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Delayed

At the moment our life feels like an endless stay at the airport. We’re awaiting a flight out but it never comes.

This weekend I was mentally rejuvenated by going to Las Vegas and hanging out with good friends. I came back to Tucson with a new perspective, and feeling ready to get the house project done. It’s a good thing too, because the news has gotten worse and worse, and without a break I might really be depressed about it.

The story behind this is too tedious to detail. Suffice to say that our countertops will not be installed until late in March, which means we won’t have appliances or sinks until nearly April. We have a choice: we can blow off the house and leave it unfinished, to be resolved this fall, or we can blow off our schedule and stay here until the house is at least habitable.

We’ve decided to stay, sort of. This means a major disruption to the schedule that I had posted about a week ago. The worst thing is that we will miss the Heart of Texas unit rally in Ft Davis entirely. We’ll also have to shove our scheduled stops in Weatherford, New Orleans, and Florida back about three weeks, and cut some other stops out entirely. Nobody is happy about this.

But there’s no point in agonizing about it. If we left things unfinished here we’d only be coming back to a project in October or November, and we don’t want to face that again. We want to come back to a house we can enjoy, not a project that drains our energy. The whole point of having a house was to have a comfortable and relaxing place to land between trips. The only way it can fill that role will be if we get it to a point where we can settle in when we return.

This is not all bad news. Since we have little to do in the house during March, except wait, we will look for an opportunity to take a shorter trip for a week or so between projects. This means we can re-visit the idea of going to Sonora with some friends who have expressed interest (and who happen to have spouses who are native Spanish speakers). We can also do some long weekends in southern Arizona at places that weren’t available to us during the coldest part of winter, like the Chiricahua Mountains.

I wish we could take off this week and join our friends at Anza-Borrego.   As it turns out, several of our friends are coincidentally going to be there this week, including several characters you know if you’ve been reading this blog regularly: Bobby & Danine; Bill & Larry; Rich C and Sadira; and Jay and Cherie from Cheyenne.   It sounds like a party — and we can’t go!

One happy reason that we can’t go has to do with Emma.   She has made such tremendous progress at karate that she has achieved three stripes on her white belt.   Her instructors have decided that this Saturday she will test for her yellow belt, which is a real compliment.   Normally it takes at least three more weeks for a kid of her age to be ready for that test.   To be ready, she has to learn some more phrases in Korean, study some rules, and learn one more new form.     So this is a critical week for her.

The moral of the story is that delays happen, in any kind of traveling life.   Long ago we learned to stay flexible.   It will be a huge drag to miss our friends at the Fort Davis rally, but every setback opens up a new opportunity.   It’s sort of fun not knowing exactly where or when we will be going, but having confidence that something interesting is about to happen.   One way or another, we are going to get this Airstream back on the road.     And we’ll find our friends again at some point.   Like us, they are irrepressible travelers and they will pop up, sooner or later.

Once we get a few details squared away, I’ll post a new schedule here.   Right now only know that we will be back in Vermont by June, and attending the Vintage Trailer Jam in Saratoga Springs NY during July 10-14.   The rest is unknown … and as long as it is, I’ll enjoy the sensation of anticipation and the thrill of all the possibilities that lie ahead.   Perhaps this “delay” thing isn’t going to be so bad after all.

6 Responses to “Delayed”

  1. Mike Young Says:

    Rich,

    Perhaps it is a rule here in Arizona that home remodeling takes more time than we expect. For us delays became routine months ago, but a new twist has gone from annoying to comical. It seems that every task that we have done must be done at least twice. For example, our fireplace came but it was the wrong model; our mantle was supposed to be impregnated with a color but it came as uncolored concrete; our double-opening French doors came but they only hinged on one side; cabinet door overlays arrived but some were the wrong size and the hinges caused binding of adjacent doors; the front door was being installed but the hinges were rabbeted on the wrong side; a lock set ordered over the internet arrived without one of the two screw holes needed for installation tapped. I could go on and on with examples. Perhaps there is something in the air here that makes delay for all sorts of reasons part of the Arizona experience. Go with the flow, because someday as you know the bad stuff will recede from memory only to be replaced by amusing stories of that time when the gods conspired to make our lives a bit more interesting that we had intended.

  2. Gunnygod Says:

    There’s another down side too the delay, one morning you will wake too find the lemon in your driveway.

    Gunny

    PS Don’t ask When !!!

  3. Rich Says:

    Sure, Gunny, go ahead, but don’t be surprised when Emma comes out in her karate uniform and kicks your butt!

  4. sadira Says:

    Ohhh…we’ll miss you in Anza Borrego for sure! I was just at the Airstream this morning picking up Rich to take him to work so he could get everything all hitched up and ready to pull out this afternoon when I go get him from work…I am very excited at this point, and am having a hard time finishing out my short day at the shop. We’ll take lots of pictures though, that’s almost as good as being there right?

    almost. 😉

  5. Jay and Cherie Guerin Says:

    Danine found us this a.m. Looking forward to meeting all the other usual suspects. We’ve followed their antics off and on over the months. Friday we’re leaving for Big Bend RV Park at Parker Dam CA for a week. After that we’ll be heading back into Arizona.

    Too bad the house’s holding you down. We’ve been there!

  6. rick olivier Says:

    hey again, rich, noticed you plan to stop in New Orleans. if so, dude, you definitely need to call me so I can feed you and your clan some REAL CAJUN FOOD made by a REAL CAJUN!! me. and if you have time (and I’m still awake) we can hit some of the best music clubs in the whole freakin’ world… or I’ll drag ya’ll out to some zydeco around Lafayette…endless titillation here below sea level…

    r. o.