The Capital "I" - part two

 The "I" project - part two

Old friends are the best friends, right ?

Before the age of social media I would have had no

problem with that concept. For a variety of reasons I'm not so sure anymore. 

Sure, some people change and we certainly do. We drift apart and tend to remember them the way they were and can be put off when we reconnect and find they're not the way we expected them to be. Of course this has real life implications too.

I'm hesitant to go into the two groups who spring to mind in this regard. You all probably have similar experiences with old school friends or folks from a place you used to work. Briefly, my high school friends didn't really surprise me but some of of my army buddies did.

I will mention someone who just blew my mind. Our lives crossed about twenty years ago through work. I'll call him Joe (not his name) and he was very good at his job. He was very good at partying like there was no tomorrow too. He was a good father and a good guy. He paid his child support and remained involved to a great extent with his daughter. I never did quit my job to be his partner though he made some good offers, because I thought he was not entirely reliable. Boy did we have some good times and adventures though.

We drifted apart but both of us would occasionally keep in touch somehow. We both got married and when my marriage fell apart he reached out and I went to vist him and meet his new family. It didn't go well. To make a long sad story short I feared for my life before the weekend was over. I didn't want to hurt him or anything but felt it was best to go away as soon as I could. I understood that he was under tremendous stress and he was it seemed having trouble living a different life style. He was always an easygoing, overgrown frat boy and now had a small business, two young boys and a wife that  expected him to act like a grown up. 

So, I bailed out. I apologized for making him feel uncomfortable and put some miles between us. After about ten minutes I tried to send a more formal apology and explanation to him. I don't think it's okay to throw away old friends over small problems. I guess he didn't feel the same way. I was unfriended, blocked and couldn't even call him. I did snail mail a nice note to him but never got a reply. 

I'll admit that there are times that ending a relationship is necessary and appropriate. I have a friend right now who I think should pull the trigger, so to speak, before their significant other hurts them in ways they might never recover from. 

I do think that we don't value our relationships like we used to. We don't hold on to them like we really should. Yes, our friends and family will hurt us. They will do inexcusable things as well as things we do enjoy. That's just how things are. Sometimes our friends help get us through trying times and by gosh they ought to be able to rely on us to help them too.

Full Disclosure on the motivation for "part two"

I had a discussion with my oxygen delivery guy yesterday. I noticed the cigarette pack in his pocket and we got to talking. I mentioned, and he agreed that tobacco is like an old friend. Yes it treats us badly, like old friends sometimes do but it's always there for us when we need it. You know ? Like old friends are always there too.

The Capital "I" Project

 

The Capital I Project

Join me in an examination of just who and how the heck I am. As I look back on the path I took in becoming the person I am today it dawned on me that while I'm fairly comfortable in my skin, I doubt that my memories, impressions and assumptions about myself are even reasonably accurate.

I've started with a short list of things that I believe but also wonder about. President Kennedy's speech writer, Theodore Sorenson may have written, "Often wrong, never in doubt". I think that describes me perfectly. My mommy always said that she thought I'd rather be right than president. I think that's a perfect grasp of my nature too. But which one is right ?

Yes, I did call her and refer to her that way. I don't remember anybody, even in high school who thought, or at least mentioned that it was strange. Maybe some did and I just didn't care. I've always taken some pride or pleasure in doing my own thing, so to speak. Whatever was popular or conventional wisdom just didn't seem compelling to me.

And that's where I'll start my quest for myself. I place a great value on my own individuality. I even think it's great for other people and have often though less of folks who just follow the crowd rather than think about things for themselves. I am not trying to say it's okay to look down on anyone just being honest that I have.

So what am I conflicted about ? I'm willing to defend your right to be what I'd call wrong on any number of subjects. I've got your back if you want to be a Nazi, but I would happily punch you in the nose too. You have the right to be a bigot, anti-vaxxer, gun nut and the list goes on. Don't expect me to agree with you and do expect a heated argument but I figure if you aren't doing anything that hurts anyone, you can believe whatever floats your boat.

Also if I'm being honest, I do have guns, skip some vaccines and miss telling a lot of jokes. I sometimes forget my mask too, but I feel really guilty every time.

So, what say you - and please do. Should I share my quest for inner enlightenment or keep it to myself ? Do you have similar or conflicting thoughts that you can add ? Is the extra space in front of the question mark helpful or just distracting ? My "enquiring mind" wants to know

I got a little engagement on this as a facebook post. Not as much as I'd have liked, but thats okay too. Link provided if you care to see the comments over there.

The OP.

One (maybe last) more random thought on a move.

 

This has been an adventure to say the least. Taking chances all the way and dealing with difficulties pretty much all the time.

My Health challenges

The Heat

Razor thin budget

Questionable decisions

Bad roads

The list goes on but probably the worst part was a Portable Oxygen Concentrator that was trying to kill me.

I learned a few things along the way.

One of which was that twenty some odd bottles of water was probably not enough water. It was so hard though to keep hydrated. The (pos) POC. wouldn't let me get out out the truck and some people would rather walk right into a sign post rather that look at you when you ask them to do a good deed.

I learned that "Please help me" works better than "Hey, do me a favor"

I learned that a very low oxygen level may cause you to make poor choices of words. For example, "I'm disabled and require assistance with the gas pump" might have been better than, "Hey good looking, you want to come out here and pump this thing for me"

I learned that some, or at least one, younger looking peace officer preferred to be addressed with "good afternoon deputy"rather than " listen up kid".

Okay, I'm stretching my artistic licence a little with those last parts. It didn't go down exactly like that. Actually the clerk was a jerk who hung up when I asked IF I could get some help and I had to talk a deputy out of going in to arrest the clerk. He had been chatting with me and overheard the conversation.

I just had way too much time on the trip to imagine different ways things might have gone, say without the six hour waits for road service or the broken sway bar on the trailer maybe. I rather liked my alternative story so that's the one you got to read about.

Anyway, I'm here. I'm slowly getting settled in. I'll be saying good riddance to the evil oxygen machine at the UPS store in a little while and wish you all-

Happy Monday !

P.S. I did actually say "Hey Kid" to a cop at one point on the trip. I felt that his much older partner

needed a laugh and more importantly, that he'd have my back if need be. It worked out okay thank

goodness.

 

Well, we made it. For once I was ready for the welcome picture too. The phone was on my lap. Maps, and everything else turned off.

I was ready for my close-up, so to speak. Wouldn't it be funny if I-35 was like Sunset Blvd. and I didn't get that shot ?

Yep. That's right. Or maybe, nope, that's so wrong ? There wasn't a sign or a welcome center on that particular highway.

That's okay though. I'm home. Painter seems to have forgiven me and I'm starting to recover from my "adventure"

 

Random Thoughts on the way home.

 The next step was the bumpiest one. Not the most difficult but just the worst roads I've ever seen. The people were almost as bad.

The MS welcome sign was supposed to be after the whiney rant but blogging from the phone is confusing. Sorry about that...

Next up, a brief visit to Tennessee. It felt funny that I'd go from Tupelo to Memphis in the course of a day.  If you don't know why, leave a comment please.

I will say that the people in Tupelo were nice and the people on Memphis were just about exactly how I'd heard they would be. Granted, I stopped to secure a loose bit of the junk on the trailer in a "bad" part of town (is there any other kind in Memphis) but only one local tried to mug me.

 Next up was Arkansas. The folks there were mostly really nice and the roads were better except when they were really bad. The first part felt like I was in one of those bucking broncos and drunk. Other than that first fifty miles though they were great. Kudos to the guys who maintain them.

I missed the sign on the bridge over that big muddy river. It, like most of the state was beautiful. Here is a borrowed and badly processed version I found online. 

Well I never been to heaven
But I been to Oklahoma

It's really pretty and the people seems genuinely nice. I'd advise you to go a different way though if you

fillings and want to keep them. The road repairs are continuous and ridiculous. I almost decided to drive on the rumble strips just to smooth out the ride.

Almost home and at this point the phone never stopped. Are you here yet ? Are you there yet ? 

When will you be here ? etc...  This is also about the time that Painter decided to play dead. 

I couldn't get her to talk to me and she didn't budge when I poked her in the cage. I was hot, tired

short of breath and certain that I killed my kitty when we were almost there.

I pulled over in the nearly hundred degree heat. I was in direct sunlight  and rolled the windows up and 

opened the cage to see.  I guess it was an escape plan because just as soon as the cage door opened, she

 was ready to run.  I was so relieved that I couldn't even be mad at her. Also, I was concerned that I'd killed 

myself at the end of the trip too. It must have been a hundred and twenty in that darn truck. 

Moving right along

 So I left Fla and had only five more states to go through. First though, I had to negotiate Atlanta. If you've never done that there is a spot about half way where the signs and the map and even the signs they've painted on the street tell you to stay to the left. Then at the last possible moment your exit is on the right. 

When there are a half dozen lanes of aggressive drivers between you and your exit it can be quite a challenge. My truck knows the way by now though...

 

When I got to Alabama I completely missed the welcome sign. The rest stop was full of trucks that were backed up onto the highway. I'll just say that the interstate was in pretty good shape though the side roads were not. The folks I ran into were nice And the further north I went the lower the gas prices were.

 More to follow soon.

Yet another random thought.

Doing a little catching up here. I got into Kansas a few days ago. I'll probably condense a few of my posts and try to hit the high (and low) points in order.

The obligatory shot from the rear view mirror. There are many things I'll miss about living in The Resort. 

I left Florida and tried to get a picture of all the "Welcome to" signs along the way. I missed a few due to traffic or just not being ready and had to steal a few. This next one is legit though.

I'll continue later when my computer is charged up. Doing this on the phone is not too bad except for the ongoing battle with Otto, the auto-incorrector.

Random Thoughts on a Move - Part III

 

Not this morning but close enough...

This is an early one so it might be a little more random than most. 

I may have just seen my last Sebring Stunrise. With a little luck I'll be hitting the road tonight.

That's probably wishful thinking, but one should never give up hope.

The sunrises here are breath taking. The colors, the light hitting the bottom of the clouds and the

reflections off of Dinner Lake or the lakes farther away combine to deliver an amazing view.

Sunrise can have many different meanings. In my own experiences it's varied from -

OMG, did I just spend the whole night in that bar ?  Mostly, it's been more along the lines of,

Oh great, off to work again. There may have even been a few times when I wondered who the

heck is that, and is she going to get up and cook us a nice breakfast or what ? Lately I've watched

a lot of sunrises and thanked God for giving me another day and something way prettier than any

old rainbow I've ever seen. If that was the last one I get to see here, it was a good one.

I've probably experienced a few last times and I've sort of been  watching out for them. The last 

time I got to go to Publix, my last trip to the post office here and the last time I drove someone to 

the jail to visit a loved one were memorable. The last time I have to rewire trailer lights on that darn

truck - okay, that's probably just wishful thinking again. A few things I wont miss are palmetto bugs, 

love bugs and the toads. I wont miss the three am trips to take peeps to the hospital or the hundred 

mile round trip to pick them up from the detox center. I will not miss the hundred plus mile trip to

the VA hospital. Those five or six hour, fifty dollar trips will be replace with a twenty minute run to

Wichita ! 

Well, I'm wasting daylight and it's only about eighty degrees so, back to work for me. I'm going

to try to get the bikes loaded on the trailer before the rain starts. Now if I can only find one or two 

guys to help, I'll be in good shape.

Random Thoughts Part Two

                   Random Thought Number Two 

As I get closer to leaving there is less and less time for contemplation. On top of an extensive "To-Do" list there is still the need to deal with the mundane daily duties.

Things like showering, dishes and garbage take time and effort. Living with COPD often means that just those things alone are a struggle and I'm sometimes thrilled that I've done those AND swept the darn floor too.

So, yesterday I had two appts. at the VA. This is a big deal as it's at least a two hour trip each way. I checked my tires and oil and stuff the night before and set the garbage out so as to make it easy to head out in the morning. I put the bag on the hood of the truck and drove by the dumpster on the way out.

It all went according to plan. I took plenty of oxygen tanks and hopped in the truck feeling optimistic that the day would go well. Indeed it mostly did except for a wrong turn that made me a little late. I called and let them know and they implied that it might be a big problem. GASP - anxiety level through the roof !!!

I'm going to miss those guys at Bay Pines VA. The shuttle driver picked me up in about a minute and took me to the entrance. Then the son of a gun wheeled me inside ??? right up to the desk !!! The clinic people seemed delighted to see me. They took me in so quick I had pinch myself. 

But I digress...

Sebring and to an even greater extent Sebring Resort is one of those special places that doesn't leave those who live here unchanged. I'm certain that being here saved my life and possibly my sanity, but it almost killed me in different ways and more than a few times. The folks here are mostly incredibly sweet and nice and of course there are plenty who do not fit into either of those categories.

I'd say that this place has left a mark on me. 
Okay, several marks - lol
All in all I'd say the good marks will last and the bad ones are at worst, reasonably worthwhile learning opportunities. At best, the bad ones have been good for a chuckle or two, many giggles and several good strong belly laughs. 
The picture below is from yesterday morning. It's certainly a mark of the less that good kind but not one that will last except in a giggle and this blog post.
Can you guess what it is ?
Hint: Yes that's the hood of my truck.

The tendency to think of this as a typical "mark" of living here is tempting. But seriously, these marks wash right off and life is too short to take everything all that seriously, right ?

If you don't know what it is I'll drop the answer below.

Give up ?

It's  sʞɔɐɹʇ ʇoƃƃɐW 😱😎🤣

Leaving Sebring Resort

                        Leaving The Resort

This old post card, like this place

 has seen better days. 

When I got here I did a series of videos called 

"Random Thoughts On A Divorce"

This blogpost begins with - Random Thoughts on Leaving Sebring Resort.

Perhaps it too will be the first in a series...

I can't ever remember wanting to leave anywhere before.

I've been eager to go somewhere but not so much to leave somewhere.

There have been places where I lived that didn't suit me perfectly. 

The climate - either political or the weather can put me off, it's true.

Oddly enough, those things are pretty tolerable here.

The traffic isn't bad and the folks here are generally very nice.

Not on Facebook of course but in Meet Space even the worst of them are cool(ish).

I live on a beautiful lake with virtually my own private beach.

I came here hurt and confused and heavy in heart mind and body.

I was at a low point in my life and in need of some place to heal myself.

I did that here.

I got distracted from my miserable condition by accepting a job.

I lost weight, got stronger, forgot to be sad and began an adventure of sorts.

I met and got involved with a whole bunch of really interesting people. 

I'm not going to go into the reasons I feel like I want to get away.

Maybe when I'm away for a while I can put it all into a reasonable frame 

of reference or perspective.

For the moment though I'll just try to convince myself that I'm more eager to go somewhere else than I am to just leave here. 

A Prickly Point About Piney Point

 

Let's go to the beach !

There's a mess getting worse right now in the middle of Florida.  Phosphate mining leaves a mess behind. The toxic waste is dumped into vast retention ponds and forgotten about.  When I say vast I'm not kidding. I always wondered what was behind the dike as I drove to Tampa. Miles and miles of dikes and I never knew I was just yards away from a potential flood of toxic waste.

I've noticed one other thing out on that road lately.  The miles of cows and pastures with only the occasional prison or park to break up the monotony are now being punctuated by stoplights. Yeah, stoplights to mark the gated entrances of the new developments. So many new developments and I don't even want to think about that much traffic on a two lane country road.

Now you might think that a big toxic waste spill would make it harder to sell Mc-mansions.  That might indeed slow things down, but only for a while. The mandatory evacuations and closing the only road to the west coast must be difficult for those who live there. The new people will forget  soon enough or flip their houses and move on. Once the leaks get plugged it will be ancient history to the sales people in the new developments. 

Of course the land value in the area will suffer. Maybe not as much as Tampa Bay will,  if millions of gallons of this stuff gets flushed into the bay, but the prices will come down. The land for the next development will cost a whole lot less than the last one.

*** update here *** Change that "if" part above.  They started sending the nasty stuff into the bay immediately. Change the millions part too. Sorry I was off a bit. Not by a decimal point but a couple of them. I believe so far they have sent somewhere around 300 million gallons into the bay.

Cleaning up the mess wont fix the problem. Mostly what that does it will let some people get even more rich. Developers get cheaper land prices and clean-ups don't come cheap. It will get a fix of some sort and the mess will get remediated but the problem will still be there. 

The obvious  problem are the massive ponds. They are prone to problems with leakage due to age and construction details.  Another breach is inevitable. This isn't even the first one since the present owner bought the property.  You might ask the obvious question, why would you want to buy a massive pool of toxic water anyway ?  That question covers up a more important one though.  Just like the toxic waste water covers the much more toxic and radioactive waste underneath the water ?

The obvious answer is money. The best kind of money. Other peoples money. The owner of a hedge fund used six million dollars of investors capital to buy the land. With the land as capital he secured a seventeen million dollar loan. When the darn thing leaked last time he used the investors money to buy enough time to declare bankruptcy. Now state is going to pay for this repair. That stinks just about as bad as the air in Tampa once the algae starts blooming. 

 Now that covers everything I think I know up to now. Perhaps my cynical take on the developers and land values was even sort of a stretch. But the thing that worries me isn't the certainty that this wont be the last leak. It's probable even that the next one or the one after will involve a massive breach that sucks the radioactive stuff out into environment. My concern is that on rare occasions, come in like the ones in the 1920s, all the ponds and all the toxins and all the radioactive waste will sweep across half the state like a radioactive squeegee.  If a hurricane can blow Lake Okeechobee half way to the Gold Coast I'd say it's almost certain that one will do the same with these "retention" ponds. 

Imagine this with radioactive sludge !