It was a pretty uneventful 1,100-mile slog back to Mesquite from the Oregon coast. The RV and the dogs did well, Charlie got to read a bit, and I got to examine a lot of (for the most part) desolate countryside from the driver’s seat.
It is enlightening to observe the various sectors of America on a journey through the great outdoors. Most of our route was through lightly-populated areas, with beat-up cars, dilapidated houses and barns, no Starbucks, lots of “out of business” signs, crummy roads, and a few “Trump Won” signs being flown by hardscrabble diehards. The landscape is dry and becoming drier, lake levels are down, and crops are thin in many areas. The overwhelming lushness of the Oregon coast stands in stark contrast to the hundreds of miles of sagebrush and dirt that we traveled through.
The air quality during the ride home was atrocious, due to the massive forest fires occurring in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The smoke was especially thick from Reno to Tonopah. At Walker Lake, near Hawthorne, Nevada, I could hardly make out the lake (which is a huge one) despite the fact that the highway is only a few hundred yards above the shore. People with respiratory issues in that area must be suffering big time. Firefighters, like medical professionals during the pandemic, have to be bone weary.
We’re relaxing here in Mesquite for a nine-day breather before we head south on I-15 to Oceanside, California (north of San Diego) to set the rig up for a 30-day stay at Paradise by the Sea RV Resort. We’ve been going there for years: it’s right by the beach, the weather is great in September and October, and it is close to friends and family. It is expensive to stay at Paradise but I’m really looking forward to riding my bike along the shore from Oceanside to Torrey Pines while watching the surfers do their thing.
We came home five days early so that we could get some projects done. Priority One was the demo of our master bedroom walk-in wardrobe closet. Our son Jonathan (an ex-cabinetmaker) will fly out here from Lexington while we’re in Oceanside and will install $11,000 worth of woodwork. I spent the past two days tearing out the existing woodwork, spackling the walls, and painting. It now looks good as new, ready for Jonathan.
We’re so lucky to have him in our lives: he’s Charlie’s business partner (bookkeeping and taxes) and is always willing to support us in any way required. Jonathan and his wife Misty and daughter Autumn are all hard workers, never complaining, always pushing the ball forward. They seem to like living in Kentucky and are doing fine financially.
Charlie and I have spent several days on the phone with Microsoft and Intuit tech wizards trying to resolve some issues with our laptop computer that we take with us on our road trips. Yesterday, Charlie spent about six hours on the phone with some Philippino gal trying to fix a glitch in Windows, and then I spent another couple of hours in the evening working online with a guy named Abiola from Estonia to de-bug software. It was very frustrating, to say the least, because these foreign techies speak English with an accent. They were nice, but it seemed like both of us spent a lot of the time asking the technician to repeat what he/she had just said.
Speaking of foreign stuff, our good friend Lloyd has relocated to the Yucatan Penninsula of Mexico. He was just settling in when Hurricane Grace blew through the area and knocked down buildings and power poles. Last week he signed a lease on a dwelling in Progreso (on the Gulf coast) and his girlfriend Juanita arrived from South Africa. Hopefully, they will enjoy each other and the Mexican adventure, although the climate there is hot and humid; it’s definitely something that takes getting used to. As does the Mexican culture, where Support Your Local Police means paying “la mordida” (the bribe) for a parking spot or making a traffic citation disappear. Hopefully, Lloyd will adjust.
We are getting our annual flu shots tomorrow and we’re scheduled to get a Covid-19 booster (Moderna) in a few weeks while we’re in Southern California. My sister Claudia arranged that: how nice of her!!!
Speaking of the pandemic, mask-wearing is coming back into style what with the flu season approaching. It continues to baffle me why so many people are not getting vaccinated and why so many elected public officials continue to play politics with this serious medical issue. Over 600,000 Americans have died already from Covid-19…and flu season approaches. It is a shame that politicians are playing games with peoples’ lives.
Speaking of political games, it is interesting to see the blame-throwing about the end of American “occupation” of Afghanistan after twenty long years. Both political parties are responsible for this longest war in American history, another “undeclared” debacle (like Korea and Vietnam) that had dubious justification, thousands of killed and injured U.S. soldiers, and cost our Nation hundreds of billions of dollars. We should have gotten out of Afghanistan long ago, but no President had the cojones to do so until Biden came along. He’s now taking flack because the last troops were shipped home on his watch, something that former President Trump committed to and then, failed to accomplish…probably afraid that he’d take flack like Biden is now receiving. Trump dodged the war in Vietnam and then dodged ending the war in Afghanistan: he is and always has been a coward.
By the way, shouldn’t war be a last resort? Unfortunately, some politicians like to flex muscles and the American military-industrial establishment likes to build rockets, tanks, submarines, fighter jets, guns, and ammo. In the absence of real threats to our national security, politicians find it necessary to invent them. The United States of America has sadly become a bully looking for a place to pick a fight.
It’s sickening and it’s shameful.
I returned home to find a lot of accumulated mail…including Sports Illustrated magazines which, for some reason, Charlie subscribed for me awhile back. I used to be addicted to sports but have lost the passion, for sure. I followed many sports back in the day when “news” was primarily about competition, banner achievements, and record-breaking individual endeavors by premier players. I could relate, somewhat, due to my experience as a middling athlete in many sports and the respect I had for great performers. Nowadays, most of the sports “news” pertains to athletes’ contracts, shoe endorsements, social media gaffes, extra-marital affairs, drug use, after-hours revelry, and criminal behavior. (Or who didn’t display “patriotic” behavior during the National Anthem.) It’s as if performance on the field is secondary to the other crap. I’m fed up.
One of the Sports Illustrated features that I glanced at this morning concerned sports gambling and the fact that it is becoming more prevalent and…surprisingly…sanctioned by professional leagues and many states.
Gee, I seem to recall Pete Rose being banished from Major League Baseball for doing some innocent gambling. The greatest pure hitter in the history of MLB is not in the Hall of Fame because he bet on baseball games (not against his team) while he was a manager. Football Hall of Famers Paul Hornung and Alex Karras got suspended from the NFL for doing similar stuff. It’s okay, now, I guess. Maybe Rose, Hornung, and Karras were right all along? Will MLB now un-banish Pete Rose?
Conspiracy theorists are going to love proliferated sports gambling: When some doofus running back fumbles the ball with a few seconds left on the clock, with the game on the line, there will be accusations that he did it on purpose…to affect the “spread”, thereby screwing a lot of gamblers out of tons of money. Who’s to say he didn’t fumble on purpose? Even the GOAT, Tom Brady, sometimes throws unwise passes that end up in the hands of the other team; was it an accident or was he paid to throw a wobbler, in trash time, at the end of a game that his team was winning?
I think legalized gambling in sports will lead to more polarization (i.e. enraged, unruly, maniacal fans), demands for investigations, and possibly violence perpetrated against players who are perceived to have tanked the “spread”. Not a good thing, in that the outcome of the sporting contest will be overshadowed by the antics of non-athletes trying to beat the system for personal gain. So much for “winning one for the Gipper”.
It’s a weird world that we live in, and it’s getting weirder all the time.
Thank goodness that I’ll be dead soon (enough). We’re circling the drain, Folks.