Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Moving On

This past week has brought much into the world of this homeless but not shelter less pair.

Tuesday night I resigned from the Oakland Schools Board as we will be spending much of our time before we leave for where ever in the Peace Corps up here in Mackinaw City. I had originally tried to resign in May before we spend the summer in France etc. but my fellow board members asked me to wait until this fall. This is only the second time in the last twenty years that I have not held elected office.

But we returned to Mackinaw City to find our hammers and crowbars and we went back to ripping out ceilings, walls and in the course have filled at least one dumpster.

On Saturday we ventured up to Sault Saint Marie, Ontario to sign Susie up for Ti Chi and get registered for classes that begin this week. We had little trouble crossing the boarder and are now the proud owners of bridge passes or tokens for both the Mackinac Bridge and the international bridge at the Soo. The club had a welcome back class Saturday morning and invited us for lunch. They are starting a class in Sault Saint Marie, Michigan next week. We will try to attend that one on Tuesdays and go to Ontario for the Thursday night classes.

Sunday, Dick, Sandy, Susan and I took off at about 10 for Saint Helena Island and the lightstation to close up for the season. We were hoping to go on Monday but the weather was too good to pass up on Sunday. When you have good weather at this time of year and that includes the size of the waves, you have to be ready to use it. When we left in July we had closed most stuff up but the last boarding of doors, etc. had not been done. We have to make the lightstation pretty tight to discourage visitors in the winter.

We returned to an invitation to become docents on the Icebreaker Mackinaw, that has been decommissioned and now resides in Mackinaw City, its namesake. They had lots of volunteers during the summer but now that we are past Labor Day there are still tourists but most summer folks have left town for their winter digs. So Susan and I are boning up on all the facts and figures about the sixty-three years of the ship's service keeping the Great Lakes open to shipping in the winter.

As to the Peace Corps.... They are still coming up with things they want Susan to add to her medical, frankly it seems rather excessive. But I have been cleared medically. But I think that they are still working on getting out their last volunteers of September. It should be maybe a couple of months before we hear. So stay tuned.

By the way the picture at the top of this blog is looking down from the tower at St. Helena lightstation at the area we usually eat our meals in good weather.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

We have moved north!


We have moved north to Mackinaw City where we are trading housing for work with the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. We have become destruction experts as we are helping pull out the insides of a former restaurant that GLLKA will use as offices and gift shop.

Both Susan and I have heard from the Peace Corps on our medical stuff. I have been cleared medically but the letter is in Birmingham and I have not read it yet. Susan heard today that again they needed more material.

The recent returned Peace Corps mag had a piece or rather several pieces on their effort to attract more over 50 PC volunteers. One of the comments that they got from those older volunteers surveyed was the incredible need for medical material. It is one thing if you are twenty-something there are not too many things that you have experienced medically in your short life but us oldsters have more of a record that in most cases does not exist on paper any more. As I mentioned in my last blog entry I had to have two more tests. I am not sure if this had anything to do with my doc wanting to make perfectly sure that nothing would go wrong or what. Both Susan and I are starting to think there must be something wrong with us medically. But before this PC application we both thought we were in pretty good shape.

Tomorrow we head off to Orangeville, Ontario for awareness day with the Taoist Ti Chi folks. Then it is back to Birmingham as I have a board meeting. It is good we have some place else to go as we have put in some long days pulling off paneling and ripping off celling tile. There is not much left on our bodies that does not hurt!

I have a picture of the Mackinac Bridge at the top of this piece because for the first time on Labor Day, Susan, Jus and I walked the bridge. Something that is real Michigan but none of us had ever accomplished. It was a beautiful day. We started early with the Governor and some 5,000 other people at 7 AM. There were still folks walking at 4 PM. The estimates are well over 50,000 in total walking this year. Labor Day is the only day that anyone is allowed to walk over Big Mac.