Saturday, July 25, 2009

Finally home

OK, I didn’t go straight home after all. I thought I was ready, but ….

I left Alexandria and headed south on I-95, the most direct route to IRB. Just south of Richmond, I came to a fork in the road. If I went straight, I would stay on 95, but if I veered off to the right, I would be on I-65 heading toward Atlanta. I veered. It was a hasty impulsive decision.

An hour down the road, I called Liz and asked if her cabin in Blue Ridge, Georgia was available for a few nights. It was. I drove my longest drive. Seven O’clock at night I arrived at a terrific modern rustic three story cabin in the woods. From the front porch rocking chair is a perfect view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Liz wasn’t there, (it would have been nicer if she was, but since I had the place to myself I decided to chill out, put my feet up, and stare at the moon. Ahhhhhhh……..)

It took a little doing to get there. After following directions down windy back roads I came to a place where my little rock laden Honda struggled to climb a steep uphill gravel road. But we made it. Now my recently washed car is covered in dust, looking pitiful. But then, sometimes when you want to get somewhere you’re going to get a little dust on the car.

The next morning, I did some front porch sitting and smiling at the mountains. Basically I did “nothing” all day long. I read a couple of magazines that had been with me the entire 9,000 miles that I never found time to read. I picked some blackberries. I love picking blackberries, so this wasn’t actually doing nothing. I went to bed at 8:00.

The next day I went into Blue Ridge for breakfast. There I met a nice lady who has sold her home in Fort Myers, Florida and Blue Ridge, GA, (She and her husband had planned on doing the seasonal living in two places arrangement, but). They were packing their bags to live in Reno, Nevada…..just because. They were having an adventure. Good for them.

I met a lady who bought and has been running a gallery in town since November. I don’t think it was as much fun as she thought it was going to be. It is pretty quiet in the winter, she says, but since they sell other artists works on commission, they have to keep the gallery open all year, six days a week, 10:00 to 6:00. She, coincidentially was from Fort Myers. Blue Ridge is a very friendly town. You would like it.

After three nights in Blue Ridge, I crept down the mountain at the first spark of dawn and coasted down south toward home!

And so now I am really backkkkkkkkkkk. I don’t really wish to be so. But it will be nice to see all my friends and soak in the Gulf of Mexico.

But being home means there is work to do. I am not sure impulsive decisions will are a smart thing to do on a day to day basis, so I have to think more, plan more. And I have to get rid of the mouse who took up residence in my house while I was gone. And bring the grass back to life. And go through the pile of mail. And, and, and.

The trip was easy. Now I have to get to the hard stuff.

I will be thinking about what I have learned and seen while on the road. People ask, "Is there a place you would want to move to, the best place you have been?" I will think about it and let you know. I have much to process. More to say.

I mean...... what now?

Monday, July 20, 2009

Following the Interstate Home

I have not really thought through this dialog but I am going to publish it because this may or may not be my last blog posted before I get home. And I leave here in the morning.

So where the heck did the time go?!!! I’ve made a really big circle around our country. Can it be over so soon? I want a do over!

I can feel the pull of mountain streams, winding roads, and smooth red rocks calling me back. Still, I’m resisting the urge and heading south for palm trees and sandy beaches. (It doesn’t sound too bad when I put it that way.)

I cannot leave the places I have been altogether behind me. The amazing sights I have seen and the terrific people I have visited are unwilling to be ignored or forgotten by this brain of mine. This blog has helped me find my voice and I speak with enthusiasm of all I have seen and done.

I have had little time along the way to process or make sense of anything that was or is. I haven’t had the time to sort, delete, format, or edit. Not with any degree of skill, anyway. There has barely been enough time to view, collect data and file. Perhaps at home I can process and plan. And perhaps figure out, “now what?”

I have been pretty upbeat for most of my 6000+ mile road trip. There were, as you know, a few slips of confidence and gloomy moments. And occasionally I exhausted myself being me trying to recover my misplaced state of mind. But in spite of all or, because of all, I have to agree with the T-shirts that say “Life is good!”

Sometimes I believe in fate, that what is supposed to happen happens somehow. But other times, I think that things just happen. I took a few roads less traveled and when I came to a fork, I sometimes decided on a whim which way to go. I responded to cosmic nudges to turn here, stop there, and keep driving. Unfortunately, I haven’t found inspirational direction, or stumbled over a pot of gold, or met my soul mate. Not even a meaningful bond with a stranger. I have been propelled by circumstance toward nothing in particular at all, or so it seems. (Of course, I am not actually home just yet!) (And I haven’t digested the whole of the experience, yet.)

Would it be easier returning home if home were farther away from my ex-husband and my ex-life? Probably. So I will have decisions to make.

On the plus, however, in that same little town, there are other people, my people! My friends, and soon to be my friends. And all those I have spent time with along the way, on the road, and on the Internet. And they have been with me, helping me keep my head above water, helping me find my own road. I may have started this road trip seemingly alone, but I have been lucky enough to find friendship and conversation with special people along the way. When friends respond to my words with understanding and encouragement it is like a finding a warm place in the sun on a cold day. That has been the best part and that is saying a lot because I have been in some incredibly stunning places.

I need to think about those lifestyles I have experienced, the homes I shared, the places I have seen. I have been around enough to know that IRB is a good place to live, but there is more to life than finding a place. Although I don’t quite know what I am talking about here. Rambling again.

The sky has been overcast with gray clouds hanging low. The weather is less happy today. I overshot the sun. Maybe I stayed too long in one place, moved too slowly, or maybe a cloud has been hanging over home (I hear it has been raining a lot there) and as I get closer, there it is.

Anyway, I’ll be home soon.

I will blog until I get where I need to be emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, find a place in my head that feels right. Set my sails for my next thirty years.

The middle of August I will head for Boston to be with some old high school girl friends, all three of who I have visited along the way on this trip. I now know them in their natural habitat and I hope that will add to knowing them out of it too. Maybe they will help me sort, delete, edit and compose. I am so glad I get to go so soon after I arrive. Going home is hard!

Really hard!

Confluence


I spent the weekend in Confluence, Pennsylvania. Erin, Jerry and I drove out to the mountains with two kayaks on the roof of the car. We met up with a family reunion of good friends. We camped out in the backyard of their B and B, and came in for food and conversation. It was wonderful except for the trains which passed by every hour on tracks that were 20 feet from the front door. In the wee hours of the morning, you could hear the train coming, a tiny muffled growl that grew with incredible intensity until you held your breath thinking that the engine was about to blast through the tent. And if that didn’t get you sitting bolt upright, the horn blowing as it approached the intersection would. It was a loud and memorable part of the experience.

There were nineteen people in the reunion, we added three more. We ate like kings and lived like vagabonds. Some people kayaked and some played and some went to see Frank’s Lloyd Wright’s Falling Waters, which is probably the architect’s most memorable work, a 1930s modern looking house that was build right over a waterfall. Surely you’ve seen pictures?

Confluence is a town situated where three rivers collide. It has a few stores, a couple of restaurants, beautiful scenery and one well traveled railroad!

I took a little walk one morning while everyone else was still sleeping. The mountains were amazing in the morning mist. In some places all I could see were dark shadowy bushes and trees growing out of a cloud high above. The day lilies were still closed tight and it was sooooo quiet.

It was hard to leave that and go back to the traffic and noise of metropolitan Washington DC. But for the rest of my party, Monday is a workday. So here I am, back in their town house.

I took part of today to see DC and check out our nation’s capital. Finding my way to Pentagon City and then on the metro to the the Smithsonians was a challenge in itself, with the little experience I've had on my own in such situations. Picture me trying not too look too confused and vulnerable while trying to navigate the system, the cost of a metro ticket, and the blue, orange, yellow and green metro lines, getting off at one stop, seeing a few memorials and finding my way back to another metro stop and eventually finding my car and the correct interstate to the correct exit and back home. Whew! Made it.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Writer's Block


(This photo is of "The Thinker" which stands in front of the Cleveland Art Museum. I have always liked the statue. I feel like I understand it.)

For some mysterious reason, I’ve found it hard to write this past week. I could attribute it to being closer to home and the pull that I feel on each arm in opposing directions, one toward home, and one in the opposite direction. I haven’t been able to bring my hands down to where the computer keys are.

Yeah, that must be it, ‘cause even thinking about the end of this road trip, sends a chill up my spine and not in a good way. I’m not ready to get back to the conventional life, the real world, regular everyday stuff. I want to keep going, be irresponsible, and continue my wandering ways, talk to wise old streams and eat peanut butter by a campfire. But………heck…….I think I will be coasting down the Smokey Mountains next week, slowly, toward Florida, toward my island. (Although, I really do think that if I have to live in one place, IRB is one of the best places to do it.)

For the time being, though, I’m spending a few days in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. I’m staying at my daughter’s town home. Yesterday, while Erin and Jerry were at work, I took the opportunity to organize (again), wash clothes, check emails, and generally try to clean up the mess in my car. It took all day and I still didn’t get done. And I worked hard at it, too. And I tried to blog, but the words wouldn’t come. It has been almost a week since my last post and I feel negligent!

However, I wasn’t able to blog at my last stop, anyway. Cousin Stan in Chesterland, Ohio doesn’t have a computer and thus no internet access. A rare bird in this age of electronic communication. I can’t even imagine living without a computer anymore! But he and Pat manage just fine. They like it that way, and I am thinking they may be onto something. Sometimes less information is good. Sometimes not being so readily available is less stressful. Being a little less connected can be peaceful, even more so if you live on a gravel road surrounded by trees.

Ohio was a familiar place for me and I visited my old haunts. I stopped to walk down the sidewalk I’d walked every school day from the start of kindergarten up to fourth grade. We lived in an apartment house owned by my grandmother and grandfather (Mommer and Popper). It was one block from the elementary School. Things haven't changed much from what I remember, although when I lived there the area was almost totally white Anglo types and now it is mostly an African American community. There were very few other changes, except for little stuff like my doctor’s office now being a pizza shop and the old movie house gone altogether. I used to be able to buy candy in the Big Little Store for a penny, candy bars for a nickel and ice cream cones for a dime. At today’s prices, I can’t afford them.

The apartment house looked much the same although in need of sprucing up. I tried to remember my younger self, catching fireflies, riding my big three wheeler around the parking lot, playing with Karen who lived next door, coming home for lunch and racing back to school when the first bell rang. T’was all a really long time ago, another lifetime so it seems. Our old apartment had a for rent sign in the window!

My Ohio childhood is a life far removed from my Florida life. I left Ohio a married woman at the age of twenty-two, a graduate of Kent State University, and settled in a warmer climate for the rest of my life.

Following is what I did while in Chesterland, Ohio. On a day threatening rain I went to a flea market in a park where I bought nothing, sat with Stan and Pat sharing a bottle of wine and a cheese plate in a local winery, toured the wonderful Cleveland Museum of Art, and watched Mamma Mia on the TV. Also, I enjoyed the company of their son and his family, ate terrific homemade dinners, went to a backyard birthday party for a one year old, and enthusiastically discussed politics with my cousins as the television news commentators brought up one disturbing issue after another. And I think our distinctly different views were disturbing, too! Well….maybe stimulating is a better word.

I stayed overnight just outside of Uniontown, PA in the Historic Summit Inn, once considered a grand porch hotel on the top of the world. I crossed paths with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford again. (Toured their ground in Ohio, too) Others who have come before me include Warren Harding, Harvey Firestone and Jonny Weissmuller!

It has been cool for July and I am having a hard time comtemplating August heat in Florida. The weather report for 33785 says it has been raining and in the eighties. I guess my grass won’t die nor the candles melt while I have been gone. Hope not, anyway.

Before heading home though, I will be heading to Confluence, Pennslyvania for the weekend where I and Erin and Jerry will be meeting up with friends and hopefully doing a little kayaking and camping.

So, in case you were wondering if I had been captured by pirates or swept off my feet by a poor but shockingly handsome and charming gigolo, or simply got lost on the back roads of the Appalachian Mountains, I thought I would let you know, all is as it ought to be, I am well.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Macedonia, Ohio


I am staying with a cousin and her husband in Macedonia, Ohio for a few days.

I was born in a nearby town, but from the age of 10 until I went off to college I lived in the very same subdivision , in a similiar red brick house, that my cousin now lives in, here in Macedonia. I am, I'd say, back in my hometown. An interesting place to be at this point in my road trip.

It has changed quite a lot. It was pretty rural back in the days when I road my bike down the streets and played in the woods. Back then a kid could be outside all day, out of site, and no one worried about their safety. And we didn't even have cell phones to check in with! Me and my cousins knew the woods well. We knew where to find the pussy willows growing beside a pond, where to pick berries, and where the rocky ledges were where we could shimmy up a narrow crevice to the top. We knew where the hole in the fence was to allow us to get through the barrier and where the trees fell just right to facilitate hut building.

Now there is a Walmart, Target, and strip centers where the Turkey farm used to be. Open meadows have become subdivisions. Our swimming hole is no longer swimable. Just yesterday construction crews removed the railroad overpass that was a landmark in the middle of Macedonia. My old junior high school is completely gone! Lots of things are gone. I barely recognize the place.

However, nearby, the beautiful connected system of parks that make up the Emerald Necklace around Cleveland is still here. My family used to go on Sunday drives in the parks on roads that followed the Cuyahoga River Valley or the Erie canal. That was back when gas was $ .33 a gallon. The fountain in the park bordering Tinkers Creek where us little kids used to play still spouts and there are still little kids playing in it, even though a sign that says no wading or swimming still stands next to it.

My family spent a lot of time in the parks. We would cook breakfast on a camp stove, hike the trails, climb cliffs, and walk down the creek in our old tennis shoes.

I road down roads I must have ridden down a hundred times before, but I was not hit with nostalgia. Too many changes. The house I lived in has been neglected and looks kind of sad. The woods I used to play in that started where our backyard ended is gone, replaced by big homes with fancy patios. In general, everything looks smaller than in my memory. The distances between towns shorter. The winter ski slopes that I feared descending look barely high enough for a good ride.

We, Bobbie, Ken and I, traveled south a little, past Canton, and spent yesterday in Amish country. We sampled cheese at the cheese factory, and taste tested bakery at the bakery. We walked through a dozen shops selling lawn decorations and country knick knacks. We admired the farms. We saw black buggies pulled by horses and driven by women and men in traditional conservative dress. We speculated on and had questions about the lifestyle of the Amish. We stopped for a family style dinner at Der Dutchman, and ate a bountiful county dinner of salad, whole wheat rolls, baked chicken, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, dressing and gravy with a big slice of pie for dessert. (Banana cream, coconut cream, and oatmeal pie were our choices but the list of berry and cream pies was ridiculously long.) Afterwards we walked our over-stuffed selves back to the car for the ride home. We observed fields being plowed the old fashioned way with horse and plow. We admired the large farms and mosaic hillsides with fields of corn and wheat and beans and whatever. It was sunny, the sky blue with scattered puffy while clouds. It looked like a folk art painting complete with red barns and white silos.

As night approached we sat in their backyard and toasted marshmallows over a fire. A big strawberry moon provided enough light for us to sit leisurely until we were done.

Being in my hometown does not make me feel like I am home, but I enjoyed the respite and the memories and a taste of the good old days. Home is now 1500 miles away in Florida and I will be back there at the end of the month.

For now, I plan to stay another night, and then travel only a few miles to visit my country cousin in Chesterland, Ohio.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Cool Fun!



That's me on the Zamboni! The one waving. That's Tom driving.

Whoo Hoo!

I've got my fleece on.

We were scraping the ice.

Cooool!!!

Real cooolllll!