The rest of 2019

 Part three summer and fall 2019

Throughout the summer and early fall we continued to work around the house and entertaining ourselves locally. Looking back in my references I see we bicycled a lot, sometimes to the beach at the state park and in the evenings on the seven-mile golf cart path around our community course. We went to the Garden City pier several times that summer to listen to the bands that perform there in the evening. There are two bands every night, one at each end of the pier. We attended the performance called “High Steppin Country” at Lakewood Campground. This is a very professional looking show performed by amateur actors, many of them seasonal workers at the campground.

In the midst of all this activity, we also managed to complete another house project. We replaced all the heavy wooden storm shutters with ones made from hollow wall polycarbonate panels. My friend Gary got a deal on 4x12 foot sheets of the hollow wall polycarbonate, and I fabricated the new storm panels. I also made a storage system for the in the garage ceiling.

Polycarbonate storm shutters

August 2019

My granddaughter Delaney and her boyfriend Nick came to visit us. They have been together since High School and are two great kids. They are the kind of young person that gives you some hope that the youth of today will not totally screw up our country. Delaney was still in college in 2019 and Nick was working for an engineering firm in Salsbury Maryland. They have since become engaged, bought a house, Delaney graduated with honors and works for a different engineering firm. They are doing all the right things, they are still great, now young adults.

October 2019 

On the 15th of the month, we flew west to Albuquerque New Mexico where we were picked up by the Kolman family. Their home is a couple hours north in Los Alamos. The town sits on the edge of an ancient volcano.  Under it is 6600 feet of compacted volcanic ash, deep below that is molten lava just waiting for its time to come alive again. Isolated because of the difficult and harsh landscape it was the perfect place to hide a research laboratory. The Los Alamos research laboratory has been here for over 80 years. in the 1940’s they developed the world's first nuclear weapons, they ended World War Two. Today the lab, as the locals call it is still a leader in nuclear research and in many other disciplines. it dominates and defines the town, the atomic culture is like the elephant in the room, no one talks about it but it’s there, you can feel it in the air, is It is truly a different world. 

After enjoying our stay with the Kolmans we returned to Albuquerque and flew to Las Vegas Nevada to attend SOAR. The Special Operations Association Reunion is an annual gathering of military alumni. From Las Vegas we flew home to Myrtle Beach on a Red eye flight with one stop-over in Detroit before flying on to Myrtle Beach.

The only other item of note on a personal level is in November we purchased new (to us) Rattan furniture for our Carolina Room. We found the furniture for sale on Facebook Marketplace and drove up to Greensboro NC to purchase it from a Vietnamese couple. As I remember it, they came to the US as refugee children in the 1970’s, grew up to live prosperous and productive lives as business owners and were recently retired.  The complete set was in excellent condition, and we were very pleased to purchase it at a fraction of what it would have cost from a furniture store.

November of 2019 is when the world became aware of the respiratory illness that was spreading from Wohan China. There were rumors that it was a biologic weapon that had leaked out of a secret Laboratory there. 

By December 2019 the reality that this was going to be a worldwide problem started to sink in. Before it was over it was reported to have killed 7 million people although some statisticians believe the actual number is between 18 and 33 million. God help us all.