Spring has sprung, taxes are paid, and we are currently back in Columbus, Ohio once again helping the doctors with their Mercedes payments. Lori is now the bionic lady with a brand new left knee and we are struggling through the very painful process of getting the new knee broken in. She may be able to outrun a speeding ant, bend paper straws with a single twist, and leap paper clips in a single hobble, but even with oxycodone she had a couple blackouts from the intensity. Then she started having bad trips and it's down to take a tylenol and be a big girl. Needless to say neither of us have had a very good night since and some parts of the day get rather rough. It is getting better with the twice a week therapy and we go back to the doctor again in mid May. Right now we have no future plans until the knee issues get resolved. We did meet a couple that has had three replacements between the two of them and claim the future is bright.
As of right now I have loaded all the photographs and documentation for our travels up to getting back into Columbus in June 2010. That actually totals 2437 photographs and 168 pages with 545 photographs in 2010 so far and a lot more to finish out the year. Thanks again to Thinkful.com I got directed into learning enough JavaScript, mostly from NetNinja on U-tube, to be dangerous. Now I can add pages and only add a few lines to my script file rather than having to change the menus on all 168 pages which was a major pain. You now need to have JavaScript enabled to jump around the site but that is required for most modern websites. Actually the pages load a little more quickly since most browsers load the JavaScript once and hold it to fill in the menus on each page. Of course I did find our friend Bill knows we want to load my JavaScript once and never ever do any updates so there is no need to ever refresh the script. If things look a little weird and some 2010 pages seem to be missing from the menu try clearing the browsing history and it should clear up. I also created a little feature that links outside my site are shown in the traditional blue, links within my site are shown green, and sites you have already visited shown in red. That part is also stored in your browser history and gets wiped out if you need to do a refresh.
This site is planed as a work in progress. After retiring in 2006, we started sending reports back to the wonderful lady that had always watched the house while we traveled. Unfortunately Ruth Lambert is no longer with us so the major incentive for the reports is also gone and sending color copies to all our friends and relatives does start to get rather expensive hence this more convenient website presentation. As in our rambling, the reporting tended to be rather erratic and although it only got into 2010 it was reaching 300 pages and filling two 2 inch notebooks. With the old stuff converted that puts me now only nine years behind and working on finishing year five of our travels.
We retired in mid 2006 and decided to wander the USA to actually see what it really looks like. In some 40 years of actually working for a living John has had extensive travel but rare opportunities to see an area. Usually it's dark going into the plant and dark coming out so most of the scenery is the inside of a plant, motel room, or restaurant. Actually in the last six months before retirement John put in two 34 hour days; ya walk into the plant and walk out 34 hours later. So we sold the house and the majority of the "stuff" and are now OLD (medicare recipients), UNEMPLOYED (retired), HOMELESS (not destitute), and enjoying the nomad lifestyle. NO! we don't have an RV; we sold the house, we're not driving it. We have two tents to camp when we want, but mostly motel camp. Staying a week or a month tends to be economical most places and we are definitely budget travelers. Look for us where its warm but not real hot with a reasonable cost of living.