Two Down and One To Go

Last week we finished a little painting project as we mentioned in the prior posting.  The second bedroom also got new carpeting, just like the first room.

 

This week we are back into the suburbs of Minneapolis getting a number of maintenance issues dealt with, both personal and mechanical. 

First the mechanical stuff: all 3 of our motor vehicles are having something done.  The new pickup got its own baseplate installed yesterday.  The supplemental braking system that we had used on the Saturn was saved and reinstalled as well, so the pickup is complete and ready to be “tow’d”.

The V-Strom got a new front tire, which was just finished this morning.  That’s how I got the title for today’s post.  The one yet to go is our motorhome which is in the shop to address a water leak around the windshield.  One half of our two-piece windshield had cracked last year, and the guys who replaced it thought the cause was from some rust on the steel frame that supports it.  We hope the shop is able to finish up and get it back to us by Thursday or Friday because, without it, we are homeless.  We are staying at Paige’s sister’s place until we get the call.

The personal maintenance we are having done this week is annual dental checkups for both of us.

This trip to the “big city” also allows us to catch up with some of the family.  We had dinner with David and Valentina Saturday night, and got a chance to see the damage caused by last week’s windstorm in Minneapolis and area.  Thousands of trees were blown down late last week during 2 days of rain and high winds.  Nearly 600,000 people were without power as a result.  By Tuesday morning the count was down to about 25,000 people still left in the dark.

 

 

Bob’s sister, Mary, was in town for a wedding last Saturday, and Becky, Denny and Diane’s daughter, was home from Utah, so it was a good time for brother Denny and his family to host a reunion on Sunday afternoon.  They also were able to update everyone regarding their mission trip that will take them to the Nevada area for 23 months starting in August.  A real adventure for them!

 

We also met up with our friends, KJ and Rob, which is always something we look forward to.  Lunch tomorrow is with Paige’s former co-worker, Nicolle, and her 2 children.  So it’s a good, busy week.

Brett and family are in Paris for their vacation.  We are hearing from them that they are having a great time and seeing a ton of stuff.  Technology sure helps to stay in touch on trips like this!  We’ll be anxious to catch up with them to get the girls’ stories and pictures on the trip.

Keeping Busy

Our last post mentioned frost and freeze warnings, but we avoided the worst.  Now that the calendar says mid-June, Spring is almost here (and we get by without jackets during mid-day).  We have had a lot of wind, with clouds and easterly winds, but the weather is getting better.  The trouble is…the warmer temps have brought out some fierce mosquito hordes.

Even here in the northwoods we have kept up our social life with at least 3 dinner outings: old family friends in Duluth, recent Nomad co-workers in Virginia, and cabin neighbors in Gilbert.

We’ve also been busy during our weekly visits to Duluth: Paige has helped her mother sell quite a bit of unused furniture on Craig’s List and we’ve loaded our new truck with a couple of loads of stuff for recycling.

Most of our cabin time has been spent with a little remodeling project in one of the bedrooms, which now has 2 new walls, a painted ceiling and new carpeting.  We will match this ceiling and floor in the other bedroom this coming week.

Just Checking In

Regular readers might be wondering where we are.  We have been in the north woods at the family cabin for over 2 weeks now, and there is no internet connection for us here.  We have been going into Duluth at least once per week, but we haven’t taken the time to update this blog until now.  Actually these thoughts are being written on a Sunday night, but might not get posted until mid-week.

We spent our first week here doing “spring (?) cleaning”: cobwebs, raking, and window cleaning.  Our first trip to Duluth involved Bob meeting with the Speech/Language therapists at St Luke’s Hospital.  This was an introductory meeting, but will become weekly to work on some voice issues.  We also had a field trip to Aurora so Paige could pick up some additional round paint brushes (her favorite for detail work).

Memorial Day weekend was spent driving: Friday to Duluth for the evening, Saturday an early start with Paige’s Mom to Grand Forks ND for a family wedding (Eric, the second son of cousin Steve), and Sunday returning to Duluth.  The wedding was a reunion, of sorts, for most of the Benson clan.

Our second week brought us 2 round trips to Duluth, the first for voice work and laundry on Tuesday, and a work project on Wednesday.  After killing Joyce’s front lawn last year (by using the wrong chemicals for weed killing) we re-worked it this year by renting a de-thatching machine, raking out the rough stuff, and spreading 3 yards of new black dirt, grass seed, and straw. 

We were glad to come back and have a non-working couple of days at the end of the month.

 This past weekend was pleasant since we had company: Brett and his 3 girls brought their Black Lab up for a last visit.  Zoe, the Lab, is 13 years old and not doing well anymore.  She spent a lot of time in the water over the years and a little time this weekend too.  We got the dock and the raft out so it almost looks like summer around here.

Looks are deceiving however, since there are frost and freeze warnings out for this area tonight.
We have also started a repair project inside the cabin - adding new studs inside an outside wall.  Here we are stripping the knotty pine tongue and groove paneling off.

Wish us well.

We have Relocated

In our nomadic lifestyle, a work project is 3 weeks long.  Between projects we tend to do a variety of sightseeing and that involves moving around.  We were in Elk River for almost 4 weeks due to the late spring up at the cabin.  That’s a pretty long time for us to be in one place.  We enjoyed being able to spend time with the granddaughters and to help out with the busy schedule at their place with Brett being out of town and Jen teaching and coaching.  And we also were able to see Dave and Valentina – not long enough but we hope to see them more this summer.

We need to get the new truck ready for towing by the motorhome.  The shop we are working with wasn’t able to get the new baseplate on our truck this week, so we drove to the cabin separately, Bob in the motorhome and Paige in the pickup.

This past week has also been busy:
-Sunday was Mothers Day with Paige’s mother in Duluth.
-Monday was lunch with our investment advisor
-Tuesday night was a picnic dinner with the grand-daughters where Jen’s team had a track meet (beastly hot weather!)
-Wednesday we went to lunch at the girls’ elementary school (we appreciate quiet, now)
-Thursday we took the girls to dinner and met David and Valentina (also coincidentally ran into Pam and Ron with Ron’s grandson, who were seated right by us in the restaurant!)
-Friday was lunch with Paige’s sister, Pam, to celebrate her upcoming birthday

Yep, it’s time to get out of town, where we can catch up on our naptime.  We are at the family cabin again, and the ice is finally off of the lake.  Next week many neighbors will be coming to open their summer cabins and get their docks and boats into the water.  We are experiencing lots of wind, with rain threatening, are still able to get lots of spring cleaning done.

Busy Retirees

Happy Mothers Day to all Moms reading this.

We spent much of this weekend with Paige’s Mom in Duluth; she is doing well.  She is busy with all her activities and is walking much better than the last time we saw her at Christmas. 

 

During the past week or so we have been quite busy.  Every weekday we have helped to see the grand-daughters off to school and to greet them upon their return in the afternoon.

                                                        What a day we've had!

In addition to these every-day activities we have also been involved with a funeral, a birthday party, our anniversary, a couple of medical appointments, buying a new (to us) vehicle, selling our Saturn, and meeting friends for lunch.  We get tired just listing all the things we’ve done. 

 

We went to the Screwtape Letters production at the renovated Pantages Theater in Minneapolis for our 43rd anniversary celebration on Friday night.  While just getting seated, we saw Bob's brother and sister-in-law, Denny and Diane, at the play.  It was so surprising and fun to see them!!  They were celebrating their May anniversary as well.  It was a very interesting performance of this C.S. Lewis book and a beautiful old theatre.

 

The bigger news is the lack of springtime, even yet.  The 2^nd weekend of May is Minnesota’s Opening Day for fishing.  Many of the lakes in the northern part of the state are still ice-covered.  As we drove to Duluth yesterday morning we noticed the lack of leaves (they are still budding, but not yet out).  We took Paige’s mother, Joyce, north to the family cabin to see how it survived the winter.  There is still some snow on the ground in sheltered areas and way too much in the air during our drive.  We thought of fellow Nomad, Janet in Florida, who has never seen snow in the process of falling.  We have seen way too much, and May is way too late in the year for this.

 

 

Both Island Lake and Whiteface Reservoir are still iced over, but it shouldn’t last for long (we hope).  As soon as we get the baseplate and braking package added to our truck we will be relocating from Brett's place in Elk River to the lake.  We'll trade this nice view out their family room window for the view of the Whiteface.

 

Still Waiting for Spring

We were warmly welcomed when we pulled into Brett’s place last week:

But that’s about all that’s been warm.  As we mentioned previously, we had expected spring to arrive in Minnesota shortly after we came.  Well, we are still waiting!!  The lakes in the metro-area of the Twin Cities just melted a couple of days ago along with a little more snow.  Heavier snow hit southeastern MN and western Wisconsin.  We found some shrubs with new growth about to open, but spring is not yet here.

We have been busy with seeing the grand-daughters off to school each day, and being around when they return each day.  We have also had a couple of opportunities to drive through “rush hour” commuter traffic: last Wednesday through morning traffic to attend a funeral, and Friday afternoon returning from near the airport.  Both trips were nearly enough to bring us to tears.  We are not used to such STOP-and-go traffic, and certainly don’t miss it.

Friday night we had visitors for “Movie Night” along with popcorn. 

 

This makes it easier to deal with weather and traffic

 

Time to Stop for Awhile

We did it: returned to the land of frozen lakes and snow-covered ground (many places); taking 4 days to cover about 1100 miles.  For some hard-core over-the-road types that rate sounds easy, but we’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to limit ourselves to about 200 miles per day.  We have also been lucky with the weather: the rain in Iowa last night held off until after we were parked, and did not turn into snow.  The snow that came to MN yesterday stayed west of our route so the roads were fine every day.  We expect to have another 2 or 3 nights with temps below freezing, but spring should show up here later this week.

We plan to stay near the Minneapolis area for a couple of weeks, while the snow up north melts.  David’s trailer is snowed in at the cabin.  A neighbor with 4wd and a plow couldn’t get it out today, in fact he got stuck in the 2 ft. of snow in our driveway and needed to be towed out!  So, we will wait until things melt and dry out before we go up there for the summer.

Meanwhile, there are lots of things we need to do, and people to see while we are here.  The trick is to scheduling everything.