Full Circle

I'm sitting in SLY (Small Land Yacht) in the Duncan Family Campground in Wayson's Corner, Maryland. Full Circle because Suzanne and I tent-camped here twenty years ago when we first looked for a place to live for her new job with the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington DC. For days, we had looked west of DC in Virginia. Everybody said live where there's access to Virginia Rail or Metro. Problem was nothing spoke to us in Virginia and it rained cats and dogs everyday we looked. MISERABLE!

Someone in Columbus, Mississippi, grew up in Galesville, Maryland, so we looked there. Great little community on the water but the elementary school had been closed. Mahlone, who was starting fourth grade, would have had to ride a school bus and we didn't want that.

It was still raining as we started looking for a place to live in Maryland. In fact, it rained so hard it knocked down our tent in the Duncan Family Campground. It's cloudy as I write this but no monsoon yet!

After looking from Virginia to Galesville, we finally drove toward Annapolis, in the driving rain. We knew we wanted to consider Annapolis because of a National Geographic article with a cover photograph of Main Street looking from Ego Alley toward St. Anne's Episcopal Church.

Somehow we circled around Annapolis and entered through Eastport. As we crossed the Spa Creek Bridge, the sun blazed out from behind the storm clouds and reflected off ten thousand sailboat masts and the gold dome of the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel. Suzanne and I both said, "My God, this is it! All we have to do is find a house." Annapolis was and is the most beautiful place I've ever seen.

We found a house on Prince George Avenue. Suzanne and Mahlone moved in, started work and school, and I commuted from Mississippi for six months. Suzanne finally told me to move to Annapolis even if I had to be a waiter. Mississippi had a new Governor, and I most likely would have lost my job as the first Manager of the Major Economic Impact Authority anyway. I got a contract with NASA that lasted ten years, so everything worked out OK.

Here I am back in the Duncan Family Campground. I got SLY the week before Mahlone's wedding. Suzanne went to Ocracoke for a week after the wedding. Our life is strange. Full Circle.

The Perfect Marriage of The Perfect Woman

Mahlone married Mike three weeks ago. Her Mother had worked on details everyday for the past year. At least 99% of the excruciating details worked. Mahlone worked right along with her Mother and came to Annapolis most of the last 20 weekends to help plan and execute the details.

Bells were tied with ribbons, mason jars were wired to hang in trees, placecards were calligraphied (is that a word?), liquor was purchased, plates and glasses were rented, menus were agreed on, and one gay German farmer-florist was replaced after he doubled his price quote.

By the day of the wedding, I was bone-tired and feeling guilty because I had not really done anything.

Mahlone has always been the perfect person who grew up to be the perfect woman. As a child, she was sweet. As a teenager, she was sweet. As a student, she studied and worked hard. As a worker, she worked smart and hard.

Her intelligence, her beauty, and her sweetness continue to astound me. And now, she has the perfect husband.

Just look at her! I love her so much!

SLY & I (The 2nd Part)

The adventure continues!

Tuesday, I took the Metro to Rockville and drove SLY back to Annapolis. Wednesday morning, my mechanic checked everything out and declared a go. Wednesday night, I drove SLY back to Rockville in commuter traffic on the DC Beltway. Not pretty, but we made it!

Bob and I signed all the paperwork and he faxed it to the credit union. I gave him Suzanne's check for the extra thousand, and as soon as the credit union deposits the money in Bob's account, I'll start the multi-step process to get the RV inspected, titled in Maryland, and a tag.

When all the official stuff is finally completed, SLY will be detailed and our life together really begins! I figure that will all happen about a week before Mahlone's wedding and I can show SLY off to all my family and friends coming to the wedding. They, as well as folks at Vocus, are sick of hearing about this damn RoadTrek dream of mine. May they all be big enough to be humble and thankful for me. Fantasies really do come true, sometimes!

For those really concerned, a RoadTrek is really a small land yacht. In the future, SLY will be my transportation, my house, my entertainment center, my vacation destination, and my safe place. My carbon footprint just diminished greatly!

In the physical space of an extended van, there's a queen-size bed, a bathroom with shower, a microwave, a sink, a refrigerator, a cooktop, a flatscreen TV with DVD player, a dynamite stereo, an eating area (really two eating areas), total self-sufficiency with sewer, hot water, furnace, air conditioner, and more without having to be hooked up in a campground. The generator recharges the batteries and runs everything. Oh, for the outback!

My main concern, at this point, is which storage area to use for my inflatable kayak.

Even Marty was not dismissive and said SLY would be the way to drive cross-country. That's saying something for Marty since he drove cross-country in a VW. Wonderful compliment!

Rab wants me to bring SLY to Boston. Eric wants to take SLY to a Pittsburg Steelers game with his father to tailgate. The entire female recruitment staff at Vocus cheered yesterday and yelled "great ride"! Oh SLY, you're better than a puppy, and you're not even mine yet. Why, oh why, couldn't I have been this popular in high school when I cared?

SLY & I

Meet SLY (Small Land Yacht).












I've wanted a RoadTrek for years. My fantasy may come true this week.

Bob and I have been talking about this van recreational vehicle for months now. I decided to wait for the Annapolis house to sell to buy an RV. Bob offered to finance it, but he said his wife wasn't really comfortable. I decided to get a loan from the credit union and just do it. In the meantime, Bob bought his new RV and, with the pressure off to sell the RoadTrek, wanted a little more than I thought we agreed on. I decided to wait. Then, my wife wanted to pay the difference and end the search and agony.

The RoadTrek SLY goes to the mechanic Wednesday morning for a check-up. Assuming everything is OK, SLY and I should start our life together later this week. Who knows what adventures lie ahead?

John Steinbeck had "Travels With Charley" which helped us have a standard poodle for fourteen years. Maybe, just maybe, in a few days I'll have SLY.

Life Sucks!

Life Sucks!

Last Friday, Mario called and left a message that he had been laid off. He'd been told earlier in the week and wanted me to know that he would not be there the next time I needed help.

Mario came up to me on the boat trip of the quarterly Vocus meeting because he had not seen anybody on the boat who had more gray hair than he did, and I did.

Mario was full of life and personable and helpful and warm. He was interested in everybody he met. His job was to host Webinars for PRWeb that Vocus had purchased in the last year or so.

Between drinks on the boat trip, Mario told me about PRWeb and I told him about my photography hopes and he told me how PRWeb could help meet my needs.

A week or so later, I started the process to announce my first ever photographic exhibit. I was concerned, I was nervous, I was scared, I didn't know how to do it. Mario showed me how. I can only speculate how many hundreds or thousands of folks Mario helped.

I was able to input the wording but the photographic images didn't nake sense to me, and Mario walked me step by step. The press release went around the world, and on the second day, my story on Annapolis Maryland was second only to a New York Times article. That's powerful!

Here's just one of the hundreds of sites where my press release showed up:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/08/prweb1239804.htm

Now Mario isn't there. It's not possible, but done. Life Sucks!

A Bad Love Story

Suzanne and I live in small, separate but sorta equal, side-by side bamboo cages. They were pretty big when we married over 40 years ago.

The Vietnam War was on when I graduated from college, and Suzanne saved my butt by marrying me and getting pregnant. If I had gone to Vietnam and survived, I might have long gray hair and a beard and be riding a Harley. Wait, I do have long gray hair and a beard. Just no Hog and no drug problems except for red wine.

We started cranking in the walls of the cages about 35 years ago. I started working too long and traveling too much and not coming home as soon as I could have. Suzanne started being really angry and frustrated about that and really, really unsatisfied.

We tried being too friendly with other people and that cranked in the walls and lowered the ceilings of our cages. Before long, we couldn't stand up straight or stretch out to lie down and being so miserable made the cages even smaller.

All the time, we could see through the walls and imagine everybody else we could see outside our cages was happier and more successful and prettier and getting what they needed and wanted, while we languished on the rough floors of our cages and cried.

We tried living different places. Suzanne went back to law school. I took different jobs. All the while, the walls moved inward and downward.

Every once in a while, I'll open the door to Suzanne's cage and she's free to leave. Every once in a while, Suzanne will open the door to my cage and tell me I'm free to leave if I pay her forever. But we don't. At least, we haven't yet.

Now, in our 60's, maybe we can retire to adjoining rooms in a mental hospital, close to where our children live.

Thanksgiving On The Front Porch 2005

Nobody lives here anymore. Suzanne and her brothers come for a weekend every two or three months. The rest of us get to be here once a year if we're lucky. I don't know how much longer that can last. Suzanne wants to keep the place forever. Her older brother wanted to sell the day their Father died and her younger brother goes back and forth.

This big ole house in Fort Valley, Georgia, contains the only roots Suzanne ever had outside of our marriage. Her Father, Col. Bob, was an Air Force pilot so the family moved every year or so. While Suzanne has romantic memories of "growing up in Europe", she didn't have any roots.

After a final overseas assignment in the Vietnam War, Col. Bob declined to train young pilots for what he had come to consider a useless war, and the Air Force put him in a desk job at Warner-Robbins. Not one to languish a slow professional death, Col. Bob bought this house and retired at fifty or so to fix it up.

For the next thirty-five years, Bob and Martha lived in this one big house in this one little town. Bob played golf every day and fished in Florida when he wanted to. Martha visited us in Columbus, Mississippi, and later in Annapolis, Maryland, for months out of every year.

Our kids spent long summers in this house, and we all had wonderful holidays and long weekends here. Finally, Suzanne had roots.

With four bedrooms, ten beds, several pull-out sofas, and a dozen sleeping bags, there's room for Suzanne and her brothers and the children and the grandchildren all at the same time. Then there's the wood burning stove and the kitchen table that can hold twenty. My God, this is heaven on earth.

Suzanne's Mother and Father died a few years ago, and the house lost it's heart. We don't all get there at the same time much anymore. But - that last Thanksgiving - now that was really something!