The Sandcastle

I have lots of experience at moving. My Dad was discharged from the Navy when I was 3 months old and I made my first move from one living quarters to another. Of course, I have no memory of that. I have memories of a couple places where we lived when I was a toddler but I don’t remember those actual moves. Kids, I think, rarely remember the actual moves. I just know we moved in the middle of kindergarten. And again as I started 5th grade. And again at age 15. And I live in four different places during four years of high school.

Dave was in the Army when we married and we lived in eleven different places the first ten years we were married. I remember those moves and all the ones that followed. But, never have I had a move like this one.

Normally, when you move from one place to another you start way in advance and pack boxes of the things you rarely use then stash those boxes in some corner or another. On moving day, your helpers come, whether they be friends and relatives or paid movers, and everything gets moved to the new place all at once. Then you start unpacking the boxes until you are all moved in.

But we’ve been living the last year and a half in a 24-foot motorhome. There’s very little in it we don’t use regularly. And there’s no place to stash boxes as we packed them. So we moved bit by bit.

We parked the motorhomes side by side, packed a bag or two from the old RV, moved that stuff into the new RV, unpacked it and found places to stash it, then went back to the old RV to do it again.

Everything had to be unpacked and put away as soon as it was moved because we never knew when the dealer was going to want to move the RV into the shop to do more of the warranty work. The new RV had to be ready to be moved all the time. So we had a couple of days of being discombobulated.

I got ready to brush my teeth only to discover my toothbrush was in one RV and the toothpaste in the other. I got hungry then discovered the food was in one RV and the cooking utensils in the other. My lumbar pillow was, and still is, always in the wrong one. I had one can of pop in the new one and three cases of pop in the old one.

Even when we get stuff over here there are the challenges of deciding what goes where. Did you ever try to pack a movable pantry that has adjustable shelves? You’d be surprised how long that apparently simple task takes.

I hate clutter! It makes me grumpy.

I am going to be so glad when we are done moving. So is Dave. 🙂

TTYL,

Linda

We are buying the RV I mentioned before as being in Bakersfield, California. It is not perfect but nothing in life is, really, and it comes so close.

It is a 2010 Winnebago Journey Express 34Y and it looks like this:

It is a 34 foot DP. Translated that means it is almost 35 feet long and it has a diesel engine at the back end. It has only one door which you can see on the passenger side front. You climb several steps to get into it because there is storage on the lower level–known amazingly enough as the basement. The extended walls you see in this picture are called slides. The front one is in the living room and the back one is in the bedroom. On the other side is one that runs nearly the entire length of the RV which makes for lots of room inside. See:

In the living room here’s Linda’s chair:

And Dave’s chair:

And the view they face:

That’s the dining/computing area. It includes a buffet with a surprise. See the funny looking top of the buffet?

It hides this:

I suspect we’ll start watching movies again with such a comfortable place to do so. We even have a surround sound system so we can catch all the nuances of movie soundtracks once again.

This is the kitchen:

Most RVers call this a galley but I don’t come from a boating background so I bounce back and forth between the two terms. We now have a double sink and a four, count them four, door refrigerator! And a microwave/convection oven I can reach and a corner into which to tuck my bar stool so I can prepare food without having to stand too long. I’ve already started digging out some of my favorite healthful recipes.

Speaking of healthful, see this long aisle facing another big TV?

That’s where I plan to put a new Wii so I can go bowling or play tennis or golf or whatever else will help me get up out of my comfy chair and moving around some. Those cab chairs under the TV swivel to face the living room so our visitors can be comfy, too. The passenger one is a recliner with a built in foot rest as well.

I have no plans at all for this:

That’s the bedroom TV. Are you counting? That’s three so far for a couple of people who have watched no TV for the last year and a half. We would never have ordered this many TVs but the RV already had all of them in it and they wouldn’t give us a discount to take them out so, as far as I am concerned, the only value of this one is resale value some day when we are done with the RV.

But wait! There’s more!

This is the outside TV. Yup, TV number four. The one where we can have the neighbors over to sit under our awning and watch the big game. Or play in the big game if we put a Wii out there. Or watch what I do if I decide to start presenting seminars on RVing like I used to do on model railroading. Or something. Surely we can find some justification for having four TVs in a house that’s only 34 feet long! After all, the dealer who ordered the RV with all these TV must have justified it somehow.

Anyway, that’s our new home. At least it will be if the dealer ever gets all the glitches fixed and upgrades installed. The latest word is it should all be done ready for delivery to us next Tuesday. In the meantime, we now have keys to it so we can start moving our stuff from the 24 foot View to the 34 foot Journey. I think our stuff is going to get lost in there.

TTYL,

Linda

ps. Oh yeah, there’s a bed and a bathroom, too, for those of you who were wondering about that.

After a couple days sitting still doing nothing we needed a do everything day. We dumped and filled our tanks, traded my paperback books, bought groceries, did laundry, bought a new mouse for my computer, returned that mouse, bought a different one at a different store, and ate lunch at the Heart Attack Grill.

The Heart Attack Grill sells the experience more than the food.

Here’s the menu:

Each of those hamburger patties is 1/2 pound of meat. They also sell “Flatliner Fries” which are cooked in lard. The fries are serve yourself and the quantity is unlimited. Your choice of beverages are: Full-sugar Coke, Pabst, Coors, or water all of which are served in the bottle with no glass. There’s nothing “Lite” or “Diet” served at the Heart Attack Grill.

The experience begins as soon as you pick which counter to sit at. The “nurse” serving your section comes around with a hospital gown for you to wear (Fortunately, you get to wear them over your clothes here.) and ends with the “nurse” presenting you with a list of the “procedures” you had and the bill for them.

It cost us $25 plus tip for two Single Bypasses and two of those tall bottles of Coke. We were also tagged with hospital type wrist tags that said we each had a bypass at the Heart Attack Grill. If you have a quadruple bypass you get to ride to your car in a wheelchair. If you weigh over 350 pounds you get to eat free.

It was one of those once in a lifetime is enough experiences but I highly recommend anyone do it once.

TTYL,

Linda

As much as we have enjoyed traveling in our View the last year and a half it has not been good for my health. The galley cannot be modified to let me do my own cooking and Dave does not enjoy doing the cooking I need. Plus, I cannot do my exercises in the limited space we have. Now that I have been diagnosed with diabetes, those thing are of increasing importance. So, as many of you have already guessed, we are shopping for a bigger RV.

Yes, that’s why we are thinking of buying a CR-V. A bigger RV wouldn’t let us go the places we go now so we’ll need a runabout.

Yes, that’s also why we spent so much time in Houston. We picked out a Winnebago Vectra that appeared to be designed specifically for the way we live and spent much time negotiating factors relating to it. Unfortunately, the one we couldn’t negotiate was a potential engine recall that would have left us homeless if the incorrectly machined part failed. With a nearly 1 in 20 chance of that happening, I just couldn’t persuade myself to take that risk.

So, next week we are going to California to look at a different RV we think might work for us. Keep your fingers crossed.

TTYL,

Linda

We’ve been at La Posa South LTV near Quartzsite, Arizona for a week and a half. We met members of the View/Navion Owners Group. We reunited with Escapee Class of ’08 members. We made new friends with Escapee Class of ’09 members. We ate at local restaurants with groups of 17-19 people. We experienced a storm that broke a record held for 104 years. We sat around many campfires and told many stories–most of them mostly true. But now it is over for another year and we are the last of our group to move on.  All good things come to an end. I wonder which of our many friends we’ll see next and where we’ll be then?

TTYL,

Linda