Coming And Going

 

Family reunions. What a bag of worms they are!

There's that whole emotional side. Surviving the, sometimes toxic, concoction of chunky soup that rattle-can stirs up!

There's going to be some people there I really want to see, some I wouldn't mind seeing, and some I could do without seeing. But regardless, I'm going to be expected to engage in the social niceties while floating around in that cauldron, unable to get away from all the other chunks of cooked, raw, mushy, palatable, noxious bits trapped in the same greasy stew by the random chance of blood and marriage.

And then there's the practicalities of logistics.

According to Google maps I'm 1340 miles, or 20.5 hours away from the clan-home. I find that, on a good day, I have to add an hour for every 6 Google hours, so in the real world it's more like 24 hours away.

In the past I could do that. Drive all day then let the coming night gradually wrap me in a comfortable cocoon of anonimity, solitude, and headlights as I slip unnoticed past the real world still going on behind the dim yellow squares of curtained windows until dawn gradually exposes me again, but not anymore.

I recently managed 16 hours in a single shot, from the property to Salida CO when on my way to pick up the teardrop, but that was pushing it a bit. 

The red arrows point to a half dozen RV spaces along the edge of the truck parking area which keep you out of the way of the precious (there's never enough) truck parking. I've never seen more than 2, counting me, RVs overnighting here at a time.

My current favorite first-night stopping point between here and the clan-home is just over 12 hours away, and that's not too bad. During the summer, if I leave the house at a decent, but not ungodly, hour, it's just coming up on sunset when I stop, and as an added bonus I'm almost completely through that barren wasteland of the Mississippi River flood plain. 

I can do the trip in 2 if I have to, but now days it usually takes me 2 and a bit calender days to drive straight through to the clan-home. Leave on Saturday morning, take it easy working my way further north on Sunday, and pull into a sibling's driveway around 1000 on Monday.

This year it was the Brother's driveway I landed in. 

The Brother was 15 when I left home. He was off in the world of cars, speed (as in go fast, not the chemical kind), and all other things mechanical, I was off in - well, I'm not sure what the hell world I was off in - but I do know that our two worlds rarely intersected in those days, even before I left home.

Ideologically, philosophically, politically, the Brother and I are very different people. But around our house we didn't call the carpenter when it was time to build the new garage, the tile-layer to finish the downstairs bathroom, or the mason to construct the freestanding-fireplace suround in the rec-room. Instead we grew up with a steady stream of projects, during which Dad taught us how to line our shoulder up over the blade of the hand-saw in order to cut straight and square, and how to hold a hammer to drive a roofing nail with a tap and two blows. He taught us how to work together smoothly, efficiently, intelligently.

To this day, on those rare occasions when the Brother and I are in the shop together, we work side by side without getting in each other's way, ideas and concepts are quickly grasped and understood, tools and supporting hands are where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be. We work together smoothly, efficiently, intelligently.

So that’s our thing. We plan a project or two together and call it a visit. Except that this year there was that whole - stop and restart his heart; three times; in an attempt to get all the heart-bits working together properly, and when that didn't work, install a pacemaker/defibulator along with threading in two seperate sets of wires attached to his heart - thing that the Brother was subjected to just over a week before I arrived.

When I pulled into the driveway he could barely manage a couple hours on his feet before taking to his bed again, and lift something? No way! So it didn't look good for projects and shop-time!

But like the quintessential macho fool, he was determined to carry on anyway. That evening the Brother, his wife, and I loaded folding chairs into a car and drove a few miles to thier town's downtown,

where every Monday evening the street is closed down for an informal car show. Those with, park their classic, muscle, custom, or just plain sweet ride, cars along the street, those without walk the street admiring, and the rest of us park our folding chairs against a building and watch.

Yeah, I know, hardly my thing, but now with my only traditional friend recently dead I'm more aware of the need to try and embrace the occasional social interaction, so I went.

The Grondins College of Cosmetology was right actoss the street from us. The heads in the second floor windows were slightly creepy!

Actually it wasn't too bad. Almost enjoyable even. Pretending that I'm just like the next person for a couple of hours. Not that I actually did anything other than sit in my chair against the wall like a - well, wallflower.

The next day was exciting though!

It didn't start out that way. Knowing he was going to just be out of surgery I had brought a couple of security allen wrenches from the bike rack with me that I wanted a hole punched through so I could hang them off a split-ring. Being hardened tool-steel I had nothing in my shop that would do any more than leave a little scratch on the surface, but the Brother would have just what was needed. A small, simple project, but a project nonetheless.

Well, even slow-playing it, that took all of 40 minutes start to finish.

That's when the excitement started!

I had previously mentioned to the Brother that it would be nice to weld a nut on the stub-end of the teardrop's jack handle

so I could use my electric drill like I can on the jack of the cargo trailer rather than having to hand-crank the thing. Well, the Brother remembered that and was hell-bent on doing some welding!

But here's the thing. When you have a pacemaker/defibulator you are not supposed to stand right in front of a running microwave, or next to a 480v 3 phase brush/commutator motor, and welding is off the table lest the EMF from the arc sets off the defibulator.

Well fabricating is the Brother's life so he had several discussions with the cardiologist about that whole welding thing, including trying to get his hands on one of those gizmos so that he could turn off the defibulator while welding then turn it back on again when he was done. (Yeah, that didn't fly with the doctor!)

They came to a compromise where stick welding was out because that produces really dirty EMF, but he could TIG and MIG weld as long as he kept the arc at least 12" from the pace/defib and the current less than 100 amps. (The doctor placed the pace/defib on his side under the right-handed Brother's left arm rather than the usual upper-left chest to make it easier to keep it 12" from the arc)

But the doctor also told him he couldn't resume normal activities for 14 days while the unit settled in and learned his heart-signals. Well here we are, in the shop maybe 9 days after his surgery with the jack off the teardrop and he's suiting up over at his welding table! His excuse was that he didn't have a calendar and was bad with math.

He turned the welder on and I pointed out that at the 97 amps he had it set for, it was pretty close to his 100 amp maximum. - He reached over and turned it down to 95 amps - Like that was going to make a difference!

I backed off a good distance (everybody around him has been told if the defib goes off he's going to flop around like - well, like he's being shocked, and instructed to NOT touch him until EMS arrives with the gizmo to shut the damn thing off!), I had 911 dialed into my phone, and my thumb hovering over the send button!

Welding is a precise business and requires a steady hand. When that first arc flashed he didn't even flinch, but I jumped high enough to put daylight under my feet and had to choke back a squeal!

But nothing bad happened. No herky-jerky, no smoke eminating from places smoke isn't supposed to be eminating from, no dead brother, just another day at the welder. And now I have a 13mm nut (same size as the screw-in tent stakes I use) welded onto my jack. A cheap man's electric tongue-jack.

Wednesday I relocated from his driveway to the group campsite in a county park that we use for the reunion.

Sunday was a mix of relief and melancholy.

By mid afternoon what had been a vibrant mix of people and rigs and food and conversation and games and general mingling and unmingling the day before, was an empty patch of ground, made all that much emptier by remnants of other groups hanging on through the Tuesday checkout deadline as my little rig occupied the lone patch of 17 campsites that we, as a family, had temporarily owned and brought to life.

No faces as usual, but this is the Daughter's water-bottle with her dog-care business logo on it.

This reunion was even more special than usual because, for the first time in a good 20 years, the Daughter left both of her businesses in Tucson, one a dog-care and the other themed sleepovers (think girl scouts with tee-pees and a southwest theme and birthday get-togethers with inflatable tents and the latest super-hero theme), to make a quick weekend trip to join us this year. The most consecutive time I've spent with her since she was about 12.

And that made the aftermath just that much more desolate.

I was hanging around, putting miles on my bike as a distraction, to give my sisters (OK, technically sister and sister-in-law, but that's just too cumbersome, and unnessessary.), who live in a sort of urban subdivision, time to unload thier trailer and get it over to storage to make room for me in thier driveway.

Three years ago they had an electrical project for me, but I was in no shape to make the trip that year so they ended up paying an electrician to get it done. Last year was all about visiting with Mom. This year they had a small woodworking project they needed help with, so of course I was going to stick around for that.

Thier trailer is a 19'-er that grosses at 5000 pounds that they tow with a Honda Passport and the monsterous equalizer hitch used to make the connection between the two wieghs in at about 45 pounds. Nothing the two of them together can't personhandle around at the moment, but they are thinking of the future when that may be too much for them and envisioned a castored dolly for transporting the hitch between spot-in-the-garage and reciever-on-the-car. They had a leftover chunk of particle board and wanted help selecting and installing castors on it.

I'm not sure they appreciated it because in the end it cost more than a handfull of castors, but I went one step farther with the concept. OK, maybe 4 or 5 steps farther.

The castored base is still there, but now made with cabinet-grade plywood which won't sag over time under the weight in a damp garage, with blocks on top to give the castor mounting screws more bite without raising the overall height. But now there's a scissor jack bolted to the platform which is operated by a socket chucked into a battery powered drill. (Same socket and drill they use for the leveling jacks on the trailer) Bolted on top of the jack is another platform that the hitch snuggles into where it's held in place by the same hitch-pin that secures it to the car.

Now they roll the hitch over to the car, use the drill to raise it up to the right height, slip it into the receiver and pin it in place. To remove it, just reverse the pinning procedure and lower the upper platform so it's resting on the stabilizer blocks, then roll dolly and hitch into a corner of the garage. No actual lifting required.

A little paint will make it look better as well as last longer, but it's still a little more crude than I would like. But we didn't have access to my fully equipped shop and were working with hand tools. (How can people survive without at least a tablesaw and a decent square?!)

But now it was time to give them their driveway, and lives back (their social calendar is the stuff of my nightmares!), so with some anticipation tempered by the melancholy of saying goodby, 

I headed south to another favorite overnight spot.

No specific RV slots at this southbound I-57 rest area right on Rend Lake, but there's plenty of room to parrallel park a whole slew of RV's along that loop which is on a peninsula jutting out into the lake.