Here Come the Brides (Boston, 10-18-12)

Once we arrived in Livingston TX, (technically our “home” town) we took care of some business.  We are having our wills, powers of attorney, etc. re-written, now that we are TX residents.  We had our initial appointment before our trip to Boston, which gave the attorney a few days to type them up while we were gone.  We met with the lady who offered to keep an eye on the cat, and got all our laundry done, Once we did all that, we were ready to go!!

I’m very happy we decided to fly to Boston for the weddings.  Of course, I would have been much happier if the weddings had been on different days, or even different weekends.  Both were important enough that we would have tried to fly back for each of them. We attended the actual ceremony of my cousin Greg’s wedding.  This picture is of him watching his bride walk down the aisle.

This picture is of him walking down the aisle 31 years ago when he was the ring bearer at my first wedding.  His mother was terrified because I insisted that a ring bearer should carry the real rings!

Greg and Jen exchange rings. 

Greg and Jen with his parents, my uncle Bob and aunt Tish, two of my favorite people!

After sticking around that reception long enough to eat dinner, we hightailed it out to the second reception.  I would have loved to have watched Christina walk down the aisle, since I’ve been friends with her since she was 11 years old.  Her parents are two of our best friends, even though we don’t see them too often!  We are trying to convince them to move to Arizona.  We may succeed yet!  Their daughter Dina gave birth to her first child, in Arizona, on her sister’s wedding day.  (their mom-Roseann, didn’t get much sleep the night before the wedding! Constant text updates on the labor progression!!). They were hoping that Dina would be able to Skype to watch the wedding ceremony, but she was a little busy!

 

Christina and her brother Mark.  We also got to spend time with a bunch of other good friends,all of whom we know from our boating days in MA. At one time we all had a boat on the same dock at the marina, and spent years partying together! 

Sunday we got together with my family at my brother’s house, where we ate, played cards and watched the Patriots win a football game.

Our last day, Monday, we spent the day with Stephen, ending up at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants for dinner.  We had an awesome trip, but the days passed too quickly.

Back in Livingston, we are taking care of “stuff”.  We met with the attorney and finalized the documents we need, Paul updated his driver’s license to the correct “class” for towing a trailer and we voted. Tomorrow we’ll weigh the rig and the truck again because the weighing equipment here is state-of-the-art, and it’s always a good idea to know what your vehicles weigh.  From there we head south of Houston for more partying!

Friends and Fairs (Dallas TX 10-11-12)

Timing is everything in life and once in a while it works out just right.  So many times as Paul and I travel we “just miss” a festival, fair, or other event.  This time it worked out perfect.  The day after we arrived in Denton, just outside of Dallas, we spent the day at the state fair.  Of course, we saw Mike and Julie within minutes of arriving in town, and have met and spent some time with their friend MJ as well. 

We were greeted at the fair by Big Tex, a bigger than life Texan, who actually talks, complete with mouth movements.  Everything is big in Texas!

We did a lot of eating and drinking all day, having all decided we weren’t going to worry about calories.  We even tried a deep fried grilled cheese sandwich, although I don’t recommend it.

We skipped the agricultural exhibits in favor of the vendors.  Our first stop was at the Ford exhibition, where Julie and Mike checked out an F450 that bears a remarkable resemblance to ours, although Mike says he is just going to wait for Paul to upgrade, then scoop up ours.

We spent a half hour playing “games” at the Ford exhibition, winning T-shirts, hats and chap stick.  It was fun though, and you can’t have enough Ford paraphernalia, as far as Paul is concerned!

MJ is thinking about changing her hairstyle, and came up with the great idea of trying on some wigs to see what she likes. I liked this one but I hear that her daughters vetoed it.

Just as we were leaving the fair, we heard the U.S. Marine Corp Drum and Bugle Corp come marching down the street.

 

Of course we stopped to listen to them play.  There is something about a marching band playing patriotic songs that sends a chill down my spine. 

The next morning, Julie and I, as tired as we were, managed a short walk, and returned to witness the guys “working hard’ on Mike’s trailer.  We couldn’t resist giving them a hard time for sitting down on the job, although we were obviously kidding.  Mike is as handy as Paul, and these guys love to find projects to do!  This particular project was to do a quick fix on Mike’s trailer.  A deer made a suicide run into his 5th wheel while he was towing it down the road.  There was a fair amount of damage to the front, but it sure could have been worse.

RFD (10-07-12)

One of the things I enjoy about this lifestyle is the cute little interesting tidbits I learn along the way, although to be fair, its not really because of this lifestyle, but more a factor of us being retired, with so much time on our hands to go out and discover these things.  The other day I learned more about RFD, as in "Mayberry RFD".  up until the very late 1800s, farmers and other rural inhabitants had to drive to the nearest town to get their mail. Many times that was an all day event, so it had to wait until they needed other things from town, which meant they sometimes went a month or more between post office visits.  In the late 1800s the idea of Rural Free Delivery  came into being and after much study, the government decided it made sense to institute a wide scale system of delivering mail to outlying residents.  By 1902 the conversion from town based post offices to home delivery was well underway.  Its hard to believe, but we've gone from 76,000 post offices in 1901 to 35,000 post offices in 2012.   To people who live in an urban or suburban area, including myself, up until a few years ago, it's really difficult to imagine just how isolated and rural some parts of this country STILL are!  Paul and I enjoy, and are in awe of, some of the really small farming communities that we pass through in our travels.   I just had a conversation with my son yesterday about how diverse this country is.  He lives just outside of Boston,  about 300 yards from public transportation, and can be anywhere in the city that he wants, in less than an hour, without getting behind the wheel of a car.  His day to day experience living in this country is completely different from someone who lives in a small ranching or farm community.  Neither way of life is better than the other, of course, but they sure are worlds apart!

the house Samuel Clemens was born in

We spent one day exploring Hannibal and Florida Missouri, home to Mark Twain /Samuel Clemens.  One of the museums contains the house he was born in.  8 people lived in this two room  house while his father had a larger house built. Growing up, Samuel Clemens was fascinated with riverboat pilots, and vowed that he would become one when he got older. And he kept that promise to himself.  



the mighty Mississippi



For many years he worked as a riverboat pilot, but then, he also worked as a journalist, a typesetter, and a gold miner.  I was surprised to find out how well traveled he was.  He lived in quite a few states in the U.S., in addition to living in Europe for many years. Once he decided to leave the river, he spent much of his life as a traveling speaker as well as a writer.

My favorite quote of his from the museum:

My books are water: those of great geniuses are wine.  Everybody drinks water.

We continued along our way and soon made it to Boonville MO. We spent the night at Boonville RV Service, so we were there first thing in the morning, ready to meet with Dale to see about our pin box. He had, in the shop, a Roto-Flex pin box that he gave us to try.  This pin box should address some of the chucking, or “front to back” jerking motion when we tow the trailer.  We can’t have a pin box with airbags because the hitch in our truck is an air ride hitch and the two would work against each other. It’s been a few days now, and Paul says he can tell the difference. The other option out there, for those wondering, is the Mor-Ryde hitch.



Paul and Dan



Since we finished up with Dale sooner than we expected, we scooted over to Kansas City.  We’ve been trying to stop in and visit Dan Hammond, a friend of Paul’s from his days with Ford Motor Co. since we went on the road 3 years ago, and we finally made it! Because our visit was last minute, we just met Dan at a local BBQ restaurant for dinner. Dan is one of those genuinely nice people. We always enjoy his company.

We continued on our way south for a day, then we stopped to “reconnoiter”.  We knew we have a few days before we need to be in Livingston, but we weren’t sure which route we wanted to take, and what we wanted to see along the way.  So, one morning we both had maps open and were discussing our options, with nothing popping out at us as very appealing.  It was at that very moment that I got a text that said “ Any plans to do Dallas on your way south? We are headed to the state fair in a few days”. It was from Julie and Mike, good friends of ours, and that was all it took to put a plan in place.  After finding out where they are staying, we responded back “ we’ll be there tomorrow”.  So that’s where we are.  More on that another time.

By the way, we did get the fenders repainted on the truck.  They had it for 4 days and ended up having to give us a loaner because we had borrowed Jess's car and she needed it back. It was all worth it though.  The fenders, of course, look new, as does the whole truck since they detailed it inside and out!

Bittersweet (10-04-12)

As I've mentioned before, I hate leaving when we are visiting one of the kids . This time it's a little easier since we will all be together for Christmas, which is approaching faster than the speed of light!
Sad to say I didn't even take my camera out while we were in Michigan. I told Jess I need to get a more recent picture of her, since the ones I have are a year old and were before she dyed her hair (again). She is one of those rare natural blondes who dye their hair darker. Anyway, the only picture we got was the one she took with my phone and set as my wallpaper so I can look at her beautiful face every time I use my phone.
Sunday Jess went to the Lions game, and Paul and I were planning on watching the Pats play. We had everything done that we needed to do, kicked back with our feet up, turned on the TV and realized we wouldn't be watching the Pats play after all. It didn't dawn on me that the Lions and Patriots were playing at the exact same time, so of course the local station was showing only the Lions game. I quickly downloaded a radio app onto my ipad, and listened to the game on the radio. Of course, I left the Lions game on the TV, so every time there was a good play, I instinctively looked up at the TV. At one point the Pats were down by two TDs and my son called to chat, since the game wasn't all that interesting at that point. 15 minutes into the conversation I commented that the score was now tied. We said goodbye pretty quickly once we realized that! The Pats did win, but the Lions lost. I had fun. Paul gave up and worked on one of his projects.
We are on the road to Boonville Missouri right now, stopping there before we head to Livingston TX.
Here's why we are headed to Boonville:
Recently Paul decided he wasn't 100% satisfied with the comfort of the ride we have while towing the trailer. Sometimes we have "chucking", which is a jerky motion caused by the difference in acceleration/deceleration between the truck and the trailer. Our existing hitch takes care of some of the problem but not all of it. Paul called someone we know who used to own the company that makes the part of the hitch that is on the trailer. Paul has called him before to ask about the suspension and the axles and he is a wealth of information. This time Paul wanted to know what our options are for making the ride smoother, and Dale said "c'mon down" to Boonville, where the two of them will put their heads together and figure something out.
While planning our route we discovered that we can drive through the Hannibal, MO area and check out the Mark Twain Museum.

This post is a test. I am posting it from my ipad.