That’s what I told the endocrinologist yesterday when he said, “We’ll run a few tests the next time you’re in the area.” Dude! Dude. My husband and I cancelled all our summer plans and rearranged our lives to come here for this. For you! To Houston in the summer! Can’t you do them sooner?” To […]
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Bluegrass, Blue Ridge, Orange Sky, Fireflies
Perfect moment report! Tracy and I were standing on the mountain ridge at this Airstream campground in southwest Virginia, watching the sun set. Just the right amount of distant clouds were over the Blue Ridge so that soft stretches of orange and pink were occasionally punctuated with striations of neon. Half the sky shifted in […]
My Doppelgänger
I knew something was weird even before I met her. As soon as Tracy and I pulled into this Airstream-only park in southwest Virginia, people who spend their summers here would wave at me enthusiastically. Like, really excited to see me. I thought, “They sure are welcoming here!” But then I noticed that the waving […]
Dipping into a Different RV Lifestyle
We’re at a gorgeous Airstream-only campground (not the one we usually go to, although that’s up soon). This one’s near Roanoke, Virginia, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so the elevation has cured our heat-dome woes for a bit. What an abrupt change in lifestyle for us! It’s not like we’ve come here from months […]
Small Precious Things
We’re such the assholes when we pull into a campground. We leave the diesel truck running in the road while we scope out our site. Once in, we crank down jacks with a drill, set up the starlink antenna, put up the tent, add lights. It’s a lot of stuff we disgorge onto our campsite […]
Guess What, Back to Houston
This is part of a personal/medical series (GDTRx), unrelated to travel. Just a quick update here. I didn’t get an appointment with the Mayo Clinic. I don’t know why I didn’t, because the denial code is in a letter that’s been mailed to our mailing service in Livingston, Texas. As in snail mailed. I won’t get that […]
Navigating a Hipcamp in the Heat
This week we’re parked at one of those brewery/winery/event spaces that are so popular with young, Eastcoast families with disposable income, this one near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and we chose it only because we were pretty desperate. It was a last-ditch plan because it’s part of the Harvest Hosts and Hipcamp listings that drive us bonkers: […]
A True Vacation
You know the background here: after two weeks in New York, we turned south to Virginia to wait on a couple of doctors—which’ll determine where we’re going next—and this change of plans meant we had no camping reservations for the summer. We were in a pickle. When my good friend Mary Margaret offered us her […]
Two Bands, Four Styles, Several Surprises, One Happy Me
“Is this the The Other One?” I can’t believe I’m about to ask this of a guy who looks to be the dad of the band we’re watching at a park in Upstate New York. The kids in the band are blaring distorted guitar and screaming vocals; they’re metal in every way. There is no […]
Good News on Schodack Island (& More Glen Shots)
I’ll get the good news out of the way and then talk about where we are. The good news is that I do not have a brain tumor. I’m serious, I’ve been wracked with justifiable worry about this, ever since a month ago when my former endocrinologist told me she thought I had one. Since […]
