Aug13
Posted on Aug 13 by Ruth Davis
It is my second Monday on the road and already we have a regular morning routine. Laddy stands at the foot of my bed sometime between 6:15 and 6:45, awake and ready. I pet his happy head, do my morning hip stretches while I’m still lying flat, then get up and make my bed. He’ll either jump onto the bed or return to his dog bed under the dinette while I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth and throw on some morning walk clothes. With my phone, keys and a pooper bag in my back pocket, we head over to the nearby park for a short leg-stretching pooper walk. The grass is thick and green and damp and there are usually gulls and ravens on the softball field. We are usually the only ones there, though twice, I’ve seen city workers pull up in their trucks for their fifteen minute breaks. Back in the RV, I feed Laddy, pour my own cereal and check my email while my single cup of coffee drips. Beyond that, the routine ends....
Aug11
Posted on Aug 11 by Ruth Davis
The Morro Strand RV Park offers free wifi, but the signal goes out at least once a day, often for several hours at a time. This would be fine if I were on vacation and ready to unplug. But my business can only support me if I have reliable internet access. So this morning I drove to the Verizon store in Los Osos, an easy five miles down the road, and purchased my own mifi hub. Now I can connect my iPhone, iPad and laptop and be assured that I will always have fast internet access. It would have been so easy to just head back to the park and hang out in the motorhome, relaxing, watching the hubbub of activity of families and dogs, surfing the internet, even getting some work done. But my intention for today was to get out, explore, maybe even take myself somewhere I haven’t been before. I parked on the dead end street at the back bay in Los Osos where the narrow sandy trail winds around the inlet. The tide was lowing...
Aug09
Posted on Aug 9 by Ruth Davis
I am officially COLD. It’s a little after 9 am and it is only 53° outside. In Phoenix it is already 97, on the way to 113°. I am not complaining, just reporting. I hear no gulls, no ravens. The entire Morro Rock has disappeared under a blanket of morning fog. New campers arrived yesterday: several families with kids and dogs, a young couple with a pop-up trailer and bicycles, a mid-century couple with two fluorescent colored kayaks attached to the back end of their RV. The man next door is by himself in a GMC Envoy towing a 26’ trailer. I watched him back in then out several times, unhitch and level his trailer, then sweep the white aluminum sides of the rig. This morning he has already swept the steps and smoked two cigarettes. Across from me, the matriarch of the family hoists two navy blue suitcases onto the picnic table and pulls out a small pile of brightly colored kids clothing. A young boy about seven emerges from the trailer in superhero pajamas. The woman picks...
Aug09
Posted on Aug 9 by Ruth Davis
I am a creature of habit and routine and schedules. It keeps me focused, accomplished. It’s how I get my work done. But part of this new lifestyle is about challenging that need for control and structure. So today we took a different morning beach walk. (The yellow area of the beach is cordoned off for the nesting snowy plovers. Dogs are allowed on leashes everywhere else.) For the past three days we have been accessing the beach at the end of Atascadero Road and trudging across the soft sand to get to the water. Today we continued along Embarcadero Rd, the street that parallels the ocean. The road is flat and wide and there are several places where the sand dunes open up so you can see the water and the waves rolling in. After a half a mile, the road dead ends at a dry wash where there is a large dirt parking lot with several paths down to the sand. I watched an older couple walk from the water to the lot, noticing that the sand...
Aug09
Posted on Aug 9 by Ruth Davis
The motorhome is a 1989 Itasca Sundancer. Marika and I bought it from the original owners in 1994 when it had only 9400 miles on it. (Today the odometer reads 54,058.) It’s 24 feet long, 8 feet wide with a shower, toilet, sink, refrigerator, freezer, four burner stove and a microwave/convection oven. There’s a full sized bed in the back and a dinette with two bench seats on either side that fold down into a single bed. And there’s a swivel chair in addition to the two seats up front for the driver and the passenger. The RV originally had a fold-out queen sized bed over the driver’s cab but we took it out years ago and put a five inch ledge around the U-shaped area with separators for extra storage. One side is designated as the food pantry with banker boxes holding cereal, canned goods, snacks and root vegetables. The other side of the U has Laddy’s dog bowl, toys, brush, laundry supplies and a small step ladder so that I can wash the center of the windshield. The wide...
Aug09
Posted on Aug 9 by Ruth Davis
Laddy came up to my face this morning at 6:10 and so we were out and back from a short walk to the park by 6:30. I made coffee, we had breakfast and I turned on the water heater, preparing for a shower. But instead, I got back under the covers and slept for another hour. I checked my email and other work-related things and then, finally, we headed out for a beach walk. It’s a short two blocks from where we are camped, past the concrete factory and waste water treatment plant, around the corner and across the street to the sandy trail. This time I took my shoes off as soon as we reached the sand. I tossed Laddy’s Frisbee and he brought it right back, ready for a replay. After several throws I put him back on his leash and we headed to the water. The walk was less hard. Not easy, but it felt more natural to grab at the loose sand with my toes and dig my heels in, propelling me forward. My calves...
