that Madeleine's mom, Melissa, sent from Australia and had a vendor turn it into a thousand piece puzzle. The wooden card table being used once belonged to Durelle's folks, so there is over a century represented in that scene.
     Back to the changing seasons: the blossoms on the magnolia tree in the back yard are starting to fade and the oyster harvesting season ends Monday. Time to head north.

     It is discouraging how quickly the blossoms turn brown.

     This year we'll head north with our fourth rescued  senior golden retriever.  Meet Mocha. She'll be eleven in Sept.

     It will be interesting to see how she travels. Her predecessors all loved it.

A Memorable Moose Hunt

     As my favorite blog-stalker has so inelegantly reminded me, I am way overdue for a new post. Since there is little of blog-worthy material in the day-to-day minutiae of our lives in Hanahan, SC, I will take the craven approach of retelling old fireside stories. The following is the 53 year old tale of, "How cold was it?" 

   Thanksgiving weekend of 1964 found me on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska for the last couple of days of the cow moose hunting season. A bull moose was a better trophy, but a thousand pound cow made a lot of good eating. I was in the Air Force as a radar maintenance officer stationed in Anchorage.  My hunting partner, Phil Catalfamo, was my office mate. While I had grown up hunting and fishing, my Brooklyn born buddy had only fired a rifle at ROTC summer camp. While the hunt was successful, the hardships encountered insured that the tale would be often retold.

     We drove down from Anchorage and set up camp in my bare bones, Apache pop-up tent trailer pulled by his Rambler station wagon.  Fortunately we were using our Air Force issued arctic gear including clothes and sleeping bags. The stove was the iconic Coleman, and we had a not-so-iconic catalytic heater. The ice chest was used in the hope that it would keep things from freezing!

     On the second day in the waning hours (they wane early in Alaska in the winter) of the cow season I spotted two sets of track heading off into an old forest fire area. It was a thousand acres of burned pine spars known as the Kenai Burn. We agreed to head in opposite directions around a hill.  It was tough going with knee-deep snow, fallen pines like jack straws, and it was cold!  I spotted a fairly large cow accompanied by a yearling which was still with its mother in the second year. I had a 7 mm Magnum with a scope much more suited for sheep hunting. I used head shots so as to preserve as much meat as possible. It took several. That light round was underpowered for a moose’s skull. 7mm would be about .27 caliber.

     As is always the case with a moose hunt, this was where the work began.  After some judicious preliminary knife work on the two moose, we easily built a bonfire in the snow as firewood was plentiful. It provided light and heat. Did I mention that it was cold?  We had game bags and pack frames, so we proceeded to field dress and quarter the carcasses. Plastic bags were used for the hearts and livers. You can’t skin a moose while wearing arctic mittens. We managed by keeping our hands in almost constant contact with the still warm meat. It was completely dark by the time we had stacked up the parcels in the snow. It was a half mile back to the car, so we were forced to wait until the following morning to tackle the job of packing the meat out.  Before leaving we built up the fire in the hope that it would keep the wolves away from our stash.

     When we got back to the Apache, we were tired, cold, hungry, and cold. The first order of business was to get the stove going so that we could get some hot food. I filled the tank with Coleman fuel, pumped up the pressure and lit the burner.  The fuel was so cold it would not vaporize. I started a small fire of more dead pine and tied a four foot extension to the handle of a small aluminum sauce pan. I dumped the fuel tank into the sauce pan, and warmed up the fuel over an open fire. Had it flashed, I would have simply dumped it in the snow. From time to time I would test the temperature by pulling back the pan and touching it with my fingers.  When it was as warm as I dared, I poured it back into the tank. This time, albeit with much noisy and sooty sputtering, it caught.  Once there was a flame, the generator tube warmed up and the stove worked fine. The contents of the ice chest were frozen solid. I hacked off some chunks of bacon and thawed them in a hot skillet. We carved off some chunks of bread and thawed them in the hot grease. The eggs, too, were frozen. We peeled them as if they were hard boiled, and added them to the pan. They rolled around for a while, developed a flat spot and eventually cooked.  After replenishing sufficient calories, we cleaned up our gear. The sleeves of our sweatshirts were frozen moose blood.

     Once we were cleaned up and fed, the adrenaline level dropped and it was time for the perennial post-hunt drink. I dug out the bottle of Jack Daniels, Black Label and a couple of aluminum cups. The darned stuff would not pour!!! We had to shake it out of the bottle with the consistency of a margarita.  You can’t do that with your freezer.  The weatherman said that the overnight low in the area was minus forty!  Especially in a metal cup, that bourbon lasted longer than any before or since.

     Every minute of daylight the next day was spent packing out quarters of moose through the still miserable walking. One of us still carried a rifle because the wolves were demonstrating too much interest for our tastes. The Coleman stove was set up on the tailgate of Phil’s station wagon. After each trip, we heated up a can of soup to split.  Eventually we got the cargo lashed on top of the tent trailer and on top of the Rambler  and headed back to Anchorage.  My buddy remembers saying to his wife as he carefully lowered himself into the bathtub, “Even my hair hurts”.

     There was a game processing concessionaire on Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage that would hang, age, cut, and freeze the meat for six (!!) cents per pound. The two of us had already jointly purchased a used 31 cu. ft. freezer for our fish and game. We needed it because the dressed, packaged weight of the cow alone was 606 pounds.

     Relatively speaking we were babes in the woods dealing with some pretty severe circumstances.  Nonetheless, we kept our heads and came through unscathed.  And we have an endless supply of “Can you top this?” stories whenever someone says, “How cold was it?” It was so cold that the Jack Daniels would not pour.

Alligator

     As frequent readers know (I almost said, "loyal readers", but that might be tempting fate.), we have frequent alligator sightings on the banks of the big retention pond. The pictures typically are not dramatic enough to be blog-worthy. They are usually on the far bank away from the housing, and there is nothing nearby with which to compare size. I've asked Durelle, but she has declined to wander over.
     A couple of days ago one swam over to our side and climbed out on the bank. There still wasn't a yardstick, but eight feet would be a good estimate. Here is the sequence:

     There are a couple of things to notice. In the fourth picture I caught him walking. It's the first such picture I have taken. They usually are immobile for hours at a time soaking the heat from the sun into their cold-blooded bodies. And, look closely at the last picture, Doesn't his (her?) belly look like it contains a recent large meal?

     On the health front, I have changed my PT from orthopedic to mostly balance issues. These gals are real specialists, and they're good. Durelle will be getting a second shot (epidural?, nerve block?) next Thursday. It seems to help.