Al
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| Grief and grieving. | October 19, 2010, 05:04:40 AM | |
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| The ol' VW bus goes down the road. | July 29, 2010, 05:18:54 AM | The ol' VW bus goes down the road.
Many of you who've been on the forum for quite sometime may remember posts by me years ago that included a certain 1972 Volkswagen "hippie bus" that was often a player mentioned in my trials, hijinks, and escapades. This one had ton's O' personality, having had all sorts of stickers applied during it's lifetime, and far-out murals painted on the interior ceiling. If this van could talk, It likely would'nt be able to remember all the "trips" it took, anyhow. 
Stickers from Hendrix, the dead, and even Phish were all over the interior panels. What a wild trip this thing had before it came to Sophia and I five years ago....
I sold it yesterday.
I've always been a bit of a vintage volkswagen person, I've owned several. I'm very mechanically inclined, and there's never a shortage of work to be done on a vintage air-cooled volkswagen. So vw's and me always "clicked". Well, that and the fact that I never, ever, drive a "normal" car if I can help it. The more a vehicle is a cultural icon, the more I like it.
No, not a grateful dead fan, not a "hippie", nor am I a pothead. None of the above. The reason a VW bus was always on my "big list O' vehicles to own before I die" was simply it's ......... cultural significance. The dream of the open road, the dream many have of "crossing the country in a vw bus" and so on. I just always wanted one.
I do have to admit, they are completely their own kind of vehicle..... unique in their handling, their "feel" when driving. (in a VW bus, you sit ahead of the front wheels, with that big bay window, you can look down at the road just inches ahead of your feet)
They aren't fast, they don't handle great, by any stretch of the imagination at all. The lack of speed or power, and the amazing view of the road ahead of you, the scenery around you, literally force you to take your time, and while you are taking your time, admire the scenery and things going on around you as you travel. It's almost a zen kinda experience, a wonder you experience. You've been forced to slow down, and you realize, slowing down is not bad at all. It can be awesome for the spirit.
So, anyhow, this rusty old camper holds many fond memories for me. Camping on a lakefront site, with a kayak beached at the campsite, with a view that would make a great postcard from the rear hatch when you wake up.
Camping at another site where the other campers all stepped out of their big-bucks rvs to literally stare at the smoking, primer gray heap backing in to a neighboring site, with their jaws literally hanging down.
Kinda a "Oh shit, Martha, hippies! Lock everything up! Look on their faces.
Sophia sleeping in the little forward hammock/ cot, still so tiny she needed a binky to go to sleep, and turning a flashlight off and on, then giggling at the glow in the dark stars some long ago deadhead, hippie, or whatever had painted / stuck to the ceiling over her cot.
And me snapping a picture of her first ever S'More the next day.
One time while "boondocking" or "dry camping" way out in the woods along a very primitive logging road, (free! no fees and no neighbors!) we all heard a pack of coyotes let out a mournful howl, 5 or 6 of em', in unison. At about 30 to 50 yards away. A friend of mine who was out with us camping literally turned about as white as I have ever seen a person turn.  Sophia, on the other hand, thought that it was "the coolest thing ever!"
And boy, could you pack that thing good for a camping trip. All you needed for a week, including a tandem Kayak and two bikes, cooler, food, fishing equipment, .22 rifle, and so on. Even a portable DVD player for rainy times.
Several trips to the local drive-in over the last few years, where we could pack our own drinks and food, back the bus into the parking spot backwards, throw open the back hatch, fold down the bed, and watch the movie laying on our stomachs, heads propped up on pillows, like laying in the living room watching tv or something.
So many little great memories.
I bought a low mileage Mazda Miata in the spring of 2009. (another car on my gotta own at least one someday list....) And I love that car as well. But funny thing - you never need to work on it. And since that car came onboard, we never drove the bus anymore. It just sat in the yard, always needing work, as they always do when they are 38 years old. When faced with rebuilding the carb on the bus, or, hopping in the Miata, dropping the top, and just driving, I've since always chosen the Miata.
This spring I decided it was time to shit or get off the pot. Either fix the bus, or sell it. One or the other. As a camper, it is off the road all winter, and the insurance reflects that - only about $160 a year to insure. But the old cars, they go to pot quick when they sit around. Brake lines, rust, varnish in the carburetor (remember them things?)......... Let em' sit outside just a few years and the only thing they have in their future is a scrap yard.
This old girl was like a part of my family. She deserved to be out on the road, camping, doing, going. Not just rusting away unused, uncared for.
So when talking with a co-worker recently of my hard decision, he mentioned that his brother had "always wanted a bus........." things started moving along. A price was set, the guy came to look at it, and was obviously very enamored with the old machine. Wanted to do the odds and ends work, and go camping with it. And he's very mechanically inclined, to boot.
It was almost like I was an adoption service screening a prospective parent. They seem like a perfect match.
Which brings me to yesterday. After transferring the title, and putting the temp tag on the back, we jumpstarted the old thing and warmed it up, with it's Oh so distinctive flat air cooled four cylinder tempo putting away as it warmed up, then pulled it back onto the pavement in the alleyway behind my house to check tire pressures and what not. I snapped some pictures before it drove off, and Sophia gave the spare tire on the front (also distinctive of the bay window style buses) a big hug. And they drove it off, to it's new home just a few miles away. As it drove away, with it's so familiar and distinctive barrage of sounds and smells (really hot motor oil, gasoline.......) I realized that it felt good to let it go. We, Sophia, I, and this old van had gone down different paths, and for once, this wasn't a sad thing, but just an event, a fork in the road for us all. I'd learned to take the good memories, and move on along my new path, without any sadness pulling me back. I truly feel no sadness at all.
All is well, and as it should be. Life changes as time flows on. We can kick, fight, scream, be in denial of it all, or, we can accept change and move on down our new path with out focus on what is ahead, and what we want that to be, without letting "letting go" be such a difficult thing. It's not good or bad. It just "Is".
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| re-entering the fray commonly known as dating....... | January 23, 2009, 01:31:23 PM | I joined an online dating site not too long after putting the A out the door. I had high hopes initially, hell, lot of people on the site, locally, too. I placed a thoughtful and straightforward ad, posted a bunch of pics, and sat back.
The emails began to roll in. Hell, this was too easy, lol. I began to read them, correspond with some.
The initial burst of energy i felt began to dissapate rather quickly as i corresponded and read the email. Every single one reeked of dysfunction. Kay, perhaps i was being too hard on folks, I thought, no way could such a high percentage of people be toxic. Surely I'm being jaded, or too hard on them, setting my sights too high........
Over the next year and a half, it became quite an education on the condition, psychologically, of the average single adult walking around out there. And not a pretty one. I'd come to the conclusion that a healthy person is not the average. The average person is unhealthy. Healthy is the rarity.
Shit.
This is likely to be a long spell, I realized. After about a year and a half, I'd come to the point of I-just-don't-give-two-shits-anymore. I had long since learned that sex does not equate to love, and that it was never really a necessity. My life was, is, very good. My daughter in my primary custody, legally...... bills paid mostly on time. Time to spend with her, lots of little adventures. Peace and tranquility abounded, no more drama at all. I had learned to separate the wheat from the chaff rather quickly now, amazing how a few sentences with someone, and i would just know whether they "got it" or not. I had two people i met in person on the site, nearly all others ended up getting the delete button. No time to kill on losers, I've only got so much time on this earth to kill, and that clock just keeps ticking. So, I kept busy at the task of living..... not existing, living.
I worked less, enjoyed more. I found myself, found the outdoors and nature again. I rediscovered many passions I had had in my youth, like going a a hard and fast tear on a mountain bike - riding so hard that when i came home and dismounted it felt like walking on taut springs rather than legs. Took great pleasure in small things i did with my daughter, soaked up as much of the positives of being a parent as i could possibly do. The first day of kindergarden, and being outside to have her run into my arms at the end of the day. Camping, so far out in the boonies, that we heard a pack of coyotes howl in ionision, not more than 50-100 yards away. Kayaking, fishing. The first ER reunion in Ohio, where soph and i hung out and assisted Chris in the kitchen, went swimming with robin, and cycling with Greg . Fossil hunting in an area less than a mile from my home. Playing with slot cars, working on projects in the basement workshop. Bike riding together, exploring the world like we were both 5 years old. Road trips in the 72 vw bus camper, some through wilderness logging roads, some to the drive in movies. Some to tiny, out of the way silver 1950's style roadside diners where the waitress still calls you "hun", even if she's 20 years younger than you, and where you can sit and sip coffee at the counter- while Sophia makes conversation with the staff, and then proceeds to order for me... As in, "he'd like coffee, and creamed chipped beef....... I'd like a hot dog and.." The whole while, waitress has a hysterical smirk on her face. We've gone to a local museum, to see dinosaurs bones and artworks, and been to an opening for a local author's first book, a children's book, a copy of which was free to every child, personally signed by the author, as well as read by the author to the kids. We went to a local spot that I knew from my childhood, where a creek goes down a 50 foot long sheet of rock, probably a 30 foot drop along it's length..... a natural waterslide..... and spent a particularly hot august day squealing as we slid down it, as well as just lolling about in the icy cool stream, talking. We sat and watched insects - praying mantises and others that flocked to the tiny garden pond we built in the backyard. We tamed 5 tiny wal-mart koi to the point that we could feed them by hand, and named them flash, moonbeam, nemo, spot and bingo. We rode a little antique red wagon down some hills. Tended to a garden in the back yard. Learned from a gardening friend that the reason our strawberry patch in the back yard was not producing sweet enough berries anymore, was because we needed to add rabbit manure. Imagine trying to explain to a 5 year old that her pet bunnies shit would make our strawberries actually taste better, not like shit, LOL. Shot over 2000 digital photos, of things worth photographing, documenting little bits of life. While driving to the supermarket, we found a lost soccer ball in the street, stopped, and took it directly to a local park, where we giggled like idiots while both playing soccer for the first time, just the two of us.
For the cost of nothing, i acquired some old unwanted roof racks from an old phone company van, cut and welded them as necessary to make them fit, and mounted them on the vw bus, enabling me to carry the kayak, bikes, and mount an also free canopy to the side for camping - a crank out deal that allows me to set up in 30 seconds, wherever i park for the night. We went picking blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries, still in the freezer and used for the occasional smoothies we make in the blender. We camped, free, on a friends property where our campsite was at the peak of a mountain, the highest spot for miles....... where the sky's horizon seems a full 180 degrees and the night stars, the milky way, are visible to the naked eye. We sat around many campfires, toasted marshmallows, cooked hot dogs, and talked of little things while snuggling on a folding chair.
Such an amazing year and a half. I feel as though I've crammed a lifetime of simple pleasures into that period. I'm thankfull I've been such a hard sell, thankful that i refused to lower my standards to simply have someone at my side, for just the sake of having someone there. Aside from the obvious dysfunction that would have ate at me, it would also have kept me from living these things, had i allowed another mentally unwell person into my life.
As I review it now in my head, damn, it's been a good life, this short period of time. I'm glad i took the time to heal, the time to fix myself. The time to simply be a dad......... and hopefully instill in my daughter these same values. I no longer regret the years wasted before - i focus now on cherishing every minute i have here, and enjoy life and my loved ones immensely. I also note that nearly all of the past 1 1/2 years escapades, cost extremely little or nothing at all. So the old saying that the best things in life are free, makes sense.
I was 39 years of age before I even learned how to truly live.
I'm at a point now where a person on the dating site emailed me, along with a photo. I opened the email, saw the pic....... thought, wow, cute.... probably serious problems upstairs like everyone else.
Bit battle weary, I was, lol.
I read the email anyhow. Hmmm. Fascinating story, she had left an alcoholic and abusive husband a few years back. And a mother of two little ones. And as the chat and emails went to and fro, i desperately searched for dysfunction, for red flags. And just couldn't find any. And she seemed to posses the qualities i sought....... a long list, impossibly long, surely no one could hit on all the things i sought. Independent, and solely responsible for her kids, so many qualities she possessed.
Cutest thing I ever saw in my life, when she was on yahoo messenger with me, early on, chatting with her webcam on, and the two kids, 3 and 6 years old, run into the room and start climbing on her, sitting on her lap, all over her, her with an expression on her face of a combination of humor / embarrassment...... , knowing i was seeing it on my end.
Looked to me like a mother lion or bear on a nature show, with the cubs playing and frolicking all over them while mom just bears it with indifference.
Made my heart melt a bit, that did.
So today we're a few dates in, and everythings going well. Time will tell.
I'm just so damn happy that i made the choice to not lower my standards. The past year and half has been the best of my life. I'm looking forward to the rest of it being that way. Living, not just existing.
Al out |
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| a day off. | January 23, 2009, 01:18:29 PM | Well, seems Soph has caught a bit of a stomach virus that has been going around. So she's off school, and I'm off work. Called in some vac. time, staying home to coddle the little one. Actually looking forward to it. She's surely sick, but the kid always has such a positive attitude, such a trooper..... puke, wipe mouth, and smile and start babbling, immediately after...... slight fever, too. It amazes me the way she still sees the best in the situation, when most adults, if as sick as her, would be lying in bed whining like invalids. I guess the cartoons and day off balance it out, in her mind.......
Those of you who are parents know this routine, buckets strategically placed throughout the home, from where she sits, to the bathroom. Sort of a barfing path / walk.
I guess we just make the best of it we can. Makes no sense to worry over that which we can't change.
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| Looking ahead. And liking the future again. | November 24, 2008, 04:18:20 AM | Christmas is but a month away. Of course, money is short, and new surprise expenses seem to pop out of the woodwork to compound things. So why am I not concerned, and upset at this?
I guess I'm used to living frugally. I know that I'll have the $10 to pay for the Christmas tree that Sophia and I will soon march off into the woods at a tree farm to cut by ourselves - a tradition for us.
And I know the bills are paid, and we'll be eating.
Even if the items under the tree aren't plentiful this year, we surely will have a peaceful and quiet holiday, devoid of drama and nonsense.
Last year, I themed the tree as "the great depression".......... candy canes, glitter covered pine cones, bows and ribbons. And a 1930's toy tin train that I had found at an auction running under the tree.
I guess my theme was a year ahead of schedule, eh?
Just the same, I anticipate the holidays this year as much or more than in years past. I look forward to the "old fashioned" type of celebrating family, people, peace and contentment. Safety. Security. And a few very well thought out gifts.
And no drama.
There is nothing quite like the experience of a child excitedly waking you up way to early, to tune you in to the fact that "Santa came last night!!!", nevermind that it is 5:00 AM and you would be extremely miffed at being woke at such an infenal hour the other 364 days of the year. On this day, it's such a good feeling to bask in the joys of childhood. Even if it's from the creaking, graying adult side of things. It's still a childhood thing that comes back to us in the presence of little ones.
Al |
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