The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry…  And that about sums it up for this morning.

Yesterday was a pretty decent day all told.  We got one bit of business done early in the morning and that gave us the rest of the day to enjoy ourselves.  We had about 225 miles between us and Galena and we took most of the day getting there.

I have never heard anyone extoll the virtues of Iowa’s natural beauty — it’s sort of a conversational non-subject it seems, but I have gained new respect for Eastern Iowa over the last month or so.  And especially the town of Dubuque.  Once we go fulltime I suspect we may spend some time there.

These two shots were taken a while before we got there though and I had to include them.  Nice to have an entire town happy to agree to a bit of nonsense!  It seems so many people today take themselves so seriously that the idea of an entire town agreeing that someone’s grumpy is refreshing!

Anyway….  The drive was nice enough, in spite of Momma Nature spitting at us all day.  It would have been “better” if we’d had an actual rain — the little bit of humidity was just enough to keep us on our toes as the road was pretty slick — but it was a nice drive in spite of the weather.  To make things nicer we did what the both of us have been really enjoying lately — we’ve been listening to podcasts of  WNYC‘s  RadioLab. If you are not yet familiar with RadioLab — my condolences.  It’s witty, it’s informative, it’s educational, it’s riveting.  It’s Good Radio!  And it’s FREE! (unless you want to support public radio and who doesn’t!)

Yesterday we particularly enjoyed the podcast on sleep –

The closer we got to Galena the more rain we got — but we made up for the inclement weather by hopping into the pool (indoors of course) at the Best Western where we are staying.  Pool,  hot tub, pool, hot tub…. after a couple of cycles like that we were relaxed like a limp noodle and pretty much not good for anything for the rest of the day.  It’s truly amazing what a little heat and viscous fluid can do to your body, your mind, and your motivation.

I suspect that today we will NOT be doing what we planned.  The weather is really crummy for walking the streets of Galena and I don’t think (though you can never tell for sure about us) that we will want to spend another night here waiting for better weather.  We may just head home at some point; or not.  Poor Peggy didn’t sleep well again last night — it really is evident that RV’ing may be the only way that she’d be able to enjoy travelling nowadays — she simply has a hard time sleeping in strange places and at least in the RV she’ll always be in her own bed, on her own pillow, with her own blankie…… awwwwww……

I was awoke at 3:30 and she’d been sleepless for several hours.  She turned on the TV and eventually fell asleep.  When I got up at 6 she was sound asleep and I hope she’ll sleep a while yet…..

This trip has kept our minds mostly off of the meeting next Tuesday.  Being around the house would not have done so.

One of the recent RadioLab episodes (well, for this time challenged guy “recent” might have been over the last six months or so) dealt with STRESS.  Years ago I’d heard a sort of mentor of mine, Edward T Hall, (meaning I never met him but devoured pretty much everything I could find written by him) talk about the clinical effects of disappointment — meaning that chronic disappointment can not only induce illness but even death if carried to an extreme.  After that I’d not heard/read anyone really dealing with the science of this idea.  Stress does.  I encourage you to listen to the podcast when you have time.

I’m not saying that because I’m feeling THAT stressed out;  this was merely the confluence of several streams of thought at the same time.  We happened to listen to the podcast at this particular time — not that we sought it out to deal with our stress — the podcast just happened to be the next in line to listen to.

Well, I’m getting hungry and my wife is sleeping… what to do, what to do…. go wake her up?  Nah…. not a good idea.  I’ll go get into mischief somewhere.

Luv to all, prolly be home later today.

Yesterday we drove home; today I paid the piper….. well, actually we paid the TAX man when I went in to get the title on the RV.  Talk about enough to choke a horse!

But, seriously, the trip home was very nice.  We got an unexpectedly early start (8:45) and were home by 3:30 with ample stops:  Breakfast, our first realistic fill-up (567 miles on the tank, took 56 gallons but I could have gotten a couple more in the tank == so it’s a good solid 9mpg, just slightly above what I figured), and a couple potty stops.

This was also the first time through the Tollway with our iPass covering both vehicles — have yet to log on and make sure they didn’t show us a violators but I called in advance, made sure we could do that, and registered Journey as an official  vehicle for our account.

Not keen on driving through Milwaukee traffic in Journey with the toad, ( remember — the “toad” is our towed-vehicle) and through construction — but a few more miles under our belt and we’ll go anywhere with it.  Every vehicle handles just a little differently and this one has a steeper learning curve than some.

Michael Brylow stopped by the house to turn the heat up for us.   Thanks Mike.

Being “home” again didnt’ feel quite the same.  I think for myself anyway, I’m already transitioning to home being Journey and not the schoolhouse.

We parked in our normal lot for last night — tonight the family are coming over to see our “new house” and tomorrow Journey takes her birth at the storage yard until, probably, April.    I don’t see us going anywhere in the cold WX, and we wont go fulltime until the kids get their house sold — so, other than a car trip we are prolly Cudahy-bound for the duration.

Seeing as this blog is for you whom I trust not to break in and empty out the house while we are out of town I’ll revert to my regular blog for a while now, and next time we leave town we’ll pick up the narration as if nothing had happened in between.

Keepin’ you all In The Know.

Peter

I’m sure other recently retired people have experienced the same thing, but I have to say that I have felt tired most of the month of October.  It’s hard to realize how much a person relies on habit to cope with life.

I don’t know if we will ever find a “routine.”  We generally aren’t people who do the same thing all the time.  If it weren’t for regular work hours at Aurora I’m not sure Peggy would ever have settled into the kind of schedule we have lived for over 30 yrs.

There is a strange dichotomy between our life on the road and our life in Cudahy.  When we get back to town in a couple days we’ll segue back into yet another sort of schedule for what may be the winter or longer.

I don’t exactly have anything insightful to say about what we are experiencing now.  We’re just living through it and looking for the other side of this emotional adjustment;  all things change and learning to embrace change has never been my most favorite activity.

After yesterday we planned for today to be a bit easier.  Debbie and Delbert  decided to ride with us to Lincoln’s New Salem Home — state historic site.  There is a 200 site campground there and we are spending a few nights here.  We didn’t do much by way of touring/visiting today — it was rainy and pretty mucky — but we ended up at Cheddars for lunch and had a nice day of it, with some time to relax in the afternoon.

As much as we love being with friends sometimes a body just gets tired out; we needed our nap today!

I thought you might enjoy these shots.  The one on the right was one of the young gals in the horse show.  Her mount seemed to have a mind of his / her own on several occasions during the afternoon, but with both rear feet off the ground this barely-teen had her hands full.

After the horse show we took the scenic route back home going through the Carlinville town square.  It’s an 1800′s town that really goes crazy about Halloween with a parade that brings in floats from all over.  Not being into Halloween I didn’t bother with pictures of the floats but I did like some of the architecture!

I hope you enjoy — I know we did!

We had time to trouble shoot our Blue Ox today — seem to have gotten that sorted.

Also had time to readjust our Velvac sideview mirrors.  The dealer had the arm a little closer in to the body than I like it,  when I looked down the side of the coach all I could really see was the Awning arm, now I can a little more of the side of the coach as well.

Should be in the upper 30′s tonight, and nearly 60 tomorrow.  Not bad for almost November.

Yesterday was really nice.  In spite of the fact that we had some problem with our Blue Ox the trip from Davenport was very nice.  The weather was nice, not too much wind, and light traffic.  Peggy drove behind me down to Debbi’s.  We hope to have time to figure out the Blue Ox problem when we leave here.  For some reason one side of the Ox locks and the other side doesn’t then them seem to switch status and that’s not supposed to happen …. but it’s brand new and if worse comes to worse we’ll deal with a warranty situation.

Dinner last night at Los Agaves was a lot of fun.  There were 7 of us and dinner was accompanied by not many moments of seriousness.  Amazing how a couple margaritas loosen up a woman half my size!  Heck, one loosened ME up!  Anyway…. we had a leisurely meal before heading over to the production of Rocky Horror Picture Show put on by the Hoogland Center for the Arts. The play didn’t start until 9 pm….. which for us is like midnight — the latest we have been out in a while!  Timing the production for the Halloween season much of the audience came in costume (we might have had we realized earlier that we were attending — but last minute changes mean you look like you don’t belong)  Out of the 7 of us Peg and I were the first Rocky non-virgins — so none of the rest of them had any real idea what to expect.  Needless to say a good time was had by all — though it was a shame that the sound system didn’t handle the script very well.  Between the audience chiming in and a too much volume on the sound system not everyone could make out the words, or plot.

Sleeping inside in a regular bed seemed a bit strange; but we fit entirely on Debbi’s driveway and enjoyed the comfort of her guest bedroom.

Today we were off to a slower start.  No need to get moving out of the house until noon, so we enjoyed seeing some of Del’s travel snaps and had time to get caught up.

The afternoon was time for a horse show…. I guess that’s what you call it.  There’s a Riding Club (horses) in Gillespie Lake, IL that was having an event today.  There must have been 25 horses, not all participating in the events in the ring; it was a real family event with every age from infant to 80′s represented (not all on horses though).  I did take some shots of the people and the horses but for now I’ll only share this one of my dear wife, the Kid Magnet.  Wherever we go give her a little time and there are kids gathered around her.  And I gotta tell ya….. anyone kids want to be around is a pretty good person to spend your life with!

The evening looks to be relaxing and restful — filled with good and plentiful conversation….. so that’s all for now.