Author: Lee and Tracy

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Third Year – The Emotional Arc

The third year started off pretty rough for us.  We were in the midst of our worst work kamping job to date, selling Christmas Trees, and I at least was seriously wondering about the balance in our lives. It was clear at this point that work kamping jobs were much harder than we originally expected and we had to face the reality that our lives were not going to be the fantasy that we had built up in our heads.

We learned about this lifestyle reading blogs and talking to lots of people, but most of our initial role models had access to savings or other income streams that we simply did not.  We don’t resent that; I am happy for people who have lots of money in the bank or multiple retirement sources, but that is not our reality.  And I think we both had to come to grips with the fact that comparing our lives to our perception of theirs was a losing proposition.  If we had a slogan for year three, it would have been “That’s Not Our Reality,” as we had to keep reminding ourselves things were different for us.  And that actually became easier throughout the year when we met more and more people who were in financial situations similar to us and were still finding a way to make it work.

Gate Guarding was our first experience with that and thank heavens we got that job.  It not only was the first job we had done to date that we both really liked, but also gave us the opportunity to connect with other full time RVers that needed to work.  Let me make a distinction here.  Most of the RVers we know  supplement their income (either with work kamping or volunteering), but needing to work is different from that.  There is a huge difference in mindset when you have “Screw you” money in the bank and quitting a job means you will need to dip into savings versus needing a paycheck to pay your bills.

We had an opportunity in our third year to meet many more people who were closer to the edge financially and our own savings dwindled, moved more into that category emotionally as well.  For us, working these jobs and the full time lifestyle is still better than our previous lives.  The pressure is much less than having a mortgage, kids in college, or years invested in a job you need retirement from.  But it is not the life we imagined with months of traveling and a few work gigs in between.  Rather the opposite is true.  We worked 10 months out of 12 this year, and are trending to barely break even.  Lee in particular had to makes peace with that reality and found it very frustrating since he envisioned more of a 50/50 split in work time/play time. I wrote a post about living a full year with no corporate money that sums up the financial realizations we finally came to.

On the plus side we really started talking about the importance of the jobs we selected. Initially we said we can “do anything” for a few months, but when that few months became 10 months the conversation had to change,   Gate Guarding was a great example of this because at first glance it was a crappy deal.  Working 24/7 in the middle of a dusty oil field with no days off for $125 a day sounds pretty unpleasant, but we really made the most of it.  The job also has minimal supervision and tons of free time (especially later in the assignment) and we both made the most of it.  Lee edited some 20 years worth of home videos and posted them online for our kids to see and I finally finished the recipe book I had started back in Alaska.

Becoming a published author was a very big deal to me and the time to create was priceless.  I had no illusions that my cookbook would become a best seller, but the experience meant something to me and the response I have received from our readers was wonderful. And despite the low wages we were able to put some money back in our bank account because our costs were the lowest they have ever been. And when we left that job we were able to cram a ton of experiences into the 5 weeks we had between jobs, meeting with friends, seeing new things, and Lee got to spend a week with our youngest daughter in Las Vegas, which was something we had committed to prior to ever starting the lifestyle.

I do want to take a moment here and say how grateful I am to our friends for going to some trouble to see us despite our work schedules.  We realized this year that our travel had to be largely dictated by where the work was, and were worried that this meant we wouldn’t be able to see our friends.  But many of our fellow dreamers made a significant effort to to see us and  Cori/Greg, Steve/Deb, Kat/Bert, Jim/Diana, and Rick Raab  saw us multiple times throughout the year in more than one state.  Those moments spent with our fellow RV-Dreamers kept us connected to why we started living this lifestyle and gave us important perspective on our overall goals in year three.

This year we also got serious about health care on the road.  The last couple of years healthcare took a back seat to other priorities, but this year we were able to get physicals, dental work, and I even got my first colonoscopy. Although not glamorous, this was a very important step for us as being able to receive medical care on the road is a very big deal for long-term sustainability.  Thankfully Oregon is a very friendly state when it comes to health care and all of our experiences with health care providers were good ones.

We also found ourselves wanting to return to a job for the first time this summer.  We absolutely loved Oregon and the people we worked for were really great.  I didn’t like the specific job we did very much at all, but working for a large company allowed us to talk about coming back in different roles.  I also came to the realization that I am not willing to clean toilets all day every day.  That may sound like a no-brainer, but it was an important step for me, because we were still living in the mindset that we could “do anything” for short periods of time as long as it kept us on the road. Some time this summer I hit my limit, and finally said out loud that I simply not willing to “do anything”.

It’s not because I think I am to good to clean a toilet.  I’m not, and don’t even mind if that is a part of our job.  But I need more in these temporary positions than that, and I came to the realization that’s it’s OK that I feel that way.  After talking to Lee about that realization we approached the problem in two ways.  First, we decided to apply for a lead role for next season with the company we were working for, and I simultaneously started looking for consulting work.  In the back of my head the timer for working in my field has been ticking, and I started looking with the hopes I could find a 3-4 month job somewhere in the south over the winter. We had signed up for Amazon back in January, but my hope was that I could find something that both paid more and was more rewarding.

Unfortunately this search was much more frustrating than I originally expected. There were far fewer short-term contracts than I expected and most of the interesting ones were 6+ months.  Since I was keeping May open for the possibility of us going back to Oregon I really couldn’t accept anything longer than six.  And the timing was weird.  Most of these jobs expect you to be onsite in no less than two weeks, but the interview/hiring process generally takes at least a month.  Compare this to work kamping jobs that you often set up a year in advance and I was trying to full in gaps in an existing work schedule, which simply did not work well.

Couple the timing issues with the fact I had to be in a warm area for the winter and wanted to be on the east coast to be near family and the selection of open jobs was much smaller.  I also was hoping that recruiters would help me with the search, but ran into some issues early on with my home location.  Linked In requires a home state in your profile and my home are is Jacksonville Florida because that is where my mailing address is.  Despite updating my resume with language like “Ability to relocate at own expense” the only recruiters I heard from were in the Florida area.  At one point I tried to change my location to San Antonio to show up in different recruiter searches, but then  I was concerned about what other potential employers in Florida might think.

And no, you can’t leave it blank either on Linked In or Indeed.  There is definitely an employer bias on location for short-term positions which I understand because they don’t want to pay for relocation for a short-term employee.  Yes, there are companies that specialize in consultants and I looked at those, but you are essentially working for them and they largely get to decide when and where you work.  The entire process was extremely frustrating and felt like I was trying to shove the square peg of my full-timing life into a round hole.

I haven’t talked about it much, because I kept hoping I would land on the “secret formula” but at least in Year Three I haven’t figured it out yet. At this point I am actually thinking I would be better off getting a Virtual position.  Initially I wanted to work in an office and in person, but going the virtual route will bypass a lot of these issue with explaining where I live.  Most of those jobs I have seen are full time positions and I would prefer not to start there.  I like our summer work kamping jobs and in a perfect world would consult in the winter and work kamp in the summer, so at least for now that is what I am going to keep striving for.  Eventually I might need to bite the bullet and get a “real job”, if for no other reason than we need health care.

Speaking of healthcare,  in 2017 we were on ACA or ObamaCare and it worked well for us.  201 was a crazy roller coaster ride with health care, but as of this writing we are on a subsidized plan out of Florida for 2018. We have no idea of what this looks like long-term for us, and are making these decisions one year at a time.  We can do this because we feel we are in very good health, but of course that could change at any time.  That’s one of the reasons why I feel it is so important to keep my options open with my previous career.  Very few of these seasonal jobs offer healthcare and even the ones that do have pretty expensive COBRA plans to bridge the gap between jobs.  We would have a difficult time absorbing $1K a month in healthcare premiums within our existing budget and for us at least it would require compromises we would not be willing to make. We could always roll the dice of course and go without coverage of just get a catastrophic plan and both of those choices are on the table. For right now we are trying to keep it in perspective and not make it the deciding factor in either our job or lifestyle decisions. Update:  Turns out that our healthcare costs for 2018 will actually be $200 a month lower than in 2017.  Yes premiums went up, but so did subsidies and I was pleasantly surprised that with the same estimated revenue costs were so much left.  We even had enough money to add dental this year, which hopefully will help cover some of my periodontal disease costs. Again, I am taking this year by year but we appear to be  fine for 2018 which is a great thing. 

So that’s where we are for the year and as I write this we are working at Amazon.  In Year 2 I decided I wanted to try all the major types of work kamping and Amazon is the last one on my list.  After this experience, I will definitely feel we have learned enough to make decisions about employment going forward, and are seriously talking about repeating jobs and developing a “route.”  Most people we have met who need to work follow a pattern of travel that allows them to keep their costs down and have assured income throughout the year.  It also helps with maintaining a relationship with health care providers and depending on the route allows people to routinely see family.

For us the last is a challenge.  We love the west, but our family is all back east and this year in particular really brought home to me how difficult seeing family and being there for important events would be.  I wrote a blog post about it.  One thing we know for sure is we can no longer afford to keep criss crossing the United States if we rely solely on revenue from work kamping jobs.  Our choices are to develop a route in the east, find other sources of revenue, or be resigned to seeing our families less.  Not great choices, especially since I got into to this lifestyle primarily to see new and interesting places.  It’s clear though that some compromises will need to be made and I expect Year 4 will be the start of that.

The last thing I want to say is despite this being a year of change we still saw a lot of really cool stuff.  At the end of the day I still heavily weigh the people and places we get to see when judging the quality of my life and this year we managed to do an amazing amount with the free time we had.  So I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures for the year and the hope that you will continue to follow our journey in Year 4.  As always thank you for your support, because it truly does matter to us.

We saw some beautiful sunsets while gate guarding

And had a lot of fun watching our resident road runner

The cover for my cookbook!! Very exciting stuff

Hanging out in the desert with Kat, Bert, Steve, Cori, Greg,  and Deb

Seeing Lee’s sister and brother-in-law Lisa and Dave

Driving Perkinsville Rd was pretty intense

Hanging out on Route 66

Stopping and seeing our good friend Sherry who made Lee ribeye and pie!

Seeing the giant crater was cooler than I expected

And we stumbled across these cool ice caves near Flagstaff

I spent a wonderful week with my mom in Las Vegas

And Lee got to celebrate Kay’s 21st birthday with here in Vegas just like he did with the other two girls

We worked along a beautiful scenic road all summer

And had numerous opportunities to see white water rafters

We saw Sue and Jonathon twice

And visited the Oregon coast several times connecting with Jim, Diana, and Rick along the way

And we saw lots and lots of Mount Hood, which is definitely my favorite mountain we have seen yet in all of our travels

Plus we spent the summer watching a nest of baby ospreys grow into adulthood. That was an amazing opportunity for any bird watcher

We saw Mt. St. Helen’s with Jim and Diana

Reconnected with Lee’s good friend from high school

Saw lots of lighthouses

And bought a tent which we used to camp right on the ocean

We boondocked in Colorado with a wonderful group of friends

Explored Madison County with Deb and Steve

Saw Bridget and Pat while we got a Mor-Ryde upgrade and a new couch

And I finally got to visit the RVMA Hall of Fame

And spent tons of time with friends and family

Mom and my brother at my nephews birthday party

Got to see My nephew Lex in Ohio

And my nephew Abram in South Carolina

Dede and Denny planned two very special day trips for us

We got to see our long time friends  Larry, Cory, and Ted

So excited to see my cousins Lori, Mike, Mark, and me

Loved seeing my Aunt Cathy who has been very supportive

And of course a wonderful time spent with Jeremy and Kyrston

Topped off by a visit with Bill and Nancy

And we finally met up with Linda, Steve, Bill, and Kelly at Amazon

A wonderful year of seeing friends and family and amazing experiences.  Plus of course you really can’t beat our views.

Colorado

Iowa

Washington

Oregon

Nevada

Arizona

and Texas

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.  Search Amazon Here
  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itunes.

 

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Third Year – By The Numbers

November 14th is our “road-a-versary” and since the format I used the past two years worked for me, I decided to go ahead and keep it. There will be a separate post with our emotional arc for the year and a third one on our financials.  Since I track our budget on the calendar year, that summary will be out sometime January. This post is all about the other numbers and gives a broad overview of our travels. So let’s start with what it looked like:

Travel Information

Finally, we got to cross in the middle of the country.  I felt really bad for those middle states the last couple of years and was happy that our route took us through the middle.  We also earned four new state stickers this year, which were Oregon, Colorado, Iowa, and Kentucky. We have pretty specific rules on earning a new state sticker (we have to spend the night in the RV and do something specific to the state) and four new stickers wasn’t that bad. Despite our desire to stop criss-crossing the country, as you can see we did exactly that starting in Texas and ending in Kentucky, with the intent to travel back to Texas when we are done at Amazon.

Travel Miles – The trailer traveled 7,215 miles in Year Three with a lifetime total of 33,902 miles. The truck traveled 20,123 with a lifetime total of 78,866 miles.  And for those who are keeping track (Bill!) the truck engine has 54,038 miles. The reason we keep track separately is the truck engine was replaced at 24,828 miles, but our warranties go by the truck mileage, not the engine mileage.

Travel Pattern – This year our travel pattern was largely driven by our work schedule.  We did have the opportunity to do some exploring between jobs in April and October, but mostly travel was dictated by where we went to work.  Well, that’s not exactly fair, we certainly had some say in what jobs we selected, but getting from job to job placed restrictions on where we could explore and for how long. This is what the year looked like. 

  • November – December Selling Christmas Trees in New Braunfels, TX
  • January – March Gate Guarding in Dilley, TX
  • April – Time off in Phoenix, Sedona, and Flagstaff, AZ, and Las Vegas, NV
  • May – September – Working for a utility company parks department in Estacada, Oregon
  • October –  Visiting with friends in CO and IA , Mor-Ryde Installation in Elkhart, IN, Visiting family in Columbus and Charleston, SC
  • November- December  – Working in Amazon Distribution Center, Cambellsville, KY

One of the major benefits of work kamping is our campsite is free and we only paid for campgrounds 37 days this year.  This year for the first time we truly traveled with no reservations.  We went from Texas to Oregon with no reservations, and then again from Oregon to Ohio the same way.  Traveling in the shoulder season gave us a higher level of comfort that we could find a spot and we are just more comfortable in general with finding campsites on the fly.

Truck and RV Repairs and Upgrades

I would have to say at this point I don’t really see a pattern with truck or RV repairs.  It is true that several of our friends had some pretty major issues in year three, but I didn’t feel for us it was any worse than any other year.  It might even have been better because we are much better at living with/working around issues rather than letting them derail us.  Case in point; we were without a working furnace for the entire year.  It obviously isn’t optimal, but we did prove to ourselves that we can manage.  Some repairs though, like our refrigerator slide being broken, absolutely have to be fixed quickly, and in those cases we were lucky enough to be able to schedule the repairs during our non-working time.  Here’s what the year looked like:

December – First attempt to fix the furnace.  The mobile tech who worked on the issue was in a motorcycle accident and was unable to finish the repair before we moved on to our next job.

January – We attempted to have the furnace, axle, and front left jack fixed.  This was a fiasco from start to finish.  The warranty company refused to fix the axle despite their independent adjuster telling them it was needed, Camping World said they fixed the furnace but we later learned they didn’t even reassemble it, and we didn’t have enough time for the front jack repair. We did spend $592 on two new front tires and an alignment for the truck this month.

October – We got the furnace fixed and our refrigerator slide which was stuck in the “in position”.  We also got a Mor-Ryde suspension upgrade and new disc brakes which you can read about here.

The furnace and refrigerator repairs were covered by our extended warranty, but the new tires and Mor-Ryde suspension were out of pocket expenses.

Patterns I am Seeing

I wasn’t really sure where to add this and it’s important to note this definitely is not based on comprehensive data, but I wanted to share some trends we are seeing with folks in our little community who are hitting their third or fourth year.  This is definitely based on a limited sample size, but I do think it is interesting and wanted to pass it along.  I’ve gotten some heat in the past for over generalizing, so please understand that this is really just a little slice of a pretty huge RVing pie and these thoughts are presented in that context.

  • Everyone has sold their house.  The longest anyone took selling their house was three years compared to the the shortest of 3 days.  Eventually though everyone’s house sold.
  • At least 1/3 of the people I know have changed RV’s. Some upgraded to newer/larger models and others changed from Fifth wheels to Class A’s or vice versa.
  • Repairs, repairs, and more repairs.  The first couple of years the RV’s seem to hold up pretty well, but around year 3 and definitely year 4 stuff starts to break. Almost everyone I know has had their travel detoured or delayed by the need to stop and make a repair.
  • Family emergencies.  Unfortunately these also have occurred, and at least 1/2 of the people I know have had their travel interrupted by either a health issue or a death in the family. This is real life after all and I wrote about how challenging these situations can be while on the road in this post.
  • Some people have settled on a home base of sort.  After traveling for 3-4 years many people start to think about developing routes or establishing a home base. Partly this is to help keep costs down, but it’s also to have consistent medical care or be able to see family on a semi-regular basis.  Folks are either staying on family land, buying a small piece of land, or returning to a job they liked.  This trend is of particular interest to us because we definitely see it in most of the folks we have met who have been full time RVing 7 years or longer. At this point we are not opposed to developing a route (a major change for me) just haven’t figured out the right one.  For us this is going to depend primarily on our job situation, but we are definitely open to settling into a routine that works for us, which is again a major change from how we started.
  • Almost everyone we know has volunteered or work kamped at least once.  Partially this is done to help supplement or generate income, but it is also done for the experience.  It’s nice to stay in one place for awhile and really get to know an area and community. And we know several people who have continued to keep their old jobs despite being on the road three years.  I don’t regret giving up my old job, for a variety of reasons, but it’s nice to see folks continuing to travel and work full time in a corporate environment.
  • Finally, we only know two couples who have left the full timing lifestyle.  That really surprises me, but most folks remain deeply committed to this lifestyle, despite it’s challenges.  Not to say people don’t talk about eventually getting off the road, but the general consensus seems to be, we aren’t ready yet.  There is still more we want to see, still places to explore, and in general this life is better overall than the old lives we had.  We talk about this stuff around campfires and dinners, but for most of us the end-game is not well defined.  That isn’t because we don’t know how to transition back, but because we have learned to live a life with more ambiguity.  For me at least, that is huge personal growth and something I will be grateful for no matter how long this lasts.

So again, this is my attempt to pass along some patterns I am seeing, and I am sure they are greatly impacted by my own personal experience.  My reason for sharing them at all is to show that Lee and I are not an anomalous couple, but part of a larger group of people that are experiencing similar things.  When I was researching the lifestyle and reading blogs, I was very skeptical and thought that the people who managed to do this successfully were one-offs, and that is not the case. We have met lots of people who are very happy and fulfilled in their full timing lifestyle and that has not changed even after three years of travel.  And it’s easy to see why.  Ask any full timer to rattle off their favorite experiences and they are all things that they probably never would have done on a traditional vacation.  There are very special moments that people usually stumble across in their travels that simply would never have happened in our old real lives.  A picture is worth 1,000 words though, so let me share some of ours for year three.

Top 10 Things We Saw

This is always my favorite part of the By-The-Numbers post and this year, despite working so much we saw many wonderful things.

  1. Of course number 1 is a waterfall..and what an amazing one it was. Lee read about Grand Falls when he was researching the area, but even he didn’t expect what we found.  The falls are taller than Niagara and very, very wide. It was a special experience and I highly recommend making the trip if you are ever in the Flagstaff area.
  2. Lee’s favorite experience of the year was when we went to Hecata Head Lighthouse at night.  We were with good friends Jim/Diana and Rick which added to how special it was and neither one of us have ever seen anything quite like it.
  3. Seeing Crater Lake checked off a big bucket list item of mine and experiencing it with our friends Kat and Bert made it really special.
  4.  More waterfalls of course and sharing all of the waterfalls in Columbia Gorge with Lee was really special.  I had seen them before on a work trip, but loved showing them to him and thankfully we did this early in the season as a large wild fire burned most of this area later in the summer.
  5. What a wonderful surprise Walnut Canyon was.  I absolutely loved it and when you combine it with Sunset Crater and Wupatki it’s sister locations it makes for an amazing day.
  6. I loved, loved our visit to Winslow, Arizona.  Yes, it is super cheesy, but getting to “stand on the corner,” was very special for me and I was giddy most of the day.
  7. Ahhh Sedona.   We had a frustrating experience in Sedona but the views were absolutely amazing.  Definitely a place we want to go back to.
  8. Being in the Path of Totality during the Eclipse made this list to my complete surprise.  I really thought it would be much ado about nothing and it was only sheer dumb luck that put me in the path, but obviously it was meant to be because I truly loved it.
  9. The Petrified Forest was very special for me because it was a place I have wanted to see since I was a little kid.  Sometimes those places disappoint, but this time it did not.
  10. We stayed at Lost Dutchman State Park and had spectacular views of the Superstition Mountains.  I really liked the park, although it wasn’t one of Lee’s favorites, but either way those mountains are truly something special. Plus we got to hang out with Deb/Steve and Cori/Greg and that always is a fun time no matter where we are.

There were many more special views this year but those were the ones from a pure picture taking perspective that really stood out. We really did see some very special things, despite the fact we worked most of the year.  I wasn’t completely sure that would be possible to be honest, but picking Oregon for our summer job really helped make it possible.  But I’ll be talking more about all of that in the next post.  

Supporting our Blog

We very much appreciate your support of our blog.

  • As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.  Search Amazon Here
  • You can purchase the ebook telling the story of how we became full-time RVers.
  • You can purchase our recipe book filled with 80 recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. You can purchase the kindle or paperback version on Amazon or buy the Apple version on Itunes.

 

 

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First Time at Amazon: Day 7 – Day 11

Disclaimer:  We  are not spokespersons or officially affiliated with Amazon in any way. This account is of our personal experience as seasonal employees in the Cambellsville, KY distribution center in 2017.  I in no way speak for the company or my co-workers, and am only recounting my personal experiences.  Also, any details I get wrong in this or any other post are due to a misunderstanding on my part and are not intentional.

Wearing this shirt was my attempt to remind myself to not get agitated about the goofy stuff. On the plus side I never ever would have worn this in my corporate life. The sentiment would have been frowned upon lol.  Thanks Denny for getting me the shirt!

Day 7

I was thinking as I walked into work yesterday that my calves were holding up pretty well, so it should come as no surprise that it was all about pain the calves last night.  Note to self: don’t borrow trouble. The first half of the shift I actually felt really good, but after lunch the work slowed down, the routes got longer, and my feet started acting up again.  I am going to try and take the inserts our tonight, to maybe help with arch support and if that doesn’t work I have a pair of Skechers I can try. Lee was in a ton of pain.  The last couple of hours we were bumped between modules (Q to F to E to F to Q) and except for one brief stint where I was picking multiple items per bin it was rough. For me at least when I get in a rhythm it hurts less, but the more time between picks the more I think about how much my feet hurt.

Speaking of that I wanted to share  my picking process.  I walk at a pretty slow pace to get from bin to bin, but when I get there I try to be as efficient as possible.  For me that means grabbing the first item I see with the color on the computer and then scanning it.  Most of the time, it’s the right one and this means I avoid digging through the bin. In those cases where it is the wrong one it costs me a little extra time, but that is more than made up by how often it’s right.  Lee does something similar but he doesn’t even look at color.  Since his numbers are still better than me, his method may work even better than mine although I know he is walking faster than me from place to place.

I’m also going to the bathroom on a semi-regular basis and I do this by stopping when I have a pick near one.  They told us to empty our bins before going into a bathroom during shift, but I found this wasted time and cost a ton of extra steps.  I just leave my cart near the restroom and pop in and out.  In all fairness though I am lucky that there is a small restroom in a corner of the area we are picking in.  Once we add stairs this may become much harder.  Still, despite the comments I have read/heard from several people, everyone says they go to the bathroom “on their time.” And thus far at least, the short stops haven’t hurt my numbers significantly overall.

Which takes me to the environment.  For many, many people working in a place where they have to actually worry about whether or not or when they could go to the bathroom would be a deal breaker.  The whole environment is particularly tough for Lee since he is an independent and creative person.  Largely I find this atmosphere much easier than many other jobs we have had.  There is minimal personality drama for one thing. You see people briefly in the aisles, smile and give them a wave, but there is little time for chit chat.  Other jobs, like packing, involve folks having actual conversations, but as Bill says, us pickers tend to have a conversation in 90 second clips over the course of several chance meetings. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there is drama going on somewhere, but I am largely blissfully ignorant of it and so far it has in no way impacted my ability to do my jobs.  This is in direct contradiction to most camp hosting jobs, for example, where managing personalities is a big part of being successful.  To me that is a huge advantage of picking and I enjoy my success or failure being about my own personal accomplishment.

It does leave quite a bit of time for personal thoughts though, so if you are a person who doesn’t want to spend a ton of time in their own head this may not be the job for you.  If you are more social, you might want to try packing.  It’s a shame really that a work kampers we don’t get to try out all the positions before choosing one.  It’s seems pretty obvious that the stowers are having a hard time keeping up and I would love to jump over and stow or pack for awhile when things are slow. That’s what I see many of the senior regular staff doing during the shift, but I get why it doesn’t make a ton of sense to have temporaries learn all the jobs.  That being said, many people come back year after year and it would be good if they found a way to allow the returning work force “float jobs” in a season.  Once you are locked into a position it practically takes an Act of God to be moved to another role, and some jobs just aren’t a good fit.  That doesn’t mean the person couldn’t contribute in other ways, but for us first-timers in particular how could we possibly know what worked until we tried it.  Personally, I feel very lucky we got assigned to picking.  Although the physical toll is rough, I am really enjoying the solitude and still find the whole thing pretty mentally relaxing.

Tracy: 24,269 steps ( 10.10 miles)

 

Lee:  29,418 (13 miles)

 

Interesting Item Picked:  The absolute winner for tonight is a product called Shoe-Purri. It is made by the company who make Poo-Purri which is a bathroom deodorizer that many RVers swear by.  I had no idea they also made a shoe deodorizer, but am very excited to try it.  RV’s are small spaces and as such strong smells tend to permeate everywhere and unlike a house there are limited places to stow stinky stuff. So anything that really works in that area is a big hit. 

Day 8  

Pain is a relative thing.  Once I removed my gel inserts, the searing pain in my arches went away and although my feet hurt in multiple places, it was definitely manageable.  That being said it must have hurt somewhat, because when I woke up in the morning I saw I had this.

Rash on my left calf above the ankle

The jeans I was wearing are a little short and it appears that they rode up and the cuff was rubbing against my lower calf.  I honestly had no idea it was happening and trust me I am pretty sensitive normally to this sort of thing.  But as I said, pain is relative and in the grand scheme of things this didn’t even register.  All that being said I feel pretty good for having completed five 10-hour shifts and walked nearly 50 miles.  That’s gotta be a record for me, and I feel pretty good about it.  Lee also was much better last night as well.  It still hurts, but the pain is manageable.

Oh and I keep forgetting to mention that they have these cool vending machines that have gloves (you can get a pair once a week) and ibuprofen or cold medicine (these you can get based on the recommended dosage/time frame.  As much as I appreciate the free medicine though I didn’t find it very helpful and instead am carrying a small baggie of Advil. Gotta have the good stuff.  Hopefully next week they will open us up a little bit so we are in different sections.  As much as I am not looking forward to adding stairs, I am getting a little tired of being in the same couple of areas every day.  I have discovered though that I like hanging clothes.  There are a few sections with hanging suits and dresses and I seem to have a knack for finding the items quickly.  Plus I enjoy pulling down the beautiful dresses and suits and make sure I pack them lightly in totes so they aren’t smooshed by other clothes.  Lee hates this section because it does slow you down but anything that provides a little variety is a good thing.

Tracy: 25,284 steps ( 10.55 miles)
Items picked: 

Lee:  22,621 ( 9.99 miles)
Items picked: 

Interesting Item Picked: All three of my girls are reading the Amazon posts, and they have lots of interest and questions about what the job is like.  They asked me if only Dad was getting the sexy items, because I haven’t mentioned them so I thought I would talk about that here. From day 1, actually hour 1 I have seen lots of adult items.  Makes sense really because most people would want to buy that stuff online and as a person who is live and let live (as long as both people are adults and it is consensual) most of it doesn’t really phase me.  I should say though that if you are a person who is really bothered by that sort of thing this is probably not the job for you.  Lots of the items have half naked women on the outside packaging, but in this environment I usually just think about how their parents feel lol.  And as non-judgmental as I try to be, some of it I just don’t get.  There are lots of adult sized animal costumes, and of course all kinds of kinky lingerie.  Corsets are super popular and since most seem to be made in China I do have the occasional thought on what the women working in the Chinese factories must think about them. They probably think we westerners are nuts.  The most unusual (for me), and again trying not to judge here are the adult sized baby costumes.  Those just make me shake my head.

So to answer the question,  yes I do see this stuff and pretty frequently,  but it is unlikely those items will ultimately end up here.  I usually have 4-5 items a day I jot down and the best ends up in this section.  The sexy stuff usually doesn’t make me smile, wonder, or laugh probably because it’s not a very sexy place to work lol.   The item that did make me smile on this particular night was a Man’s grey T-Shirt with Groot printed on the pocket.  I loved Guardians of the Galaxy and thought this was a very clever way to allow men to individualize the simple grey T-Shirt. Super cute.

 

 

 

Day 9 and 10

Lee and I both decided to work half days and to give each other a little personal space he worked Friday and I worked Saturday.  On of the problems with signing up for these shifts in advance is you are locked in and if you decide to not work at the last minute then you take attendance points.  You can wait until the last minute to sign up, but you run the risk the shift will no longer be available.  In any event I think we both decided that 50 hours and 5 days was enough.  That may change as our bodies toughen up but for right now it seems like too much.  While Lee was working Friday Kelly and I went to lunch at the college.  It was nice hanging out just the two of us and we went to the pharmacy and shoe store to see what I could do about my feet.  Amazon offers a 30% sketcher shoe program, but since I can’t buy shoes online without trying them on I went to a local store.  Wow I am glad I did, because nothing on their list was remotely comfortable.

Afterwards I did some research on plantar facciitis, because so many people mentioned it in the comments and despite the scary sounding name it’s not that complicated.  Basically there is one ligament between your heel and toes and if this gets strained or inflammed any place on the foot can hurt.  I was happy to see Advil can help with this, but it’s also really important that you have the right shoes.  Since so many people mentioned nurses, I reached out to my sister (who is a labor and delivery nurse) and asked about her shoes and she raved about her Asics. After talking to here I also Googled best shoes for walking on concrete, and the Asics showed up as number one in multiple locations.  The second choice, by the way, were New Balance 608’s which coincidentally Bill wears and absolutely loves.  So I did more research and saw they have a sports store here in town and plan on heading there after my five hour shift today. Personally, I think it’s important to try on shoes when your feet hurt.  Basically if you feel “ahhhh” when you try them on that’s good, and if you feel “urrrrg”, that’s bad. We will see how it goes.

The five hour shift was pretty good.  It was quiet for one thing, and I was kept busy in the section with non-clothing items which is my favorite. I put some heel gel cushions in my Merrill’s which definitely helped, but I was excited about checking out shoes after work.  When I got off at five I drove over to the local sporting goods store and they had a small selection.  They did have one type of ASIC GTO 2000’s and actually had my size.  Plus, they were on sale for $59.99, which was an incredible price since they are usually $120+ dollars.  I tried them on and although my feet didn’t go “aaaaaah”, they also didn’t go “urrrrrgh”, and since it was such a good deal I decided to go ahead and buy them.  Did you know that shoes only last for 6 months with heavy use?  I didn’t know that they needed to be replaced that often, but then again since high school I haven’t been much for heavy physical activity.  (We’ve been told shoes should be replaced after 500-600 miles. – Lee) Looking forward to trying these and hope they work.  I can feel discomfort in my feet most of the time now, and it’s even woken me up a time or two when I have been sleeping. Hopefully I caught this in time and have avoided serious damage.

Yes they are god awful ugly but who cares if they work

Tracy: 11,623 steps (  4.88 miles)
Items picked 11/8 -11/10:  I got these numbers from the weekly report.  I picked 1565 items and was 125% of goal and 147% to curve, both of which are pretty great. To be clear I am not busting my butt here, but going at a reasonable pace (for me) and focusing on being as efficient as possible. 

Lee:  9,878 steps (4.36 miles)
Items picked 11/8 – 11/10:  Lee is totally crushing it with 2199 items picked, 138% to goal and 162% to curve.  I think these numbers are getting some attention because he has supervisors and safety people stopping in to check on him all the time and one of the area managers even found him on the floor because he “wanted to meet him.”  Not sure what they think is going on here, for all we know they are taking bets on when he flames out, but if that is what they think will happen, they don’t know my husband. (I would like a piece of that action. – Lee)Of course we haven’t added stairs yet so not sure what that will do to either of our numbers. 

Interesting Item Picked: I saw this  Zonman Water Proof Camera Bag and it immediately got my attention. I like to take pictures around waterfalls and the ocean but spray is definitely an issue.  I wasn’t sure if it would actually work though, so checked with my resident camera expert Lee. (First of all, any time you do anything with a camera that’s outside the “norm”, there’s a risk of damagin it. Getting it near water (even a light mist can accumulate dangerous amounts of moisture), snow, sand, smoke, hanging out of an airplane, whatever. So, you know, caveat emptor. On the other hand, it’s only money, and some shots are worth the risk. Having said that, this is a pretty reasonable amount of money to significantly mitigate that risk, especially for anyone who wants to be able to take those once in a lifetime shots no matter what the weather is doing. I’ve had waterproof bags with this kind of seal before, and they’re usually pretty trustworthy, so I would definitely use this. – Lee)

Day 11

Well the new shoes helped.  I still had pain, but it was manageable and when I woke up in the morning my feet were much better.  The only problem was the heels were being broke in and started to rub me, but I visited the medical facility onsite and got 2 big band-aids which helped.  It’s a nice feature that they have a medical facility and it is staffed by EMT’s and nurses.  They have limits on what they are allowed to help with before referring you to a doctor, but are pretty well stocked with first-aid stuff and it appeared they would be able to assist if someone was in cardiac distress.  In retrospect I should have bought new shoes prior to coming into the job and spent some time “breaking them in” in advance, but hopefully I have caught it in time.  We were both pretty tired though, despite the half days and a full day off so after working we both fell into a really deep sleep. That is one of the great things about working this swing shift is we can both sleep in if we feel we need to.  I am routinely sleeping until 8:30 which is very unusual for me, but my body obviously needs it and I am paying attention to that.

And really the job is going OK.  The only part I really hate is when the volume of picks is low and our routes take us all over the place.  I was talking to one of the regular employees (you can tell because their badges are solid blue versus camperforce has white with a blue trim) and he said that once peak season is over it is always like that…yuck.  Plus he said that they get “a lot pickier” during non peak which is hard for me to imagine.  They seem pretty picky now.  Anyway,  late last night I had a run of A’s and B’s (which require kneeling down) and several K’s (which require getting on a step stool) and those are rough when you are already tired.  At one point I was shuffling along like a zombie and completely lost track of time until the new chime system let me know it was the end of my shift.  They have been talking about installing these chimes since we got here and they are finally live, but instead of bell notes of some sort they are playing short sound clips that are unique to each shift.  One of the shifts gets a sound from Super Mario, which is kind of cute, but others sound like some weird yelling thing.  Seriously, not sure who picked it, but it’s a jarring noise and definitely would not be my first pick although it definitely gets you attention. I have mixed reactions to the chime since I have never worked a job that has a “whistle”. (I hate the new chimes. I don’t like the “dog whistle concept” to begin with, I find it demeaning. We’re all adults, we all know how to tell time, and everyone has a scanner with a clock on it that’s synced to the master clock. And I can’t imagine there a lot of people in this environment that forget to take a break or lunch. – Lee)

Tracy: 25,470 ( 10.62 miles)

Lee:  26,288 steps (11.61 miles)
Items Picked: 1,033

Interesting Item Picked: Tough to pick my favorite today, but I am settling on Go Pong Lotion Hidden Flasks.  They have a line of products that look like sunscreen or lotion that you can sneak alcohol into places with and they looked really realistic.  I’m not a huge drinker, but I am also not a big fan of being forced to spend ridiculous amount of money on drinks in public venues, so I liked the idea.  Yes, it seems like something you would do in college, but as full timers on a budget I could definitely see the benefit, plus they are pretty cheap at under $10.

 

 

 

 

 

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First Time at Amazon: Day 4 – Day 6

Disclaimer:  We  are not spokespersons or officially affiliated with Amazon in any way. This account is of our personal experience as seasonal employees in the Cambellsville, KY distribution center in 2017.  I in no way speak for the company or my co-workers, and am only recounting my personal experiences.  Also, any details I get wrong in this or any other post are due to a misunderstanding on my part and are not intentional.  

We had some time this weekend to explore the area, but I found myself just wanting to relax.  It’s been such a long time since we had a weekend off and I really wanted to just enjoy it.  We did make a Sam’s Club run with Bill and Kelly, and bought a bunch of different snacks for the next couple of months.  Small packs of peanuts, Slim Jims, and crackers will all fit in our clear fanny packs and are perfect for a little protein kick mid-shift.  We also stopped and tried out a new Chinese buffet, which was OK but nothing that special.  The company was great though, and we really enjoyed catching up with our friends.

Saturday, Kelly had set up am RVillage event for Camperforce people at Green River State Park, and we drove over to check that out.  The state park is really beautiful, right on a gorgeous lake, and we reconnected with Harry and Vicky, and met some new people, which was nice before we started our full shifts.  You do “meet” people in the aisles when you are working on occasion, and the more friendly faces the better, I think.  Despite the beauty of the campground we are glad we chose our current RV park.  The state park only has 30 amp and a honey wagon for grey/black water tank dumps, and although it really was beautiful, having strong 50 amp and full hookups was worth giving up the nature for us.  Everyone is different though, and it is nice that the State Park is an option for the Camperforce folks.   It adds about 14 minutes to the drive to/from work, but for many the setting would totally be worth it.

The lake was huge, curving around the campground and there were lots of boaters on the water on Saturday

The fall colors were really pretty, this picture doesn’t do them justice

Harry, Lee and Bill chatting

Oh, and on a side note, our RV friends Sue and Jonathan are back in Korea, and met up with my daughter Kay. She had a great time on her “play date” as she called it, and they all really enjoyed each other’s company. How cool is that? RV friends are the absolute best!

 

Day 4

I’ll be honest, I was pretty nervous when I woke up in the morning.  It wasn’t about my mental ability to do the job, but rather whether I could handle it physically.  We had jumped right in and signed up for Voluntary OT on Sunday, and although they cancelled the mandatory OT our voluntary shift was still a go.  And that was a good thing, frankly.  We are here to make money, and who knows how long OT will be available, so we wanted to take advantage of the opportunities when they came.  We were actually hoping to sign up for an additional 5 hours at the end of the week and Lee and I decided to stagger those shifts so that we would both get some alone time in the RV.  Unfortunately when we went to the portal we got a strange error message so we will need to speak to someone when we go in today. After all the training and talking, I would just like to get it started.  I’m a “rip the band-aid off” kind of girl and the sooner I knew what I was dealing with, the better. It’s also really humid today (85%) and I toyed with the idea of wearing shorts, but it got cooler as the day wore on and ultimately I decided to stick with jeans at least for the first day.  They do provide knee pads, which I might try out today, but I just want to play it safe clothing-wise until I get a better handle on the job.

So overall it went ok.  I really made sure to pay attention to my body and when an area started to fuss a little I would switch hands, do mini-stretches, or try to adjust my stance.  The only are I couldn’t do this for was my feet.  I bought some Gel insoles. which really helped, but my feet were very sore.  The last hour in particular was pretty tough, but I kept plugging along. You may have noticed that my steps were much less than Lee’s and that was because for most of the night I stayed in the E section and did clothing.  I was actually pretty grateful to be moved into other products at the end of the night, because mentally I was getting a bit sluggish.  For me at least that does matter, because I am a bit dyslexic and start to misread the number/letter combinations when I am not paying attention and end up walking in the wrong direction lol.

Overall I felt I did well, and at one point early in the shift was even out picking Lee.  That was largely a factor of where my picks were and I hit a “hot streak” that had me up around 132 picks an hour at one point.  Although he is moving from place to place a lot faster than me, I think I am pretty good at getting the item out of the bin quickly.  I noticed a pattern where usually the needed item was on top of the pile and many times the right item was the first one I put a hand on which saves a ton of time.  If the needed item is “hiding” in the bottom of the bin, that can really slow the process down, especially if there are numerous items that are the same color, but different sizes.  Speaking of which I honestly don’t know how you could do this job if you were color blind.  Technically it could be done, as you could look at brand names and use the scanner when in doubt, but color is often a great short cut and it would definitely make this job a lot harder.

And I should probably mention thank heavens for the scanners.  I can’t tell you how many times I scanned the wrong item or bin and it beeped at me, which showed me at least how often human error came into play.  Not that long ago bar scanners didn’t exist and I imagine the process times and error rates were much higher. The way it works is we scan the bin and then the item and if either of those things is wrong (I am facing the wrong side of the aisle more times than I would like to admit lol) it beeps at you.  And if you absolutely can’t find the item you  every single thing in the box.  I had to do this a few times when there was no discernible difference between products.  I even came across one poor guy scanning over 50 look-a-like items trying to find the “right one” and definitely felt for him.  Thankfully this situation doesn’t occur very often.  Usually there is enough difference in product it is easy to quickly find the right one without the scanner, but it is nice that you can use it as an option in a pinch.

Tracy: 19,730 steps (8.26 ,miles)
Items picked: 770

Lee: 29,918 steps (13.22 miles)
Items picked: 984

Interesting Item Picked:  Since my daughter Kat likes the interesting item section, I thought I would share something I thought was perfect for her husband Micah.  It was a Minecraft Creeper Fleece Robe and it made me smile as I thought of them.  I also picked an OSU hat and a Philadelphia Eagles jersey that made me think of family and friends, but the robe was the overall winner for the day.

(This is my favorite item of the day: The Sasquatch Bikini Ugly Christmas Sweater. Quantities are limited, so be sure and get yours today! This was a close runner up. Also, I picked a LOT of French maid and “schoolgirl” outfits. So some folks are gonna have a very Merry Christmas! – Lee)

Day 5

There definitely is a cumulative effect on the soreness.  Day 5 was my first 10+ mile day and although I did pretty good in the early parts of the shift towards the end it was a struggle.  There is a certain amount of mind over matter involved at that point, and I try to think to myself (as our friends Bill and Nancy suggested) that this is great hiker trainer.  Still there were lots of groans at the end of the night and we both went to bed pretty quickly. One thing that made it worse, was the number of steps between picks was much longer than yesterday.  We were both traveling from one end of the section to another between picks by the end of the night and ultimately we both received messages that we were out of work towards the end of the night. We weren’t 100% sure what to do in this situation, so we logged out and logged back in a couple of times until more work was in our queue and that’s one thing I do find frustrating and want to talk about, but in order to do so I need to make it very clear that this next part is based on supposition and anecdotal evidence and unfortunately I have no idea how the algorithms work.  They didn’t teach us that in training.

It appears that when work becomes sparse the computer intentionally slows you down.  It does this by sending your picks farther and farther away from each other and even in some cases sending you away from and then back to the same bin to get the same item rather than combining the pick. The idea, I suppose, is from a productivity standpoint it is better to keep people moving than allow everyone to take a break, but it’s hard to keep moving when you see this happening and realize all that extra walking is essentially “busy work.”  To be fair, people are definitely monitoring the situation, because so far every time the routes start to lengthen, pretty quickly the computer tells us VTO (voluntary time off) is available.  People start to take advantage of that, which then puts more work for the rest of us, and eventually things seem to settle back into “normal.” I’ve also noticed this seems to happen right around break time.  As folks start to peel off on break, the route gets much more compressed with picks coming in rapid succession and near each other.  Those last few minutes are a great time to boost stats, because I’ve found I can quickly pick multiple items right before break.

All that being said, I’ve never been a big fan of busy work and I am REALLY not a big fan of it when it adds steps to my day.  When you are picking and get lots of items in rapid succession you get into a rhythm and feel like you are accomplishing something.  For me walking to and fro and barely picking anything is both tiring and a little frustrating. I have to keep reminding myself that I get paid the same no matter what I am doing, but towards the end of the shift that doesn’t help much.  It’s also probably worse because we are in training and by design “locked” into a relatively small area.  Since being “opened up” means adding in walking up and down stairs, which I have no idea how my body will respond to, for now it’s best just to leave it alone.  So far my knees are doing OK.  I have to be really careful to switch out hands and arms because I do start to feel overuse in the left side and both of us are struggling with our hip muscles.

Lee definitely had the worst of it, because for some reason the computer kept sending him back to the same bin where he couldn’t scan the barcode.  There was one bin with Superman underwear that had faded bar codes and he marked it as such, like you are supposed to.  But when we were low on work, it sent him back multiple times and the problem solver hadn’t yet been out to fix the problem. Ultimately he got frustrated because the system wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, so instead he marked the item as “missing”, and then dumped the entire contents of the bin in the “damaged” bin at the end of the aisle.  Afterwards when the scanner sent him to that bin he just ignored it. This story, by the way, had me laughing so hard when he told it to me (gallows humor), especially when he explained the interaction with the nice young girl who was the problem solver.  Eventually she explained to him that when things are rejected a message is sent to the problem solver team who then solve the problem. At one point, she put new bar codes on the items and restored them to the bin, but she couldn’t explain why it kept sending him back to the same bin before the new bar codes were attached. Can I just say every. single. day. he is getting some kind of “special attention”, whereas I barely think they know I exist lol. (I also got yet another long visit from a safety person, who followed me around for about 15 minutes to watch me and asked me a few questions. Like, “Where do you go if there’s a fire?”. I told her I would quickly and calmly leave the building using the nearest exist. When she asked me where the nearest exit was, I told her I had no idea, because there was no signage, but in the event of a fire I would be motivated to find one. I think she made notes that I thought the exit signage was inadequate. She also asked me where I would go in the event of a tornado. I told her I would go to a tornado shelter area. She asked me where they were, and I told her they were under the tornado shelter area signs. She asked me where the nearest one was, so I told her I had no clue, and we walked around a little bit until I saw a sign and pointed to it. I pretty much always feel like I’m in an episode of candid camera. She said I was doing a good job, which was nice, since I’m 200% to goal. But it’s only day 5, and we haven’t started using stairs yet. I fully expect someone to watch me go up and down the stairs to make sure I’m doing that right as well. I’ll make an educated guess and say that they want us to always use the handrails, and hardly ever want us to slide down the banisters. – Lee)

Tracy: 25,552 steps (10.66 miles)
Items picked: 782

Lee: 25,364 (11.2 miles)
Items picked: 837

Interesting Item Picked: It is true you start to zone out and  hardly register what you are picking, but once in a while an item really stands out and actually makes me stop.  Today it was a Chemo Beanie which was a really cute and stylish head wrap for someone who has lost their hair to chemo.  The reason it caught my attention was initially I thought it was just a cool head wrap, and was thrilled when I looked closer to see they were specifically designed for chemo patients and came in all kinds of colors and chic patterns.  The company was founded by a woman who was trying to help two of her aunts who had breast cancer feel better about how they looked and  it’s a wonderful example of  value-based entrepreneurship.  I didn’t know any of that, by the way, until I got home and researched it, but as I said the quality and uniqueness of the product really stood out and made me want to learn more about it.

(Today I picked several Family Holiday Survival Kits. Those made me chuckle.  Also, something in a plain brown box with a title that was so graphic and shocking to see in print on the scanner screen that I actually gasped when I read it. I am not going to link it here, you’ll have to use your imagination. – Lee)

Day 6

Yes, the effects are cumulative, but I’ve also noticed I am having different problem areas every day.  Overall this is a good thing, because as Lee said “pain is weakness leaving the body,” but today’s problem area were the arches of my feet and that was brutal.  If the problem area is muscular there are things you can do…change your stance, use icy hot, more Advil etc., but the pain in the feet to some extent is what it is and the arches in particular were rough. What it feels like is I am changing my stance automatically to accommodate problem areas, which then leads to pain in other areas. I have also started wearing gloves, not because of concern about dirt but to help with potential cuts, scrapes and blisters.  The ones they provide for free seemed to help pretty well.  (Almost all of the bins are these ingenious cardboard box modules with cardboard drawers, and the edges of the drawers can be pretty sharp.  – Lee) I am hoping that eventually I will run through all the areas of the body and “toughen up” all over, but that remains to be seen. On the plus side an employee came up and told me I had passed the safety check with flying colors.  That was strange because I didn’t even know she was watching me, but at least I got the feedback.  I get why people talked about the “big brother” atmosphere now, but I have decided, for the moment at least to not let it bother me.

Oh, and you may notice that I don’t have the number of items picked down below.  Because we are on swing shift, there is no daily report for us, and we have to manually ask someone everyday to look it up.  Frankly this has been a major pain in the butt and since I don’t know what value it provides, I’ll throw it in on the days I can easily get the information, but for my sanity I have to let it go.  I like working swing shift very much, but since there are so few of us, it’s had some negative points.  They have a portal where we can sign up for voluntary overtime, but none of us appear to be set up properly in the system.  That means we need to manually have an HR person put in our requests for OT and when we worked Sunday it’s not showing up in the portal as worked.

They have a manned HR desk open most of the time in the warehouse, but I have not found this to be helpful.  We are always talking to a different person, it appears their knowledge is pretty limited, and since you are not talking to one person the core issue was not being resolved.  Finally I found our Area Manager (my first conversation with him) and laid the situation out.  There is a line between line supervisors and HR and since the portal was on the HR side, initially he was moving me in that direction.  I was having none of that.  I firmly explained I needed someone to take ownership of the problem, and eventually he agreed to call HR.  So far that appears to be the biggest issue with their processes.  The processes all work pretty good, but anytime something falls out of the norm, it appears supervisors/leads have a hard time problem solving.  Admittedly this is my impression from my limited view, but the few times we have had issues because of our shift they have been very difficult to resolve.

If I felt I could stand around while they were fixing it, I would probably care less, but that timer is always in the background.  No one put you in non-productive time while you stop and talk to someone (I did hear that the health clinic, AmCare, does, but haven’t personally seen that) so every minute you are talking to safety or a supervisor counts against you.  And yes, I understand that we are new and no one appears to be even looking at these numbers, but as a metrics driven person that bugs me. In a perfect world every time I went to HR or talked to a lead person they would scan me out and when we were done would scan me back in.  The reason it bugs me is because it sort of pushes a person towards doing work related things in their off time so their metrics aren’t affected and I am not 100% sure that isn’t intentional.  Let me give you an example;

They have this nice portal that we can use to look up tons of info, but every time we logged in from home it made us change our password.  Because of my IT background, I determined pretty quickly that this was happening because we weren’t on their internal network.  The solution (which none of the supervisors was aware of) was to log in just once on their internal computer and change the password there.  It’s a silly little thing, but in order to do that we were referred to a bank of computers in one small corner of the building and the initial setup of our desktop and changing the password took about 7 minutes. (The system uses each computer as a separate desktop, so if you log in to any “new” machine, it goes through the entire process of creating you as a new user on that machine, and setting up a desktop. And it’s slooooooow. – Lee) I decided to do this coming back from lunch, knowing full well that my metrics would show a “late start” back from break.  I also knew that I would need to push it a little bit to make up that 7 minutes. (I take a completely different approach to this entire problem: I just don’t care.  I’ve never been a fan of “the clock”. Once I clock in, I am working, and anything that I need to do that is work related is on their time. If they choose not to use labor tracking for anything “off task” that’s completely up to them. If they don’t want my time wasted dealing with administrative stuff, then they should fix their administrative stuff. At the moment I am consistently between 178 and 200% of goal, so I’m happy to discuss how I manage my time with anyone that would like to bring it up. – Lee)

And sure, I get it, these are seasonal jobs and they don’t really care that much about our metrics as long as we show up on time, but I can’t help but think about the folks that work there full time.  In all fairness I am sure they know how to “get around” the computer system but the whole energy and dynamic of the place is kind of weird.  I’ll see some permanent employees standing and chatting in an aisle while picking and then someone will say, “I better pick something before I get into trouble.” and the little group breaks apart. So I know it’s not just me who feels this internal clock/pressure, I just don’t understand the limits and rules yet. As a rule follower, that’s a little frustrating, but trust me I am not making myself totally crazy…there’s just a ton of time to think on this job.

Tracy: 23,711 steps (9.91 miles)
Lee:   26,251 (11.6 miles)

Interesting Item Picked: Today the item that made me stop in the aisle was a 3D printing pen.  I am not 100% sure how it works, but you draw things and with filaments(?) created a three-dimensional item.  Pretty cool for a kid who has an imagination and is artistic, but no idea if it actually works in practice.  Never seen anything quite like that before though so wanted to pass it along.

(Today the item I picked more than any other,  is the Stocking Flask, the use of which would make the dancing Santa hat seem less ridiculous. I also picked some Enema Coffee. Um, ick. I’ll stick with pumpkin spice flavor, myself. Something else that caught my eye was the girl’s first birthday outfit, available in size 18 months. Must be metric. – Lee)

 

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full-time RVers such as Instant Pot recipes, Travel Days recipes, and Pot Lucks recipes.    You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.

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First Time at Amazon: Day 0 – Day 3

Disclaimer:  We  are not spokespersons or officially affiliated with Amazon in any way. This account is of our personal experience as seasonal employees in the Cambellsville, KY distribution center in 2017.  I in no way speak for the company or my co-workers, and am only recounting my personal experiences.  Also, any details I get wrong in this or any other post are due to a misunderstanding on my part and are not intentional.  

Day 0 (That’s what Amazon calls Orientation Day)

Our orientation day was on Monday morning at 12:00pm.  We arrived about 20 minutes early and were the second ones to arrive and met our trainer who was handing out our badges.  I was pleasantly surprised that my badge and picture were ready and everyone in our group had their badges in place when we arrived.  We waited until noon in a large, well lit foyer area that had lots of cool information on the walls, and then we walked through security (testing our badges) and into the break room. The best part was right at noon we saw two smiling faces through the security window, and Bill and Linda were waving at us on their way to their lunch break.  So sweet!

The break room was awesome.  20 plus microwaves, large coolers for lunches, and free coffee or hot chocolate. There is also a semi enclosed smoking area with picnic tables and some heaters available for us outside of security. To get into the break room you have to badge through some metal turnstiles and when you are leaving you have to go through a metal detector. Honestly it was all a little confusing at first, but eventually we understood it.

Upon entering the breakroom an employee was waiting to take a picture of our ID.  Despite what we read that stated we needed two forms, they accepted just our passports, and quickly took a picture of those.  Then we talked to our trainer for a moment and were led into a training room in the warehouse.  The warehouse was really cool.  Extremely neat, great lighting, and lots of signage.  One of my first jobs was working security in a warehouse so I had some basis of comparison, and again was pleasantly surprised.

After coming in to the training room we watched a series of videos.  Our trainer was funny and kept things moving along but it was a bit confusing in parts because what was on the slides didn’t apply to us at all.  Some modules, like safety training, were for everyone, but many of the benefit options didn’t apply.  We also went over the attendance policy numerous times and it was VERY clear they take it seriously.  There is a point system for being late, leaving early, or missing work and a clear write-up policy that goes along with the points. That didn’t really bother me, because I like clear and well defined rules, but Lee was definitely getting a little antsy. It was all a bit heavy handed, but then again they take this stuff very seriously, and we certainly got that.

Personally, I liked a lot of what I saw.  As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt it made me happy to see so many of those tools actually being used and I loved their 360 feedback approach and the Voice of Associate comment boards they had throughout the warehouse.  I also really appreciated a video that we saw on Workplace Violence.  The video was produced by Homeland Security in Houston and I think it has value for everyone to see.  I have linked a version of it here if you are interested.

I will say towards the end things did feel very rushed.  We had 8 minutes for questions and he cut them off at exactly 8 minutes and then took us out through security and to our lockers.  We had an 11 point sheet with information about our lockers on it, but it didn’t tell us how to open a combination lock.  Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t remember how to open one, but thankfully this very nice couple walked us through it.  It’s been years since I have used one, but was pretty embarrassed that I couldn’t remember how, and I wasn’t the only one in the group.

I think as a general comment that was the major problem with the training.  It took for granted that you knew certain things and those of us who were first timers were a little lost.  I am equally sure that most of it was very boring for returning employees, so I am not sure it served either population very well.  We were also told the the training used to be 5 hours long, but the time had been reduced to 3.5 hours.  This really showed as we rushed through several sections and didn’t cover the work place harassment or ethics videos at all.

All in all I got what I needed from it, but Lee just endured it.   There were some technical difficulties with the videos, which drove him crazy, and there were several specific questions that were asked that couldn’t be answered. Let me give you a quick example.  We needed to know about Voluntary Overtime (which you sign up for) and Mandatory Overtime (which you are required to do),  We were initially told we could get text messages sent to us via a web portal regarding both, but when I asked a follow-up question were told Mandatory overtime wasn’t on the Hub yet.  Later in the class I asked exactly how we would find out about mandatory overtime and was told there were message boards in the warehouse, but I was a little fuzzy on the colors that were being used.  I was also told, after asking, that we would know if we had mandatory overtime by lunch time on Thursdays because our mandatory OT day is Sunday. The reason I asked so much about this is three different people have told me they missed their first mandatory overtime day because they weren’t notified.  They not only missed making money, but they also received points for missing a shift.  Eventually the points were removed, but they had to go to HR to have that done.  I wanted to make sure that wouldn’t happen to us and asked the question.

Let’s just say I was still not 100% confident after I received my answers, but hopefully our full day training tomorrow, will answer most of the remaining questions I have.  It’s a bummer that we have to work 5:30pm -4am tomorrow, but it’s only one day and those of us who are on swing shift got stuck training on nights.  Again, good start for me, not so great for Lee, but we will see how it goes. Oh, and as a starting point my weight is 139 pounds and Lee’s is 189. We will be counting steps and seeing how much weight we lose.

Tracy:  2050 Steps  (approximately .86 miles)
Lee:      (Didn’t count steps today because I didn’t have a pedometer and kept losing track of the count when people talked to me. – Lee)

Day 1 – Safety School & Process School

Because there were only a few of us on swing shift, they had to decide whether to have us training on the day shift or night shift.  We ended up training on nights which was rough because we had to work (for just this one day) from 5:30pm – 4:00am.  I woke up at my regular time was thankfully able to take a nap for a few hours before we went to work.  Lee slept in until 8am and ultimately ended up staying awake until 5am the next morning.  Ultimately I will say we preferred training on the night shift.  It was much quieter for one thing, and when we were turned loose to do our job at the end of the night, there was barely anyone around, which I appreciated.

Which brings me to the size of the warehouse.  It looked on the smallish side on the outside and we eventually learned that Cambellsville is one of the very first 5 Amazon warehouse buildings.  Newer facilities are much bigger, but even though it looked small there is a ton of stuff in that building.  It has multiple floors for one thing and everything is so neatly packed it’s amazing how much stuff is in there.  It’s truly mind blowing and I wasn’t surprised when we were told they ship 2-3 million items every week.

We also learned there are some differences between the Camperforce seasonal staff and the regular employees.  First of all the productivity levels are set lower for us, and most importantly we are only expected to work 10 hours of mandatory OT rather then the 20 hours that the full time staff works. We also learned a ton about safety.  Several people told us the safety school was the worst part, but I thought it was great thathey went to so much trouble to properly train us.  We took a tour with our small group and the coolest thing was we each had a headset and our tour guide had a headset and microphone, so even though we were out on the floor we could hear every word.  That was really awesome for Lee since he has trouble hearing in noisy environments, and I just wish they would have used those same headsets when we broke off into smaller training groups later.

We also went through a series of stations and first learned and then tried simple daily activities.  Although there was a bit too much repetition for my taste, I did learn a lot, and I have no doubt the tips we learned will help me physically throughout the season.  The most important thing I learned was to have my nose follow my toes, which means you turn your whole body and avoid twisting.  That’s going to be tough for me, but really important.  After safety school we took a break and then we had Hazmat training.  Of everything we learned this was probably the most poorly done, as it was simply our trainer reading off cards.  Lee and I both initially failed the small test they gave, but were coached and eventually passed it. I did learn that perfume is highly flammable which was interesting.

Finally we were ready to go out on the floor and with a small group of four people were assigned an Ambassador to show us the ropes.  The first part of her tour was much less polished, and without the headsets we really had to listen carefully.  She was a nice person though, and loosened up as the night went on, sharing with us some of the tips of the trade, which I really appreciated.  The training worked for me, as she showed us picking, then let us try and ultimately turned us loose for an hour or so.  Lee and I were both relieved to get started, and since our picking intentionally kept us in a relatively small area we both rocked it.  My rate was 64 items per hour (I picked 4-1/2 tubs worth) and Lee was at a whopping 96 per hour.  A lot of that has to do with where your items are in proximity to each other and how many multiple quantities from one bin you pick, but I was pleased nonetheless by how comfortable I felt.

And at least for me that first night wasn’t boring.  We will see how that plays out as we go along, but I found I needed to pay pretty close attention.  The worst part for Lee was the smoking.  It’s been over 20 years since he had a job where he couldn’t smoke whenever he wanted and depending on the break schedule, we can go as long as 3 hours without a cigarette.  I was pleasantly surprised by how well I did with that, but for Lee it will take some adjustment. The good news for me is multiple people said we did NOT have to go to the bathroom on our breaks.  I have read some complaints about that in other blogs, but this year at least it is a complete non issue.

Tracy:  12,010 steps
Lee:      13,204 steps

Day 2 – On The Job Training

Today was a 5 hour day, which was nice because it gave our bodies time to acclimate and allowed us some time to get back on our regular sleep schedule.  We came in at 5:30pm and started the night at a quick start up meeting.  These meetings are at the beginning of the shift and after lunch, and involve the managers talking about production levels (which I really don’t understand at this point) and the team doing stretches.  One of the biggest complaints I have heard from people about Amazon is these daily stretches, but honestly I don’t understand what the big deal is.  Any of us who have played sports know how important stretching is, and yes, it is kind of goofy doing it with a bunch of other people, but it’s not like a military exercise or anything.  It’s pretty informal and attendance isn’t exactly taken, plus it is literally 5-7 minutes of your day. (Not to mention that it actually works. – Lee)

After the stand up meeting they broke us newbies out and put us in two small groups.  Lee and I were split up this time and we both got different trainers from yesterday.  This was a nice touch, in my opinion, because I learned different things than the day before.  We spent some time going through a series of exercises on what to do in “special circumstances” (missing product, defective product etc) and then they sent us out on the floor. (I do not so much enjoy the constant repetition in training, particularly if I’ve started the process of doing the thing. The “real world” is rarely the same as the training, and so it’s difficult to pay attention to something I’m told over and over that I already know from experience to be inaccurate. For example, if every day someone tells me a bus will arrive at noon sharp, and I see with my own eyes that bus actually always arrives at 12:07, and after a week of that I am given a test wherein I am asked what time the bus arrives, the answer would be 12:07.  Also, I’ve just never felt that vocal repetition is an effective method. Hearing something doesn’t connect it to anything in my brain. You can tell me a phone number 1,000 times and I will never remember it, but if I dial it two or three times it will be permanently embedded in my memory. I still remember phone numbers from when I was 12. If I’ve already heard something, my brain just ignores it the second time around, and anything new they might add gets missed. And there’s ALWAYS something new. Rote learning sort of works for certain things, but rarely for processes, and never when the process varies from the training. In that case only active learning works. YMMV. – Lee)

Amazon has a concept of standard work, and the expectation that quality will be 100% from day 1.  Standard work basically means doing the same thing the same way every time and although they go to great pains to allow you a learning curve on how fast things take, they do want high quality from Day 1.  Taking my friend Bill’s advice I found a pace that worked for me and gradually built on it.  They seemed to like this approach as I was largely left alone during the training period.  They stopped by and checked on me a couple of times, but aside from a few questions I felt good.

I did want to check if my pace was OK and managed to get them to tell me the target rates.  They were hesitant to say, but eventually I found out that the regular employees are expected to pick 85 an hour (although the really important number is productivity percentage which takes into account how far away you have to walk for each pick).  Seasonal employees only have to make 80% of that (about 68 per hour) and since I was pacing at 74 picks an hour I was doing just fine.

Lee, on the other hand, was getting lots of attention from the trainers, and not the good kind.  He was pacing at 96 picks an hour immediately, and since he was an outlier they kept coming over and watching his process.  They made lots of corrections to how he was doing things, which he largely found annoying.  In all fairness he is a lefty and has always found different ways to complete tasks to accommodate that.  Plus he has really strong wrists (so he didn’t want to put the scanner down every time), moves very quickly, and he just thinks about things in a different way.  Put all that together and he wasn’t following their standard process, although his results seemed pretty good.  Hence tons of attention. (We’ll see how this goes. I’ve never been a big believer in doing something in a certain way just because someone says it’s the best way. It usually isn’t, and if I can do something better (faster/safer/more efficiently) it’s hard to let that go. I could talk about this all day, but suffice it to say that I don’t thrive in this sort of environment, for a whole mess of reasons, so it’s nice to know if I have to do a substandard job because “that’s the way it is”, I will, to get the money, but it will make me a little sad and annoyed. I’m very curious to see what the accuracy numbers are. – Lee)

I enjoyed being left alone and actually found the job to be relaxing, but he was frustrated by the extra attention and corrections.  We will see how that all plays out over time, but if you are a person like me who just wants to come in and fly under the radar I suggest not going overboard right off the bat.  Pick a speed that works for you and build your pace gradually.  Focus on learning your way around the building (a huge challenge for me)  and learning the ins and outs of the way things work, especially in the first few days.

Tracy:  8,054 steps
Lee:     10,675 steps

Interesting Item Picked: Peace of Mind Planner    This is a hardback book that has details on your end of life wishes, financials etc.  Seemed like a cool thing to have filled out just in case, but I wondered if it would send a weird message to buy one for our parents 🙂

Day 3 – On The Job Training

I woke up this morning a little sore, but overall feeling OK.  My shoulder blade muscles on my left side are pretty achy, probably because I am taking their advice and trying to use my left hand and arm more.  I also had a little soreness in my right hip, but again, nothing too serious.  I tend to be super sensitive to my body when we work these physical jobs though, because a minor issue can become a major one with repetitive activities.  I have found that the best way to stop this from happening is to catch it early and as much as possible change how I do things slightly to put less pressure on that area of the body.  Essentially if I am sore all over that’s  OK, but if one area becomes over stressed that’s generally not a good thing for me. (I feel great. – Lee)

Since Kelly and Bill were off we asked if they wanted to try lunch at the college and we ended up buying a 10-punch card for $61.  Initially I thought that we each had to buy a punch card and with our schedule I wasn’t sure we would use it enough, but multiple people can share the punches and I am sure we will go at least 5 times. The food was decent and there was lots of variety, plus I liked the vibe,  It was a mix of students, teachers, and work kampers like us.  Afterwards we drove out of town a little bit and went to the Taste Like Home Country Market. They had lots of dried good, jams, preserves, a small deli and bakery. Most of their product comes from from a factory in Pennsylvania, but the prices were decent and the quality was pretty good.

The best part of the lunch (despite hanging with Kelly and Bill of course) was picking Bill’s brain on training versus reality in the picker job.  Overall the job is pretty close to how we were trained, but one item we discussed was whether or not to hold the scanner in the hand after scanning a bin, while taking  out the bin  to  pull things out. Bins  are drawers that start at the floor and go up to about 7 feet, and although some of them are at a level that they can be pulled out halfway, about a third have to be taken out completely and set on the cart while you poke through them looking for  an item. Lee and Bill have nice strong wrists and longer fingers, and the scanner never leaves their hands. (Setting the scanner down  is awkward and clumsy and wastes time. There’s a hole in the cart where people put the scanner handle, but then it’s awkward and clumsy to take out again. The people who put the items INTO the bins (stowers) have a different cart, so they have a holster mounted on the cart. THAT’S what I need. One of those on my belt would allow me to quickly and efficiently access the scanner. I  asked around to see if I could get one, but was told that they don’t distribute them because the carts already have holes. You know who has them? Amazon. $26 is a very reasonable. I figure if I will be using it around 1000 times per day, for 35 days (that’s 5 days per week for 7 weeks) I’m spending a number per use that is so small my calculator won’t tell me what it is. So I’ll go with an hourly rate instead. If we work 10 hours a day, 5 days a week for 7 weeks, that’s 350 hours. So  this thing will cost me about $ .07 per hour. That’s a decent value. – Lee)


My wrists have always been a problem area for me, so I am putting the scanner down each time as we were trained.  This costs some extra time, but I am still doing fine overall. But to really set speed records shaving those few seconds off matters. (Maybe I should get her a holster, too. – Lee)

Speaking of speed records, Lee was picking 118 items per hour at one point today.  Now to be fair this was when he was in one small area and we didn’t have to walk steps in training.  Still it must have been somewhat unusual because numerous supervisors came over and spent some time watching him.  He did fine with only a couple minor corrections in his process, but even he admits that pace is not sustainable when you are working 10 hour shifts/50 hour weeks.  It was largely a mental challenge for him to see how fast he could safely go in the process, which if nothing else kept him entertained. (That kind of rate is completely unsustainable. In order to hit that I was sweating profusely and too focused. Think of it like driving far too fast on an unfamiliar road. You can do it for a while, but after a bit you start to get frazzled and tired and you’re much more likely to make a mistake. I ended up the day with about 97 units per hour, but I don’t even think that’s sustainable for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. It’s like a puzzle. The process is incredibly repetitive, so I enjoy breaking the entire chain down into individual steps and then changing one step in a tiny way to see what  effect that change has on the entire process. Doing the same thing over and over again several hundred times allows to do that and see pretty fast results. The data nerd in me is in heaven. The worst part is that we aren’t allowed any kind of electronics and taking written notes is way too time consuming, so I have to remember whatever data I can for comparison. The problem with that is that is uses a lot of short term memory, and short term memory is used a lot in this process, to be efficient. I’m  seriously geeking out, so it doesn’t even feel like work. It’s like I’m getting paid to play, and get exercise. – Lee)

I, on the other hand, had a rough night stats wise.  During our shift we were frequently interrupted to answer pop quiz questions and I found it difficult to find my rhythm again after each interruption.  Definitely using a different part of my brain for this job. Plus the computer kept moving me from section (called a Mod) to section and each time I was moved I had to leave my cart, find the place, orient myself, and then find a new cart.  To be clear the stats take all of the into account from a productivity perspective, but the numbers per hour and total picked do suffer.  And I want to be super clear that no one training us really cares about how we are doing at this point.  The numbers are only available to us in one place on a paper copy, and they disappear after one day.  In order to even get the numbers for today’s post Lee went in and looked at it (I told him he was crazy to go in on our day off but he wanted to know), so it’s going to be hit and miss how often I report out on it. (We’re literally one minute away from the building. Last night I had on the wrong shoes and I really started to hurt, so at my 8:00 15 minute break I jumped in the truck and drove home to change them. I was back with enough time to smoke a cigarette. So popping over there to get these stats is no big deal, and without the data I will be miserable. – Lee) 

It actually surprises me to be honest that these numbers are not readily available, but there are some significant downsides to people “chasing numbers.”  Folks start cutting corners, focusing on the wrong things, etc and the overall greater mission can suffer.  Still there have to be other people who are curious, so maybe I’ll ask next week if they can print me a weekly report.  You know that information is somewhere.

Anyway, my feet did hurt after the five hour shift (I soaked them in cold water and it really helped.  Thanks Denny for giving us that square collapsible bowl Lee said we would never use!!! It was perfect!) and I am a little nervous about next week. Our voluntary 10 hours of overtime on Sunday has turned into Mandatory 10 hours and even though we were going to work anyway that bugged me since we just started. Our trainers also get to decide whether to unlock us for multiple buildings (I still can’t find my way around easily without asking for help) and of course we are adding stairs which is going to stress our knees.  Speaking of knees, I mentally groan every time we get a pick that is in bin A or bin B.  Those are always on the bottom and you have to kneel down to pick from them. I had 6 A’s in a row last night and kneeling down, and then getting up was rough. (They do offer very nice industrial knee pads you can wear through your shift, for free, which is nice. – Lee) 

Speaking of help, I will say almost every person I have asked for assistance has been really nice.  I always start with an apology and “I’m new” and people are happy to stop what they are doing and point me in the right direction.  I appreciate that, because these folks do this year round and it must be annoying to have all of us descend on them once a year.  But politeness goes a long way and letting my hometown accent out doesn’t hurt either, since I grew up in a small town less than 4 hours from here.  Going forward I expect these daily posts to be shorter as we fall into a routine, but for now I am finding all of this pretty fascinating.

(UPDATE:  I popped over to the building today to take a look at the report so I could include units picked in this post, but I have some questions about the format of the report and I couldn’t find anyone to answer them, and didn’t want to be a pain in anyone’s butt. I will be a pain in someone’s butt when we start our new week on Sunday. For now, the information below is listed in the report as week cumulative, but what I don’t know is which days are included. We picked for an hour or so on Day 1, and at least four hours each on Day 2 and 3. Yesterday was by far the most we did, and it’s hard to believe that in all the hours we worked we only picked those amounts, but for now, this is all I have. – Lee)

Tracy: 13,261 steps
Items picked: 563

Lee: ?????? steps (My $4 Wal Mart pedometer says I walked 2,000 steps today, no way that’s true. I got a better one so starting Sunday I’ll have real data. – Lee)
Items picked: 706

Interesting Item Picked: At one point I picked a Islamic Prayer shawl and it did give me pause.  It seemed wrong somehow to just throw it into a tote and I made sure I carefully placed it and then closed out that tote so nothing would go on top of it.  It made me think about how strange it was something like that went through Amazon Fulfillment Center and when I mentioned it to Lee he said he found a Jewish prayer shawl in a bin among thigh high fishnet stockings and other sexy clothing.  Yes, the shawls were completely covered in plastic, but since they are religious items that seemed wrong somehow.  That’s the reality of the world we are living in though, and somewhere in this warehouse I am sure there are Jewish shawls and Islamic shawls sitting side by side. Made me think. 

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full-time RVers such as Instant Pot recipes, Travel Days recipes, and Pot Lucks recipes.    You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.

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October Budget 2017

It’s probably no surprise to anyone that we spent a ton of money this month, $5,752, and since we only made $1704 in trailing wages, must of that money came out of our savings account.  This month’s budget also does NOT include the money we spent on the Mor-Ryde upgrade, since that came out of savings as well, so overall we are really needing that Amazon cash to hopefully get us close to break-even for the year. So let’s get into the specifics. (There was also income from working freelance in production for a few days, but that money won’t come in until November. – Lee)

Campground Fees – We tried to watch our costs as we crossed the country and were able to boondock a few days, but speed took precedence over cost and we stayed where it was most convenient.  We also spent several days in a campground near our daughter in Charleston and ALL the campgrounds down there are pricey.  The one we stayed at was $35 a night which was by far the cheapest. 

Groceries and Dining Out – These two categories were weird this month because of all the time we spent with family.  Although most of our meals were paid for by family and friends, we did pay our own way several times and I made a point of trying to pay my way when I was with my mom.  Plus, Lee took the trip to New Hampshire to clean out our storage unit and most of those meals are included.  (To be specific, lunch on the day of the drive there, dinner the second night, and lunch on the day of the drive back, everything else was a treat from a friend. – Lee) To offset some of that we didn’t spend much on groceries, but did have to restock perishables once we were in our camper again, because milk, produce, eggs etc had all gone bad.  All in we were $192 to the negative in all the categories combined, which isn’t too terrible considering. 

Entertainment – We were $15 to the good in this category which was largely due to Lee’s parents paying for our entertainment in Columbus.  The money we did spend was while in Iowa with Deb and Steve and I was happy we kept this under budget despite a busy 5 weeks of travel. 

Truck Fuel – This one was a doozy, we were $1,396 over budget.  Part of that was $670 we spent at the end of last month as we traveled across the country.  Because we used the Pilot card there was a delay in the billing and we forgot to add it into last month’s numbers.  I am adding it here though to make sure it gets accounted for, and it also helps me show what it cost to cross the country.  In addition to traveling from Portland to Columbus, Lee made a side trip to New Hampshire.  Although he wasn’t pulling a trailer, he was driving the truck and that cost money as well.  The most important thing about this category is that it really shows how expensive it is to cross the country.  Campground fees aside, the gas can be a killer and is very difficult to absorb in our standard budget.

Home Maintenance and Furnishings – We also went over in these categories by $437 for several reasons. We paid $130 in deductible and shop fees for our furnace and slide repair.  Lee bought the pieces parts to make us a wind break, which we have wanted for almost two years to protect the area we smoke in outside, and we bought new dining room chairs.  I often blog while sitting at the kitchen table, and Lee spends a few hours at that table each week making cigarettes, but the wood chairs we had were incredibly uncomfortable.  After much searching we were able to find extremely comfortable chairs at a discount dinette store in Columbus and at $99 each they were a steal. Best purchase I have made in a long time and my tush is very grateful. 

In conclusion, I knew it would be a $5,000 month and ultimately wasn’t surprised we hit $5,700.  I think Lee was surprised though, but since we talked about purchases every step of the way, it is what it is.  The trip to New Hampshire alone costs us over $400 including $263 in hotel expenses, and even though that wasn’t the best short-term financial choice it did give us closure.  Plus of course family and friend time was priceless, but now it’s time to get serious.  For the first time in three years we really need the work kamping money and are hoping there will be lots of overtime available to help replenish our funds.  To that end we have already signed up for voluntary overtime for Sunday and plan on working 50 if not 60 hour weeks as much as we can. At the end of the calendar year we will have a better idea how we stand overall, so stay tuned to see how it all turns out.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full-time RVers such as Instant Pot recipes, Travel Days recipes, and Pot Lucks recipes.    You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.

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First Time at Amazon – Getting Hired and Arriving

We’ve made it safely to Amazon and are tucked into our campsite, but before we start working on Monday I wanted to take a step back and explain how we got here.   When we talk about work kamping jobs (those are jobs that are commonly done by people who live in their RV’s either part-time or full-time), Amazon is one of the best known.  Partly that is because their program has been in place for many years, and also because they spend money advertising on the job site Workamper News. 

Every year they hire hundreds of people for their holiday peak season (October – December) and they start that process in January.  We knew about Amazon from our research and other work kampers we had met, and our good friends Kelly and Bill had done a season two years ago.  Consequently it has always been on my list of things to try.  But because we knew we wanted to do it in Cambellsville, Kentucky we needed to work going to that area into our route.  And it’s important that you have a general idea of your route, because they start hiring the January before and since it is a popular job the best way to make sure they have an opening is to apply at the beginning of the year.

So that’s what we did.  Back in January of 2017 we applied for the position online, honestly I can’t remember exactly how we applied except our friend Kelly kept an eye out for us and told us when the position was posted.  They had an online portal and multiple step application process if I remember correctly, but I just don’t recall all of the specifics. Part of the reason I don’t remember is simultaneously we were getting set up for our gate guarding job and interviewing for our summer position.  January is a very busy month for work kampers when setting up jobs because many of the best jobs get posted and are interviewed for during the December/January time frame.   In any event, my first email from Amazon came on January 12th and said our application was under review and “Due to the large number of applications we receive, you may experience a delay in a response from our team. We appreciate your patience through this process.”  Since I had lots of other things going on that was OK with me.

The next email I have shows them contacting me March 22, 2017.  This email said “thanks for your interest” and talked about the locations that would be available and asked us to select one.  Each year there are different Amazon locations that have this program and that is a deciding factor for many workampers.  It costs money to drive to a location, and then drive to your winter place afterwards,  and so this year when they eliminated the Texas location from the mix, several people we knew decided not to “do Amazon this year.”  The company doesn’t share why some locations offer the Camperforce program and others don’t, but the locations do change.  Part of the reason we chose Cambellsville is they are consistently on the list year after year and we wanted to be with our friends Bill and Kelly, and it put us reasonably near Columbus for Christmas.

On March 24th we received a conditional job offer.  We both were expecting an interview of some kind, but that never happened.  Instead we were asked to select our department and shift.  This is where it got tough.  We had minimal information at this point and relied heavily on the experiences of our friends to make a decision.  Lee and I are both in pretty good health, but these are physical jobs and everyone has areas of concern.  We watched a video that talked in detail about the physical requirements of each job and then verified it with anecdotal evidence from people we knew.

Ultimately we selected our first and second choice (Stowing and Picking) and then our shifts (we asked for L shift at the prompting of our friends, which wasn’t in the list of choices but we knew existed and then weekends as our second choice).  L shift is a mid-shift and pays a 75 cent differential, as does the weekend shift.  Since we didn’t care what our days off were, we wanted to maximize how much money we made.  And by the way, we were doing all this in tandem.  You must have a unique email address for both people in the couple and every step had to be coordinated so we gave the same answers and did the steps together.  I will say Amazon did a great job of keeping our accounts “linked” and despite concerns I had ultimately scheduled us in the same place, with the same shift, and same days off. Pretty soon after we made our selections, we received confirmation of our location although we were told it would be a while before we knew what our job or shift would be.

The next communication was in May when we had to decide on our campground.  This is also a big decision as there were several to choose from.  They all had pluses and minuses, and once again we relied heavily on our friends who had been here to ultimately select one that was close by, but had a lot of separation between spaces.  We absolutely needed 50 amp for heating our rig with electric heaters instead of a propane furnace, and although the state park was tempting and offered a honey wagon to help with tank management we both decided we absolutely wanted full hookups.  The most popular campground is Heartland RV, which is within walking distance to the distribution center, but it is first-come first serve and since our start date was late October we assumed it would already be full.  So we selected a campground and then contacted them to make a reservation. That process was a little nerve wracking, because we wanted to get a decent spot but eventually we were able to lock in. Once we were locked in we sent a message to our Amazon contact to let them know the campsite was all set.

I will say our contact was VERY good about answering emails promptly.  We didn’t always understand the answers, but that was more about us being first-timers than anything else.  Again, asking our friends really helped with this process, and eventually we got comfortable with the process. We also attended a live Webinar in May where we were given an overview and allowed to ask questions.  We weren’t alone in having some confusion, but our main contact did a great job of fielding questions.  Our only question at that point was about smoking.  We knew we would work 10 hour shifts with only 2 breaks and a lunch and had heard that you “lost” part of your break walking to the break room.  As smokers we need to spend part of our 15 minutes smoking and if we couldn’t easily get outside that would be an ongoing issue for us.  We were relieved to hear that there were “fenced in” smoking areas attached to doors around the building that were inside of security, allowing smokers to smoke without going all the way to the entrance and through security. That made us both feel better and the entire webinar made us feel more grounded in the job. Update: We toured the building from the outside when we arrived and there are only two smoking stations, and neither is attached to the building via fencing.  Not sure yet how that will play out, but it definitely didn’t match our mental picture from the webinar discussion.

Our next communication was in August. We were told they would not have as much flexibility with job assignments and shifts as in the past and although they would try to accommodate our preferences, ultimately they would put us where they needed us.  For us that was not such a big deal, it was all new to us, but I imagine for folks who had very specific preferences this was more of a concern. Either way we received multiple communications stressing that point, although I don’t know yet how many returning people didn’t get their first choice. We were also told that some Camperforce employees had already started working and there was a need for folks to start early in Shepardsville, KY.  We were in Oregon at that point, but it was good to know an early start was possible at least this year.

One of our biggest concerns regarding Amazon was the lack of overtime.  Some of our friends were hired in 2016 and made relatively little money because the centers were overstaffed.  The pay is reasonable ($10.75 an hour), but the real money comes from OT.  In 2015, Bill and Kelly made what I considered good money, but in 2016 many folks walked away with just standard pay. We really hoped that 2017 would be a “good OT” year, but also understood that we would just have to take it on faith.

On Labor Day we were asked to take a badge picture and upload it to the portal.  We have had to do this for several jobs and although I get how this helps an employer, the process for us is a pain.  You have to find a piece of white wall for one thing, and in our camper we don’t have that.  Consequently, we have taken them in front of Cori and Greg’s front window shade, in my daughter’s apartment, inside a campground rec room, all kinds of places, but it always ends up being a pain in the butt.  Plus add to that the first picture is never, and I mean never, accepted and it’s twice as painful. Amazon was no exception. We did it twice and then received another email saying they would be taking badge pictures during our orientation, so I am not sure why that was even necessary.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.  I know it’s a little thing, but little things can be annoying and it’s worth noting that all of this is unpaid time.

The next communications were at the end of September and were around background checks and drug tests.  We’ve had logistical issues with this in the past, but in this case everything went pretty good.  We didn’t notice that the order for the drug test was only good for one week though and when we missed it by one day had to go back to the third party company who handles this and get another order.  They were awesome, getting us new orders the same day and we were able to get the drug test done on our day off which was a good thing.  The testing facility was an hour away from our location, but we combined the test with a Costco run. We drove an hour to the nearest center, took the tests, and got the results within a couple of days which was great. Once we passed the drug test and background check on September 15th we received our official offer.

Keep in mind that was 9 months from when we first started the process, and although I understand the need to schedule background and drug screening close to the start date, it was a long process to get to this point. Our start date was finalized on September 30th, (we needed to move ours and it was no big deal), and then on October 25th we received instructions to read all of our pre-hire paperwork.

There was a ton of it and if you don’t bother to read it all it’s not that big of a deal.  Just go online, open the doc, hit accept, repeat until all are done. Because this happened while most people would be traveling to get there, you did need solid internet, but if not (according to the email) the Cambellsville library has computers and will help people. I didn’t read every single word, but I did skim everything and it took me over an hour.  This is a large company and many of these documents seemed to apply more to full-time employees.  I did read every word of their confidentiality agreement though, because as a blogger I need to be careful there.  So you will be seeing the following statement on all my posts about Amazon.

We are not spokespersons or officially affiliated with Amazon in any way. This account is of our personal experience as seasonal employees in the Cambellsville, KY distribution center, in 2017.  I in no way speak for the company or my co-workers, and am only recounting my personal experiences.  Also, any details I get wrong in this or any other post are due to a misunderstanding on my part and are not intentional.  

After reading all the documents as prompted, we closed out of the portal but then received an email from our friend Kelly telling us our work assignments should be posted. Honestly I have no idea if this document was up there all the time or was added later, but I can tell you we were never prompted to go there and look at it.  The document was called Terms of Employment and although we were prompted to review the 18 other documents (I counted them) never received a prompt to look at this one.  In any event, this had our shift and supervisor.  They don’t, however, tell you the job, so what everyone does is ask around on Facebook groups or friends to see what their job will be.  Goofy really, not sure why they wait so long to tell you that. Anyway, we found out we were L shift and were going to be pickers about 4 days before we were supposed to start working.

I mention that because if you are a person that will only work one shift or do one job, this might not be for you. Unless of course you are willing to drive to your center and then turn around and leave if you aren’t happy with the assignment.  Perhaps, not  a big deal if you winter on the east coast, but for those of us that winter out west, it could cost several hundred dollars in gas just to get here.  Either way, you need to be open to all possibilities.  We felt really happy though.  Picking was our second choice, but once we learned more about it, thought it might be a better fit for us after all, and the L shift is a really good one. Our friends, who were returning employees and requested the shift, didn’t get it, so I feel pretty lucky.  The extra 75 cents an hour should add up and personally I am thrilled we don’t have to get up at 5am.

Once your shift/job is locked in it’s pretty hard to change it but it does happen.  I have heard of cases where they allowed people to switch jobs with a note from a doctor, but pretty much it seems you are locked in.  That actually makes the most sense to me from a business perspective.  It would be a nightmare of scheduling to allow folks to switch shifts and supervisors and I can completely understand why they would discourage that. All of these “last minute” communications happened while we were traveling to the location, because Amazon will only pay for 2 days of campsite prior to your first work shift.  Some people come in early and are allowed to start early, but since we would be paying out-of-pocket we decided to come in at our scheduled time.

Which takes me to arrival day.  Although we had reservations at another campground, we wanted to check and see if we could get into Heartland Campground, where our friends were staying.  In past years this first-come-first-serve park filled early and we thought we would never get a spot, but this year is different and there were several spaces left when we arrived October 28th. As we were warned, it’s basically a parking lot, but it has strong 50 amp and is within a 5 minute walk of the distribution center.  It also is near our friends and since it is pretty cold here already (32 degrees the first night we were here) we don’t plan on spending a ton of time outside.  Our friend Bill met us at the entrance and then we walked the campground looking at a couple of open spots.  I chose a back-in site on one of the “terraces”, because it was free of standing water and there was only one row of campers on that level. It was a little tricky getting into the spot, because of the terrace, but Lee eventually managed and we are all setup.

Our new home at Heartland Campground

Community room has big screen TV

Laundry facility

Love this table. It’s for people to put extra stuff they don’t want. That’s awesome!!

After some basic setup, Kelly and Bill took us on a tour of Campbellsville.  It’s a nice small town, and has lots of services.  There is a Kroger (which was the grocery store we grew up with) and a huge Walmart and smaller IGA.  It has several restaurants, most of the common fast food places, and even a small movie theater.  It reminded me quite a bit of the small town the beet harvest was in, where local businesses understand the seasonal workforce surge and are used to accommodating those folks.  One of the most interesting things was that the local college allows non-students to buy meal passes.  The meals (which include numerous choices, drinks and deserts) are available for $6.10 each if you buy a punch card for $61.  You can also just pay for one meal which is $7.15.  We actually went inside and checked it our on our tour and will try it at least once. Kelly and Bill (who are on the day shift) eat dinner there frequently so they don’t have to cook at the end of a long day.

The college dining hall

After our tour, we finished our initial setup (tomorrow I am doing a deep clean on the place before we start working) and then had dinner at Kelly’s rig.  We told her they didn’t need to cook, but she insisted on our traditional welcome dinner and we had delicious Kentucky Burgaboo stew.  She also invited Linda and Steve over and we had a great time getting to know them better.  We had met briefly in Alaska over a year ago, but had gotten to know them a little better on Facebook.  Nothing is better than face-to-face for getting to know someone, and we were thrilled by how much we had in common.

From Left: Linda, Steven , Kelly, me, Lee, and Bill in front

We called it an early night because Kelly and Bill were working on Sunday, and headed over to our place, happy to be here and ready to go with minimal fuss.  And we are incredibly grateful that they have guided us through this process.  You certainly can do it without knowing someone who has gone before, but honestly having that additional resource made this entire journey so much more pleasant.  We start working tomorrow, and I will be going back to the Day by Day format, and we will see how it goes.  I’m truly not nervous at all, which is unusual for me starting a new gig.  I think it’s because people we know have done this before and that gives me a level of comfort I wouldn’t necessarily have.

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Headed to see Kyrston…Finally!!

Mom and I woke up to an absolutely gorgeous sunrise on Thursday and I was very excited about seeing my oldest Daughter.  We had plans to spend a week with her back in April 2016 but broke our shackle as we were pulling out of a campground and had to spend that week dealing with our first major repair. Consequently we never got to see her apartment, and although she came up and spent time with us while our repair was being done, that has always bothered us. So despite the extra driving from Ohio to Charleston then back to Kentucky, both of us knew we needed to spend some time with her.

Kyrston was excited about seeing us also, and she drove the 2 hours to Myrtle Beach to have lunch with Mom and I and then we transferred our stuff and headed down to Charleston.  Mom wanted to treat us to a special lunch, and we went to the Sea Captains House which is right on the ocean in Myrtle Beach.  Keep in mind if you go here that it is a very popular restaurant, but since we showed up 15 minutes before they started serving lunch, Mom was able to get us a beautiful window side table.  The menu was really good, with lots of selections, and I was thrilled that they had Carolina Shrimp on the menu.  Not all of the entrees are made with Carolina Shrimp though, so make sure you pay close attention to what you order.

Beautiful seat

With an awesome view

Me, Kyrston, and Mom

I got this appetizer which was marinated Carolina shrimp. Yummy

Mom and Kyrston

I was glad Mom and Kyrston got to see each other, although if Mom moves here they will hopefully see each other quite a bit.  Then Kyrston and I got in her car and drove the 2-1/2 hours to our campground.  While we were heading that way, Lee was also on his way down.  He got back from New Hampshire on Friday and picked up our RV from the dealership, and thankfully both the slide and the furnace were fixed!!  Finally a working heater and just in the nick of time since we will definitely need it in Kentucky.  The repairs only cost us $130 (deductible and some misc parts) and we were both thrilled with the job that RCD RV Center did.

He also got a chance to use our new disc brakes while he was making his way towards us, because a small car cut him off on the freeway then slammed on it’s brakes and he missed it by inches.  Lee swerved into the break down lane, convinced he wouldn’t stop in time, but the new trailer brakes grabbed hold and helped stopped the truck and trailer.  He is really pleased so far with the Mor-Ryde brakes and definitely felt they improved the ride. Which was a good thing because despite being completely apart in different states for over a week, we arrived in Charleston within an hour of each other.  Kyrston and I went to the campground and I realized how much I missed our home.  Lee and Kyrston talked, while I walked around touching stuff (true story) and feeling that sense of relief at being back where I belonged.

I also got to go through the few things Lee had pulled from storage and brought to the rig and was finally reunited with my Christmas tree and looked through a Child Craft book called Places to See that I had as a child.  As we have traveled the country the last few years, I often get this weird feeling of Deja Vu and thought it might be because of this book I often read as a child.  I immediately opened it up, and no kidding it fell to a page, which contained a picture of the Sea Lion Caves we just visited this summer in Oregon!!  Lee, who I think thought I was crazy until this point, was duly impressed, and I can’t wait until I have some time to sit down and cross check where we have already visited.

I loved these books as a child

There it is the sea lion cave

Kyrston was really excited to see her Paa Paa..as she calls him 🙂

I was also excited to see that this lid I bought in Columbus fit my pan. Denny had recommended it and we made a special trip to pick one up ($3.88 on closeout). Not only does it fit but has the cool collapsible middle so I can stir without hopefully making such a big mess.

The next  day we went to hang out at Kyrston’s because it was pouring.  We hadn’t seen this much rain in quite some time and it was great because their place was 9 miles away and I loved it.  What a great apartment for a newly married couple, and the decorations were thoughtful and stylish. It was wonderfl seeing some of our old stuff had made the cut and I loved how she blended her things with Jeremy’s.  We even brought them a house warming present we had picked up in Ohio and I was thrilled it fit right in.

Beautiful collage wall in the dining room

They both have a guitar and I love how she made it part of the decoration

I loved this which was on the back of the kitchen cabinets. They used chalboard paint and Kyrston free handed the drawings. She definitely gets this talent from her grandma DeDe

Lots of little touches like these beads in the bottom of the sink

Love this

This was our present and they found a place for it right away!

We spent the evening talking and catching up and we got to spend more time with their puppy (now 2 years old) Fynn.  He’s a really good dog and knows some tricks which was fun.  Plus Jeremy, who was a chef for 12 years, showed me how to make Chicken Marsala.  I took lots of detailed notes and learned several new techniques so hopefully I can duplicate it and put it in the next cook book.

Finn and Kyrston

Finn gives hi-fives

And shakes

Kyrston and Lee talked and talked

While Jeremy taught me his recipe

So good!

The next night they treated us to dinner at High Cotton which is an upscale restaurant where they work.  We really got the all star treatment while we were there as all the managers and several employees came to see us throughout the dinner.  We also got a few extra treats as the meal went on and it was absolutely wonderful food.  My favorite though of the entire meal was the raspberry sorbet (my absolute favorite) which was silky smooth, exactly the way I like it!

In downtown Charleston

Kyrston and Jeremy

A yummy little amuse bouche

Another tasty little treat from the kitchen

The seafood tower was decadent and the stuffed mushrooms were amazing

They are all about the customer service and I loved that they had extra pairs of readers, which Lee needed for the menu

My Halibut with haricot verts and roasted potatoes

Lee’s ribeye was cooked exactly the way he likes it

My favorite entree though was Jeremy’s pork chop. I think that was the best piece of pork I have ever had

Kyrston loves her dad

My raspberry sorbet

Lee’s apple crisp!

me, Lee, Kyrston, and Jeremy

Yes, it is on the pricey side, but if you are looking to splurge I highly recommend it.  Plus ask if Jeremy or Kyrston are working and you can tell them you read their mom’s blog!  The next day they had to work, so Lee and I went to meet Nancy and Bill.  They are friends of ours we met at our first RV Dreams rally and we haven’t seen them since 2015.  Nancy reached out when she saw we were heading their way and we met in the middle at a restaurant they had eaten at before.

The SeeWee was about as different from High Cotton as you can get with casual diner style and a simple menu.  The food though was really great and I loved their local fried shrimp which were absolutely fantastic and Lee’s chocolate pie was to die for.  Plus Lee got some home made blueberry muffins (with Maine blueberries no less) from Nancy and we had a wonderful time getting caught up.  Bill and Nancy grabbed the check, despite my objections, and said they always did that “for their kids.”

That statement really touched me and we are honored that they feel that way about us.  We have had a special connection with them from the first time we met, and although we rarely get to see each other, Nancy sends me nice little comments through my blog which lets me know they are keeping an eye on us. They have  been role models and inspirations to us and we often say if Nancy and Bill can do it so can we.  Love you guys and we are so glad we got to spend some one-on-one time together.

From left: Bill, Nancy, me, and Lee

The shrimp “popped” in your mouth amazing

And the pie was awesome!

We all sat outside after we ate and talked in this cool little space

Homemade blueberry muffins! So delicious!!

We feel great about our visit here, but it’s time to head north to Amazon to see Kelly and Bill and Linda and Steve.  We have our paperwork done and our shifts so once we are settled in I will start blogging about it.  I have heard from many people they are interested in my take on it, but they have the most rigorous confidentiality agreement I have yet seen.  I will be going back to the Day by Day format, but my focus will need to be mainly on how I am holding up physically as they are really specific about the proprietary nature of their processes and procedures.  Hopefully I can still manage to create enjoyable content with those restrictions, we will just have to see.  As always thanks for following along!

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full-time RVers such as Instant Pot recipes, Travel Days recipes, and Pot Lucks recipes.    You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.

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First Time Emptying out the Storage Unit and Looking for Condos in Myrtle Beach

To store or not to store is a pretty big question when you are starting out in the full time lifestyle.  Many purists believe you should get rid of everything that you can’t fit in your RV, and others believe it is a waste of money to pay for a storage unit for things that you ultimately won’t care that much about anyway.  There is some truth to both of those tactics, but for us the process of getting rid of 25 years worth of stuff was traumatic enough that having a storage unit made the process bearable.

That was three years ago, and although we have been paying for the unit this whole time and haven’t been back to Keene once, I don’t regret the decision.  In all fairness our piece of the 10×10 unit is only $20 a month (two of our kids cover the other portion for using it to store their stuff) and it is true that I had a hard time remembering many of the items we put in there.  There were a few things I absolutely remembered.  Our photo albums, the bed we used for most of our marriage, and several smaller items that were family heirlooms.  Most importantly I remembered my small ceramic Christmas tree.  The tree was going to be what I put out every Christmas and it wasn’t until our first Christmas that we discovered somehow it had ended up in the storage unit rather than the RV. At least we hoped that is where it was, but Lee wasn’t 100% sure where it had ended up.

So it was for that tree, and piece of mind, that we finally decided it was time to clean out our piece of the unit.  It’s worth noting that from a pure financial aspect it really didn’t make much sense.  Yes, we would save $20 a month because Lee’s parents were willing to take the items into their basement, but it was going to cost around $400 in gas, food, hotel, and tolls for Lee to go up and get it.  It would take months to recoup that investment, but we both decided it was worth it to close down that chapter of our lives.

Part of the problem is we selected a storage unit in Keene, NH and once Kyrston moved to Charleston we had no reason to go back there.  Yes, we have some wonderful friends and memories in that area, but it’s pretty far from everywhere else and there was no reason to go back on a regular basis.  That’s one piece of advice I would offer regarding a storage unit. If you decide to get one, make sure you pick a place that you are likely to return to on a semi-regular basis.  That way you can access the items in it and more importantly check the status of your stuff. We didn’t choose a climate controlled environment because of the cost and always had a low-level concern about how are things were holding up.

Turns up this was not unfounded because when Lee arrived at the storage unit he had a really difficult time opening the door. Several of the tubs had gotten soft in the summer heat, and the bottom ones had sort of collapsed under the weight of the others stacked on top. A tower of them was leaning against the door.  When he finally was able to open it, a tub hit him right in the head and I imagine it was similar to those images you see on Storage Wars. (On the plus side, it was 30 degrees that morning, and the first thing that fell out of the tub was a leather jacket. I couldn’t get it to zip, it might have shrunk from the heat or something, but at least I wasn’t as cold. – Lee)

Someone hurt his head 😦

On the plus side, at first glance, it does not appear anything was ruined and although Lee found many spider webs the unit was mouse free.  He started the process of going through the tubs and sending me pictures of items to see if I still wanted them.  Of course all of this happened right when Mom and I headed out to Myrtle Beach, but she drove the first leg so I could focus on replying to Lee quickly.  It’s cold in New Hampshire in October, and I wanted to make the process as easy as possible, especially since I wasn’t there with him.

Turns out there weren’t that many items he had to ask me about and it was interesting how quickly I was able to decide.  I had a visceral gut reaction to every picture I received and the Keep or Leave decision came pretty easily. I was also pleasantly surprised to rediscover a couple of items I forgot I kept and in a couple of instances was really happy I still had them.  Just because you can’t remember an item doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.  I can’t remember stuff all the time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.

There were 23 tubs for Lee to go through. Most of them were photo albums or tapes.

We were happy we had saved these chairs. They came with the RV but we thought we would never need four chairs since people would rarely come over to visit. Shows what we knew lol

Hooray my Christmas tree. I made this in ceramics class with my Mom and Sister in 1994.  It has both sentimental value and is one of the few crafty things I have ever made in my life

It didn’t take Lee that long to go through the items, and then he repacked the boxes and put them in the truck.  He thought through in advance how he was going to transport everything and since the RV was (by design) still being worked on he had all of the truck bed to work with, minus the toolbox.

Kind of surprised there were this many tubs, but since he only showed me my stuff I had to assume the bulk of it is his 🙂

He used packing blankets to keep the wooden bed parts from rubbing against each other, and put them in Christmas tree bags to keep them from getting wet if it rained on the 700 mile drive home.

And then tarped and strapped it down. Pretty nice job!

After Lee got the storage unit done his plan was to see how his successor at the television station he ran was getting along, and visit some other friends.  He had a wonderful time and even went to the high school and gave an impromptu lecture to the advanced public speaking class on The First Amendment in Mass Media.  Lee is a big First Amendment advocate and since he used to help out teaching television production at the high school he has always really enjoyed speaking to the kids.  He also got to see friends and I think in a weird way get some closure on our time in Keene.  We had lots of time to prepare since it took our house so long to sell, but at the end things still felt very rushed.  I think we left bits and pieces of ourselves behind and going back and cleaning out the storage area helped with that.

While Lee was taking care of the storage unit, Mom and I were driving to my sister Wendy’s.  I hadn’t seen her or her kids since last April and I was anxious to visit.  I couldn’t believe how big Abram was and how much he was talking, but thankfully he seemed to remember me.  He also loved the RV and trailer I bought him and spent many happy hours playing with it which was great.  My niece Bailey was in college and unfortunately we didn’t get to see her, but we did get to see my nephews Bryce and Alec.  Alec had gotten much taller as well and as an eighth grader has a totally different attitude.  It goes with the age though and he still gave me a big hug when he saw me which I will take as a victory.  The boys are really curious about the lifestyle and Bryce in particular asked lots of questions about the places we had seen.  It’s fun to talk to them about it, and hopefully they can see from my example that it is a great big world out there and fun to explore.

Abram with his truck and RV.  He immediately though it was a horse trailer, but when I showed him the little kitchen inside he got really excited.

So cute

Abram building a giant tower with grandma

My sister Wendy and Mom sitting outside. We were all enjoying the beautiful South Carolina autumn day

I pulled out my rusty soccer skills to play with Abram. He has a nice foot and throws a mean spiral with the small football

The next morning we stopped by and saw Wendy again in the morning and then headed off to Myrtle Beach.  The purpose of the trip was to help Mom look at condos because she wants to relocate to the area. As soon as her house sells she plans on buying a place right on the ocean, which is a life long dream of hers.  Since my sister and daughter are both in South Carolina she is looking in that area and Myrtle Beach is really the only place with condos in her price range.  The problem is that it is very touristy and the crime in certain areas is significant.  Since she will be on her own, we all want to make sure she is in a safe place and my sister, who is more familiar with the area, took a weekend and looked at different places.  Mom wanted a return visit, and I wanted to gain a level of comfort with the area as well, so I carved out a few days to go and spend time with her down there.

It’s tough to buy in an area you don’t know unless you at least rent a place, so Mom rented a larger three bedroom in one of the high rises on the north side of Myrtle Beach.  I am really glad she did, because although the ocean and beach are beautiful, the complex is full of renters and I totally understand Wendy’s concerns. Plus it was pretty loud, with lots of activity even in off-season, which I think would be wearing on a person if they were living there.  And most importantly although we liked the layout, the condo had obviously seen better days.  Heavy rental usage can take a toll on any condo and that point was driven home when Mom went to open the sliding glass door and the handle broke off in her hand.  It was funny, but sort of drove home the point that this may not be the best choice, and either way we probably wouldn’t have learned those things without seeing it firsthand.

Condo we stayed in

The balcony views were great

Mom likes to people watch and there certainly was plenty of opportunity for that although the 11th floor was a little too high for me

Nice pool and hot tub area, but there was also a large kid pool and the noise level was high well past 9pm. Again, ok for a vaction but not sure I would want to deal with that every day

The beach was beautiful and as you can see this is Mom’s happy place

Warmish water even in October and lots of shells on the beach

Mom was cracking up laughing when the door handle broke off in her hand. On the serious side thank heavens the balcony had two doors or we might have been signaling to the ground for help getting back into the room

The next morning we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and then were off to look at the area and condos.  We intentionally didn’t schedule actual walk through but mainly wanted to see the buildings and the surrounding areas.  Yes, the actual layout is very important, but you aren’t going to just stay in your place and walk the ocean all the time.  I wanted to see grocery stores, hair cut places, nearest urgent care/ER etc.  If there is one thing I have learned in our travels are those things are important because regular life does intercede on a fairly regular basis and if you are far away from basic services that can be an issue long term.

Sunrise on Myrtle Beach

First though we needed sustenance, and since Mom’s seventieth birthday is coming in November, I treated her to Paula Deen’s.  I am a big fan of her cooking (bring on the butter) and was excited to try a restaurant.  The place is huge but also a destination place and the wait times for dinner even out of season can be 1-2 hours so we decided to try breakfast and we got right in.

The restaurant is located on Celebrity Circle which has lots of shops and things for kids to do

The menu is kind of interesting.  Everything is served family style and for $14.99 per person (drinks not included) we got 3 entrees, 1 meat, and 2 bread items.  That’s a ton of food for two people, but we decided to go ahead and splurge for the experience and just eat a little bit of each item.  We actually saw 4 women come in and then leave when they saw this was the arrangement because it was “too much food” and I appreciated the sentiment.  To Go boxes are not allowed because you get unlimited “refills” of every food item, so you really do have to leave food sitting on the table, especially with just two people.

Mom with Paula Deen. She actually had a book signing schedule on Saturday but as much as I would have liked to have met her we didn’t want to fight the crowds

You get this super sugary and large cinnamon bun as soon as you sit down

Had to get chicken and waffles

Mom loved this sausage casserole

And I wanted to try to banana’s foster

This is all the food they brought us

My absolute favorite part was actually the butter (which I had to ask for). She puts powdered sugar in her whipped butter and wow was that good. Fantastic spread on a biscuit.

We really enjoyed it, but I think I would have preferred having lunch which they don’t serve until later.  Whenever you go, definitely bring your appetite and maybe a couple of hearty eaters with you. Also don’t forget the gift shop which was fantastic.  Yes the prices were high, but the selection and quality was really good.  I bought Mom and I matching coffee cups so we could remember the experience and she really enjoyed her birthday present.

Gift shop

I got the red for me and the Mom chose the green.

After we were fortified we headed out to look at different areas.  We toured neighborhoods from Murrel’s Inlet all the way to Cherry Grove.  I was doing the driving and I found it very challenging.  The Ocean Blvd starts and stops in numerous places and we had to back out to the bypass and back in several times.  When we tried to find particular buildings by address we also had some confusion because there is a South Ocean Blvd and a North Ocean Blvd and the real estate listings weren’t always clear about that.  Plus I wanted to see each area not only from the ocean perspective but also the small neighborhoods behind them and then what services were on 17, which is a road that runs parallel to Ocean Blvd.

I won’t bore you with all the details but it was a lot to take in.  Each little area had it’s own distinct feel and many areas were obviously in transition.  Crime is definitely a concern here, along with the fact that many areas are mostly rental properties.  We spent the entire day talking through the various factors, but I didn’t really feel like we made a lot of progress.  I tend to be very systematic when it comes to these types of decisions and my Mom is more intuitive.  Don’t get me wrong, she does her research, but she is more willing to take a risk than I have and that has served her very well in her life.  In this case, since she is making a 10 year decision it’s not just about what we see today but what the area she selects will become in the future, so a certain amount of speculation is involved.

I found the whole huge list of possibilities a little overwhelming, but she seemed to take it in stride.  The trip was a success though in that I learned the area and now when she sends me listings I will have a much better idea of where the condos are located.  Things don’t stay on the market long around here though, so much of her choice will be directed by what is available at the time she sells her home.  She has people she can stay with temporarily or she could rent for awhile until something good comes up, but knowing Mom I think she will make a decision very quickly when the time comes.  She really doesn’t mess around when it comes to major life decisions and I have always admired that about her. Plus at the end of the day we ate at one of the many seafood buffets down here, and although it was pretty expensive, it was her treat and the endless crab legs were really good.

Gotta love anyplace with a friendly giant crab on top

The place was so big the host gave us a small tour as he led us to our seats.  Sweet kid.

Three long tables of food, plus a carving station and hibachi grill.

We had a view of the intercoastal from our table and at one point a boat drove by.  Lots of people prefer living on the intercoastal, and generally it’s more affordable, but Mom really wants ocean front views so she can hear the ocean at night.

The seafood and dessert portion were both really good. The rest of the 120 items were somewhat mediocre.

I needed a drink and treated myself to a Giant Crab Mai Tai. Pricey but I get to keep the glass

Tomorrow we are going to spend some time enjoying the beach and then Kyrston, my oldest daughter,  will be picking me up to take me to Charleston.  I’ll meet Lee there and we will spend a few days with Kyrston and her new husband Jeremy, and then head up to Amazon.  I’m amazed by how much activity we are packing in on our time off, but surprisingly I am not getting really tired.  That’s probably because I know we will be heading back west and won’t see everyone for a while and I want to take advantage of this time while I have it. Unlike previous years on the road when we knew exactly when our family visits would be, things are much more open ended because our work situation is not locked in yet.

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full-time RVers such as Instant Pot recipes, Travel Days recipes, and Pot Lucks recipes.    You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.

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A Whirlwind of Family Time and Finishing Up Columbus

I forgot to mention in my last post that Dad and I had a wonderful dinner, just the two of us last Thursday.  I enjoyed spending time with him and really being able to talk, and it’s nice that we can chat on a wide range of topics. Becoming friends with your parents is a pretty cool side benefit of getting older, and I am definitely enjoying that aspect of being in my 50’s.

Dad and I

On Saturday, I left DeDe and Denny’s for the last time, and headed out for a whirlwind day of meeting folks.  Although we had lots of time during the week when we visit home, most folks are working traditional jobs, so Saturdays and Sundays fill up fast. Plus people have their own lives happening with church, football games, other family events, so it can be pretty tough to see everyone you want to see.  Mom helped me solve this problem by scheduling a family gathering on Sunday with her side of the family and despite the short notice almost everyone was able to come.  Dad also had some people down on Saturday night and Saturday and Sunday were jam-packed.

You may have noticed that Lee and I have been apart more than together the last several days and this was an intentional choice on our part. It is flat-out impossible to see everyone when we are trying to do this together and since we spend so much time together in our regular life, we didn’t feel the need to be with each other on our “vacation”. The break probably served us well and since Lee had the opportunity to pick up a couple of days work with the old company he used to work for that money definitely came in handy. I know he was missed at my family gatherings and I assume I was missed at his get-togethers.  Hopefully people understood, because more than anything else we wanted to spend concentrated time with our parents.  I will say that absence does make the heart grow fonder, and by the end of the week I really missed him. It’s weird not being able to turn to him and tell him stuff, and although we are keeping in close contact via texting, it’s not the same.

We did start the weekend together and went to a Sunbury campground to see one of our oldest friends, Ted.  Ted was the best man at our wedding and has caught the camping bug and he and his family have a really nice Grand Design travel trailer in a seasonal site. I didn’t even know Grand Design made a travel trailer, and they are really nice inside.   Ted was kind enough to invite a couple of Lee’s friends from high school as well and the four of us had a very nice lunch and caught up with each other.   Since Lee and I got married so young they are my friends as well, and we all share a history with one another.

The Grand Design Imagine travel trailer

Really nice on the inside

Lee checking out the outdoor fridge and stove

Ted invested in a golf cart which makes sense since it is a big park and his kids are often up at the pool in the front

I really liked this custom fire ring that a guy in Ohio makes. It’s similar to the one we have but MUCH more heavy duty and I’d love to have one just like it

Lee, Larry, Cory, and Ted

My day was so jam-packed that I had to leave early, so I hugged and kissed everyone goodbye and drove from the far north of Columbus to the far south to meet my Aunt Cathy.  My Aunt has been reading my blog from the beginning and has been a huge supporter of the lifestyle and she even bought me dinner while I was in Texas because she was thinking of me.  It means a lot to me when family members take the time to check in on me and I absolutely wanted to spend some time with her.  We met at the Grove City Brewing Company and although I have not been drinking while driving my in-laws car, I did have a $2 sample size of the Grove City brewed pumpkin ale.  It was really good and pretty novel to drink something brewed in my previously small hometown and we spent almost two hours catching up.

Grove City Brewing Company

The Abracadabra Pumpkin Ale..I love that they had 4oz sizes for $2

Cathy also brought me a present which was really amazing, because it was based on reading about our life and putting some thought into what I might need.  She had an extra Kindle Fire, still in the box, and I was blown away when she handed it to me.  I haven’t had much luck reading on my iPad because it hurts my eyes, but I am excited to try out the Fire.  Plus since we are Amazon Prime members I get one free e-book a month, and its small size and “book like” holder seem like a pretty cool solution to needing a book on the go. Most of our friends are 100% ebook because it helps with the space, and although I like reading a paper book, you can’t always get the titles you want.  Frankly it’s just easier and I am interested to see how my eyes do with this new format.

Aunt Cathy holding my Kindle Fire. Incredibly generous of her!

We could have talked for hours, but she was very understanding that I had also scheduled a visit with a friend I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Beth and I went to second grade together, lived down the street from one another in high school, and played soccer together.  She is an elementary school teacher and doesn’t do Facebook, so we had lost touch over the years although I tried to keep up on her life a little from other mutual friends.  My dad and her dad are very good friends, and when they all saw each other at a local restaurant on Tuesday night (Grove City may be bigger than when I was a kid,  but it’s still a very small town) she gave my dad her phone number. He passed it along and we made plans to see each other around 4:30pm.

Beth was always a very kind person, so I wasn’t nervous about seeing her, but I did think there might be some initial awkwardness because so much time had passed.  Instead, Beth came in, started laughing (she has a great laugh) and we started talking as if we were continuing a conversation that we had left off earlier in the week.  I know I say that we pick up relationships with people easily despite the separation, and it is definitely true, but even I was surprised when it happened with someone I haven’t seen in 20 years.  Some people and relationships are just special though, and Beth definitely falls into that category for me.  There were some differences of course.  We have grown kids and our lives have gone in completely different directions, but as she said at our core we are still the same people, just hopefully a little more mature. I had a wonderful time hanging out with her, and again could have talked for hours, but finally had to leave because I was late for a get together at dad’s house.

Me and Beth

Thankfully Dad understood, and they had saved me the lobster rolls and shrimp everyone had made.  I spent a couple of hours at his house with my brother and his family, Aunt Susie and Uncle Don, Barb, and some friends of Dad’s I recently met and then headed up to Upper Arlington to my mom’s house.  Five distinct groups in one day is a stretch even for me, and I watched a little TV with mom and then collapsed into bed. We needed to get up the next day and prepare for the big family gathering and I was pooped out.

The next day folks started to arrive around 1:30pm and by 2pm we had a full house. Most of my cousins were there along with my great-uncle Larry and my grandfather (who are both widowers and now live together).  My Aunt Diane and her daughter Trish and her family were there along with my brother, his family and his in-laws.   I was grateful and humbled that everyone had found time on short notice to come and see me, and everyone seemed to enjoy catching up with each other.  Even though everyone else lives in the same town, they don’t get together as a big group that often and it was nice that everyone saw one another.

Great Uncle Larry, my cousins wife Stacy, and Mike hitting the desert table

My cousin Lori, her beautiful wife Stacie, and my cousin Mark’s girlfriend Cheryl

Lori, Mike, Mark, and me

I should probably explain that growing up in a small town often means you have lots of relatives you go to school with.  My Uncle John was one grade ahead of me in school.  His wife Wendy, my cousin Mike, and his wife Stacy all graduated in the same class together.  And my cousin Troy was one grade later, and cousin Lori was two grades later. Being in school with family members can be a little weird. It’s likely that at school you run in different circles and have different interests but you see each other at family gatherings and have a shared childhood history that is a strong bond. In my case, since I was an only child for 11 years, these cousins were the closest thing to brothers and sisters I had, and as a little kid we spent tons of time together.  Our families just threw us all in a group together and all the adults parented everybody, so I have a strong connection to all of them and their parents.

Unfortunately my cousin Troy was unable to come because one of his kids had a football game and my Uncle Larry (who is an avid blog reader) was in Texas on vacation.  They were both sorely missed but hopefully I will get to see them next time around. As with my other friends, the conversation was very different of course.  Mike and Stacy are grandparents three times over (I know they don’t come close to looking old enough to be grandparents) and I spent quite a bit of time talking about healthcare and retirement with my cousin Mark. We also talked about my lifestyle and many of them had lots of questions.  My cousin Trish is a self described minimalist and she and her husband were really interested in what we were doing.   It was a great gathering and again felt really blessed that people found the time to come on such short notice, and after everyone left Mom and I cleaned the house (she is in the processing of selling so it needs to stay “show ready”) and once again I collapsed into bed, tired but happy with the people I was able to see.

The next morning Mom and I got up and she followed me when I took back DeDe and Denny’s car back to their house.  Then we stopped at the greenhouse DeDe and Denny work at to see their haunted house.  DeDe and Denny have worked at de Monye’s since retirement from their “grownup jobs” and really enjoy working with the plants.  The greenhouse also has a kid friendly haunted house and play area this time of year and Dede, who is incredibly talented, decorates the area.  I have known DeDe for 30 years and always knew she is more talented than many professional interior decorators, but even I was blown away by the haunted house.  It was really large for one thing, and each little area in it had it’s own theme.  Plus, it was very kid friendly (although the spider room creeped me out a little bit), and for a set fee kids get the haunted house, a straw maze, animal viewing area, popcorn, and more.  Really great idea, and again, beyond anything I expected, so if you have small kids and live in the Columbus area you really should check it out.  Look for the tiny lady with the spiked grey hair and tell her you read about it in the blog!

The big ghost was Denny’s addition

Lots of pumpkins for sale

The straw maze is perfect for little ones because parents can easily see inside

Entering the haunted house with DeDe leading the way

This is one small area and the level of detail was the same throughout. Seriously amazing

They have goats, turkeys, and pigs the kids can see

For some reason this was quintessential DeDe to me. Fun with an awesome level of detail…and it was all kid-sized

We also went back and saw Denny who was watering in the plant area. He is very fond of growing and transplanting cuttings and also pots really nice arrangements in all sorts of cool containers. It was beautiful back there and very well maintained.

Mom and I stopped for lunch and then headed back to her house.  We both had to pack for our upcoming trip and I wanted to spend some time with my brother.  We had seen each other several times throughout the week, but with so many other people around hadn’t really spent much time together, so we scheduled pizza dinner on Monday night and we were finally able to spend some quality time together.  Eddie has grown up to be a pretty chill guy and is handling parenthood very well.  There is something to be said for becoming a parent later in life and he shows a patience that I never had with my kids when they were three.  Plus he really seems to be enjoying every moment with his son and step-daughter and it was just fun to watch them play together.  Looking forward to coming back and spending Christmas with them after Amazon, so it wasn’t too bad saying goodbye to everyone.

Mom and Lex hanging out. Since Mom lives next door she and Lex are very close

Lex is a quiet kid, so it’s hard to catch a smile, but I got down on the ground when we was playing with his magnetic trains and caught one

Eddie, his wife Patricia, and Mom

Eddie and Lex

Eddie and me

Next up Mom and I are headed down to Myrtle Beach to look at condos, and we are seeing my sister Wendy and my daughter Kyrston along the way. Simultaneously, Lee is driving up to New Hampshire to clean out our portion of our storage unit, and bring the small amount of things we have left back to his parents in Columbus.  Then he will get the RV, and drive down to meet me at Kyrston’s where we will spend a few days together and then we we will drive up to Amazon.   Tired yet?? I know the schedule is nuts, but we need to make the most of our time back east before we head out west again!

Camper Chronicles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, a program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We very much appreciate any purchase you make via our website links.  There is no additional cost to you and helps support our blog.  Search Amazon.com here

Or you can check out our recipe book filled with 80 real recipes we have cooked in our RV and taste tested by Lee himself. The cookbook specializes in recipes that have a limited number of ingredients, without sacrificing flavor and is organized into categories that matter to full-time RVers such as Instant Pot recipes, Travel Days recipes, and Pot Lucks recipes.    You can preview the kindle version on  Amazon or the Apple version on Itunes.    It is also available in paperback.