Week 2 of hiatus

Monday, 13 through Sunday, 19 April 2020

What I've been doing
This week has been a series of activities that would normally be called Spring Cleaning, but in this context it's called Sorting Out the Things I Don't Need on Future Travels.  During this process I've found a few things I've been looking for for the entire 24 months I've been on the road - I had put them in a very safe place, obviously.  And in the sorting this time, I've realized how much I've learned about what I truly need and how I truly live, as opposed to what I thought I'd need for the life I thought I'd have.

I've not only paid this month's bills but also straightened out some financial confusion I haven't had time to sort out before.  As an example, I finally responded to a letter from Social Security they sent me last October saying I might be able to increase my benefits.  I've been drawing survivor's benefits from my former husband's social security for 5 years or so.  Social Security tells me that the benefits I qualify for now that I've turned 70, using my own income rather than Pete's, gets me to an extra $150 a month, and they'll give me retroactive benefits at that level for the last 6 months.  I was practically incoherent with gratitude.  But a small part of me knows that Pete was such a competitive person that, in a way, he'd have hated to know that my benefits get me more money than his.  One of the ironies of life.

My usual way of doing things would have meant I'd have taken several trips to the storage unit to clear out the RV as I've sorted through various batches of things.  The hitch in that plan was that one of the things I'd put in that very safe (unfindable) place was the key to the storage unit.  I'd been smart enough right in the very beginning to leave extras with David, but it was knowing that I had one here some place that kept me sorting and looking instead of making trips.  And finally - ta-da! - I did find it.  Along with the business cards for all my medical providers in Austin and a few other important items.  But now enough time has passed that I'll just keep on with the sorting until Tuesday, when I'll need to leave anyway to dump my waste tanks again.

Weekly Cleanliness Trips
What else can you call a trip that has a primary purpose of getting rid of waste products.

Rockwall
The trip last week to Rockwall included Anna and David and didn't work all that well for them.  Anna sat at the dining table and couldn't hear much of anything David and I were talking about just a few feet away, thanks to the non-acoustics in here.  David sat in the shotgun seat and spent half his time convincing Dexter that the seat would only hold 1 at a time.  Also the passenger side door doesn't open because of that displaced molding around the outside that's barely being held in place by duct tape - it hangs down enough to block the door.  So each time he got in and out, David had to shoehorn his way into the passenger seat while trying to deal with the dog beds taking up all the floor space between the 2 front seats, as well as the console that juts out from the dashboard between the seats.  He nearly got stuck once.  Much easier for me because I'm used to all of it, but not so easy on my guests.

In Rockwall we passed an enormous building that Anna said was the county courthouse (I didn't recognize it as such because it was just sitting on a plot of land like a regular building instead of at a town square).

Rockwall County Courthouse

At that point, I was still thinking of Rockwall as being a small rural community, forgetting that it's now likely considered a suburb of Dallas and Richardson and Plano - that whole growing tech/industrial area.

Rockwall County has an estimated population (in 2017) of 96,788.  This building was built in 2011.  And rural or not, this still looks pretty fancy sitting out in a field on its own.

I walked the dogs around one of the fields and got a couple of photos with the wildflowers.

Dexter

Gracie

Gracie never wants to look at the camera.  Dexter was just oblivious.

Driving through Garland, we passed a building labeled International Leadership of Texas.  D&A told me it's a charter school and that there are several of this particular brand around the area.  I thought the name seemed a little weird so I looked them up.  They claim to work on building leaders for tomorrow by offering classes in English, Spanish and Chinese and that 100% of their students take at least 1 AP qualifying test.  All very well, but they rank as #81 among the 427 private schools in Texas, which doesn't seem very lofty to me.

I looked up Garland High School and it ranks #377 among the 2,813 public high schools in Texas.  Using very creaky old long-division without a calculator, I work that out as the private school ranking 19% and the public school ranking 13%.  Maybe I figured it out wrong, but that's what I got.  Both schools claim 60%+ minority students and 50%+ "economically disadvantaged."  So why should someone be paying for the private school?  Especially why should the State of Texas be paying for it, which I think they are.  Some economist or researcher with time on their hands during this quarantine might want to take a look at these figures statewide, and the source of their funding (and maybe the political connections of those sources).  Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of full funding for public schools and a zillion years ago was a very poorly paid teacher in the Texas public school system.

The trees and plants are noticeably green, which I commented on, but both Anna and David said it'd been like this for many weeks.  To my eyes, though, the well-advanced green was stunning.  I'd seen nothing like this in any state I've visited since last fall.

We passed the Milano Hat Company, also in Garland, and I was surprised to see the Justin brand on the building so looked it up.  Milano Hats was founded in 1983 and was very successful, and a few years ago began getting the rights to produce hats for other brands - most notably Justin® Hats, Larry Mahan® Hats, and Tony Lama® Hats.  I had no idea Garland had become the center of the Western hat universe.

We passed a building labeled Mission of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was a church I hadn't heard of so I looked it up.  Turns out to be a branch of Catholicism that focuses on missionary work.   The depiction of Jesus at right is theirs.

That same image is in a front yard in the next street over from here, and every time I walk the dogs by there, I think it's an odd choice for a portrait claiming to be Jesus.  He would have been a Middle Eastern Jew and, granted, people undoubtedly looked different 2,000 years ago than they do now, but at a minimum I'm confident no one living in that region had skin this pale, and I'm pretty sure those features are much more northern European too.  But it was a long time ago and cameras didn't work so well then.

Speaking of cameras, we also passed a very large warehouse-y building labeled Shutterfly.  I'd always thought this was an online company, not a manufacturing concern and couldn't figure out what they'd need a big building like this for.  I still don't know.  They say online that they are indeed an online tech company and don't manufacture any products that aren't already on your computers.  And this building didn't look like someplace a bunch of computer programmers or techs would be sitting around in.  It looked like a warehouse or, at most, a factory building.  No windows.  Odd.

We passed a bridge that was labeled as prohibited to any vehicle "over 3 axles or more."  It still strikes me as funny.  Did they really need to say no more than 3 axles twice in one sign?

Caddo Mills
This past week for variety I drove to a place called Holiday Road Travel Center at Caddo Mills, which is a few miles beyond Farmersville and is just as rural an area as it sounds.  This place turned out to be an RV park with multiple RV services, including a repair shop.  So I was able not only to dump my waste tanks there, but also dump my garbage and fill my water tank.  And then they let me take my dogs to their enclosed dog park (which the dogs immediately misused by eating grass instead of running around and enjoying being off leash).  They were very nice about everything, but the RV park didn't seem very hospitable to me - the land had been completely cleared and the nearest trees were quite a ways away, so it's probably fiercely hot when the sun shines.

On the way there I passed a Raytheon plant.  Turns out they've already got plants in Dallas, Richardson and Plano and are building one in McKinney and claim more rapid growth in North Texas than anywhere else in the US.

I passed through the town of Murphy, pop. about 20,000, that David tells me was there when I was in high school but I sure don't remember it.  Still, that was in the '60s and even as recently as 2000 its population was only 3,100, so it was probably tiny back then and surrounded by fields.  Now it's an actual town and bleeds into other surrounding areas.

I saw lots of bluebonnets and paintbrush along the road.  Anna said the peak was weeks ago, but it still looks good to me.  I also passed huge fields full of yellow flowers.  Very sunny on this non-sunny day.

I passed through Farmersville, pop. 3,301, with the slogan "Discover a Texas Treasure."  Maybe next time I go out that way I'll stop for a look at the town.  This trip I just stopped at the Dairy Queen for a malt, and found they'd stopped answering their phone so I had to go to the drive-up machine and place my order that way and they brought it out the (locked) door to me.  Odd experiences these days are bringing.  Nothing wrong with the malt, though.

I passed through Princeton, pop. 6,807, which I've also never heard of.  But it's been around for a while because there was once a POW camp there briefly during WWII.  I found a one-page entry that seems to say a migratory labor camp was converted to hold German POWs, who were actually held 5 months after the end of the war.  It's the "migratory labor camp" bit that's interesting to me.  Take a look for yourselves at this link.   https://www.collincountyhistory.com/pow-camp

I heard on the radio that Cook Political Report has designated Wichita Falls as the most conservative congressional district in the United States.  Which is saying something, when you think about it.  We lived in Wichita Falls for 2 years - Pres. Kennedy was assassinated while we were living there - and I don't remember anything about that time that made me think it was so very right-wing.  Either I was too young, or my parents insulated me, or things have changed.  Or all 3.

I drove through McKinney, current pop. 195,342 (where Raytheon is going in).  McKinney is considered an exurb of the DFW metroplex and is reaping the population benefits.  From 2000 to 2003, and again in 2006, it was the fastest-growing city in the US among cities of more than 50,000.  In 2007, it was the 2nd fastest growing city in the US among those of more than 100,000, and in 2008, and again in 2017, it was the 3rd fastest in the same group.   The 2010 census put it at 131,117; the estimate for 2018 is 191,645.  And in 2014, Money magazine named it the #1 Best Place to Live in America.

All that for little old McKinney.  Who'd've thunk it?

Plano - Allison Autocare
I'd stopped here last week to get the RV officially inspected (now that I'm back in the state of Texas), only to discover that I couldn't lay my hands on a copy of my current insurance policy.  That policy is one of the many valuable things I unearthed during my Spring Cleaning this last week, so this time when I stopped, they were glad to help me out.

It's been a while since I've had to get a vehicle inspected, and I remember the days of putting it on a machine to test vehicle emissions and other exciting things.  No longer.  Those days are past.  This guy checked all my equipment, including my tires, and asked some questions and that was pretty much it.  But he sends in a report to the state about how road-worthy I am, so this time I can get the registration done without arguing about getting the inspection done in another state.

In fact, my registration is due in May, and my driver's license expires in September, so I've put both on my list of things to do during this hiatus.  But at least I now know where my insurance proof is and I now have my inspection done.

Future plans
Earlier in the week, I got the impression from the news that maybe if I stayed here through May, I'd be able to get back on the road in June.  I really miss it - the traveling around and seeing new things and learning about new places and people.  Then I started to do a little research.

I discarded my original travel plan, which would have me postpone Missouri (April) and Iowa (May) for a later time, and instead go to Minnesota in June, North Dakota in July and South Dakota in August, and possibly even Nebraska in September.  My thinking was that some of the medical people are hoping the virus will die down during the summer, and possibly kick back into gear in the fall, which might give me some travel time.

But all those states except Minnesota have governments that have refused to institute statewide stay-home orders, making me very very nervous about traveling there.  Just because the virus may not be spreading as fast doesn't mean it isn't spreading at all.  And with my asthma and my age group, I feel pretty vulnerable.

Instead I thought I might head west to New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada.  I looked them up to see what kinds of measures their governments were instituting and found that even in those states where the governors were being very cautious, they were being subverted by the state legislatures and by protesters among the general population.

And when I look east to the states I missed in the beginning - Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina - I'm seeing the same sort of trouble recognizing reality.  I'm getting pretty sick of listening to elected officials saying saving lives is less important than saving the economy.  Like the illustrious lieutenant governor of Texas did a month ago - this article is a funny version of that ghastly pronouncement.   https://news.yahoo.com/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick  I still don't understand why it's an either/or proposition.

Anyway, after all that discouraging research, I concluded I can't make plans right now.  I can hope - but I'm with those who think adequate testing is a bare minimum for opening things back up, and we sure ain't there yet.  But who knows.  Maybe in a month things'll be different.

Meanwhile I'm taking comfort from the advice I noted last week from that elderly survivor of other worldwide disasters - forget about planning into the future and instead make a daily to-do list.  So every morning, I sit down and make a list for the day.  And I do my very best to get through my list each day.  That's where I focus my attention.  It really does help.  I can control the little things.  The rest is up to somebody else and there's no point in wasting energy thinking about it.