Takin' it in Stride

We returned to the River House from our trip to Texas at 1:30 am Friday morning, June 27, 2008. The house was still there, the cats were ok (although they thought they were starving. we knew better because the cat sitter had been there the night before and left them with fresh water and food), and all seemed well.

We let the cats sleep with us that night to keep them quiet and got a pretty good nights sleep.

Friday was spent doing errands, unpacking, catching up with mail and generally having a quiet day.

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Until 6:30 Friday evening. We had a pretty active thunder storm with about 1.5 inches of rain and lots of wind that afternoon. Frank took a nap during the storm and slept through the thunder and woke up to an explosion. At the same time the power went out. EJ immediately called JEA to report the problem. Suspecting the same problem we always have causing power outages, a blown fuse on one of the power poles, we walked up to check it out.

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The first thing we found was a concrete power pole broken off about 2/3rds of the way up.

Then we found the cause. A large limb, about 18 inches thick, had fallen on top of the power lines. Instead of pulling the lines out of the pole, it broke the pole.

All the neighbors in the affected area gathered around and inspected the damage. Traffic couldn't get through because the limb was blocking the road. With the help of one of the neighbors we managed to move enough branches and pieces to open up one side of the road.

Knowing that there was no way JEA was going to get this fixed quickly, Frank started the generator so we could have air conditioning, lights, refrigerator and TV. We kept an eye on JEA's progress and about midnight got ready for bed.

We decided to turn off the generator so we precooled the bedroom down to 72 degrees. Then Frank set up a fan connected to a battery through an inverter. That would blow the cool air around until the power came back on.

At 2:30 am power was restored.

Once again, Life is Good.

What do you mean our Condo is in Orange Park??

Even though some of our best friends live in Orange Park, we swore it was something we would never do. The two main north-south roads are overcrowded and best avoided during rush hours.

However, we are finding that the new condo is convient to everything. There are Oriental, Mexican and BBQ resturants within walking distance. There are two "doc in a box" locations and a hospital that we can walk to. So if Frank falls off the roof again, EJ can drag him to medical attention. There's a Publix grocery store a half mile away and a Lowes within a quarter mile.

Life is good.

What are we doing?

For the last year or so we have been talking about downsizing. We love our house but it had begun taking up more of our time than we were wanting to give. We have other things we'd rather be doing than raking leaves, pulling weeds, picking up fallen limbs, mopping floors, cleaning windows, sweeping and so on. It had gotten to the point where there was always something that needed doing to keep the yard and house looking decent. The house had become a full time job. We had already retired from full time jobs and didn't need any more.

Frank had been talking up selling everything and buying a bigger RV. Life on the road, "no worries, mate". EJ wasn't quite ready for such a drastic change. She still wants a home base to come back to. When it came right down to it, neither one of us relished the thought of getting rid of all our stuff. There are some things that we're just not done with yet. Besides, we have a perfectly good Class "B" RV that we've traveled in for as long as 7 weeks at a time and we were still weren't ready to go home. Considering what's happen to gas and diesel prices, it's a good thing we decided not to go with Plan "A" and sell everything to buy a bigger RV.

Plan "B" was to find a smaller place, that didn't require as much upkeep. We had a few requirements such as a double car garage, indoor laundry (a lot of places have them in the garage), access to a swimming pool, an adult oriented community, and a place to park the current RV. We also wanted a view of either woods or water. And after much soul searching, we decided we'd like to stay near our friends. We had moved away twice before and came back both times.

We're thinking that we want to begin traveling for 3 or 4 months at a time, so the smaller place is going to have to be pretty much self sufficient in our absence. Florida is wonderful in the winter months therefore we want to travel during the hot summer when we can go some place cooler. That means we need a place we won't have to worry about.

So the search was on. Over the years we had kept our eyes on certain neighborhoods and areas. We also found some new places to investigate. But in the end it was our good friends Ron and Dale Powell who furnished the lead on what would become our new home.