The Crazy Coots aren't Homeless!

We have a lot to talk about since December 2nd.

December

We spent almost the whole month of December in the Bay Area while Dave recovered from a very successful cataract operation. Left eye only. We spent a lot of time catching up with friends & family between many doctor's visits.

Kathy had a nice lunch with her friend from Sequoia, Lynne Murphy on the 2nd. We then had a great visit and dinner with Dick & Linda Moore on the 4th (thanks for coming over to Half Moon Bay to join us!). We went hunting for a Xmas tree with Daughter Julie's family and had an exciting trip throughout 50 miles of mountains and back, no tree. They went a few days later about 5 miles from home and got their tree.

Granddaughter India introduced Big Chief Happy Bear (Yours Truly) to her boy friend Quinn at our mobile teepee and we passed around the peace pipe to cement our relationship. He has a pet sheep on a leash and I told him not to talk to sheep, they lie.

We had dinner with John Anderson of Vadic days in San Jose's Santana Row and reminisced about the good old days. We had dinner with Dean and Janice Judd also from the Vadic days and lunch with Tom McShane, my ex-boss from Vadic. He presented me with an old Vadic Ma Bell calendar that dates back to the 70's.

We visited our neighbors from Sydney Drive, Hal & Geni . Kathy met with Joanie Cavanaugh and Rachelle McCabe (co-workers from Sequoia Hospital) and we played golf twice with Glenna and Frank Vaskelis (Kathy's ex-boss from Sequoia.) Kathy also worked at Sequoia on the 18th at the employee's holiday meal - she loved visiting with all her friends from there. Glenna is a great leader at Sequoia, and a dear friend - we always enjoy getting together with her and Frank.

We spent a day in Golden Gate Park with Julie and daughters India and Meilani and India's friend Fizzie. We went to the ballet with them in San Francisco and celebrated Christmas.

Kathy decorated the Crazy Coots Coach for Christmas and it was sparse but beautiful.

All in all, a very busy and fun time. We left the Bay Area for Laughlin, NV on the 28th with stops in San Juan Bautista and Bakersfield and arrived at the Davis Camp State Park in Bullhead City, AZ on the 30th with only 1 or 2 little mishaps. We were going to meet a number of people from Sage Hills for New Years and ended up with Ken, Lisa and Sue. The rest were somewhere around there but we weren't able to connect with them.

We did spend time with my old Air Force buddy Bill Bremerman and wife Joan in Bullhead City. They live part time there and part time in Meadview, AZ. They live in a really nice 55+ resort community and we played golf at their resort.

January 2010

After New Year's we moved down to the AVI Indian Casino near Bullhead City, where we played golf at the Mohave Golf Resort. There were some beautiful sunsets and the golf course had some great views.

We spent a fair amount of time at the Wheel of Fortune penny machines. Here is a picture of some of our winnings.

On January 11th we left for Tucson with stops in Congress, AZ where we toured Wickenburg. Kathy managed to squander some of our money at Buckshot Babes.

We also found what may be our next great investment.

We arrived in Tucson on the 14th at the Voyager RV Resort where there are over 1000 spaces.

We then spent 2 weeks with my Sister Kathy Isaac and her husband Al beginning on the 16th at the Worldmark Time Share resort in Rancho Vistoso.

It is a few miles north of Tucson with beautiful views of the Catalina Mountains.

It took us 2 days to unload the motor home and store it, and then get Tiger to the vet where we "stored" him. The time share doesn't allow pets. The picture below is what the motor home looked like as we were "packing stuff out."

The weather was cool but we had a great time and found a beautiful golf course, The Pines in Marana. Eight of the last holes are in an old rock quarry and one tee is 500 ft above the fairway. Absolutely beautiful.

We also did the tram ride up Sabino Canyon near Tucson and the tram had to cross one lane bridges which were under water from the creek following the rains. It's a very pretty area. We also visited the Pima Air & Space Museum and they have the 2nd largest collection of aircraft in the country. Here is a picture of a B36.

We did manage to watch some teary eyed movies as you can see.

We left Rancho Vistoso on the 30th, picked up Tiger and returned to the Voyager at that time.

February......now things begin to get interesting!

Besides playing golf a few more times and touring the area, Kathy & I discovered the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. What a place to learn about the desert and all of the wild life. One of the exhibitions is with 3 Harris Hawks in free flight and they swoop right down over your head. Beautiful to watch.

On the left above is a Pygmy Owl who nests in a Saguaro cactus. Those are Javelina's lounging in the desert.

Kathy & I decided we might like to have a winter home in the Tucson area. We started out looking at the Voyager and really liked a manufactured home but it turned out to be too much for our budget so we continued our search. We found manfactured homes for sale from as low as $20,000 but you could say they needed some work.

We found our little nest in the West about 20 miles north of Tucson between Oro Valley and the town of Catalina. It's called Quail Ridge Estates and on 2/24 they accepted our offer and we put earnest money down. It's a 55+ community of 130 manufactured homes.

March 2010

The atmosphere at Quail Ridge is wonderful ! We attended a western dance at the community on the 6th of March and there were about 120 people there, all of them having a good time. Live Western music and catering by Bubb's Grubb! Yum!

On March 17th (with a little Luck 'O The Irish), we made the final payment on the house and once again became homeowners! The movers with all of our STUFF arrived from California on the 22nd. We had very little idea of what we had in storage. The movers were here at 7:00AM with 2 trucks. They were ready to leave at 11:00AM. Here is what it looked like when they left.

Here's what it looks like now.



On the 24th I fell down the back steps carrying a 60 pound desk top and fractured the fibula in my left leg. Being the macho guy I am it took me a week to decide to go to the doctor. In the meantime we went to a Diamondback Spring training game, tried to unpack boxes, etc. I found out Kathy doesn't take kindly to my directions on where to move what box.

Our home is a triple-wide and is larger than our house in Sunnyvale.

It has beautiful views of the mountains. We have this Saguaro "lamp" right outside our bay window and deck! It's so nice to see at night!

There are also all kinds of critters around. Bobcats, Coyotes, Quail, Javelinas, Road Runners, Ground Squirrels and we won't mention the creepy ones (snakes, tarantulas, etc.) as Kathy gets a little nervous. This ground squirrel has produced 3 little babies and we are trying to get them to go some where else.

When we moved in we found that a 50 inch TV complete with a Pioneer Home Theatre receiver had been part of the sale. I spent 2 days figuring out how to wire in all of the VHS, CD, DVD, Cassette devices along with the DirecTV recording receiver. We are enjoying major league baseball on our "new" TV almost daily!

Another thing we did after moving in was to set up a bird sanctuary and it is amazing the number of different birds we attracted. They include Quail, Gold Finches, Road Runners, White Winged Doves, Cardinals, Pyrrhuloxias, Abert's Towee, Hooded Oriole, Thrashers, House Finches, Gila Woodpeckers and more. A couple of weeks ago a Mother Quail brought 12 little babies, the size of golf balls, to feed right under our noses. So far we have identified 20 different kinds of birds. Here are a few pictures.

The bird feeders are about 3 feet from our dinette window and Tiger lays there and his jaw chatters as the birds fly against the window.

We plan on keeping the motor home and are storing it about 100 yards from our house. Once we get settled we will be off on trips especially to the West Coast. We are currently planning on leaving around the middle of August.

April 2010

We had a wet winter and spring and as a result the desert is in full bloom. All different kinds of cactus including the huge Saguaro's, Barrel, Prickly Pear, Chollo, Stag Horn Chollo, Teddy Bear Chollo and Agave. Here are a few pictures of the beautiful flowers when the cactus is in bloom.

May & June

We have spent the last 3 months settling in and the house is in great shape. We have had a number of visitors starting with Dee Dee Brenner from Moses Lake (we met her while working at Sage Hills last year), one of Kathy's best friends, Jacqui Gandy from Tacoma, my Sister Kathy and her husband Al, Al's Brother-in-law Jerry Isaac and Al's Sister Carol from San Antonio.

While Jacqui was here she decided to buy us a house warming gift in the form of a Javelina. We have named him J(H)appy Javelina and he adorns our front yard with the cactus and bird feeders.

We are seriously thinking about changing our names from the Crazy Coots to the Jappy Javelina's.

We do hope to have more of our friends visit us here in Tucson and look forward to a fun 2010.

We'll be leaving here in the motor home near the end of August and heading for California and then up to the Pacific Northwest.

Bye for now.

2 1/2 YEARS ON THE ROAD - WHEE!

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR

As of 12/1/09 we have been living in our motor home for two and a half years and we are still talking to each other....well most of the time.

A lot has happened since our last update on August 1st. We continued to work at Sage Hills and play golf, lots of it. Kathy worked in the pro shop and I did things like wash windows, marshall on the golf course, do the food and booze runs to beautiful downtown Othello, pool boy duty, etc. Kathy played in a tournament on 8/9 and won $30. On 8/16 she won another $10. Watch out Michelle Wie! Of course I won some prizes too. Here are examples and I didn't include pictures of the black golf balls I received for screwing up the rules during one of the first tournaments I entered:

Here are a couple of pictures of us doing pool duty.

On August 11th, Jason, Kelly, Logan and Peyton came and tent camped next to our motor home for 2 nights. The 1st night they were here it rained for the first time since we'd arrived here. On the same day, Pat, Traci, Andrew, Nathan and Sydney showed up on their way home from Lake Chelan. We had a big cook out with hamburgers, brots cooked in beer, corn on the cob and watermelon. It was fun having them all here to see what we were up to. The next 2 days we played golf with Jason and I beat him in a skins game. Not bad for an "old coot."

We also experienced many great sunsets while sitting in our motor home having cocktails.

On the weekend of 8/29 we went to Seattle to a Mariners game as guests in a sky box with Diane and Gary Cooper. Diane and Kathy have been friends since seventh grade. David's sister, Kathy and her husband, Al went with us. We stayed in Kathy and Al's luxury condo overlooking Puget Sound in Des Moines. Both the game and the stay were treats.

The Grant County Fair left us with very little to say about it. Here is a picture of the Suffragets, we should never have given them the vote.

Most of September was spent working and playing golf. Sage Hills has a TGIF tournament almost every Friday and tournaments on many Sundays. I was given a new driver from our fellow workamper "Bogey Bob" and then another friend, Ken, put a senior flex shaft on the driver. It really has helped me get more distance on my drives. Ken also gave me a new 5 wood and that was a big help. All in all, I have lowered my handicap from a 40 to a 30 and when we go back next year, I hope to lower it some more. Ken gave us lessons on chipping and we had another lesson in Moses Lake from another pro. Kathy's game is significantly better. She isn't calling her clubs really bad names any more. The "horse race" game was a hoot with everyone on the greens at the same time and of course Ken had a couple of bad lies.

We took the motor home to Spokane near the end of September for a 3 day trip and stayed out in the suburb of Deer Park in a really nice and quiet RV Park. We played golf at the beautiful Indian Canyon course and spent 2 days touring Spokane. It was a nice break and we had a couple of good meals at Anthony's overlooking the Spokane Falls. We also found a good Mexican restaurant the first night we were there. Spokane is a nice city.

We started October off by flying to Vicksburg, MS to our semi-annual Air Force reunion. We had a really good time lying about all of the things we did when we were young. Othel & Caroline Mendrop did a wonderful job of hosting the reunion. We dined on catfish, hushpuppies, okra, and watermelon - true Southern fare. We toured grand old mansions and a Civil War battlefield . We also toured one of the 10 largest computer centers in the world. It is operated by the Corps of Engineers and they are doing amazing things, a lot of which are for the various branches of the armed forces and highly classified. There were 14 of us (plus spouses) in attendance and there were a number who were sorely missed. All of us are either approaching 80 or are already there. It's hard to believe that it's almost 60 years since we met in Waco & Biloxi.

Kathy & I also spent an overnight in Leavenworth, WA in our Worldmark timeshare. It is a wonderful little town that looks and feels like an old Bavarian town in the mountains. I had never been there before and we plan on going back next year during Octoberfest. We had a true German dinner at King Ludwig's and met the Mineo's from the Seattle area. They were there in the area looking for specialty mushrooms. Sal happens to be the cousin of the actor Sal Mineo. We hope to get together with them when we return to Washington in the Spring.

The rest of October was spent partying with our friends and preparing to leave Sage Hills for the winter. We have been invited back next year. We had a lot of fun there, met a number of good people and are looking forward to returning. A few of them are planning on going to Laughlin, NV for New Year's and we hope to be able to join them. We felt a little sad leaving but it was on to Puyallup where we made it in time for Hallowe'en with all of the grandchildren there. It was fun.

One of the things we enjoyed was all of the fresh produce grown locally. Here is a picture of some apples given to us by Martin (the golf course head groundskeeper) who does a wonderful job taking care of the golf course. The big one on the left was part of the bag of 10 we received -- huge!! We kept only four as that's all we could get in our refrigerator - and shared the rest with others. They were delicious.

By the time we arrived in the Seattle area a number of things had gone wrong with the motor home. Earlier in the summer our inverter/converter had failed and it took a few weeks to get it fixed. We were able to borrow a battery charger from Sage Hills as we were running off the house batteries. Then while we were in Mississippi our living room furnace failed so we started using the heat pump. That failed as well, and on our way to Puyallup the windshield wipers only worked in the high speed mode. Anyway, we were able to get the motor home to a repair facility nearby but they had to order parts that would come in a week. They were able to fix the furnace right away so we went on down to Portland to visit Larry, Megan, Jackson, Ann & Chris and drove back to Seattle and had the rest of the things fixed. On our way to California, the ice maker quit working (a major disaster), the water pump stopped working, and our Garmin GPS quit. When one is dependent on the systems working in our "rolling home" it becomes quite a challenge to get things fixed while we're still living in it! Anyway, we had a great visit with Kathy's clan in Puyallup and mine in Portland and then we headed south to Ashland.

We spent 3 nights there with Roy & Mary and their new dog, Buddy. We had the pleasure of meeting Mary's two daughters who were up visiting from California as well. It is a very fun place to visit and Roy and I are very quiet when we get together. I don't know why the wives nag at us so much.



We hurried out of there before the snow came and next stopped in Orland, CA for a night. Lo and behold our living room slide-out wasn't working. I crawled under the motor home and found a broken bolt. ACE Hardware had one so I repaired that and the next day we ended up in Half Moon Bay on 11/14.

We are here for 6 weeks to see daughter, Julie, Allan, India and Meilani and to do doctor visits.

On Monday I met with my eye surgeon and the day before Thanksgiving I had cataract surgery on my right eye. The next morning at 9:00AM I had my 1st post op meeting and the surgery went wonderfully well. My last appointment is on 12/28. On the 29th we will head for Laughlin, NV to celebrate New Year's.

In the meantime we are having fun with Julie and family, and trying to see as many friends in the area as possible. I spent 1 day as the photographer where Allan was Santa, giving presents to low income residents at the Half Moon Bay Community Center. We took close to 200 pictures. Here is Allan in his Santa outfit with India (age 15) on the left and Meilani (age 8) on the right!

We also spent a day with Julie, India, Meilani and India's best friend Fizzy at the California Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park. It is a very green facility with wonderful displays.

We spent two delightful Sunday afternoons playing golf with Kathy's former boss, Glenna and her husband, Frank. The Old Course is adjacent to the Ritz Carlton here in Half Moon Bay, and is within walking distance of our RV park. We have a lovely view of the golf course and the Pacific Ocean. Glenna and Frank are pictured below. They have two huge Maine Coon cats named Marco and Polo!

One of the other not-so-fun things about owning a motor home is when the day/night window shades strings break. We have had them "fail" three times since we've owned our coach so have been spending a number of hours restringing them ourselves. Each shade takes us about two hours, and we've done five so far! Three more to go ...

Kathy helped serve the employee holiday meal at Sequoia Hospital on December 18th. This is the place she worked last ... and she loved seeing many of her work buddies there. She's also had a chance to catch up with several of her girlfriends in the area.

We have our dashboard "decorated" for Christmas - complete with a tree, wreath, Santa, a Nativity scene, and a "Grinch" figurine. Festive! Our stockings are hung (thanks to Linda and Maynard) on a nearby picture frame. Hope Santa can find us!

We spent one Sunday with Julie and family helping them find a Christmas tree. It turned into a bit of a long journey (most of the day) as the tree farm they'd gone to last year (about 30 miles south of Half Moon Bay) was out of decent trees, and they couldn't find the other tree farm they'd been to a number of years ago. We rode in the back of their Honda Odessey for what seeemed like the steepest, twistiest, narrowest roads in the whole Bay area ... for many hours ... and ended up back in HMB with no tree. They were able to find a beautiful tree the next day -- at a local farm about two miles from their home!! Life is full of exciting adventures!!

One of my previous bosses from AT & T, Dick Moore and his wife, Linda, trekked over to see us and we spent a fun afternoon with them which ended with good Mexican food. Dick recently retired, and is enjoying a life of leisure.

Another fun evening was spent with John Anderson - a friend I worked with at Vadic many years ago.

Another Vadic friend, Deane Judd and his wife drove over to see us from nearby Hollister. They were going to fly but the weather was questionable and we spent the day with lunch at the harbor and catching up with them.

We had lunch with my old, he's a lot younger than me, boss from Vadic where we sold modems of all things. Had a great time reminising about the good times we had and all of the friends we made during those years. Tom & Biruta still look great and we met their daughter Allison who works with them. The calendar pictured below is a Vadic one that was done in 1982 by David's best friend, Larry Courtney. It featured spoofs on "Ma Bell" ads...

We had another nice lunch with Hal and Geni Sundquist - they were our next door neighbors in Sunnyvale. It was fun visiting our old neighborhood again.

We had a delightful dinner with Ken & Elaine Krechmer at their home in Palo Alto and Ken made delicious lasagna. Ken and I worked together at Vadic back in the mid 70's.

We hope this brings you up-to-date on our travel and activities. We've been pretty busy! We both wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and peace to all. We are grateful for your love and friendship and hope the next year brings good health and happiness to you and yours.

With love,

Dave & Kathy