Free hand sketch of Jan and Karl from reference photo on cell phone.
My wife and I like to walk in water, whether it is at the Carrollton city pool outdoors, the Lifestyle Fitness Center indoor pool, and today in Lake Erie at Walnut Beach in Ashtabula, Ohio. This trip is about the future. Jan retired from teaching art at CES in Carrollton, Missouri. Going to Vermont is an abstraction. Retirement is like Vermont, an unknowable future. How will Jan transition into retirement? What routine will she adopt as her own? Me, I've been doing this since 2016. So -- traveling to Burlington, Vermont for a two day speaker packed conference -- it is a peek into what we are going to be -- as a couple retired. Now traveling. And then after the conference -- what then???
Sketch from cellphone. I asked a local about Walnut Beach. He told me the swimming season usually starts later in June, when the weather gets warm enough. The water is cold. He said it was unseasonably warm. This is a good thing for Jan and I WANT to be in the water on our trip up. So, today, we walked out from the hot sand into the cool lake waters.
We walked along the roped perimeter of the swimming area. Jan spied a buoy bobbing. Other swimmers swam beyond the safe zone to the buoy and swam back. Jan wanted to. I had mixed feelings. Soon I realized it was safe for Jan, since her body mass keeps her afloat. She swam. Reach it. Rested. And swam back to me. We're approximating it was 75 feet out. Just a guess. She is a fish. She loves to swim.
As we walked out, we held hands, and steadied each other to stay upright. Our feet sunk through the sand and small pebbles, with each step. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Awkward.
Together, side by side. A mental picture of support. This entry added for Monday, May 28.
The next day we skipped Niagara Falls and crossed the lower portion of New York state, through Jonestown, Olean, visited Jan's life coach in Ithica, New York, and stayed over in Geneva, near the Finger Lakes.
It was our hope to stop at some point and draw. Do some art for ourselves. That came on Thursday morning.
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