Category: Something’s Always Broken

1st quarter 2023: Big change. BIG.

So uh, remember last update when I said that pesky medical follow-ups were keeping us in TX, but at least none were serious? 

One got serious. 

And that’s why we’re still here, but that’s not the BIG change. I’ll get to that.

It’s a little bit about me, and a lot about Tim and boats.

I won’t leave you guessing about the medical thing. 

My doctors found that I have some precancerous endometrial lesions, and the treatment for someone my age and with my cancer history is a hysterectomy. I’m scheduled for the surgery in April, and we expect to begin our trek toward WA & AK in mid-May, assuming I get an all-clear from my medical team.

Quite honestly, it’s a relief — and also a good excuse for a heartfelt reminder to get your regular check-ups, and also your irregular ones, for symptoms and conditions that just don’t seem right. Don’t wait.

So yeah, other than a 10-day visit to Tim’s folks in Mexico, we’ve stayed put here on our friends’ property in Boerne, TX, and since I have no RV travels to report for this quarter, I’ll jump right into what’s happening later this year.

And now… for something completely different. 

If you were paying attention last summer, you might have noticed my somewhat cryptic caption on the photo of Tim at the WoodenBoat School in Maine.

It was here, in July, that we started seriously discussing the “what ifs” and “just maybes” of that rekindled flame.
(This is a screen cap of the slide show from the original post, not a new slide show, so don’t click the little arrow thingies because they don’t do anything.)

Tim loves wooden boats, and …

… he once built a wooden boat, and …

… our older son went to the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, WA, ten years ago, and …

… Tim’s been thinking about it ever since, and …

… we knew we’d be returning from Alaska to Washington in September of this year, making it an ideal time to start school there, but …

… Tim didn’t know what he’d do with the skills he’d learn and the degree he’d earn, so …

… after a lot of drive-time discussions and no small amount of soul searching, he decided to let those wood shavings fall where they may, because life is short, and it’s time to fulfill this dream. A post-graduation plan will eventually reveal itself.

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tim applied in January, pretty much the second admissions opened for the 2023-24 school year, and – – – paperwork, interview, more paperwork – – – is now enrolled in their 12-month Boatbuilding AOS Degree program, starting in October!
It was in fact while we were living in WA 20 years ago that Tim built his first wooden boat, laying the keel after returning from a lengthy Navy deployment in 2003, and launching in 2004.
The 15’ solid wooden and fiberglass sailboat was based on Harold Payson’s Gypsy.
Tim modified it in 2005, refurbished it in 2015, and sold it in 2016, shortly after we took to full-time RV living.

We have what feels like a shipyard’s worth of logistics to plan before school starts. Are we going to book an RV site for a year? Rent a furnished place? Sell or store Tex (5th wheel) or Road Island (truck camper)? What about the cargo trailer with all Tim’s tools in it? What am I going to do while Tim’s in class every weekday from 8-5 for a year? If I get a job, won’t we need a second vehicle? And oh yeah, there’s this summer’s trip to Alaska in Road Island, for which we don’t even have the bare minimum of dinghies in a row yet. Ack!

And then… there’s the weather. We’ve visited family in western Washington countless times, plus we lived in Bremerton for a 2-year tour of duty, and it was the longest, coldest, darkest, wettest 6 winters I’ve ever experienced. Please send a sun lamp and other mood lifters. I’ve already bought the wildest pair of rain boots I could find.

The father will follow in the son’s footsteps, right through the doors of the boat school, 10 years later. It’s kind of like a legacy admission, only… backwards?
Plus, that boy of ours still lives in the area, and the prospect of more family time definitely puts some wind in this mama’s sails.
(Photo taken at the school, the weekend our son graduated)
And if I knew where to find this old license plate frame, which I had custom made for Tim when he finished the sailboat in 2004, and is now buried in a box in our storage unit, I’d definitely give it a shine and put it on the BFT.

As we muddle our way from springtime surgery in Texas, through an Alaskan summer road trip, to settling into student life in Washington in the fall, check in with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for brief updates on how it’s all going. Until the next long post here, I’ll leave you with a joke.

Question: What’s the biggest advantage of going back to school as a retiree?  
Answer: If you cut classes, no one calls your parents. 

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.

WheRVe we been? Our travels 2nd quarter 2022

Well how ’bout that? It’s not often you see my legs sticking out from under the truck (and please observe that they are crossed, so everyone knows that all those swear words are coming from a lady).

One reason is that Tim doesn’t have the same… photographic priorities?… as I do, so there just wasn’t a picture of me in said position until I asked for one.

Another is that a few years ago, he started getting wicked strong vertigo from jobs that involve lying on his back looking up at something close. Seriously. Like, he’s had to roll over and puke on the pavement, and then spend a few hours recovering from the dizziness and nausea. Not fun.

So as situations warrant, I take one for the team, scootch and wriggle my way under truck or RV, and do the best I can while Tim coaches from above. There’s typically lots of ratcheting and wrenching and volatile cursing, way more grime than I care to have touching me, and sometimes I earn bruises and busted knuckles as payment. True love.

In the photo above, I was installing the tow bar hitch thingie that makes it so we can put our bike rack on the front of the truck, instead of behind the camper, where it would block our one and only door. Having to remove the bike rack every time we need access is also not fun.

Why am I explaining this? Because it was the last thing we did in central Texas before we finally got underway in Road Island in April, and I can tell you right now, almost 3 months in, that buying the truck camper early enough to take it out for a test season before next year’s trip to Alaska?

Rather brilliant move.

By which I mean a fair amount of stuff has already broken, and we’ve fixed it. And a fair amount of stuff we’ve brought along has been deemed unnecessary (mostly kitchen items and clothing), but that’s greater than the amount of stuff we didn’t bring along but wish we had, so overall we did fairly well, and we already kind of knew there was no way we’d get it right the first time. Maybe next year.

So how about I get to the map and the whirlwind tour now?

13 states, 2864 miles — only as measured directly between overnight stops, not all of which are on the map.
We put way more miles than that on the truck, sometimes with the camper on, sometimes without, as we ran errands and visited people at each location.
(Map does not reflect actual routing.)

The really cool thing is that 4 of those 13 states completed our RVing map of the Lower 48!

Although we made stops in TX, LA, AL, and TN for quick overnights on the way, our first real destination was VA, so that’s where I’ll start.

Slide Show 1: VA-MD-DE

  • VA: Our friends’ kids are all getting married these days. Open bars help me feel less old.
  • VA: Tim upgraded our off-grid living options with lithium batteries and solar panels.
  • VA: Appalachian Trail day hikes for me; several overnights for Tim.
  • VA: The Big Oops. Gasoline in the diesel tank. Damage confined to our bank account.
  • MD: We’ve got friends who make brick oven pizzas at a winery all summer.
  • MD: Friendship, wine, and pizza make a perfect trio.
  • DE: Our 45th state, in the park where we first took our boys camping in 1998.

Slide Show 2: NJ-PA-CT

  • NJ: Skipped the drive; took the ferry
  • NJ: State 46 offered lakeside tranquility
  • PA: Moochdocked with friends we made at an A Year To Volunteer project in 2021
  • PA: Stayed a little longer than planned, because the fridge required a major repair.
  • PA: But while we waited for the part to arrive, we did the Philly thing.
  • PA: Cheesesteaks too.
  • CT: Our 47th state, and more A Year to Volunteer friends with driveway space!
  • CT: And a dog who rather liked the taste of my coconut curl creme. Oh, Marshall.

Slide Show 3: NY-RI-MA

  • NYC: We took the train from CT into the city for a day. Tim had never been there!
  • NYC: We crammed a lot into our 10 hours, but we definitely need a few return visits.
  • RI: Site 746 in State 48. Done! We hit Rhode Island in Road Island, and could not have planned it better than that.
  • RI: Our Harvest Host farm offered much quieter neighbors than that state park did. Enough said.
  • MA: We spent 4th of July weekend housesitting for friends. Came with a dog!

Where to next?

I’m publishing this in New Hampshire, then we’ll spend a few days in Maine, and then we’re crossing the border to visit our Canadian neighbors, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, for a few weeks. That means we’ll celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary outside the US this year, and I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened since 1993, when we marked our 1st anniversary in France thanks to a US Navy port call.

And there we were, married one year, posing in the hallway of our inn in Cannes.
I was 24; Tim was 27.
If you haven’t read our “how we met” story, or want a refresher, it’s here. You probably won’t need a hankie, but be warned that you might catch yourself grinning like a total sap.

The internet says that this is our Pearl Anniversary, and we’ll be staying in a waterside village in a province famed for its fresh North Atlantic seafood, so I’m thinking that wherever we eat out on July 18? I shall order the oysters.

Close enough.

We started full-timing in August of 2015, but I didn’t think to do an annual review until the end of 2016, and it was just a listing on Facebook of places we’d visited. After that, I started using a quarterly format.