Introduction

 

Travels with Gawain and Loki

Introduction 1:

I turned 67 in August and although I’m hoping to live many more years, I thought now would be a good time to start some adventuring.

I have chosen two dogs as my adventuring companions. Gawain, a blue-eyed Husky Lab with an awful disposition around the wrong people (my wife can show you the scars and her now crocked thumb). He growls and snarls and bares his teeth whenever I pull him out of my chair, but other than that I am not one of the wrong people (alpha male beating his chest). The other adventurer is a Beagle named Loki, who true to his name and breed is mischievous and obnoxious.

Gawain is named after the 14th-Century Middle English Arthurian legend of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. And keeping with this scholarly and erudite naming convention, Loki is named after the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s character. I was named for my grandfather on my mother’s side.

Get the three of us together and it can be loud, as in a call from hotel management telling us to quiet down. This adventure will hopefully not involve hotels (don’t hold me to that). And I’m hoping they won’t be too loud in camping and RV situations.

In preparation for our adventuring, I am working on some training for the three of us. I am working on my pushups (currently I can’t do any). For them, I’m trying to teach them not to take me for a drag when I want to walk. Sit, down, stay, fetch, come and shut the f-k up are some of the commands we are working on.

The first leg of our adventure will be going from my daughter’s house in Reading, Pennsylvania in mid-December 2022, to a house I own in Umatilla, Florida, with stops in Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach and Savanna. I usually make this drive straight through, with some short sleepovers in rest stops. But, this time I thought I would take it slow and see more of the stuff between New Hampshire and Cuba.

My house, which I bought having only seen pictures, (really nice pictures I should add. I’m no fool), is in an area known as the Umatilla Camps. The houses, or those still standing, are connected by a series of dirt roads in a forgotten area where stray dogs with ear mites and burglaries by dead people are, shall we say, not uncommon.

When I first visited Umatilla, I found that the house should have been the subject of a “Green Acres” TV show episode. I spent a few weeks there and then went back to New Hampshire. The second trip down I found that a dead burglar had burgled the place. I know he was dead because he left his drivers license and the police told me he had been dead for a few years. In reaction, I secured myself a storage unit at a storage place, where I put most of my tools. I spent another few weeks in Florida before heading again back to New Hampshire.

What will be different this time? I plan on having power, internet and an alarm system installed. I might even splurge and put some locks on the windows.