Bolt Hole

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Where do you go when you need to hide? When everything is just too much, and the world is just not doing what it should, but you can’t fix it?

Because there are things you can’t do, and things you can’t fix. I almost drove myself insane in 2020, convinced there must be something I could do to stop the madness. If I just explained once more…

It is a side effect of playing with worlds, with made up histories, with empires that rise and fall in my mind. You get confused when it comes to the real world. Kind of like when you’re in a rough spot and you just want to fast-forward and get past it, because your mind is used to movies. Only more so, because you think there must be a clever trick you can use to make it all alright.

But clever tricks are a novel plotting device, partly because it would be really boring to write “And then the character sat around for ten years waiting for the other shoe to drop in the minds of those who weren’t paying attention. And then–“

But the world doesn’t lend itself to fast forward or clever tricks. Not most of the time. 

Note I’m not going to say you can’t do anything about the mess — looks around — we’re in. It’s a mess and no mistake, one that started before I was born and probably long before most of you were born too. And it’s… Well. It is, you know? It took almost a century to weave, or if you look at it another way, 300 years, from the beginning of the industrial revolution, to the worship of “scientific” and “experts” and larger and more bureaucratic governments.

We’re not going to undo it all in one go. Even if you take the approach to untangling this mess that I take when I’m crocheting and the thread gets in a big tangled mess, and just cut out the worse of the knots, then tie to the last clean thread, when it comes to the world, and everyone in it, or even to the vast and complex nation we inhabit… well, other than that outside the metaphor, you end up in blood up to your ankles, with that approach, and what comes after is more than a bit of a gamble, even that takes time. And pressure. A lot of time and pressure. And heaven help us, the pressure is being applied. Yes, it is. But the time is awfully hard to take.

And honestly most of us, perhaps desperately, are still hoping for a solution that doesn’t dye all the thread red with blood, and allows us to go on crocheting a tissue of human dignity, liberty, individuality instead of the old grey, dingy pattern of feudalism or communist neo-feudalism. That, well, now, it could go very slowly and then all of a sudden. Or it could go… slow. Incrementally slow, so it looks like it’s all coming apart, because you don’t see the parts that are getting slowly rebuilt in the background. It’s messy, it’s slow, and most of the way — probably the rest of my life — is very uncomfortable indeed for those who know history and see how it could all tip into the brown stuff. Or worse, the red.

But it’s all slow, beyond individual, or even plucky small group control. Hard to live through.

However, we live not just in a place but in a time. And it’s the time we have. Probably (unless you believe in a very specific form of reincarnation) the only time we have. Like the space opera “these are the times of our lives.”

And you know, it could be worse, much worse. I mean, I doubt I could have gotten this far and still be alive, given what my body is and how it works, if I had been born ten years earlier, even in a slightly more advanced place. Also, I like daily showers. I like clean clothes every day. I like hot meals. All of those were at times luxuries, and at times unobtainable without extreme effort or wealth while I was growing up, let alone say when the founders lived.

So our times are not so bad, even if parts of it are very much Heinlein’s crazy years, and our polity insists on going howling further into them.

Then there are personally bad times. Sometimes I wonder how my friends survive, how they go on functioning and producing beautiful things, or creating these ordered, joyous lives, while dealing with stuff. I think I’m more of a wussy in the emotional field. I worry obsessively about those I love. (My love language is biting my nails to the quick.) Particularly when I want to help but I can’t.

But I know, blessed though I’ve been so far, there will bad times ahead. They arrive for everyone. Nights of a thousand years by a hospital bed. Days of dealing with a loved one who is sinking into illness or losing his or her mind. Endless weeks of drudgery and effort. Personal or inter-personal strife. People you love who leave, by their decision or not. People you lose to death, misunderstanding, anger. You wake, you sleep, and you wish you could be anywhere else, at any other time, doing anything else. All of us go through times like this. All of us. It’s part of humanity.

Where do you go then? What’s your bolthole? The fox goes to ground. The bunny goes down the rabbit hole. Where do you go?

I don’t mean physically. We all have places we go physically, where we feel renewed, refreshed. Where we gain strength, so we can go back and do what must be done.

For most of my young life that was grandma’s house. I’d go around the side gate, past the renters’ yard and the wash tank, around past grandad’s workshop and the orange tree and to the grape-vine shaded patio where I played every day until I was seven, and often enough till I was ten. The kitchen door was always open — unless grandma was going to be gone more than a day — and the clock ticked loudly on the wall. If grandma was not in sight, I crossed the kitchen, opened the door to the inner corridor and called for her. If she didn’t answer, she was out on some errand. But most of the time she was in the kitchen or the yard, doing something, or answered from the depths of the house, “Daughter! I’ll be there.” (Daughter/son is a term of endearment in Portuguese, often used for grandchildren, and even your spouse.)

And then I’d sit down. A kitten or three would climb into my lap. The dog would lie at my feet, grandma would make tea. Later, when she decided I was a young lady, instead of the bowls used for tea in family, she’d bring out the teapot, the night cups, and the bought cookies. (Heaven only knows why, but I appreciated the effort and the love behind it.)

She’d talk of people in the village. I’ll be honest, I have a lousy memory for faces and names. And always did. So most of the time I was only half aware of who she was talking about, unless she mentioned a connection to one of my classmates, or a cat or dog. (Yes, I know. But it’s like this. I knew every pet in the village. Humans on the other hand, were Rex’s owner or Tareco’s girl.) Still, I was interested, in a way. And grandma had a gift for making stories interesting and infusing these very ordinary people with interest and color. Particularly because her memory often went back to their grandparents or great grandparents. And she wasn’t malicious. Sometimes disapproving, but not malicious. (If she made malicious comments, they went waaaaaaaay over my head at a point that I caught the hint, but knew she wouldn’t elaborate. Stuff like “And if you knew how his grandfather made his fortune.” Or “Well, they said her great grandmother was no better than she should be, but I never…” Sometimes, I really wanted those stories. After grandad’s death, while she was still in shock, I managed to get her to tell the story of a local family whose first ancestor in the village was a “dangerous sword-fighter” and “not a good man” and I got a feeling that, well, things we value in characters are certainly not how the village knew people. Or how they valued them.)

Sitting there, listening to grandma talk, to the daily life of people engaged in their own struggles, and how she wished to help this one, or convince that one to take it easier, or– And petting a kitten and sometimes the head of a dog that came to rest it on my knees, I could feel my own struggles: exams and college and ideologically motivated teachers and professors, and spiteful (and sometimes ideologically motivated) classmates and friends or ‘friends’ slip away. Leaving me a space to catch my breath, and just be. Until I had to face the outside again.

For years, while living in Colorado, the bolthole was Pete’s kitchen on Colfax, which is kind of funny, since for at least half of that time, it wasn’t in a particularly safe part of town. Also, it was technically a “low dive diner” frequented by working class people, but also marginal people. That was part of its charm. I could go there, usually with the family, and sit in the back, and soak in the noise and the busy and the various pieces of various lives I could overhear. And eat some souvlaki and rice pudding. And for a moment, the world was bearable.

My other respites, the first one from the beginning, the second only my last ten years there or so, were the Natural History Museum (Yes, it changed names. I’m not at home to their weird notions. rolls eyes.) And the zoo.

I’d walk slowly through the hallways devoted to the evolution of life on Earth, soaking in how small we were in relation to the immensity of time, and I’d feel better. And there were often interesting special exhibits.

Then there was the zoo, which particularly when it was cold and almost empty was like a very large garden with interesting animals as a side attraction.

It probably says something about our last years in Colorado that we ran away to those at least once a week. (Until the lockdown.) And older son and I would often drive through night for coffee at midnight at Pete’s. (Mostly because I wanted to talk plots, or stories, as it was getting harder and harder to write, for reasons that were probably physical.) By that time, nighttime at Pete’s was a who is who of area writers. I have no idea why. I mean, I know why for me, but not for others.

Now I’m far away from all my physical boltholes, and grandma’s house is gone. I mean, parts of it stand, but it’s not remotely the same. The room I was born in is now a bathroom, tiled in pink roses.

Going to Colorado this summer did my heart good, even if I paid for it physically, in having my auto immune go completely insane the moment I went to high altitude. (It got better when I came back down.) It’s good to know it’s still there. Look, yes, I knew it existed. But remember we left during 2021, lockdowns still in erratic existence, and everything plain weird. It’s not what it was. And Colorado Springs has changed beyond recognition, at least the downtown area that was my stomping grounds. But a lot of my hangouts are at least similar enough, it’s good to know they’re there, that people are enjoying them, even if I can’t.

I have memories. Both of grandma’s house, and of Denver, and of a couple of perfect days in Denver with the family. One when the kids were little and one when older son and I just couldn’t take “it” — house hunting (for us), apartment hunting (for him), short on money, waiting for house to sell, stressed over writing career in my case, and applications in his — sometime in 2015 and we went out for the afternoon, had a long walk in the zoo, under a drizzling rain (so rare in Colorado we didn’t have umbrellas,) then dinner at Pete’s. At the time we were both strict low carb, but we were bad and split souvlaki for desert. We sat in a small booth, up front (you could only sit in the corner booth if you had 4 or more people) and watched the street outside through the window stippled with rain drops. I don’t know why that particular afternoon was perfect. It just was, and thinking of it makes me feel better.

And of course, when I sleep I go to grandma’s house. That kitchen, with the (insufficient number of) blue-painted cabinets, and the huge table, is somewhere at the center of who I am. It’s probably where I’ll go when I die. And you can tell I feel it when I want to paint my kitchen cabinets blue and put a chicken mural on the dishwasher…

But I’m a writer. My boltholes aren’t always real places, or real memories.

Oh, I’m a reader too, but weirdly, I don’t often go to other people’s worlds to hide. Heinlein’s, sometimes. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Puppet Masters. Pratchett’s Hankmorpork. Simak’s rural places, in fall, with someone hunting raccoons.

But it’s more likely I’ll go to my own places, my own internal worlds. When I’m truly going insane, the world is often Elly, which is yes, very weird, very dysfunctional. But it’s been with me since I was 14, and I have 3000 years of its history in my head. (The rest is fuzzy.) And it’s so different from ours that I’m not in it at all, so I can go there and live for a moment a life that is not mine, and that is impossible to me.

Going away, even if only inside my head, gives me a few moments to breathe, so I can face reality again.

And its being inside my head means I can go any time (so long as I remember to come out again. there were years, while growing up when making myself do that was almost impossible.) I can take a much needed break while cleaning boxes or doing dishes, or sorting clothes.

Then come back refreshed to face the mess we’re in. Again.

I honestly think without those breaks, I’d already have gone insane. (Or at least “non-functionally insane” since these are the Crazy Years, and I haven’t taken and I’m not likely to take the solution of the “sane man” in those circumstances, you can tell I’m a little nuts myself.)

So, what’s your bolthole? Not physical. (Or physical, but not in the sense of where you go when SHTF. We don’t want that out in public anywhere.) Just the place you for a respite, so you can face the madness again.

Because these days? Everyone needs a bolthole.

157 thoughts on “Bolt Hole”

  2. I’m definitely lacking in boltholes these days.

    Most of San Francisco, for example, has changed for the worst. Closed stores. Lots of deferred upkeep in places. Far too many trustees of modern chemistry. The general air that if you’re not totally on board with everything, you’re not welcome there.

    Conventions…last one I went to, no longer my crowd. The gaming space for pen&paper RPGs has gotten extremely woke as a part of the Geek Culture Collapse since 2015-16. Most of the lines that I like are gone or went entirely digital. The few that remain are the Very Big Publishers.

    Comic books and general American graphic stories…don’t ask. Not unless you want me to violate WordPress TOS with a long profane rant about the Cancel Pigs and how they destroyed…well, comic books and most Western entertainment and how they’re still doing it…

    TV? Most network TV shows have become Dad programs (written for people my father’s age, so 55+ years old). Basic cable isn’t much better. Premium cable are trying to chase the next big lottery win. And the less said about the wallpaper paste that is streaming, the better.

    I don’t think I could stomach to buy anime these days, especially with the translation scandals coming out. Manga is a little better, but not by much outside of fan translations.

    A lot of the people I liked doing things with have left the area. And I’m not into what is around here.

    …so, it’s been rough finding the things that make me happy.

    1. The one nice nice about pen & paper RPGs is the ones you have can’t be corrupted by “updates,” and playing them again will usually result in something completely different happening.

      My wife and I are having issues finding new shows to watch. About the only actual new show we watch is The Rookie, and it’s jumped the shark so many times now we just follow along because we like the actors. The “new to us” stuff is almost all from 15-20 years ago, sometimes longer. Movies have become not just cr@p, but stuff so unappealing we can’t even convince ourselves to have a family night out with them, and especially at those prices.

      1. There’s a reason why I haven’t gotten rid of my phyiscal copies of movies or games, especially the classics.
        And most TV shows are being written by people that are idiots in general or specific, which is why I enjoyed “The Rookie” for the first season or two, but when the stupid plot points kept running up even more and more…I can barely make myself watch it.
        Movies…yea. Last movie I saw was “Ferrari,” and I think there are maybe six movies next year I want to see. Maybe.

        1. I saw an article recently about how some (younger?) folks are (RE)discovering a key thing about physical media: The/a streaming “service” can’t take it away.

          1. It’s the reason why I’m not on streaming services anymore (except Amazon Prime, which you don’t have a choice about). As long as I have an intact hard drive and a DVD player, I’ve got the shows I bought (for example, I still have Symbionic Titan, because I bought it before they took it off iTunes).

        2. Living in Mordor west, there are places. Santa Clara has the world’s best doughnut shop. Stans. You can buy a glazed that is so fresh that the glaze is still dripping from the warm doughnut.

          Then you can go across the street to the city’s central park, and watch the water foul in the large “pond”. You may hear/see the aquamaids practicing in the swim center that launched many swimmers in the golden age of Santa Clara swim history.

          Not a bad place to get your stress reduced. Each day is different, some days there are over 100 geese, others, only ducks and a lone coot. Sometimes a cormorant shows up to see if there are any fish in the pond. Or dogs expressing pure joy running in the field.

          The true secret of peace is to know that God invites me on an adventure. I have no idea what is going to happen. There just are strange diamonds of divine appointments that I find along my path. Yesterday, a clerk at Walgreens told me she always likes to ask me how I am, because I will tell her “Joyful.” I also make her think. So I go into the world expecting the unexpected, practicing my 3 goals:
          First, that I make everyone I meet more Joyful.
          Second, that I make people think.
          Third, that I reflect God perfectly to all I meet.

          All three paradoxic goals, since they are both possible and impossible. All gifts to bless others.

          1. Thank you so much for your post! “God invites me on an adventure” indeed! I like to say “every day is like Christmas” and it annoys some people. Every day is a gift from God; every day is an adventure! Some adventures are full of happy and trippy experiences and others darkness and danger. But all lead to heaven in the end!

            1. He invites me to join his adventure. That requires learning to listen. To be a disciple, you must learn how to listen. To learn, you must learn to listen.

                1. I just take dictation. It involves twisting my mind so it is a better receiver. I know it is God when my response is: “You want me to do What?”

                  We do find Him in suffering, it helps us pay attention. Still working of perfect trust. Today had to go to an area where parking is impossible, was almost certain to have to walk 3 blocks with rain coming, I prayed for a parking space. Found it. Perfect location. Rain started just as I returned to car.

                  Question from God. “Do you still not trust Me to provide?” He gives me what I need, not just what I want. Still buying lottery tix.

                    1. I “think”, (may be Word) He wants you to be as intimate with Him as you were with your grandmother. It isn’t about doing things for Him, but being present with Him. So in “ordinary” life knowing His presence. What I call “reflecting Him perfectly”.
                      Dean Koontz in his book , “One Door Away From Heaven” does a great job of describing that intimacy with what Koontz calls the “playful Presence” on pages 324-325 in one of my paperback copies. Different pages in the hardback.

      2. These days I have been able to find TV shows to enjoy. Lately The Murdoch Mysteries. We’d seen a couple of its 17 seasons, but life got in the way. I’ve also started watching Stargirl, which surprised me. I thought I’d hate it, but halfway through the first season, I’m liking it. Fight scenes are silly of course, but characters and story seem very interesting.

          2. Heard from a couple of people that Godzilla Minus One is the best Godzilla movie since the 1954 Japanese original (i.e. the original Japanese cut, not the later Americanized version).

          4. I’m glad I didn’t know it was subtitled before I went. I generally don’t like subtitled movies. It was good.

            I don’t know if it was the best Godzilla movie because it’s the only one I’ve seen.

      3. Well, this 71 year old gave up on network TV. The list of shows $SPOUSE and I watched was steadily getting shorter, with the last holdout NCIS. With the Gibbs character gone, we were getting tired of it, and when one season ended on a cliffhanger, we decided to bail. “Do we care what happens to the Gibbs-replacement?” “No.” “Agreed.”

        DVDs seem to be the best replacement for us. Brit mysteries (Midsomer Murders for the sheer insanity, and right now alternating with Vera). In spare moments, I’m watching tLotR movies, currently half way through The Two Towers. Seems I’ll watch a half hour or so at a time. Current H’wood content doesn’t appeal.

          1. The ‘zon doesn’t market a Region 1 DVD for Vera Season 11, but I got an affordable multiregion player and a Region 2 DVD. We went back to the beginning and are at Season 2.

            When the mood strikes, we have the full set of Bones to watch again.

                1. We gave up on the local (well, regional) PBS station. The Acorn-distributed disks advertise some other shows, including a detective series starring Peter Davidson (my second favorite Doctor. Tom Baker FTW!). No idea if it’s any good.

                  Foyle’s War was good, though the post-war episodes weren’t as enjoyable. (“Sam’s” fiance was likable, but the guy who played him as the husband was less so. Running on a Labor ticket was offputting. 🙂 ) OTOH, the post-war intrigue was interesting.

                  2. If the Peter Davison show is Campion, yes yes yes it is good.

                    Margery Allingham wrote the books, and they’re in every genre with the same series characters. Even sf.

                    1. The show that Acorn has been advertising in their discs is the 2003-7 The Last Detective. If they carry Campion, it’s not advertised there.

      4. I was just thinking that Ukraine versus Russia is starting to look like a “Twilight 2000” scenario.

    2. Anime has already begun the shift to AI translation. While I haven’t confirmed it yet, I suspect you’ll be able to find the AI stuff in locations that are maintained by the Japanese publisher, and not sites like Crunchyroll.

        1. Bandai’s already been putting their shows up on their YouTube channel. I don’t think Witch From Mercury is there right now. But a lot of their other shows are going up.

          I think there are a couple of others that already do, as well.

      2. (Buma voice) “Long live the Buma revolution! BANZAI!!”

        (Grin)

        -That- might not be as obscure as I first thought….

    4. I haven’t bought a new comic in years outside of a few crowd-funded efforts by William Tucci. I’ve been bolstering my comic library with back issues. My reading cutoff is some time in the 90s. (Actually I barely get into 2001 when it comes to Avengers comics, I stopped reading X-Men before the mediocre The Twelve storyline and the spider clone story killed the Spider-Man line even before that) (I did enjoy Blackest Night and if I don’t think too much about it World of New Krypton was intriguing on the DC side). I’m close to completion on my Avengers library, and old Spider-Mans will be next. That might be it for me. I can read Japanese so I have a few manga series but I don’t know enough to diversify. Maybe on our next trip back…

      We moved out of our isolated little town into another even more isolated little town because the former is being overrun with the weird people who love coffee shops and microbreweries too much. Voter fraud was enshrined as official state policy in the last midterms so it sort of feels like we’re going down with a sinking ship. If it were not for the lush, fertile world I built for myself to play in (a world that spans genres from sff to high school drama to spy stories) I’d have been driven to despondent depression years ago.

  3. I tend to fall back on music from my youth (especially Pink Floyd and Dire Straits), and funny stories (Temporary Insanity and Over the Edge by Jay Johnstone, How Much For Just the Planet? by John M. Ford, and Charlotte MacLeod cozy mysteries). Physically I haven’t really had one since I was in college and driving into Minot realized that it no longer felt like “home” anymore. If I need a safe space it’s usually just some silent, dark space where everyone will leave me alone.

    1. I ripped all of my CDs (and most of $SPOUSE’s — I skipped Sinatra and possibly Elvis), and the majority of those are on USB sticks for the two vehicles that use such. (The oldest one supports MP3 CD-ROMs, so that’s my solution.)

      Pink Floyd, Steeleye Span, P.D.Q. Bach, Beethoven among others. Was going through a box set of the Beach Boys last month, and I’ll probably bring up the Emerson, Lake & Palmer albums. My weekly shopping trips use 45 minutes each way, plus in-town driving. Since $SPOUSE stays home and takes care of the dog, it’s either my music or the radio, and when Rush passed away, I pretty much stopped the latter. (If Mark Steyn had taken the Rush Limbaugh slot, I might have stayed with AM radio for the trip into town. Don’t care for the trio who got that slot.)

      1. We ripped all our CD’s too. Would like to add to those, but the old method doesn’t work with current windows (probably would if I really wanted to figure it out. Nope.) We are using free Spotify on the phones for when we have coverage. No coverage, we probably have music off anyway because of where we are at.

        TV shows. I tape what I can. Rest is on Paramount+ (I know CBS, sigh. But Trek.) and Netflex (Wednesday) Tape all the NCIS, will see what replaces NCIS LA, given the hint at the end of the final (it isn’t NCIS Australia). Started watching the wildfire show, dropped it. Dark Wind (Leaphorn & Chee), Joe Picket, based on the books. Also the Alaskan Newspaper show that covers missing natives.

        Otherwise, my place is – Reading. Often old favorites.

      2. I ripped all of our CDs years ago. Other than some Mercy Me and Matthew West we don’t buy music anymore. I copied most of out VHS over to DVD a few years ago. And we have a bunch of DVDs of TV we used to watch.

      3. Ripped my CDs years ago, but I still have most of them (the few I don’t have…short version was that I had some hard-to-find stuff in my car when it was stolen and the thieves threw it out when they took it).
        I back up my music collection every year, day before Christmas. And I won’t give up my physical CDs on this side of the grave.

        1. Had everything stolen out of the car (forgot to lock it). Before flash drive mp3 (and the ones we have now are tiny, dang near invisible, and difficult to pull out) had CD’s. Jokes on the thief. They were self burned CD’s. Lost maybe $5 on CD’s and cases. OTOH still miss that good jacket that was in the car (not that it’d fit now, but still). Haven’t had the cars hit since.

          1. I had a summer job at a steel company in $BIG_CITY’s ghetto neighborhood. The built-in speaker for my ancient MG’s radio packed it in, and Brit-electric replacements were unicorns, so I took a small bookshelf speaker (from a dorm stereo–replaced it with larger speakers the next year) and used it, with it riding behind the seats.

            The MG with the original soft top took seconds to break into, and somebody got the speaker and a cheap wide-brimmed hat I’d sewn a hat band on. Neither one was expensive, and losing the hat was the most annoying. (I had the second speaker, after all.) That was just before I found somebody selling a hard-shell top for the car. That fixed the easy break-in problem.

            Never quite figured out what the value of one stereo speaker was…

            Haven’t had break-ins since, though I’m cautious to paranoid when I do my Medford trips. The coolers (one with food, the other filled with small stuff from Costco) go to the hotel room, and the Subaru Forester is as generic as a car can get, at least for that area. (And Flyover Falls, but thieves could target the occasional pickup truck with an open, but full bed. OTOH, the CCW take rate is high, making for a Heinleinian “polite society”. That and big dogs in the bed…)

            1. We’ve always had a lockable canopy on any pickup we owned. Not that being locked particularly kept anything in the back safe. But then on our trips we were mostly worried about bears. Depending on where we were going, coolers behind locked cab doors weren’t particularly safe (California). Yellowstone/Teton bears don’t break into cars or canopies. Though rumor is a grizzly that will go after dogs left in closed (not sure locked or not matters) canopies that hangs around Old Faithful.

              1. That was the weirdest thing about going to a Yellowstone-adjacent summer camp this last year. “Wait, your bears don’t rip open cars like tin cans?” “Wait, your bears do?“

          2. My car was stolen out of my locked garage because the landlord didn’t lock his and the neighborhood kids just kicked through the sheet rock into everyone else’s. I found my car, along with four other stolen cars, dumped behind the trailer court down the street. 1,200 miles in two days, ripped up interior, knife holes in the roof, broken stick shift knob, and missing my demon jacket with 5” buck knife in the pocket, and three dozen cassettes. I’ve replaced most of them over the years with CDs, but I’ve never found some of the old Ventures albums again. Sure, the various songs, but it’s not the same.

        2. I’ve been looking at the maybe 500 LPs on shelves in the living room. Many years ago, I recorded 100 records onto cassette onto a long defunct recorder, but I now have the bits and pieces to convert to mp3. (I think I did it when I took a week off when I changed jobs. My car was in the shop, so Plan A was out the window, and the cassettes were Plan B for the time.)

          I have to do the recording/conversion in the shop; current tastes in music is Country, and Kat-the-dog objects to anything else. That and bouncy floors. Pretty sure I have suitable software, but it’ll be one record every few days, most likely.

          There are some gems in there. A full set of the Ring Cycle, a Beatles box set (all the UK albums), Keith Emerson before ELP. Plus my favorite driving song: “Radar Love”. 🙂

          1. There’s a couple of USB turntables on Amazon that have good reviews, which you can buy and make copies of your LPs directly.
            And you can make friends by offering to bring your turntable over to do the same for their records.

            1. I have the medium-high-end turntable (a Linn Sondek) from the Uncle-[Redacted]-Memorial Stereo system (he died intestate, so the old fight between my father and his parents didn’t register. Sigh, Family!). Pyle has a phono-to-line adapter, and Berenson has a line input to MP3 output adapter. Add a decent preamp (which I have), and I’m good, though it’s not portable. At all.

              It’s been 25 years since the Linn has been powered up, so I might have to change some parts. Will have to give it a try. My no-longer golden ears won’t notice minor changes in quality if the phono pickup is funky. Major changes, we’ll see. OTOH, $SPOUSE’s Technics turntable worked fine a few years ago (same issues, though it’s direct drive vs belt).

          2. My parents bought one of those turntable to mp3 devices and copied a few hundred albums, and nearly a thousand 45s. Unfortunately it didn’t play 78s. And after they ripped everything they could they sold them off.

  4. I run the California highway system through my head. PCH, that’s 1… Eagle Rock, 2… Beach Boulevard, 39… etc. It helps me when I can’t get to sleep, and I find it soothing for some reason. I resorted to it when I was cooling my heels in the airport over the holidays, as well. I moved out of California a few months ago, but I don’t think I will ever stop doing this.

    I think of my grandparents’ home often, as well.

  5. Louis L’Amour books. It doesn’t really matter which ones, as I’ve read 90%+ of them. I lock myself in my room and read comforting stories of the rugged hero who might be sore and tired to the bone, but keeps on doing the right thing anyway.

  6. Novels. I go to fictional worlds, mine or someone else’s, whatever works in the moment.

    Sometimes music works. Lately, I’ve been obsessing over sea shanties, with their hints at exploring unknown worlds and passing mentions of rounding the Horn, returning from the Kamchatka sea, and waiting for the groceryman to show with sugar, tea, and rum (looking at you Wellerman-what a great song) .

    1. Have a steampunk version of shanty for travel to other worlds! (Abney Park has more, including a steampunk pirate album)

      2. This resonates with my current re-read of Heinlein’s Space Cadet. I’ve just read the part where an older Patrol person explains Martian “two worlds” to Matt. Very cool.

  7. I’ve got a tropical island, probably South Pacific. The air and water are warm, and it’s got a very nice beach. I sit on that beach and drink Mai Tais and watch the waves. Sometimes I’ll ride a motorcycle on the island’s one road. Sometimes I’ll have other things to do. Sometimes I lay in my house there and listen to a tropical rain drum on the roof.

    I first discovered the place shortly after my mother died. It’s been a great help since, from time to time.

  8. You know what, I think it might be cooking.

    I looked up what soulvakia was, and I think I can make it in a skillet on the stove. Cheapish pork cut, tzatziki sauce and store bought pita.

    And apparently you can grill pinaple and bananas the same what you do the soulvakia, so grill those up for a dessert.

    Have Abuela andy brother over for dinner with the rest of the family seems nice.

    And since we are talking pork, yogurt, cucumber and bananas, it shouldn’t be that expensive.

      1. Yes 🙂

        I always find it a bit humorous when I’m reminded certain Asian countries use ‘garlic-eater’ as a racial slur, and I’m like, your loss, not mine. 🙂

  9. My house is usually my safe space. And my garden. But in the winter I really suffer because I can’t get out into the sunshine. We are saving up to build a sunroom. But I don’t know if that will ever happen. I have sun lamps but they work better for my plants than for me. My work at the library is also generally calming as I have created a pretty comfy environment here and even middle school libraries are kind of chill places.

    Except for helping kids find books, going out amongst people is not my way to relax AT ALL. But I do go to my parish church and putter around with the plants there as I am in charge of them. Obviously, I need to do that when no activities are going on, so it’s just me and my Creator and the plants being all cozy. It is quite calming for me. I also head to the deep forest if I am able. Or even just any flower garden or patch of plants.

    If I am under severe stress, I tend to binge read Tolkien. It is helpful to recall how other Hobbits were able to overcome great trials and tribulations.

    I am not the kind of person who will ever be called upon or expected to “do great deeds” or rally others or anything like that. But someone has to feed the troops, wash the clothes, change the beds, and tend the wounded. That would be me. I am also a believer in prayer and fasting to provide spiritual strength to those in danger. So I endeavor to do my bit and not stress about doing more. If I’m needed for something, I always get a brick to the back of my head to get my attention.

    1. Seconded on all fronts. I can’t work in the garden this time of year, but I still have plenty of preserving projects to do this year (last year’s garden was incredibly productive). My house is a refuge, albeit one that needs significant upgrades soon – I live with my parents, and my hope is to get most major projects out of the way before I move out (I maintain a small hope that someday I’ll find someone to marry).
      Music is also a refuge – I love to play and to listen. Especially sacred music. I wish I was still the music coordinator for my congregation – that was the best calling ever – but I’m . . . content, I suppose. I could wish for less necessary church meetings and more actual worship, but someone needs to do the planning . . .
      Also, I’m a martial artist, and doing difficult physical things is an excellent way to forget about the world’s problems for a while. It helps me focus on the current moment.
      That being said, I think I’M the refuge/safe space for a lot of the people in my life. A really weird realization to come to, but I’m the one that feeds people when they’re sick, physically or spiritually, listens when people need a sympathetic ear, and keeps things running smoothly when crises happen.

  10. When the wife and I were first dating, we had season passes to Disneyland. (Yes, I am aware of how horribly Woke they have become. Leave me my memories.)
    We could occasionally catch a rainy day, when the crowds were thin. The park is filled with many small spots to stop and talk, surrounded by a thousand and one things to talk about. The background music, the atmosphere and the fresh hot popcorn.
    Young love in what was a magical place, in the rain? Yeah, that’s my bolthole. No one and nothing can touch me there.

      1. Last time we went to Disney LA was ’93 with our 4 year old. Disney Florida in ’97 with our then 8 year old. Both in the winter. Both were wet and “cold” for their respective locations. Us Oregonian’s, warm wet is not a problem. Guess what. When it parade time the lines at space mountain are were short. We must have rode that thing half a dozen or so times after the first night. We always meant to go back to Florida, if only to go to Cape Kennedy and the museum, again. Never have.

  11. I have series that I reread and drop into which there is no way real me belongs in. But just the other day I was thinking of your short story about the colonists that had to be gene spliced to an amphibian form. That world sounded like fun actually.

  12. My bolt hole used to be a small tourist railroad (won’t name it, but AFAIK it’s one of the few left that’s all steam all the time). Grew up riding it, and finally moved back to the area so I’m once again close enough that I can visit whenever I want.

    The train itself, and the picnic grove partway up the line, used to be the places were I could go and get away from it all and find peace and quiet. Alas, the place has changed, and IMO not for the better. It’s become retooled towards tourists and “kiddiefied” to the point where it has an actual mascot, as in a poor schmuck who has to wander around all day in the blazing sun wearing one of those costumes that belongs on the sidelines/stands at a professional sporting event. And its usually overrun with adults glued to their cellphones who won’t control their screaming children, so good luck finding any semblance of peace or tranquility.

    Now I either find a grade crossing to park next to where I can listen to the whistle (and is there any sound more hauntingly beautiful than a steam locomotive’s whistle?) and watch the train go by, or just retreat into whatever fantasy I’ve cooked up inside my head. Increasingly the latter (because the train only runs on the weekends and it’s ****ing cold this time of year!), even though I recognize that it’s REALLY not healthy.

    1. To clarify: the train only runs weekends in the late fall through mid-spring/early summer. In season it runs seven days a week. But my point about it being ****ing cold this time of year still stands. I’ll do a lot to hear a steam locomotive’s whistle, but freezing my butt off ain’t one of them. Barring special circumstances, of course.

    2. Reading, always reading. Painting helps but reading is my one true love, my safe haven, my bolt hole. Books of course, but lately fanfiction for some reason, good to fair fanfiction. As much as the new Star Wars Trilogy is hated and mocked I know I’m probably opening myself up to ridicule, but I fell head over heals in love with Reylo and that ship is one of my favorites.

      1. Honestly, we enjoyed a lot about the new trilogy. Yes, they screwed up, but in very different ways than the prequel trilogy. Lots of room for improvement, but I think part of the major issue with the third was that they had planned to feature Carrie Fisher and then they had to scramble because of their self-imposed deadline to come up with a new plot. If they’d just held off for a year it would have been a better movie.

        1. Oh I’m well aware of the problems those movies had, I’m not denying them, they rushed like you said. But I really don’t get alot of the complaints I see about the sequel trilogy. I mean I hate woke nonsense as much as anyone here, but I really didn’t see it crammed so much into the movies that it ruined them. You had people saying Rey was a stupid woke grrrl power boring overpowered Mary Sue AND that her trying to save Ben Solo from the Dark Side was teaching women and girls to be weak doormats to abusers, ummm which is it?
          Sorry, like I said I fell hopelessly in love with both characters, they and the sequel trilogy could have been MUCH better written and plotted but thats why I like fanfiction.

  13. My boltholes have generally been video games. I’ve been a PC-exclusive gamer since about 1988, never owned a Nintendo, Playstation, or Xbox of any kind. All my gaming has been on PC. My favorites have been some shooters (mostly Battlefield) and RPGs/MMORPGs. I’m bad at multiplayer shooters so I tend to get upset with myself and rage out, though I do that a lot less these days now that I’m old (57). But I’ve generally found my refuse in games like Everquest, World of Warcraft, and more recently Final Fantasy XIV. I can turn my brain off and just zone out doing mindless quest grinding, or perhaps mentally write some roleplay in my headcanon involving my characters. (Sadly, actual roleplay on MMOs is harder and harder to find.)

    I also have been super-heavy into Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077. I like games with well-imagined worldbuilding and both of those, especially CP2077, do that. CP2077 is a very bleak and nihilistic story at times but the world of Night City is beautifully built, the characters are memorable, and the gameplay is fun and shooty.

    Other than that, I’ll take a nap. In my fifties, I have learned to appreciate the power of a good Nap.

    1. I’ll second the video games.

      Hyrule (especially the most recent version) is a great place to just … ride around on a horse, watching the scenery.

      1. I had an N64 as a kid and Ocarina of Time is still one of my absolute favorites. I wish I had the money to revisit Hyrule again.

  14. We have a camper named Serenity, and a truck to tow her called Captain Mal. When I am stressed I think about being snuggled in the camper, reading and listening to the rain on the metal roof, or coming back after a day of fishing and having a cool drink and a hot grilled steak. Our Serenity represents freedom, and exploration. I am refreshed thinking about where we’ve traveled, and have yet to travel. She’s my bolt hole.

  15. My main bolt hole – to some extent both physical and mental – is the land my parent’s own in the mountains. It was part of a larger section that my great aunt owned, and I have been going up there all my life for over 50 years. In 2020 due to declining health (and, of all things, The Plague) I started going out there once a month for a week and have done so for the last 3.5 years. It is 90 acres of glorious meadows and trees – and no people.

    When I am not there, my refuge is my Japanese sword martial arts class. No matter how hard or bad of a day I have had, training removes me from the world and grounds me.

      1. I actually practice Iaijutsu, the art of the quick draw. But from watching kendo and other practitioners, any martial art is loads of fun – it does require effort, but so does anything of value.

        1. I took a a few Jeet Kun Do and other Martial Art classes but that was years ago when i weighed less.

          1. I did not start (really, other than a couple of college classes) until my mid-forties. It really is never too late, even it is not in what one started in – for example, based on what I know now, I suspect my ability to start something very physical like Tae Kwon Do would be limited.

  17. Mine was baseball. Is, but was. And now I have to up and analyze this. Okay, here goes.

    Baseball hit(s) all the right buttons with me. It satisfies my liking for games and competition. It has deep and rich history to study. It has the statistical component that allows for rabbit-hole analysis, that the pros have gotten very serious about in the last few decades in chasing down how to play the game better, but which is nowhere near limited to that. For eight years, baseball was my second writing career, and I enjoyed it at least as much as I had enjoyed writing SF.

    Then, like so many other things, it was destroyed in 2020. At least at the professional level, and at least for me.

    The problem was not entirely Commissioner Rob Manfred’s politicization — or perhaps the better term would be partisanization — of Major League Baseball, but when he decided that you can’t spell MLB without BLM, that’s when I knew I had to walk away. His egregious yanking of the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to punish the state of Georgia for instituting a little election integrity showed me I was right, and that I would not be looking back. (It also showed me a lot of allied companies, by the current peculiar definition of “allyship,” who lost my custom by their stands.) My baseball writing gig had gone away, the website suspending publication when baseball locked down and never returning, which made it not easier but more practical to make the clean break.

    It still hurts me to the core, but when the limb is gangrenous, there is one solution.

    My solace is that professional baseball is not the entirety of baseball. I watched some Japanese baseball while a high-number cable channel showed them. I’ve taken a couple road trips to college baseball tournaments in the last couple of years, and if the stars align I’ll go to Omaha this June for the College World Series. There’s also high-school ball. I can walk a quarter-hour from my home to the high school my nephews attend to watch the Roberson Rams … who just happened to win the state championship last year.

    It isn’t the refuge it was, but there is still a refuge away from the overrun refuge. When all is winter, I can still do as Rogers Hornsby did: look out the window and wait for spring.

    1. Ah baseball. I’ve lost my enthusiasm for sports, but have always loved baseball. I hope to visit Cooperstown this summer on an offshoot of my trip to LibertyCon. Most of the changes I have reconciled myself to, even the DH, but the brouhaha over the shift drives me nuts. Don’t make rules against it, just insist that the overpaid morons swing a little late once in a while and hit it the other way. If they’re giving you half the infield, hit it there. You don’t have to change much. Just do it a dozen times, and they’ll give up on the shift and let you go back to hitting the way you want. Sigh.

      1. The greatest shame of the ’93 strike is that, I swear, Tony Gwynn would have hit .400 that year. He ended at .394 and was, unbelievably pushing his average even higher when the strike came.

      2. You’re tempting me toward a fresh rant on all of the rules changes. I will resist the temptation save to say this: I think Rob Manfred could do a better job of improving the game if he didn’t need to be seen as improving the game. If the reform is a subtle touch to restore balance, he isn’t interested.

        Okay, I’ll add this. A Commissioner of Baseball should love baseball. I am not convinced Rob Manfred even likes baseball. It’s just the corporation he’s running. He’s like Bob Iger, only with a different ratio of profit-seeking to agenda-pushing.

    2. I gave up on MLB after the ‘93 strike. But there’s an independent league team in town that’s been fairly successful and fun to attend. I still like reminiscing about the old pre-strike days.

      2. Ah, the independent leagues — back before Rob Manfred messed that up too. Back when I lived in New Jersey, I spent years as a fan of the Somerset Patriots, going to several games a year. They’re a Double-A team now, after Manfred applied the reform sledgehammer, but back then they were still a great time and the class of the Atlantic League. I could even mention the extraordinarily well-known person I saw throwing out the first pitch at the league’s All-Star game one year. (Hint: he arrived and departed by helicopter.)

        I responded to the 1994 strike by striking the 1995 season, but they served out the sentence I imposed and I was back in ’96. It would take something immense to get me back to MLB now. I can hope for it. I cannot expect it.

      3. Independent baseball FTW. I was a season ticket holder for the St. Paul Saints for several years, including their first year in the new downtown St. Paul stadium. Then I got fired as a fan. Also, the city of St. Paul decided to turn off-peak street parking into a revenue stream. I have been to maybe three games in the last eight years, and none since the Saints became a AAA affiliate of the Twins. Still, there’s always Town Ball. I’ve watched a lot of that, even back in the day when my beloved Saints were out of town. And it’s been interesting to see how players can progress. Forex, I first saw Caleb Thielbar playing Town Ball for the Northfield Knights, then as a rookie for the Saints. He’s been in and out of The Show for a decade or so now, initially and currently with the Twins.

          1. Cool. I made a couple of road trips to Fargo to take in Saints away series vs. the Hawks. Also to Sioux Fall for series vs the Canaries, uh, Pheasants, uh, Canaries. Never made it to Sioux City, to my chagrin.

    3. Baseball was one of the sports that I could enjoy without feeling odd about it, because it was a sport played by reasonably-sized people in a reasonably-sized place with reasonably-sized rules.

      (I also wore through two copies of The Umpire Strikes Back and just how the game used to be…)

      I even worked for a season as an intern with the Oakland A’s. And got to explore so much of the Oakland Coliseum that I can still recall parts of it.

      Sometime around the same time as you, I just lost any joy for the game. I went to an A’s game for Mom’s memorial on her birthday this year and we had a Skybox and a good view and…the joy was gone. The A’s got their butts kicked. The stadium was worn out and should have been replaced years ago. You couldn’t blame the team for moving to Vegas considering how the City of Oakland treated them.

  18. My house is my refuge.

    During the summer I go out in my garden or putter in the greenhouse. Watch the bees in the flowers or put seeds in the ground.

    During the winter I read my books, or write them. No one here but me.

    Since I bought this house I find myself less and less inclined to go out in public, although I have to eventually or I end up pulling my hole in after me and indulging depressive fantasies.

  19. My basic default is books. My MiL still doesn’t understand why we keep so many books on hand, even though I’ve explained to her that when I read 200+ books a year, most of them will be repeats.

    But there’s also camping (Scouting has been very helpful for that), hiking (same), and various acts of creation. Many of which are difficult due to that whole “have to clean a space so I can use it” factor.

    As a side note, it’s a pity that you’re so sensitive to altitude. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West Museum in Cody sounds right up your alley. Five museums around a central area: Natural History, Buffalo Bill (of course), Plains Indian, Western Art (whole day right there, dang), and Firearms (originally held by the Winchester company.) Somebody compared it to a Smithsonian and I’d say it has a similar feel without the crowding.

    1. There’s something really wonderful about revisiting an old much beloved book isn’t there?

    2. But there’s also camping (Scouting has been very helpful for that), hiking (same),
      ……………….

      100% Though we’ve done the camping/hiking long before we were involved with Scouting. We still get away to western national parks/monuments and more famous state parks. Have no interest of going to historical sites back east or the bigger cities (not 100% true, but hubby doesn’t, so it’ll wait. If never happens? Oh well.) Not camping anymore, not with the RV (long trips) or tent. We hotel it. For us RV/truck VS hotel is break even when fuel is around $2.00/gal (hotel wins at any higher per gallon cost. But we only need one room.) Tent camping? When did the ground get so dang hard, to sleep on, and get up off of? Asking for a friend. OTOH our standards are well below the Hilton and the inside the park hotels (come on, we upgraded from a backpacking tent, and a small RV. Our standards are is it clean, and does it have a shower? It is a place to sleep. Pet friendly is just a bonus, because less of a hassle.)

      1. My husband doesn’t hate camping, but he’s not often in shape to enjoy it. (Doesn’t sleep well even at home, needs the CPAP, and so forth—he’d do better with a remote cabin.)

  20. Much like Sarah, my bolthole has always been either books or daydreams, made-up stories in my head. When I retreated there, the world itself and all the characters in it, including the one I was imagining myself as, had to have plausible backgrounds and reasons for doing things.

    I guess, thinking about it now, I’ve been writing for years, I just never bothered to let my weird stories out of my mind. In a weird way, the antics of certain people who like to put a ‘D’ after their names a couple of years ago and got me thinking about how it would have been if Texas never joined the U.S. pushed the writing into physical form. (Well, electronic form, at least. Still need to figure out the whole dead tree thing.)

  21. The only thing that works anymore is the great outdoors. Even the local park can do it, but for a real immersion into my place without words? The outdoors, regardless of weather, but the worse the weather the better. Sleet works well.

    And for a bit of encouragement as we watch the West disintegrate: Ashli Babbitt’s husband, working with Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch, have filed a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit against those responsible–the federal govt, I guess.

    There will be a Reckoning.

  22. My own bolthole is writing my books. When it all becomes too much, I can retreat to a world where I can control things – even if I am writing about things like … oh, devastating hurricanes, the potential deaths of loved ones, war, drama and all the rest of it. The imaginary world of my own books is a certain mental refuge.
    Oddly enough, in dreams I often go to my grandmother’s house, too. The little white cottage on South Lotus, in Pasadena, California, where we could sit on Grandma Jessie’s swing under the avocado tree, and breath in the scent of citrus blossoms, and look up and see snow on the highest peaks of Mount Wilson.
    https://celiahayes.com/archives/4318

  23. My own bolthole is the Buffyverse. It’s my current “special interest” so it serves as what one Youtuber calls “eye sparkles” and also as a “stim” to help with emotional regulation.

      1. Some people only need to come up for air. And I would like to watch that series again, but first we need to replace the optical drive in the Xbox (which we use as a media server.)

  24. I wrote a poem called The Homeless Wanderer when I was 16 because that’s the way it is. Where I live used to be called The City in Motion because if I didn’t go somewhere for 6 months, when I returned, it had all been moved. I mean literally moved. I have actually watched the mountains laid low and the valleys filled in. My high school best friend moved away before our senior year, and I wrote him once, “Remember that house where you used to live, on the hill in the avocado grove? Well, the house isn’t there anymore, and the avocado grove isn’t there anymore, and the hill isn’t there anymore.”

    The ranch where I spent the most memorable years of my youth, where I used to shoot rabbits on our front lawn with my Dad’s old single-shot .22 long rifle is now unrecognizably configured into a resort of time-share condos.

    I’ve lived in the same place for 38 years, but everything around it has changed many times over. Hopefully I won’t be driven to the solution I imagined for the protagonist in my story, A Hearth for Ulysses: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZTJZ9D1.

    “Here is a key to a house far away,
    where I used to live as a child.
    They torn down the building when I moved away,
    and left the key unreconciled.”

    Fortunately or unfortunately, “The mind is its own place and can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.”

    Still, every day when I say grace, I’m sincerely grateful that I can live in a land and a time of wonders, of abundant food and hot showers, where one can go anywhere one wants, even one where I can communicate with people the world over in my own native language and have hundreds of books, and instantly look up things I don’t know. What an unimaginable paradise we live in! May it have many centuries, but I intend to enjoy my limited time here and use whatever gifts I possess to convince my people to continue their glorious existence and make it better rather than give it up.

    “There’s a reason for the world.
    You and I”

    2. I still have my key to my childhood home. It’s a very old fashioned “skeleton key” for a 1920s art decco glass-knob lockset.

      The place was built and expanded by residents over about 150 years, few of whom knew what they were doing. And so far out of town that “what’s a building code” was a theme and punchline. I labored endlessly as the “handyman” of the family keeping it going.

      The house is long gone, torn down well after we left. Died of old age and disrepair. The backyard walnut tree remains.

      But I still have the key, and some b&w photos I took with an ancient Brownie camera.

  25. I really want my apartment to be a refuge, but… it’s too crowded; with furniture, with tools, with plants, with projects I don’t have room to do.

    The funny part is, this didn’t bother me all that much until I moved a bunch of the stuff (that wasn’t mine) out.

    I’m hopeful, that when I am able to move the rest of the stuff that’s no mine out, There will be room to do the projects, and then it will be a refuge.

  26. I just realized I forgot I had a second bolthole…my car. I fell in love with driving in college when I would just go on long random drives to escape the stress and take in the beautiful scenery in the part of Virginia where I attended. After I got out on my own, I would literally take entire weeks off from work and just…drive. Like, DC to Alabama and back over six or seven days, rarely stopping anywhere along the way except motels at night. Mostly avoiding Interstates, just driving for the sake of seeing different things even if they weren’t scenic. I love to drive. Whenever SheSellsSeashells and I go anywhere, I drive. I prefer to do it and she gets to relax and rest.

    I don’t do random road trips much anymore now that I’m older and married, my car has 130,000 miles on it, and the aches and pains come after a while behind the wheel, not to mention $3/gallon gas. But should I ever get a new ride, it will be something that drives well…sporty, but not harsh, like the Mazda I have now (we love Mazdas for various reasons). And I will maybe re-discover the joy of the open road.

    1. $3 a gallon? You must live in paradise! Here it’s $4.40 or more. Some stations are over $5.00 again.

      On the other hand, I needed to go shopping today and there was a big sale display near the front doors. How amazing is it that you can drive 3 miles in less than 10 minutes and get fresh pineapples in January for 39¢ a pound?

      1. We are currently at $3.18/gallon. Even paid $2.18 last week (4x fuel points Friday’s at Fred Meyers was very good to us last month. -$1/gallon earned 3x’s.)

        My sister and BIL do the driving tours. Their last major trip was Eugene to Yellowstone, which was freeway. Cody, Niagara Falls, New York, DC, some CW national park sites, to start of Route 66, all back roads until Route 66. South on Route 66, then they came north through the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, then home. They drive a hybrid Toyota Corolla (not plug-in variety). Lessons. Very few places where they actually used the electric mode because usually at higher speeds where gas mode kicked in. They’ve already done one Eugene, Yellowstone, Beartooth, Little Big Horn, Rushmore, Rocky Mountain, Utah parks, south to Houston, east to N. Orleans, then back west home. Planned trip is Eugene, south, east along the gulf coast to Florida, down to the Florida Keys and Everglades, then reverse by different route back west and home. They don’t have a particular itinerary, often finding hotels that same day. The only exception was when they went to N. Orleans, only because they expected to get there Labor Day weekend. Their days are 6 – 8 hours, driving, max.

        Driving tours, in the grand scale that they do isn’t for us. For no other reason that I tend to get sick, every single time we try the long distance driving trips (even the one that took 5 days to get to Eugene to *Phoenix, and 9 days from Phoenix back home). I can barely deal if we keep the driving to about 6 hours with breaks. The final kick home gets me every single time.

        ((*)) 2015 Winter Golf trip. Eugene to first hotel. Guys played golf in the morning (I worked, yea Wifi). Drive to next hotel further down road. Repeat until in Scottsdale. Saturday move into time share condo. Guys spend the week playing golf. I couldn’t work 🙂 (Wifi was lousy.) Next Saturday start our trip north through Lake Havasu (were BIL and his wife had a snowbird location), then Utah parks, and eventually home through Bend, the following Sunday. We are repeating part of this mid-February. Difference? I am flying down to meet hubby. Trip home won’t be on a time schedule because neither of us are working anymore. Pepper isn’t going to be happy. She is staying home. Hubby gets to remember what it is like to not have her along. (Yes. Could fly with her without charge. I am not, for a number of reasons.)

          1. When someone from Orlando overheard we were taking the morning to go to Cape Canaveral, expecting to be back for the park in the evening, they were shocked. “It is clear across the state!” Blink. Double check mileage. “It’s 55 miles” that is from downtown. Little more than an hour each way because of stopping to pay the tolls. (Which were a surprise to us. Only place we’ve experienced tolls is entrance to national parks. Good thing we actually had cash.) We weren’t flying 3000 miles to not take in where there were space rockets. Come on, drove from Disney CA down to San Diego and back in one day, and it is a whole lot further than 55 miles (meet up with SIL and her two kids).

    2. (Checks odometer)

      347,000

      “Road Trip!!”

      (Singing) “Take me out, to the black. Tell ’em I ain’t comin’ back. You can’t take the drive from me. You cant take the drive from me…”

      The song is funnier when I am road tripping to a Cowboy Action Shooting match, thus wearing Mal-ish garb.

      1. The highway sings a thrilling song
        Of rubber, oil, and gas, a Siren song that calls to many a young lad or lass . . .

  27. Writing is my bolthole, and reading science and/or archaeology, or really good history. For some reason I’ve been having trouble getting into fiction as an escape, although I think I know part of “why” on that one.

    Physical bolthole is hiking, especially new-to-me terrain that is not flat. It can be rolling, it can be steep, just not flat.

    1. My brain seems to have turned on for fiction two days ago, which praise G-d for. It was hard turned off, so all fiction was a slog and effort. And no, I don’t KNOW why.

    2. I know when things are bad, because my writing speeds up.

      A lot.

      And the subject matter gets weird.

      (Seriously, I’m trying to write A Solist In Rome and for some reason I am writing two other stories. Including one where I’m having to write lesbian sex scenes because they’re important in context…)

      I’m working on three stories now. The only time when it was this bad was just after I got fired last year and Mom got in really bad shape mid-May/early-June. So I am a little stressed…

  28. My bolthole is generally reading, especially “I could put this in a book” type reading; either fiction or history/ecology Neat Stuff. Also beading, fanfic writing, and watching anime, but I haven’t had much time or energy for either of those for… ugh, months now.

    At least I got my brain started back into “writing the missing draft pieces/editing”.

    …Also AMVs. I love a good AMV – there are some great Owl City ones.

  29. My bolthole is YouTube videos of 1970s game shows — particularly, Match Game and Hollywood Squares — because they have groovy theme songs, and they remind me of the days when I was a kid and didn’t have to go to school (summer, Christmas break) and didn’t have a care in the world. And I “get” many of Paul Lynde’s zingers better now than I did then.

  31. To rest, I wander back through my vast internal storehouses of classical music performances past.

    That, and we moved (again) into vastly better housing than the first go-around in this new region in which we find ourselves. The physical bolthole is much improved.

  32. Bolthole? I am old enough to know I won’t survive a real SHTF event, so I just assume it won’t happen.

      1. Although it does sum up that the establishment papers have a lengthy track record of being wrong. The Babylon Bee, nominally a satire publication, is far more reliable as a news source than establishment. Or as some call it “America’s Newspaper of Record”.

          1. I think you’re correct. I used it because it ignored what was following. Which I claim to do to hide my terror.

  35. My escape from the daily minutiae has always been reading.

    For several years now I have kept a yearly spreadsheet of books read, listing author, series if one, title, do I own it, or is it library or KU, and a rating. I do this because I can no longer remember everything or everyone I’ve read and liked. I often re-read favorite series, but I also find new authors I like and then will read thru every book in a series by them.

    I would not say that 2023 was particularly stressful, but I logged 434 books read to the end, mostly fiction. I think 360 was my previous high count.

    I also maintain a personal Authors To Avoid list, the intro to which states: “Because I did not like their style, stories, plots, editing, ignorance, incompetence, or the fact it was, or was not, Tuesday. To be added to as discovered.”

    Occasionally I will read thru that list and chuckle at my own explanations for why an author was so honored. (At least two concluded with “Needs a new job.”)

    My motto? “Life is too short to read crappy authors’ books.”

    1. Some folks, you want to give them one of those Vo-Tech flyers or free barroom matchbooks that say “Be a welder!”

    2. Bolthole? As in mental retreat/cave/sanctuary?

      Hanging out here, and a few other places.(grin)

      Road trip!

      Workshop/library.

      When your mood hits the fan, head for the bolthole.

  36. My home is a sanctuary from the storm most of the time. The mountains are as well. And of course reading has long been a way for me to escape.

  37. Not only do I have a great store of moments of places and times in my memories, and my fiction, and favourite stories I can re-read….

    I also have put quite a few years into building a community around me that I can relax in. That’s part of why we moved to Tiny Town, TX – and though the community has grown all out of what we originally envisaged, it’s all good. Today, my love and I cooked for … I think 11 people showed up tonight… and we had enough leftovers to send home for people who didn’t make it.

    Tomorrow, we’ll go out for breakfast with a couple other people, and maybe later, I’ll grab Kortnee and we’ll either bitch about Works in Progress and stories not in progress over Vietnamese/Korean/Sushi (it’s one of those cash-only places where we walk in, and we eat whatever the chef decides we’re having. It’s always good.) …or we’ll sit on the back porch and have mimosas and sunshine, and some random food I cooked up.

    I’ll probably see her off with a dozen eggs from the neighbor across the street, and maybe I’ll get around to bargaining with a friend close by for eggs from her ducks.

    Last but most importantly, I have my husband, and he has me. Wherever he is, is home, my rock, my bolthole from the storm.

    Even when my house is torn up and awaiting repair, when member of the community are in the hospital or hurting, when work and life are stressful enough I can’t write and barely find anything I can enjoy reading… I have my husband, and I can relax with him.

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