The ICE!

I can handle the snow, sort of handle the single digit weather, I'm getting used to the long trek to the flush toilet (I love saying that!) but the ICE! I am having such a hard time navigating the ICE! I waddle around like I'm 9 months pregnant, taking the tiniest of baby steps but I still slip and slide, even poor Roxy slides all over the place. I don't understand how the elderly get around. It's so dangerous! A large icicle fell on my head the other day as I was leaving the front door, but I was so preoccupied with looking at the ice on the ground that it just bounced off my hood. We were in the Subaru the other day after everything froze the night before under huge sheets of ice and we could hear large chunks of ice falling off the car onto the road and I said to Steve, "it's like that doomed space shuttle". Then a few days later it warmed up and everything is melted! Now it's snowing again, but I don't think they get the huge snow packs like in the Sierras. No wonder flooding is a problem in the midwest!

Mission Accomplished!

Steve fixed the Trooper! It took a few days and some down-home swearing, but he got the leak fixed and so far all systems are a go. We tentatively have been taking the Trooper out in bigger and bigger concentric circles each day, but always leaving the Subaru near the Chelsea interstate exit in case we broke down in the Trooper and one of us had to hitchhike back to Chelsea and grab the Subaru. We ventured out to Lansing to look at Michigan State last Saturday and were confident enough to look at each other and go, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" So the next morning we took it as a sign from God when our electricity was out, and we did the unthinkable! We drove 9 hours IN THE TROOPER to IOWA to pick up Steve's abandoned tow dolly! You have never seen such passion as when Steve connected his long-lost tow dolly to the Trooper hitch! We were a family again! The trip was nice because the weather was clear and we drove back through Chicago and had a really nice dinner where Maggie and Robert met some college girls at the next table who went to University of Wisconsin and University of Indiana and were in Maggie's same sorority. The roads are so horrible though in these states! They've got the excuse about the weather creating havoc but the potholes are huge and frequent and dangerous! It's like, "fix your freakin roads already!" I don't understand how the citizens of these states back here put up with the roads! It's shameful!

It was 60 in Lansing!

Robert wields his ax like a real mountain man on the massive trunk blocking our road!

The chillins arrive!

Their arrival!!!

Robert and Maggie arrived in Detroit late Monday night. It was so exciting to finally get them to Michigan! We drove to the cabin and their reaction was subdued to say the least. Maggie immediately plopped herself down at the computer and 15 minutes later declared, "I'm already bored!" She was kidding.... I think! The bathroom logistics took some explanation because I don't think they completely believed us when we said it's either the outhouse 30 steps up the hill, or the flush toilet 1/4 mile away on an icy road. The next morning I was explaining to them that when you answer the phone you say, "Friend's Lake" and then take any reservations for the cabins if necessary. Robert goes, "Friend's Lake.......run away! Save yourself!" But I think they are getting used to it. I have my suspicions that they think we like it too much and they are afraid we will want to stay here forever. We drove them around Ann Arbor and University of Michigan which they liked a lot.

The stadium in Ann Arbor

Maggie's sorority's house

at U of M (Tri Delt)

I sing the Messiah! Not!

Well! Over a week has gone by and I haven't added anything to the blog. There's a lot of pressure for life to look somewhat interesting! The Sunday before Christmas I was invited to participate in an ad hoc version of Handel's Messiah in Ann Arbor. They do it at an Episcopalian church/Jewish temple and they have been doing it for over 40 years. Whoever wants to participate is welcome and musicians and singers all gather for a totally unrehearsed version of Handel's work. There is a conductor and I think most of the musicians have either done the music or are very good musicians because the music sounded wonderful. Somehow I was seated in the front row of the tenor section, I wanted just to observe but I was given the book and ended up standing with the tenors, mouthing along with what sounded like professional tenors behind me. It was a lot of fun!

It's Bobert's 21st Birthday today!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Robert! Don't go too wild and don't gamble away that last $12 in your checking account! We're so excited to see you soon! It's snowing like mad, but just now it stopped. There's suppose to be a lot more on the way. This is what awaits you! These are views from our front door.......The red building is the workshop. We love you! 21!!!!!!! 21 years ago I was in a hospital bed deliriously happy but so tired. YOU were wide awake, so alert, so perfect, and I just wanted to go to sleep but you wouldn't let me. But it's been 21 years of sheer joy! We're so very proud of you! Love Mom and Dad

The guest cabin

The guest cabin! Anyone we know can stay here for free!
It's called the Teen Cabin because teenagers built it in the 60's.
Come visit!

Kitchen but no running water

ladder to loft

view outside door

Some college kids just stayed at the cabin and I found this nearby.

cabin kitchen

as you walk in the door the sink and pantry area to the right with gas heater in foreground

the cooking area to the left

The kitchen is really cold unless the gas heater is turned on. We have a budget from the Quakers for electricity/gas for the SEASON but I have a feeling we're well overbudget already and it hasn't even been two weeks! This cabin might not be a "free" as we thought!

A little bit of Chelsea and what I know about living in cold

The area next to cabin

Cabin after snowfall

Scrooge in The Christmas Carol (excellent production!)

Main Street at night from a moving car

More of Main Street

Neighborhood in Chelsea

Shop in Chelsea (snow has melted boohoo!)

House in Chelsea

More shops in Chelsea

Clocktower in Chelsea

I now know a few things about living in cold weather in a cabin that's not that insulated:

1. After you cook a meal or pour a cup of coffee, you must consume it immediately because everything cools off QUICKLY! There's no lingering over a steaming mug of cocoa because it rapidly becomes a tepid cup of quickly congealing semi-solid. On the plus side: a carton of milk is SOOOOOOO cold! I have never ever had milk at that perfect just-above-freezing but still liquid temperature! oooooohhhhhh nice!!!!

2. There's no such thing as darting in/darting out of anywhere. EVERYTIME you go outside you must spend TIME bundling up, even if it's just to get something out of the car that you forgot. THEN you must walk SLOWLY because it is so slippery. Ice ice everywhere! I've already fallen down twice, once just after I told Steve, "don't step there, it's slippery!" and then I stepped there and fell flat on my butt! Once you get inside anywhere that's civilized, it's HOT and so you must take time to divest yourself of layers, then reapply them before you venture out again.

3. We ordered a face cord of wood before we came and by my amateur calculation, at the rate we are blowing through the stack, we will be spending about $5000 on fuel each month. I might be exaggerating a little, but I can see why people in cold climes find it cheaper to rent a condo where there's warmer weather than try and heat their houses in winter!

4. Cold weather survival can easily make one a hypocrite! I was looking at a Town and Country magazine (probably not a good idea when living in a primitive cabin with furnishings by Value World) and saw ads for fur coats. My immediate thought was, "those look so beautiful and warm!" This from someone who was standing shoulder to shoulder with PETA just two weeks ago!

and finally!

5. Please let in snow for Christmas! I always wondered what the big deal was when people said they were hoping for a White Christmas but the landscape after a snowfall is so stunningly beautiful I can see why people look forward to snow falling at this time of year!

Maggie and Robert arrive late Monday! It snowed in Reno, so it's not going to be a big shock to their California bodies. I'll try to post more pics in the next post!

More unreal estate

This is the view this morning out of our window. It's snowing! That's the frozen lake, and the little boat house, and the sauna on the left. The houses in the pictures below are from a historic area of Detroit, right in the middle of all the crap, called Indian Village. There were several homes for sale, a lot of them $200K! The gray house was $40K because it was a wreck inside. I didn't get pictures of the mansions in Grosse Pointe, and there were several of those for sale for I'm sure millions, but I will try to get those taken and posted when we take the kids to see Detroit in a few weeks. Maggie and Robert are flying in Dec 22, and staying for almost a month, so we have to come up with some sort of fun itinerary since we don't have cable. I forgot to tell everyone that our Izusu Trooper is now in front of the cabin! The scam transport company we hired on the internet actually picked up the Trooper in Newton, Iowa and brought it to us here in Chelsea! Steve had to order specialty parts from the dealer in Ann Arbor and a neighbor down the road has generously offered his heated garage for Steve to work on the car, so hopefully we will be a two-car family again in a few days. Steve's beloved tow dolly is still in Iowa, sitting behind a fence at the shop where we originally had left the Trooper, so the transport driver said although there wasn't any room for it on this trip, the next time he goes to Iowa and if he has room, he will bring it back to Steve. You have no idea how much Steve loves his tow dolly, so this separation has been painful for him. He would have left me in Iowa and taken the tow dolly if it had been a doable choice. Our plan for the next few days is to work on the Trooper while I read magazines by a warm fire in the beautiful library in Chelsea, then start setting up meetings with his contacts in Detroit. This is a slow time of year and the auto industry is in meltdown mode, on the verge of bankruptcy, but Steve's forging ahead with his vision!

Unreal estate

We went on a hunting trip on our first full day in Michigan and came back with a car full of Trader Joes groceries! We're only 20 minutes away from Ann Arbor/University of Michigan and about 40 minutes from the Detroit airport, so we're hoping we have visitors! The area is really pretty but the snow is melting! It's suppose to be over 40 tomorrow! The weather is volatile, one minute sunny and cold then overcast and cold. It's always cold, but nothing in Michigan has been as bad as the cold in Iowa. We've mainly been getting the cabin in shape and going to Value World to supplement our insufficient wardrobes. Thursday Steve took me on "the tour". We bought a kitchen table from Craigslist in Ypsilanti (which is kind of yucky), then we drove into downtown Detroit. Steve's always told me how awful it is but I thought he was exaggerating, but no he wasn't. It really looks like a bomb has gone off. There are endless storefronts that are boarded up or burnt, stately brick buildings abandoned, neighborhood after neighborhood of nice big 2-story homes that would cost hundreds of thousands in California, but you couldn't give away now in Detroit because they are so trashed, the streets are virtually treeless, there are VERY FEW people walking around downtown, hardly any cars, it's just bleak bleak bleak and SO depressing! I can't begin to describe the sheer vastness of this misery. Then you drive just a few miles north along the river and it's almost like a curtin goes up! The neighborhoods of Grosse Point and all these riverfront communities start and the homes are so unbelievably gorgeous it takes your breath away. There are trees and mansions lining the river where all these huge ships sail by, yacht clubs, the views are so impressive, like living on the ocean only you don't have to listen to the infernal racket of the waves. Then we drove back through Detroit where is looks like a war zone. It's weird! All the people we've met in Michigan have been so nice, but they are all so sad because they know their state has sunk into a black hole. We had to drive to the next town because Chelsea doesn't have a LAUNDRY MAT so we had lunch in a little diner and just started talking to the guy at the next table and it ended up he has an uncle, a retired admiral, who lives in the retirement home in Davis where Maggie worked! How small of a world????

The cabin and Michigan so far....

Well, we made it to Michigan minus one car, one tow dolly and one romantic notion about living in a snowy countryside! We lost the Isuzu Trooper just outside of Des Moines due to a bizarre mechanical problem Steve wasn't able to fix, so we decided to abandon it (after 2 days of trying to fix it) along with the tow dolly and continue on. He was able to leave it at the shop where they let him work on it himself and we arranged with some hopefully legit trucking company I found on the internet, to have it shipped to Michigan in the near future. We had to unpack both cars to condense the irreplaceables just in case we never saw the Trooper again and the temperature was 5 degrees! Has anyone ever seen that old movie with Ronald Reagan, "Kings Row" where Ronald Reagan wakes up in a hospital bed and starts screaming, "My legs! My legs!" when he finds out they had to be amputated? Well, that was me screaming to Steve, "My hands, my hands!" as we tried to function in single digit weather! I kept whining to him, "is this normal? Is this how it's going to be for the next four months?" but he kept assuring me it was a true cold snap and even the locals thought it was intolerable. So we stuffed ourselves in the Subaru with both dogs struggling to find the best real estate on my lap and finally headed east. We spent the night in South Bend, Indiana and the next morning I got to cross an item off my bucket list: walking around a beautiful east coast snowy campus. It wasn't on the east coast but that morning we walked all around Notre Dame campus and it was stunningly beautiful with all the gothic architecture and spires and arches. We had gingerbread lattes and scones in the lush bookstore watching the snow fall and I was content. Then we drove to Michigan in snow flurries, but the weather cleared just as we got there and I had an unobstructed view of Chelsea as we drove in around 2 pm. Chelsea is really really cute, even cuter than Steve had told me, and the library voted "Best Small Library in America" was just as advertised, adorable shops, pretty Victorians, lights in all the trees! Then we drove to the cabin! Well......there's charming rustic, and then there's barely habitable rustic. At least there wasn't a dirt floor as I had been led to believe, but it was a dump and dirty but had running hot and cold water, a refrigerator, a stove/oven, and a gorgeous view of the icy lake. We unloaded everything and went to a meeting of the Quaker board where they introduced us and we kind of got an idea of how the retreat works, then we had a dinner with fruits and vegetables! Steve and I were laughing because the whole trip was proof that a lot of mid-westerners don't know how to eat. Every breakfast that was included in our hotel was lacking fruit and when I was in an Iowa McDonalds I ordered my new love, apple dippers but the gal said they were out of them, then I ordered a fruit salad and she said they were out of those and then said, "it's winter so we don't get a lot of demand for those items" It's apples! It's not like I was ordering mangos! Then we were in a Long John Silvers (we do love our fast food, and I complain about mid-westerners!) and the huge guy in front of me said while ordering, "I don't want any of that slaw, just extra hush puppies!" Anyway, the people in charge of the Quaker retreat (who I think might not be that quakerish, but they are exceedingly nice) gave us a quick orientation of our caretaker/corrdinator duties (which amounts to giving out keys for the guest cabin and restocking toilet paper in the outhouses) and we started to make a home out of our little log cabin! It was fun to procur a lot of stuff that we knew we would just leave behind after we left and the slate was pretty blank, so with my limited ability to channel HGTV, we turned the dump into a cute abode, not magazine ready, but habitable and with the incredibly beautiful scenery outside the windows, and the fire going in the wood stove, it's really quite cozy! We love it! Until the morning, when we have to roll out of bed and either DRIVE to the flush toilet or trek up the hill to the outhouse! It's not that awful, it's kind of like camping, but everytime we're out and about we make sure we hit all the toilets, whether we have to go or not. The dogs HATE HATE HATE the cold weather and the snow! Roxy looks at me like I've started to beat her, and poor disabled Chewy has to slither around on the snow on his stomach to go to the bathroom and I think his little weiner might get frost bite! Steve laughs at me but everytime we're outside I'm scanning the sky for predators that will grab our rabbit-sized canines with their talons and whisk them away into the trees or I'm looking in the forest for starving wolves who view poor Chewy as an injured rodent. He said it's not possible, but I've heard stories! This is the events of the first two days, and I will do another post for the last few days we've been here. I don't think the blog template likes long posts, it has erased several so I will try to break this up!

We made it to the cabin!

WE FINALLY LEFT DAVIS!!!!!!

We actually got out of town November 30th at 5:30 PM! We drove a few hours to Reno and had dinner with the kids then left there around 10:30 and drove another few hours then went to sleep in the car. The beautiful bed I set up in the back of the Trooper, while super comfortable and cozy for one, was quite a different story with two people and two dogs. We then drove across Nevada, through Salt Lake and ended up in Rawlins, WY around 10PM on Monday night and got a hotel, forget camping in the car! The weather was beautiful the whole way but now in Wyoming it is so windy. Steve didn't get to see his beloved continental divide which has fascinated him since childhood because it was dark, but he saw the sign. We're going to have dinner with Patty and Nancy in Longmont, CO tonight and then hopefully we'll keep driving into Nebraska. So far the tow dolly has held up! The dogs are a little freaked out by this adventure but we'll try to slowly introduce them to inclimate weather as we travel north and east! We'll keep in touch!

I think we're leaving Tuesday

After several delays, it looks like we will be leaving Tuesday, Nov. 25th! Wagons ho!!!!!!!

The Cabin!

The Cabin on Long Lake! This will be our new home for the winter (if we can ever get out of Davis). This is a picture of the cabin Steve took in August, but now it's probably buried in 6 feet of snow. Steve now admits there is a LOT of poison oak all around AND a prison just down the road. I think there is a disturbing novel in this somehow, but on the plus side, there are cute coffee shops and a state of the art library just three miles away. Hopefully we'll start the wagon train out of California in about 12 days!

I liked this quote by a rapper, no less!

The rapper Jay-Z elegantly expressed the Obama campaign's connection to the long struggle for equality, along with the enthusiasm that it generated: "Rosa Parks sat so that Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so that Obama could run. Obama's running so that we all can fly."

Testing, Testing!

We're still here, but progress is being made! We will probably be able to leave around the 15th. We're not taking too much stuff, just lots of blankets and the dogs. We have been slowly getting our car fleet down to three 4WD vehicles which somehow makes me laugh since I am NOT a 4WD type of gal! The other day I was about to toss the LL Bean catalog in the recycle, but suddenly became QUITE interested in the advertised outerwear, especially the garments rated at 35 below! I notice that the long underwear was not made out of cotton "death cloth" as my friend Nancy refers to it, but of wool and silk. I think I will buy some online afterall! Will keep you posted! The rainy Davis weather is getting me in the mood for this move!