Oh, that, yes, I am working for pay again for a few weeks.  But it is still retirement and motor home related. I want to take my motorcycle along with us as we travel around the country, but since we did not buy a toy hauler vehicle, I've settled on towing the bike on a trailer.
The short term job I am working is going to buy this for me.

Not the hot little Norton on top, but the small single track trailer. When parked at a campsite I am thinking it will slide up under the rig when the bike is off-loaded and not take up a lot of extra space.

While I have been busy with the extra mentioned above, I've still been working on the modifications to the motor home.

Last post I told you I was tearing out the guts to the hide-a-bed to make room for additional storage underneath. (BTW I posted a note on Craigslist offering the mechanism to any takers, and aother RV guy picked it up because he is adding bed space to his rig.) After the bed was removed I built a new sub-frame to hold up the sofa cushions.

My "shop" is little more than the great outdoors, so I guess I am well prepared to continue making changes as we travel, but for some things I will need equipment that is more precise for finish work. My brother has said I can use his shop in Oregon for some other things I'd like to build. But for now, a saw horse and a straight edge works for cutting out the final piece to lay down as a cushion seat and finish the sofa storage project.

The motor home came with a sliding rack that fit in one of the cabinets, and while it seems a convenient idea, the single layer of storage racks did not fill up the available space very effectively, so Pam said she'd prefer to have standard shelving put in it's place.

So back to ripping out and rebuilding. I love the challenge. This is how this little mod turned out. Now she can cram in the food from side to side, and front to back.

There comes a point, and I think we are there, that we'll just have to take the motor home out and live with it for awhile to see what works, and doesn't work for us. For the remainder of our stay in the stick house, we will need to evaluate what will travel with us, what will become flotsam, and what will go into long term storage.

That and finish up my short term pay job and get that trailer ordered.

I know, we already have our motor home, so why head to Denver to see an RV show. Just a little window shopping  I suppose. You know, check out the new stuff, see what is hot this year, and in my case, I was hoping to get some idea of what modifications would be nice to add to ours. (As if I didn't already have enough crazy ideas.)

So, how about this in for a little cozy living space.

Fireplace with genuine radiant heat, and simulated flames. The slide out gives you room to stretch your legs and relax after a busy day fishing, hiking, or exploring. This model, just out this year, is a fifth wheel trailer with the bedroom flipped to the back of the rig, giving the center to the dining room and this loft area a great living room. Pam and I really liked this new concept, and from the comments of others we overheard, you may see more coming out with this.

Another new concept we saw for those that do a lot of outdoor cooking and entertaining when in the RV, was the slide out outdoor kitchen.

Pull out the awning and the outdoor patio is set. I'd imagine that you could add the wrap around insect screening and this could make for a very nice outdoor living space.

What I did not see, was a lot of new outdoor equipment, or RV accessories offered by the vendors. This was primarily only rolling stock, I was told that there is a larger show in March that brings out a larger venue.  For our time table, I would hope to have most the the changes and upgrades made to our rig by that time.

That brings be back to the driveway where our rig sits while I make the changes I feel capable of doing. This past week that meant some more deconstruction work. I looked at the hide-a-bed and thought, we most likely are not going to use this bed, but we could use the space the mattress takes up under the cushions.

Tear it out I say...

As an added bonus space, I am going to re-fasten the sofa all the way up on the lip of the slide out and use the space behind the sofa for more storage. A folding table, and some folding trays will go nicely back there.

But now, this part takes more than a few piece of hardware, I needed a full sheet of plywood to cut on, and, well, the motor home works just fine to run down to the lumber yard to pick this up. Besides, I could use the driving practice.

With about 10 weeks left, I better get busy.

Last week's blog mentioned some modifications I wanted to do on motor home. Some on finished.

This drawer was probably designed for the week-ender. It simply did not open up enough to be very useful on an ongoing basis. (Not to mention it was cheaper to build)

What I did was strip out the old runners and install new, (Ok,recycled, remember the house salvage project I was helping with last month) steel drawer runners that now allow the drawer to hyper extend so that the entire drawer is usable.

The drawer above this one actually had clearance in the back that was not there for the lower one, so I not only added the new runners, I rebuilt the entire drawer so that it is about five inches deeper. Now it allows for a full size utensil tray to fit.

As I alluded to in the start of this post, there are new things that seem to crop up. After using the motor home over the holidays, I didn't get everything correctly winterized, or at least not well enough for a week of temps hanging out around the zero mark. There was a small, (but apparently vulnerable) water valve on the toilet that snapped apart when the little bit of water left in it froze.

Next, well, now we are headed into projects that need to be patented if they work.  For instance, a 12 volt heated terrarium for RVs. Maybe not a huge market,  but hey, with the demand for solar energy, there could be a need for more 12 volt appliances.

It started with Sarah, our daughter. At one time we convinced her that in place of the traditional pets that kids have in stick built homes, (think dogs, cats, goats, etc) she would have to choose a pet that could travel well. Something small, portable, low maintenance and has a short life span (what! You think I want to take care of a tortoise for a hundred years). She found some that fit those requirements.

Hermit Crabs.

They have already passed some sort of test in surviving a trip across country in a U-haul truck, and a year in Colorado. But what they do need extra, (and I forgot to add this to the original pet spec) is some mild heating.  Currently this is supplied by a small heating pad under the cage that is plugged into the house current.  What  I am thinking of, is creating a small cave they can crawl into that will be heated with a 12 volt heat source.

Sure, I'm up to the challenge. See you next week.

Pam and I used the Motor home for the couple of weeks that we had guests in the house.  It was not a full shake down, but did give me some idea of things I want to change or upgrade before we live in it full time.  Like the tiny kitchen drawers.

I've got some spare parts and drawer slides on my garage shelf, so the first upgrade it so rebuild the current "doll house" drawers into something a bit more useable.

Other ideas are to add some slide outs to a cabinet to make it easier to use, as well as a drop-down counter top so give the cook more space to use when creating gourmet dinners.

I have some bigger ideas, but we want to actually use the motor home for a month or so before I decide exactly what I'll do. I am hoping I can hit up my brother in Oregon and his larger wood shop for those changes.  (What do you say, Kirk?)

More things I need to do are smaller maintenance repairs, bad switch here, leaking shut off valve there, nothing major.

And about the name of the craft, it was officially re-christened, with a splash of cheap champagne, the "Voyager" after the Star Trek ship of the same name. (the one that was sent so far into deep space it took seven years to return to home port)  My daughter and her boyfriend gave us a set of decals to replace the factory name to make it official. Sweet huh!

What brings this to mind, is that Pam and I are again reviewing travel books, and more specifically, RV travel books.  Two books that we are reading are collections of journals and essays that a traveler has written and published in a larger book format. So I've been reviewing this blog and realized that we have been adding various bits and pieces to it for nearly three years. The welcome page written primarily by Pam has around 300 entries. This page that I've written has around 250 entries. They include stories we've taken in a travel trailer, a journey through cancer treatment, epic motorcycle trips, entries of life and memories.

Some, (Hi, Mom) have followed the blog since the beginning, but for anyone else just meeting us, it is a bit daunting, and hard to track reading from the beginning.  A single manuscript would make it easier to enjoy.  See, we really need to write a book.

Take a look at some entries that started our retirement life,

April 8, 2007

We will be leaving southern California the last week in April and going up to Oregon for the most of the summer; staying near Mike’s family for an extended visit. (Hopefully we'll get in a side-trip to Crescent City during that time too!) After that we will be heading across the country again to settle near Jennifer – most likely on the Alabama side since the home-schooling laws there are easy to live with. (Gads – I can’t believe I’m choosing to say I’m going to live in Alabama!!)

Why? Lots of reasons - it looks as though our son-in-law will be returning to Iraq by late summer / early fall and we would like to be nearer to Jenn and Aiden during that time. The cost of living is so much less there that we can live the same lifestyle on just Mike’s retirement check that we could live here with me working full-time. Back there I can work, albeit for less than I’d make out here, but we could bank my salary in Alabama versus just treading water in California. And I really DO want to buy a bigger RV to use for travelling full-time.

So we are cleaning out closets, deciding what we * really* need and what we don’t; copying music to our laptops so we don’t have to move the CD’s – that kind of stuff. After looking at moving costs, we’re probably going to sell most of our furniture here and just buy new when we get settled back east. (There’s an IKEA in Atlanta that I plan to get real cozy with…) :-) I’m going to the beach every day that I can, we'll make it to one last Angels' game and I'm trying to fit in a day trip to Catalina since we haven’t been there yet and it’s on my list!!

October 12, 2007

Today was a day of taking things to the local thrift shop, hazardous materials to the 'haz-mat' dump, and beginning the process of transferring clothes, food, etc. to our 24 ft. home for the next few weeks.  And you know what??  Even though we have basically ONE piece of furniture - an antique dresser - plus a couple of bookshelves - that we are taking with us, this whole packing thing is really a pain!  Which is a big reason for us wanting to eventually get a bigger RV to full-time travel in - you never have to unpack!  You get to live and see different places, but you take your stuff with you.  Sounds good to me.  :-)

Tomorrow we will load up the truck with everything, finish packing the trailer, do some cleaning in the house we've been living in this summer and then first thing Sunday morning we will hit the road.  Our first stop will be the Seal Beach Naval Station campground; very close to where we lived in Huntington Beach.  We'll stay there for about a week visiting with Christa and some friends; then Sunday the 21st we will start our trek east.  With my handy-dandy blackberry we should have internet access and be able to update this website with where we are each day.  Mike and I are both anxious to get going again, we loved our trip earlier this year and are hoping this will be just as much fun.  Not to mention that we are looking forward to finally being nearer to Jenn and Aiden.  (I think our grandson is anxious too - I received another 4:30 AM phone call from the little stinker this morning.  He just wants to know when we're finally going to get there!)

We'd love to have you follow along with us on this new adventure - and if you know of any places to see or things to do in the states we'll be going through, please let us know!

October  19, 2007

So we packed up our beach towels and chairs and headed to Sunset Beach this afternoon to get in one more beach fix. Mike brought his boogie board, Sarah brought her Frisbee, and I brought my book and camera. It was a great couple of hours watching Mike rediscover that boogie-boarding takes different muscles than motorcycle riding. I also spent a few minutes watching this little bird play chicken with the waves. It had a long skinny beak and was (I’m guessing) eating some kind of little bugs in the sand. But he would run down to the water line as the waves recessed, quickly poke his beak in the sand and grab what bugs he could find and then at the last minute run back up the beach as the waves came in. I tried to get some pictures, but couldn’t catch him in action.

After a while, the wind turned a bit breezy and cold, so we reluctantly packed up and headed back to the truck. In a couple of days we will start heading east and at the first opportunity I’m planning to dip my toes into the Atlantic Ocean. I wonder how strange it will be to watch the sun come UP over the ocean instead of watching an ocean sunset. Can’t wait to find out…

October 28, 2007

The other sign we kept seeing was one pointing out that the river we were crossing over was the Colorado River. Keep in mind that we first saw that river several days ago in Laughlin, Nevada. Then again at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Then it disappeared for a while until we started seeing it again, and again, and again. And it wasn’t that we were driving alongside of it and the road just went back and forth over the river – no. We would cross it in one place and then not see it for 200 miles when suddenly there would be another sign pointing out that we were crossing it again! Sarah sincerely thought we were lost and driving in circles. That river certainly makes quite a journey!

Pam and I both beat the "H" out of our keyboards this past month to meet the challenge we took to write a novel length manuscript. We both did, whew!  

But to do that meant a lot of other things took a backseat.  Time to play catch up.

One of the things we have put off, is dreaming. Not that we haven't been dreaming, it is just that our stories and characters were filling up everything we could think on. Now we begin the new dream.

Like the poem goes, Oh, the Places you'll go.

And we can, but even with the motorhome, time is still finite. We can not be in several places at the same time, so things we want to see, are locked into a timeline.  There are only a handful of Space Shuttle launches left, and we want to see one. We want to see the leaves change color in New England, but you can only do that in the fall, and we want to see family and weddings, and fireworks, and that takes a decision to be at a certain place at a certain time. 

So we pour over travel books, and routing programs, and having a ball. Should give us something to write home about anyway.

There is the new motor home I will want to start bonding with, there is the weekly writer group meeting, and a new Men's Bible study group I just joined. I have a few pick-up jobs with a merchandiser that gets be out of the house here and there.  On Thursday's I hang out with a few guys and tear down houses to see what re-usable furnishing could be ripped out to re-sell at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore shop.  But I'm talking about all that extra time I have as a retiree.

I know, I'll write a novel in November...

I signed on with about a zillion others around the world to take on the challenge of writing a novel in 30 days.  Why, I don't know. Maybe because so many have made comments about the short stuff I blog and suggested that I should "write a book" someday.  Time to put up, or shut up I guess. Or maybe I don't want to procrastinate so long I miss the boat.

 Will this be a book you're going to find at the local Barnes and Noble, probably not. I may not even share it with anyone. (ok, an excert or two along the way if I think a particular piece it brilliant) But realistically, cranking out this many words in a month is not about quality, but quantity. Very much like my first 500 mile day on the motorcycle, I didn't think I could do it, but now that I have, I can do it on a regular basis.

I start tomorrow, and I barely have an idea to write about, although this character named, Snakebite, seems to be creeping more and more into my head. And I think he rides a bike a lot, and maybe, just maybe, when I can't ride over the Colorado snow, he can ride for me.

Besides having a heart for helping others, Pisti, (Pea-sh Tee) and I also have another common bond. We both love motorcycles. Whether we will ever get to ride together someday remains to be seen, but we did leave with hopes that if I ever ride a motorcycle in Eastern Europe we'd work on it. And the same if he could ever get to the states.

One other strong belief we share, is that if you ride, you ride with all the safety gear. This means you wear the helmet, the riding jacket, and the sturdy pants. Because, let's face it, it's a dangerous out there.

Pisti's personal mantra "Safety First" literally saved his life this past week.

It is a universal constant, drivers do crazy unpredictable things at times.  This driver made an illegal turn and cut him off. You just can't predict these things. You will never know this ahead of time so that you will be sure to don the gear.

That is why I am so bothered by the large number of Colorado riders that ride without their helmet, and even ride in cut-offs on hot days.  I preach ride your own ride, but don't ride stupid. ATGATT!!  All The Gear A The Time.

Pisti will miss some time from work, but he will work again.  That would make me a believer if I were not already.

Have you ever been to a Bike Night?  What you will generally find is a crowd showing up and every one parking their machine.  The riders will walk up and down the row of bikes looking over the new models, the new modification, and the new pieces of chrome.  Some come solo, others in small packs of 2 or 3. Young and old, fresh and weathered, they will all be there. Small talk starts most conversation, how you doing, what cha been up to, or even the occasional, so when did you make parole?  Some riders have actually ridden to places beyond the parking lot, they will talk tall tales of great rides, the rest just sit back and listen.  If you think about it, it is very much like going to church, except I haven’t seen a church meet at Hooters.

Biker bars and churches both have the type of person called the poseur.  Be it, the rider and bike that rolls up with all the chrome, the flashy paint job and odometer on the light side of the triple digits. The biker poseur loves the Race Replica paint job.  In church the poseur is the new guy in church with the three-piece business suit, the trophy wife, and the “Hello, Can I make you deal” smile, you see him leaving each new hand he shakes a business card.

On any given bike night there is the new kid that shows up on a small bike, not much, but already he has a tank cover matching his bright new rider suit. He looks up to the old timers and asks questions. He wants to know about any good riding roads. He’s fresh from his rider safety class and anxious to learn better riding techniques. The church will have the new Christian, you know the one, he’ll actually bring his brand new Bible. He will be proud of that study Bible, and yes, he’s personalized it with a new leather cover.

My favorite biker rides a late model touring machine. If the odometer shows a triple digit figure you can bet it has rolled over. The paint is faded from long rides in the desert sun, not from sitting in the front yard. His leathers are worn, tattered, and comfortable. If you ride with him he knows about back roads the county road department has forgotten.  He’ll wait for you at the fork in the road to insure you don’t get lost. He is not a squid, but there is no doubt he handles his bike with the best. His life passion is bikes. In fact, this bike he rides now is not the only one in his stable. It’s just the one that fits him best.  At the drop of a glove he’ll be in your garage helping you install that new upgrade. In the dead of the night you can call him. You know that he’ll show up with his beat up truck to come get you when you break down.

 Christ calls us to a life of passion .God is not interested in flash and chrome with no substance.  We’re not to live a life with our faith tucked away in the barn, only to be taken out for a week-end ride. Our faith should be our daily ride. Life’s roads have been ridden and we should share the dangers and warn our fellow riders.

The expert rider will always work on improving riding skills and keeping instincts sharp.  The mature Christian also stays in the Word to keep his mind sharp.

Whether you ride your ride, or ride for Jesus, keep it real man.