Merry Christmas from Albuquerque! It’s Christmas Eve Day; the traffic is still heavy and the drivers are frantic. Ah, the joys and peace at Christmas time. No matter. We still wish you a Merry Christmas or whatever you say and wish others at this time of the year. We do truly hope you are as well as can be expected and are able to experience some quiet amidst the chaos and uncertainties of the Times we live in. And of course, this season brings out a looking back and a reflection of what has gone on this past year.

2013 marks the first calendar year the Bluestem Roadies have been on the road full time. We sold our house at the end of November, 2012 and officially entered the world of full time RVing. When we started in the fall of 2012, we had a fifth-wheel pulled by a Ford F-150. In Savannah, Georgia that all changed. We traded the whole enchilada and now live in a 33-foot Winnebago Sightseer motor home pulling a Ford Focus. We not only got our full time RVing feet wet in 2013, but we plunged right in and now are up to our eyeballs in a new life style.

Despite the homeless life style we are now experiencing, the lack of a familiar home base, the separation from friends and family, intermittent mail service, funky Internet connections, and our lousy gas mileage, looking back at 2013 the absolute highlight of the year was the wedding of our youngest son, Kedric, and his partner, Pollen.

Minnesota, bless you, was a state in 2013 where the voice of reason won out and all bans against same-sex marriage were struck down. A dream of ours came to fruition not only for Kedric and Pollen but for many of our GLBT friends who over the years were involved in or wanted to be involved in committed relationships but had to experience those relationships without legal backing and support of the community at large. It was time for a wedding.

When MN approved same-sex marriage, we expected a wedding to take place in 2014. But Kedric and Pollen saw an opportunity to marry when Pollen’s parents from New York state were scheduled to visit in early September and we were still in MN before heading west on our travels. So, the opportunity was acted on and a wedding took place in their backyard in Minneapolis. Rejoice indeed!

An additional bonus of a wedding is a gathering together of family. My brother, his wife and two daughters and a son-in-law made the trip from the east to celebrate a one of a kind event and to enlarge the circle of love that surrounds Kedric and Pollen. And, the wedding provided the opportunity for our immediate family to gather together. With busy families and separate lives, that doesn’t happen very often. We hosted a breakfast gathering the morning of the wedding, and Rhys and his entire family were able to attend. And, so, this picture of our family is most precious to us. Grandkids keep growing up and growing away, but this picture has captured a time and a moment that Shannon and I will turn to often as we bump down the road. Thanks, Drew, for your great and important photography.   

During this past year we have volunteered in South Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, and Arizona; and spent more then a month touring Florida. We got acquainted with Forest City, IA where Winnebago is made; visited my brother in Pennsylvania and made a first visit ever with my cousin in New York state; became reacquainted with old friends from Maine and visited new friends that seem like old friends in Ohio; dodged snow and floods in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Colorado; visited really long-time friends from many lives ago in Wisconsin; saw kids, grandkids, and former co-workers; and made many more trips to Good Will as we reduced the size of our storage unit twice during 2013. We traveled through Nebraska to get to our destination in Colorado to visit Shannon’s niece and family and Shannon's sister and her husband, our beloved brother-in-law on death’s doorstep; visited New Mexico twice; experienced the government shutdown up close and personal when we could not volunteer due to the shut down; and looked down into the depths of the Grand Canyon, a sight not seen by us in 44 years. Somewhere in there I flew to Pennsylvania for my 50^th year high school reunion with a classmate of mine who lives in New Mexico. And, we had to part company with our best-dog-ever, Libby, making a pact that we would not have another dog until we settled down from full time RVing. We shredded the pact in December when we acquired a NMI (not my idea) Shihpoo in December, now named and spelled Tuzi which means “little-package, big-trouble.” Oh boy! It seems we have been constantly on the go, and that’s the way it should be.

And so it goes…If you haven’t hit the delete key by now, you deserve a BIG HUG and another wish of Merry Christmas. We carry our memories of you with us always, and it is sufficient for the road. Be good, keep well, and get ready 'cause we'll gonna pop in for a visit one of these days and not tell you about it ahead of time. And always, keep focused on the good things of this life.