December 1986

This is the first time in 15 years that we have been able to write this newsletter from the mainland USA.  We are now back "home" and have both crossed the Rubicon of Middle Age -- 40 years old!  Ken has the grey hair to prove it, but for some reason, Sharon hasn't quite gotten the word yet.   At any rate, to celebrate our mid-life-crises, we decided to take this entire year off from gainful employment and do a few of the things that we just didn't have time to do before.   But let's back up a little.

Last year at this time, we were still in Kenya and chomping at the bit to leave.  As a lark, we chose to spend Christmas vacation in Tanzania because it would be the last opportunity to do so, and the border had always been closed before.  Bad move!  Not only were we frustrated at every turn by the Tanzanian bureaucracy and prices that were 10 times what we were used to in Kenya (example:  $135 per night to camp in a game park!), but we were also arrested when we arrived at the border on our way out of Tanzania and held at gunpoint for over 20 hours. It cost us another $600 in bribes to be allowed to leave that socialist worker's paradise.

That trip just took the heart out of us, so we spent the rest of the year selling off most of our worldly possessions (I think we've done that 5 times so far!) and planning the year ahead.  One of our long deferred dreams was to see the USA in a Volkswagen camper, so we figured that 1986-87 would be a good year to do it.  Thus, we ordered a camper from Germany to save money, then watched the dollar take a beating at the hands of the German mark.  The result:  We paid $2500 more for the car than we would have had we paid for it when we ordered it early in the year.  Well, it's only money.

Then, in June, we took delivery of our car in Delaware and drove it up to Canada for a shakedown run.  Afterwards, we spent 5 weeks in Columbia, SC, at summer school.  While there, we bought a townhouse at a gated community on a lake, with all the yuppie amenities we were looking for (The Yacht Cove, 175 Mariners Row, Columbia, SC 29210), and rented the place out for the rest of this year. We'll move in around June, 1987 and should be there for the next two years while Ken pursues a Ph.D.

After Columbia's record high temperatures, we were glad to get on the road again when school was over, and we then proceeded to scour the continent, racking up 20,000 miles on our odometer in a few months.  We managed to go to all the areas of the country that we had not visited before, save the mid-West.  The best of the best:  Crater Lake in Oregon.

While on the trip, we also managed to sample enough regional cuisine to gain about 15 pounds each. We are now paying the price for this extravagance and are wintering in Florida in our apartment on a literal starvation budget.  But, we still have a few goodies in store for the rest of the year.  By the time you read this, we'll be on a cruise to Mexico.  Later, we'll fly to New Orleans for an educational conference, and, two days afterwards, we'll be in Brazil for Carnival, something else we have always wanted to do.

In sum, this year is turning out to be one of the best of our lives.  We now spend our time reading, writing, exercising, and catching up on all the Americana we have missed for the last 8 years.  We feel good, if a bit older, and hope to spend the next 40 years as well as we have the first.

Love to all...