Post date: Oct 18, 2013 9:29:20 PM
We are getting ready for another trip to Nicaragua. This time we have rented a house in Granada for three months. This gives us time to have visitors from the States and do some touring, as well as relax in the sun.
Speaking (writing, really) of touring, we are looking to go to San Carlos (the start of Rio San Juan) with some friends. On previous trips the reasonable way to get to San Carlos was via La Costeña airline, because the road trip took and entire day. Now, however, La Costeńa only flies to San Carlos two days each week and the road trip is less than half a day. Considering that we would have to drive to the airport, wait for the airplane, then wait for a taxi in San Carlos, we are no longer saving any time. And with four people sharing a car (with driver), the cost is actually less via road than via air. Big change in a couple of years!
There are a couple of festivals during our stay. We hope to join the locals for La Purisima, Christmas, and New Year celebrations. However, we also plan to spend Christmas away from the cities and towns, so we will have to wait and see what we find.
Our house-and-cat sitter (or one of them) is expected to arrive late this afternoon after driving across country from D.C. That reminds me of the trip that Carol and I drove across from Boston to Seattle in a winter storm.
In 1975 we were living on Beacon Hill in Boston. The economy of the Northeast was declining as a result of the Arab oil embargo. So I applied to University of Washington College of Forest Resources, as a PhD student in forestry and economics - two new subjects for me. Carol flew out early 1975 to interview for a job in Olympia and inquired about the progress of my application. That resulted in my being accepted to start April first, and we had short notice.
So I quit my job (as engineering manager at Columbia Cornice Company - New England's largest roofer), drove up to Winter Harbor, Maine, where I rebuilt the old utility trailer that had been rotting behind my in-law's garage, and packed up the heaviest of our belongings. At the time we had a 1974 Mercedes 240D - never the most powerful of vehicles and one of the heavier. So the combination of sedan plus trailer (taken upon our arrival in Seattle) was a bit ponderous.
We started out fine, but by the time we left eastern Pennsylvania we hit a storm, and the wind was coming from the west. We never got the car into high gear after Pennsylvania until we dropped over the Cascades into Seattle. As we approached Chicago one evening, the ice built up on the Mercedes star hood ornament, which was lighted by the headlamps. Wish I had a picture of that.
We had collected some miniature subtropical Gesnariads, hardly plants to move in a snowstorm. But each night we bundled them up in our coats and took them into the motel room, along with our two cats Hannah and Wilson. In the morning we would warm up the car, the bundle the two crates of plants, carry them to the car, get the cats, and be on our way again. By the way, Wilson liked to ride wrapped around my neck while I drove.
So we get on our way across the plains after leaving Chicago the next morning. The median and sides of the Interstate were littered with semi-trucks and cars that had slid off the icy road during the night. By morning the highway had been plowed and salted and sanded, although it was still snowing, making the way passable. The snow had drifted into huge piles under each freeway overpass, and the trucks had cut a single notch through these drifts. Just about the only traffic was trucks - and us.
We celebrated Easter (March 30 that year) in a truck stop.
By the time we reached the Rockies, we had to wait in truck stops until the road over the next pass was plowed, then join the caravan of (mostly) semi-trucks over the pass - only to wait in the next truck stop for the plowing to proceed ahead of us. The truckers were not accustomed to seeing diesel cars, and were somewhat fascinated by this crazy couple with a diesel car pulling an overloaded trailer through the snow.
Trusting that our house/cat sitter actually arrives safely this afternoon, we are slightly scrambling to move ourselves out of part of the house so that she will feel at home. Then I realize that I have left some personal items lying around, or in drawers that the sitters might wish to use, and have to figure out what to do with these. Some get tossed - not having been thought about for decades. Others get put away as fond mementos. I did find a milk delivery card - possibly from the 1930's or earlier, as the telephone number was simply and exchange plus four digits and the address of the dairy was 9th and Virginia and this company was operating as early as 1915. It had been pushed up under a shingle on our back porch. The delivery man punched the amount of milk left in exchange for the empty bottles.