Last Time This Time?

 For a year and a half I've been hearing that once Carmen's CPE (that's Clinical Pastoral Education to you and me) residency ends, she won't be able to find a job as a staff chaplain. So In the waning days of 2020 a job came open at Baptist Hospital in Fernandina Beach. She applied, went through a four stage interview process over two months, and landed the job. That's the good news. One of the expectations of the job is that the chaplain live in Nassau County. So, once again, we are selling our condo and looking for the next perfect place in which to install ceiling fans, blinds, faucets and other miscellaneous items to make it our own. Meanwhile, Carmen is commuting an hour to two hours each way, as well as finishing the unit of CPE  that started in January.

I have been handling the showings of the condo, and trade people to do the things better left to contractors, such as installing a vent pipe from the dryer to the outside through the attic, and replacing rotten wood (and later, 2 panes of glass) in the bank of windows upstairs on the northwest side.

We have gone to Nassau County every weekend since her commute began, looking at rentals and houses for sale. We've made offers on a couple of places, but they're already under contract between the viewing and the offer. Going again tomorrow. I have faith that it will all work out. It always has.

Meanwhile, I am dreaming of the plethora of fishing opportunities, a well- funded community theatre, and a garage big enough to leave my mitre saw set up.

A fella can dream.

Hurray Hurray For JTA!

Not long after settling in here in Solano Grove, I did some research online, gathered some change and small bills, and set out walking to the bus stop directly across San Jose Boulevard from the entrance to our lovely condo community. The number 17 came along directly, I climbed aboard, and announced that I was going to the Rosa Parks Transportation Center to get my free geezer bus pass. I started to put money the the slot, but the driver stopped me. "You can ride for free to go get your pass!" he said. Cool beans!

This was my first trip into downtown Jacksonville since my 1982 Greyhound trip with Heather Bowers (see Slowly I Turned, posted on October 21, 2009) and believe it or not, it has grown. So, the bus twisted and turned through the streets, and finally came to rest at one of many slips at Rosa Parks Station. I thanked the driver, as is my custom, and stepped out into downtown Jacksonville. Being a fifty-plus-years veteran of public transportation systems, I immediately began looking for an information booth where I could inquire as to the whereabouts of the office that issues geezer bus passes. Before I could find one, a woman wearing a JTA jacket approached me and asked if I needed help finding something. "I came to get my free geezer bus pass," I replied. "Right this way" she said, and led me to a portable building on the far side of the bus slips.

The woman at the desk inside was very nice and very efficient. She entered my name, address and age into the computer, took my picture, and a few minutes later handed me my free pass, good for five years.

I can use my Star Card to ride any bus in the fleet to everywhere they go. It's the best deal ever. Thank you, JTA!

The Final Move (Again.)

In my previous post I complain about not having posted in three years. That was five years ago. Well! I was having my second session with my mental health professional last Wednesday, and she assigned homework: updating my blogs. Let the homework begin.

A year and a half ago (that's the summer of '18 to you and me) I began whining that I don't get to have any fun, never get a break from my full time job of caring for the four other mammals in my family. Carmen, at the same time, was going through a crisis in her full time job. The solution: we bought a condo in Jacksonville and moved again.

It started out simply enough. We were going to rent an Air B&B over Thanksgiving week and visit our friends who live in Jax, St Augustine and Port Orange. Another friend was flying from Virginia to spend a few days with all of us. And I was assured that I would have some time off from all the beasties. While we were making plans for our first actual vacation since 2001, we became interested in the idea of spending our golden years near our friends we've had for thirty years. So in September, we drove down from Nashville and went on a three-day tour of available properties with a local realtor. In October, our Jax friends looked at a condo they thought we'd like. Carmen flew down to look at it, and made an offer on it. By the middle of November it was ours (and the Bank's.)

So instead of a leisurely drive in the Subaru together, it became a Subaru with her and the dawg and the vacation stuff, plus me in a 16 foot Penske moving truck with the first load of stuff. My vacay included loading and unloading the truck. Carmen helped.

The days at the Air B&B were great. And Carmen even stayed with the dog while I went on a St. Augustine Holiday Lights Tour with our girlfriends. Another friend had Thanksgiving dinner with us. A splendid time was had by all. When it was time for Carmen to go back to work, I stayed at the condo for a few more days to line up the electrician (another friend in Jax) and the painter to get some work done before we moved the rest of our stuff. I drove a rented 2019 Nissan Rogue back to Nashville - well, I was in the vehicle, but it was clear that I was not the one driving.

Next came fast and furious packing of everything but the washer and dryer, an inflatable mattress and one of our camp chairs. Carmen would be staying in Nashville until April while I lived in the Jax condo. Otherwise, we would be paying insurance on an unoccupied dwelling!

A year ago, the middle of January, 2019, we hired loaders in Nashville and unloaders in Jacksonville, rented a 24 foot truck with a bench seat for two cat carriers plus me, and got 'er loaded up. Once again, I drove the truck and Carmen drove the Subaru with the dawg.

The most interesting story of that move is about Whitney, a tall, muscular black woman who ran her own moving business. She and two little skinny men who were obviously totally intimidated by her, unloaded that whole truck in less than four hours. Most impressive was the roll-top desk, a massive oak thing that was going upstairs. Whitney strapped that giant heavy chunk of wood to herself and hauled it up the steps while her assistants scrambled to try to help. One thing was crystal clear: pissing Whitney off was a bad idea!

So now, for the most part, we were moved. I was, anyway. Carmen went back to get the Nashville condo sold and finish out her job obligations. One more POD load came down with the washer and dryer and some miscellaneous stuff. Meanwhile, I researched the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and discovered that geezers over 65 get a FREE PASS for all public transportation!

Hanging with our friends is part of our routine these days. We attend theatrical productions and other cultural events with friends or just the two of us. Carmen is really happy with her new career as a hospital chaplain. I'm exploring our new neighborhood with da dawg. And I've even gone fishing a couple of times.
 
Jacksonville is a good place to live.

A Totally Unexpectedly Nice Day

You probably won't be asking why - why is this post in The Gospel instead of Cat Juggler?! Primarily, it's because I haven't posted a Gospel since 2012.

Yesterday, September 9th, 2015, was a day I had been anticipating with a slight edge of dread. Carmen, after three tries leaving messages that evoked no calls back, finally made an appointment for me with a primary care physician. Dr. John Guenst was recommended by another geezer in the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation. The doctor's office is in the Saint Thomas Medical Center - no wonder I had doubts - a little over six miles away, directly on Highway 70 South, same as us here in Bellevue. My favorite thing about it is that it is directly on the number 5 bus route, same as us here in Bellevue. Unfortunately, Carmen had an appointment with some folks from the other UU church in town, which took her directly past St. Tom. I wasn't going to be able to ride the bus in. BUT! I could ride the bus home!

After a nice long walk with Grace at Edwin Warner Park, we came home and showered up. I put on some semi-spiffy duds, loaded my laptop case with necessary items (not including my laptop,) and we set out. It's a pretty simple excursion going in toward the city on 70 South, and we were there in about twenty minutes. She dropped me at the main entrance and boogied on to her meeting. I went inside, found a directory of doctors, followed the direction arrows to the west tower, took the elevator to the 4th floor, and was there. Only an hour early! The receptionist signed me in. The medical assistant handed me the mandatory clipboard full of papers to fill out, and thanked me for being early. She said I could see the doctor twenty minutes ahead of my scheduled appointment. Then she went to lunch. So far so good.

I filled out my paperwork, and checked my Kindle Fire for wi-fi. Finding nothing I could tap into, I dozed off. As advertised, twenty minutes before 12:30 she called me in from the waiting room. We did the usual height/ weight/ blood pressure/ pulse/ respiration thing, and the entering of basic medical history into the computer system. What I discovered about her was that she has very close to zero sense of humor. Not good. But she went away soon and left me to wait for the doctor. And wait. And wait. That twenty minute edge evaporated, and then some. Finally, however, he came in.

I don't like doctors. Anybody who knows me knows that. I don't trust them. I see them as yet another leach on the bloodstream of humanity, just a shade smarmier than lawyers. Many many doctors have confirmed this belief. Therefore, I was not prepared for what happened next. Dr. Guenst came in the room, greeted me cordially, then laughed at my smart-ass remark. He spent an hour with me, going over my medical history, laughing at my silly commentary, asking for the stories behind the scars. We actually had a good old time together, and were reluctant to break it up so he could see other patients. This never happens.

He recommended a tetanus/pertussis/diphtheria shot and a shingles vaccine, which the assistant administered with her usual lack of good humor. Then she sent me to Registration, where nobody had told me I was supposed to go first, before coming to the office. When I finished there, she could send me to the blood drawing lab on the same floor, where eight vials of blood were removed from my arm. Then I was sent back to the receptionist, who signed me up for my online portal, and I was done, only three and a half hours after arriving. I took the elevator back down to the entrance, found my way out to the highway, and sat down on the bench to wait for the bus.

The Bus Stop sign at that locality actually had the #5 schedule printed on it. The next bus was the 3:30, in only a half hour. Long before that, however, it started to rain. Not a lot, not hard. Just a little sprinkling, enough to be annoying, but not enough to soak me. The 3:13 #3 bus stopped in front of me, the doors opened, and the driver asked if I wanted to come aboard. I wasn't standing up, or looking expectantly, or waving, or any other standard indicators of wanting to board his bus. "No thanks," was all I said. Time ticked on, while the crick in my neck from four years of looking for MBTA buses began to throb. 3:30 came and went, but I was not alarmed. Bus schedules are impossible to keep. Then at 3:32, a young (30ish?) woman came around the corner and approached the bench. "What time does your bus come?" she asked. I looked at my watch and smiled wryly. "3:30," I replied, "but I don't think it'll be on time." "Where do you live?" she asked. This threw me, but I recovered. "Bellevue." "Can I give you a ride?" I hesitated. I really like taking buses. "It's about to start raining really hard," she explained. "If it will make you happy," I said. She smiled. "I'll get my car, come around and pick you up here." She went back around the corner toward the parking lot. I was unsure of what to do. I wrestled with it a minute, then decided that if the bus came before she did, I would take it. It did not.

The light turned red at the precise instant that the SUV driven by Sara(h?) pulled up in front of me. I climbed in, reached WAAAAY out to close the door, buckled myself in, and we were off. "I was driving by and saw you sitting there in the rain. I just had to stop." I thanked her, and we introduced ourselves. I'm pretty sure she is primarily an unbridled extrovert who hates driving alone, because we engaged in spirited conversation all the way. We talked about Bellevue, Mexican restaurants, Edwin Warner Park, and our dogs, all the way to the CVS, where my new prescriptions would be waiting for me. I thanked her again, and went inside. It was pouring rain, and had been for most of the journey.

Three prescriptions and my lunch - a jar of honey roasted peanuts - in hand, I went back out. The rain had stopped, and I was dry walking all the way home.

Turn Around And You're There

Off I went on another paint delivery into the deep boonies of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. Vinny gave me directions to C&M Hardwoods on Leboeuf Trail in Centerville. He's not my first choice for directions, but of all the humans currently at Sherwin Williams Meadville, he was the only one who knows where it is. "Go up that street there, what is that, 27?" Great, not even out of sight of the store and he's unsure of his information. "You know where you turn left to go up the hill to the Fairgrounds?" "You mean 77. Yes." "Go on up the hill to the KwikFill" Good. If there's a KwikFill, a Country Fair or a Sheetz, he's all over it. "Keep going through Blooming Valley, and on the other side you'll go up the hill and keep going until you come to a road to the right called Lyona Road. There's really no landmarks out there to help you find it."  So far so good. "Turn right on Lyona Road and go to the end. The highway (he means 408) bends there, so going straight from Lyona Road puts you on the highway to Townville. Go through Townville, and on the other side you'll come to a four way intersection. I always look for a dilapidated trailer, and soon after that there's this four way. There's a sign there that says C&M Hardwoods. Turn right. It's a dirt road. Go about, I don't know, I'm terrible with distances, maybe a mile and a half?" I shrugged. "You'll find it. There's a building on the right and a building on the left. I don't think there's a sign, but you'll see Chris' green Ford truck." Well, I thought, I've gone farther on less before, how far wrong can I go? Let's find out.

The early stages were easy. But once I was past the KwikFill, I felt like I was in uncharted territory. On I went through Blooming Valley and up the other side, and on and on, trying to read every street sign going off to the right, knowing how well unmarked much of rural Pennsylvania is (see "The Road Less Marked" several posts back) and keep up speed so as not to piss off the local drivers. After way too many minutes of barreling along Route77 on the far side of Blooming Valley, I decided I must have missed it. I began looking for a place to pull off this busy highway. Up ahead there was a road off to the right. I slowed down and turned right onto, you guessed it, Lyona Road.

On I went on Lyona, rereading my notes I took while Vinny rambled. Miles down the road I finally came to the double stop signs in series taking you in a straight line from Lyona Road to the eastbound leg of Route 408. On through Townville and out the other side. Now I have gone there and back again, and I still couldn't tell you where this dilapidated trailer is. Perhaps, after all my decades in the South, I have a different idea of what to look for when it comes to dilapidated trailers. Anyway, I kept going and going until I figured I must have missed it. I began looking for a good place to turn around. There was an intersection up ahead. Oh look it's...Leboeuf Trail. There's the C&M Hardwoods thataway sign. I pulled off and found my delivery ticket. 11505 Leboeuf Trail was the address. On I went.

As usual, house numbers were hard to come by, but enough people had numbers on their mailboxes for me to track my progress from 12530 down through 11875 and then there was a cluster of mailboxes with four digit numbers! I went too far? How did I do that? I looked for a place to turn around. Guess what. C&M does have a sign. Right there.

The cluster of mailboxes served a cluster of houses down a little dirt cross street. Silly me.

CATA

The first public transportation I ever took was the bus system in Washington, DC in the mid-sixties with my worldly grandmother. I didn't know anything about it other than to keep a hold on her hand and ride wherever she took us, to the theatre and then back to the National Geographic building where my dad worked. Second was about forty miles and several years down the road. Having never wanted a vehicle, my first mission when I moved in 1971 from Vero Beach, Florida to Glen Burnie, Maryland was to learn the Baltimore City Bus System. My brother and his wife Liz lived in northeast Baltimore, and I visited them once a month or so. Liz was a Baltimore native who had taken city buses to school and everywhere else all of her life, so she could rattle off route numbers from anywhere to wherever. I quickly became proficient at it as well. The phone book had the system map in the front with the other maps - very handy if you could find a phone booth (remember them?) with an intact directory.

In May of '75 I flew to London, and was issued a transit system map in my tourist packet, which I used daily for the seven days of my "London Show Tour," covered in detail in my post from October 8th, 2009 entitled "Four Plays." In October of 1977 I got a job delivering new trucks all over the east. Figuring out transit systems became part of my skillset. From New York and New Jersey or Chicago or Atlanta, I'd breeze into a city, deliver my truck and then figure out how to get home to Baltimore, by bus, train or plane. In December of '82 I took my 13-year-old little buddy Heather Bowers on the "snow tour" to New York City, Buffalo and Niagara Falls, Ontario, complete with a hair-raising adventure on the New York Subway System ("Slowly I Turned" posted October 21, 2009.) Since then, I've used the Orlando LYNX system, learned Boston's MBTA better than their own information people, and put Albuquerque's buses to a lot of good use.

Then we moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania. I knew before we moved that Meadville has a bus system, the Crawford Area Transportation Authority, but I didn't pay it much attention, Meadville being so small and much as I like to walk. Then I had knee surgery. Suddenly that fifteen degree hill from Grove Street to the top of Chestnut Street became a long hard painful slog. Suddenly I was motivated to learn the system.

Three buses. That's all it is. The routes are divided into five, but it's really three. Blue Route A and Blue Route B are the same bus, same driver, A leaving the Downtown Mall on the hour and B on the half hour. Red Routes A and B are exactly the same hour and half hour schedule. Green is the long one that takes a full hour. It goes out to the Walmart, the movie theater and the Park Avenue Plaza among other attractions. That's it, the CATA bus system. Since I've been out and about after surgery, I've taken Green out and back once. Blue A, however, takes twenty-some minutes to haul my fat ass around the southeastern Meadville area from a block and a half away from work to the top of Alden Street, a block and a half from my house. It may be small, but it does the job I need it to do. That's all I can ask of it.

Just Like Old Times!

Yesterday, after I got all of my chores done, I allowed myself to go out and play.

See, Saturday night Carmen called from Jacksonville, FL where she was visiting a sick friend. During the course of the conversation she mentioned that she was glad to be coming home on Sunday, but wishing she didn't have to drive home from the Pittsburgh airport all by herself. She said she knew it had to be that way, but just wished it were otherwise. Somewhere deep down, an old yearning stirred, one that hadn't been heard from in a while. Way back in the early postings of this blog you'll find the fruits of it.

Sunday morning I made coffee and went after the last stages of the tub/shower caulking project with gusto, seeing light at the end of that tunnel. I caulked, cleaned up, and completely reassembled the bathroom. Then I went online to Greyhound.com and checked schedules from Meadville to Pittsburgh on a Sunday. Carmen's plane was scheduled to land at 6:28. The bus to Pittsburgh was scheduled to arrive at 5:20. I then looked up Pittsburgh's public transportation and found a bus leaving at 5:40 from downtown Pittsburgh, arriving at the airport at 6:25. That's cutting it pretty close. If the Greyhound is late and the plane is early, I could be stuck in Pittsburgh until the next bus back to Meadville. I printed the #28X Airport Flyer route map and schedule, and continued my chores.

I put away all of the tools and other materiel from the bathroom project, and dealt with the dishes and recycling that had been piling up since Thursday, when the bathroom project began. I scooped litter boxes and put out the garbage for Monday's pick up, including the detritus from the bathroom project. Then I looked at the clock. It was after 1:00. I could procrastinate on laundry. If I was going to catch the 2:55 Greyhound, it was time to begin launch sequence.

Gingerly I took a bath, being careful not to splash water on the new caulk. As I dressed, I loaded things into my backpack - my Free Cell game, my MP3 player and headphones, my Rand McNally road atlas, my hearing aids (it was windy and rainy for my walk downtown) and my various schedules and route maps.

It was hard to get out the door with the kitties dancing around me, lobbying for an early feeding time. I made it outside, and came right back in for a warmer coat. My raincoat would have sufficed for now, but who knew what my life in Pittsburgh might be like? Kitties notwithstanding, I managed to get out the door again.

The walk downtown was uneventful. I stopped by the bank's ATM for enough cash to see me through whatever, bought snacks for the road at Rite Aid and arrived at the Greyhound stop - a sign in front of the Downtown Mall - at 2:45. No bus yet. I went into the mall to wait.

At precisely 2:55 the Greyhound pulled up. After fifteen minutes online and fifteen more on the phone, all I had learned about tickets was that I couldn't get one on a Sunday. I hoped there was a way to surmount this problem, or this would be the end of the journey. The driver got out. I asked about a ticket to Pittsburgh. "You give me your ID. When we get to Pittsburgh, you pay the fare and get your ID back." Fair enough. I handed over my driver's license and boarded the bus.

Two and a third hours passed quickly between the Free Cell game and the five or six times I dozed off. There were only two stops on the way, and these two were not what I would have expected. We stopped in New Castle, pretty far off the straight and narrow, and (of all places) Zelienople. Nobody got on or off in either metropolis. And it seemed like only minutes later we were wending our way through the streets and bridges of Pittsburgh. We were right on time.

The only thing I didn't know was where the bus station was in relation to the 28X route. So when I paid my thirty dollar fare at the Pittsburgh station, I asked the ticket agent where I could catch the bus to the airport. She told me to turn right when I got out the door and go to Liberty Avenue a couple blocks down. I turned right and walked a couple of blocks. No Liberty. I consulted my route map. It showed a stop at Liberty and 7th. I was at Penn and 14th. I turned right again and smacked headlong into Liberty. Back I hurried, watching the time and the street signs - tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh. Which side of Liberty? Which direction is the airport? There's a bus - 28X to the airport! If I had been on the other side of the street I could have caught it. If I were allowed to run on my new knee I might have been able to catch it. I consulted my schedule. The next one would be at 6:10, arriving at 6:55 - cutting it VERY close. I called Carmen's cell phone and left a message asking her not to leave the airport.

The next 28X was right on time. It's called the Airport Flyer, and man oh man does it fly! It was seven minutes early. It let us out at baggage claim. I ran in, frantically searching for a monitor that would tell me if the Delta flight from Atlanta was on time or what. I found one. The plane was "AT GATE." The baggage would be at Baggage Carousel L. There it was. I mosied around to the far side back corner, and there she was! No Greyhound back to Meadville in the morning. Yay!

We grabbed her suitcase, took the parking shuttle to the car and headed out for some pretty good Mexican food at Don Pablo's on the way home in the good old Pennsylvania pouring rain.