By Joni Johnson

Last year, I wrote an article about what it was like to tent-camp as a solo woman.  As you may remember, I had everything I needed including a pop-up bed that would be 20 inches off the ground and a little camping toilet for those middle of the night moments.  But I kept thinking that as I grew older, putting up a tent by myself would become harder and if I were to do it, I probably wouldn’t do it for just one or two nights.

Fifi at Edenvale Winery in January

So in January, I just started looking for a small class B camper van.  In addition to the ease of use, I figured a locked door wouldn’t be a bad thing. At first, I thought a cute little trailer would work, but I was quickly talked out of that because towing could be a problem.  I had been in touch with a salesperson in Medford and we set up an appointment for a quick little look.  He had four options available. I really liked Van number one.  It was only 20 feet long, had a microwave, refrigerator, toilet (with a wet bath- which I will probably never use) air conditioning.  A generator and a bed that I could leave set-up.  I laughingly offered a low-ball figure but they amazingly took it (January Sales) and all of a sudden I was the owner of a used 2015 RoadTrek RV I immediately named Fifi.

   My spot at the Alpaca Farm

I took Fifi out for one night in January, checked out the problems and returned her to the dealership to fix.  After that, I made a two week trip to Baja California to see the whales, and then I had a left reverse shoulder replacement for a lefty, which took me out of the game for a while.  In June, I decided I would be strong enough to drive and lift objects, and off I went for a couple of two-day tryouts.

Joni and Starr at the Stonehenge replica near the Washington border

Finally, I planned a 15 day trip from Medford to Seattle via Bend and      returning by the coast. This was all based on a four-day overnight stay at the Deschutes River State Recreation Area for a Peace Corps event.  Everything went perfectly until the fire truck stormed by about three hours after I arrived.  At first, we thought it was just a camper in distress.  But more and more fire trucks went by and we realized there was an actual fire on the hill in front of us.  All of a sudden, we were told to evacuate.  There I was, with my dog in the van and everything packed up.  But where to go?  It was nine pm and I decided to head for Seattle, where my brother lived, on the already planned route.  I got four  miles away and found a nice little parking lot in the local Chevron station and called my brother.  Within minutes he had found me a place at a local campground just across the bridge over the Columbia into Washington.  Otherwise, I really didn’t know what to do because it was so dark and I wasn’t sure I could handle my new little rig on unknown, unlit roads at night.  I think that my next choice would have been to curl up in the Chevron parking lot.  Instead, my brother found the Peach Beach RV park, which was just lovely and right on the Columbia river.  And, luckily, they had a spot available for three nights because of a cancellation.  So I had a great time meeting all sorts of people, getting help on all sort of RV issues like keeping my generator going when the camp had a four hour power outage in the middle of over 100^o weather.

The continuation of the Oyster quest at Newport

The rest of the trip was lovely.  Four days in Seattle with wonderful food and then moseying on down the coast from Tillamook to Waldport to Yachats and finally to Bandon before heading home. Mostly, I stayed in state campgrounds.  A few times I stayed at wineries and cheese factories and alpaca farms through Harvest Hosts.  My idea of traveling is eating out.  And I managed to make no exception this time.  Some people love to cook in their campground setting.  I love to eat in restaurants.  And so I made this an eating tour, checking out fried oysters and fish and chips for 200 miles. Driving via Portland and dealing with the traffic reminded me of Los Angeles with lots of stop and goes and slowdowns. I decided I would kiss the ground when I returned to Medford.

My final night was a non-camping extravaganza: a large pet-friendly king sized room at the Seven Feathers casino where I had prime rib and won money at the table before taking Starr out for her final walk of the day.  I think I must have stayed in the shower long past the minutes typically allowed during a drought.  It was heaven.  But so was the rest of the trip.

Hanging out at Bullards State Park

Some people think I am nuts for buying an RV and traveling on my own at my age.  Other people have even used the word brave.  A person I met at the RV spot in Washington wrote a blurb on her Facebook page about me. She, her husband and I became friends and plan to travel together.    I would print what she said, but it would make me blush.  But it was all about traveling on my own at my age.  She did say, “P.S. If you ever see a lady and she is saying “I need a man” while trying to pump her own gas. Help that woman out because she is smart enough to know when to ask for help!”  And I have to say that I do ask for help all the time.

I don’t see myself as brave at all.  I just don’t see that I had a choice. It was either move forward and enjoy the rest of my life or stay stuck in the pain and loss of my loved-one. My husband passed away in May 2022.  Before Tom got so sick, we traveled all the time.  His illness and Covid brought that to an end for three years.  But I realized that I only have so much time left, and I wanted to take advantage of it.  Tom and I had traveled in a Class C motor home in the mid nineties.  I loved the experience but really didn’t feel comfortable driving that large of a rig (24 ft) even then.  He never wanted to buy an RV because of the work entailed.  So we didn’t.  But that was something I really wanted to do.

  Meeting the dogs at Bullards State Park.

I see Fifi as giving me a sort of freedom I wouldn’t have without her.  And she is a chance to really travel with my darling dog.  She and I are a team.  I don’t think of myself as alone when I am with her.  If I were to rent a hotel room or an Air BnB, I would really be totally alone. You don’t come across that many people in terms of meaningful conversations, even with a dog, when you are traveling that way.  But camping is different.  There are people everywhere.  You meet them walking your pup.  You meet them because they are camped next to you.  You meet them because you need help and many of them love   being of service.

People ask me if I am afraid. I don’t think I have been.  I lock my door at night.  There are camp hosts in the state parks.  And I haven’t heard of too many serial killers making reservations three months ahead so that they would have a place to camp.  So RV camping gives me freedom, interesting people and adventure.  I have no idea how many years more I have to be able to do this.  I’m just keeping my fingers crossed!

The Resident Satisfaction Survey – Review and Interpretation

RVM and the PRS system

Why RVM may be doing better than the numbers indicate

What else would be good to know

by Bob Buddemeier

On July 20 Dave Keaton presented results of the March 2023 Resident Satisfaction Survey.  To see the survey results, log in to MyRVM; the URL for the data slides is https://files.mwapp.net/FILES/141583233.pdf, and for the video of the presentation, https://retirement.app.box.com/s/rzzxupn336i077u98h86r2suj1tkrhcq.  If you are interested in the management and future of RVM, I recommend that you review that material.  As was the case with the presentation of the Strategic Plan, I feel that both the content and the conduct of the Survey presentation were positive contributions to building an informed and engaged resident community.

The results are part of a cycle of surveys of PRS-managed CCRCs, and include comparisons with eleven other communities over resident ratings on 14 factors.  The comparisons provide useful information, but need to be interpreted in terms of systemic differences between RVM and most other members of the PRS group of CCRCs.

The presentation files provide multiple views of the information; for the sake of convenience in reading this article, Table 1 contains some of the key data.

TABLE 1:  Satisfaction Survey, RVM and PRS System

RVM 23 = RVM 2023 survey results for each factor; N 23 = number of respondents for the question, RVM 18 = RVM 2018 survey results; PRS 23 = composite score, all PRS CCRCs

Key differences between RVM and other PRS CCRCs:

• RVM is not associated with a university or other institution, as the Davis and Tempe facilities are.
• RVM has 900+ residents, compared with 200-300 at many of the other facilities.
• RVM has both towers and a large number of cottages on a large campus; most others are apartment buildings only, with relatively small grounds.
• RVM is not in or near a major metropolitan area, unlike the others. This means there is a different lifestyle potential and ambience, and that RVM residents are drawn from more widely dispersed market areas.

What do these difference imply about interpretation of results?

I suggest that one of the most important points is the combination of (a) the number of residents, (b) the variety and dispersion of housing arrangements, and (c) the variety of backgrounds and geographic origins of the residents.  These result in a wide range of attitudes and interests among residents, greater average social distances among individuals and subcommunities, and greater challenges in communication, both among residents and between the administration and residents.

These factors imply that the residents will be less likely to operate on the basis of the same information and assumptions, and that peer interactions will have less influence on collective behavior, so consensus and concerted action will be more difficult to achieve.

This also means that the range of opinions – or survey responses — is likely to be broader at RVM than elsewhere.  I’ll make further comments on this later, but a specific result is that, in the context of this survey, a broader range of opinions is likely to result in a lower score.  The survey defines “average” as 3 on a 5-point scale.  If the average of the results were close to three, more outliers would not necessarily change the score much.  However, for the 14 factors and 12 institutions, 123 of the 168 scores are between 4 and 5, and almost all of the others are between 3 and 4.  This means that introducing more variation into the dataset will reduce some of the highest scores, since there is no way to increase them.

My conclusion: The process of comparison is weighted against RVM, and relatively speaking, we are doing better than we might be expected to based on the scores of the other CCRCs.

So what? one might ask.  If we want to be the best we can be, we should strive for the magic 5.0 in all categories, regardless of what the others do.  Well, yes, given infinite resources.

Unfortunately, we are not given infinite resources, and doing the best we can with what we have means prioritizing goals to maximize satisfaction even if we can’t perfect it.  In turn, that means understanding what the results tell us about where to dedicate resources.  The resources to be dedicated may be dollars to fix known problems in some cases, or human resource time to analyze and identify problems.  In either case, it’s important to identify both the importance of problems, and the ease with which they can be solved.

A few specific examples:

1. About 27% of RVM respondents (132 people) answered “no” or “don’t know” to the “would you recommend RVM?” question.  That’s somewhat higher than the PRS system value, and considerably higher than both the RVM value in 2018 and the Holleran (survey contractor) benchmark value.  It’s also significant for marketing.  To address that directly, I would want to find out whether the responses were associated with a diffuse negative attitude, or correlated with a few specific dissatisfactions.
2. Subjective and qualitative factors are difficult to deal with – Administration Responsiveness and Resident Association Effectiveness are examples, especially since these are probably affected by the size and diversity of the resident population to be dealt with. Definition and analysis are needed.
3. Staff Friendliness probably has an ameliorating influence on some of the other factor ratings, since people are likely to overlook minor deficiencies if an employee is friendly, polite, and responsive to requests. However, almost all of the institutions ranked high on this factor, so it probably isn’t a relative advantage for RVM – but it is something to work hard on maintaining.
4. Reaching for the low-hanging fruit: something that is missing from the results is a breakdown by residence – at least towers vs. cottages, and maybe further (Manor/Terrace vs Plaza, south vs north villages). If concerns are significantly different, focused responses can be more economical and effective.

A final comment – public opinion and public behavior can be very slow to change.  The problematic Dining Experience factor seems to me to be like steering an ocean liner.  The whole process of menu development, supply, staff acquisition and training and resident information takes a lot of time and effort, and it may take years to find out what difference a change makes.  I think that we are still operating in the shadow of the COVID years, and it is not clear how the many non-equilibrium factors affecting the future are going to shake out – not just for dining, but for the organization as a whole.

It would be nice to have some simple but effective ways to assess resident attitudes and opinions – and especially changes.  Unfortunately I don’t have a specific proposal, but one approach might be modification of Residents Council organization to incorporate a layer of contacts or representatives at the neighborhood level.  In addition to providing information relevant to Council and Administration decision-making, this might also improve the Resident Association Effectiveness rating on the next survey.

Appendix for those familiar with some basic statistics:

I am not a statistician, but I am a believer in both use and constructive misuse of statistics to explore and understand datasets.

It might be useful to analyze the distribution of scoring patterns for individual respondents.  It’s encouraging if people think everything is very good, but their answers reduce the ability of the analysis to discriminate among the factor ratings, and don’t provide guidance about what needs to be done.  Reanalysis after excluding individual responses consisting of uniformly high scores (e.g., average >4.5) might provide better differentiation of the factors, as well as a more nearly normal distribution of data.

Another need I see is for a useful assessment of uncertainty and significance.  The data produced by the survey present some problems: on a 5-point scale, median and range do not provide much precision, and the rating distributions are far from the bell-shaped curve norm.  However, standard deviation is a convenient calculation that can provide a semi-quantitative estimate of uncertainty adequate for a rough ranking (or grouping) of factors, even though the distribution doesn’t support conventional quantitative interpretations.

Approximations of the latter sort can be done by reverse-engineering the data that are released, but a firm like Holleran undoubtedly has the capability to make much more sophisticated calculations, and I hope that if this has not already happened, PRS and RVM will request further exploration of some of the points raised above.

by Bob Buddemeier

 It’s summer, and the world is hotter than ever.  Not only that, but elderly (or downright old) people are more vulnerable to the dangerous effects of heat.  And, we are getting older as the climate gets warmer.  A bad combination.

The Complement has a long-standing tradition – two, maybe three years – of reissuing an article on preparing for emergencies that are due to, or occur in, high temperatures.  To refresh your survival skills, click the following link.  https://thecomplement.info/2022/03/03/hotsy-totsy-a-review/

However, that article considers only dehydration, which is far from the only way to be killed or disabled by excessive heat.  To round out your worry inventory, we’ll discuss  how you can get killed by heat by: (1)  Not drinking enough; (2)  Drinking too much; or (3)  Spending too much time in the wrong environment, independent of your drinking habits.  Do not rely on this brief summary – see the CDC website on Heat Stress and Heat Related Illnesses – especially heat stroke and heat exhaustion

Before going any further, let’s specify that by “drinking,” we mean drinking water or a beverage that is primarily water.  It’s best to avoid alcohol and caffeine, BUT it is better to have coffee or beer than to go without fluids.  For reasons we’ll get to below, isotonic beverages (e.g., most “sports drinks” like Gatorade) can be desirable in hot weather – these have the same salt concentrations as your body fluids, so they keep your internal chemistry in balance when your water balance starts bouncing around.

The Three Horsemen of Heat:

1. Dehydration – you sweat and excrete more water than you take in by eating and drinking. You can dehydrate yourself at almost any temperature by not drinking enough, but it’s a lot easier to get in trouble when it is hot and you sweat a lot.  With a combination of high temperature and physical exertion, a person can sweat as much as three gallons per day.

Fortunately, there is a straightforward, simple way to track your hydration state – monitor the color of your urine.  And if you can’t produce anything to look at, take immediate emergency action.  Assuming you can pee in or on something that will facilitate examination, the chart below tells you what you need to do.

2. Sodium depletion (hyponatremia) – too much water in or going through your system washes out or dilutes the sodium in your body fluids, with potentially disastrous consequences for your physiological processes.  This doesn’t have to be heat-related; diarrhea or vomiting can cause it, especially if lost fluids are replaced with water rather than isotonic fluids.  However, hot weather may inspire people to drink large quantities of water without enough salt intake through food or drink.
3. Heat stress – your body cools itself by evaporating sweat. If you can’t sweat, or more likely if your sweat can’t evaporate, your body just gets hotter and hotter until your core temperature stays above 104^o F for a while.  Then you’re toast, although pretty soggy toast.

When does this happen, other than when you are too dehydrated to sweat?  That’s what the Heat Index is about.  When the air is moist (high humidity), evaporation is inhibited, so your sweat does not cool you off by turning into vapor.  The Heat Index is measured in degrees, but it is temperature adjusted for humidity – and the higher the humidity, the lower the temperature at which you can get into trouble.  The table from the National Weather Service Heat Index page is shown below (click link for more info).  See also the PBS Terra video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqBrL8BokSk&t=12s.

IMPORTANT NOTE  — these values are calculated for shade; in direct sun, the risks are higher.

Local note – midday summer humidity in Medford is often in the vicinity of 40%, so when the temperatures get up to 100^o, we are well into the Heat Index danger zone.

Symptoms and signs:  Each of the conditions has a list of possible symptoms, but they tend to overlap, and you don’t need an MD to figure out that if you or somebody else has been at an elevated temperature and feels bad, it’s time to take heat stress precautions. In the following list, those in italics are likely to indicate heat stroke, which is a medical emergency.
Confusion, delusions, combativeness; dizziness, headache, exhaustion; cramps, muscle twitching or fatigue; nausea, extreme thirst, scanty or infrequent urination; inability to sweat; seizures or loss of consciousness.  These symptoms can come on and progress very quickly!

What to do: If the symptoms are serious or protracted, get medical help immediately (911).  Get the victim out of the sun, into a cool place if possible, and cool the body (wet cloths, ice packs, cool bath).  If symptoms are mild/moderate (heat exhaustion or dehydration), drinking fluids is indicated, but not if heat stroke is a possibility – that needs to go straight to the Emergency Department.

Note:  Symptom and treatment lists are consensus compilations from multiple medical organization websites.