Month: September 2011

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Done With Fliers

Tonight, I turned another page of the ‘Financing the Lifestyle’ chapter of my nomadic life. After nearly a full six month of it, I delivered my last flier. This job was work. I enjoyed the middle section of it, the brief window when my body had adjusted to the routine and I had four full days to do them. Now that I had to squeeze them into my evenings after a full day job and working full-time at my own business they were getting to be too much.

My favourite part of finishing was reclaiming the trunk of my car! I’ve had the car in hatchback mode for six months with the back seats flipped down. It was nice to bring the seats back up and apply the trunk cover, making the car look so much neater and tidier.

Now that I finished my fliers a whole even sooner than I needed to, I have gained a whole evening to finish destriping and hopefully do the last of the Poliglow. It’ll be a bit of a race tomorrow since night is coming very early now. 🙁

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Tabitha’s Great Escape

Last night, I made sure the front door was locked and then I went to bed.

It was COLD in the rig this morning and I discovered why as soon as I managed to get out of bed: the front door was wide open!!! The stupid thing doesn’t shut right unless you slam it.

My first thought was MY CATS! But then I calmed down. Neelix had been with me all night. Tabitha had never been outside and would surely be too scared to leave… or would she? A quick check of the rig revealed my worst nightmare; my girl was gone.

Trying to stay calm, figuring that she’d have been too scared to go far, I threw on a warm sweater and some shoes and went out. I called her for about 5 minutes and she appeared by the front door, mewing pitifully. I went to pick her up and she bolted, probably thinking I was mad at her. She took refuge under the rig, right behind the driver’s side rear tires where all I could reach was her tail. She continued to meow but would not let me get close and the minute I let go of her tail she bolted again. Thankfully, it was back to the stairs by the door where she waited for me to let her in.

I have no idea how long she was outside, but my five minute ordeal probably took fifty years off my life.

RV tip: don’t just do a visual check that the door bolt is in the ‘locked’ position. Physically check that the door is actually SHUT!

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Destriping Marathon

Gah, how did this get to be the last weekend in September???!!!

By yesterday morning, I’d barely made a dent in my destriping project, but it was time to button it down. There was no way I’d drive the rig the way it was! At this point, the goal was to make the rig look less embarrassing; restriping would have to wait for the spring.

Yesterday’s project, then, was do the back of the RV. I lost the morning because of fliers, so the back, which still had a huge sticker on it, was a feasible project. So, destripe (AUGH!), clean (easy), and Poli Glow (peasy).

Today’s project was to completely clean the already destriped passenger side and Poli Glow it, then spend a few hours working at the %*()#%* driver’s side stripes.

So, passenger side side looked like this at about 9AM today, not counting the stripes:

And by 1PM it looked like this:

You can see the discolouration in the picture if you really squint. The RV is a dull yellow while the area under the stripes is stark white. Here is a tip: DO NOT WAX YOUR WHITE RV. Wax turns fiberglass yellow!

The result is nothing short of a miracle. Yes, a stripeless RV looks a little odd, but even with the ghosting the rig looks better than it did with the chipped and cracked decals.

Poli Glow is an absolutely amazing product.

I still have two to three hours of destriping on the driver’s side, then about two hours of clean up and Poli Glowing. The weather will be good this week so I’m going to try to put in an hour per evening.

Not to toot my own horn, but I did all this progress with a stress fracture in the left foot, a broken toe on the right foot, and a large second degree burn on my left wrist. This past week has told me that I am either more of a klutz than I thought I was or that the universe is telling me to take it easy!

Once this exterior project is done, I will be able to focus on getting the apartment cleaned and the rig ready for pulling out. I am hoping to pull-out Sunday, so the one-week countdown is on. But there is no real rush to get out, so if it happens one evening next week, that’d be fine. The following weekend would be pushing it, though. I want Jody and Gary to get their yard back before the weather turns so that they can get their trailer in it. As I said to them, I’m a pretty good guest in that they haven’t needed to ask me to leave! 😀

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Moving Towards Acceptance

I have taken THE big step towards accepting that I will be back in a house semi-bound life for six months: I ordered internet service. Telus has a special; super fast internet with 500GB of bandwidth for $30 a month for the first six months. I will be downgrading my cellular modem to the flex plan so that I still have it available should I travel this winter or the other internet goes down. So that will be $35 a month. The total will be $65 (plus taxes and fees, of course), which is exactly what I pay now for my 5GB mobile account!

Once again, I’d like to make it clear that the only reason I am staying in Lethbridge this winter is the sudden availability of health services. Getting signed on with a family doctor in just two phone calls was life-altering, but what followed was even more amazing. I had initially booked a physical for January, but I don’t want to wait that long to see the doctor. So I called and asked if I could get a regular appointment sooner… and I got one for October 5th!

I have no intention of getting settled into this apartment. I will make it as cozy and functional as I can for six months, but I am bringing the strict minimum with me and will invest as little as possible into making it habitable. There are so many things I will miss: having many rooms, the double sink in my kitchen, my kitchen’s much more functional layout, my huge shower. But I am looking forward to having a bath!

In the next week I will scrub every inch of the apartment and start to make an inventory of what is coming into it. Of course, Miranda will be parked very close by, so I can grab what I need, but I want to see how little I can live with.

November should be a much slower month for me with nice days at the beginning. So with the rig empty, I’d like to repaint the study and do another coat of yellow in the kitchen/library/loft. I’ve made a list of other small projects that I could do weather-depending that would be much more doable with the rig empty.

The only big project on the table for this winter will be planning my shortened US route for my trip through there in the spring! Six months will go by fast, I know it, and soon I will be back on the road, healthy and ready for more adventures. That’s how I’m looking at this winter; just one more adventure in this crazy, wonderful, nomadic life of mine.

 

 

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Being Out of Propane Really Messes Up the Routine

Last night, I ran out of propane just as dinner was finishing. The chicken needed an extra minute, but a lid and the residual heat from the very hot cast iron pan finished the meat off nicely. So, no propane, turn the water heater off, make a note to pick some up after work the next day.

This morning, I wake up and stumble to the dressing room to wash my face. Run the hot water for a second, splash some on my face, and WOAH, that’s cold! Oh, right! No propane. Duh.

Shuffle back to the kitchen to make coffee. Rinse French press. Why is the water cold? Oh, yeah, I’ve been down this road this morning. Fill kettle and put it on the stove. Strike match, turn on burner, and… oh, right.

(Mornings are tough for me. 🙂 )

Since I’m moving in just under two weeks, it didn’t make sense to get a full 30lber of propane. I asked for 10lbs. Except that propane is sold in litres here… Quick, some math! A full tank is about $18 so a third is $6! The propane filler guy was very good natured about the exercise. 🙂