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| Don's Family |
We returned from out west in time for Pat to get foot
surgery. She recovered enough from her fall in Sept to proceed with the
surgery. In the course of pre-op testing, an irregularity was discovered in
Pat’s EKG. So off to the cardiologist and more testing. Pat was cleared for
surgery, which went fine. Later it was determined that the leads on the EKG
were hooked up wrong! A similar thing happened to me in 2007. She has mostly
recovered from surgery, except for some swelling and soreness.
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| Pat's Family |
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| Our Condo, Third Floor, Right of center |
We moved into an AirBNB in Columbia, MD for the months of
Jan and Feb so Pat could rest. We were getting a bit tired of moving into and
out of AirBNBs, so we thought about getting a house to spend the winter. We
considered GA, but our family, friends and most of our doctors were in or near
the MD area. Maybe it was the great weather we had in Dec that helped. We
started looking on 12/31 and made an offer on 1/3. On Jan 17 we settled on a
large 2 BR condo in a 55+ community in Odenton, MD. After four snow storms in
January, GA was looking good again!
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Winter Wonderland
Pat mourned the loss of her cousin and close friend Gale. When Bob was ill, Gale provided assistance and support to Bob and Pat. Pat’s sister, Linda came down from York to help Pat shampoo all the carpets. Phase 1 of our move was to pick up some excess furniture from Julie and Susan and clean out our 10x10 storage unit. I was delighted to know how much stuff we needed to buy to make the condo livable.
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We stopped for lunch, filled up our 40-gal gas tank and switched
drivers and headed down Rt. 17 Bypass, a lightly used divided highway. Twenty
minutes later, I was napping in the passenger seat when Pat fell asleep behind
the wheel. The RV crossed the left shoulder and Pat’s scream woke me up. Pat
tried to get the RV back on the highway, but our car that was being towed
behind us, was scraping along the cable guard rails. Once the RV got perpendicular
to the highway, we were seconds from crashing into the woods on the opposite
side of the road. Pat tried to correct, but with the car spinning wildly behind
us, the RV spun completely around until the car hit the cables again, this time
on the passenger side. The RV came to rest in this position.
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You can get this used car cheap
Unbelievably we were both not injured! Many local people stopped to see if they could help. Before long we had the fire department there. A guard rail support had ripped open the gas tank. Luckily no fire started. A large wrecker came and lifted the RV off the cables before it could be towed away to a body shop. The car was totaled and another tow truck hauled that way. A State Trooper gave us a ride 20 miles to the nearest decent motel. Pat was issued a ticket for Reckless Driving, a serious offence in NC. We hired a lawyer who says he can likely get that charge dismissed.
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The guy at the body shop brought us a rental car. He did not ask for a driver’s license or credit card; we just shook on it. (Don’t try this at
the airport!). After a few days of getting our affairs in order, we drove to VA
Beach to buy a car. We needed a car like the one we had (2014 Honda CRV) so we
could tow it behind the RV. We found one with 40+K miles, which was very low
for an 8 yr. old car. You hear a lot about the outrageous used car prices,
sorry to say they are not exaggerations. We paid about the same for the replacement car as we did for the original car when it was 2 yr. old with 18K Miles. |
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Topper's new House in New Bern, NC
After we got a tow hitch installed on the car, so we could
carry our bikes, we headed back to NC. We took what we needed from the RV and
continued our trip to New Bern. Chris and Joselyn just bought a house there and
we wanted to see it. It was a nice house in a good neighborhood in an historic
town. My bike was another casualty of the accident, so I bought a replacement
while in town. We cancelled our reservations at the RV resort in Hilton Head
and headed for Morehead City, NC. We spent a few days there exploring the area.
The NC Aquarium and Tryon Palace in New Bern were the most interesting places.
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Tryon Palace in New Bern
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Gardens at Tryon Palace
We decided to leave our RV in NC to finish repairs. No one
knew how long this would take based on the difficulty in getting parts, so we
returned to MD and got to sleep in our condo finally. We still had no living
room furniture in the condo. We had been storing our living and dining room
furniture from our Accokeek house in our garage in Lewisburg. Now it was time
to retrieve it. Maybe you remember the horror story of our attempted move last
year, well this year we hired the firm of Pat and Don LLC. We picked up a 26-foot
rental truck from U Haul and cleaned our garage and hauled it to Odenton. What
we didn’t put in the condo, we packed into a U-Box and it will be shipped to
Montana.
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Hellbender at NC Aquarium
The original travel plan was to fly to Portugal, spend a few
days in Lisbon, fly to the Seychelles for a five-day cruise on a large yacht,
fly to Tanzania for the Great Migration, fly back to Portugal and travel up their West Coast, then fly home. COVID restrictions made this itinerary impossible. We
were not allowed to enter Portugal after being in Tanzania. There were many
other COVID testing requirements which compilated the travel arrangements, so we
scrapped Portugal and the Seychelles and added a pre-trip extension to our
Tanzania trip. We are now scheduled to depart March 15.
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