As I begin this post it is Mothers’ Day 2015 and I am in the final couple days of preparing to leave Asheville for the whole summer.  Felix and I are hitting the road on Friday morning and will drive to Sacramento over 6 days.  We will stop in Nashville to see an old friend from early in the Sacramento days (we met in 1973 when I lived in an apartment complex before buying my first house) and whom I haven’t seen since probably the late 70s or early 80s when she lived in Chicago.  From there we will drive to Fort Smith, Arkansas, Amarillo, TX, Santa Fe, NM, Las Vegas, NV and finally Sacramento.  I have allowed two nights in Santa Fe to catch up with my old friend Beth Kiyosaki whom I last saw when Abner and I did a similar trip West in the late summer of 2008.

All day I have listened to radio shows the themes of which revolve around mothers, as seems appropriate for the day, and I have had a realization that I guess should come by the time you are 66 years old.  My mother was 23 years old when I was born and my father was 28.  They could not possibly have known much about life, let alone parenting, at that age, as few of us did in our 20s.  They had lived through the Great Depression and then WWII.  Much of the time during which they might have been able to learn about how people treat each other and behave in the real world had to have been spent focused on fear, grief, basic survival and hope.  Given all that, it is nothing short of amazing that as Mom approaches her 90^th birthday in a few months and Dad his 95^th they are still together and seem to be happy and reasonably content with their lives.

They certainly made their share of mistakes as parents.  All parents do things when their kids are young and difficult that the kids ultimately end up resenting to one degree or another.  Probably no parent has survived parenthood without being told by one or more of their kids how much they hate them.  In the end, in thinking about my mother today, I realize that she and my father did the best they could possibly have done, and bore and raised 4 kids who grew up without becoming drug addicts, spouse abusers, ax murderers or any number of possible psychotics.  They also, I believe, gave us the most important knowledge that you have to have to make your way in the world.  We have the ability to distinguish between manipulation and love.  For that, and so many other gifts, I think I am actually quite lucky.

Getting ready to leave for my long summer trip has been unlike almost anything I have ever done aside from moving.  When you move you are forced to choose all the things that really matter and that you think you will really need.  In theory everything else gets given away, sold, or trashed so you don’t go through the pain of having to carry things you really don’t need.  Going away for more than 4 months is oddly similar other than the fact that you will eventually return home.  As such, one has to look at all one’s stuff and consider what you really are going to need in this whole season away from home.

Felix and I are traveling by car, as I mentioned, and since he requires almost the entire back of my Touareg whatever I choose to take for myself (and him) has to fit in the rather large Thule roof-top box I have used for many years of travel.  It is actually rather commodious but due to its oddly aerodynamic shape, it doesn’t encourage traveling with items possessing bulk.  In looking at my daily life it is obvious that one of the more consistent activities is that I make myself a couple cups of coffee every morning and lattes on Saturdays and/or Sundays.  My friend John has equipped the house he is letting us occupy all summer with a couple of coffee brewing devices but after all these years of using my Jura Capresso it is hard to think of doing without it for 4-1/2 months.  The problem is that it is bulky.  What to do?

Clothing is another matter.  When I am living in Asheville and my life revolves around hiking with Felix, playing bridge with a bunch of friends twice a week at UNCA, and the occasional lunch and frequent dinners with other friends, I generally have few times when I need to dress in anything other than shorts/jeans and a t-shirt or polo.  I am not certain that will be true this summer in California.  I am expecting to be traveling to San Francisco, Aptos, Los Angeles, San Diego, Napa/Sonoma, Lake Tahoe, Fort Bragg/Mendocino, and probably one or two of the National Parks.  It is true that in most of these places I can dress as casually as I do at home but sometimes not.  Furthermore, in California, on any given summer day, it could be 110 degrees in Sacramento and the high 50s in San Francisco and the coast.  Spread out over the months from May through September this increases the likelihood of straddling a couple of seasons.

Of course the other issue is shoes.  I am quite picky about footwear both functionally and in terms of what it looks like with the rest of my outfit.  Shoes are not, as most travelers know, easy to pack and carry.  I am debating the value of filling a box of shoes and taking it to UPS to ship.  I have already filled one decent sized box with shorts, jeans, t-shirts, underwear, socks and other necessities and am not eager to spend more money shipping stuff but truthfully I just don’t see how I am going to manage to get all my “necessary” crap out there without some items going separately.

All that aside, I am really excited about this trip.  I left California in early January of 2005 and have tried for all those years to maintain friendships from 3,000 miles away mostly with 10-12 day trips.  Inevitably I spend the whole time frantically going from lunch to dinner in a vain attempt to have quality time with a whole slew of people and in the end, fly home exhausted, in need of a vacation, and having pissed off the people I didn’t have time to see.  By going for 4 months I should be able to connect with just about everyone who matters to me without feeling pressed for time.

The onslaught of really warm muggy weather and the huge influx of tourists that occurs in Asheville after Memorial Day will all occur after Felix and I have left so, if this summer works out well, I may just start doing this on an annual basis.  One could do worse.  4+ months of the year in California and the other 8 in lovely Asheville is not the toughest gig you will find.

And so on Friday, assuming I haven’t failed abysmally in my preparations, Felix and I will hit the road.  I am hoping that, as the summer months progress and perhaps fun and interesting events follow our travels, I will post our comings and goings for those of you who enjoy reading this stuff.  Until then. . . .