The lost years 2019-2020

 The lost years 2019 – 2020

I am writing this blog in 2024 and will post it online, but I really don’t expect anyone will read it after all this time. Millie and I have chronicled our travels every year since 2012 and printed it in book form at the end of each year. This is my effort to recall, write and hopefully print the two missing years.

How it all began and what happened in 2019-2020

In 2010 I started the Dispatch as a small group email back when I was traveling alone, well not quite alone, I had my dog Maggie. I put “Dispatch from the Road” in the subject line so it would stand out amongst all the junk email and I sent it to a few select friends. In my inexperience I once accidently sent it to all my contacts, and to my surprise a large number of them asked to be left on the distribution list. That’s how it all started.

In 2012 when Millie and I were making plans for what would become the annual “Great Summer Road Trip” I decided it would be easier to put the Dispatch online. Then I would only have to send out a short announcement whenever I added content. I was originally thinking I would build my own website, but soon found it was easier and free to use a blog.

We chronicled that first trip around the country and with the addition of Millie’s Kin and friends the readership grew larger than I ever thought it would. At the end of the year, we printed the blog postings into a book. It was a printing of one copy, we just did it for our own memories. 

We’ve continued to print the book every year since then, with the exception of 2019 and 2020. For a year or two prior I had been become increasingly dissatisfied with my writing. I seemed to be saying the same things over and over. This time period was also our transition back to sticks and bricks home ownership. The carefree condo life was over, and I was once again following a lawn mower around the yard! My vagabond wandering days were over and I was becoming………..ordinary?

So it was that in the waning days of 2018 I was thinking I couldn’t write, and all my travel stories seemed to be reruns of things I’d already done. That pretty much set the stage for quitting and then another long lingering tragedy fell upon me. 

When we returned from our western trip in the fall of 2018, we knew there was something seriously wrong with Maggie. We were assuming she had contracted desert fever, a respiratory ailment common to the southwest desert regions.  

We took her to our veterinarian as soon as we got home, with the hopes that a course of antibiotics would knock out whatever ailed her. Thus began a long struggle with a mystery illness. Her health continued to decline despite the best efforts of all the doctors and staff at our vet’s office. They also presented her case at a veterinary conference attended by many doctors. We even took her to a specialty hospital in Charleston. It was all to no avail.

We didn’t resume our normal at home gym schedule, we didn’t go much of anywhere together, one of us was always home with Maggie. We just didn’t want her to die alone. 

Maggie crossed the rainbow bridge on March 22 2019.

The entire year of 2020 was the year of Covid 19 and we didn't travel much. When it hit the US in late 2019 and early 2020 it was a virulent virus. Over time it became less so but, in the beginning, it meant severe sickness and almost certain death for those with weakened immune systems. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was also a crap shoot aspect to it. For an unknown reason in random victims it was extremely focused on the respiratory system. The majority of these unlucky people faced an agonizing death. 

Ok, that’s enough about the trials and tribulations during those dark times, let's see what I can remember about what Millie and I did in 2019 and 2020.