Showers

If you read my previous post, you know about the trip to Minneapolis. Well an interesting feature of that trip was the fact that water fell from those big gray things in the sky on a continual basis from just East of Amarillo until we were in Iowa! For the geographically challenged, that is approximately 800 miles, 14 hours, and took us through part of Texas, all of Oklahoma, all of Kansas, all of Missouri, and part of Iowa. We don't do rain in Tucson. Water is something that has to be pumped out of the ground. We didn't see the sun from the time we left Gallup, NM until Monday morning when we were at Amy's new home in Minneapolis. This is not good for an old fat guy.

Showers Part II: Monday evening after some guys from the Elder's quorum came over and unloaded the U-Haul (actually they carried the stuff into the house, I handed them each item from the truck), I figured it would be a grand idea to take a shower since Amy kept telling me I stank to high heaven. Perhaps she was correct since I had been wearing the same clothes since Friday morning. Amy had purchased a shower curtain that morning and had installed it as she unpacked all her bathroom accouterments. She has one of those telephone looking shower thingies that I like but she had no tools to install it and the people upstairs were asleep so we couldn't borrow tools. Alas, I would have to use a regular shower head but I have suffered worse things in my long life. The absolute worst thing about a regular shower head is getting that blast of frigid water when you switch from tub to shower. When I become rich and famous, I'll hire someone to do that for me. After suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous cold water, I began to hose off three days worth of encrusted filth that would have left a ring around Lake Superior. It felt magnificent! I am a simple man with simple tastes. I like a nice, easy bar of soap. Alas again, this is a woman's shower/tub with 37 different bottles, tubes, scrapers, razors and nothing even rsembling a bar of soap. So I started reading the labels to see what I could find and finally came up with Dove Exfoliating Body Wash. I had a body that needed washing and doves are kind of cool pigeon looking things, so what could possibly go wrong? Exfoliating evidently means adding parakeet gravel so as to abrade the top layer of one's epidurmis into oblivion. I should have used sand. With no rubber no-skid thing in the tub and no telephone thingie, I was hesitant to stand on one foot lest I fall and break a hip, so I decided to sit on the edge of the tub to rinse my feet. Did I tell you it is mid-November and I am in MiniWhatTheCrapolis, Minnesota? Yes, the edge of the tub was coolish. Polar icecap coolish. Now I know why I live in Tucson and have my very own shower with a telephone thingie shower head.

Travlin' Man

It all started when my much older sister (Lorna) was talking about her annual pilgrimage to Idaho for the Potter (my mom's maiden name) family reunion in Lava Hot Springs. I went with her two years ago when it coincided with my 40-year high school reunion and had so much fun being her chauffeur that I went with her again last year for our brother's birthday. Too bad I couldn't afford the airfare to Boise. But wait! For less than the price of a ticket for one, we could rent a car and drive there and back so we did. A little over 2,000 miles later, we had had a great and scary time (I'll write about that later). That was at the end of June, In August we (Babs and I) flew to Nashville and spent two weeks visiting our kids in Huntsville, AL and Clarksville, TN. Three, yes three days after we got home I drove with Dan in his un-airconditioned Tracker the 1600 miles to Melissa and Josh's place in Huntsville, then flew home. Exactly one month later (Sept 14th) I flew to Nashville and drove BACK with Dan. Now, two months after that (Nov 14th) I drove a U-Haul truck with all of Amy's belongings and her SUV in tow on a car carrier to Mineapolis, MN to the tune of another 1800 miles! I've driven I-40 so much that people are starting to recognize me along the way. It's like Norm going into Cheers... "RON, how have you been?" "Haven't seen you for a couple of months." "Everything OK?" My butt may never be the same. I can hardly wait to see where and how far I'll be driving come Feb 14th.