Since last year we have our own home in Texas. A very nice 34 feet long travel trailer we call “Landman”. Our friends Richard and Paula allowed us to store Landman on their large rural property in St. Hedwig during our sailing season on “Island Girl”. We don’t have a truck to pull “Landman” from Richard’s and Paula’s property to the campground in “New Braunfels” where both our children and their families live. Like most real Texas rural landowners our friends Kurt and Kitty have a large pickup truck and together with our daughter Dominique they moved “Landman” to the campground and had it ready so after our arrival we just could move in and go to bed.

After the hurdles of a delayed departure from Guatemala City, long waiting for Customs and Immigration in Houston, being treated by TSA (Transportation Security Administration) as a terrorist and a new computer system by Avis Rental Car and employees who did not know how to use the system to handle an extended car rental we were so relieved and grateful for all the preparations made by our friends and our daughter. Richard, Paula, Kurt, Kitty and Dominique we are so grateful having a support team like you! Thank You!

The first Sunday after our arrival was Father’s Day and with a nice dinner at the home of our son Robert and his wife Heather, we had the opportunity to see our children and all but one of our grandchildren. With six grandchildren in the age of 24 and 13 it is every year a surprise to see them and see how much they have changed. The oldest, Justin said that he is no longer our grandchild but our “Grand Adult”. With the four oldest “Grand Adults” living their own independent lives it gets harder to see them as grandchildren and more like relatives you only see once a year. Dorothy and I love our sailing adventures, but we have a tough time with the realization that we are growing apart from our family.

Before we started sailing we were a waterski family and we spent every weekend on the water either on “Lake Medina” where we had our lake house or at the “Greater Miami Water Ski Club”. Before I built our own jump ramp we skied often on “Lake McQueeney” where the “Ski Bees” waterski club had a jump ramp. The intensive jump training paid off for our son Robert who became a Professional Water Skier for Sea World in San Antonio Texas and San Diego California. This summer his son Jack followed in his father’s footsteps and started skiing for Sea World in San Antonio. We are so proud of him.

Besides visiting our family our main goal was to see the doctor to help me to fix the problem which started last year and forced me to have an emergency flight back to the USA. I had two surgeries, but these did not solve the problem. The doctor confirmed what we already expected that I needed another surgery. According to the doctor this last surgery was a success and he expects that the problem is now resolved. For me it was the beginning of a very tough time with a lot of pain. An open wound in my butt and the pain put limitations on our activities and therefore we spent most of our time at home in “Landman”.

The good thing was that the doctor allowed me to swim, so I could go every morning to the swimming pool of the fitness center of the “Resolute Health Hospital”. Waking up at 5:10 in the morning and starting my laps at 5:30 make me feel good and ready to start the day.

In the first weeks of our stay we did a lot of shopping for boat parts, especially parts for our “Fisher Panda” generator. We ordered also a lot of parts using the internet and had sometimes a daily flow of packages delivered by “UPS, FedEx” and “USPS”. So, I was not surprised to get on a Sunday an e-mail from “UPS” about a package. I opened the e-mail and the attachment and that was the end of my laptop. In minutes, all my documents and pictures were destroyed and useless and the laptop infected by a known virus. I could not eliminate the virus and even a specialized computer repair facility could not guarantee that after all the work they did that the virus was removed. The only solution was to clean out the machine and restore the operation system from scratch. I decided to purchase a new laptop and again install all the software I have. Since I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 some of the applications did not work and I had to recompile them or I had to buy the upgrades. I especially had problems with an add-on on “OpenCPN” called “GE2KAP”, but the designer of the add-on helped me to get a temporary solution until he upgrades the add-on.

The nice thing about this was that I had something to do. The Wi-Fi on the campground is very slow and it was nearly impossible to make the needed downloads. My son allowed me to use one of the offices in his company, which not only was a great environment to work in with great internet connection but also to mingle with the people in the office and to see a few of our family members. Not only Heather, Robert’s wife works in the office, but also my daughter Dominique who is the Marketing Manager, her son our “grand adult” Justin who is one of the agents and Robert’s mother-in-law our friend Nancy who is the receptionist.

The months of July and especially August are temperature wise brutal in Texas. The daily high temperature rises every day over 100F. and many days the temperature reaches close to 110F. We have 2 A/Cs in Landman and these keep the temperature inside comfortable. However, these camper A/Cs are very noisy. Our campground is on the Guadalupe river and a very busy freeway called IH35 is going over the river at this location. So, our campground located underneath two bridges with constant traffic and the ACs is quite noisy. Another advantage of using Robert’s office is the quietness.

Last year we were very close to sell our beach condo in Miami Beach. Due to very bad decisions of our real estate agent the contract fell through and we continued renting out the unit. After some negotiations with our renter for an extension of the lease we decided to put the condo on the market. The renter vacated the unit on the first of August and we hired a crew to fix all the problems our renter left behind, to paint the entire unit and stage it to make it attractive for buyers. We heard on the phone about all the problems in the unit and we decided to go to Miami Beach to see for ourselves what needed to be done and pick up a few items that we wanted to keep. Short term airfare was completely off the wall so we took an upgrade for our rental car and drove in four days up and down to Miami Beach. The total distance was close to 2800 miles. We spent the night with our friends Scott and Barbara who we had not seen for 4 years. We expected not to be in the country when the condo would be sold and we turned the entire sales process over to our son Robert with all his real estate contacts. We met the real estate agent who gave us a very realistic assessment about the process. To our big surprise 2 days after the listing of the condo we got an offer we could not refuse and we signed in the meantime the sales contract with an estimated closing on October 3, 2017.

Although we had a very comfortable car and had a very pleasant trip I was broken when we came back and regretted for the rest of the week that we took the trip. But on the other hand we were happy to see our friends, Miami Beach and the meeting with the real estate agent and the maintenance man put our minds at ease.

A tropical storm called Harvey passed over St. Lucia in the east Caribbean and the southern part of Belize before it became a major hurricane. During his passing over Belize the tropical storm brought a lot of rain over 3 days in the Rio Dulce on top of Island Girl, but it caused no major problems. But after Harvey became a major category 4 Hurricane and made landfall in Port Aransas where our son has his beach condo and his 49-ft. fishing vessel the big problems started. Large scale flooding was predicted not only on the coast but deep inland to where we are along the very dangerous Guadeloupe river. Last year we needed to evacuate in the middle of the night so a day before the hurricane made landfall we moved from our campground on the Guadalupe river to a campground on higher ground. Before the day was over no site was available anymore and all hotel rooms were taken by the flood of refugees after many mandatory evacuations of counties along the coast.

Friday night we were glued to the TV. Watching on the radar seeing how slow the hurricane moved to the coast with live coverage from the Weather Channel and other local stations and realizing that the storm made landfall in Port Aransas the place where we spent a lot of time in Robert’s Condo and on his boat. After the storm moved over the barrier island called Mustang Island it hit the mainland and the city of Rockport. A place where we have some friends. We were in communication with them until the power went out and the cellular tower no longer supported cell phone connections.

During the night, the wind picked up and rain started falling. It was very clear on the radar that New Braunfels was just on the edge of the west rain bands of the hurricane and we had 45 miles of wind with gusts up to 70 miles and pounding rain. Until Monday morning (8/28) we had constant rain with very strong wind and our RV was rocking, sometimes very violently. The ground under the RV became so saturated with water that the RV started to “sink” on one side. I had to lift the RV with a jack during soaking rain to put some boards under the wheels. Unfortunately, the infamous Texas fire-ants came out of the ground and attacked both of us both pretty hard.

We watched daily the horrible TV news about the heavy rain in Houston and surrounding areas with the heavy flooding that caught people by surprise and many of them needed to be rescued from there flooded homes. It was such a heartbreaking sight.

Then the news came that Bush International Airport in Houston was closed since no one could reach the airport due to the flooding. It was not expected to be open again until August 31 and we were originally scheduled to fly out on Wednesday August 30. On Monday, we received the news that our flight on 8/30/2017 was canceled, but that we could reschedule at no additional cost. We have now changed our departure to September 6.

For people like us who are not born in Texas but lived for a long time in this great state and are very proud to be a Texan say: “We are not born in Texas, but we came as soon as we could”. The horrible events around hurricane Harvey show us the real Texas. People came together to help each other in need. We know these real Texans when we lived on Medina Lake and our house was a mile from the public road and only reachable by a dirt road. We met our old Medina Lake neighbors when we attended the 90th birthday party of Wayne one of our close neighbors. Most of the attendants are in the same age group, maybe frail but all still strong at heart. It was inspiring to see them again. It was a great conclusion of our visit to Texas this year.