Blog #26

May 27- June 6

The WHY

I’m going to flip the switch a little in this blog. I usually talk about our travels and what state we are visiting in the beginning.  The reason for all this travel sometimes gets lost in the adventure. Avid blog readers will remember that we are traveling around the country in search of our next home. In between, we are having some fun, seeing new places, meeting up with family, taking care of health issues, playing with the dogs… that kinda stuff. 

Seven Year Itch

We have a habit of staying in a home for about 7 years. While I was hoping to double that in the last house, we got to 12 years before the itch to try something new hit us again.  So, we’ve been looking online and talking to brokers and kind of narrowed our choices to Asheville, NC and Durango, CO. There are plusses and minuses to both. This weekend we looked at a phenomenal property in the Asheville area. I probably shouldn’t have even let us go because it is far out of our price range. But then we went and it blew us away.

Let’s put it this way: it has its own AIRPLANE HANGAR  

It’s pretty big. but we can lop off 10 acres and sell that as a home site. We can then lop off the airplane hangar with some land (cause we are never going to fly our own planes; don’t even ask), remove the special folding door for planes and make that a separate 6000 sq ft home. Wanna be our neighbors?

Right now this is all pie in the sky. We’re going through the nitty gritty of figuring out the deal. It might happen. We’re still looking but this is a real contender. Not putting up photos until we are more definite and have a contract. Stay tuned.

Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

A week after elbow surgery to hopefully alleviate the pins needles and knife pains in David’s hand, we had a follow up appointment with the surgeon.  David and I went “up island” – west to those who don’t know Long Island/Hamptons slang.  We found out that while the surgeon said it would be two weeks before we saw real results, he now said it would be two months before we would know how well his arm healed. Cue eye roll here. At least we know that his pain may gradually abate. 

Oh Won’t You Sta-a-ay….

Nancy and Mitch convinced us to stay a little longer. Twisting our rubber arms, it didn’t take much to realize that starting the long trip to Asheville the Thursday before Memorial Day would be an exercise in traffic jam futility. Instead, we’d wait until Sunday, a day that few people would be traveling so we thought. Part of the reason to do so was that David wanted to do a few projects on the Airstream. They required some use of Mitchell’s shop and a few clear days so we could drill a hole in the roof of the Airstream. That was not to be. It rained and the weatherman promised more precipitation.

Luckily, friends came by. We got to see people we haven’t seen in years. Vilma and Michael Brennan and their girls Alexa and Sofia. I can’t believe that these girls that I’ve known since they were babes are now in college and high school. “Bubbles” and Stacey stopped over and we had a quick catch up on the porch while I started work on Rachel’s wedding invites. Mike and Jason, friends of Kirsten and now friends of her parents Mitch and Nancy, drove up from the DC area to see the L.I. Airshow. The rain cancelled, but it gave us to catch up with these really interesting people.

We managed to take a bike ride one afternoon. David put on a brave face but I think his hand is still hurting tremendously.  Trying to do anything on the roof of the Airstream would have been a mistake.  We did manage to get a couple of projects done. I was so excited that we were able to install a new outdoor shower, especially because we had been carrying around the box and having it clutter up Airstream for three months.  

On Sunday, we left around 3 and drove to Harrisburg. Just getting out of the NY Metro area was all we could hope for – potholes the size of cars that made rivets pop and everything fly out of cabinets. We stayed overnight at a Cabelas where they offer free overnight parking to RVers. They even have a corral if you bring your horses.

The next day, Memorial Day, we planned to drive part way. We got an early start so we could beat most of the traffic. I drove from 8:30-12:30pm and kinda konked out. David continued for four more hours, but then pushed through to Asheville. We made it there by 7pm but it was a long day of driving, listening to news and podcasts.

Back to Asheville

We got to Asheville and immediately became itchy to leave again. Even the dogs felt uneasy. Rey the German Shepherd seemed to remember the apartment but Toby is old and any change, even one that should be familiar, is anxiety producing. It was strange to sleep in any bed outside of our little silver nest.

We started planning a return to Durango.  In the meantime, my sister Linda and mom came back from a trip to Israel. We had been communicating with them while they were overseas. They’d taken a PCR to ensure negative Covid status pre-flight, but after their arrival, they started feeling under the weather and my mom felt like allergies were kicking in.  Two days later they tested positive for Covid.  They are both doing fine. 

I went on a long walk on Saturday to train for the 3Day. I walked from our apartment to downtown Asheville — about 7 miles. And we went to a Honey Festival in Asheville! I was in my element.

Back to Durango?

But it informed our decision to travel.  We have one more scheduled function on the east coast, an engagement party, on June 18 on Long Island.  Driving seems like the safest way to avoid catching Covid, so we’d change plans (again) and we would leave for Durango after the engagement party.

And then things changed. No surprise.  We saw a property in the Asheville area that I knew we shouldn’t visit.  A perfect house, a bit out of our price range. What to do….