Thursday, January 31, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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We like serendipity
I had planned to leave Oliver Lee yesterday, pick up the replacement for the compromised credit card a friend so graciously forwarded to me to General Delivery at USPS in Alamogordo and head westward once again. But I couldn't confirm online that it had arrived on time and since I didn't need to leave on any schedule, I signed up for one more night here and took a nap. We like naps too.
In time I opened my eyes and what should they slowly focus on way out beyond my toes, filling the aperture of the windshield - two horizontal red stripes. Could that be the rig I think it is?
I think that's Skylark
Yep, that's Skylark. Skylark is a well known Lazy Daze RV, home of Andy Baird, moderator of the Yahoo Life With A Lazy Daze RV discussion group. Andy is the guy largely responsible for my being here today and it's about time he knew it.
We like serendipity.
That was yesterday
Today Andy's friends Kate and Terry pulled in with Cholula Red and set up across the way. I may be here for a while.
Night camp
Site 8 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
It was the Crickets
Now then: it isn't so much that one way of dying beats another, though that certainly is the case, but rather that when you KNOW the jig could be up any second or any decade -- it's the awareness that's important -- that just might make a difference. I'm like everybody else, I have these moments and then forget, lapsing back into "immortality." But there was a thing that happened in my back yard maybe 18 months before we split from Maryland that hit me as hard as seeing their president drop dead on stage must have hit those graduating seniors.
It was the crickets. I'd gone outside one warm fall evening to shut the garage door and suddenly realized I couldn't hear the crickets! No wait, I could, but only if I turned my head a certain way. Oh God, oh no: I had almost no high-frequency hearing in my right ear, or was it my left? That doesn't matter. The point is, a part of me had shut down permanently. No, it hadn't happened suddenly, but I had finally noticed, and that was hard to take. I'd never again hear crickets like I once had. Never! I walked back to the house in tears. All right, I'm sensitive. But I understood at once what all this meant.