July 25, 2013
An older woman, who may in fact be younger than me, was there smoking. Wisconsin motels and hotels are now entirely non-smoking so she had to sit there to smoke, she said. As she talked she exposed the worst teeth I've ever seen, all rotting away, but she had an interesting story to tell. She was moving to the Superior/Duluth area from the Twin Cities to be near her children and grandchildren. Until they could find her an apartment, she was living at this motel. She had worked in factories all her life but now had three bad discs in her back and was in pain most of the time. She had worked to put her four children through college, she said, though she had little education herself. I hope that now they will take good care of this brave woman.
I posted the blog, had my morning oatmeal and packed up. Moving in and out of a motel is more time consuming than living out of my car. I had everything where I needed it in bins in the Subaru. I had to bring four of those bins into the motel, unpack them, re-pack them in the morning, and take them back out. I hit the road at 8:00 a.m.
Just east of Superior, I made a stop at the first visitors' center in Wisconsin. There are no longer attendants, austerity moves took care of that, but I was delighted to see this:
If these vending machines are the future, I will be able to buy Snickers bars wherever I go. Bliss!
About this time, I began to feel woozy and out of sorts. I was having stomach problems and was sneezing a lot.
My next stop was Lake Wanoka which was supposed to be the last campground of the trip. I drove in, found no one around. When I opened the car door I found out why as dozens of deer flies attacked. I drove into Ashland and asked about the weather forecast at a convenience store. More rain, they said, and black flies, deer flies, and mosquitoes in abundance.
I drove to a nearby cemetery and sat to ponder my options. I was tired, coughing and sneezing. I had a headache and a gurgling stomach. I made the decision. I called the activity director at the nursing home where I was supposed to perform the next day. No home wants a sick person to enter the premises. We cancelled.
I took a cold remedy I had with me, wandered around the cemetery a bit, wondering if this could be my final resting place. In a while, I began to feel a little better. I called my brother Carl. We had planned on meeting the next day. He said he had a half hour for lunch then had to go deal with city council business. Like me, he got on the council. Unlike me, he is in his second term.
Carl and I ate over gossip and politics. The state government balanced its budget by cutting shared revenues and at the same time forbid the municipalities from raising real estate taxes. To keep the city operating they've had to institute fees on previously free services. It's just another form of taxation so the citizens aren't going to be any better off.
Carl has come up with some clever ideas for ways to raise funds for Ashland. He thinks outside the box, so the city is lucky to have him.
With lunch over, I was on the road with many stops to rest. It was six hours later than I was home.
In the end, I figured out that I was suffering not from a cold or flu but from allergy attacks due to mold, a result of rain and humidity.
No comments:
Post a Comment