Sunday February 23, 2014 continued

Now – where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?  Oh yea – Fort Payne and tornadoes.  Well, time marches on and in a couple days, it’s about time to hit the road again in our quest for spring training.  Maybe get the car washed?  Good idea!  There’s a little drive through car wash in town and you can throw in your own free vacuum when done.  It does a decent job for $10, and I pull around to use the vacuums.  Pull out the rubber floor mats, move the seats back and forth, wipe down the dash.  It all came together so well for our morning trip to New Orleans.  …or so I thought, until I was searching for my phone about an hour later.  Talk about frantic!  My first thought was 2 of the contacts that I needed for this trip were only available on the phone.  My second thought was somebody has my phone and is calling friends all over the world.  After backtracking my moves, I realized it could be in only one place – the car wash.  It had to have fallen out of my sweatshirt pocket as I was vacuuming.   A quick run down to the car wash produced no phone and nobody had turned one in.  Cutting to the chase – Rick and I went to the local AT&T store to check on options.  Rick had the idea to text to the phone a reward for turning it in.  I decided to do nothing till the next day, and later that evening – bingo!  The phone texted Rick!!  It was explained that the glass was broke, and while it would text, it wouldn’t call.  Hmmmmmm.  I played around with this, but after no messages for the evening and into the next morning, I reported it stolen and bought a new “go-phone”.  I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade yet, so I just got something cheap to get me through the next few months.  Fortunately, after logging in to my g-mail account, all the contacts were there.  Phew!  Yea – I lost some pictures, but the important stuff was recovered.  I hope I never have to go through THAT again.

 

Sunday February 23, 2014

Various observations on our 1st retirement trip.
We've been on the road for a month and haven't hurt each other yet!  ;-)  Quite an accomplishment, huh?
It's been a cold trip.  (Well, duh! - it's winter.)  Not cold like back home in Ohio.  No - it hasn't even reached single digits where we've been.  Back home it's been single (and double) MINUS digits.  Our third night on the road produced 25 degrees in Savannah, GA.  A full week in St Pete Beach, FL garnered us maybe 2 days of sun and temps conducive to walking the beach in shorts and t-shirt, but generally windy, gray, and chilly.  Amelia Island in FL wasn't much better.  ...and then there's the 2014 icestorm in Aiken, SC.  Probably the #1 choice for a retirement relocation, but come time to leave and the roads are closed and the city is pretty much shut down due to icy roads and fallen trees blocking anywhere you want to go.  A tree was even leaning on our car from the wieght of the ice on the limbs.  Fortunately, we were able to move the car before the city had to cut it down, and there was no damage.  We had to extend our "visit" in Aiken by and extra 3 days, and spent the last night without lights or heat.  Our "home" for the week, the Carriage House Inn, was kind enough to not charge us for that last nights stay.  The storm didn't stop in Aiken.  It then proceeded to dump enough snow to prohibit us from visiting our next destination - Asheville, NC.  We get the message - NC is not where we are suppose to relocate.
Let's go visit some relatives!  Fort Payne, AL.  The home of Rick and Kathy Kuhn.  Louises' sister and brother-in-law.  It's been quite some time since we've seen them and a visit is certainly in order.  This was supposed to be a week to recuperate from the past couple weeks travel and get ready for the really long trip out west, but the extra few days in S.C. were enough "off" time to re-charge the batteries.  That, however, didn't mean we couldn't laze around for a few days and make friends with the myriad of cows, dogs, mules, goats and whatever else was out there to greet us as we took our morning/afternoon walks while the two of them had to go off and earn a living.  It also was a time to save our reputation as the official delivery couple of bad weather.  While most of the week was pleasant, we were able to conjure up enough wind to bring a tornado to Ft Payne.  It was my first brush with a real tornado threat that I know I don't want to go through it again.  Sirens blaring, lightning, horizontal rain - all while we're dashing to the garage where the underground safehouse is located.  The sirens eventually ended, as did the wind and the rain, but sleep came slowly as the adrenaline level slowly subsided.