Mulling it Over

Greetings from beautiful Cloverdale, California. We're enjoying a weekend away in wine country with our Winnebago friends. More to come at Bullwinkle's place, of course. Everything from the weather to the conversation - and everything in between - has been just perfect. And, the best thing is that tomorrow - when everyone else in our group heads home - we get to stay another night. We have a service appointment for the moose in Petaluma on Monday morning.

Between all the fun activities, we've managed to mull over our decision of which realtor to work with. Actually, the decision didn't take much mulling. And, it surprised us. Just in case you couldn't tell, we were leaning one way. (And, we so appreciate the comments of our wonderful readers. Thank you!) Anyway, after our #2 meeting with realtor #1, we've decided to go the other way and go with her.

Turns out, she did not disappoint us. She brought her "A-game" to our second meeting. She expressed genuine enthusiasm about our fulltiming story and the very active role she's eager to play in getting us on the way ASAP. She recommended an "aggressive" listing price that - as it turns out - was in the same ballpark we are. She seems eager to get our place sold by the 4th of July. In this meeting she addressed all of our concerns. Combine that with her experience and her and her firm's dominance in our neighborhood, and our choice was easy.

Yes, she wants to "do stuff" to our house that we don't want to do - or necessarily think needs to be done. But, it's time for us to put this job in the hands of the professionals. Up to now, our job was to get our house in the shape that it would look good to a good listing agent. Mission accomplished! Now, our most important role might just be to stay out of the way. (Thanks, godfadda!) We'll let these pros do their thing. 

We'll get the listing agreement signed early next week. Then, watch out! We'll really be moving! We'll definitely keep you posted.

For now, we're happy to sit in the shade, look out over the grapevine-covered hills and enjoy our friends. We could definitely get used to this!

Happy weekend!

P.S. On this day in 1986 a couple of yuppies got all dressed up and said their "I Dos" in front of their family and friends. 23 years later they're hanging out at a campground preparing to go fulltiming in their new motorhome. What a life. Cheers!

Tale of Two Realtors

We've met with two realtors over the last two days. Let me just say, that's a whole lot more fun than sprucing up the place! 

We have a followup meeting scheduled with one first thing in the morning, then we're headed north to camp with our Winnie buddies for the weekend. Along the way, we'll mull over our choices and pick one of these two to work with. Both are professional and personable. And, they are different. 

Candidate 1 has been in real estate for 20-ish years. She and her company have been involved in 40% of the home sales in our neighborhood since the beginning of time. If experience was our only criteria, this candidate would be our pick, hands down. She seemed to like us and our house. But, of course, there would be a few things she would change. She quoted a specific paint color to go on our accent walls. (I got the idea that all of her listings have this color in common!) She referred to another neighborhood listing as "a good house".  (And, what are we? Chopped liver?) Her motto is "if it hasn't sold in three weeks, we reduce the price." When it comes to price, she doesn't talk about it in the first meeting. She said she has a price in her head but wasn't ready to share it. (So, that's why we have a follow-up meeting.) We definitely got the feeling she was trying to prepare us for disappointment. We sense a lowball on the way. She also talked about how August is a dead time, and we need to prepare for that.

Candidate 2 left a marketing position in a Fortune 500 company six years ago to begin her career in real estate. If smarts were our only criteria, this candidate would be our pick, hands down. We met her two years ago when she held open a house almost identical to ours. We were very impressed then. And, we were even more impressed when that one and only house she's listed in our neighborhood sold in short order for significantly more than the listing price. Now, we know the likelihood of being in a situation where we receive multiple offers or even one over our asking price these days is very remote. Times have changed, indeed! But, within a few minutes of meeting us, hearing (and loving) our story and our future as fulltimers, she was talking price. And, we were happy to hear that she was in the same ballpark with her thinking as we are. (Of course, we all wish we had met in this ballpark a year or two ago, but I digress.) She seemed to connect with us and the house. She thought the accent walls might work just as they are. And, in light of today's economics, she has cut a percentage off her commission. She seemed very confident that we could sell this place by the 4th of July.

Officially, we're reserving judgement until we have our followup meeting with Candidate 1 in the morning. 

Care to weigh in? Your insights and comments are most welcome!

Spare Change

On this crazy day of frantic cleaning and meeting realtors, we thought you'd like to hear about a special treat we received yesterday.

As we've been purging our belongings, we've found various "stashes" of spare change: a small bowl here, a coffee cup there. Yesterday, we compiled a bunch of these stashes and took the loot to our local Coinstar machine. 

Now, if you want cash for your cash, Coinstar will charge you about 9% for the privilege of counting your coins.  But, if you're willing to take your payout in the form of a gift certificate, the cost of counting is free. When we pulled up to the machine, we quickly assessed that we could get full value of our coins in the form of an itunes gift card. That sounded great to us! 

We began to dump the coins into the machine, thinking we had $20 or $30 dollars worth. Ching, ching, ching, and a couple minutes later the total came to $51.27 plus a handful of Australian coins that didn't make the cut. 

We both have itunes accounts, and mine is currently empty. Boris graciously gave the code for the gift card to me. So, my itunes account is considerably richer. That's a lot of music and apps!

Of course, turnabout is fair play. I think I saw Boris eyeing a couple buckets of coins in the garage.

Moanin' and Groanin'

Same song. Different day. 

The deep cleaning continues 'round our house. We're not quite done, but we'll finish up in the morning. We still can't believe it's taken as long as it has. On the surface, this place looked clean when we started!

Several days of intense washing and scrubbing, on the tails of several weeks of packing and purging, has us moaning and groaning! We're stiff and tired. You should hear us. We sound like a couple of old geezers!

While the last few days have been foggy and chilly, the sun shined on this Memorial Day holiday. We took a break from all of our inside work to pick up and plant a few cheerful flowers to enhance our curb appeal and lovely back patio. 

This place is looking just about ready to attract many buyers.  Good thing, too. Because (Ugh!) we're just about ready for some much needed rest!

We hope all of our readers have enjoyed a happy and safe holiday weekend. We salute our troops past, present and future for their dedication and sacrifice in pursuit of the freedom these old geezers enjoy and never take for granted.

Little Jobs Take Big Time

Our holiday weekend is anything but restful. With realtors scheduled to meet with us Tuesday and Wednesday, we're doing everything we can to make our house look like a place they'd be excited about selling...and multiple buyers would be very eager to call it their next home.

The primary task has been a thorough cleaning of the place, which we've learned takes a lot more time that we thought. Along the way we've discovered other little jobs that also turn out to be more time consuming. Boris and I have been quite a team as we've repaired a bathroom cabinet, changed a tricky light bulb or two, cleaned the roman shade in our cats' favorite window, made a seldom used fireplace sparkle, returned furniture to its rightful place (for now, anyway), moved framed family photos from mantles to a storage box and replaced the caulk around the kitchen sink. 

You get the idea. 

And, since it's Sunday, it's time for the true test of how productive our week has been.  That's right, it's trash night. This week we have more garbage than our bin will hold.  (We've definitely been productive this week!) Our plan is to roam the neighborhood after dark and deposit our extra few bags in any bins along the curb that have room.  

Please don't tell anybody!

Home Stretch

If we had to describe today in one word, it would be "nutty". If you need evidence that this word adequately describes the day, let me share something: Our gas barbeque is sitting in our living room! (The good news is we're not cooking on it!)

The day began with breakfast and a 3.5 mile walk. Then, things got crazy. 

The carpet installers we were expecting this morning called at 8AM to say they'd be here at noon. They arrived at 1:00. (They must be on super daylight savings time!) We were a bit concerned about the job because some of the carpet being pulled up in one room needed to be placed in other areas. And, our fingers were crossed that it would all go as planned. 

Boris did an outstanding job of staying on top of the job. He quickly assessed two potential show stoppers.  First, the installers didn't have enough pad to complete the job.  And, second, the new carpet being installed didn't look like what we ordered. 

The initial resolution to the first problem was that the installers would come back "sometime" tomorrow to finish the job, while a major thoroughfare in our house stayed in some kind of carpet limbo. Uh, no. Boris was on the phone with the salesman and the installation manager and had a roll of pad on the way for delivery later in the afternoon. For the second problem he called me in for a consult. Nope. It's not the carpet we ordered. It doesn't match the rest of the house the way we'd like.  We conferred in front of the stopped installers and determined it's much more important that this house has carpet than what the carpet is.  And, so they completed the job. It looks fine.

That's just the way things seem to go around here. Nothing goes exactly as planned, and everything requires a phone call to a manager. 

While the carpet installation was underway, I began what I thought would be a simple project: begin cleaning the house from top to bottom to prepare for the realtors we'll show it to next week. I started at the top - our lovely loft with a stunning view. Thinking it would take maybe an hour, I spent the rest of the day up there. I purged a little and cleaned a lot.  And, it's not done. There's more to do tomorrow.

(Now would be a good time to let you know we've had a twice a month cleaning service at our house for the last several years. And, now I know they weren't very good.)

Boris took on another "hands and knees" project and stained the front balcony. It looks absolutely fantastic! (Well done, dear!) While the stain dries, the bbq sits in the living room. (See, this is all starting to make sense!) 

As we worked, we uncovered a couple of unexpected projects that we need to tackle in the next few days: cleaning our kitchen soffets and some touch up paint here and there.  Though we are absolutely exhausted, this definitely has the feeling of a "home stretch". 

We are just about there.  From here on out, things should come together quickly.  

At least we hope so!

Planners

Lots happening around here. We're doing everything from shuffling the contents from one room into another (in preparation of tomorrow's carpet installation) to making a first date with a realtor (set for next Tuesday). Every step of the way, the purging continues.

Today's purge was a major one. I parted with my planners.

Earlier this year, I celebrated clearing out my oversized collection of three-ring binders. As much as I loved my binders, I adored my planners more. And, I had a few of them - in different shapes and sizes and colors of beautiful leather. Once upon a time, I couldn't pass by a Franklin Planner store without going in and buying something. So, yes. I had plenty of accessories, too. The paper contents of said planners spanned several years and were stored in tubs, boxes and drawers.

You're probably asking the same question I asked myself this afternoon: So, exactly why did I keep these things?

"When I write my memoirs, I'll need these," was the answer for awhile. But, today I doubt I'll ever write my memoirs. And, if I do, I don't think it will be vital to know that I had a 2:30 meeting on February 23, 1997 with John Smith. Do you? Another reason I've hung on to these is a connection to a time when work was very satisfying, busy and (at the time I thought) very important. Well, it's time to shred that past and get ready for a much more promising future.

Besides, chances are any memoirs I do write will be more about fulltiming and less about my work through the '90s. And, I promise, it'll be much more interesting!

A "Work" Day

Though we barely left the house, we worked our tails off today.

I embarked on a sewing marathon that lasted most of the day and resulted in a finished top for Bullwinkle's quilt. Yahoo! Next step is finding someone to do the machine quilting and this homey touch will be ready for the road.

While I was holed up in the office/sewing room, Boris was hard at work on a number of projects. He put the finishing touches on the bathroom grout project. (It's awesome!) He washed our front balcony, which will be ready for fresh stain in 24 hours or so. And, he tackled our ever-so-small backyard with an assortment of yard tools. This place is looking great!

The window washers called to say they couldn't make it today, but probably tomorrow. Before you know it, our house will be all sparkly, ready and waiting for an eager buyer.

We can't wait!

An RV Show

We went to an RV show today.

No, we're not shopping. Yes, our moose isn't even a year old yet. I know. What were we thinking?

I don't know. It was Monday afternoon. We felt like an outing. And, there was an RV show at the county fairgrounds. It sounded like fun, so we went. On the way, we realized we've never been to an RV show where you pay money to park and go in. So, it was time to attend our first.

When we paid for parking, we got our money's worth. There were only a dozen or so vehicles in the expansive lot. Of course, it was Monday afternoon, so we weren't expecting a crowd. Plus, it was hot - about 20 degrees warmer than at our house. With no crowds to fight, we made quick work of visiting the few vendor booths. Boris found a 90-degree connector for our water hose that he couldn't live without. So, the trip was productive!

We actually came to see a Winnebago we're "just curious" about. But, it wasn't there. We took advantage of the basement air in the Winnies that were on display. Then, we took a look at a Tiffin or two. All mighty nice coaches. Something tells me there's a diesel pusher in our future!

The show provided us a great opportunity to poke our heads in several fifth wheel trailers. Many of our RVing friends call them home, so we were curious to see how the other half lives. Very nice! We were very impressed with all the space these rolling homes create. If we had a big ol' truck, we might have gone this way. But, we had a Jeep, which doesn't have the muscle to pull a trailer. It makes the perfect toad behind our motorhome, though!

Back home, we made progress toward our fulltiming goal. Bullwinkle's quilt is growing closer to it's completed size. And, Boris did the thankless job of cleaning the grout on our bathroom floor. (Thanks dear!) The carpet installers are booked for Friday. This project is definitely moving along!

Sunday Night Status

Sunday nights around here tend to lend themselves to a status report. We've been working hard all week (and weekend) and it's time to take stock in our accomplishments for the week. The real kicker is the trash trucks come tomorrow. So, if our bins are full it's been a good week.

It's been a good week!

Yes, the bins are full. We sold more stuff on Craigslist - our collection of LPs and a matching coffee table and lamp table. Photos have been consolidated into one overstuffed moving box. My cross stitching stuff has been consolidated and - for now, anyway - will head to storage. I've made great progress on our Bullwinkle quilt. We've ordered replacement carpeting for the places that need it, and it should be installed next week. Interior and exterior painting is complete and the window washers should be here next week, too.

Yes, folks. This place is just about ready to go on the market! Originally, our hopes were that today would be our first open house. But, our roof and a few other things set us back and today was not to be. Good thing, too. The temperature around here hovered around 90 degrees. With our AC cranking its best the temperature in our top floor loft barely gets down below tropical. So, it turns out today was not a good day to be showing this place off.

We are just about ready. Just give us another week or so.

Stay tuned.

Another Saturday Purge

We're getting to the point where there's not much left to purge at our house. (At least we don't think so.)

Today's purging adventures started out as an effort to organize my cross stitching stuff. I opened a cabinet that was known to have some stitchery inside. Actually, there was very little and it was organized in minutes. What was "way back" in the cabinet was much more daunting.

Photos.

I've read about future fulltimers spending weeks scanning photos. And, I thought about that, but never did it. I sized up the situation and set a goal: All pictures in one moving box.

I flipped through the ancient envelopes and first tossed the negatives. I can't remember when I ever used a negative for a reprint, and chances are I never will.  So, they're gone. Knowing that this project put me in danger of spending a Saturday afternoon walking down memory lane and not getting any purging done, I acted quickly. If I couldn't recognize a person or a place, the pic was gone. Duplicates were thinned to one. Crappy pictures were tossed. Finally, I had a big pile of photo trash. And, I was tired. It was time to declare this project complete.

I stacked the surviving albums and photos in one moving box.  That's right. They all fit.  Now, if we want to close this box we might have a problem. But, I'll deal with that another day.

Meanwhile, I'm so glad we've had digital cameras for many years now.  That saved me hours today. And, for that I'm thankful.

Last Flight

We're back from our Mother's Day trip to Kansas City where we successfully "parked" the contents of three large suitcases and the suitcases. Mission accomplished!

If all goes according to plan, this was our last flight from Kansas City to Oakland. And, it was as if Southwest Airlines knew something special was up. We've made this round-trip flight three or four times a year for the last nine years. And, this trip was different. On our flight to Kansas City, we had just 24 other passengers joining us on the plane. Today, we may have had twice that, but the flight was far from crowded. With room to spread out, we enjoyed the long flight. After four hours, we began our decent. For the first time in nine years, our flight approached the Oakland airport from the north. This unfamiliar but stunning flight plan gave us a sweeping view of the Marin County coast and a "money shot" of the city of San Francisco, the Golden Gate bridge and the bay. It was quite a treat, which made this "last flight" quite memorable.

That's right. For now, we're finished flying. Our next trip to Kansas City will be aboard Bullwinkle. Our family is looking forward to it. So are we!

Packed

We're flying home to Kansas City for Mother's Day. We'll be gone for just a few days. But, you should see our luggage! We're each checking two big bags and taking our allotted one carry-on and personal item each. 

All this, for a long weekend?

While the primary purpose of this trip is to spend quality time with our moms, a secondary purpose is to park some of our stuff in Kansas City. A brother and sister-in-law have offered a bit of closet space for us to leave winter gear, and we're taking them up on that. Lots of suitcase space is dedicated to gently used items we're gifting to family back home: towels, games, jewelry and - of course - the recently completed queen size double wedding ring quilt top. Plus, we're hoping somebody can use the very nice suitcases we'll be leaving there after we empty them!

Safe travels and Happy Mother's Day!

The Joy of Walking

One of the things we have done since our emancipation three weeks ago is walk. Just about every day. In fact, I think we've just missed one day, maybe two. 

At home, we have a 3-mile loop up and down hills that we really enjoy. While we've been traveling, we head out from wherever we are and walk for an hour or so. It's great. 

Walking is one of those things we've always loved to do. But, when we were working it was hard to find the time. What a pleasure it is to bring it to the top of our daily to-do list. They say it makes 21 days to make a habit. I think we're just about there. We can't really imagine a day without walking. 

And, what about the results of this new aerobic routine? We've both dropped 5 pounds in the last three weeks.  

One more big plus in the "what we love about our sabbatical" column. 

A "Bleh" Travel Day, and a Treat!

I have just a few words to say: 3 1/2 hours, uphill, steady headwind, running a generator that's sucking gas, pulling a toad on a busy freeway, arriving at home 2 hours later than we planned.

It was that kind of day. 

With the painters planning to work at our house until 4:30 or 5:00 today, we took our time leaving Pismo this morning. With plans to leave by 11, I delayed those plans by about an hour when an innocent trip to the recycling bin turned into a fun conversation with new friends who own a 32H like ours. We had eyed this twin of ours motorhome all week and had high hopes of meeting its owners. They were never around, until the trip to recycling bin. Figures! Though our visit with these new friends would wreak total havoc on our day, it was worth it! 

As you loyal readers know, I am not the primary driver of our motorhome. But, today seemed like the perfect day for me to take the wheel for the first leg. As we pulled out of Pismo Coast Village at noon, we felt like salmon swimming upstream as we met a pod of Dolphins (motorhomes, not sea mammals) coming into the park for a weekend rally. To say it was a mess would be an understatement. There's a reason why check out is a noon and check IN is at 4PM. But, that just didn't seem to matter much today. And, I should've taken it as a sign. 

Usually, I'm good for driving an hour or two.  Then, I need a break. And, Boris is ready to provide. But, today there just wasn't a good spot to stop. Before I knew it three hours had gone by. I headed for the one place I knew would be RV accessible: Camping World. We had lunch there at 3:30. Yep. It was that kind of day. 

From there, Boris took over and guided us through really crappy Thursday afternoon traffic to our storage spot, which we arrived at around 5:00. We schlepped the stuff from the moose to the squirrel (I can't wait 'til we don't have to do that anymore) and were home around 6:30.

When we arrived home, we were reminded of the reason for our trip to the beach. While we were away, the painters were at work. The inside of our place looks gorgeous! Not gorgeous enough to stay, mind you. But, definitely gorgeous enough to sell! What a treat! The place looks great.  The exterior painters were delayed by rain while we were away, but it looks like they were able to do some priming today.  

Despite one less than stellar travel day, we are definitely making progress!

Going Paperless

We celebrated a geocaching milestone yesterday. (Details at Bullwinkle's place.) In addition to picking up a "big round number" cache, for the first time we cached without any paper.

Our one and only complaint about caching has been the inordinate amount of time required to prepare for each caching outing. Every cache in the world has its own page at geocaching.com. And, each page contains gobs of information, from coordinates to descriptions to log entries to helpful hints when you need them. Capturing all of that information for use in the field has been a bit of trial and error for us over the years. We've written pages of notes, compiled Excel spreadsheets, and printed off sheets and sheets of cache pages (and sometimes even bound them into little notebooks). No matter which method you choose, it involves a lot of paper. In the last year or so, we've been able to download coordinates directly from the site to our GPS receiver, but we've continued to tote the paper to provide all of the other info (especially the hints). 

On our emancipation day, we had to turn in all of our company equipment, which included our cell phones. That afternoon, we headed straight for the Apple store and treated ourselves to two cute little i-phones. Since then, we've had a blast playing with these amazing little computers. One of our favorite spots is the App Store, which offers thousands of titles that offer fun and excitement. Over 1 billion apps have been downloaded in the store's first nine months, and we understand why. 

Yesterday, we downloaded the Groundspeak geocaching app. With one click, we greatly improved our caching productivity. And, that's the kind of stuff we care about these days! Now we have everything we used to search for and print from our home computer available to us on the i-phone.  

From here on out, our caching will be paper-free. And, we'll double the number of caches we have today in half the time. 

How very efficient!

Pool Repairs

It's been a great winter for swimming pool repair people.

How do we know? In every park we've visited recently that has one, the swimming pool has been the subject of recent, current or very near future renovations. At Flag City, they had just wrapped up the work. At Bethel Island, we arrived to see (and hear) jackhammers at work for two days turning the bottom of the pool to dust. At Pismo Beach, though the work is nearly finished it's delayed by weeks. The pool opening here as been pushed back to mid May, and at various times of the day we've caught a whiff of "plastic" smell that reminds Boris of the model building days of his youth.

All this activity has made us wonder what's up. At the various parks we've heard people mumble something about "new regulations." So, as we heard the pool contractor's generator fire up at 8AM sharp, we did a little investigating. Turns out all this noise, dust and odor is brought about by a law enacted in December 2007.

The Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Safety Act requires that public pools – including those at schools, health clubs, recreation centers, hotels and apartments – and other recreational water attractions retrofit drains that could suck someone underwater. The law required pools to be compliant by December 2008, or opening day of the 2009 season. 

A life saving law, or is legislation getting in the way of Darwinism? We'll let you be the judge. 

Meanwhile, know that part of your nightly rate at your neighborhood park with a pool is making the pool safer. And, if you need a loan during this credit crisis, you might look for a swimming pool contractor near you. Like we said, they've had a banner year.

A Day at the Beach

It's been 18 days since our employer pulled the plug. We think today may have been the best day so far! 

We're hanging out in Pismo Beach for a few days while the painters do their thing at our stick house. Details of the day are at Bullwinkle's Place. 

So, what's made this day so great? First off, we had basically nothing to do. Sure, I had a couple of phone calls to make, and Boris had something to drop off in the mail. But, other than that, absolutely nada. 

So, what did we do?  Basically, absolutely nada! 

We slept in a bit, then enjoyed a great breakfast. The morning started cool and foggy, so we hung out and relaxed as we watched many campers make their Monday morning exodus. What a treat for us to be able to stay! The rest of the morning featured lazy computering and a nap or two (how much do we love this?), then lunch.  After lunch, the fog cleared. So, we strolled into "downtown" Pismo Beach, walked the pier and admired the beach. Before dinner, we made a quick trip for groceries for a great dinner followed by a sunset stroll on the beach.  Is this the makings for a best day yet, or what?

Yes, folks. We could definitely get used to this. 

What's That Sound?

Greetings from beautiful Pismo Beach, CA. We're parked here at the Pismo Coast Village for a few days while painters do their thing to the inside and outside of our house. What a treat to be pulling IN to an RV park on a Sunday night for a change! And, for that simple act, this park rewards us for a free fourth night. So, we're here until Thursday!

Check in here is 4PM, so we weren't in a big hurry to leave our sticks and bricks. It was 12:30 when we hooked the squirrel to the moose and set out on the 250-ish mile drive south. We traveled in intermittent mist and rain about halfway. Then, Mother Nature decided to cooperate and give us a nice dry drive.

Just after we got underway, we heard a strange, but somewhat familiar sound. A high pitched "alarm-ish" tone coming from the driver's side front speaker. We'd heard it before when we were heading back from our Thanksgiving trip down south. Back then, we were convinced it was our satellite radio going through some kind of strange gyrations. We turned the radio off and noise stopped. Simple as that. So when we heard the sound early this afternoon, we did the same thing. Off went the radio and the noise was silenced.

About one hundred miles down the road, we stopped to fill up and break for lunch. Back on the freeway, we heard the sound again. So, off went the radio. Grrrrrr! But, minutes later, the tone blared once again. Boris checked the the dashboard. No lights, no warnings. I checked the fridge and various alarms in the coach, and all was well. We both checked on the squirrel in the rear view camera and all was well. As far as alarms go, we had to admit this was half-assed. It was as if the thing was trying to tell us something was wrong, but it was so intermittent we couldn't figure out what it was.

So it went for the next 30 miles. The weak alarm would sound for a few seconds and we'd do our best to rule out or figure out what was the problem. We rode along in silence because we still weren't sure it wasn't the satellite radio. Grrrrr! When we hit one particular bump, the noise started again. OK, we thought. We're on to something. As the alarm sounded, Boris cupped his hand around the brake controller...and the sound was muffled.

"Holy shit," we exclaimed. Something was wrong with our tow setup! While Boris looked for an exit, I dumped the entire contents of our huge black Winnebago bag on the floor. There wasn't a scrap of paper anywhere about this damn brake controller. With the alarm sounding on and off in a random, meaningless pattern, we spotted the perfect spot to pull off and suss things out. As we began to slow down, the alarm became a constant. We were definitely on to something. As we pulled to a stop, Boris watched the controller. It wasn't working.

As we pulled to a stop along a rather desolate section of 101 in central California, we both had visions of spending the night far away from our intended destination. We hopped out and checked the connections. The pigtail that supplies power from the moose to the squirrel had jiggled loose. Boris secured it again and went inside the coach to hit the brakes. The friendly buzz of the brake controller in the Jeep sounded and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Within minutes we were back on the road, and the random alarm was silenced.

So, now we know. That sound is our brake controller sounding the alarm that we have lost the power connection to our toad.

And that, as it turns out, is a very good thing.

A Week of Accomplishments

TGIF!

I wouldn't think it would really matter that much these days, but I really am glad it's Friday. It's been quite a week. We've accomplished much in the last few days. Here's a quick recap:

It's raining, which of course we have nothing to do with. But, what's important about that is we see no leaks. Our recent roof repair gets a big thumbs up!

Boris met with many painters. As soon as the rain stops, the exterior painter will get to work on making the outside of house look fresh as a daisy. And, the work on the inside starts Monday morning. 

We need to be out of the way for a few days next week, so we made reservations for a little weekday camping.

We made arrangements for health insurance. What a relief to know we're covered!

We got rid of a truck load of stuff this week. There's more to do, of course. But, we have a real sense of accomplishment in the purging department!

We met with an attorney today and got some great advice on how to wrap up our "separation" from our ex-employer.

I finally finished the top for the queen-size double wedding ring quilt that's been in the works for something like five years. I had one last curvy seam to pin and sew today. What a sense of accomplishment when that was done!

Whew!!!  That's a lot!  It's amazing what you can do when work doesn't get in the way. And, when the sun comes up tomorrow it'll be a relaxing Saturday for most. But, for us it'll be another busy day on the road to fulltiming. 

For now, though, we're gonna kick back, relax and enjoy our Friday night. We've definitely earned it.

Happy weekend!