It's Always The Same...

Too much life; too little time...things don't change much.  Right now we're living in our little travel trailer while strangers are living in our lovely home by the side of a small lake in a primo golf resort.  I'm jealous of the renters, but I love their money.  The three month rental pays for our travel the rest of the year to England and Europe.  This year our renters are paying for a fifteen night transatlantic crossing on The Celebrity Constellation.  We will leave from Ft. Lauderdale with final debarkation in Harwich, England.  There are lots of shore landings in between.

For three months (January - March) we are living about seven miles from our house.  We're in an RV park that has one hundred six sites.  It is a melange of RVs.  Most of the place is now occupied by Snowbirds, folks from northern climes who flock to south Florida for the winter months.  Conceptually, much like our renters.  There are others here aside from Snowbirds.  There are the working poor, folks who permanently live in RVs designed to be vacation homes, hence the name recreational vehicle.  No matter how you slice it and dice it an RV is substandard housing and certainly not capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions such as the hurricanes we experience here.  Also, in this park, the permanent folks tend to live in older, shabby motorhomes, fifth wheelers or trailers.  There are some children as permanent residents and some older people.  I think maybe people with hard luck stories.  I don't really know.  What I do know is that as year round residents at the park, their monthly rent is probably no more than six hundred dollars with electric, water, sewer, nice shower and bathroom facilities (although almost everyone uses their own on board facilities), school bus pick up at the door and a community room with a small library and a big screen TV with cable included in the price.  It sure beats the average apartment rent of just about a thousand dollars a month, utilities extra.  The other plus is that the snowbirds are grandparents and are very nice and kind to the children.

There are also people, mostly men, who are travelling workers.  There is one travel nurse of whom I am aware.  Some men live in trailers owned by construction companies.  These companies bid jobs all over the country, hire workers and provide them housing, which they share, mostly two to a trailer or fifth wheel, in which to live as long as the job lasts.  I'm sure for the construction company it's a lot less expensive than providing hotel rooms.

The final group here are the Full-timers.  Folks who live in expensive motor homes or fifth wheels year round, following the sun, north in the summer, south in the winter.  Life for them is an adventure with ever changing vistas.  They've retired, sold up and hit the road for as long as they wish.  I envy them.

I really like doing what we do for three months, renting the house, coming here.  It's so easy to lose perspective when you live behind manned gates in a golf resort.  One tends to forget about the rest of the world out there, the working poor, the blue collar guys who have to leave their towns, their wives and kids to make a buck to just survive and take care of them.  I like being reminded that there are retirees who seek adventure in the big world right outside our gates.  Rather than trying to use a stick to hit a little white ball into a cup, these are the folks whose retirement mission is to visit every national park in our system.  What a goal.  I want to always be aware of those less fortunate than I.  I want to remember that jobs are hard to come by, especially in these frightening economic times.  I want to see children who are less fortunate than my grandchildren still being nurtured and cared for and living in a poor, but safe environment because their parent/s was smart enough to choose an RV over a ghetto apartment and because most of the Snowbirds here couldn't afford to rent my house, but they can afford to take the time to be nice to a trailer park child.  I embrace the dichotomy of the RV lifestyle wholly and with much respect and appreciation for it.  I hope I am becoming a better person for the experience...