We could leave today

Bob got the batteries all hooked up and charging. It took a while and we were both very happy that he did it here rather than on the road. I spent the day taking stuff out to Hank and Fanny and loading it up. It all fits! It even seems to be organized and easily accessible. We even stocked the refrigerator.

Last night nephew Ira called and asked that Bob and I stay for two days, rather than just one. I called San Diego county to change our reservation for Agua Caliente and they were wonderful. We also decided to stay there a little longer - for a whole week. I think Bob really wants to be in the warm and make sure that Fanny and Hank are working before we actually start going East. Since we have plenty of time, no problem.

We are so ready that we could leave today, but we are going to wait until Tomorrow!!!!

With all of the advance planning?

OK. So one of the things on Bob's to do list was to check the batteries on the trailer. He did so on Saturday and, after much discussion, we decided that we would get new batteries. Is anyone surprised that they do not make batteries in the same size as the ones that we have on the trailer? Of course not. Bob had to buy two larger size batteries. They are not just more powerful, but are also bigger dimensions. The battery boxes (I didn't even know there was such a thing like that until yesterday) that we had on the trailer holding the old batteries, were not big enough. Bob called the local auto parts store and they said that "sure" that had the larger size battery boxes. They did have ONE. Of course, we need two. They said they could get it delivered. I am not very trusting and said that we would go pick it up. They called another store and verified that they had the oversize battery boxes. We waited patiently while they actually verified that they had the oversize boxes. We drove across town in what is getting close to rush hour traffic. We get to the store and it is not the oversize battery box, but the regular size. They don't even apologize. URGGGG.

We stopped at another auto parts store on the way home and they did not have the larger boxes, but they said that one of their other stores had two. This store was right across the street from the first store that we went to. (URGGGGG). They did have two and so after driving around for about three hours we finally got the battery boxes and it was too dark to install them. Hopefully the weather will still be nice today and Bob can do whatever he needs to do the modify these and install the new batteries. Good that we did not wait until the last minute to check the batteries.

The rest of the plan for today is to stock the refrigerator in the trailer and finish putting things in drawers - and maybe even label the drawers so that we can find things later. Then on Wednesday we can take care of all the things that we didn't think about and maybe spend some final quality time with daughter and grandson.

Getting closer

It is starting to get closer. Today the weather was pretty nice, so Bob and I loaded the scooters on to the back of Hank (the Ford pickup). Bob had the idea that we should load then in with the front facing the end of the pickup. then he thought that the wind would not bother the back boxes so much. But, they just don't fit that way. So we loaded one, then unloaded it and reloaded it. We were pretty tired when we finished. It will get easier as we get better at this - I hope. We also loaded the chests that go in between the scooters and Bob chained them down and locked them in place. My only concern is that it will be such trouble to unload the scooters that we will not do it very often. I hope that won't be true.

Tomorrow we will go shopping for new batteries for the trailer. The old ones are getting weak and neither of us want to take a chance. Tomorrow we will also clean our house and do laundry - which means that we will be really close to being fully packed. It is getting closer.

Less than a week to go

It is hard to believe that we have less than a week to go before we leave. We have filed our taxes, we have gotten both Hank and Fanny serviced, Bob and I have gone to the doctor and gotten our prescriptions renewed and our bodies checked. (The really good news is that Bob has a clean bill of health. In fact the doc said that he had not seen Bob in such good shape since he started seeing him 20 years ago. I am sure that is all due to the exercising that he is doing at my insistence.) We have stocked all of the nonperishable food and found a place for it. I have taken all of the clothes and determined that we have room for everything. I have purchased a data thingy (highly technical term for being able to access the Internet on the road) and have installed it and determined that it works. We have verified that our prescription insurance will allow us to fill enough for 90 days so that we don't have to stop so often. We have gathered books, audio books, and (thanks to Libbi) some DVDs of TV shows. We still have a running to do list and the things on it now are things like "cancel Oregonian", "buy printer paper", "select wines to take." Periodically we think of something like we will not have a pencil sharpener, so we go and buy a pencil sharpener and stow it. We are almost ready.

I spent some time remembering how to download pictures on to the computer. I was even able to download a movie (of grandson of course) and post it on Facebook. I spent some time working with my MP3 player so that I could download pod casts. (I love NPR and have downloaded a list of every NPR station in the US, but I know that there will be some places where I cannot get NPR, so I will have some downloads ready to go.) I could download just fine, but it took my daughter to tell me where to find them. Thanks Stef.

We have had at least one interesting surprise. I have lost 17 pounds so far - only 5 pounds to go to my goal. That is not a surprise because I have been working pretty hard at doing that. The surprise is that although Bob has been eating pretty good including seconds on dinner and dessert every night he is also losing weight. (Must be the exercise - am I sounding a little repetitive here?) Yesterday he was amazed that he had lost 10 pounds - but even more amazed that his jeans and his underwear are now too big. So we went to Penney's today and bought some more underwear. (He can wear a belt on his jeans and we can find a place to buy smaller jeans if we need to do so.)

Also, because we will be spending a lot of time in the south, I figure we will see a lot of Civil War sites. I did learn about the Civil War in school (it seems like over and over again) but I remembered very little. So I bought a very large book (1000 pages) that is the history of the Civil War, including the politics at the time. (That could be the subject of an entire separate blog - politics during the Civil War period I mean). But I have now finished all 1000 pages and at least will have some sense of what I am looking at when I get to South Carolina or Virginia- like what is the significance of Antietam?

Scott will be staying in our house. He has moved some of his stuff in already - lots of plants in a house that does not get really good sunlight, but we found places for them. He came on Wednesday with his mom - who seems really nice. He will move in on Monday so that we have a few days with him to show him where everything is. It is amazing how many things I am thinking I have to tell him - like the disposal is pretty touchy, please don't scour my good frying pan, the shower works best if you have a low water pressure, don't use harsh detergents in my washing machine. I know he will do fine.

The weather looks like it is going to be cooperative - as much as it can be in February in Oregon. We are planning on leaving about 8:30 or 9 am in order to be across the Siskyou mountain summit by early afternoon. Actually, that is how we decided when we would leave. We calculated how far (300 miles) and average speed of 50 mph and figured that we wanted to be over the pass at about 2 or 3 pm. So, we settled on leaving at 8:30 or 9. (Bob may get really antsy and try to leave earlier - he gets that way when we are ready to go.)

We have memberships in a number of different camping clubs including Good Sam and KOA so that we can get discounts on the road. We have a wonderful resource called Woodall's which lists every campground in North America and describes the place - plus gives phone numbers. I am trying to be loose about this, but Bob keeps asking questions such as where do you want to stay the first night. So we went to Woodall's and found a number of good campgrounds in Redding California. It looks like we will spend the first night there and then head for the Bay Area and a visit with my nephew and his wife. We had hoped to visit their son and his wife and new baby, but the son has moved over the past week and now lives at Big Bear Lake. The elevation is about 7000 ft. It is really cold up there and they had a pretty good snow storm this week. In addition, we already know that Bob's lungs don't do well at high elevations. So, I am not sure that we will be able to see them. We will try. But I am really looking forward to seeing my nephew Ira - who just moved to the Bay Area.

We now have reservations at Agua Caliente, a campground in southern California, just above the Mexican border. We will get there on Sunday, 2/14, and stay for at least four days. Maybe longer if we are having a great time. Bob and I went there several years ago on a trip with my sister. The pool is a giant hot tub and very invigorating. There are lots of paths into the desert and places to explore. It will be a nice place to melt away the cobwebs and duck feet and get ready for the trek. The last time we were there the area had no cell phone access, so while we are there we will have to drive several miles into Julian, California to get calls and log into the Internet. But I think we can cope with that.

We are having dinner with good friends tonight. Then daughter, son-in-law and grandson, (and son-in-law's dad) are coming tomorrow for dinner. Grandson is almost a year and Bob and I will miss his first birthday. So we are adjusting the date and having a birthday party for him almost a month early. (I don't think it will scar him, but he might be surprised as he gets older and sees the various pictures of his "birthday party.")

Then we wait until Wednesday because that is the first day that we can refill our prescriptions. We should have the trailer all hooked up on Wednesday night and ready to go early Thursday morning.

Wow. This is getting really long so I will stop now. I will try not to wait so long before writing again. Happy trails.

We have a target start date.

We have finally decided on a target date to start the Great Trek. It is four weeks from today - i.e., February 11. That at least gives us a target. We will have to watch the weather.

For the last week we have been working on the "to do" list. The list gets whittled down and then we think of something else to add so it stays fairly long. Bob is busy working on his stuff. He still has to get the vehicles serviced and check the bicycles. He has finished making stuff (I think). He has finally agreed that he does not need to do anything fancy to cover the backs of the scooters. He agrees that using a garbage bag works just fine.

We have cleaned out the large bins that we are going to take and filled them with large stuff that we won't need often, like the tent and campfire stuff. The bins will go in the back of the pickup between the scooters and actually help keep the scooters steady while we drive. The bins are now actually ready to go.

I have started pulling out clothes so that I can see how much room everything takes. I have a "staging area" in one of the spare bedrooms. We have plastic drawers that we are going to use to keep the clothes that won't fit in in the trailer and also to keep extra stuff like books, etc. I put the bins on the floor and then eyeballed both piles to get an idea if there was enough room in the bins for the stuff. I am not good at this stuff but it did not look as if there was going to be enough space. So I asked Bob to look. He agreed - There was not enough room. So we went out and bought two more bins. If those are not enough then we are in trouble because there will not be enough room in Hank for more. Unfortunately as we plan and try to think of what might happen, the list of things that we are taking with us keeps growning. Is that a function of the packing process? I know that I will have to go through everything and whittle it down so that there is room. I have my piles of stuff - "Absolutely have to have" and "Would be really nice to have" and "Wow, if there is room."

While we were buying extra drawers I couldn't help walking around our local Storables store. They have such great stuff for keeping possessions organized. I did really good about not buying anything else until we got to the kitchen stuff. One problem that I had on the trip from Ohio back to Oregon was figuring out how to wash dishes inside the trailer. We usually use the trailer for camping so we wash all dishes under the dining tent on the picnic table. But when we try to wash dishes in the trailer, there is not enough room for them to drain (Lots of dampness and mess). At Storables I found a little dishdrain that will fit right into the plastic wash basin that I use when I am washing (the sink is for rinsing water). It is really cute and will be very handy. (I have to stop buying stuff.)

Stefee shared with us her digital picture storage device thingie (I don't know what its official name is). It is really small but will store more pictures than I can ever take. She recommended that we save the picutres on the device as well as on the laptop. She reminds me that she had her device stolen on one of her trips and she lost all of her pictures. So - good advice.

I have signed up for Skype. Stef also has a webcam so we tried it last Sunday. It worked GREAT. We could see Mike and hear him. It took Stef a little fiddling with my laptop to make it possible for Mike to hear us. But she was successful. Then later when Stef got home I tried skyping her and it was really easy. The picture was not as clear as I would have liked, but it was good enough to see and enjoy. We will have to figure out how often and how long we can talk. Verizon says that their monthly internet service has enough band width (?) so that we would not be charged extra as long as we stayed below about five hours of skyping (Is that really a verb?) Verizon also recommended that we try saving the discussions for times when we have free wi-fi. Good advice. (I love getting good advice.)

Dagmar, our neighbor, has agreed to come by regularly and drive my car. I am worried that if it sits for five months that all sorts of bad things will happen (dead battery or flat spots on tires). This is a win-win for both of us since Fred and Dagmar only have one car and were thinking about getting a second car. They wanted to wait until September so having my car available to them will make that possible. Dagmar came by yesterday and drove my car around. She was very nervous, but did a great job. I am comfortable that she will take good care of my car.

We had just about given up on having someone stay in the house. I was nervous about leaving the house empty for five months because of past history when our vacant rental house was badly vandalized. But we were having great difficulty finding someone. We had just about given up because I would rather have had no one than have someone that I did not trust. We thought that having someone come by regularly and check the house would be adequate. that would have the benefit of saving us money because we could cancel cable, garbage, and have really low gas and electric bills. But yesterday Stef called with the name of a newly laid off architect who is wanting to save money because he knows that the job market is so bad for architects. Stef does not know him, but he comes recommended by someone that Stef trusts. I talked to him briefly yesterday and he will come by next week so that we can meet him and decide if he is a good match and someone that we think we can trust. That would make me feel a little safer about leaving the house for so long - but it would cost us a little more money.

That's all for now. More later.

Hi everyone. Meet Fanny the Fun Finder ( a 14 ft travel trailer in which Bob and I will spend five months) and Hank the tank (the Ford -think Henry Ford or Hank Ford??? - that will be pulling Fanny). These vehicles are going to be our new best friends for a while. The issue is turning out to be how we get everything that we need into these two vehicles and have it be pretty accessible when we need it but still safe and secure.

Bob and I have been going along prettily happily thinking that we still have lots of time. But, as we began talking last night we realized that we have a lot to do and not a whole lot of time to do it. Bob has been focused on the food and the food preparation and I have been focused on the clothes that we will take. Bob has spent most of his life focused on food so this is turning out to be pretty easy for him. I have had some experience packing for two week vacations, but not a five month trip. This is nothing I have ever experienced. For example, at first I thought that I would need to pack two sets of clothes - one for cold weather and one for warmer weather. After all, we are leaving in February and returning in July. But then I realized that I need about two days worth of warm clothes and then we will be in southern California. Hopefully we won't need really warm clothes except for coats and sweatshirts at night after that. So, we don't really need "warm clothes." Okay, that part is now easier. Only one set of clothes for five months.

Then the next question was how often we will do laundry so how much underwear do we take. (It is amazing how much we have to think about in advance.) We have decided on laundry once a week, but will bring enough underwear for two weeks, just in case. Then, of course, we went through our drawers to make sure that we had enough underwear. Unbelievable, but both of us have more than enough. (I cannot believe how much clothes I have.) It will still be a challenge but I am thinking that jeans and a t-shirt will work in all weather - so several of those. And bathing suits and shorts and nicer clothes for when jeans won't work. And - how many pairs of shoes do I need? At last count I was thinking five or six pairs. I have to be able to reduce that. More thought about that later.

We will be using plastic drawers in Fanny and more in Hank in which to store clothes and stuff. Most of the clothes we will be wearing every day will be in Fanny - I think. Then we will be able to use some of the drawers in Hank for other stuff that we need to have accessible - like cameras and computers and books and audio books.

Last night Bob and I sat down and wrote a to-do list. So much stuff that it is scary. Bob says that he can complete it in a day or two, but I doubt it. For example, we need to figure out how to protect the scooters (We haven't named them. We have Honda Metropolitans. I have a red one and Bob has a blue one. Pictures of those will come later.) The scooters will be carried in the back of Hank. The scooters are pretty weather proof, but we thought that we should have some covers for the seats and the metal carriers in the back. We already tried the commercial covers that you can buy. That was a disaster. The covers were torn apart within a few miles on the freeway. I suggested that we use garbage bags and just use a new one when the old one tore. Bob says that it will not look so nice (who cares about how it looks?). Anyway, Bob wants to create something out of tarp with grommets. (Bob always wants to create something for whatever we are doing.) We have to get this done in time to try it out and see if it will work. Bob is also making a back rest for the scooter so that he can have some support for his back while we are riding. And, we need to figure out how to carry the solar panel so that it does not break and is protected as much as possible from theft. Bob is thinking about a tarp (see what I mean) covering some batting like a quilt. All of this has to be done and tested in the next week or so.

We have to get Fanny and Hank, and the bicycles (yes we are taking bicycles on the back of Fanny) serviced so that there are no surprises.

Then we have all of the things that we need to do in the house so that it can be left essentially unattended. I am getting tired thinking about this. But I know that we will be ready in time to go. Bob says that we will go even if we are not ready and he is right. When the time comes we will go and take care of whatever we forgot when it becomes an issue. I am being very trusting here. But - One Day at a time.

About two months to go

It is now mid December. We hustled back from Ohio to deal with the insurance issues. It was nail biting and for a while I was concerned that we would not be able to take the trek. It took many phone calls and visits to Social Security, but it finally happened. By the end of November both Bob and I were covered under medicare Part B, Providence medicare plan, and ODS dental and prescription.

In the meantime, Bob and I tried to establish a routine. The routine involved me getting enough exercise and dieting. I have lost about 10 pounds and have 12 to go. That is even with my sister Lee coming for Thanksgiving. I am also working on Bob. He does weight lifiting for about 10 minutes every day and we try to walk about a mile at the mall. He is getting stronger. His back still hurts a bit, but he is doing well.

In the afternoon Bob and I both have projects. We either clean the house or organize it or something like that. I have taken many trips to Goodwill and am feeling very good that the house is getting neater and neater.

We have made some plans for the trek. We have made reservations for a week in St. Augustine with Lee for most of Passover. We also made reservations for a campground outside of Washington DC for a week. (We actually made reservations at one and then learned from the chat groups that the campground probably was not a very good one. So, we cancelled those and made reservations at another.) It is starting to seem real - at least just beginning.

Now we are trying to figure out what to do about Canada. We have decided to drive into Nova Scotia. We will probably make reservations for one week. I hope that Stef and Alex will be able to join us. that would be really nice. But, even if not, that would give us a good home base to travel around.

Then we would have three sets of reservations at key places. It is hard to believe.
Tonight Bob asked what we needed to do next to be ready. He has to get the trailer serviced - things like the tires. I have to do some cleaning of the plastic drawers that we take. Then I will begin thinking about the clothes and what we should take. I can get the summer stuff ready - assuming that I know what size I will be by then - losing weight can be so difficult.

Planning is as much fun as actually going I think. More later.