Waiting For the Storm to Pass

Taking a break alongside the Suwannee River.

Hurricane Matthew is currently traveling northward along the east coast of Florida as I write this; we expect to go through this storm with winds around 30 mph and rain, but nothing nearly as severe as what is predicted to hit the coast.  The one thing I will guarantee in all this:  we will not be riding the tandem today!

This gives me the opportunity to sit down and type out “h-e-l-l-o” to those who enjoy reading something that’s totally unrelated to the election coming up in a month from now.  Yes, tomorrow the bike stays in the garage.  Why?  Because I’m a “fair-weather biker”!  (That’s why I moved to Florida.)

The riding that we’ve accomplished since we arrived has been exceptional.  We’ve learned several routes within Levy County (in which the town of Williston is located), and we’ve also ventured out into adjoining counties on our daily loops.  Generally speaking we ride almost every single day, and we usually pedal between 35 and 50 miles on each outing.

We bought our current tandem back in 2009.  Up through May of this year we clicked off around 15,000 miles.  Not bad considering we had full-time jobs then.  In the almost five months since we’ve been here, we’ve cycled 3370.3 miles.  At this rate, in one year’s time we will put on almost half of the total miles that this bike had traveled before moving to Florida.  That’s not bad for a couple of almost sixty year olds!

Another interesting side-note is that, while we haven’t fulfilled our dream of pedaling across America, we have ridden more than enough miles to do so since we arrived in the Sunshine State.  The mileage from San Diego, CA to St. Augustine, FL is about 3053.5 miles.  Now we know that given enough time, we can ride the distance; we just need to stop riding in circles at some point and start riding in a straight line!

The beauty of the area we live in is exceptional.  Many miles of horse farms and pastures, forests of pine and hammocks of old-growth oak trees surround us.  The rural flavor of this region is delightful, and yet the “big city” (and all of its services) is twenty miles away.  The little town we live in has a major-name grocery store a little over a mile from where we live, a take-out Chinese restaurant for those “I don’t feel like cooking” evenings as well as a couple of major fast food eateries, and a local restaurant that puts “southern cooking” at a new level.

North-central Florida is notthe picture-postcard image most people conjure up in their minds when they think of “Florida”.  From our perspective it’s much better.  Truly, it’s a year-round cycling paradise! 

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Ever since we unloaded the U-Haul into the storage units, we have been living out of suitcases – much like being on vacation.  Similar to being on vacation, we've got a few changes of clothes, maybe a few of our most needed or useful items and every night we’re sleeping in a bed that does the job, but it’s not ours.  Our minds know it; our bodies know it. 

Unlike being on vacation, there’s no date when we have to be back home.  The primary reason is that we have no home.  Trust us – we WANT to be “back home”.  Not in Idaho, but in the one we’ve been watching slowly take form ever since we arrived on the Florida scene.  Fortunately, we are getting very close to having a home once again.  There are a few telltale signs.

The power company came out and ran a line from the edge of our property to the meter box, and the home now has full power, not the temporary juice running in from the contractor's power pole planted in the yard.  The carpet is in.  The painters were back yesterday doing touch-up and finish work; they should be back today to complete the job.  But what is the biggest clue that we’re almost ready to take possession of our new home?  Yesterday I watched as a truck backed onto the lot and loaded the construction worker’s portable toilet onto the back and then drive away with it.  Now THAT’S a sign that big changes are just around the corner!

Speaking of big changes, we have been getting out on the bike almost every day and riding for 35 to 40 miles each time.  We’re not smart enough to wake up and get out in the cool of the morning, so we usually start around 10:00 to 10:30.  Depending on where we go (or the number of stops we have to make), we get done in the afternoon when the temperatures are flirting with the 100-degree mark. 

But last Sunday, in the course of about a half mile, our bike riding came to a wobbly end.  Our rear wheel cracked in two spots where two pairs of spokes attach to the rim.  We have been trying to figure out what to do next – replace the wheel we’re using, or move on to some other product.  We’ve cracked four rear wheels now: two of the Shimano “Sweet Sixteens” and two of the Rolf Prima tandem wheels. 

An online survey shows that some people have used these wheels, logging on over 20,000 miles with no issues while others didn’t have them last a year.  One interesting item is that what we have is one of the older, 20-spoked rear wheels.  Rolf has upped the spoke count to 24 on the rear wheel, which gives them a stronger product.  I was almost ready to buy the new rear wheel (having to replace not only the rim, but the 20-spoked hub with a 24-spoked hub).  However, with credit card in hand and cell phone against my ear, the folks at Rolf told me that they wouldn’t have any wheel builds available until after July 20^th.  This gave me a little more time to think and shop around.

What we’re doing is buying a completely new wheel set from Phil Wood (cyclists will recognize this as a premier name in cycling components).  We’ll go with a 36-spoked front wheel and a 40-spoked rear.  Beefy, but not overly weighty like the 48-spoked wheels that many tandem riders swear by.  (Our old Cannondale had wheels like this; it was a heavy pig!)

The wheels will be like a “normal” bicycle wheel, unlike the lightweight, bladed-spoked wheels we’ve been using.  Something that, if for some reason a rim should fail or a spoke should break, any good bike shop in the country should be able to repair on the spot.  Goodbye to the exotic; hello to the traditional!

Did I mention we were still homeless?  But yesterday we started the move-in process by receiving a new mattress that will (hopefully) live as long as we do.  This humongous, heavy, back-breaking monster needed to be placed on our bed frame, which is a wooden unit that (when assembled) has a footboard, pedestal styled support with four dresser drawers on each side and a large, shelved headboard up front.  We really wanted to get the bed parts out of storage, have it assembled and ready for the delivery guys to throw the mattress on and call it “done”.  This, of course, is where the whole plan went awry.

First of all, we needed to get the bed over to the house on Monday evening and put together so the delivery guys could throw the mattress on it sometime Tuesday morning.  You know the drill… “Your mattress will be delivered sometime between 9:00 AM and noon.”  If we left it until Tuesday morning, the guys would show up first thing and we wouldn’t be ready.  But not to worry!  Other things would go wrong instead!

First of all, the painters were supposed to show up Monday and have the master bedroom touched up and ready to go at the end of the day.  By noon on Monday, nobody had been to the house.  By the end of the day, the painters had been there but left the master bedroom half done.  We moved the tarp they had laid alongside one wall, along with their ladder and vacuumed the rug in preparation for the bed.  Then Valerie’s sister showed up to help us lug bed parts out to our trucks and transport them for the two-mile drive to the house.

We put the bed parts in the garage, hoping that maybe the painters would get finished first thing in the morning and we could still get the bed assembled before the delivery crew arrived.  Tuesday morning arrived and I got to the house at about 8:30 in the morning.  The painters were on the job.

It was in the blink of an eye that they finished up the master bedroom and I was clear to start assembling the bed.  Of course I’d have to wait for Valerie to show up and then we’d try to lug the various pieces in and then put them together.  It was at this point that I started looking through the drawers and plastic containers that had been placed in them wondering the all-important questions:  where are the shoulder bolts that will attach the headboard and footboard to the drawer-pedestal section?  They were nowhere to be found.  And without them, there would be no assembling the bed.

This was unfathomable!  I know that I had the bolts, and that I put them somewhere that would be easy to find and made a lot of sense.  But now all that planning had fallen apart. 

It was time for Valerie to fly into action.  One of us had to remain at the house to take delivery of the mattress.  She’s smaller, and able to climb around tightly packed areas… so she went to the storage unit to look for the bolts.  Perhaps they got packed in a box marked “master bedroom”, or maybe they were in a baggie that had fallen out of the bed while we were moving it and just lying on the floor in the storage unit.  Maybe they were in one of the matching nightstands that would sit on either side of the headboard once the bed was back in one piece.

One thing was certain; they were somewhere and HAD to be found.  Valerie spent about three hours climbing over and around boxes, furniture and other assorted treasures looking in vain for the shoulder bolts.  I went through the bed pieces once again, looking to see if maybe we had taped the bag of bolts inside (or under) one of the drawers, or inside on the recesses of the headboard.  It was then that I caught a “break” – I found a small bag of four bolts with an assembly instruction sheet stapled to the inside of one of the drawer units.  Also in this bag was an Allen wrench, something that I’d need to get the bolts in place.

This bag was something from the manufacturer; it was not the bolts we removed.  But it was a wonderful turning point!  Imagine someone tacking in an extra bag of bolts and a wrench – thank you in reverse to that person!  All I had to do was find four more similar bolts and we could get the bed assembled.

So the mattress arrived, and I had the guys put it in the bedroom to where we could stand it on end, eventually assemble the bed and then tip the mattress into place… and finally call it a “day”.  The delivery guy said that he had just seen bolts like the ones I had at Home Depot, and that is exactly where I found a package of four more shoulder bolts.  We returned to the house, assembled the bed, tipped the mattress into place and then…  drum roll, please!

I picked up my toolbox and a baggie that I had placed a couple of screwdrivers, mini-flashlights and pliers in (which we had kept in the truck in case we needed tools) and noticed that in the baggie was a smaller baggie with all eight shoulder bolts and an Allen wrench just the right size to put the bolts back in with.  Good golly… I DID put those bolts somewhere that made sense.  But I didn’t see them when I brought the tools into the house as they were behind all the other stuff in the bag.  You can imagine my popularity when I told Valerie that the mystery had been solved!

Maybe I should take her out on a bike ride today to get her mind off of my latest faux pas.  What’s that, you say?  We don’t have a working bike?  Au contraire, mon ami!  But we do!  Our mountain tandem is ready to roll.  All we have to do is spend a little time down at the storage unit digging it out.  Oh, Vaaaallerriiiee!  I have a little job for you!

I apologize for not keeping this blog a little more up-to-date.  Hopefully once we have our own place and are back into some kind of living-rhythm I might actually start writing with a little more consistency once again!

Sweatin’ With the Oldies

The last "welcome" sign along our route.

No longer will I bring you tales or updates from the Great Northwest.  From this point on, unless we’re on the road, all written fabrications or other alterations of the truth will be based out of the Southeast.  We are official residents of the Great State of Florida, insofar as the DMV is concerned, or as it’s called here, the DHSMV – because we have to be different from other states!  (For those who are curious, I believe that stands for the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.)  Whenever someone asks us for our driver’s license, they will be presented a Florida license with a Florida address.

So why are we here?  Every morning I wake up, asking myself the same question.  This journey started several years ago, while Valerie’s mother was still alive and using her gift of guilting to get Valerie to come and visit in the greater Tampa area.  She and her husband were often flying here and there for vacations, golf trips or visits with friends – but Idaho was not on the itinerary.  While this is a point of contention with me, a vision of Martha Stewart assured me that “it’s a good thing”.  Indeed, having to go there as much as we did was a good thing.

They had acquired a place in a retirement community called The Villages, which was about 70 miles north of their home in Wesley Chapel, which is roughly 25 to 30 miles NNE of Tampa proper.  While the Villages is touted as being a golfing retirement community, and there are courses everywhere within The Villages, there is a lot more going on than just trying to club those little white balls.  We found out back in 2009 after getting our coupled Santana (which allows the tandem to break down into three sections and pack into a travel case for flying) that the Florida Tandem Rally was hosted in… yes, that’s right… The Villages.

Yes, there are old people running loose everywhere in The Villages, and a vast majority of them seem to be active.  What attracted us were the cycling clubs, particularly the presence of several members of the Florida PANTHERS (Partners Aboard Neat Tandems Happily Enjoying Riding Simultaneously).  So it was that we began flying back in the end of October the attend some of these tandem rallies, spending time in the spare home in The Villages.

We found that the “old folks” who were out riding daily were able to leave us in the dust.  Of course, the fact that they were able to ride daily never left us.  That was the planting of the seed that inspired us to move from an area that experiences winter to an area that often “hears about” winter.  We chose not to live in The Villages, but about 55 NNW from there, in a rural area that is close enough to “the big city” without actually having people crammed together elbow-to-elbow.  We can still drive down to The Villages to join in for group rides with the tandem club, or simply ride from our new home along country roads in an area known locally as “horse country”. 

We have made our first Florida cycling related purchase:  the book Florida’s Paved Bike Trails (Third Edition), by Jeff and Gretchen Kunerth.  Already it’s helped us find some local rides, and will open some doors to other rides in the region.  We have been trying to get out and ride daily, with a minimum goal of around 30 miles; anything above that is “gravy”!

The outside looks like a home.  The inside...
...well, Rome wasn't built in a day!

It’s roughly a 19 mile ride from our “currently under construction” doorstep to the southwest corner of Gainesville, where we can shop for pretty much all we need and then cycle back home.  Here in the town of Williston, there are three grocery stores that I’m aware of with a Winn-Dixie being the major one.  So if we need something that requires refrigeration, we can pedal up to a local market rather than drive.  The cars will think we no longer love them…

We left Idaho May 10^th, 2016 and arrived in Williston, Florida late in the afternoon of May 14^th.  While we have no real home yet, we watch as the construction of our new house continues and are hoping that by sometime in July we might be starting to move in.  In the mean time we are staying with Valerie’s sister about 15 miles west of our new homesite, and often cycle a loop from her home to ours’ and back, giving us about 34 miles each day.

And so our lives begin.  Again.

My First Day of Retirement

Thanks to all my friends, postal and customers,
who made my last day memorable!

It’s Monday, May 2^nd of the year 2016.  I am now officially retired from the United States Postal Service.  Yesterday, being a Sunday, didn’t really count – Sunday was the one constant day we had off from the Post Office.  But today – Monday – I should be getting ready to go to work…  or at least sleeping in until the very last minute, dreaming about calling in “sick”.

But no.  Here I am, pretty much wide-awake at 4:30 in the morning with thoughts running around in my head like a hamster on a wheel – running fast but going absolutely nowhere.

Did I say it’s 4:30 in the morning?  Well of course I did.  I thought I’d log onto the Internet and get some change of address forms printed up for our local Post Office, and then check some mileages on the maps, look for potential places to stay each night, and then do some more appliance shopping.  (We’ve got most of the big stuff picked out… but I still need to get an over-the-stove microwave and hood and some ceiling fans picked out.)

Did I say I logged onto the Internet?  No, I did not.  I said I thoughtI’d log onto the Internet.  Sometimes the things you’d like to do and the things you’re able to do are two different things entirely.  And this morning, at least here in Garden Valley, Idaho… the Internet is missing in action.  What a pity I wasn’t able to just roll back over and catch another hour or two of sleep.

Not being able to access the Internet has allowed me to sit down and write this long overdue entry to my blog.  Being that it’s really too early to tell whether my first day of retirement will be a high or a low, let me tell you about my last day of work, which was definitely a “high”. 

Trying to get done in a timely manner was impossible; people were stopping me along the well to say goodbye, wish me success in retirement, or give me a card.  In a few of those cards were the “signatures” of their dogs, also wishing me well.  A couple of cards even contained pictures of the dogs… lest I should forget!  At one stop I found a package that contained a framed portrait of the little horse that I had been sharing part of my daily apple with for the last fifteen years.

For many years there has been a “tradition” in our section that some of the letter carriers (whose routes were close enough to each other) would get together for a Saturday lunch.  One of my postal friends who started this lunch habit with me retired from the Post Office almost six years ago; he was in attendance at the lunch, as was my wife, Valerie.  She had always heard about our lunches but, because her routes were never close by, was never able to attend.

Done with lunch and back to work, I continued in pretty much the same vein seeing people and saying good-byes.  Then, toward the end of the route one of my customers asked if I could come inside just for a moment.  As I rounded the corner into their kitchen and dining area I found several neighbors sitting or standing by the counter—all of whom started singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.  This was followed up with a little lemonade, some questions and answers about our move to Florida, and then a round of thank-you and goodbyes.  About fifteen minutes after this miniature surprise party and I was facing my final mailbox.  And then there were none…

The only thing left now was to drive back to the Post Office, check in and then “check out”.  I rounded up my personal belongings into a tub and waddled out the door for the last time.  When I got to my little VW bug, I unlocked the passenger door and placed all the stuff inside on the passenger seat, locked the door and closed it.  There in the front seat was all that was left of my postal career, and it was at that very moment that reality truly hit me:  I had just locked my key inside the damned car!

And so I owe many thanks to the people I served over the years on my route, and to the fine crew that I worked with… and especially to a carrier named Violet, who happened to have a membership with AAA – and because of that was able to reunite me with my car key and get me on the road to retirement!