From historic back roads to glitzy downtown, I am finding much more to explore on the bike than I expected of SW Missouri.  Everyone seems to know Branson as a country entertainment Mecca, but I've found that the roads and forests serve up a wonderful dish of riding experiences. I am not sure there is a bad route to ride, all twisty, with hidden ups and downs that will challenge any rider.  What I have found is that the roads sometimes are busy, (and I was riding on a week-day) prone to surprise slow traffic, (farmers riding their ATV down to play cards at the local store) and slick spots that will be a bugger either on hot summer days, or when wet.

But the views along the route are fantastic.

I've had two days to explore the countryside, tomorrow the other reason for riding across the plains to get here begins. The OIT team is ramping up their adrenaline levels with some serious roller coaster action at Silver Dollar City, another visiting team is pulling themselves up out a ravine where they were accicently pushed over the wall when I met them riding around today.  My brother Kirk is trying to get here, last I spoke with him he was forced to wait for a later flight out of Denver.   But I am sure it was all come together and I'll get to watch some great college basketball.

And this little reminder from one of the classier drinking holes I visited on the way out.

Looks like I have a road trip on my hands for this week. The Kawasaki has been sitting frozen in a block of Colorado ice for too long, and my nephew has a few basketball games to win.

I believe the number is five.  The Oregon Tech team has a ticket to play in the National tournament in Branson, MO and this year I am finally going to go watch them play. Myles is a senior, so this is his last round on the courts of the College of the Ozarks that is hosting this event.

Bit of a last minute thing, so I'm busy packing and planning tonight, (see you're important, I'm updating the blog too).  It will be two moderate days of riding to get there, I plan to overnight in Wichita.

If the team keeps winning, I'll stay with them until Tuesday the 16th to see if they can take the national championship trophy home one more time.

Stay tuned, and cheer them on.

Most of the time you don't really think on this, of course travel in an RV is camping. But the difference is more pronounced when you actually get down to planning to live long term in a motor home.  As I have traveled in the past on longer excursions on the motorcycle I could live on a diet  of power bars and canned soup, but to live on this for a year...  I don't think so. 

The other thing to consider is that just because we are moving into smaller quarters, and moving the physical place we  live in more often, does not mean we will be changing what we do. The daily routine will not change. We eat, we sleep, we surf the net, or we read the same things we have always enjoyed reading.  Or more to the point I am trying to make, we will not be taking up new things we haven't already been doing.
That means the stuff high up in the closet that never gets used while we've lived in a brick and mortar house, will still never get used if it gets moved and stuffed into a cabinet in the motor home.  So why take it?  

It is easy to keep stuff when you have room, you can store it away with the passing excuse that I might need it someday. Now we are faced with the situation of not having the room or having to face the prospect of paying storage fees on something we will most likely not ever use even when we get back. So, everything, and I mean everything is facing judgement day.  The benefit of all this is the local Goodwill store.

To add to the confusion, we now live in Pensacola Florida. On paper anyway. (But then we've been living with a Southern California area code for the past three years, so this only adds to the mystery of where we really are). We will be using the Florida based mail forwarding services of the Good Sam club, and thus the move.  For most of the remainder of 2010 we will be considered Colorado residents, (to keep the tax man happy) and when asked, it will answer any questions about Sarah's schooling, (she will be home schooling under Colorado school codes). 

How can we keep this all straight?  It's easy, after all, we're just camping.

So, I may not be ready to plant bulbs, or a summer crop, it does remind me that it will not be much longer before we move into the motor home and head out. (of course the fact that I'll not be living in the same place all summer also precludes any planting this season).

Not that we are not doing any weeding. For this past week we've been attacking the the stacks of books that fill our shelves.

I don't view books as the movie character Ron Burgandy did, "I am very important, I have many leather-bound books."  But I will admit it took me nearly 25 years to finally realize I really didn't need to keep carting around all my college text books. Still, I struggle with parting with hard-cover books. What makes them anymore special, I am not sure.  I also pick up a lot of books at yard sales, used book stores etc, that I think I will read someday. So they sit on my shelf waiting for that someday. Not that I am not a reader, I am.  I just have this habit of collecting faster.

So I sort out the books  I hope to read while living in the RV and load them up in boxes to be brought aboard. Other books I admit I'll never get to, they go to the the thrift store.  Then there there are the books I really can't part with, but will not need on the road, for those I compromise and send them off to long term storage.

A few weeks back I mentioned I was planning to buy a small trailer to tow my motorcycle on (Check here).  I found the model that looked good on the website motorcycletrailer.com.   Now I haven't actually seen this thing other the pictures, so I am a little nervous. Nor have I ever ordered something this big online. I am more comfortable with looking at something in the dealer shop, and then maybe, if I can get a better price, go home and place the online order.  I couldn't just hit the drop down menu and place the order, I had to know the place was somewhat legit. I used old technology and called the number on the website to ask some questions.  What I got on the other end was a very helpful gentleman named "Larry" who took the time to answer my questions and concerns, he took my number to call me back after he got some answers to some questions. He did call me back, and I went ahead and placed the order.  It will take a few weeks to build it and then another week to ship it. I can't wait to see it, and start putting it together.

On this day, 25 years ago I married my best friend.  She has been a great travel partner in life. And just just metaphorically. We both love to travel, and over the past 25 yrs, (plus) we've been some great adventures.  I say plus, because we were enjoying travel while we were dating. From camping trips to Yosemite, to tours of Hearst Castle we quickly learned that we loved to get out of town.  And boy have we been out of town on numerous trips. If you've been following this blog from the beginning you've seen where wanderlust has taken us, but that is certainly not what we've done just because I retired.

In 1989 when I wanted to move to Crescent City I applied for a transfer to the newly activated state prison. The interview was in August but it was to take several weeks for an answer. Instead of waiting for the approval to transfer, I moved Pam and the girls, (two then) to the remote corner of northern California while I continued to live in Oakdale and wait for the answer.  Why? Well, we figured, if the transfer was denied it was a great chance to live in a part of California we hadn't experience before, and we could move again if need be.  I guess the critical mind would say we leap before we look, but our answer is that you'll never feel the wind in your face by just looking.

I've put together  a collage of pictures from just a few of our travels over the past quarter century, and look forward to seeing what the album will look like in the next 25.

Pam and I made an afternoon trip to a local RV supply store, Camping World, and walked out with two shopping carts of supplies. Things like collapsible mixing bowls, light weight folding tables. Just about set us up in one stop, pretty good progress.

In the house we are busy sorting out what will travel with us and what will go into long term storage. Plus, the logic of storing some piece of replaceable kitsch for more than it is worth to buy it again someday has us dropping several bags of stuff at the local Goodwill. Unless it has some strong sentimental meaning, a lot of household items and furniture falls in this last category as well. (check out Pam's take on this.)

Also, while doing all this prep work,  I'm working some extra job to buy some extra goodiesl. (see last week's post)

What you are looking at here is part of the car wash project I'm working on.  The tall ceiling was falling down and we are doing some repair work to it, replacing the sheet rock with a thinner PVC plastic panel.  The cinder block walls are also being covered over with this same plastic panel. I like the physical labor, for the most part, but, honestly, I feel it each day I get up. 

Here is another shot looking down from on top of the scaffolding to the rapidly filling dumpster bin of demolished ceiling.

The car wash has to be remain open for business while we retrofit it with the new wall coverings, so we work nights, and have to have every phase completed before morning. (That is, cleaned up, along with any plumbing and electrical work put back in operation)

So, I'll plug along a few more weeks while we transition to the nomadic life.

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!