How to Wash and Dry Your Laundry in a Florida RV park

With apologies to all those in the Northeast

Washing the Laundry:

1. Place laundry & soap in washing machine and start.

2. Sit in the rocking chair on the porch and enjoy the gentle breeze; listen to and watch tropical birds and talk to friendly people for about a half hour.

3. Remove the wash and place it in the dryer.

Drying the laundry:

1. Start the dryer.

2. Take a walk over to the spa and spend about 20 minutes in the warm whirlpool letting it sooth all your aching arthritic joints while watching palm trees and talking with friendly people discussing the 20 degree weather in New Jersey.

3. Spend another fifteen minutes in the pool, cooling off from the heat of the whirlpool. Emerge completely refreshed. Take a nice soapy shower.

4. Remove clothing from the dryer.

It’s a tough life but SOMEONE has to do the laundry!

Springtime

So here I am, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch outside the laundry room writing this. I’ve got country music running on the computer and enjoying a petty sunset and a warm breeze. My laptop is in fact, in my lap and life seems to be not too bad.

I’m doing the laundry simply because tomorrow is moving day. I spent much of the trip to date learning about RVs and trailers. I decided to upgrade to a new one from my 11-year-old Mallard that I purchased a few months ago to a new Summerland. Basically, I bought the Mallard cheap up north and here at Lazydays, just outside of Tampa and the world’s largest RV dealer, I moved up to a new model. I actually got almost what I spent on the Mallard in trade-in. I’m bringing the Mallard into the prep area here at Lazydays where they will set it up side-by-side with my brand new Summerland and I can take my time moving in. They are about the same size but the new one has much, much more storage area. The floor plan is much more roomy and three windows on the back and rear of each size makes it even more open and inviting. I have a separate freezer and an oven and extra burner on the stovetop. Lots of improvements are obvious, the best being far, far more storage room, especially in the outside compartments. The brand new décor is nicer too.

In the meantime, they’ll be giving me driving lessons so I can back the thing up, which has been a chaotic (and funny) situation a times. My first attempt to back in took nearly two hours. My latest attempt was unsuccessful and I put the truck in 4-wheel drive and drove through another site to get where I am.

In the meantime, I’m multi-tasking. Since I’m going to be here at least six more days, maybe more, I’m taking the truck into a body shop to have the scar on the side fixed on Saturday morning and will have a rental car at least five days. The scar was the result of an unfortunate incident with a light pole at a shopping center. After the RV is shaken down, Lazydays will tow it back to the campground for me. When the truck is ready, I’ll just hitch it up and move on.

Taking care of some other business too. Talked to my real estate lawyer to ensure that the proceeds from the escrow go to me, and not my darling bride. Talked to Metropolitan Insurance Co. about the homeowners insurance refund today. They are insisting that they credited my card for the refund. I read them off the check number my wife has and they then insisted that they can’t cancel it until April 1 because their records show that my account was credited! I said the date seemed appropriate since they were being complete fools.

RV people continue to amaze me with their friendly ways. Was talking to another spring training person from Tennessee and we talked baseball, RVs and laundry. He was about 30 minutes ahead of me on the cycle and he gave me about a half hour on his dryer, which was enough to take care of my clothes. It’s the small things about these people. They’re always willing to lend you a hand and I could swear they are, as a group, just about the most honest people I have ever met. When I was checking in here, an older man had a $100 bill in his hands that the wind blew away and a kid ran after it for more than 100 yards and returned it. He adamantly refused a reward.

At the pool today, I talked with people from Canada and Washington State. I am really getting a handle on the “snowbird” mentality. I think it is a lifestyle I like. I saw a tee shirt with a trailer on it. It said “home is where you park it” and my mindset seems to be there. At the senior citizen housing where I live in New York State, people are waiting to die. The big event of the day is waiting for the mail. Here, people are living in the here and now, enjoying their lives. For them, the “golden” years are gold. And because they follow the sun, winter is something you only hear about. This week – the first full week of spring – it was snowing, sleeting and icing. March is going out like a lion. I’m sitting here in mid-80 degree weather swimming and using the air conditioner.

I kind of expected a “class” system here but you have half-million-dollar bus people, getting along just fine with $15,000 trailer people. It’s fairly cheap to camp here, especially since they give you a free breakfast and lunch. It’s not anything great, but it’s adequate. It is southern, however and biscuits and sausage gravy wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for breakfast yesterday. They had a sort of sausage McMuffin today. There's always cold cereal and sometimes grits. I hate grits dating back to my Army days.

After I get my laundry done, I’m heading back to the pool. Thought I could get there earlier today, but the cool of the evening sometimes works better than the heat of the day. The pool is screened off so insects can’t get in and by-and-large, there are very few bugs. That wasn’t the case in Georgia where gnats started buzzing around. The first few days were fine but the last few they were really intense.

Saw a spring training game last night as the Yankees beat the Blue Jays. It was really good to be in a ballpark again. I hadn’t been to a game since chaperoning my NYC kids back in Spring 2001. All the players I’ve been watching played last night and there was a great rally in the 7^th inning where they scored four runs and just about every one of the stars got a hit. Saw Phil Hughes start and Mariano Rivera pitched an inning. On Monday, the last game of the Spring, they’re giving away replica championship rings, this one of the 2000 champs who beat the Mets in the only subway World Series. Someone who got one last year tells me that they’re very nice. The games start for real in six days and so these last training games feature the best players as they get their final tune-ups. And while the intensity isn’t like in the regular season, they’re playing hard.

Baseball is something that is very much a part of me. As a kid, I played sandlot ball after school every day and some high school ball before wrecking my knee. Both my parents took me to the games. My favorite memory is one summer day in 1961 at the height of the Maris – Mantle home run race. I was sitting in the 75¢ per seat right field bleachers and I saw my favorite player, Roger Maris, knock two into my area. Then, after being deliberately walked twice, Mickey Mantle rocketed one against the wall of the back of the third deck in right field. It was still going up when it hit the wall. If it had been about 10 feet to the left, it would have gone out of the stadium, and no one ever hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium. Early in my courtship with Rosemary, I took her to a ball game. She hated sports and we frequently fought over it when I wanted to see a game. So I took my mother a couple of times, but over the 30 plus years, I only went a few times with my church groups. But now, I’m seeing three games in a week. It feels really good.

Thoughts about battle

I’m a history major, but would hardly describe myself as a historian. But a visit to Gettysburg certainly sheds some light on the price of war. On television, we see war reports from a limited area. We more often think of war as a football game in the confines of a stadium. Even in my personal reality, war had a limited perspective limited to perhaps a half mile while on Army maneuvers.

A visit to Gettysburg is different. We think of massive bloodshed as the tragedy of 9-11. But it is dwarfed by comparison where nearly 8,000 were slain and more than 27,000 more were wounded in just three days of fierce battle. They are numbers that are mind numbing. They far exceed our casualties in both Afganistan and Iraq.

It was here that Lee’s quest to bring the war to the north ended. It is here that the largest battle was ever held on North American soil as about 165,000 men fought one another without ceasing for three days.

Gettysburg takes the numbers and makes you understand the scope. Throughout the park are scores of monuments for various military units which took part in the carnage. The battle was not fought in an arena, but over miles of fields and woods, whose ground was soaked with blood. Many of the final resting places of the dead are marked with simple three-digit numbers.

I stood at the site where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address about four months later. By then, the battle lines were back in the south and there were still years of conflict to come. I couldn’t help but think about how America today is still being torn by strife, with red states and blue states and media and mad men fighting over power and political positioning. And I wonder why we have any enemies at all?Because we shall surely destroy ourselves without any help from terrorists.

Finially I think of my personal civil war, with its mauled and wounded barely clinging to the hope that we can survive and maybe even thrive. I realize that the casualties extend far beyond the combatants. And as Lincoln noted “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us” what that task is, I’m not quite sure. I hope it involves healing the wounded.

I guess I’ll settle for “With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

On the road to Gettysburg

It has been raining since the moment I woke up about 14 hours ago, and it shows no sign of letting up. In a moment of relative lightness, I have rescued my computer from the truck and I sit at a campground whose name I can’t remember. It’s been that kind of a day. Give me a moment to look it up: Round Top Campground.

I have journeyed from Port Jervis, NY (a town whose depressed community is desperate for change) to Gettysburg, PA, and a town that is clearly living in the past and thriving on it. But the journey, not the destination, is the story of this day. I decided to leave on this day to avoid the flooding that is accompanying this torrential downpour that is leaving two to four inches of rain throughout the entire east coast. In other words, I’ve been heading for the hills!

Most of the trip has been along Interstate 81, through Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Mountains. And while I encountered no flooding, at least until I settled into my campsite, the fog created by the melting mountain snow has been thick and sometimes terrifying. There were many times along the highway where I could barely see more than a car length ahead and I slowed down and put on my emergency flashers in hopes that the vehicles behind me wouldn’t crash into Vagabond2011, my small travel trailer. I was very tempted to cut short my day’s journey when I passed through the Hershey area but certainly going to the park would be a wet waste.

As I passed through Hazelton, it brought back memories from the 1960s. My friend Bill’s parents were dying and I drove him in my Ford Falcon to pick up his aunts and take them back to New Jersey to help with the family. It was the first time I had driven on an Interstate highway in the rain and I desperately coped with the never ending flow of water washing off eighteen-wheelers as well as the rain itself. The weather for both days was remarkably similar.

The experience didn’t kill me so I suppose I am stronger. At least I feel far more comfortable handling the trailer. What was supposed to be about a five hour trip was close to seven hours and I arrived at the national monument around 4 p.m., too late for the last two-hour bus tour. The rain let up for about fifteen minutes at the time of my arrival and I was able to grab a few quick photos and gather information. I was given directions to the ¼ mile walk to the site where Abraham Lincoln gave the famous Gettysburg Address. But as I started out, the downpour resumed so I headed back to my truck, getting soaked along the way.

The town itself seems to be deliberately quaint. There is a small circle in its middle and you can head in about six directions. There are no institutions like fast food joints and big box stores in this town, and the motels have a muted brick façade that fits in easily. After all, people come to Gettysburg to view history and the residents are here to find ways to part them from their money. There are many museums, art galleries, antique stores and shops such as those specializing in civil war toy soldiers and other souvenirs are interspersed with various restaurants and lodging facilities with historic names such as the Iron Horse Inn, the Dobbin House Tavern, General Pickett’s Buffet and the Battlefield Bread and Breakfast. There are several competing bus tours and you can even rent a Segway.

One of the rangers recommended the RV park I am in because she said it was the only one she knew for sure was open at this time of the year. Many do not open until April. It’s not very much to look at for the moment. It is packed with trailers without trucks, apparently permanent or winter residents. I have seen only a few people around and there is no green on the ground nor in trees as winter is still very much here. Of course the downpour adds to the gloomy atmosphere.

For some reason, the office closed early today, at noon, so my 4:30 p.m. arrival left me fending for myself. I filled out an envelope, placing $35 in cash into it. As I did so, a pizza delivery driver asked if I had change of a $50, which I didn’t since I was tying most of it up in the envelope. The place was so dreary; I was tempted to give him the change instead. But I chose to tour the place. With the weather showing no sign of easing up, I hoped to find a spot but everything was of the back-in kind. The last time I backed into an RV site, it took nearly two hours for me to figure out how to back up. I was about to leave when I realized a deserted group of sites, actually right in front of the showers, were pull through sites. I moved into one site and stopped but found I could not connect to the electric system since I was too far away from the box. Rather than back up, I went around the circle again and came within an inch the second time. I plugged in and headed for the trailer to change clothes and microwave a leftover burger for my dinner.

I took a nap and woke up to the sound of silence. Instead of the constant beating of water on my roof, there was no noise and I took advantage of the break to drop off my registration envelope and check out the bathroom and showers. It began to rain again and now the hooks on my bathroom door are drying out two changes of clothing. This time the rain included some thunder and lightning. I hoped the storm would not spawn tornados, as it had done earlier in the week in the Midwest. I’d been through a couple of tornados many years ago and the thought of being in a trailer when one hits is not at all very appealing.

Anyway, the heat is keeping me comfy and it’s time to try to sleep. If the rains have eased enough, I’ll go for a walk tomorrow and then travel on to Western Virginia where I hope to meet a friend who lives in the Shenandoah Valley, and perhaps see a sign of Spring, before moving on towards some warmer weather.