Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 11 Nov 2024 15:11:55 GMT
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I actually moved into the new house BEFORE buying the new car. I needed the old F-150 pickup to carry stuff from my son's house to mine. Memory is bloody weird. Somehow, the car story arose in my mind before the house story.
My daughter-in-law put me in contact with the realtor who had helped them find their house, five years ago. She spoke with a glorious Tennessee accent. Had I known how few people I'd meet here who grew up speaking Tennessee, I would have paid more attention. I picked houses in my price range, which meant the low-rent districts. I wanted to be able to pay my mortgage, my auto loan, and food, with still some left from my social security check. Yeah, I know. Social Security is on its last legs. Thing is, it's been on its last legs for twenty years. Hopefully, it will hold on a little longer before the Federal Reserve manages to send the US dollar into hyperinflation.
I saw about five houses. The first time I saw the one I picked, I thought it was on too big a road. But the second time I saw it, I realized that though MLK Jr Ave is a big road, it actually had very little traffic. It took a while for the mortgage stuff to come through, and my son and his wife grew tired of me being in their little house, so I moved into an Extended Stay America room for two months. Learned a lot about West Knoxville there, before moving into my house in East Knoxville.
The house was obviously flipped, with middle-priced components inside, but it was nice, and still is, over three years later. I moved in in August of 2021.
The house has a large living room and large bedroom in front, with ten-foot ceilings, a kitchen, small bedroom, work room, bathroom, and hallway behind that, with standard eight-foot ceilings. It's perfect for an aging bachelor, with a guest room, so I can have occasionally overnight company.
There's a quarter acre lot in back, surrounded by a wooden fence, with storage shed, and a smaller lawn in front. I have a small electric mower to maintain the grass.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:53:11 GMT
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While living in my son's house, waiting for the procedure to make my bladder empty on its own again, I figured out that I would NOT be moving back into the trailer. So I sold it for cash to the RV place down the street. I looked around, at Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, BMW. I've had four Hondas, two of them sedans. I like them. Toyota still makes a Honda, with boat-like handling. Both are world class companies. I could live with the cars made by Hyundai or Kia. But the Mazda was indeed a "Zoom! Zoom!" experience. And the BMW was as much more exhilarating than that as the Mazda to the Honda.
So I arranged to buy the BMW. I was there finalizing loan plans, when the manager walked in and said, "This has never happened before. One of our employees just ran his motorcycle into your car, and he dented the bumper." "Is he OK?" I asked. "He's going to the ER, but only to make sure he's OK. He says he's OK."
I went out to look at the BMW bumper. It was obvious that the bumper was an exchangeable part, so I told him to call me when they had replaced it, and I'd come back and go through the final steps again.
The next day, I called, and said I wanted a Honda Civic, not the BMW they were fixing for me. He had a used one on the lot, and I drive that to this day.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 06 Nov 2024 22:40:40 GMT
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I tried all the coffee shops in town, but finally decided on Iconik Coffee Roasters, just off of the southern wash greenway. I biked there daily. Did food shopping at La Montañita Food Co-op, near the northern wash greenway, near downtown.
In May, I was comfortable. June got too hot. It was either turn on the AC, pay for that electricity, and bear the noise, or sit in front of a fan.
But I had a glorious two months of trailer life.
Took a few trips. One to visit a friend across the border in St. Johns, Arizona. One to Los Alamos, and a couple of lunch trips to Albuquerque.
The seven-foot height of my trailer was too short. I started feeling smothered. I'd wake up at night to panic attacks. When my bladder stone steadily reduced my pee from a trickle every hour during the night to not able to pee at all without a catheter, I had to do something. So I drove five days back to Knoxville, arranged for an operation to remove the stone, and stayed with my son.
All cured by an hour under the knife, and he didn't even need to cut anything.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:20:04 GMT
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I reserved a space for April 25 through June 23 at Los Suenos RV Park & Campground, on Cerrillos Rd in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I arrived on time, got my trailer backed into the space, and set up living there for two months, after which I would drive north and visit Tom, Neil, Brad, Ilo, and Elias. Plus a couple of days in Durango, Colorado. I've never been west of the Rockies in Colorado.
I had my DO̿ST e-bike, which rode ratchet-strapped to the inside of the trailer, in the "toy" area of the toy hauler. Santa Fe has a wash on both the north and south side of town. After big thunder storms, the washes carry the water so that it doesn't flood the town. Each wash has a wide concrete bike path along it. All your east/west traffic can go this way. Then you turn north or south to get where you're going. The big roads mostly have bike lanes. The small roads mostly have speed bumps. It is the best city for bicycling I have ever encountered.
More coming on life in Santa Fe...
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 31 Oct 2024 15:56:51 GMT
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I got rid of many years of accumulated stuff before leaving Vermont. I had a whole second bedroom full of stuff on two big racks of shelves. Everything had to go. I gave away most of it, the only requirement being that they would use the stuff they got. I sold guns, to get down to what would fit in the Truck Vault in the back of my F-150. That meant five long guns, and three handguns. I also gave away my reloading equipment, though I did charge for the primers; they were in short supply at the time.
When I left Vermont, my stuff just barely fit inside the trailer, with no room for living.
When I got to my son's place in Tennessee, the first order of business was to trim the remaining stuff such that there was room to live in the trailer. They I practiced living there, emptying the black tank once a week, and refilling the water supply as necessary. Gray water I dumped into my son's septic tank.
I moved out of my son's house for my last week there, and lived full-time in the trailer. Worked good, so I headed out in April of 2021. First stop, northern Arkansas, to visit a friend. I camped some single nights in free places provided by distilleries and museums. The other times, I paid for hookups. It wasn't yet hot enough to need the AC, which was good, since it was very noisy.
Next stop, south Texas. For the first few days, I bought a hookup at an RV park near the gulf. Went out on the e-bike to the beach, and over the big bridge over the inland waterway.
Then to my brother's house, a little ways north, where I parked the trailer for five days, and stayed upstairs, in the place he had prepared for one of his three daughters to stay. I had everything I needed, except a kitchen, which I shared with my brother and his wife.
Next, I paid for three days of parking at an RV park north of Dallas. I saw the big statue of Jesus there, and called my mother's sister, who did not answer. She would die not long after, nearly 100 years old.
Then it was on to Santa Fe, stopping in Amarillo on the way. More about Santa Fe in my next post.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:32:43 GMT
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I started my Vermont to Tennessee migration after seeing an RV on the road while driving south with my daughter to Myrtle Beach. I thought, "I could do that." But it was only a whim, until it got stronger for two months straight. At that point, it became inner guidance. In September of 2020, I decided to do it. My friend Brad convinced me that I needed to learn to drive a truck before going out with a trailer behind it. So I bought a Ford 150 with a towing package. It was easy to learn to drive it on the road. I learned that as long as you and the other guy are both in your lanes, you will pass without incident.
In November of 2020, I bought a travel trailer. It was a toy hauler, with the front half of the trailer containing queen-size bed, kitchen, and bathroom, and the back side of the trailer open, with a ramp in the back. When stationary, I used that space for a kitchen table with two wooden chairs, a desk chair, and a computer table. When traveling, the computer table was folded up, the kitchen table and chairs were ratchet-strapped to the floor, which had numerous tie-downs available. My e-bike came inside and was ratchet-strapped in place.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 30 Oct 2024 23:13:14 GMT
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I said a little in the last post about my getting to Knoxville. There are two things left unsaid:
1. What did I do for the time between leaving Knoxville in April of 2021 and getting to Santa Fe, in May of 2021?
2. What have I been up to since buying my house in August of 2021.
I will write these up over the next few days, God willing and the crick don't rise.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:22:42 GMT
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I haven't posted here since August of 2019, over five years ago.
In 2020, COVID happened. The toilet paper shortage caused me to get a bidet. I have never looked back. Now I have a heated bidet, plugged into the wall. Luxury. How anyone could touch their shit through a few layers of tissue paper, I no longer understand.
In November of 2020, my programming muse left. I could no longer do my work. So I retired. In April of 2021, I started collecting social security.
In February of 2021, I put all me belongings in a travel trailer, and drove away from Vermont for good. I landed at my son's house in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I learned to live in the trailer, before heading west, towing the trailer behind my Ford F-150 pickup truck.
I had great adventures, and landed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for what was to be a two-month stay before heading north, to visit L. Neil Smith in Fort Collins, my high school buddies in Colorado Springs and Laramie, Wyoming, and Elias Alias in far northern Montana.
A bladder stone had a different idea. When I stopped being able to pee without a catheter, I drove back to Knoxville, and stayed with my son until the bladder stone was removed, and I was all better.
I bought a house, in the low-rent district, and many e-bikes. I found the one I like, and now ride it around Knoxville, daily.
Singing in the Knoxville Choral Society, the best chorus I've ever had the pleaseure of singing with. Playing my trombone occasionally. Smoking cannabis and CBD.
Have started work on Arbitrage.wtf, to make lots of money, risk-free, real quick. Watch that space.
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:13:17 GMT
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It's been a long time since I wrote a blog post. Lisplog appears to still work, so I can do that without writing any code.
Hello, Internet!
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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 23 Aug 2019 21:14:23 GMT
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On Taylor Swift's new album, Lover, there is a song entitled, "Soon You'll Get Better". It features The Dixie Chicks.
In the song I heard, "... so, Jesus, now I pray to you..."
That line got me thinking about my prayer to Jesus today. I can find only one prayer, "Thy will be done."
Standing here, palms open to the sky, tears streaming, "Please, Jesus. I'm here. This body can move things. I can love people. Use me, as thou whilst."
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