Judy #2

 Ok, here it comes. It's a bit out of order so we'll turn the clock back to last Fall, 2022.  There.  Fall was in the air which meant square dancing was about to get going again for another season. Judy and I had pretty much quit square dancing during the pandemic so I was a bit rusty but I have had so much fun with it over the years that I thought I'd give it a try and see if I remembered anything. I pulled out the definitions and glanced through them thinking "this stuff is a foreign language". Although we had been dancing C2 for a couple of years, I never did really feel comfortable at that level. There wasn't any Advanced dancing to speak of so that left C1 and all the way back to Plus. I decided to try both.

I let my C2 friends know that I was looking for a new partner and got a call a few days later from Mary Ann. A new single lady was looking. I showed up at the next C2 dance a bit late, just in time to see the last car pull out of the lot. There weren't enough to make a square so Ross had cancelled the dance. I hurried over to Bronc's C1 dance just in time to catch the "single lady" who also had just left Ross's C2 hall. To make a long story short, I finished the season with Karen and we did just fine. It's sort of like riding a bicycle. 

But what about Plus? Earlier in the week I had gone to Bronc's plus dance intending to either take pot luck or dance with Fia, Bronc's wife. As I was signing in, this tiny little lady came running across the hall squealing "this one is MINE"! When I stood up and glanced at her name tag, I said "you're not going to believe this". Her name was Judy. She had been dancing as a single for the past 10 years after her husband had died and was known far and wide as "Jude the dude". We also finished out the season and didn't miss many plus dances in the valley. We've since become "an item" (Karen's words, not mine) and my kids call her Judy Toody. 

Here she is with me and the gang in Mexico a few days ago...she's the teetotaler.

Lots of Water Under the Bridge

 It has been awhile.  Last night I thought to check out my buddy Otto's blog to see what he had been doing. Like most things I do of late, that led me to jump into several other rabbit holes and I ended up here in our travel blog.  2014?  That's a bit of a long dry spell.  We've been all over the place since that time. Oh well.  Now is as good a time as any to start catching up.   Watch this space for some old news, as well as maybe some new news from time to time.  

First off, in case you haven't heard, the love of my life, dance partner, geocaching partner, travel mate, etc etc went "silent key" a bit over a year ago.  That's ham-speak for died.  Here's the short version.  Judy decided that the pandemic was over and we needed to go somewhere. That somewhere was a cruise to the Bahamas. She forgot to pack her appetite and while on the ship she kept getting chilled - really shaking and shivering chilled.  But she was a trooper and we managed to get off ship and even do some hiking and geocaching on shore. By the time we got home after the cruise, she was sick.  Could it be COVID?  I grabbed a couple of test kits and mine blared out "positive" but she was the sick one.  As a few days passed she got weaker and we decided to take the doc's advice and go to the emergency room. After a couple of weeks in the hospital while the docs fiddled around and ran tests, the lead-doctor-in-charge, with all the bedside manner of a prosecuting attorney, barged into the room and said "you have stage 4 liver cancer". Back home for hospice care and a few days later she was gone.

As I'm fond of saying about my time in service with the US Army "that was the adventure of a life time". But let me tell you about my latest adventure. Judy #2 and I decided we had enough of the heat and took off for a few days up north to see the kids.  She has kids in Jefferson City MO and Keokuck IA and I also have kids in mid MO so we packed up the Tahoe and headed out on July 12 after her doctor's appointment. We made it to Corsicana and stayed at a Best Western. We were off at 7:30 the next day after a pretty good breakfast and making good time but the transmission started acting up. We got to Canton and it decided that was as far as it wanted to go.  I pulled off into a parking lot and checked the transmission fluid (ok) and temperature (not ok). The closest Chevy dealer was in Sulpher Springs and after the tranny cooled down, we were able to limp the 15 miles to their parking lot. They got me in, found a rebuilt unit, and 24 hours later (plus about $8k) we were back on the road again.

Sulpher Springs is a nice little town and the folks at Jay Hodge Chevy were great but I have to say being without a car stinks.  We were trying to maintain a 28 day streak of geocache finds to snag the "hard" souvenir for July. Fortunately we had already found our cache of the day earlier in the morning because there weren't any within walking distance of the hotel, at least not the distance I was willing to walk in that 100+ degree Texas heat we've been having. Eating was another challenge. All the close restaurants were on the other side of a divided highway and might have well been on the moon.  We solved that problem by using a trick I haven't used in decades:  we ordered a delivery pizza. That process has become more complicated over the years.  Back in the 80s, one picked up the phone, called in the order to the store that would be making the delivery, and that was it.  In 2023 we had to wade through a couple of layers of automated order taking services before we found someone who actually knew where the motel was located. 

Suffice to say we survived, got to see the kids, maintained our 28 day geocaching streak, and even managed to snag a couple of square dances on the trip: one to my old club (Duck N Dive in Rolla) and Judy's old club in Wever IA. Most of the geocaches were of the "park and grab" type but a few were memorable like the Mystery cache in Jeff City that required me to tromp through some woods in the rain, a Lewis and Clark memorial in Jeff City, and a replica of Iowa Territory's oldest school house.             

We left Missouri on 7-24, spent the night in Paducah with sister Dorothy, then off to see a friend in Searcy Arkansas where we spent the night.  One more night on 7-26 at the Franklin Inn in Franklin TX (both named of course after brother Franklin Peters) and we made it back home after about 3500 miles. Judy #2 was introduced to "leisurely travel" and reintroduced to Missouri chiggers. 

Oops, Judy #2?  Who is that? She is yet another story but that will have to wait. This thing needs to go live.

Lewis and Clark Memorial

Iowa Territory's oldest schoolhouse