Bonnie Recovery

Footloose; Our iPhone4 Adventure

Written before July 1, but not posted until July 28!!

You can now reach me again at my cell phone number: 650-324-3816.  I have Zac’s cell phone until I get mine replaced with the new iPhone4.  We are working on that as you will see in the stories I tell here.

We are embarked on our 2010 Western Sojourn.  Our departure from NC was a particularly good one. We were out of the house and on the road before 11 am last Saturday (June 19th); that is a record early time for us.  Of course, we expected to be packed and out of there in time to see Zac play ball in Raleigh at 11am.  We didn’t make it in time to see him play ball at all, but we made it to the pool at the hotel where the Pollards were staying. I got Zac’s cell phone (which he uses as an iPod without phone connection). Daniel and I were having so much fun with the Pollards, we decided to stay the night there too.  I got in lots of pool time with Abi and Luc.  I will MISS THEM, but the memories of our Raleigh time together will help.

We took two days to go from Raleigh to Mom’s place in the northern Chicago suburbs (Glenview).  On the morning of June 24th, we were off in the early am to the Apple store, mostly confident at the time of our departure that we would get new phones.  Here is what I wrote waiting in line (sitting in my wheelchair, drinking coffee):

“6am. We are in line in the hope of scoring a new Apple iPhone4.  I figured the line would be long.  It is FAR longer than either of us imagined.  We should have been here at 5am  (or maybe 3am??); I'm sure there were people here since midnight, maybe earlier.    Still I don't think there are more than a thousand people, and I expect they have at least a thousand phones.  There are reporters here to cover the story of Apple-Madness, of course.   (Daniel was skeptical when I said there would be 100 people;  truly, I didn't believe there would be as many as 200. 1000 folks of all descriptions, but mostly guys under 40, are in two lines that wrap around the corner.  People (mostly women) are still arriving.  (Two guys said they have been here since 8 last night.)

6:45 (store to open at 7).  I was wrong about 5am being early enough.  The 250 people who got uncommitted phones were here before midnight.  Most people in line already had reserved online; we later read in the paper that those people were there all day just to pick up phones they had ordered and paid for! 

Monday, June 28.  We are driving to Denver where we will spend the night and go to an AT&T store tomorrow morning.  We haven’t settled yet on how early that will be.  We may even do a “sleeps in car” trick, lining up tonight and taking turns waiting in line and sleeping in the car.  How crazy are we!  Actually we aren’t as crazy as one might think.  Apple is only delivering phones to a person’s billing address, and it is a long time until we are living at our billing address again. 

We had a good visit with Mom.  She is happy in the Classic Hyatt where she lives.  She has a tall and handsome boyfriend, a retired Army general, who spends every day with her. 

Report about the ATT store early morning visit:  I work up at 1 am on Tuesday morn and couldn't get back to sleep.  I told Daniel I was going to the ATT store to wait (we'd scoped it out on Monday night).  Ever the go-along Daniel agreed to go with me.   We'd return later, hopefully phones in hand, to check out and move along to Crestone, CO, our next stop.

No one was in line when we arrived at the little neighborhood ATT store at 2am.  When they saw us setting up with wheel and picnic chairs, a "friends & family group" of 5, who'd been there before midnight, got out of their car and joined us.  Soon the line was extending.  We were first in line.  The internet connection was great; we happily sat and surfed for five hours.  A bagel/latte place opened at 6.  We had a rousing good time with the Latino "family" next to us all that early morn.  How often do we gringos get an opportunity like that?

    Bonnie & Daniel in line at ATT

We let the family go first, but we took the second service person and had our phones first; I got a tee shirt for my efforts.  We had our phones by 7:15 and thought all was well.  It wasn't.  ATT turned off our old phones immediately.  We were eager to get on to Larry's at Crestone, so we packed and left when our new phones were not yet connected.  There's no ATT service at Crestone or on the mountain road we took to get there.  And so, for one week, with two new phones, Zac's phone, Daniel's "old" 3G, and having spent the bucks on the new phones, we had NO SERVICE.   We learned that we CAN live without cell phone service; but who would want to???

At Larry's Daniel did the sync on our new phones.  By the time we reached Vail on our way to Utah (July 5) our phones got connected automatically.  

Daniel and I are doing some pretty good work on the book as we drive along.  This is a good time for concentrating.  I can see my laptop screen pretty well during the day.  Ah, if I only had an internet connection (If I really need to find something online, I use my cell phone: yeah iPhone data connectivity at a flat rate.)

As you might surmise, life is returning to “normal” for us.  It’s been so long since we had more than a few weeks of normal, I can’t claim to know what that is really.  The most I can say is that I am finding myself occupied by “concerns of the living” such as iPhones and the price of XOM stock. 

We are set and happy to be so.

Happy celling and surfing to you all,

Bonnie for BanD

Road Trip!

A travelog ... written by Bonnie sitting just outside Zion Park enjoying the early morning sun over the red rock mountains. This is a chatty chronicle of our 2010 Western Soujourn so far (now out of CA).

We’ve started the trip back to NC, where we will be by August 7 for the Pollard baptism on Sunday the 8th.  We’ll be there a week before heading out to Boston and Chicago, arriving home sometime after Labor Day.  For now our 7-week Western Sojourn continues.

I was a bit apprehensive this Western trip; at times I just did not want to come.  I had been weak for a couple of months, relying more and more on my wheelchair.  Was I really up to the trip??  Was I strong enough to do the fun things I might.  Ugh.  Daniel and I sometimes don’t get along too well when we drive (I try to navigate even when he doesn't want to need me to).  The trip could be a nightmare “Family Vacation”: what if the car breaks down?  And our plans staying with friends weren’t confirmed.  Being homeless is one thing; being homeless with no temporary home is another for me (though not for Daniel). I worried about how much time we’d have to work on our book.  I’d just settled into a writing rhythm when it was time to start packing.  As I had my worry fantasies about what might happen on the trip, I had to work beyond my energy to get out stuff ready for summer storage in the POD.  Worry, worry.

The “move out” of our very personal stuff from the beach house was  intensive again this year.  Though it was much easier than last year when we were still “moving in” from Cambridge AND moving out for the summer.  The actual work to ready inside the house wasn’t so bad for me: it only took about a week and lots&lots of plastic boxes.  Daniel had the big job.  We’ve accumulated stuff on the downstairs deck that had to be sorted and cleared; the POD was already crammed, even with unpacked stuff from Cambridge.  Those of you who move every few years know the problem:  it is often easier to leave stuff packed, and that is what we’ve been doing since 2008.  (We have had a few priorities like learning to live and walk again and dealing with all the post trauma of my health.)  I can’t say that we really unpacked this time, but the downstairs closets are well organized and the POD moderately so.  It was a big, hot job for Daniel even with some great help from highschoolers.  At one point the situation looked so hopeless that Daniel suggested that we just cancel the trip.

Eric and Ashley came to see us at the beach the day before we left.  We were relaxed seeing that once again we would meet our packing deadline and be able to turn over the house to weekly renters as per our contract.  The great joy of that day was just being with Eric and Ashley whom we considered our own children.  We discussed our book concepts with them and got the best insight and advice.  They helped us see how to vastly simplify our task and get it done sooner.  They showed us how to make it more focused on a market and more coherent.  I slept better that night than I had in months, and since I have experienced only joy when thinking about/working on the book.  Alleluia.

We left on Saturday, June 19  with all goals accomplished and pretty much on time.  We met Jen and the Kiddos at Zac’s baseball tournament in Raleigh, mostly so that I could get Zac’s iPhone to replace temporarily the one I dropped in apple juice.  The best part of ruining my phone is that we had to see them in Raleigh.  Our time there was some of the best of a most enjoyable trip.  I got to play with the kiddos, especially the little ones, in the pool where I am strong and can throw them around and wrestle with them.  What fun, and what a way to start a trip.

We traveled to Chicago where we spent almost a week near Daniel’s mom, Margery.  She is doing fine; most of all she is really enjoying her life.  Despite her disabilities, she is living the life she wants to live right now.  It is an inspiration to see.  She was the age I am now when I first met her.  I want to be as fit as she is if I make it to 89.  Daniel and I are transforming our diet and exercise in an effort to do just that (though right now we are closer to Mom’s current level of fit than we are to who she was 23 years ago).

The saga of “replacing Bonnie’s iPhone” dominated our early trip:  first with getting a temporary phone, then lining up to get an iPhone4 in Chicago (at Apple) then again in Denver (at ATT).  It’s a funny story that I will post before this log so that it appears just after it.  You’ll have to read that account to learn the outcome of our adventures in iPhone4 Land.

We pushed on to see Larry Browning in Crestone, CO.  Crestone is home to 55 spiritual communities of many kinds:  from Carmelite nuns to 3 different Buddhist sects. It’s a magical place below the towering rockies.  We went twice for hot springs and massage and decided to plan our travel west to have more mineral soaks.  Larry was on a deadline to complete authorship of his third book.  Most of the week we were there we sat at our various computers and wrote.  But we had camaraderie in the evenings and at times during the day.  I got a good rewrite of the book intro done; that rewrite proved quite valuable as we solicited input from others about what we are doing.

We were then onto Utah.  Our first excursion to a Utah hot springs was futile... I just could not get up the steep path.  We did score on the one just outside of Zion  It is one of the most mineral rich of American springs.  It did indeed have that mineral effect that changed our moods and aches more that one could expect from temperature alone.  We didn’t get to spend as much time in Zion park as we’d hoped, and so we are now back here again.  This time we are staying near the park entrance and plan to have some good time there -- soon.  Zion has a “wheelchair” path that goes right to the canyon “narrows.”  I’ve become quite adept at pedaling my wheelchair with my feet.  I’m looking forward to the adventure of the day.

I could go on and on about our incredible time with friends in CA.  I spent most of a week in Santa Rosa with Betsy.  We’ve been friends for thirty years; time to simply be together has always been short though.  She introduced me to her (highly successful) dieting style and took me to her YMCA everyday to walk in the warm pool.  Wow.  We were in almost constant conversation (also with her M.D. husband Gene) about the book and Betsy’r experiences over a decade of working with cancer support groups/ Gene’s experiences with patients.  Daniel and I are grateful to have friends whose diverse experience addresses so directly many fields we need to understand as we do this project.

Daniel stayed more with Glenn Edens in his fine home overlooking the SF Bay.  I don’t think I’ve missed living in CA as much as I did when at Glenn’s.  I was reminded of what our daily life was like in CA -- a ongoing conversation about technology, design and business strategy.  I’m in many fine conversations in NC, but none is quite as satisfying as those were to me.  Oh, the life left behind.  How good to be able to drop in and glimpse at it once in a while, to celebrate who we were and who we are.

Laura Dimario and others organized the Interval Research ten years since closing reunion.  About a hundred people came.  Can you imagine it?  Ten years after the demise of a corporation, we are still family.  I’d say more than half of the ex-Intervalians came.  I sat on a picnic table and “held forth”; Daniel circulated.  Wow.  I think every person there was grateful for the unique experience of Interval. David, the president, said a “few words” in celebration for us and also Paul Allen who formed the company.

We had so many wonderful conversations with friends beyond the picnic.  I won’t name or describe all the people we saw, the joy of being with them, the help they gave us in thinking about our book, or the hospitality they showed us in opening their homes to us.  Just know that we are feeling truly blessed by our continuing community over time and distance. 

By the time we got to CA all my anxieties about the trip had melted.  I dwell on the feeling of those anxieties -- gained and lost -- each day in my prayers.  How fortunate we are to have the money and the time to take a trip like this.  We’d (well, I’D) had considered staying in NC next summer.  NOT anymore.  I’m already beginning to dream about next year’s trip.

The culmination of our time in CA was a stay with my son, his sweetie, and Landen her 6 year old in LA.  Ron rented out his tiny castle in Tapanga Cyn and the three (with Murphy the dog) have moved to a big house 4 blocks from the beach at Playa del Ray.  Ron and Amber took me for a wheel chair walk along the ocean.  Of course the weather there was just perfect.  Oh heaven. 

In this post I’ve mentioned many of joys that have overwhelmed me in our 7 week sojourn; none is quite so satisfying as seeing my son happily in love.  Parents reading this will know exactly what I mean.  I’m not saying that now I can “die happy,” but my feelings are close to that.  I’m feeling blessed to have lived to have a close, loving relationship with my children and to have lived long enough to appreciate the adults they are.  The focus of my life over the expanse of my 66 years has been on my career, not my family.  I’m happy to have the book as a continuing career focus for me now.  Yet my love for my family is the best surprise of my existence.  I realize this is a bit trite.  People confronting death typically put family as their joy and priority.  I know why.

After a leisurely time at Zion, we are off for a drive by of Bryce Canyon, then back to Crestone.  Larry won’t be there this time, but Daniel has some business in town with people he met there (Daniel makes friends wherever he goes.)  On Sunday we travel east on i70 to see Jay, my precious stem cell donor and his family (now our family).

I’ll soon be posting an album of our trip pictures.  Remember that I take pictures to remember where I was; they will not be beautiful photography though our sites and friends have been just that.

Enjoying the view from our patio.

Love to you all,
Bonnie for BanD