She's HOME, SHE'S HOME!!

My Georgie Girl is home (yeah corney but we haven't had a REAL chance to get to know her and thus we haven't had a chance to name her.) And now I guess I can actually START what this blog was supposed to be.

I conceived this as a chronicle of what we planned/thought/worried over/and did in order to go from "I THINK we ought to look hard at RV Full-timing" to actually full-timing.

We had originally been looking into a trailer/RV for a living Plan-B. I'll plead guilty to being somewhere to the near side of a survivalist though I actually stop on the scale at intense prepper. I'll take responsibility for my own damned self, thanks, y'all don't have to "rescue" me from xxxxxxxxxx. NOT self sufficient, since you really, legitimately and logically can't DO that with only 2 people, but you CAN go a fair ways up that scale to the self-reliance range. This is our goal.
Well, this and living in the RV.





So, anyway, our first step was selection. In the beginning, we were simply looking for something of a bug-out type of trailer, to be hauled by my F-150. As we got to looking at trailers and RV's there were some very interesting little RV's (on DOdge or Toyota frames) that would have done the bub-out thing REALLY well. But not a lot of trailers. And my F-150 has a towing weight limit which is fairly low....(yeah I know I shoulda looked for a 350 but I was uneducated...)
It began to look like our price range was pretty solidly in the "Change your lifestyle" size of RV (plus my lovely bride strongly suggested that 3 cats were going to need more than 21 foot of RV.

SO we started looking at 25 ft and larger and, after several months of research on Craig's List and E-ghey we found a 34 foot Georgie Boy Cruise Aire II litterally around the corner. We had looked at rigs as far away as NYC and Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois, and Nebraska, from NE Ohio. the Cruise Aire was literally 30 miles away.

We critically looked at it, and took a LONG time to pull the trigger. Brought it STRAIGHT to the RV Shop, and told em to do whatever it took. I STILL don't quite understand the smile on the guy's face... LOL ...


Just under 3 Kilobux later, we have an RV with good tires, a good master propane valve (unlike how it was when we drove it home), a good new fridge, and all systems checked out.

Over the past couple weeks (it's been in the shop for 4 weeks) we've been looking at ways to learn what we don't know about RV'ing, which may be a larger quantity than we each know now (that whole what you know, what you know you don't know, what you DON'T know you don't know thing) and we have ABOUT decided that we're joining BOTH Escapees and Good Sams......Escapees does a neat boot camp in Nov (this year) in Tx, where you get taught all ALL about your infrastructure, loading, driving, etc. and we THINK we're going to try for that. (Always assuming that we get the house to the point of either listing or renting it out by then, NOT a guaranteed outcome currently.)

We'll talk more about where we're at in terms of our heads and such later. As it is, we've got a LONG day tomorrow emptying, cleaning, and filling....

C, who has been caught several times giggling foolishly this evening....

Waiting...I don't do it well...

The folks at Ruff's called this morning, and indicated that they had moved the RV to the shop, and they wanted to make sure that their list was the WHOLE list, and that I understood about the costs to fix some of the items.
After we extended THEIR copy of the list to include everything we had an issue about, they quoted the costs of a tire ($170.00 cringe, gasp....), and the belts at $30 each and around 3 hours to get them all in I said "OK. Let me know when it's done." and we parted phone company....

NOW we wait.


OH yeah. the ONE thing we have specifically picked up for this thang is an OXO Good Grips flat folding silicone collander. TRES neat, and WAY cool (plus it stores in less room than my tennis raxquette OR a "real" collander.

I expect to have it in the driveway Friday and we can start the task of aclimating ourselves (not a REAL problem, as there is more usable storage and floor space in the RV than in the house right now), as well as trying to force the 3 kittens to get along......(Yeah I'll let y'all know how THAT works out for me....).

And so the time ticks off....

And we begin.

Here is how I let my online community know I was hitting the road:


Sat, we should chat.

RELIC and I are considering (oh heck more than considering, we've about got it decided) that we're doing a southern Swing this winter....starting here in Cleveland and swinging down thru Ark/Mo/Tenn etc, down thru Texas when it is civilized temperature, west across Rt 66, and home up along or thru the Rockies and back East, with obvious adjustments as time and "stuff" like job hunting and Work-camping permit.In a couple days I'll pop a thread about this up on the Corkboard...would love to meet a few folks along the way.....we'll be doing it with a motorhome....



I'm posting that in a members contact area on the website/BBS and we'll see if we can't get a coherent plan together for 3 months....

Got turned on to http://www.escapees.com/index2.asp and expect that, within a couple days we'll be joining, since they have a LOT of VERY helpful info for tyro's like us.

The Georgie Boy is sitting in the shop, where it is going to get a bunch of stuff we KNOW about worked on, and then a bumper to bumper check.
We're thinking about an SKP "Boot Camp" in Tx in November, which pretty much gives us a REASON to have the house in listable and mothballable condition by Halloween, which is the current goal.

This blog is REALLY going to chronicle our labors in getting our selves ONTO the road, the stuff we do to the house, the stuff we do for the camper, the cats, etc. It's hopefully going to give rise to a checklist for folks who want to completely change their lives from traditional suburban living to Fulltiming it On The Road....

So, check back periodically, feel free to tell me I have my head on crooked (or stored someplace warm n moist) and help us out.

Chuck, AKA Night driver/Shadowfane

And so it goes.

I always liked it when Linda Ellerbee closed her news show with that line from Vonnegut. It carries a certain worldliness, a world-weariness, in that not a lot seems to change, life keeps on keepin' on, and not much changes in the windows.

And so I thought what better way to OPEN a blog than with that closing. If you are familiar with the old Ed Yourdon Y2K - Timebomb2000 web universe then you know more about me than I might be willing to share to someone who is meeting me for the very first time.

If not, then (I have to be careful about how much I uncloak, because, like a fan-dancer, the idea is to SUGGEST rather than to SHOW) I'll try to introduce myself.


I'm a late-50's married guy, married to the most delightful creature that ever happened into MY universe, who inexplicably decided to stay for the ride. 35 years ago this Labor Day Weekend (yeah it moves but we celebrate Labor Day Weekend) she decided to let me make an honest man of myself, and marry, after 8 months of cohabitation. (Marginal note, I use these words in conversation but LOTS of my friends often head for the dictionary while I'm there...never met a $3 word that could be replaced by any number of $.25 words.) We married to reap the cornucopial benefits for a student with a wife and for a student's wife.

The benes were over-rated. Don't get me wrong, the FAMILIAL benes were FANTASTIC (and still are) but the benes from the school etc were, well, WAY overrated.

2 years later we were in VaBch, VA, 2 years later we were in Potsdam again, knockin' on the door for an MBA. Two years later we landed here in Cleveland. Fast forward 2 weeks shy of 30 years, we are getting ready to shake the dust of this town from our sandals and hit the The Road.
(PLEASE GOD, not Cormac's road.)

But enough looking back, I don't like to do that much any more, even though I do it so well.

FORWARD!!!

ONWARD!!!

We're about to turn the Page on our Cleveland Chapter and embark on our next Great Adventure, Livin' on the Road. We now own a 34 ft Georgie-Boy Class A RV, are outfitting it, and are preparing for the Fulltiming Life.


While this blog is going to be about that Life, it is ALSO going to be about where I stand in the coming Good Fight for our Republic.

So, having JUST decided to embark into that Life, instead of the couch-potato wussie life I'm in now (ROFL) I have decided in the heights (or depths) of my arrogance to share that journey, from curb, clinging inner-ring subburbanite, to Fulltime RV'r.

Hang around and I'll filll in a LOT of the blanks I defined up yonder.