We made it to Avignon. We took the red-eye flight from Dulles airport to Paris. There was a 4-hour lay-over waiting in the airport. Then we took the high-speed TGV train from the airport to Avignon. They say the TGV train travels up to 200 MPH. What I can say for sure is that the train traveled 460 miles in 3 hours. Considering it had to crawl slowly through Paris and Lyons, and stopped twice, I’d say we probably got pretty close to 200 MPH.

The first part of the ride was very smooth and quiet. We traveled through mile after mile of farm land. All the cows we saw where pure white, with no black or brown markings. I saw very little that was painted John Deere Green. The fields and buildings looked very well maintained. I didn’t see a single derelict building. Of course, I didn’t see everything. We were both incredibly tired and were desperately trying to keep our eyes open until bed time. After Lyons, the area changed. There were more hills, with mountains frequently visible. There was less land suitable for farming. The farms we saw were maintained just as well. The ride was still good, but noticeably rougher.

Our hotel is in the heart of historic Avignon. The area is all narrow streets that form an incredibly difficult-to-navigate maze. Outdoor dining is available everywhere. Many of the smaller streets are closed to motorized vehicles — except motorcycles, of course. The French seem to accept that motorcyclists can drive and park wherever they wish. We had a delightful dinner at a table in a pedestrian-only cobble stone street. We were interrupted by motorcycles only twice.

The time zone changes affected both of us quite a bit. In spite of having .had an exhausting trip and staying more-or-less awake for most of it, I woke up and was wide awake at midnight, which is 6 AM in Maryland. I forced myself to stay in bed, and finally fell asleep about 4 AM for another couple of hours of shut-eye. We plan to take it easy today, exploring the area and visiting a couple of museums, and acclimating ourselves to the local time.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Before I start the news … We will be traveling from Monday, Sept 24 – Thursday, Oct 25. The best way to contact us is to send me an Email. Or you can call at 410-417-8854 and leave a voice mail. We will receive the voice mail by Email. Every place we are staying advertises internet access. I will check Email daily if possible. I will also post frequently while we’re traveling.

There’s no hurricane effects around here, but it was a wet week. The forecast was “cloudy with a chance of rain” almost every day. Thursday, the forecast changed to “cloudy with no rain”. I took a 2-hour ride. The rain started half an hour after I got back. That’s a lot better than a half hour before I got back. The rain broke Saturday. I was able to ride, but had to start a little later than planned because the overnight showers hadn’t ended yet. Today is nice, but we are looking at more rain Monday and Tuesday. Here’s hoping the forecast for sunshine for Wed – Fri holds.

I put LED bulbs in the our ceiling fans. The fans in the two master bedrooms have remote controls. The remote controls don’t turn the lights off. They let just a little current trickle through, and that’s enough for the LEDs to light up. That means we can’t run the fans at night. I don’t like having rotating machinery over my head when I sleep, so I didn’t care that much. But Rick and Suzy wanted a fan. We got out an old, ugly, noisy box fan for them. It was time to fix the fans. I called the manufacturer. Their advice was to put incandescent bulbs in because their fans “aren’t compatible with LEDs”. That’s a bunch of bunk. The problem is their remote doesn’t turn the lights off. I looked around Amazon. It turns out that lots of people buy inexpensive fans with two chains — one for lights, one for the fan — and later decide they want a remote. And there are companies who want to make these people happy, for a price. I found a $20 remote that controls the fan and the lights, and turns the lights off. I ordered, received, and installed two if them. End of problem. Almost. The way these remotes work, if one turns the wall switch off, then on again, the lights always turn on. You can turn the lights off with the remote, of course. But if the wall switch is off, and somebody is sleeping, there’s no way to turn the fan on without waking that somebody up. The world isn’t perfect yet.

We had a neighborhood party Friday. We have a dinner party Sunday. It’s called “Farewell to Summer”, but Danita and I are calling it “Farewell and good travels”. We leave for France the next day. I think it’s nice of the neighborhood to send us off like that. ;-)

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had an unusually hot week last week. Highs were in the 90s Monday through Friday. Some schools in Baltimore and Baltimore County that aren’t air conditioned either didn’t open or closed early. Tuesday, during the hottest part of the day, a small shower came through. I happened to be sitting at my desk and looked at the deck. I saw snow. There were very large, widely dispersed drops of very wet snow. By the time I got downstairs to take a closer look, the snow had melted.

From Friday afternoon to Saturday, the temperature slowly dropped to 60 and stayed there. This is usually the hottest part of the day, but the temperature is still below 65. We’ve had continuous rain, and it promises to continue to rain continuously through the rest of the week. My joke is that I’m not riding to get ready for France. Its a perverse kind of anti-training.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to report. We started planning for a new phase in our financial lives. I will start Social Security in January, and have to start taking distributions from my 401(K) next year. Danita starts her retirement pension next August. There are significant changes to the tax laws for 2018. (Significant to us.) We are collecting facts and asking questions. There are QCDs, DAFs, survivor/spousal benefits .. the list appears endless. We could go to a financial planner, but it’s more fun to do some research and figure it out for ourselves.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Rick and Suzy came up from Texas for a visit. They stayed at Ed’s house for a couple of days. Friday they brought Bud up to visit with us. Danita made sour beef, which was pretty darn good. Saturday Rick and Suzy cooked a family dinner at our house. Ed & Lynne joined us, as did Lynn and Gene. We had excellent lasagna and an outstanding bread pudding desert.

The Schmauses: Lynn, Ed, Bud, Danita, Rick

Ed, Lynne, and Gene

There’s not so much to report this week. We had a neighborhood party yesterday. We plan to attend a free concert in Catonsville this evening.

Danita’s computer has shipped and should be in Monday. That will make her pretty happy. My computer is a little smaller than hers, which means the keyboard is a little smaller. She didn’t like typing on it until I pulled out the keyboard Mark gave me. Mom agrees it’s a very good keyboard. Whatever went wrong with the computer, it must have been unusual. The computer was put on “Engineering hold” and spent time on the “escalated bench”.

Next week will be a busy one. Rick and Suzy are visiting from Texas. They’re going to pick Bud up and show up at our house Friday. They’re cooking a family dinner Saturday. Sunday, we’ll get Bud back to his place, then go to a Circle lunch at the Sochurek’s. It will be time for me to sign up for Social Security. I will start in January, the first full month when I’m 70. Add in my monthly lunch with Tony Chaprnka — how will we have time to get it all done?

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are things in life that should be easy, but just aren’t. Danita wants to consolidate Bud’s 3 checking accounts into one. Bud’s primary checking account is at PNC, which has two branches right in Riderwood, and a branch less than a mile from us.

She started by closing Bud’s account at Wells Fargo. Danita is a signatory on both accounts, so this should be an easy deal for her to do without bothering Bud. She got it done, but ended up making two extra trips this week, both of which required using the gas car. She discovered at the last minute that the Wells Fargo account had a safe deposit box. It wasn’t a total shock. After all, there were two extra keys that looked a lot like safe deposit box keys but nobody knew anything about. Of course, the only way to return the keys and make sure the box was empty was to drive to Rockville. Danita called ahead to make sure she would be able to get into the safe deposit box. The branch manager assured her that everything would be set up and ready for her. I volunteered to be the driver. When we got there, everything was not set up, and the manager was no where to be found. I finally got bored and went next door to grab a hamburger at 5 Guys. I had plenty of time to enjoy the hamburger plus a bowl of peanuts before Danita was done. We drove to our PNC branch, where Danita presented a completed deposit ticket and a certified check. PNC agreed that Danita was a signatory, but insisted that only Bud could deposit the money into his account. Who would think it’s easier to take money out of a checking account than it is to put it in? So it was back to Riderwood the next day for Danita, where she met Bud and finally got the deed done.

Yesterday, Danita went downstairs to watch Ben Cartwright in “Bonanza” and tool around on her PC. She plugged her PC into the charger. Smoke came out, and the PC got very hot (melting some of the case). The PC is under warranty. Dell wisely decided not to ask us to turn the computer back on for remote diagnostics. Danita will be without her computer for at least a week.

All this made us re-evaluate the warranty on my PC. My computer is a year older than Danita’s. The warranty expires at the end of this month. It’s a way-cool warranty that covers anything, even accidental damage. If I accidentally drop the computer in the ocean, and I can retrieve it, I can get it fixed for free. Dell offered me a 20% discount on a 2 year warranty extension if I would be willing to part with $580. I have a very nice computer and it’s not cheap. But I couldn’t see spending that much on a 2-year warranty. So Dell offered me a second discount, then a third. I turned them all down, and hung up. Less than 5 minutes later, Dell called me back and offered the warranty for $330, still including the accidental damage coverage. That made sense. I won’t be replacing my computer for at least two more years. I was amazed how much the warranty came down simply by saying, “Sorry, it costs too much”.

My week was considerably less stressful than Danita’s. (Other than driving in the DC area, that is.) I finished reading two very good books recently. The first is “Rocket Men” by Robert Kurson. This is the story of Apollo 8 — the first manned mission to leave the Earth, and the first to orbit the moon. According to Kurson, this was the mission where the US beat the USSR to the moon. Russia could have beat us by launching a week before we did, but they didn’t think we would be crazy enough to leave earth orbit on the first manned mission using the Atlas rocket, plus the first mission to use the lunar orbiter. It’s a great story that explains the risks NASA took, and why Apollo 8 is just as important as Apollo 11 in the history of deep space manned exploration.

The other great book is “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. This is a fictional account of a Russian “non-person” who is sentenced to house arrest in a luxury hotel in Moscow. I don’t know if there was ever a similar situation in reality. Probably not. But the story is extremely well told. The book is absolutely worth reading.

We have a SOCA dinner party this evening. Danita is especially looking forward to kicking back tonight.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It was a Laid-back week. I got some good rides in. I’m close to meeting my goals. I did a little work on the WiFi for our clubhouse. I went with Danita to visit Bud Friday. He was getting his carpet cleaned. We had to move furniture out of the way. The carpet came out looking very good. I gave blood before Church this morning. I wasn’t able to give blood while I was on Plavix, and got out of the habit. This was right at the Church. They took me as a walk-in right away.

The Emile Fischer vase was auctioned off this week. I listed it for shipping in the US only. A guy from Hungary told me he wanted it and asked my permission to bid. We traded jokes about paying import taxes on a vase that was made in Hungary, but had made its way to the US. I told him I thought shipping would be too expensive, but he could bid if he wanted. (I set this up so the buyer pays shipping.) He was the only bidder, and bought the vase for $1. He hasn’t paid his $1 yet. I wrote to him, but haven’t heard back. He hasn’t said, but I think $100 to $400 is a lot of money for shipping the vase.

After a week of chilling, we enjoyed the “Chill and Grill” party at the clubhouse Friday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This was a week of small accomplishments.

Change our website calendar – done! The board asked me to make a change to our website calendar. That’s fine, but before making the change, I needed agreement not only on what we were removing, but what we would do to replace the old. I went through a long chain of Emails with no agreement. I have not been successful presenting plans to the board in the past, so I asked an ally to do the presentation. We all agreeded on a new plan. The changes are done.

Kitchen faucet — fixed! Moen sent some cool parts, but the only part I needed, the faucet handle, wasn’t included. When I called back, they sent the handle express at no charge. Thanks for the first class service, Moen.

Bike adjustment — done! The bike chain was rattling against the side of the derailleur cage. A decent bike mechanic could fix this in a couple of minutes. It took me a couple of hours. But the bike rides fine.

Rear porch trim boards — fixed! I spent about 90 seconds trimming the boards with my new small circular saw. One could say I spent $66/minute for the repair. Or one could say I saved a bunch of money on a contractor and had the satisfaction of fixing it myself. Thanks to Mark for being an excellent ladder holder. And thanks to the guy at Lowe’s who recommended the correct screws.

Rear porch cleaning — done! The porch was filthy, but I wanted to fix the trim boards before wielding the pressure washer.

Paint the rear porch — deferred. I probably should paint it this year, but it’s just not in the cards.

Nail down the details of our trip to France (tickets, etc.) — done! Actually we did this last week, but it fits on this list rather nicely.

Nail down the details of our Thanksgiving cruise — almost done. Thanksgiving dinner is my favorite holiday. This year, it was going to be just 3. Even Danita would have difficulty preparing a proper Thanksgiving dinner for 3, so we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner on a cruise ship. Danita found a deal on a cruise leaving Baltimore, using a travel agent Bud and Leona had used for most of their cruises. Bud was talking about wanting to take a cruise. We invited him to cruise with us. He thought that was a great idea. Unfortunately, by the time we got home and called the agent, it was too late on Friday afternoon. I expect to get this done tomorrow.

Nail down a winter cruise with Mom — Done, and with more excitement to come! I wanted to visit Mom in February. Danita found a great price on a cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale, and asked Mom if she was interested. She was. The tickets are purchased. We will take the car-train to FL, visit Mom for a couple of days, then drive to the cruise ship. When we come back, we’ll drop Mom off and take a car tour of Texas. Our first stop will be the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. This is a very popular destination because it is also a popular cruise port. That Cape Canaveral hotel ticket is done. (It was one of the last rooms available.) We have a rough outline for the rest of the trip. It looks to be a fun and interesting tour.  On the way home we’ll visit Danita’s cousin Darlene in Atlanta. The trip topper will be a visit with Julia.

If that’s not enough excitement, we also have a neighborhood party coming up this weekend. The good times just keep on rolling in.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We had a nice week. Now that we’re all retired, Circle can meet any day we want. This time, we wanted Monday. Danita and I hosted lunch. Here you see Tony and Donna Sochurek, Tina and Bill Bauman, Claire McCaig, Dwain Sabiston, and Rose Bertch. The last three are all widowed. It’s a sign of our time of life. I guess.

The trim boards on our deck need attention. I had a contractor I trust take a look. He said he would call back with an estimate. He also said his schedule was pretty full. He didn’t call, so I guess the full schedule won out. I decided I could do the repair myself, if I bought a new tool. It should be in tomorrow! (Hey, even chores can be fun sometimes!)

Danita and I spent several days nailing down the last details of our vacation in France. The only thing left is the ride to Dulles airport and packing our bags. We got a really great air fare to Paris on Air France. I checked it out pretty carefully before buying tickets. I verified the fare included a meal, a carry-on bag, and a checked bag. But I failed to check out the seats. It cost $25 each for us to reserve seats. All in all, it’s still a very good deal.

We had neighborhood parties Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was a concert — three women singing tight harmony plus a pianist. They were very good. Sunday was an ice cream social and bingo. We ate the ice cream and did the socializing, then skipped the bingo.

Our board wanted a change to our website calendar. I proposed a solution that would meet the needs of the board while also meeting the needs of the majority of residents who use our website. (Web statistics are pretty amazing.) After a month of Emails, we were at a stalemate. When we got back, I sent an ally into the board meeting to explain my plan, which was finally accepted. You can see the results if you want. Go to https://www.snowdenoverlook.com/calendar/. It’s simple and lets people do what they want — get a quick answer and move on. I can’t believe how hard it was to get the board to agree to something this simple. A couple of residents have good ideas about how the web  page can be reorganized. I plan to remain neutral and implement changes after the battles have been fought.

A neighbor and friend moved and left an Emil Fischer vase behind. This was made in Hungary over 100 years ago. It’s an authentic antique. I was asked to place it on Ebay. It’s easy to post the base, but impossible to meet their expectations for what they think the vase is worth. There’s waiting and indecision. I finally announced that lacking a decision, I will post it Friday and, if necessary, donate the proceeds to charity. That at least does something good with the money and places the vase in the hands of somebody who wants it. I was able to get spectacular pictures for the posting. I used a very sophisticated photo technique. I used a blue fleece as a background and a point-and-shoot camera. The fleece was given to me for working at Assateague park. The results were not so bad, I think.

Mark returned from Physics Olympics Sunday evening. The US team did pretty well. He’ll be here a week, then fly out to San Diego for his new job next Sunday.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It is a cool and rainy day.

This morning, we saw the movie “Incredibles 2”. It was a great hit, even if the kids had already seen it. We went back to the house for lunch, then went out in the afternoon for some frozen yogurt with candy toppings. Our meals today are breakfast bar leftovers, lunch bar leftovers, and dinner bar leftovers. The kids must have liked the Disney Nature movies we’ve been watching. They picked “Disney Earth” for tonight.

We’ll be leaving for the airport early tomorrow morning. Assuming there’s no problems checking in and getting through security, we’ll have a nice breakfast at the Silver Diner. If getting to the secure area is slow, we have the option of a quicker breakfast.