One of the complaints I hear often as we strive to be as normal as possible in our pandemic mode is, “I don’t have anything to do.” After the house has been remodeled and the garage painted, what do I do now? We are told to stay outside if we are in a group, and keep a distance from others if we can. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. I have a friend that figured it out.

I received an email asking if I would like to participate in a beach clean-up. It fits all of the requested criteria. We would be outside and not close together for any length of time. I said ‘yes’, jumping at the chance to do something that I thought was contributing to the health of my world, which includes the world’s beaches, as well as my personal heath, both mental and physical.

It was great fun. We met at the beach at 6:30. One of my friends there was in a mechanical scooter. He needed a beach wheelchair that had big wheels which wouldn’t sink into the sand. The lifeguards had one he could barrow. I said I’d push him. The wheelchair acted as my walker, and away we went.

We were cleaning the main beach in Laguna. It was close to where we live. What a haul we made! I pushed and Rich picked up what we discovered with a three-foot tool that had a grabber on the end. We made a great team and what an adventure it was.

We found two shoes but they didn’t match and they weren’t my size anyway. We dug out a quilt and a beach towel which were buried in the sand. The most interesting item we found was a girl’s black lace bikini bottom. We looked really hard to find the girl, but no luck.

It was an extraordinary day. It was legal, safe, social, and a wonderful outing for us.

I’m sure you can come up with a day that is extraordinary to enjoy, if you close your eyes and let your mind wander. There are so many things in each of our personal worlds that we tend to ignore or just take for granted. Pick one and turn it into an adventure. Your mind and body will thank you.

I promised you at the end of the last blog that I would share with you, as I enter Act III, my continuing pursuit of a self-image. Without one you are invisible to yourself; you have no direction. The tendency is just to sit and biodegrade. I needed a process to prevent that from happing to me.

My father told me when I was very young, “Life is hard, but don’t worry, it will get harder. Just handle it. Never consider giving up.”

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I had a several self-images that had given me direction in my life. I was identified as a biology teacher, a diver, a martial art teacher, and even a bicycle racer, during different segments of life’s path. Each one moved me forward. When I retired and moved to Washing state all of that was left in the past. I had a new life in a new environment. No friends and no direction to guide me on my path forward. It was scary — the time had come for me to, “Just handle it.”

I made a list of all the skills that I thought I was still competent to do. Across from it I made another list of all the things I thought I would like to do.  I drew lines from one list to the other to see what would rise to the top of most skills to work with. Boating and the marine environment was the winner. That was good because I had a boat and now lived only a half mile from the harbor.

The second highest on my list was to volunteer to do something worthwhile. I had available the perfect solution. There was the Coast Guard Auxiliary unit in Port Ludlow, where I lived. I joined it and so did my wife, Sharon. Between the two of us, we worked 40 to 50 hours a week, for 18 years. We were “Coasties.” Then we retired (again) and moved back to California. Sharon wasn’t well and we wanted to be close to our family and doctors.

We weren’t concerned about self-image then, just her health. Her life path was narrowing rapidly and after a year, ended. I was 80 years old and needed a new image to carry me forward, as I had promised Sharon I would. I made new lists; they were much shorter than they were when I was younger. The container/body I lived in had many dents and damaged parts, but was still usable.

Two things topped the list. I could still write, (I had written two text books and two training manuals for the Coast Guard), and use my camera. I became a writer and a photographer. It has worked for me. Since then, I have written six books, and produced eight Photo posters in the last six years.

Technology is racing past me on a motorcycle as I now stroll down my life’s path with my walker, and I love it. When someone asks me something now, I raise my arms and say, “I know nothing.” The great part of it is there is so much to learn now, I can now identify as a student of life. My dad would be proud of me, I’m just handling it.

I refuse to give up. I will dance along my life’s path just as long as my container will hold all my parts together.

            All of my life I’ve been a Wonderer.  I wonder how and why things work. We are born wonderers. Everything we encounter is new. What a marvelous time that is for us. Watch a young anything and feel the excitement they’re experiencing as they see, touch, smell, and taste every new thing they encounter. I work at keeping my wondering active through empathy as I watch the children I’m privileged to encounter in my daily life. They’re in the process of deciding what they’re going to be. We have to be something, in our society.

            The years pass, the number is quite variable, and we become adults. Now we know everything we have to and move into the process of survival in a society that requires us to furnish food, clothing, and shelter not only for ourselves, but for the family that we’ve acquired along the way.  And to do that, you have to be something.

            In my world, I became a teacher. My father decided to become a mechanic – – that was his world. Like you, we both became something. (Think. Who are you? What do you call yourself, in your world?)

            If you’re lucky, the time will come when you can retire. We work hard for many years to reach this Act III OF OUR LIVES. A time to do whatever we want. It’s wonderful for a while, then a strange feeling creeps into our lives. Perhaps it’s the desire to still be productive in some way. Perhaps you’ll feel the need to become someone different from how you spent your life up to this point. Today’s technology is moving so fast that if you take a long nap, you’re left behind.

            My father, a master mechanic for 35 years, came to live with me at age 86. He’d been retired for 21 years and lived in a mobile home. He was deaf and just worked in his garden most of those years. I had a new Ford pickup and he was admiring it. He said “I’ll keep it tuned up for you.” He opened the hood and looked at the engine. He just stood there for five minutes looking it over. He turned to me with tears in his eyes, I’d never seen this man cry in my life as he spoke the words I’ll never forget. “I have no idea how this engine works. I won’t be of any help to you.” He turned and went into the house. I started to cry then. A proud, old man had just lost his identity. He’d lost who he was his entire life. He was now invisible.

            I decided that wasn’t going to happen to me. When it came time for me to retire, I was going to find myself a new identity. In the next blog I’ll share with you just how I worked at that.  

Each month Karin and I try to find something new to learn. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, just enough to keep our brains from forgetting what it’s for. It can be a new use of our computer, a new way to do things we already do – – just something to keep the neurons in our brains awake. That and exercise to keep our mobility working so we can keep moving are number one and two on our must do list.

I’ve read somewhere that running a mile every day will increase your life span. I tried it and I think it worked. I felt a lot older than I ever have and decided that I didn’t want to feel that old anymore and stopped running. Exercise is still top on my list but not to the extent that I feel old now.

We are on the move again now that it’s safer and things have loosened up. We both have our two shots and don’t mind wearing a mask if it makes others feel safe. I don’t understand those who refuse to wear a mask. They are so self-centered that they don’t give a (bad word) about how anyone else feels. I look at this as having a mental illness, or at least having a sociological disorder.

Karin just got back from a trip to visit her family in Missouri. She flew there but took the train home, it was a three-week trip. She’d never taken a long train adventure before. It turned into the adventure when the train didn’t show up in Flagstaff, Arizona. Her daughter, who lives in Flagstaff, drove her to Needles on the Colorado River where another daughter, who lives in Chino Hills, drove to Needles and picked her up and brought her home to Aliso Viejo, to me. Each daughter had an eight-hour round trip to get back home.

During the three weeks she was gone, I flew to Alabama for one week to visit my family. It wasn’t supposed to be an adventure but it turned into one when the plane couldn’t land in Denver due to weather. It was diverted to an alternate airport where we (a daughter was with me) were on the ground for over four hours yet weren’t allowed to leave the plane. The total time we were in that plane was ten hours. When we were finally cleared to fly back to Denver, we couldn’t get a flight to Birmingham. We ended up taking one to Atlanta where another daughter drove three hours to get us and three hours to take us back to Alabama. The total trip lasted 23 hours.

All I can say is thank God for daughters. Between Karin and I, we have five daughters and we needed four of them so we could just make a family visit. I kept reminding myself that even a bad day has good things to learn. I learned that my new hearing aids, which have no batteries and plug in each night to charge them, only last 18 hours, and when they die, I’m totally deaf. That was a good thing for me to know. Karin found out that you can never trust a train to be on time. We both feel much smarter now. Maybe.

On a recent stay in Oceanside, Karin and I were taking a walk around the harbor. It is a two-mile walk that is always interesting do to – – a constant and changing activity. There was a barge just off the rocks that formed the side of the harbor. A woman was using a small dip net to take tiny fish out of a large reservoir in the barge and putting them in a bucket.

Karin stopped to watch. The woman got in a row boat, with her bucket, and rowed ashore. There were two boys on the rocks fishing. The lady dumped her bucket into a bucket the boys had. She then rowed back to the barge.

Karin looked at me and asked, “I wonder what I just saw?” She had never been around fishing boats before. She was not satisfied with my answer of a bait barge and asked a bunch of questions.

I explained how the bait boats go out at night and net the small fish when they come up to eat the plankton that rise to the surface at night.  The bait boats put bright lights over the side to draw the plankton and the little fish come to eat them and get caught in the nets.

The bait boats come back into the harbor before sunrise and transfer the fish to the bait barge tanks. In the morning, the fishing boat charters stop at the barge on their way out of the harbor and transfer the fish into the tank on their boat. The fishermen/women now have bait to fish with.

The charter boats go out and fish for whatever time they are scheduled for. On the way back into the harbor the deck-hands clean the fish and receive tips from the fishers.

Karin was fascinated, and said, “How many people are involved with putting a fish in the frying pan?’ I had never thought of that. The boat crews, boat yard maintenance workers, the bait barge staff, and even the gas station attendants who put fuel in the boats. You could include everyone clear back to the geologist who found the oil and the people that built the boats.

It was a question that was above my pay scale and made me realize how totally dependent we are on each other. How many people, trucks, boats, etc., did it take to fill your coffee cup this morning? I don’t know either but I’m glad I drink coffee so they all have a job to feed their families.

Karin and I decided we should do our part and eat more fish.

The last two weeks in Hawaii were good weeks. The second unit we stayed at was set up better for us to write. We got a lot of work done – – Karin on her book, and I on mine. The birds kept us company all day, every day. When we left, I’m sure they missed us, like we missed them.

Being back home was kind of a shock after a month in Hawaii. We took care of the things that had piled up while gone, which took us a week. Then we went to Oceanside for a week to help us adjust to mainland life again.

We had walks along the beach, spent a day at the Wildlife Safari Park in San Diego with all the animals, and worked some more on our books. We’re now home again and continuing to adapt to our new normal which I think will still be with us for a while.

An interesting incident happened that I would like to share. It’s funny, but true. I was having lunch with a friend and I said something that my friend challenged. We do this all the time. It makes for stimulating conversations that we both learn from.

He said, “I always rely on logic to solve problems. Logic never sends you on the wrong path.”

I said, “Maybe.”

His answer was, “There is no maybe about it. Logic is based on facts.”

My mind was struggling to do what it used to, which is to process quickly, come up with an answer. “OK, a test is in order”

“Anytime.” He was glowing with confidence.

“Right now, let’s start with the facts.” My brain finally woke up. “Driving is something we all know about. Using myself as an example, the facts are:

            1. I am 86 years old.

            2. I can’t hear well, at all.

            3. I am legally blind in my left eye.

            4. Both my feet are numb due to physical damage to them.

            5. My response time is much longer than a younger person.

            6. My brain can no longer multitask nearly as well as it used to.

Do you accept these facts? I asked.”

“I sure do. They are obvious. Oh, sorry about that.”

“You’re right. They are obvious, and they all go together to cause a problem. I am not as safe a driver on the road as I used to be. Every time I drive a car, I am putting myself and other drivers at risk. Do you accept that as a problem?”

“Now that you point it out, I do. Let me know when you are driving so, I can stay off the road.”

“I have the solution. I have to limit the time I spend behind the wheel. Do you agree that will help mitigate/solve the problem?”

“I do. That is also a fact.”

“It’s a simple solution based on all the facts, if I drive as fast as I possibly can all the time, I would greatly reduce my time behind the wheel. You have to agree to that. It is based entirely on the facts.”

He thought for moment, called the waitress over, and paid the bill. Then he turned to me and said,” Maybe”.

Perhaps we should always consider before we conclude with “Maybe“.

We settled in at the Mauna Loa Village, in Kona. A genuinely nice unit, its just ten steps from the pool. I have a pool-workout that lasts one hour. I do it every other day, so being close is a plus for me and Karin who also works out in the pool.

We had a surprise when a friend that I hadn’t seen for 52 years read in my blog that we were in Hawaii. He was here too. It has been a real treat to hear how his life evolved during all these ears. He is also a “water person” and we found we had a dozen mutual friends. He is 70 now and still swims three miles in the ocean most every day.

Karin and I have taken a few walks and enjoy the smell of the sea mixed with fragrance of all the flowers. What a powerful sense of smell is! It brings to the front of the memory list many moments in my life. Some of quiet introspection, some of maximum excitement being pulled through the water by a 300-pound fish on the end of my spear, some of just sitting around a campfire on the beach with my family all around me.

We are both writing every day. Karin is editing the first draft of her new book, and I am working on the start of a new one. I published two books in 2020, so I am resting. No pressure, this is a great place for that.

We found a place where we can rent a kayak for the day. That is in our plans now. We will be moving to a new resort on the ocean front in two days and be there two more weeks.

Getting here was not fun but being here is good. These birds will miss us when we leave – – we have breakfast together every morning. In October, we will be coming back to the island of Maui for two weeks. Karin and I realize that we are truly blessed.

We were very tired when we landed at 8:30 Hawaiian time (11:30 PT). We were tested again for C-19, then picked up our luggage. Moving everything out to the curb, Karin sat on the stone wall while I was going to pick up the car. I had to run to catch the airport shuttle that took people to the car rental yards.

Once on the shuttle and underway, I relaxed for about two minutes, before I remembered my wallet was in my briefcase back with Karin. When I rented the car on Priceline they told me all I had to do was stop and pick up the key at Enterprise. Everything was paid for. I got to the counter after standing in line for 30 minutes.

All was going well, I finally got to the point where I would get the key. I was very close. The key was on the counter right in front of me. Then he asked for my credit card.

I explained to him that it was in my luggage back at the airport. He said he needed the card to take a damage deposit on the car. “No credit card, no car.” I told him I would go with the car and get my luggage, along with Karin who was sitting on the stone wall for an hour now. I would drive right back with my card. He checked with someone behind the door in the wall then came back. “No credit card, no car.”

I was having to get back on the bus to get my card at the airport. If I hadn’t already been into this car rental for $1,400 (we were there for a month), I would have just taken a taxi.  I got back on the bus.

The driver was the same one that brought me to the rental car lot. He asked me, “What happened?” I told him my sad story. I should mention that I was using my walker this whole time. He told me he would drop me off to get Karin and my luggage then come right back after he dropped off the two other people that were on the shuttle.

I bounded across the street, grabbed Karin and said, “Hurry up!”. She didn’t know what was going on. No car, and we are rushing to catch a bus?  We made it back to the shuttle stop just as he pulled up. He jumped out and took care of all of our “stuff” and we were on our way back to the car lot.

When we arrived, the shuttle driver told me to go in and get the key and he would take our belongings over to where I could drive the car right up to them. I got the key then went out to find someone on the lot to find the car. The driver took the key and trotted off into the lot and drove our car right to our luggage and loaded it in. I think perhaps the bus driver was the reincarnation of one of my dogs – – I loved him.

Now very tired, Karin got into the car.  We set the GPS for the timeshare’s address which we had no idea how to get to, then pushed the GO button. The battery in the phone was dead.  JUST KIDDING. All went well. We found the timeshare with a note on the door which said, “Use the phone in the box on the door to call after hours.” It was definitely-after hours. We could hardly get out of the car. We made the call and were given a place to drive to and registered. A maintenance man, I think he was related to the bus driver, grabbed our stuff and put it in his cart and took us to our unit. I decided they were not related, they were just both Hawaiian.

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This is not about my time in Hawaii, but about the actual process of getting from my house in Aliso Viejo, CA to Kona on the Big Island. I have made this trip many times before and the process was always simple. Buy a plane ticket and fly to Kona. Rent a car and drive to my timeshare. This was not to be, this time. Due to a combination of the CV-19 virus and my incompetence, (I blame on my age not my IQ), it became a frustrating and expensive experience.

The process started when I found a flight with the perfect times for us, a direct flight out of LAX to Kona, taking off at 7am and arriving around noon. It was on Alaska Airlines. I gave Karin the fight information and she booked the same flight, but it was with American. Same plane and times. A few days later I got an email notification from Alaska saying,” Your travel plans have changed.” I was now on a flight that arrived in Kona at midnight, and Karin, was left on the original flight. I called and told Alaska that “my travel plans did not change” and I wanted my money back so I could buy a new ticket on American and be back with Karin. I did that.

All seemed to be back on tract. A few days passed and we got a message that our American flight had been changed. We were now taking off at noon and arriving in Kona at 8:30 pm. I called and changed my car rental to a 9pm pick up.

We got the information that we had to be tested for CV-19 within 72 hours of our take off time. OK we can do that. Then we were told that it had to certain type of test by a certified facility that the airline and Hawaii accepted. They gave us a list. I started calling places on the list and found out that we had to pay for the test because it was considered to be a voluntary test, not a medical test. I could understand that. After calling a number of places I finally found one in Carlsbad, 60 miles away, that only charged $170/test. Everyone had a different price. Some were up as high as $395 each. We drove to Carlsbad on Tuesday morning to get our test within the 72 hrs.

We were told that we had to create an account with the state of Hawaii and upload our results when we got them by email. Karin did that on her computer and I did it on my computer. We were under pressure by now because we needed to upload a picture of ourselves, fill out a health form, and upload our CV-19 results from an email we were to get on Wednesday. Once it was all complete, a QR code would be sent to us which we must have on our phone or we couldn’t board the plane.

With the help of my daughter and her husband we were able to figure out how to do the health form and the photo. I received my test results, but Karin’s didn’t show up in her email. It was now late Wednesday and I’m going into panic mode. I called the Carlsbad testing site.

They had sent her results to my email address, instead of hers. They guided me through how to find it on my computer. I found it, then sent Karin an attachment for her to upload into her Hawaii travel account. It didn’t work. I printed a copy of it and took it to the airport with my fingers crossed. It worked – – they let us on the fight.  We landed in Kona at 8:30 p.m., Hawaii time. I’ll pick it up at that point in my next blog. The adventure isn’t over yet.

Wondering what I should follow my last blog about exercise with, it only made sense to also encourage you to get an annual checkup. Thinking on that subject I remembered what was perhaps the most hilarious thing that I can remember in my entire life and it happened in a doctor’s office. (I wouldn’t want you to think that I have become a serious old curmudgeon just because I’ve turned 86)

I had a back operation and was in the hospital. The doctor said I could go home if I could empty my bladder. I really wanted to go home so I used the bathroom in my room and emptied my bladder really well before he came to see me. When he came in, I told him what I had done. He said I had to show them, not tell them.

I was dry. I really wanted to go home. He said if I had a catheter put in, I could go home and come back the next day, then have the catheter taken out and tested. I said, “Great.”

A nurse, that had never inserted a catheter before, was told to do it. She forgot she had to lubricate the tube and was only successful in making my little man raw and bleeding. A doctor was called and he did it with no problem. No that wasn’t the funny thing – believe me, but I got to go home.

I was back at the hospital early the next day, worried about the test. I didn’t have any urine in my bladder; it just ran through the catheter into a bag. The doctor told me not to worry, it was OK and handed me a gown.

I took off my clothes and put on a gown that covered nothing like most hospital gowns, laid down on my back and he proceeded to pull the long tube out of my little man. He had a nurse there to aid him in the procedure. I think she was a trainee. She looked about 18 years old and very cute. He told her to give me the test and left.

She explained that she was going to put in another catheter (I almost got up to run out of the hospital) and pore a flask of water into a funnel through the tube and into my bladder to fill it. Then she would take the catheter out and I would have to empty my bladder into a container and they could measure it and tell if I was able to get it all out. I will not describe the procedure she had to go through to accomplish this, let’s just say that she and my little man became very close friends before it was through. My bladder was full. She pulled out the tube. All that was left was for me to urinate into the container.

She handed me the container and looked me right in the eyes and said (with a straight face), “Would you like for me to leave the room, so you can have some privacy?”  I couldn’t contain myself. I started laughing and then she fell apart and we were laughing so hard I almost missed the container.

I’m not sure what the message of this blog is, but I think it is to see your doctor at least once a year for a good checkup.