When in doubt, chill out.

This is Avila Beach, near Pismo Beach, north of Santa Barbara. It’s a great place to chill out and think things through. And God knows I need to chill out. There is a row of shops by the beach, and I’ve gotten into the habit of ordering a fish sandwich and a cup of chowder from Mr. Rick’s. Yesterday I had a Corona with my usual order. Now I get those iconic ads for Corona.

My life the last few months can be summed up by the lyric from a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” 

The craziness began when I left the Seattle area last summer and went to Utah to sell my eighty acres of land. I went with the expectation that the sale would be quick, but when two buyers backed out, I had to fire my real estate agent. Months later, after camping out on my property in a big tent, buyers were found near the end of September. Unfortunately, I believed I might be able to buy a house on the West Coast, so I began driving around coastal California, Oregon, and Washington. I had a lot of misadventures, but my bids were outbid and my eyes were opened to the fact that the world had gone crazy not only via the Covid virus, but also in the real estate market. But I suppose I've got my feet wet if I ever decided to take up travel writing as a way to make a living.

 

After some looking around I discovered northwest Florida had affordable houses, so off I went to the panhandle of Florida. Was I worried about the Covid pandemic? Nope. I was apparently immune to it. I wore my mask, but saw a lot of people who didn’t. 

 

For anyone who hasn’t driven across the United States, it takes a lot of time and tanks of gasoline to cross Texas because it’s bigger than a lot of European countries. I arrived in Pensacola and honestly thought, "This is it!" Oh how wrong I was. 

White beach sand, gentle waves, pretty girls. What is there not to like? Yeah, Gulf Breeze, just south of Pensacola, is where I went to unwind. It's easy to be seduced by good weather, and wonderful beaches. Mea culpa. I used to hang out at the Artel Gallery, playing music with local musicians. It was an okay way to spend my time. I thought I was buying a house. I thought my life made sense. I even hit a few golf balls at Bubby Watkins driving range. Pensacola seemed like a cool place to hang out. I had blinders on.

I immediately put bids on many houses. Again I was outbid. I was also beginning to be educated about why the houses are so cheap in Florida. Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Sally, who arrived in the panhandle of Florida sixteen years apart to the day, September 16, 2004, and September 16, 2020, had caused damage to the majority of the houses. I was two weeks away from closing on a house when the inspection showed leaks, wood rot, and the need to replace the roof. On the last house, a week from closing, the Veteran’s Administration said the repairs would have to be done by the owner, or I would have to show I had the excess funds to do the repairs. So that was the end of that. I could have opted to stay in Pensacola, there are nice beaches in nearby Gulf Breeze, and the weather is pretty nice. But I was burned out, and had spent a fair amount of money already, so I decided to head back to the West Coast. 

 

Siri, which had provided a mix of correct and incorrect directions in recent months, directed me on a rainy night into Mississippi from Mobile, Alabama. This time it was wrong. That’s when a young woman ran a red light and I got in an accident. It was everything the movies portray of the South. The cops were more interested in gathering together to shoot the breeze and not inclined to find out what caused the accident. The doctor at the hospital ignored and never examined me. My Nissan Pathfinder was totaled and I was stuck in a hotel room for two weeks. My insurance company, USAA, said I was on my own because I only had liability. The other driver’s insurance, State Farm, was equally unhelpful. Thus, I hired a legal firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi to recoup my losses, and I paid the towing company to help get my Pathfinder running again. Miraculously, they resurrected it by pulling out the front end, replacing the radiator, and two new lights. I was in pain, and fed up with everything, so I got in my ruined truck and drove to Saint George, Utah to load a U-Haul with my things, and my truck on a trailer. And off I went to California. I was in no condition to drive due to having aggravated my sciatic nerve damage from when I’d broken my back in 2014, but I kept going. That is how I arrived in Santa Barbara County for the second time in six months, and decided I had no reason to go back to the Pacific Northwest. 

As of this writing I am still in Santa Barbara County, awaiting a financial settlement from the accident. There's not much chance of my buying a house in this area unless a miracle happens. I’ve used this time to finish writing my seventh novel, 21 Days in Paris. I’ve submitted it to a handful of publishers, literary shops, and producers. This story is based on a true story (mine). While in a coma after falling off the roof of his house, an art professor dreams he's in Paris, where he falls in love with a French woman. A bomb goes off on the eve of his asking her to marry him and he wakes in a hospital in Seattle where he learns he's been in a coma for twenty-one days. He goes to Paris to see if the woman he loves exists in the real world. Here's a promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oveaQGVrSsY  

Summer will soon be here. I’m not sure where I will end up yet, but sometimes it's best to simply stop and think things over. Chill out, kick back, and let God decide the best thing to do. The weather is nice, I'm eating beach food, wearing sunglasses and flip-flops. Life is good. Still feeling phantom pain in my lower back from my damaged sciatic nerve and lumbar vertebrae. Somehow, I don't know how, everything's gonna be all right.