My partner Jim, and Ned Bedinger, struck a deal. Ned gets Panama Or Bust and we found a new friend. It made for an auspicious day when Jim sold his rig. It was actually more than a rig, it was his home for nine years. And, not without some emotion about letting go, he said: “I’m homeless!” I understand the feeling. I too was temporarily homeless at one time.
Later this morning, I have guests from Hardwood, Michigan arriving.
I’ve blogged about them before, but just for an update, let me explain why this unusual group of visitors are headed my way.
My house burned to the ground in 1946 or 47. My mother was left with the clothes on her back but without shoes on her feet. My dad was cutting pulp for the paper mills and the house was consumed before he was able to reach it. My older brother, sister, and I were in school when it burned. Two younger brothers were home with my mom. No one was injured in the fire.
It was catastrophic to have the school bus driver leave us at the crossroads that day with nothing but a spiral of smoke to go home to.
In rural Hardwood, our closest neighbor, the Robinson family, was adjacent to the bus stop. In the opposite direction, about 1/4 mile away, was the Cousineau farm.
My two chums, Pat Robinson and Bernice Cousineau were at the bus stop with us. We spent that first homeless night with the Cousineau family.
With no house, we moved to a friend’s camp, then a very tiny house with a renovated chicken coop that served as a boys bedroom. Within a few weeks we moved out of Hardwood to Iron Mountain where my dad got a job at the Ford Plant.
Except for one brief encounter, I never saw my childhood friends, Pat and Bernice again.
Tomorrow, after a lapse of over 60 years, Pat Robinson Whitfield, and her husband Richard; Bernice Cousineau Patrick and her sister Marie Cousineau Gaber will arrive at Sacramento Airport for there first visit to California. We had had no contact over these intervening years until a phone call out of the blue last year. I was amazed they managed to run me down after so many years.
Every picture our family had was burned in that fire. They’ve promised to bring some photos. Old friends found. You will meet them on this page as we renew a lifetime of changes in the weeks ahead. Homelessness and friendship is something you never forget.

This is my E-GO Cycle. Its basically a battery operated scooter. It takes you shopping and to the library and back. It has a range of 48 miles with the extra battery. It’s highway legal if you register it. Quite a nifty machine.
My main transportation is a 2001 Prius. I bought the first one in the state. My dealership ordered it on-line at midnight for delivery to their shop July 11th of 2000. The first Prius’ came from Japan and you had to buy then sight unseen. No test drive. You could choose from three colors but you had no guarantee you’d get what you chose. No choice of what was in them, either.
You had to be pretty sure you wanted one to get one. I got my picture in the Modesto Bee and a couple gifts from Toyota. But, the biggest gift has been all these years of great mileage.
Living in the foothills, my average mileage is 45.6 in the winter and 47.2 in the summer. If I stay in the valley, I’ve gotten 52 miles per gallon out of a tank of gas.
Not bad, sonny!
Of course, my Prius is a hybrid. You still have to buy gas and have oil changes and belts.
I also owned a 1994 Chevy Pick-up plug in electric. It was fun to drive and show off. I tried loading pictures from my old Mac and couldn’t get them to transfer properly. It had 24 batteries under the pick-up bed. It came from McClellan Air Force Base and was a government experiment. The engine was made by Hughes Aircraft and looked like an airplane engine. Everyone loved it. Such fun. I’m sorry I sold it, but I didn’t have garage space to keep it and the batteries, supposedly good for 8 years, were still going after 13. Those last couple years, it wouldn’t make it uphill and my range became extremely limited. Even so, a classic with all the original decals on it.
I’m a devoted greenie and I know a lot of people doubt that electric cars are the wave of the future, and green technology won’t work, I’d like to pass on a note from rachel@greenoptions.com and Karen Pease from gas2.org/. Its all about the new generation of green cars and fuels. Also, a story on their site about Jay Leno’s new show on NBC. He will be putting guests in an electric car.
So, why did I buy a Terra that gets about 6.5 miles to the gallon?
OUCH!
I’m still in a daze.
And, the super expensive rig I was drooling over, tango, to answer your question, is a Road Trek. Oh my. If only it were green, I’d snap one up in a minute and sell the new gas hog.
When will manufacturers make a green motor home, like a turbo diesel or something?

WAITING!!!

It was somewhat unusual to take delivery on the new motor home in July and finally get to inspect it and drive it yesterday, 09-09-09.
La Mesa RV service people showed us how every little doodad in the thing worked, then we waited while they fixed a broken rivet on the exhaust and adjusted the parking brakes. The tech went through and replaced some screws, tightened stuff, showed us how to remove the radio and television, checked the air conditioning and so, on. Motorhomes are fairly complicated equipment and I have a new appreciation for Jim’s knowledge, knowing what questions to ask, and seeing to it that all was taken care of adequately. Quite an all day process. We boondocked at Camping World where we proceeded to pick up a lot of handy built-in type gadgets, and arrived back in Murphys about 3 p.m. About a 200 mile trip. YIKES! Since I drive a Prius, its hard to accept the low mileage these beauties get. We are going to put up a sign, GAS POOR BUT HAPPY!
The test run was a success. The Fleetwood Terra performed very well climbing these hills and we’ll be on the road again after Christmas.
(That is supposed to be a picture of Jim above, but I really wanted to show the compact rig behind him that I was drooling over. Don’t tell!)

The first alteration to the new motor home was relocating the toilet paper roll in a more convenient place. I’m a bit reluctant to bring up the homely subject of toilet paper again, but, here goes…

I once laughed at the Ann Landers column when she discussed the proper way, according to her readers, to hang the roll. Letters flew in with top vs. bottom rollers. There have been divorces over the correct or incorrect, depending on your point of view, way to hang toilet paper.
Egads! Is there anything more earthshaking going on than toilet paper?

But, here is a sample from my email:

And now, I have a confession to make. I’ve never even told my kids this elucidating information. When I got married, my husband informed me he had to have the toilet paper roll from the bottom. He couldn’t stand it any other way. The marriage lasted 40 years, all because of toilet paper.
So, there you have it. I’m a bottom roller and Jim’s a top roller. So, whoever changes the roll governs. We gotta keep the peace in the family. And this, I swear, is the last word on the subject.
LOL

Brice Station Winery owner, Stu Mast hoists a glass at the end of a long, busy weekend.
His friend, Fred, and father-in-law Paul Quyle helped drink up the half used bottles after a busy day in the tasting room. In fact, Delores Quyle-Mast was still serving customers as the rest of us finished off the opened reds. As Fred proclaimed: “its a necessary job, somebody has to do it.”
Umm, yes, lovely job. I was only too glad to help.
However, it didn’t make me delusional. Fred claims he has exray vision. His only problem, he doesn’t want to see that well. He is tired of looking at bones and he is trying to refine his exray vision to just seeing through clothing.
I’m for thinking he may be taking this job too seriously.

Pam Quyle seemed to think so,too.
But, I don’t know…that exray vision thing…Oh, that I could somehow…

Well, never mind. What I do know is, the wines at Brice Station are non pariel. (The 2005 Merlot) The company is great; Pam’s pottery across from the tasting room makes Brice Station a more interesting stop. When you are wine tasting don’t miss it, four miles above Murphys.  Wine Country Calaveras
And a good time was had by all!

On the road for three months? I’ve finally struggled through all the mail. The bag above is white paper recycle. Useless, waste of paper. I’ve dutifully replied to a round of senders, do not mail. I can’t believe my request to be on the do-not-mail list has run out? I’ve quite forgotten how it works.

Once I reduced the junk, this is what I had left. One beer tray of magazines and a pile of things to attend to.
I believe computers will streamline communications. Though, in my Onearth Magazine, I just read that the carbon footprint for your cyber mail service is horrendous, just ridding us of spam.
Can we ever win?

My place is a Certified Wildlife Habitat. When I first signed up with the National Wildlife Federation, I didn’t think it would make much difference in the amount of wildlife I see. I was wrong. Its the water.
I have a pond with enough length that the bats can swoop and scoop. It contains a big rock for smaller animals, and a board to crawl out if something goes wrong.
Deer, raccoons, squirrels, foxes, skunks, and birds are frequent visitors. Cougars and coyotes come occasionally.

For lizards, a shallow pot bottom with a few rocks works well. They require a shallow vessel without slippery sides, otherwise they drink and drown.

I leave a brush pile and long grasses along the fences here and there so quail and small critters can hide as they move from one place to another.

Western bluebirds have a special house on my greenhouse. I was home in the spring and saw it full. My butterfly house has yet to surprise me.

I had no idea how thirsty the animals are in this hot climate and I appreciate their presence on my property. We no longer spray, not even for ants. We use diatomaceous earth if they get pesty.
When I first signed up, I saw bag worms in my walnut tree and I thought about getting out the spray. Soon, a cyclone of wasps broke through the bag and ate every last worm.

The squirrels increased in such numbers that I could not harvest one walnut. They got every last one from two trees. I tried coyote pee in dog hair, rubber snakes in the trees, strategically placed owls, (which worked wonders to keep the jays out of my almonds and peaches) but the squirrels kept a’coming. Finally, after about three years, the hawks came in and killed most of the squirrels. Nature asserts itself when you give it a chance.
To create a wildlife habitat you promise not to use insecticides, herbicides and to provide water for the critters.
I don’t get to see the critters very often and when they come, by the time you get out the camera, they flit away. Deer are the least shy and often come around during the day. Every now and then….you get a decent shot.

Moving from one motor home to the other has been all work and no play.
Last night, my friend Karen came to the rescue and invited Jim and I for a light dinner. One of the nice things about being on the road is coming home and reacquainting with friends and family.
Karen usually makes my favorite, home made apple pie for dessert. This time she surprised me and made a peach pie instead. She is a renowned pie baker.
It looks as though we enjoyed the wine best, but its not true. Conversation is the best part of the dinner. Food, wine and friends. Unbeatable!

I remember telling a Michigan cousin of mine that in California, when you hang your clothing on the line, by the time you get to the end of the line, the first items you hung are dry. She didn’t believe me. It was eighty-eight degrees at 7:30 in the morning, yesterday. It was that kind of day.
Unloading the motorhome meant it was time to wash everything, blankets, towels, sheets, all the heavy stuff along with the regular laundry. It seemed a sacrilege to add more heat to the atmosphere when I still have my “solar dryer”.
In Portugal, women, whether they have automatic dryers or not, love to hang their wash on the line. You might say that folks today are missing something without the old clothesline in the back yard. Heck, a lot of people don’t even have back yards.
As a kid in Michigan, my mom hung out the clothes while talking to the neighbor over the fence, catching up on the neighborhood gossip.
I would hand her items to hang and soon learned that towels go with towels. If hard pressed for space, they could double with the sheets, where the fabric dipped in the middle. She taught me that unmentionables are hung on the middle line where no one from the alley could see them.
In winter, clothing froze into boards and had to be removed and laid over indoor dowel dryers to finish the process.
The laundry kind of typified who you were in the world. Fancy slips or plain? A flowery blouse or go-to-church white? Overalls and work shirts? Or white shirts and slacks?
Then, it was sprinkling and ironing all those shirts and blouses.
My mother’s old wringer washer did duty until 1954 when she got a Spindryer. What a marvelous invention. It washed much like any electrified agitating washer, but then the clothing was transferred to a second, smaller tub that spun the water out with centrifugal force. Then, it was a quick-dry on the line and fold and iron time.
We had migrated to California by then and the old formality of days gone by made the job easier. No white shirts for my brothers. T-shirts instead. Then polyester came into vogue and ironing was nearly eliminated. And, an automatic dryer almost eliminated the clothes line.
My job was folding mountains of clothes while listening to the radio.
I don’t miss it one bit.
Even so, the satisfying smell of freshly laundered sheets, taken down from the line, folded neatly into a square brings back a lot of crazy memories of backyard washday.