Florida is Cancelled (for me, anyway)

Yes, a real-life demonstration of Inflation...its wonderful effects on the average, or sub-average, Joe.

This, after how for over ten years, we heard that inflation was GOOD - first, two-percent inflation was to be WORKED TOWARDS, and then, how inflation HELPS the Working Stiff. And how horrible is DEflation.

One year ago, to the day, I went on my first, now probably only, long-term RV vacation in Florida. Had a fine time, allowing for lower Senior-Citizen standards. Met some people I knew only online. Ate at several fine casual restaurants, recommended by my hosts. Saw the Panhandle beaches, NOT swarmed with people - it was chilly; mid-fifties.

Saw how popular Florida had become...and where was good and affordable. The Panhandle was expensive. The whole area was so busy with "Snowbirds" that free-camping or stealth-camping was a true project.

But then I found an RV site in the Kissimmee region, affordable, immaculately maintained, filled with sociable old coots like me. Had three weeks of fine living, coffee in the commons in the morning, the sun, summer temperatures, an airboat tour. More to do, but I never got to it.

So. I'm making plans. And adding things up, since now that my food budget is doubled, pennies count. The $800/month lot-rent rate there is now $1300 a month. The gasoline cost would be over 50 percent higher.

My $1500 winter getaway - justifiable in my budget - has become a potential $2600 expense. Which is not justifiable.

I stay home.

Closer to home: Arizona was the "other" place I was going to go RVing in. Well, now, with the nation's border erased, vacationing in Arizona would be like a pleasure trip in the DMZ. Las Vegas is the fallback, and there are many RV parks there.

What, I want to find out that homeless Central-American bums passed out on the sidewalks of the Strip, are the new entertainment? I remember Vegas from 35 years ago, when it was kewel, and fun, and novel, and filled with beautiful people from elsewhere. Now it's none of those things, and the Beautiful People are fatted, tatted, transvestites suffering from the mental illness of Wokeness and Karenism.

I stay home.

The trailer stays parked...in a storage lot that's costing me money. Now I have to decide if I should sell it, or hang on, against the possibility of my own homelessness.

Two competing dynamics, here. Rents and land prices are exploding - rents, especially, and probably to get worse, now that FedGov is gonna forever subsidize and house our invaders.

Balance that against their contradictive policy, Malthusian Depopulation. They say 70 percent have taken the Jab. "Excess Death" is now at six-sigma levels. THAT is gonna show, with time - as those who would be Florida Snowbirds or RVers criss-crossing...are instead, assuming ambient temperature.

So. Do I keep or do I sell? Any money I get, is of secondary concern. It's about cutting future losses and not losing more from declining market and depreciation. That, versus the reality that I DO have it, and it's ready to go, if somehow I again wind up in housing trouble.

How big is it and in what condition?

Do you store it under a tarp?

If it's any consolation, rents and land prices *should* be coming down:


But yeah, inflation sucks. Unfortunately, it's baked into the fiat monetary cake. It's one reason why I advocate for Ron Paul's old Competing Currencies bill.

Viking said:

How big is it and in what condition?

Do you store it under a tarp?

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19-footer.

It's under a giant roof - a guy with what had been a farm, put up a series of these steel pavilions in making part of the land into an RV storage center.

Excellent condition, but spartan. No velour Barcaloungers - a nice bed nook, a kitchen and eating booth, and on the wall, a flat-screen television. PO put that in.

If it’s in excellent condition under cover and you don’t need the money, why sell?

So now comes the question, since you are done with plans requiring movement:

DID YOU or did you not start writing that novel? My writer's radar searches the ether... finds naught.

Nor can I find an excuse.

You are NOT burdened with schedules to keep.
You are NOT without a medium in which to record your novel.
You are NOT doing a fukking thing with your life.
You are GIFTED with the writer's gene.

I want to hear/read progress, not travel whines. Keep the trailer, it won't sell for shit, and it is a living abode after all.

Now get doing something important, as opposed to flipping a coin to decide whether you want to watch TV or take a dump as you are doing now.

Casey Jones said:

Do I keep or do I sell?

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There's always Walmart parking lots...

Goldhedge said:

There's always Walmart parking lots...

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Not anymore.

That's changing.

The best "free" sites I've found are at Love's truck stops. When I went to the Sunshine State a year ago, that was how I lodged for nothing, all the way down. I was self-contained and, once up, there was coffee, breakfast of a sort, and if I wanted, a shower for me.

BUT. Even allowing that's all you can afford...there's limitations. They say nothing to RV types doing that, and I wasn't the only one. But if you unhook, to go do something without pulling the trailer...they will quickly impound and tow your trailer as abandoned.

Terrorism, dontcha know. Maybe the trailer belongs to Ollie do Snackbar.

That's a hell of a way to "vacation" - with the constant fear of what you can and can't get away with...

Unca Walt said:

So now comes the question, since you are done with plans requiring movement:

DID YOU or did you not start writing that novel? My writer's radar searches the ether... finds naught.

Nor can I find an excuse.

You are NOT burdened with schedules to keep.
You are NOT without a medium in which to record your novel.
You are NOT doing a fukking thing with your life.
You are GIFTED with the writer's gene.

I want to hear/read progress, not travel whines. Keep the trailer, it won't sell for shit, and it is a living abode after all.

Now get doing something important, as opposed to flipping a coin to decide whether you want to watch TV or take a dump as you are doing now.

Click to expand...

Parkinson's Law.

...Work expands to fill available time.

Since I had my blow-out with the cellular company, I'd PLANNED to go to Florida cut-off, and focus, nights, doing what I could.

That led me down the rabbit hole of counting resources, adding up costs, and swapping emails to find out the price this year at Camp Mack. I was afraid, after the spring storms, it would be closed.

Nope. Up and running...that must have taken a lot of money, because they're sure charging for it.

Truth, all joshing aside. I've decided on logistics - how to get it out.

Walt, no lie - you'll get a crack at editing chapters once I start getting organized.

...you know how difficult it is to write a flashback novel? I have Prologue 1, Prologue 2, Prologue 3...before the action even starts, the casualties start piling up. A dead body on the Red Line Rapid, in Cleveland. Another dead body in the Houston Ship Channel. A near head-on crash by a junior "fireman" on the Penn Central, years earlier.

Drunken dreams. The FBI guy (set in the 1980s) with a compromised wife, goes for a 5 am jog.

Tying all them together, is where all the false starts, the questions, the pieces of the puzzle, have to fit.

Viking said:

If it’s in excellent condition under cover and you don’t need the money, why sell?

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Long story, and there's parts I'd rather leave alone here.

Short version is, there's ongoing costs; and there's rapid depreciation.

Go to Thailand.

Hey, CJ, Uncle just wants you to get started on your book, as that's the tough part. I know--I wrote a novel and 3 short stories. I began to research and write in July, 2009, but didn't finish it until December, 2021. There was one year I didn't write anything.

What's interesting, once i started, I felt I had a responsibility to the characters to get them to the finish line, lol. Once I finished it, I just decide the hassles with publishing for a profit weren't worth my effort; so I give the book away for free to those who ask. I sent Uncle Walt a copy. Give him your email and he can send you one.

Anyway--JUST START

Farpdinkle said:

Hey, CJ, Uncle just wants you to get started on your book, as that's the tough part. I know--I wrote a novel and 3 short stories. I began to research and write in July, 2009, but didn't finish it until December, 2021. There was one year I didn't write anything.

What's interesting, once i started, I felt I had a responsibility to the characters to get them to the finish line, lol. Once I finished it, I just decide the hassles with publishing for a profit weren't worth my effort; so I give the book away for free to those who ask. I sent Uncle Walt a copy. Give him your email and he can send you one.

Anyway--JUST START

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Farpy wrote some short Western stories, and a good novel. Pretty damn' interesting. The whole group, plus the major story line could have made a television series with the right publicity. <-- That last part (getting it out there where people who would like to read it get to read it) is a steep hill, no error. But the point is, he wrote it, and it exists. And will exist...

Farpdinkle said:

Hey, CJ, Uncle just wants you to get started on your book, as that's the tough part.

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Because for "normal people" it takes at least some amount of action first, in order to become truly motivated to follow through. Once motivated, the action to continue becomes automatic.

Farpdinkle said:

What's interesting, once i started, I felt I had a responsibility to the characters to get them to the finish line, lol

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That's how it works. Some call it the five minute rule.

Well...I started. Five pages written.

Dead attorney walking. To the Red Line station, below Terminal Tower. Being a junior attorney isn't all it's cracked up to be...but as dubiously as he views his future, it's a lot shorter than he knows.

Beware the guy on the other end of the platform - who looks like he's got a Lady Clairol dye job, and smells like theatre grease-paint.

"It's the only city with a tower that is terminal, looking over a lake that is eerie"
Alex Bevan

BackwardsEngineer said:

"It's the only city with a tower that is terminal, looking over a lake that is eerie"
Alex Bevan

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Only one of many scenes.

How does a cab patron flying off a bridge into the Houston Ship Channel, grab ya? The cab patron became inconvenient to the driver, after each learned they shared a past. Caught in the middle was some poor stripper from Caligula 21, who took the cab with the cooling stiff...thinking she'd make some easy extra money. Instead, she found out if there's eternal life.

Sent the cab driver off to do...what he'd been resisting. He knew the day was coming. Not unlike Travis Bickle...but a prime target was dropped in his back seat.

There is still time to put vampires into the story. If the stripper were a vampire, you could change an empty life cut short into a short bit of karma.

Someone_else said:

There is still time to put vampires into the story. If the stripper were a vampire, you could change an empty life cut short into a short bit of karma.

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The cabdriver (who is also the dyed-hair guy on the platform) is the vampire.

He gets around. I have him nearly having a head-on with an Amtrak train, years earlier - not his fault, but the Amtrak engineer was one of their first female types, so he becomes the sacrificial lamb. He's fired, but the (useless) union gets him a reference - to a tourist railroad. Where he runs STEAM locomotives, with college kids.

And townie kids, the same age.

And he slowly goes mad. Becomes a monster. As he lives in a tumbledown bungalow on the edge of a golf course overlooking a lake in the Adirondacks.

A long way from Texas, where he stole a car to escape his drunken father, as an eighteen-year-old...

That's good stuff! Do you plan on first person, second person, or narration?

If memory serves, Lucifer's Hammer was mainly first person, and it worked very well.

Someone_else said:

That's good stuff! Do you plan on first person, second person, or narration?

If memory serves, Lucifer's Hammer was mainly first person, and it worked very well.

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Actually, Lucifer's Hammer was third-person.

The perspective rotated. For a time it was Tim Hamner's experience; and then long periods with Harvey Randall. Then his drinking buddy, the biker wannbee. There's cameos of various survivors and victims; and of course the crazed Henry Armitage, the preacher.

Something like that. A broad, panoramic set of stories.

It's my life - all but the killings. I don't know if I've lived well, but I've lived broadly. Morning jogs in Fairport Harbor, Ohio; cabdriving in Houston and Cleveland. Railroading, flatland and mountain. Drunk in 35 states. Owned dozens of cars; driven everything from a scooter to an aircraft carrier.

I have been in more ugly situations in more places, thanks to women, money-issues and booze, than any ten people I know.

...and, to think, long ago, I had a fear of dying of old age in the same area I grew up in. THAT didn't happen...

I think we may have awakened a Finklestein (sp.?) Monster.