Editor’s Note: I, Akbar “Akbi” Khan, write this website. The couple described below and their story described on this site are fictional. Any resemblance to any other people, characters, events, or anything else is coincidental. Their interviews with people, attendance at events, and observations about things they experience really do happen, however. I know this because I, Akbi, experience them. Then I convey those experiences from the point of view of Robert and Colleen. Once again, Robert and Colleen (RoCo) and anything having to do with them or their backstory: fictional. The interviews, events, and places described herein: real. In regards to Robert, Colleen, and the people, things, and events related to them: “This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.” The subjects of the articles here are all real and I, Akbar “Akbi” Khan, did interact with them to write these pieces.

Meet Robert and Colleen Morgenthau. Their friends call them RoCo. They’re both 65-years-old, and have a dachshund-boxer mix named Moses. Their children, Jacob, David, and Rachel, are 27, 35, and 40, respectively. Robert retired in 2017 after 37 years as an actuary. Colleen was a schoolteacher for the same amount of time and retired in 2017, too. They bought an RV in December of the year of their mutual retirement and left New York City, their hometown, to start the second chapter of their lives. Their intent was to commence RoCo Part II in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but they left their specific destination intentionally undecided. They wanted to be adventurous and spontaneous after a lifetime of—happily, it must be said—doing things by the books.

On their way down Interstate 95, RoCo stopped in suburban Maryland to see their friends, Paul and Lucy—PaCy–Steinberg, who live in the Baltimore suburb of Pikesville. The four of them do a yearly get-together in late May to celebrate the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot at the same time, as they’re members of the Jewish ethnoreligious community. PaCy took them to a vegan restaurant in nearby Clarksville. RoCo fell in love with HoCo, or Howard County, where Clarksville is nestled among other towns southwest of Baltimore, northeast of Washington, D.C.  This is the story of their unfolding acquaintance with Howard County, as told through their exploration of the people, places, and things that make it up. RoCo—and Moses, let’s not forget—explores a different facet of the prismatic place that is Howard County each week in nine-week cycles, and they take you along with them in the form of the joint journal they’re keeping as they do so.

In their weekly posts—penned alternately by the duo–Robert and Colleen get to know the area through a nine-week cycle of visits to places in the county: a local business, a community organization, an event, a faith community, a location of local historical significance, a place that’s important to the area’s children, a neighborhood, a visit with a politician, and a public space. They invite you to join them as they explore Howard County and decide whether or not to put down roots here.

This is (the fictional and non-fictional all in one) story of…RoCoInHoCo!

Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.