## 260125: The Long Road Home

I had my official "bring it north" load stuffed to the ceiling in the car, and could have taken off just about any time, but wanted to hang out for a couple more days just in case anything more was going to show up in the mail. And then one of the residents reminded me that the facility was going to do a big retrospective and tribute to the residents that they'd lost over the course of 2025, and I figured that since Mom was part of that set I should at least be present. It was kind of a nice little ceremony, actually, without too much religious stuff shoved into it. The theatre space was more packed than I'd ever seen it. A surprisingly long list of names was read off one by one, in alphabetic order, while the resident pianist played a tasteful set of very recognizable pieces. So with the program in my lap and the list of names, I knew when Mom's slide was coming up. There was a little more speeching and then they went through the names *again*, this time placing a white rose in a large vase on the stage for each one -- there must have been about 30 of them. While we accept that a place like this is likely to have a fairly rapid turnover, it was all actually rather touching. "Lives well-lived" and all.

There was a reception in the lobby afterward, so I did a little social chatter
with some of the many people I'd come to know over the years, received more
condolences, etc.  I didn't stick around too long; in the process of getting
ready to leave, I was already feeling like sort of an outsider without any
particular vision for the future of the place -- but seriously, I wish it
the absolute best.

I took one last fond look at the "grand staircase" that graces the main lobby so prominently -- again, this is part of that upper-crust "Titanic" social vibe I've always gotten from the place. Clearly a place of privilege, but they also work pretty hard on building that.

After one more quick mailbox check back at the house, I headed out to spend one
more night in the hotel before starting the northward odyssey tne next morning.
I had my coffee, I had my charging-stop plan, and felt kind of good to be back
in the saddle again even if this might be my last one of these runs.  It's
still a long-ass drive, even if I've come to know it so well!

In further reflecting on what I'd seen over the years of coming here, quite
a few projects have been started and mostly finished.  The new "northside"
piece of the retirement community is almost complete, doubling its size, and
there's a waiting list for the rest of the houses to get built.  I saw the
completion of the diverging-diamond interchange where one of the major surface
roads intersects I-75, and it definitely makes the flow much more efficient
through there.  I saw the Starke Bypass get built, which makes a nice fast
route around congestion, but I still feel bad for the people in the "historic"
town itself which is likely not getting nearly as much tourism/business as
it used to.  I noted the eventual disappearance of the "Lawtey -- speed trap"
billboard, even though the town still evidently has a reputation for overly
strict enforcement.  And one of the longest-running projects was a constant
mess for almost all the time I'd been coming here -- the big interchange
between I-10 and US 301, a major truck stop area.  That one was notable because
the eastbound on-ramp has to hop way over a substantial part of a rail yard
underneath, and the politics and legal wangling about it raged on for years.
It seems to be mostly done now, finally, so eastbounders can just sail onto
I-10 without having to wait 15 minutes at a non-intuitive light.  And of
course all over Florida are acres of new and unsustainable subdividions going
up all over the place, many of which sat unsold and empty for like 3 years
during the big housing crash in '08 or so, but now more are getting occupied
and the fresh groundwater table is inexorably sinking.

With this excessively fancy sign, we bid farewell to Florida. I guess it's supposed to resemble the Sunshine Skyway that connects St. Pete to points south of it. Kind of a bittersweet feeling crossing the state line; Mom really loved this place even if the weather just sucks in the summer. I can distinctly remember the first time I visited and flew down, and the second I walked out of the terminal I was hit with this awful wall of heat and humidity, and went "Gah! Yuck!" whereupon Mom said "don't you just love this warm, enveloping air we have here??" The answer to most of what Florida gets is "no thanks". But this morning, by contrast, was lovely and cool and felt more like a New England fall day. I'll take it.

I made Columbia SC that evening, and ran into a bit of a charging clusterfuck
with several broken/nonfunctional rapid-charge units.  At least when I found
a site that worked, there was an entirely adequate hotel right there which
after all that was clearly a better option than trying to make Charlotte
before stopping.  Six years driving (non-Tesla!) electric and putting
up with this on occasion, because those other networks *still* can't get their
stuff reliable and they don't seem to really know how or care.

The second driving day was fairly uneventful; made it about halfway through
PA and overnighted again.  Closer to home!  In the morning I popped out the
front door of that hotel and, surprise!  Three inches of snow on everything.
The main roads were mostly fine, though, with only handful of vehicles off the
side of the road, and later that day I made the Poconos where that long-lost
auntie that Mom had been trying to write to lives, and we had a lovely catch-up
from before the pandemic.  Her son and family live right up the hill from her
relatively modest but cozy little house, so they took me in for the night in a
very comfy guest room.  I was less than six hours from home at that point, and
really looking forward to see if my house was still standing.  Two months
away, one of the longer absences I've ever taken from it.

There's a big wide valley between two ridges, one of which is where High Point NJ is. As you're screaming eastward down this hill in PA and just about to barely tag the top corner of NJ near Port Jervis and cross into NY, you can see the park's monument atop the ridge. This is kind of a unique place where if you're on I-84 heading either way and the weather's clear, you can see the road in the distance winding back up the opposite hill.

Of course by the time I reached home through all this the car was totally
filthy from road salt, and I only did a minimum of load-in that evening.
And then discovered that the supposedly "lifetime warranty" water heater was
leaking pretty badly.  Good thing I turn the main water off for these long
trips!  I do have a water detector on the basement floor, to alarm on just
such events -- if that hadn't gone off, I might not have noticed for some
hours.  And of course heading into a weekend with a monster snowstorm on the
way, I wasn't about to get any useful bandwidth from the company that makes
these things, so I guess I simply wasn't going to have hot water for a while.

On top of that, I lost a fairly large filling, so now I have to go get that
fixed too, and it'll probably have to be a crown.  Never stops, does it...

But then I started to sort out some of the paperwork I brought home -- I still
had to deal with some financial updates, and the thing I'm really dreading now
is the impending tax season where I have to sort out trusts, EINs, 1041s, and
all that craziness.  I will likely seek professional help on that, as it's
pretty much a one-off.  I applied some vague semblance of order but spent more
of today out shoveling snow, and working on this diary section.  It will
probably be the last one for a while, but as I learn more about actually
handling estate stuff I expect I'll document some of that process here.