Organizing and catching up

Our lives have continued to be full of organizational and catch-up issues. While I wrote blogs and culled our photos for the photo albums, Chelsea set up our Traveling Roses Facebook page and put photos in our blogs.

I squeezed in time to work on deleting programs, photos, and music from my laptop, hoping to improve the functioning before calling in James. Then I tackled learning more about my Droid 3 and QuickOffice.

For many months now I’ve used the QuickOffice app on my Droid to take notes when I’m in the field. That part worked well, in fact I love having it, but when I transferred the documents to my laptop I ran into some snags. That took some looking around on my phone and consulting with Chelsea before I finally discovered it wasn’t my failure to understand, it was the limitations of the app.

I’m happy to report that I solved the phone-to-computer transfers of photos and documents, I know where to find everything on the phone (I’ve discovered all the little hiding places), and now I know my limits for what I can expect instead of being frustrated. That’s a very good thing.
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Chelsea had been having problems for almost two years with settings on her laptop. She’d tried any number of avenues looking for help. She finally stripped her hard drive and reinstalled her operating system, only to discover she couldn’t get drivers for her internet, audio, and video. Her wireless had gone out too.

We wrote to James Gayle at Duck Capital Computers, who came through like a champ. In short order he had fixed Chelsea’s wireless, audio, internet and video drivers, and tweaked a couple of other annoying things.

Not only did he clean that all up and get Chelsea’s computer humming along perfectly, James also copied all our data off two heavy old hard drives to his hard drive. We’d been carrying those hard drives around since Delray Beach in February, trying to figure out a way to get that data off.

We weren’t about to give up easily on it, as they had photos we couldn’t replace, but wow, was it annoying to carry that weight and bulk around!
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The following morning in the Super-8 motel was heavenly. Though I was sliding downhill fast, Chelsea came to the rescue and headed out to the breakfast bar, bringing back breakfast goodies. Combined with the juice from the night before, we had a feast.

We moved slowly after breakfast, getting things ready for our ride to Gueydan.

Seeing Kenneth and Krisy was an absolute delight. They are both low-key, and Kenneth in particular has a completely irreverent and irrepressible sense of humor. It was just what we needed.

Krisy and Kenneth were amazed at our stories, laughing along with us. They were suitably impressed to hear that Krisy was only the second woman we’d spoken with in four months. We told them we had felt like little bits of estrogen floating in a sea of testosterone for the last few months.
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Twenty minutes down the road we met up with Sherry Bell and her silver Dodge minivan. Chelsea, Pat and I worked like well-oiled machine, shifting the bikes and gear in under five minutes. After quick and heartfelt goodbye hugs with Pat, Chelsea and I settled into the middle two seats in back with our gear and bikes behind us. Sherry’s deliveries and personal items rode shotgun in the front seat next to her.

Eleven hours later, tired almost beyond caring, but quietly pleased with the direction things were heading, we sank in bone-deep relief onto the beds of a Super-8 motel in Shreveport, Louisiana.

I had driven a hundred sixty miles in the first three hours. We’d survived the battle of the dueling navigation systems. We’d driven another eleven hours, the first five hours with no break. We’d met a wonderful new friend. We’d had complete strangers be very kind to us.

Best of all, we laughed more from Atlanta to Shreveport, deep belly laughs, laughs that just took us over, than we’d laughed in far too long.

Sherry started it.
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Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day. We wanted to get the makings of a car bomb, Guinness and Baileys, but it was way too problematic, so we settled for wearing our St. Pat’s Day earrings that Alex’s girlfriend Amanda had given us two years before.

We felt very festive! Thank you again, Amanda Kincade!

We cycled madly home from the Museum, changed faster than two winks, and flew over to Erika’s next door.

To celebrate Erika’s daughter’s seventeenth birthday, “the girls” were heading out to Lafayette for ear piercing and a Chinese buffet. After we got a tour of Erika’s house and appreciated all the changes she’s made over the prior few months, Erika collected Amanda (her daughter), Megan (her son’s girlfriend, now living with them), and met us in the car.

First stop was Wal-Mart for Megan and Amanda’s ear piercing. While Chelsea captured it on film, I slipped off to find packing tape and trail mix for our imminent trip to South Carolina. I was back for the main event, though, watching as the earrings were punched into the ears. We were very honored to be a part of the process!!
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It’s time to back up now and fill you in on an ongoing thread that was about to change our lives. In November last year, an old friend of mine looked me up online and got in touch with me.

I’d only known him for three years, thirty-four years ago, but it was a memorable relationship.

He is now living in a small town in northwestern South Carolina, but had a condo in Daytona Beach, FL. After a bit of exchanging emails back and forth, Pat decided to come down from Daytona and visit us for a day in late December or early January.

Chelsea and I had a great time. It was peaceful and though we should have been packing, it was nice to have a change of pace and think about something besides downsizing.

We kept in touch over the next weeks and months. Pat kept encouraging us to come up to South Carolina, telling us we could go sailing, whitewater rafting, go on motorcycle rides on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and generally de-stress in a gorgeous environment.

It sounded pretty darn good to us.
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Our Only Bike Ride

Since we’d not been riding for a couple of months, we spent time in Gueydan gradually getting the bikes ready. We’d also ordered a pair of Ortlieb waterproof front handlebar bags.

Chelsea had eventually figured out how to install them, while dealing with those appallingly awful Ortlieb instructions and fighting off hordes of mosquitoes. We were dying to ride with the new bags (they were wonderful!).

Starting way back in Delray Chelsea and I began having severe sleep disturbances, resulting from overwork and too much time-deadline stress.

No matter what we’d do, we’d lie awake until three or four in the morning, but still awaken early. The lack of sleep made things much worse.
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Our first day back in circulation was a memorable seven-hour endurance marathon to Lafayette with Kenneth and Krisy. What we’d expected to be a quick trip to Wal-Mart turned into visiting eye doctors, health food stores, grocery stores, beauty supply shops, friends in hospital, and last but not least, Wal-Mart.

Krisy drove most of the trip as Kenneth still had dilated eyes from his doctor visit at our first stop. On the road home at last, well after dark, Krisy looked in the rearview mirror and laughed good-naturedly when she discovered we were tired. “Didn’t anyone tell y’all about my trips? Oh yeah, they loooong trips!”

After a much-needed rest and recovery day, we managed to visit Jane Hair mid-week for an hour or more at the Gueydan Museum, just long enough for big hugs and to quickly catch up on the “big picture” of the last few years.

After promising Jane a return visit, we popped into Patti’s Book Nook to see Jamie Gayle. Jamie had been writing us for nearly two weeks, ever since he’d heard we were back in town, but we were in no condition to do much of anything, so we kept rescheduling.
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It took two full weeks before we were in circulation again.

Weather Shocks

Having spent months in gorgeous, stable eighty-degree weather in South Florida, we suddenly had rapidly fluctuating weather, frequently going from warm spring-like days to bitter-cold and windy days overnight, then back again. It wreaked havoc with us, given how tired we were.

Privacy Fishbowl

Back in Delray we often joked that our social life was Craigslist and FreeCycle, except for Alex’s Improv nights in our last few months. Especially towards the end, we saw very few people, we did only errands, and even errands were pretty infrequent until the last mad frantic days.

The sudden plunge from our situation in Delray, where we were very private, almost secluded, to being in the center of activity with no privacy except in the trailer, was another shock to our systems.
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By the time we got back to Gueydan that Mardi Gras night, we needed to be alone. We’d been sleeping in living rooms and spare bedrooms for five days, with incredibly on-the-go days and very little sleep.

So as tempting as it was to take the comfy bed in the house at Kenneth and Heuetta’s, we opted for setting up the trailer. It had a private bathroom, a heater, a kitchen sink, a hot plate, a bedroom with wall-to-wall mattresses and clean sheets. What more could we want?

I was so whupped that all I wanted to do was sit, preferably in total silence with a drink in my hand and a book in my lap. Chelsea on the other hand was resolutely determined to “get things put away”.

I simply couldn’t cope, so I did my level best to ignore her ongoing mutterings and mumblings and questions.
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