I’m saying goodbye to this most excellent RV park in Bonita Springs, Florida, but first I got to say hello to an old friend who graciously drove across Florida to visit—YAY! (And yes, her name is Karen. I get to have two old friends named Karen. It’s never confusing because one of them is “Karen” […]
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The Beauty and Strangeness of the Deep South
We’re only an hour outside of the college town of Gainesville, Florida, but it feels like we’re on the moon. This is the Deep South, baby. We’ve moved away from the pine forests and small, scrubby palmettos of the panhandle into forests of huge live oaks entirely covered in swaying Spanish moss. The ground here […]
“The Show” Reunites!
Flashback The setting: 1978, a colonial home in rural Virginia: the living room has a stone hearth and stone benches surrounding a large fireplace. The characters: Two 10-year-old girls with a lot of time on their hands. The music: 45 RPM records on a turntable in the corner, playing I Will Survive, Cats in the […]
Better than Lakes and Sunsets
I’d lost sight of how long it’s been since we saw a friend. Heck, or even had an in-person conversation with someone else that lasted longer than a few seconds. Yesterday’s meet-up was a balm to my soul. Thank you, Tom! Tom’s the reason we came to Missouri, and just a couple of hours hanging […]
Happy Birthday to a Dangerous Man
When I first met Tracy, he had a beer coaster thumbtacked to his closet wall. If you know him, you know that’s not like him. He hates doodads almost as much as he hates sayings. But it’s an important beer coaster, and he still has it. It says, All men dream: but not equally. Those […]
Old Friends, Primo Beer, New Toys
YAY! Seeing Tracy’s best friend, Dave, was our central goal for coming to the Midwest this summer, and with the virus we thought we might have to sacrifice the visit. It took a severe thunderstorm to get us stuck at the brewery where he and his wife were working for the day, but thank you […]
What I Miss the Most
When I first started dreaming of life on the road, I was at the tail-end of about 30 years of being responsible for family members in various settings, from hospitals and nursing homes to my kitchen table early each cold morning before school. The idea of literally driving away from it all pleased me to […]
Love Me Two Times, Iowa
We’re back in Iowa—in Elkader, the small town where Tracy’s best friend and his wife live. We weren’t keen on visiting (hence the second take) because they’ve been dealing with all the decisions and stresses you’re faced with as small business owners these days (they own a brewery and tap room here). After Wisconsin though, […]
What We Do in the Heat
We’ve been doing three things in Madison, WI: hanging out at a distance with old friends, walking miles of park trails, and sitting in a stupor due to the heat. Sometimes we’ve combined #1 and #3. Peeps I so enjoyed a visit from were someone Tracy went to UWM with [that’s University of Wisconsin-Madison to […]
Tracy’s Social Hometown
We came to Iowa to hang out with Tracy’s people, and Iowa is continuing to deliver. Or, to overuse that Field of Dreams reference, if you show up with your weird new travel trailer, the friends will come! We’ve walked, driven, and biked through old neighborhoods here in Cedar Falls and its sister city, Waterloo, […]
