December 21

Is today the winter solstice? I think so. Victoria is just north of the Tropic of Cancer. I haven't looked at a globe, nor Google Earth, but I think I am now close to the latitude of Okinawa, where I spent one and a half of the best years of my life. That was due to two factors: women and youth. I had just turned 21 when I left Okinawa.

When I left Okinawa I was a very good aircraft mechanic. Now I am a very slow bicycle mechanic. I have lost dexterity and strength in my fingers, and have lost a good deal of the sub-conscious intelligence that, for instance, places a nut squarely on a bolt and turns it in the right direction while the mind is troubleshooting the difficult problem at hand.

A crowd of motor homes, each the size of a city bus, and each towing an SUV, came into this park the day before yesterday, and left this morning. Will and Eleanor, he from South Dakota and she from Ottawa, each divorced and neither about to remarry, occupy the only RV left here, and they are leaving tomorrow. I will be the only tenant, until more Gringos come through.

Will's biography could make a country song. He drove trucks, was an owner-operator, built up a fleet of twelve, got divorced, bought a bar, and then another, and met Eleanor in southeastern Arizona. I didn't ask about his dog. He spent six years in the South Dakota National Guard. Those of us who were "regulars" called Guardsmen "weekend warriors". Eleanor is a retired teacher. She was the head of the English department at an Ottawa high school, and she sounds like it: Standard English, offhandedly conversing with excellent diction, a true gentlewoman. She rented one of these "apartments" two years ago, and has made it into what would be a very attractive and comfortable place, if she and Will did not use to store all the things they "need" that won't fit into their RV.

They drove me to a Wal-Mart today, where I bought shoes and another pair of jeans. I am concerned, here, with the way I present myself, more so than I have been for a very long time. I have not been a foreigner since I left Okinawa, and the status concerns I have here prompted those remarks on how good a mechanic I once was.

Juan continues to mess with the plumbing. He and I communicate, a little. His plumbing is eclectic: an elbow salvaged from this, a length of pipe from that, whatever works, as long as it doesn't cost anything.