1 Month

Well, we’ve been out here for thirty days now.  A lot has happened.  So I though I’d recap it and bring everyone up to speed.

We quit our jobs on February 1, 2008.  We stayed at my parents’ house for a couple of weeks, getting our affairs in order, selling off and giving away our remaining possessions and making modifications to our sweet pink campervan.

On Sunday. February 17, 2008, we set out.  We had a general direction and a set of rules that we thought would serve us well.

It was a soft start.  For the first week we stayed with friends and family within the state of Ohio.  We had a good time. The next Saturday it was time to push off from Athens, OH.

We headed off towards Wayne, WV.  Over the next few days we traveled through West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and into Tennessee.

Our first night in Tennessee was in Kingsport.  It was a great day, exactly the kind of thing we were looking for on our trip.

The next morning we woke up feeling good.  As we got on the highway, we noticed that the engine didn’t seem to be all the way in gear.  A few miles down the road we pulled off the roadway and limped into the driveway of a local auto-mechanic.

Providence? No, he couldn’t work on it.  So we had our precious van towed to the nearest dealership.

We went to the dealership, which always costs more, because we thought we could rely on them.  They told us that all of the trouble and the odd sounds we were hearing were rooted in the transmission, and the solution would run $2,600.

Two days later, we picked up the van, $2,500 lighter but overjoyed to be back in our home.

We did some laundry and then took off down the road.

100 miles later, we lost all oil pressure in the van and pulled off the road.  Fantastic.

We had the van towed to a trustworthy and highly recommended mechanic in Newport, TN.

The engine was blowed.  He searched for a new motor, and then gave it to us straight.  A new engine would run $4,500, he recommended we not replace it.

So, we rented a car, packed everything we could fit into it and headed back to Ohio.  We left the van title and the keys with the mechanic.  He said he’d take care of it for us, the crusher refused to take it, but hopefully he managed to squeeze a few bucks out of it.

We got back to Ohio where our car, which had miraculously not sold, was waiting for us.

Two nights later we were back off.  We decided that the rules were pointless and set out without them.

We headed directly to the Gulf of Mexico.  Two days later we hit water in Panama City.

We spent a night in the car on the beach and then headed to Apalachicola National Forest, where we camped for a couple of nights.

The second night we were hit hard by storms, very hard.  Strong winds and sheets of rain tore through our tent, and lightning flashed constantly for nearly an hour.  We later found out that a tornado touched down about 30 miles away.  It was terrifying.

Just as the worst of it was over, we fled to the car for the remaining couple of hours of night.  As soon as day broke we packed up in the drizzle and left.

Two days later we found ourselves in New Orleans, visiting with one of my oldest friends.

He showed us a great time.  We saw the sites around the Big Easy, from the heartbreaking lower ninth ward to the bustling French Quarter.

After four nights we decided it was time to head on down the road.

We intended to head west right away, but wanted to visit a brewery just north of New Orleans first.

We didn’t make it in time for the Wednesday tour, so we found a campground to pass the night so that we could go the next day.  We liked Fontainebleau State Park so much that we stayed there 6 nights.

That brings us to today, March 18.  We just left the campground and are headed for Texas, battling 35 mile-per-hour headwinds that threaten to tear the bikes off the car.

As usual, we’ll know where we’re headed when we get there.

Comments

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last 30 days…

1) The only thing that trumps sarcastic debate is free beer and cigarettes.
2) Discussing scripture is tough without shared frames of reference.
3) I would like to spend more time in West Virginia.
4) Anything can become routine in 30 days or less.
5) $32.25 is a very creative place to start.
6) What we can & can’t, should & shouldn’t, will & won’t can create a strange paradigm in which to live.
7) Living in a van down by the river is harder than it sounds.
8) I now know where Newport, TN is.
9) A lot of sentences can start with “What if….”
10) I’ve learned (well decided to start focusing on) this: Be here, now, prepared to be nowhere else.
11) I don’t like all words, but some of them I like a lot.
12) I really agree with this statement: “The most important thing to us is to just not care about money or possessions.  But putting that into practice is hard.”
13) I can’t consider myself to have lived somewhere until I genuinely care about what happens locally and try and be a part of it (I’ve been to GA, and I’ve lived in Haiti, both for about 4 months at a time).
14) I have the ability to focus on or ignore just about anything I want to.

Did I miss anything? See you in thirty days. - Jiminy