Rules: Leisure World's 60 pages of them

In our country these days we seem to be experiencing the cultural sweepstakes of who has had their freedoms infringed upon the most.

And we just bought into a place where our "freedoms" are curtailed in more ways than they ever have been.  And we have bought into a place where 4000 other people probably have the same experience.

I find this fascinating.

There is a 34-page rule book for living here.  There is another rule book for what you can do architecturally---25 pages.  60 pages of rules!

Mind you, these are not laws.  All of the laws also have to be obeyed.

How is it that in a society where the average person bristles at any infringement on his rights to do whatever s/he wants that so many people will choose to live in a place where there are 60 pages of rules?

And Vicky and I seek isolation, both in our home on our five acres on Whidbey Island and in our pursuit of isolated and beautiful areas on our public lands.  How can a place like Leisure World fit into our "us?"  We will have next door neighbors---right next door! 

As I write this, we are sitting on the back patio of our rental in Leisure World.  It looks out upon the golf course like the house we have purchased does.

It is eerily quiet.  Right in the middle of the city, it is quiet.

There is a sameness to all of the homes here.  There are only certain colors you can paint your house and your trim.  Basically they are varying shades of boring--browns.  You can't fence in your yard.  Your back patio can have a fence, but only so high.  No chain link fences anywhere.

First of all, people who bristle at externally-imposed rules probably don't choose to live here.  They would be miserable.

But of more importance, we believe, is that the people who live here recognize that what they "give up" isn't very much, but what they get is a lot.  And it is easier to follow rules when everybody else is.  There is a feeling of fairness and equality that mitigates feelings of being imposed upon.

OK, so we can't paint our house yellow.  But there is no loud music and no barking dogs.  At all.  Everybody actually does drive under the 25 mph speed limit.

Psychologists who study stress have found that it isn't necessarily the big stressors in life that affect us, but, instead, unhappiness is caused by the collection of minor stresses---hassles.  Leisure World, due to its rules, reduces the hassle factor enormously.  Just obey the rules and you won't be hassled by minor things that, added up, create tension and stress.

In many ways, Leisure World reminds me of the M. Night Shamalyan movie The Village, about a town that at first blush appears to be in Revolutionary War times but is actually in modern times but protected by a large fence (and by fears of fearsome creatures that roam outside the town).  When you leave Leisure World you are hit in the face by the real world---traffic, noise, danger, etc.  Inside it is protected and safe and calm--streets are wide, people move slowly, you can't park on the street at night, there is a security force that's always present, and there are gates that restrict access to anyone who does not have permission to be here.   And all of the homes are varying shades of brown.

What a difference from Whidbey (Anything Goes) Island.  And in many ways, what a relief.

Our days here consist of walking about half an hour to the recreation center and finding a place to dance there:

 Of course before doing this, we checked at the recreation office to see if it was following the rules if we did this, and were told it was. 

Then we go to the Gym for 30 minutes and ride the exercise bicycles. There is a 20-minute limit on them if someone is waiting, so we adhere to this.  A rule.  There is also a rule that there is no photography in this room, for obvious reasons.  We adhere to this rule, and are glad that everyone else does too.

Then we go swimming for 30 minutes.  There is usually a water aerobics class meeting at the same time which has the "right of way," so we have to work around that.  Easy.  No inflatable devices, no running, no diving, etc. etc.

Then we walk home, carrying all of our stuff in our backpacks.  Already we are getting stopped by people who ask us if we are "hiking."  We say yes.

Then we sit on the back patio, watch the golfers, drink wine (me), knit (Vicky) until dinner.  It is OK for us to take a picture of us doing that:

 Of course most people who live here are retired and are, like us, old.  And there are no children here.  Somehow, for us though, the sounds of children aren't "noise," but the sounds of dogs, motorcycles, loud music, etc., are.   So we miss the children.

It is a very different way of living.  Almost 180 degrees from living on Whidbey Island which consists mostly of people who have moved there to retreat from the rules and structure of ordinary life.   But very similar to the lack of hassles that we experience when we camp on our public lands. On Whidbey Island we need 5 acres of buffer from other people, just to experience peace.  Here we don't. 

We like all of the places we live.  

Living in the bed of a pickup when your bodies are getting older

In two weeks I will be 70.

After I wrote that I just stared at it for about a minute.  Could that really be true?

I've never had "hard" birthdays.  Turning 30 40, 60, 65 were just numbers.

But 70 is a different thing.  No reason it should be, but it is.

I am, officially, old.  I am on Medicare, this month I will be forced to start taking Social Security, my body aches from having old joints and arthritis in many of them, I worry about what's happening to the "younger generation," I have to concentrate on getting enough fiber in my diet, I would rather watch a 1950s western for the 10th time than a new movie, I forget where I sat my coffee cup, I go to bed earlier and earlier, we bought a home in a retirement community..............wait..........what did I just say?

We did something that I never could have imagined doing on my own.  But that's the best part of being a "we" instead of an "I"---you do things you couldn't have imagined doing.

We decided to buy a home in Leisure World, Mesa, AZ, a retirement community with three swimming pools that are open 24-hours a day, two golf courses, two recreation centers, miles of sidewalks to walk on at any time of the day or night, a ballroom for dancing that we can use any time nothing else is scheduled in it, and miles of safe roads to ride our bikes on.

There were multiple reasons, but the main one was that we are getting old.  Have I mentioned that I will be turning 70 in a couple of weeks? 

We love the desert, something that we have learned together over the past six years.  And we love camping and hiking in the desert on our public lands.  But we can tell that it is getting progressively more difficult to do this in the way we had been doing it---which is to leave our Whidbey Island home for 5 months and live the entire time in our little camper. 

So now we have another plan that will enable us to continue with what we love and need from our camping.  We will have the home base during that 5 months be our home in Leisure World, and take one- to three-week trips from there in our camper.  Almost everywhere we have stayed in the desert (Arizona, California, and Utah) is within a day's drive of Leisure World.

Unsurprisingly, we immediately agreed on the home we wanted.  We could tell from the listings and from how homes were being remodeled to be "flipped" what most people were looking for in homes in this retirement community.  Mainly, it seems that people want new floors, new appliances, new bathrooms, and new kitchens.  They want a lot of space in the home, so homes that have had rooms added on or porches enclosed sell for more.  Homes that are next to the golf courses command a lot more money---many people who live here golf.  And it seems that everybody wants all of their interior walls to be painted white.  Entire homes with only one color.  

We had a different set of priorities.  We also wanted a home on the golf course.  But not because we are golfers.  It is because we are used to wide open spaces.  So not only did we want one on a golf course, but we wanted one on the end of a fairway.  That way, from our home, we had no walls or other structures for a couple of hundred yards.  I learned the value of this type of location from my parents, who also had a home in Leisure World that was at the end of a fairway.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it was to us.  Here is the view from our back patio:

That is really quite a lot of space in one's "back yard" considering we are in the middle of a city.  And the feeling it gives is hard to describe---it is that feeling of openness that we crave in our camping road trips and in our home on Whidbey Island.  AND we don't have to mow it! 

The aerial map below shows how much distance there is outside the back of our home.  The purple pin is on our home:

We also wanted space between us and our next door neighbors, as much as was possible given it is in a city.  Our lot is wedge shaped, which gives us that.  Being on a curve gives us more space!

 We also wanted a home that was not on one of the main roads through Leisure World.

Finally, we wanted a home that was near the center of the community.  Leisure World is bounded on three sides by very busy, and noisy, roads.  Walking around here we realized that at a certain distance from these roads the road noise is nonexistent.

We wanted quiet and open.  And we got it.

The home we chose is on the small side, in comparison to other homes here.  One reason for that is, thankfully, no previous owners have added onto it.  So, from all of our living spaces in the home---bedroom, living room, kitchen, dining room, and rear patio---what is visible is the view of the golf course shown earlier.  The only time we would be looking at a wall is when we are taking showers.

Views out the living room and dining room:




View out the bedroom:




What we gave up for this benefit of openness to the outdoors is "new."  The home is in need of some things, like rear slider doors (there are FIVE doors that exist to the patio---an example of what I mean by the original design of the home emphasizing the view to the outside) and all need to be replaced.  It has popcorn ceilings that have to go.  And it needs repainting inside.  We will do no remodeling because it doesn't need it.

In the ways that our Whidbey Island home suits us, this one should also suit us---it is quiet with views of nature from every room.

So, here we are, living in the same retirement community that my parents lived in for 20 years. For the foreseeable future we will be here part-time, using the swimming pool and walking around the quiet streets in between trips to the desert in our camper.  We will still be living for many months of every year in our wonderful Whidbey Island home and in the bed of our pickup.  But time catches up with everyone, and we can feel it stalking around us waiting to pounce.  When it does, we are now more prepared for it. 

Two and a half years in the bed of a pickup

As of the end of 2017 we have spent over two and a half years of the past six years living in our camper.

We are trying to grasp this:  Two and a half years in the bed of a pickup.

We are spending the rest of Road Trip 7 in Mesa, AZ, so will have no more dispersed camping sites on this trip.  Here are photos of the dispersed sites we camped at since the beginning of September, 2017.

These photos aren't in order because....who cares?