January 22, 2015

     There are no excuses for waiting so long to post this, but the last couple of weeks have been a blur.  My wife's mom, GoGo, has had several TIA's and is practically immobile.  She has been at Amy's brother's house in Birmingham.  Amy travels to stay with her two days a week.  Sometimes we bring her to our house for a few days.  Even though she would like to spend more time here with us, our house is not really equipped for someone in her condition.  My mom has spent the last couple of weeks in Trinity hospital in Birmingham.  Diagnosis was congestive heart failure and afib. She was able to walk into the hospital but after being in bed that long she is having trouble walking.  She will be discharged from the hospital today and will go to rehab for physical therapy here in Talladega. She could be there for up to 20 days or less depending on how well she progresses with the therapy.  Although both moms have similar health issues, their attitudes are as different as night and day.  Gogo's attitude is very negative, to the point of being mad at God for not taking her on to heaven.  She is waiting to die.  Of course some one said that she will probably live another 20 years so God can prove he is in charge.  On the other hand mom's attitude is positive, wanting to live every day to the fullest, fully intending to regain her strength and get back to her usual activities.  She makes the best of every little setback she encounters.
    So, with all that has happened in the last year, surgery on both knees, loosing my sister, and now taking care of our mothers, I am glad that I did not spend 6 months hiking the trail.  I really miss my sister, because we thought that she would be the one to care for mom.  Apparently God had and continues to have other plans.  I am glad that Amy and I are retired and are in a position to take part in the care of our parents.  In the meantime writing this blog will have to take a backseat, and a low priority.  In another month winter will be fading out and spring coming in, bringing with it new opportunities and new changes.  Gardening time.  Hiking again.  By the way, my knees are doing great.  I can walk down steps without any pain and I can cross my legs with no pain.  There is a little discomfort when standing up from a chair, but that is getting better and better.

January 4

     Christmas is over and 2015 has begun.  Time to settle in for the new year.  My new exercise program will begin in the morning.  I will start with logging everything I eat, using my fitness app on my ipad.  I will also start daily walking with a minimum of 2 miles at the track at Veteran's Park.  Also I plan to add treadmill walking 30 minutes a day.  I will try this for the rest of January, then consider other ideas.
     I also have other activities to do.  I plan to begin my woodworking by building two beds.  The first thing to do is to clean out one of my buildings so I can have room to work on this.  Right now the building is so full I can barely get into the door.  When I retired I took everything I had accumulated over the years and instead of going through it then, I just brought it home and threw it into that building.  Since I have been retired for over a year it is time for winter/spring cleaning.  I admit to being a hoarder, but it is time I got rid of almost everything.
     I seldom drive my truck, but drove it to town to walk on the Saturday before Christmas.  My wife met me at the track and we went to fill up with gas.  After I filled up the gas tank I discovered the truck was a leaking gas.  Half of the gas had drained out over the weekend.  The truck is a 1994 Mazda B3000 cab plus.  When I took it to find out about the leak, I discovered that the gas tank is no longer made for that model.  I made several inquiries online trying to find a new tank.  The day before Christmas eve I found a used one at a salvage yard in Munford, about 10 miles away.  My truck is now ready for hauling.  Looks like this week will be a lot of work.

Hiking again - January 1, 2015

     It has been a long time since my last post.  Sorry about that, but my new years resolution is to do a better job at posting on my blog.  A lot has happened since Thanksgiving, but the time has just flown by.  My wife's mother, who is in poor health, has spent a couple of weeks with us.  She had been staying in Birmingham at Amy's brother's house.  Amy, and sometimes myself, go over every Tuesday and Thursday to stay with her.  We have been doing this since October.
     We started a new Christmas tradition.  Amy and I and our moms ate Christmas hamburgers on Christmas day.  This was the first time we did not spend Christmas day with any of our kids.  Our daughter Emily and her family (Craig and Kale) when to Indiana to spend Christmas with Craig's parents. Our other daughter, Katy and her group (Scott, Kinsley, and Cooper) spent Christmas day with Scott's mom and her family.  Our son, Jason and his wife, Shelley spent Christmas with her parents in Ashland.  Therefore we began a new tradition by cooking Bubba Burgers on the grill.  After lunch we took GoGo, Amy's mom, back to Birmingham.
     Katy, Scott, Kinsley, and Cooper did come to spend a week with us.  They will be returning to Virginia in the morning.  It is always great when they come to visit.  Jason and Shelley came over this past Saturday so we could all get together for lunch.  That was a really good time.  I forgot to mention that Baxter, Katy's dog came too.  Also Jason brought his dog, Brooks, a chocolate lab that is as big as a horse.  It made for a full house and a fun time.
     Scott wanted to do some trail running, so I dropped him off at Adam's Gap on the Pinhoti Trail.  I parked at the Cheaha trailhead and was supposed to meet him somewhere on the trail.  I walked the Cave Creek trail and ended up missing him at the connector with the Pinhoti,  I knew I had walked 4 miles when we finally got communication on Scott's walkie-talkies.  I should have turned and gone back the same way I had come, but I decided to continue on the Pinhoti back to the parking lot.  My cell phone went dead after 8.4 miles, which was still about 2 miles away from the parking lot.  Needless to say, I can hardly walk today, but there was no problem with my knees.  I had forgotten how rocky and steep that portion of the trail was, and decided to go really slow to protect my knees,  I finally finished after the sun went down.  A lot farther than I had planned, but a really enjoyable hike.  My legs were begining to cramp a little at the end.

Scott after we met up.

This selfie was taken from one of the views on the Pinhoti.

Scott was ready for another run today, but since I can barely walk from sore muscles my hiking is done for a couple of days.  He will have to wait for his next visit to do more of the trail.  For me, I am going to start my weight loss program tomorrow.  Today it's time for football games and one last big meal with blackeyed peas and turnip greens.

  

November 26

     I have decided that the old saying "time flies when you're having fun" is really true. It is hard to believe that the last three weeks have passed so fast.  Each day brings a new challenge.  The best thing about being retired is that the world is now on my schedule, more or less.  There is so much to do around the house that I could do, if I choose to, and that's the best part - I now have a choice.  When I was younger, I always had to work two or more jobs to make ends meet. Time was dictated by work.  Spare time was hard to find or just didn't exist.
     Remembering the jobs I have had, I started working when I was in the 8th grade.  My first job was delivering newspapers.  We lived in Auburn, AL at that time while dad finished getting his BS from Auburn University (War Eagle!!!).   My paper route covered from town all the way out West Glenn.  I rode my bike to town and delivered papers in the afternoon.  My brother was younger but had a paper route around our neighborhood.  I can remember we would both ride our bikes to town on Sunday mornings, before daylight, in the freezing cold, so we could roll and stuff our papers.  Along my route there were two other drop sites where I would have to pick up and stuff more papers.  There were times that I would also have to do his route, but I do not remember if I was paid for those times or not.  I remember the worst part of the job was the monthly collections I had to do.  Sometimes college students were hard to find when it was time to pay the bill.
     We moved to Tuscaloosa so my parents could continue their education at that other school in the state.  From there we moved to Talladega.  I was about 16 and needed a job to put gas in my car and to save a little money.  I walked all over town looking for a job.  I found one working at a gas station, Jack's Gulf Station.  I remember asking Mr. Jacks if he needed someone to work for him.  I told him that I knew nothing about working at a gas station but I was willing to learn.  I was really surprised when he hired me.  I worked on Saturdays, from 7 to 7 and was paid $5.00 at the end of the day.  Not a lot of money, but I think minimum wage at that time was less than a dollar an hour.  It was a full service gas station and every customer had his gas pumped and oil checked and water checked in the battery.  I also washed cars and Alabama Power Company trucks in January and February when it was so cold we would have to boil water over the gas heater inside just to pour on the water faucet to get the water flowing. The gas station was one of my favorite jobs.  I was always busy and Mr. Jacks had a couple of good looking daughters that would sometimes come to the station.  The station was located on North Street about a block from First Baptist Church.  It was close enough that we could go get a coke between Sunday School and Church, We made a deal with the Sunday School Teacher to end the lesson early so we could get to the gas station and back.  Okay, the real reason was so we could slip off and smoke a cigarette before church.  We were not the only ones though, some of the older church men were doing the same thing.  The station is no longer there, but was located where the parking lot for Burger King is now.  More to come later.

November 9

My son, Jason, and I spent the weekend camping at Vogel State Park.  Vogel is located at the base of Blood Mountain, Ga. We camped at one of the walk-in campsites in the park.  This was an excellent place to camp since this was the first camping since my knee surgery.  I was not sure about being able to crawl into my tent and then to get up out of the tent each day, but the knees did fine.  I even did some hiking up the mountain at Hogpen Gap.  Jason hiked from Neels Gap to Tesnatee Gap about 5.5 miles with his dog on Saturday.  Returning to camp I hiked a one mile loop around the lake at the state park.  On Sunday I dropped him off at Tesnatee Gap and he hiked up Wildcat Mountain, while I parked at Hogpen Gap and went up the mountain from there.  We met close to the top.  As I remembered there was an excellent view on the trail towards Whitney shelter so we headed that way.
Below are several pictures of our trip.

Park Entrance

Well behaved Brooks.

Jason staking down his tent.

View from behind the store at Neels Gap.

I think Brooks was dragging Jason up the trail.

Just one of the many views from a mountain top.

The one mile trail I hiked.

I also hiked down to these falls.

I even made it to the top of a mountain.

 

Nov 8

Well it's been a while since my last post. I wanted to give a quick update and then edit this tomorrow. Here we are at Vogel state park. Jason and I are enjoying the time camping. 

October 11 - 24

     I cannot believe that it has been 2 weeks since my last post.  Time passes so fast that I need to take time out to enjoy it more.  After spending one week in Chantilly, Virginia and this past week at home, I am wondering where the time went.  We really enjoyed our visit with grandkids at Katy and Scott's house.  They were laying laminated hardwood flooring during the first part of the week and then adding the trim after the flooring was down.  I still have pain when getting on my knees, so all I could do to help was give advice and operate a saw.  By the time we left, I am sure that Scott had enough advice from me to last at least until they come visit after Christmas.  Katy is a perfectionist and quickly pointed out any flaw she saw.  Of course that meant redoing several things.  I think she was doing the right thing since she wanted a professional job from amateurs.  Also we celebrated Cooper and Kinsley's birthday while we were there.  Cooper turned 3 and Kinsley will be 6 next month.  We celebrate both their birthdays together so we can do it in one visit.  It is just a little far for us to make monthly trips to Virginia.  

     We returned home on Sunday.  Amy's mom, GoGo, was taken to live at Amy's brother's house.  She had fallen twice on Saturday and had to get a neighbor to help her off the floor.  She has always been on the "go", hence her nickname GoGo, but now age has caught up to her and she has lost her mobility.  For now she will live in Birmingham instead of her home in Talladega.  Amy made two trips to see her one on Tuesday and one on Thursday.  I went with her on Thursday, and we will visit again on Sunday.  

     Also on Tuesday I went to a breakfast meeting at the Cracker Barrell in Oxford.  For the past couple of months a group of us (4) get together to talk about old times.  We were friends in high school, church, and college.  The group includes Bobby Slay, Jimmy Harris, Hal Phillips and myself.  We all have ties to Auburn.  Bobby and I roomed together our Freshman year.  We have a lot of good memories from those years.  Jimmy's parents and my parents were very close friends and used to take vacations together.  Next month we will meet for lunch at the Ark, a fish restaurant between Lincoln and Riverside.   

     Jason and I are planning a camping trip together.  Since my knees are not ready for long hikes we will be car camping at Vogel State Park in north Georgia.  We will pitch our tents about 1500 feet from the parking lot.  We will do some short hikes, without packs, so I can test out the knees.  I am looking forward to that experience.  I hope the weather cooperates with us to make it more enjoyable.

Our trip is planned for November 7, 8 and 9.  I get excited just thinking about it.  More to come later.