It’s Christmas Eve here in Brownsville, and I’d planned on going to the cocktail party at the RV park clubhouse this evening, but the holiday blues are upon me. It doesn’t help that I cleaned everyone out of pocket money during Card Bingo last night in a freak string of beginner’s luck and now don’t […]
Pre-Christmas in Brownsville, with Mangos and Beer
We spent the Saturday before Christmas in downtown Brownsville for a full immersion in all things that are weird here. It was fabulous. The Christmas Village in the park by the zoo was deserted in the broad daylight, just the way we like it. The food trucks were closed up, and the lights were all […]
Medical Mystery Tour Wiki
Ha! Just kidding on the wiki part. Friends have been asking me how I’m doing, and I kept thinking, how handy would a wiki be here, right? I could write with tons of footnoted links, and friends could contribute what they know about conditions, or, better yet, stories of me texting at odd hours convinced […]
On Hearing the Palm Fronds Rustle
I ride my bike to the RV park’s fitness room each morning, and then I park it against the trunk of a palm tree. To get it situated just right so it won’t blow over in the wind while I’m in the gym, I have to duck under the fronds. Palm fronds rubbing together in […]
Still Catching Our Collective Breath
I haven’t been my usual chatterbox self here on the blog because there hasn’t been much to report. Except! For big news! (Oh how easily I forget.) My knee is finally better! I found a chiropractor willing to do a modified set of jerks; he was more conservative than the guy in Wisconsin about the […]
Friends at the Heart of 2024
You might remember that, for our 2024 travel, we’d planned on this: We ended up doing this: We zigzagged up and down as we changed plans on the fly, mostly while I tried to figure out what the heck was going on with my health. I’ve been thinking about how to recap the year without […]
Rest, Hydrate, Recoup, Repeat
We’ve never needed a long stay as bad as when we dragged ourselves into our winter spot, in the dark, last Friday night. This is our third winter in Brownsville, the very southern Tip o’ Texas, and our second in this RV resort, Jetstream Tropical Trails. It’s a new campground plopped on top of former […]
Our Impossible 11-hour Travel Day
After I wrote that Alice’s Restaurant post, a lot happened. We didn’t get fined for staying on the beach an extra day, but the opposite happened: we kinda wished the cops had stopped by our trailer, and we wished that twice. Thanksgiving Night 7 pm: Tracy was watching football and I happened to look out […]
Wherein We Act Out Alice’s Restaurant Massacree
You know the story: Arlo and friends clean up after a Thanksgiving feast at Alice’s church-turned-house and end up getting arrested for throwing their trash off a cliff, which plays a role years later in a pretty ironic situation when Arlo’s being drafted for the Vietnam War. He says to the draft sargeant, “You mean […]
On the Beach, the Crowded, Chilly, Still-It’s-a-Beach Beach
We finally made it to camp right on the beach! Man, have we spoiled ourselves with previous years doing this, though, because this beach location kinda sucks. Okay, it doesn’t truly suck. No beach does, right? And here all the elements are in place: the trailer is parked on the sand with not a thing […]
