Old Friends and New Friendships

Facebook categorized this as a ‘Life-changing Event’. That is an understatement at best. But the best IS that this has totally changed our lives. One of my big fears was the possibility that I would feel as if I were on a trip rather than a lifestyle, and easily yearn for getting off the road. There is definitely a trade-off in such a condensed ‘soup can’ of a home (luxury by RV standards, as validated by the stares and inspections we attract on any campground arrival, yet sparse compared to our previous 4k sf space, filled with all the things we loved). Surprisingly, controlling how much water we use, constantly monitoring our simplest of systems, repeatedly cleaning, recycling trash by item, have provided a small but satisfactory contribution toward appreciating everyday living. As well as leaving us free to explore, enjoy the history and magnificence that is the pride of the land we call home. It is a lot to ask family and friends to keep us in their everyday lives when we aren’t often physically there. The advent of social media has helped bridge this extremely difficult ambition to be everywhere. Traveling around often as we have been still provides a routine to set up our home on arrival. Hook ups of utilities if available, 2 slides out, anything in the interior that isn’t safely bolted, velcro’d or otherwise tightly secured, gets rearranged. The small things that now

To Friendships,
old and new

make up our humble home also include any opportunity to utilize the special pieces we were able to salvage from our purging carnage. Brian, putting out the hand-made ‘Castellano’ welcomes Sheila every time. We have only sparse wall space to hang anything, saving what we can for making our home more homey. Our coveted ‘Peggy originals’ found a perfect spot on our LR wall, thank you Peggy Dembicer, for sharing your repurposing talent with us!
Our exposure to America and its hidden agendas, gems and beauty is truly, to steal an overused metaphor, priceless! I have learned that although we hear and know about economic hard times, there is an enormous wealth evident everywhere we go, contrasted only by the extreme poverty. A shift in class separation? I hope not, we are on the cusp and could tip either way, dependent as we are on the government and stock market. Same rule on the road, no politics and no religion and we can all be friends.
The whole ‘leaving family and friends’ dilemma is really just the adjustment to out of sight but NOT out of mind. We remain intensely interested in what and how everyone is doing and enjoy sharing where and whatever we are doing, either through Brian’s select, unabridged email distribution or this Odyssey blog I am striving to keep up with and remain informative, for our loved ones and fellow nomads.
The dust settles (usually right in our home), the true friendships survive and continue with the fervor of distance making your hearts stronger. But the interesting phenomenon for me, is the time constraint of being on the road bringing out our years of experience and intuition, allowing us to make ‘fast friends’ with our new ‘neighbors’. Quickly sharing our stories, tips and creating a bond that will surely be resurrected when we meet again down the road. In the condensed time we seem to shed the introductory stage and don’t have the constraints of busy lives that often don’t leave enough time to let new people in. We are more open to the variety of people who now cross our paths and the interesting perspectives, stories and advice they bring to the table.