March 8, 2011

When the movers arrived the big question became would all our stuff fit into the storage unit in San Luis Obispo plus the garage we’d rented in Morro Bay. We’d moved out of the big house in Cambria in September and most of our possessions were in SLO. So where did all this other stuff come from? We’d even sold or donated various items in the rental house. Still it was a down-to-the-wire proposition. (Oh crap, a cliche, and I really don’t want to get into a rewrite here.) The guys unloaded at Morro Bay and then it was on to SLO; they had to call in a supervisor but stuffed the rest of the stuff in. Barely.

That was only the tip of the iceberg. (Uh oh.) Unbeknownst to us, the movers had packed some of our landlady’s art. We discovered this when we started moving her things back in from the garage. So we left on Tuesday the 8th shouldering a burden of guilt and shame. Well, that might be overstating it. But there it is.

We left her a note: go to my www.cambriacreations.com website, select a print and I’d do up a nice 24 x 36 photo-on-canvas for her. And in a year when we get back and unpack, we’ll find her picture or pictures and send them along.

Wait. We’re not even on the road yet. In order to be mobile when we reach different places, we bought a device to haul Joy’s car. Rvers call them dinghy’s—just like what yachters call the little boats they trail behind. We hadn’t had great luck with this Kartote. Still, I hooked up the thing to our intrepid RV (we still haven’t named it) and off we went to Morro Bay to unload yet more stuff. (Joy drove down in the Avalon as she needed to gas up.)

That done, we tried to load the Avalon onto the dinghy. As in the past, this proved a disaster, again mashing part of Joy’s front bumper. It’s the dinghy, not me, I swear. Finally, we said screw it and tried to donate the damned Kartote to the thrift shop that happed to be conveniently across the alley. When they couldn’t get hold of the right person, we prevailed upon the wonderful, friendly, helpful and unsuspecting fellow who’d rented us the garage to put it up for sale and split the profits with us. As he said, he’d expected to maybe hear from us that we were half way across the country—not, could you sell this?

So we drove to LA that way, me in the RV, Joy in the Avalon....We arrived in time for rush hour, which is not called that any more. In LA, people refer to “drive time.” It’s an interesting “repurposing” of the words, another phrase I enjoy. Wait, wait, it wasn't what I'd think of as normal rush hour because we didn't arrive in the area until after dark and at the RV park, after some last minute wrong turns, about 8:30pm. 

The guard at the gate assured us that we wouldn't hear the planes taking off from LAX (the park is kind of at the end of one of the runways...) “once you’re inside.” As I hooked up our RV to the sewer and the planes roared off overhead, I wondered if that could be true, and was too tired to care.

March 10, 2011
We worried a lot about getting Joy to the hospital at 7 and she came up with the solution; she'd stay overnight at a nearby hotel then take a taxi to UCLA.  I'd join her in pre-op and then later in recovery. And what about Dandy? Joy worried more about that than her surgery. I eventually took him with me and walked him in between trips up to see Joy. The pre-op personnel were wonderful, and Joy's attitude great. She joked with the two anethetheologists that "these drugs are better than the '60s," and whatever they were put her out pretty quickly. Hours later I joined Joy in the recovery room. As a sidebar, I should say that the personnel in surgery who I met were fantastic and although I'd not met Dr. Chang, who performed Joy's surgery, before she talked with me afterwards I was impressed.

March 12, 2011

Several days later. Joy’s recuperating in the RV and we’re both getting used to living in this tiny space, realizing that we brought along too much of this and too little of that. There's not much hanging space, or storage space so trying to keep order is not easy. The laundry bag has grown beyond its normal limits, and soon make seek to acquire additional territory. Perhaps a colony or two will suffice.

The RV park is run by the County of Los Angeles and “full hookup” here means something different than it does at private RV parks. There is no wi-fi network to connect to or cable tv to plug into. Our unit has a built in antenna and we are able to pull in several channels, two in English, the bulk of them in Spanish, the others in Japanese and Korean. This is LA after all. We didn’t want to pop for a satellite unit, but may have to. The bathrooms here are interesting also. The toilet paper is, I swear, less than one layer thick and it seems as if you have to use a chunk of the roll each time. Economy. Same for the showers. There are no handles. Instead, you push in a button where the handle should be and the water comes out...for a few seconds. No kidding. I shouted over to the stall next to me, where I heard the water running constantly, “What’s the trick to keep the water going?” Back came: “Take someone in with you, mate,” in a thick Australian accent. The trick actually is to use the handicap shower stall. There’s a handle there, and the water will run a bit longer, with occasion elbow nudges.

March 15, 2011

I was beginning to wonder why the hell I was writing this, thinking who would want to know what was going on anyway and why would I want to record it. Nothing going on. Haven’t met anyone interesting. Sticking around the RV. Watching people ride by on their bikes a few feet in front of us on the bike path. Periodic walks with Dandy for the pee and poop patrol. Pictures here and there.

Well, there has been some excitement. The day of the horrible earthquake in Japan Joy’s son Andy came knocking at our door. “Do you know about the tsunami warning? For twenty minutes from now! I’ve been phoning you!” We’d had our phones off, and of course no TV since, well, I explained that. Quick decision. We decided to drive the car to higher ground rather than unhook the RV. “You’ve got insurance, right?” “Right.” So that’s what we did, and joined a number of Angelenos on the bluff above our beach RV park to see if a possible 4-6 foot wave might come in. No damage here, but some across the waters in Catalina....

Last night a bevy of identical Rvs pulled into the park, words emblazoned on their sides. “Have you heard the awesome news, the end of the world is coming. May 21, 2011 is the beginning. The Bible guarantees it.” There’s more to it, including what looks like the international road sign circle with the red line through it—but in the center of that is the year 2012, presumably to let us know that the Mayans did not have it right, or that the misinterpretations of the Mayans, rather, did not have it right. Oi.

Today I met a guy who clearly was not an Rver, I surmised, because of the large backpack on the bench and the bike. No fancy gears. I didn’t ask how he got in. “It’s a Schwinn from, like 1969. I ground the kick stand off. Do that with all my Schwinns.” He and his wife, it turns out, started out on their bikes from San Diego — “We kind of live around, get to meet people.” They’re heading north from here. “We’ll maybe catch the train in Ventura, that’s where it comes in at the coast, could get it in downtown in LA, but I don’t like that. I was born in the state, fifty-two years, and whenever I get away from the coast it’s trouble.”