THE WANDERING GYPSIES BREAK FOR FREEDOM 2005

After a long hiatus, a devastating period of writer’s block and a dose of literary constipation, it is now fall of 2023 and I feel a loosening of my (bowels), read “mind”. My shaking old fingers, feel ready to attack my typewriter and spill out some more, meaningless, history of our life. I have written, earlier, about a time where I decided to forego work and wages. Rather, Ol’ Bubbaloo and I decided that I had suffered enough and it was now time to seek some freedom. We had been away so long, that we did not even know, where we were supposed to settle for the next phase of our life. It turned out that the last time we had been in Canada we were in Calgary. I wanted to stay in Texas, however, I realized as a non citizen, we could not possibly afford US Health Care for our now aging bodies.

Peru was bandied about, but ultimately, we decided, Canada was more attractive. Especially because, Bubbaloo’s dad, step mom, sisters and brothers with their assorted offspring, as well as my children D1, D2, D3, lived there. So away we went, bag and baggage, into the unknown. I must add that I was full of trepidation, while making this tremendous decision. Ol’ Bubblaloo was the stabilizing influence. She was focused and nothing could bring her down. Not even my feelings of guilt about leaving the workforce and so many of my colleagues behind. My constant worries about running out of money, were pushed aside, by her reminding me that I could always go back to work if we came up short. That was so comforting! Something to really look forward to! Nonetheless she overcame my whining and these gypsies headed home.

The weeks, prior to departure, had been a flurry of activity. We had been moving around as vagabonds for approximately 27 years, since the time I originally left Canada and encountered Ol’ Bubbaloo high in the Andes of Peru. During our time, moving around, we had accumulated some “goods”. Or as the girls would say, “treasures”. Most of which, were still in our possession and following us around the world. All the time growing (exponentially), over those many years. So, everything had to be gathered, evaluated for importance and included in our list to move; or placed in the pile for disposal. I might say here, that the pile of Bubbaloo’s stuff for disposal was one small garbage bag full. My stuff was less important and comprised a righteous sized mound. We had to sell our Texas house, arrange movers, pack, load and head for freedom.

When I write it all in one sentence, it does not seem like a big deal. Of course, Bubbaloo did 99% of the work. I was free to finish up my job, flit around the world, a couple more times, and enjoy pre-retirement wind down. I must admit, getting ready to move, again, was a big deal and a tonne of work and stress. By this time in our life, Bubbaloo was a professional. One day, of what she went through, organizing many years of our life, into a final move, would have had me with a rope in my hand looking for a tree, “to hang myself up in”. She was tough, thorough, and unbending in her quest to make sure we got the best value for each dollar we spent, gathering everything up, and heading for freedom. Our house sold quickly, at a small profit, typical of the Texas market. We were now past the point of no return!

The last day found us in a cab, headed for the airport, enroute to Canada and into the unknown. My god, what a liberating experience. I will say again, that the first day of retirement was one of the top five days of my life. After a long time, I slept all through the night, without some “knob” in Timbuktu calling me at 3:00 am, to share some major screwup they had “birthed”, and how it was somehow my fault. Come morning, I bounded out of bed, and was excited to take on the day. The movers had arrived, loaded up everything, including ours, and Ange’s vehicles and had departed for Canada. We headed to the airport for a leisurely flight to our new adventure. For once, in 30 years, I boarded an airplane, without feelings of trepidation about what awaited me at the other end.

We arrived in Calgary, with no real plan, other than to find a place to live and see what retirement was all about. Our goods and vehicles arrived soon thereafter. In my usual manner, now would be the appropriate time to “go off” on Canadian Customs and Immigration policies. This time however, all went quite smoothly. Rather than provide, a blow by blow description of what, the first months of retirement looked like, I am going to recount a few small flashbacks of our short time in Calgary. Mostly just scraps of frivolous things, that influenced our final decisions of how retirement would play out. They go something like this;

Finding a house to buy was an eye opener. Since the last time we were here, the housing market in Calgary had boomed. I vividly remember a realtor taking us to a modern house in a good area on the west side of Calgary. We pulled up out front, to what appeared to be a good sized house on a large corner lot. My thoughts were, “I could live here”! We looked inside. It was spacious, very modern and beautifully presented. After oohing and aahing, the subject came to “how much”. The realtor puffs up and says, “this house is a steal at $900,000!” Well, you coulda knocked me over with a tumbleweed. Geezus, that was 3 times as much as I wanted to spend. I guess I was stunned. Ol’ Bubbaloo pulls me aside, with one of her looks; before I blurt out something like, “we’ll take it”!

She pushes me into a corner and asks, “do you realize that this is a half of a duplex?” “Nah, can’t be”, says I. She walks me across the front yard and sure enough on the other side of the corner lot, attached at 90% and hidden from the front view, it was connected to another identical house. They were mirror images of each other, connected at 90 degrees. “Geezus”, escapes my lips. I truly believe, it was at that point, when we already knew, we would not be living in Calgary, long term. We quickly ditched the realtor and set our sights on a more, temporary residence in Calgary.

The next vivid memory, and also a great influence on our future retirement plans, came shortly after settling into a house we finally leased. It was nearing summer time when we finally got settled in. Our goods had arrived and we were ready to enjoy the Alberta “midnight sun”. We had a great deck, set high up off the lawn and overlooking part of the hood. It had partial views into downtown Calgary, from far away. I remember, breaking out my near new BBQ, that we had bought in Texas. Ol’ Bubbaloo’s, sister-in-law, Lulu, lived in Calgary with her two children. It just so happened that her parents were visiting from Peru. So, to repay some of the hospitality that we had been shown in Peru, over the years, we invited Lulu and her family over for a good old fashioned, Canadian BBQ. We had everything set up to have an epic feed on our deck. Our vision was of telling tales of Peru, while I cremated, some otherwise, delicious looking steaks. All the while enjoying the evening sun from our deck.

The guests arrive, we lead everyone to the deck, pour drinks and I bring out the meat. Immediately, my tray is swarmed by about 1000 horseflies. These are mean little buggers. They take a bite out of any flesh they can find. They are completely unafraid. A bite from them hurts like hell and gets me to cursing. To add to our dining pleasure, a squadron of mosquitos had arrived and descended onto us and our guests. I go back in and quickly change to my full HazMat clothing. Now I’m fighting off the horseflies, who were trying to carry off our meat. And to add to my pleasure, fighting a swarm of mosquitos, that are landing on everything and everybody. I am like a wild man. Alternately slapping myself, and my meat, jumping around and silently cursing these insidious insects.

Geezus when I grew up, near there, in the good old days, we had no bugs. Early each spring, some sort of government agency flew, and drove, around the outlying areas of each city, and sprayed breeding areas (around lakes, marshes, sloughs and ponds) with a good old petroleum by-product. We never had bug problems in my youth. Seldom did I ever see any bad effects of this spraying. Once in a while you might have a calf born with two heads, or a baby with three arms. I vaguely remember stories of a few children that “glowed” in the dark after exposure to the spray. However, in my mind it was well worth the risk to be able to live life, bug free.

In any event, within a matter of minutes Ol’ Bubbaloo and all her guests have gathered up their drinks and moved inside. I could see them sitting at the dining room table, peering out at me, while I pretended to have fun, cooking their din din. I am now fully clothed in my Alberta BBQ gear, from head to foot. The evil horseflies were crawling all over myself and the meat, looking for something to bite. I’m flapping my arms around trying to shoo them and a million mosquitoes, off of our food. Too those, gathered inside, I must have looked like some insane dervish, jumping around and cursing. I think it was at this point that I already knew, there would not be another summer in Calgary.

Now comes fall and I further reinforce my vision of Calgary, NOT being our longterm retirement destination. One day, along about the end of November, I come bopping out of the house, to go to the local store. I hop in the car, turn the key, and hear, only, a very sickening groan, coming from the motor. I try again and am rewarded with some clicking sounds. Now I can feel my temperature starting to rise. I’m choking back curse words and try to crush my feelings of self pity. I look out, down the street, and see red, yellow and black extension cords coming out from under the hood of all the vehicles parked near us. Realization finally hits. I had completely forgotten about “engine block heaters”, that aid in starting frozen up motors. Another spike has been planted in the “heart” of our plans for staying long term in Calgary.

A little later in the winter, I find myself standing in a heated golf ball driving range at -14 degrees C. I am all by myself, dressed in golf gear, with hot air blasting down on my head. I have a bucket of white golf balls, which I am hitting into a blizzard, onto a snow covered range. Perhaps I should have just stayed home and imagined that I was pounding golf balls onto a sunny and green, fairway. I stayed for a while, firing white balls into a white wonderland. They disappeared as phantoms. I had no idea, in which direction they went, or if I had even hit one of them properly. Pretty soon, I decided that this was embarrassing. What if someone has seen me standing in my outfit, swinging wildly at golf balls that you could not see. With that, I packed up my gear and tail between my legs, I slinked off home.

The rest of the winter, I spent in our basement, waiting patiently for “Pele” to get back from school so I could kick his ass on my pool table (story later). While, I was idling away those many hours, where I could not go outside, I invented a new hobby that I named “slow death”. We had accumulated more than 50,000 (hardcopy) photos during our 30 years of travel. Boxes and boxes of them. I decided that they needed to be scanned into our computer. “Get a life”, you might exclaim. Well, I couldn’t come up with anything more fun, so I spent countless days, weeks and months, hunched over my scanner and computer, entering one photo at a time. After what seemed like years, spring arrived and I could go back outside and meet a new crop of flying, biting bugs.

I believe by the end of the first winter we already knew we would be moving on. Remember, I was born and raised a few miles north of here. And within one year, the climate brought me to my knees. One day a friend summed it all up. He said, “JimboRed, even if you can stand the bugs in Calgary, you still need to go away for the winters.” That pretty much seemed to say it all. Unless we could find a moderate climate to live in, we were still going to need two places. Sure enough along about late spring, we jump in our car and head west, looking for warmer climes and year round golf. That story and, the one, of our time with Pele, will come later. For now just say, “goodbye Calgary, it has been nice!”