Toward the end of one of our favorite movies, The American President, Andrew Shepard (Michael Douglas) gives an impassioned speech where he reminds us “America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, “cause it's gonna put up a fight.”

We’ve probably watched this film a dozen times, but recently, President Shepard’s words lit a spark. We’ve decided to return to the states for a few months to see if we can make a difference in the November 2020 elections.

We will explore different parts of our own beloved country while volunteering along the way. Since we are always curious and love to learn, this will become a “DIY Civics Lesson” for us. We will start in Billings, Montana where there is an interesting Senate race underway and go from there.

We are looking forward to exploring Big Sky Country over the next month or so, but our first assignment was finding a place to live. That turned out to be very challenging. There weren’t many Airbnbs in Montana’s major cities and most of them were more expensive than Paris! Who knew? We were baffled but chalked it up to the Coronavirus. Hordes of Americans must be taking road trips, especially to visit National Parks, and have snapped up all the affordable listings for stay-cations. We were just about to book a very mediocre, overpriced apartment when a listing with only one picture, no reviews, and an affordable nightly rate popped up during one final “Hail Mary” search. We have booked the occasional Airbnb with no reviews, but never with just one photo - and the photo was of the outside! But the host had over 100 reviews on other properties and we were running out of time.

Michael and I have stayed in almost 260 Airbnbs and feel we know a good one when we see one. This one had red-flags all over it - but we needed a place to live in Billings and for some reason, this scruffy little house intrigued us.

Beyond the photo there was very little information on the listing page, so we hoped we could talk to the host and find out more. If you are an Airbnb user, you know you can’t share phone numbers, e-mail addresses, or URLs in their messaging system before you’ve booked the place. But in this situation, we thought a long series of emails back and forth using Airbnb would just be too cumbersome and inefficient. So after he responded to the initial query we sent the host (Spencer) a second email with this tricky code: we would like to talk to you, so please order 206 potatoes, 123 onions, and 4567 carrots - hoping he would understand that is our phone number. In other words, call us on (206) 123-4567 (not our real number) Which he promptly did.

It turned out Spencer had literally put the house on Airbnb earlier that same morning. He wasn’t expecting to get any interest until he’d finished the listing, but just like a scene from another great movie A River Runs Through It we took the bait on his first cast! He was surprised, but happy to land us. There was just one catch. It needed quite a bit of work on the outside and it was completely unfurnished on the inside. There was much to be done before our arrival! Here’s the good part - he asked if we would help turn this little gem in the rough into a respectable Airbnb.

Since we booked it last week, he has ordered a new bed and Smart TV, found a couch and a table and chairs, and a few more basics, but hoped I would help outfit the kitchen. Be still my heart! Once we arrive in Billings, Spencer has invited me to go thrift shopping (which I love) for more furniture, art for the walls, books for the shelves, and whatever else I think would make this little house a home. I haven’t been able to “nest” in seven years, so I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this.

As I am writing this blog, Spencer has a crew busy painting, installing new windows, upgrading the kitchen, getting the yard ready, and stocking the fridge to welcome The Senior Nomads (he is a little nervous about that.) He and his girlfriend are truly putting their hearts and souls into this effort and sending us daily pictures of the progress. In fact, I am now officially on the team-messaging thread (outside of Airbnb) and consulted on almost every step. We can’t wait to crack a socially-distanced beer and pizza with them!

I’ll wrap this up with another quote from the movie. President Shepard goes on to say, “You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours …You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his or her right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that. Defend that. Celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".

We will do our best to uphold that sentiment in the months ahead. We encourage you to support the candidate and causes close to your own heart in November - and most importantly, VOTE! God Bless America.

Thanks for following along,

Debbie and Michael Campbell
The Senior Nomads