It is very early in the morning, perhaps 4:00 or so. The sky is crystal clear and a bloated golden moon is just easing itself into its mountain cradle for a day of rest after a busy night illuminating the leafless mountainsides of Asheville, North Carolina. The air is very cold and still.
We
ran into
an old buddy recently, a fellow named Dusty. I met Dusty while studying
sonography, but I hadn't seen him for a year or so, and I had since knocked off
a little over 60 pounds. He didn't recognize me at first, but he commented that
now I look more like the pictures on my web page.
"Time,"
I thought, "to update our website again." A lot of water has gone over the dam.
Andrea has become become a Registered Nurse after two years of arduous
study. I had simultaneously studied sonography, but discovered early on that I
am no caregiver and second, I wasn't comfortable trying to fit myself into a
medical bureaucracy. I had not, after all, worked for anyone else since
1973, when the Treasury signed my checks for pushing nuclear submarines around.
Anyway, going back to school
put an end to our six-month sojourns to Europe, and we both miss the travel.
But that'll change.
We are considering travel nurse programs, where we can choose our lifestyle 13
weeks at a time.
Ski a season in Aspen, explore Idaho for a summer, dive the Florida Keys in the
spring,
leaf-hop Vermont in the Fall. . .
Sounds
cool,
doesn't it? Maybe we'll travel two quarters a year and return to Asheville (or
wherever) for Andrea to pursue her Masters as a Nurse Anesthetist, a Nurse
Geneticist, or (maybe) as a Family Practitioner. We don't know yet, but it is
very exciting to consider the options open to us.
Meanwhile, we haven't abandoned our travels entirely; this Christmas we
spent a month cruising the West Indies aboard Sea Cloud II and
poking around South Florida until it was time to return to our chilly digs.
This was not our first Sea Cloud trip. We stepped aboard the original Sea Cloud
in April, 1988 in Curacao bound for Barbados. Two years ago, we helped
inaugurate Sea Cloud II in the Canaries, and this time we embarked in Barbados
bound for Carriacou, Martinique, Bequia, St. Lucia, and Antigua. Weather and water
were perfect; we snorkeled every day and danced away the nights.
The last couple of years weren't all a picnic, however. Mom had a couple of
tough hospital episodes. First, she went in for abdominal surgery; her intestines
were tied in knots of adhesions and she needed to be untangled to live. The
untangling went fine, but the recovery was awful. Months later, she lost
consciousness during a difficult early morning breathing/anxiety session, and
had to be rushed to emergency. It didn't look good. She lost all blood
pressure, and remained comatose for much too long. How she fought her way
through that one I'll never know, but she is one very tough lady. She's fine
now, feisty as ever. Mom and Dad enjoyed a nice shindig for their 60th anniversary,
which I wouldn't have missed for the world. Neither, apparently, would she.
I am back into my daily fitness center routine. Thirty to forty-five
minutes of cardio followed by
another forty-five minutes of lifting. 
I had overdone the workouts a couple of years ago and really screwed up my
shoulders. So, I had to lay off for a few months, exercising only by
lifting heavy forks to my mouth repeatedly. (Hence, the sixty pounds I had to knock
off. *sigh*)
This time, I am being much more careful with both the workouts and the diet.
I lost only two pounds per week (it was a snap!) and I am judicious about my
workout. 
It's a new life all over again. We miss our a
partment
in Bregenz, to be sure, but the world seems a little wider now that we don't
automatically head to Austria for
months at a time. That's the problem with having a vacation house--it's where
you go, often to the exclusion
of a whole wonderful world with "cattle in the marketplace and angels in the
architecture."
(With apologies to Paul Simon.)
So there you go, Dusty! Up to the minute!
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