January 12, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Setting Up

After we left the service center, with our furnace fixed, and our jack and axle issue awaiting word from the warranty company, it was late enough that we didn’t want to attempt driving down to Padre Island, so we went back to Leisure Resort Campground and stayed one more night. Since we checked in after 5pm, they asked if we could pay in the morning when they opened the office at 10am and we were happy to comply. Super nice people at this campground, and the price was great at $22 with the Passport America discount. Plus as a bonus we got a visit from a really great cat. I, of course, thought he should join our adventure, but Lee is holding firm on his no pet policy. We did get some nice petting time in though and I fed the cat some tuna and milk which should hold it for awhile. He actually seemed like he was in pretty good shape, so he could be from a local farm. (This cat is bold. When I came out in the pre dawn to smoke and have my first coffee, he jumped right on my lap and began negotiating to live with us. Nope. – Lee)

Kitty Came to visit

Jumped right into Lee’s lap 🙂

Beautiful morning sunrise to start the day

So we took our time in the morning, packed up and headed out. We were less than 5 minutes into our drive to Padre Island when we got a phone call from the gate guarding company we have been working with that they had a job starting tomorrow! We originally applied with the company back in November (see post here), but although we had been in contact with them we had pretty much given up on getting a job in the near future.

The oil industry has scaled way back over the last year and a half, and although they are expecting things to ramp up again, no one knew when these new contracts would start rolling in. There are lot of ads out there right now, but everyone seems to be building their list of folks for the upcoming expected boom, but nothing solidified yet. Knowing that, we continued to work on getting our licenses, mine came in right before Christmas and Lee’s actually came in Monday, but we were also looking at other options. We looked at Work Kamper News, our “go to” first, but most of the available jobs were minimal or no pay. We applied to a couple with no response which makes sense because many RV’rs are looking for work in the same few areas of the country.

After striking out there I started exploring other avenues. I will say looking for temporary jobs is very different than the professional job searches I have done in the past, so different resources are called for. I checked out Craig’s List searching for contract jobs, but since you have to put in a specific area I found these pretty difficult. I looked at Indeed.com, again looking for temporary jobs, but most of those jobs were either temp to perm or frankly I was completely unqualified for because they required a skill I did not have. We also reached out to others in the RV community and did hear about some concession jobs working at Houston and San Antonio Texas rodeos that Aramark had in February and March. (We missed the deadline to apply to work at the Superbowl! That’s the sportsball game made famous by Andy Griffith. If you are unfamiliar with football, as I am, then please do yourself a favor and listen to this, it explains it very well. – Lee) One good thing about the Aramark job was they did have a stipend for campgrounds, but the bad part was that you were on your own finding one. Still it was a possible option, but I wasn’t getting a great feeling from anything I looked at. Temporary jobs just aren’t as common as they used to be, or maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places, and we were even talking about going to an employment agency, but again “where” came into play. It’s one thing to look for a job if you know where you want to be, but quite another with a more open ended location, and truly I was just getting frustrated by the whole thing but trying not to make myself too crazy.

So that was our state of mind when the call came in, so we jumped at the chance even though it was only $125 a day for a 24/7 shift, with no idea how long the contract would last. Yes, the job was on the low side of the pay scale, but it would come very close to covering our budget, and more importantly we would get to experience gate guarding and see if it was for us. (Plus, most gate gigs are 24/7, so you aren’t out spending a lot. – Lee) So we made a U-turn the first chance we got and drove 2-1/2 hours to the town of Dilley, Texas. Dilley is pretty small (population 4,070), but it has a small convenience store, dollar store, laundry mat, and a couple of restaurants. Since it’s right off I-35 it’s only about 20 minutes to the nearest town that has a Walmart and large grocery and a small hospital. We are located on a small (for Texas) ranch about 5 minutes outside of town and this is very unusual as most of the gate guarding jobs are in much more remote locations. We also have decent ATT wifi, which is great, and they are bringing us a booster because their tablets are ATT also, which is very good as well. But I am jumping ahead on the story. Let me back up a bit.

Day 1

We headed in that direction, and the company sent an Account Manager down to meet us. We ended up meeting her at a local Phillips 66 truck stop (there weren’t many places we could fit our rig while waiting) and the Account Manager went out to the site to see if our pad was ready. Unfortunately they were still working on it (they add a lot of dirt and gravel, roll it down, wet it, and roll it again to give you a nice level pad) so she came back and talked to us. We had two choices. Stay on the ranch, near the field, or stay at one of their (the gate guard company) office locations. Since we were all set up for boondocking (water in the tank, full propane tanks, etc) we decided to just stay at the ranch. First she drove us out to make sure we could get in and turn around and then we followed her back out. The spot was actually super nice and we were set up in no time. After giving us a warning to watch out for rattlesnakes (!), she said she would see us at 7am.

Road we drove down on the ranch

Nice site for one night. There is collapsed homestead behind us, that’s where the power lines go.

The next morning the Account Manger came and got us and we drove up to the gate. They were just finishing up the pad and we started talking about where exactly to place our rig when the trailer with the fresh water tank, generator, and light tower arrived. Our pad is on the smaller side, and we wanted to make sure it was as far as we could get it from both the trucks coming in, and the generator (which runs 24/7 unless we want to turn it off during the day) so we started to talk it through. In the past we would have rushed through something like this, but we both know how important it is to be comfortable in your space, and it’s a pretty big pain to change once you are all set up. The Account Manager was very patient with us, allowing us to take all the time we needed, and she started checking trucks in for us as they started to arrive. Eventually we picked a spot and got the service trailer in place, plus the black water tank was delivered as well so that was all hooked up.

The flat bed with water tanks, diesel fuel, generator, and lights

The flat bed with water tank, diesel fuel, generator, and lights

The generator engine

Black tank. The company added the PVS pipe which was nice

Black tank. The company added the PVC pipe, which was nice

Everything was going pretty well at this point. We are extremely level, the generator (which we both had major concerns about) was far enough away that it wasn’t too loud, there were no smells from the black tank or generator, and water was hooked up. I was learning the job and it seemed pretty straightforward. Log truck in, log them out, and be friendly. There was more to it of course, but compared to what we have been doing recently, pretty simple. (And no heavy lifting, or getting pine needles in our underwear. Don’t ask. – Lee) Everyone was super nice and very chill, and I was definitely liking the vibe of the whole thing. The first thing that went wrong was the lighting mast. In the picture of the service trailer you can see the lighting mast sort of laying down on the top of the generator. There is a hand crank and a wench that pulls a cable to move the mast to an upright and vertical position, then another crank that telescopes the mast to about 30′ in the air. Steve was cranking it to the vertical position when the cable broke, and the mast fell back down. So someone will be coming out tomorrow to repair that, and in the meantime, they are bringing another smaller trailer with just lights and a generator so we can have lighting tonight. It’s really, really dark out here at night.

Our gate. We temporarily worked out of the back of the Account Managers truck until we got set up

Then we ran into a problem. We had discussed how we would handle any issues if they came up the evening before and were going with our new plan of talking it through and seeing what the response was, instead of waiting to see how things turned out. Since this was a brand new site, as most gates are, we expected there to be some issue or another, and for us it was the fresh water. We were told the water was NOT potable, only suitable for showering, and dishes, but the tanks weren’t certified, so the water shouldn’t be used for drinking. (I am one of those people that worries less about water than most. I won’t drink water that is clearly not safe, but generally I trust it, and I’ve never had a problem. – Lee) OK, not perfect, but we had two filters, plus we could add bleach to the tank and we definitely thought we could make that work. Unfortunately, when we tried running the water through our system the filter clogged up within 10 seconds, and the pressure dropped to zero. Lee cleaned it, and again, it clogged up very quickly. At this point we knew something was very wrong. It turns out that the tank, (which we were told was scrubbed and sanitized prior to receiving it) has algae and the algae was clogging things up. Let me show you a couple of pics.

This amount was after 10 seconds of the water running

1/2 gallon of water straight from the tank

Just to be clear, the problem wasn’t the city water the company was putting in the tank, but the tank that the third party vendor provided. At this point I went in to take a nap for the evening shift so Lee dealt with it from there. Folks were concerned, but no one was exactly sure how to solve the problem. Most people just remove the filters and mesh screens from their rigs to prevent the clogging, but we had discussed it and were not willing to do that. Once the particles got into our rig, then we could have clogs throughout the system. And just to be super clear, water was included in the contract, but we weren’t holding the line on whether it was drinkable or not, but we both felt that it should be clean enough to flow through our system. Lee was very polite and helpful, but firm that the problem needed to be solved. (My mantra was “it doesn’t need to be potable, but it does need to flow. – Lee) We even offered to use our fresh water tank, but since they would have to fill it every three days instead of weekly, they weren’t crazy about that option.

They came out and rinsed and scrubbed it again, but we had the same issue. (Worst mechanical bull ever. – Lee)

Eventually the account manager pitched it back to the vendor to solve (where the problem belongs, in my opinion) and we are waiting to see what happens tomorrow. Apparently all of their water tanks are in this type of shape and he thinks he would need to buy a brand new one to make this work. The vendor did say he could bring a 150 gallon tank out as a temporary solution tomorrow and then try to get approval for purchasing a new one. Frankly I am not surprised this isn’t an issue for more people, but maybe it’s just us. In any event, I feel we handled it appropriately but only time will tell. Either way, it is much better than the alternative of just accepting it and then being unhappy for the next couple of months.

After 6pm when the water vendor left things really slowed down. We didn’t have any more trucks, but the ranch down the road had still had some throughout the night. We aren’t sure how busy we will be at night here, but someone still needs to be available, so we have decided to split the evenings. I am going to work 4pm – 4am and Lee will work 4am – 4pm. That way I get to go to bed in the dark and fall asleep while it’s still reasonably quiet and he gets some quiet time in the morning as well. (And of course there’s a lot of overlap where we’re both awake, which is basically noon-9pm – Lee) We will also be able to eat dinners together because it will be lunch time for me and dinner time for him. Not sure how it will work out, and we are certainly open to changing it, but we wanted to give this a try.

Since I have the night shift I was a little worried about the dark since we were warned about both rattlesnakes and illegal immigrants. Rattlesnakes are out early this year, but will hopefully stay away from the area because they don’t like the vibration from the generator. If they are not close just leave them alone, but it was recommended we use a hoe to push them out of the way if we see one in our direct path. Since we don’t own a hoe we were given a baseball bat by one of the guys who works for the company which was super nice of him, but I think we are going to get a hoe at the local dollar store if they are cheap. (I’ll be looking for a 35 ft hoe. – Lee) The gate guarding positions in areas close to the border are all manned by police officers or retired police, and they are armed, so obviously this can be serious, but we are being told it is unlikely because we are on the east side of 35 (apparently that is a dividing line of some sort). If we do see something we were told to be careful not to provide food or water of any kind because “word would get out” and we would become a routine stop. If they need medical attention call 911 but otherwise tell them we will call border patrol. I’m pretty uncomfortable with the whole thing, so am glad we have such a well lit area. It’s just part of the deal, and I do appreciate the clear direction on what to do even if the scenarios are unlikely.

Newly painted gate lit up at night

Light beam allows us to know when a truck pulls up. Works pretty good. We have one on inside and one on outside

We can adjust the lights later, but for now we are all lit up which is not the worst thing. Apparently animals will check us out the first couple of days and then give us a wide berth, so having the lights keeps them at bay as well. Later we can aim them on the gate and hopefully less on us.

First night went well. I didn’t get any trucks, although the busier gate down the road had a few an hour overnight. I enjoyed the quiet, to be honest. Been a long time since I had this much quiet time. It was nice. I also got a ton done. I applied for Amazon for Lee and I for next year, wrote this blog post, got caught up on email, and watched The Bachelor, which Lee is not a fan of, so I always try to find time to watch alone. Will see how it works long term, but so far so good.

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December 2, 2015 by Lee and Tracy

Downside to Our “Hub and Spoke” Approach

We travel using what I call the “hub and spoke” approach. We go to a central point in an area and stay there and explore from that location. This is different from how many people travel, moving every few days or every week, and there are pros and cons. Since we are in a fifth wheel and like to deploy our outside stuff (chairs, rug, etc) staying put in one place makes that extra effort worth it. We feel more “at home” and we minimize travel days, which are still not my favorite. There are many advantages to this method of traveling, which I have talked about quite a bit, but there are also some downsides which I should probably explore. When we come to a new area there is a feeling of excitement and adventure. So many places to see and the newness of it all is a lot of fun. When we stay in a place for awhile though, no matter how great, eventually the bloom starts to come off the rose. The little things start bugging us. Traffic, lack of services, bugs, the general unfriendliness of people, and of course the weather. Weather is so much more a factor for us now than it was in a sticks and bricks. I barely registered the weather when living in New England because I largely went from my house, to car, to work, to car, to home. Sure I would smile on particularly nice days, or be concerned with huge snowstorms, but I hardly spent any time in the outside at all so it didn’t matter so much. Now we are outside all the time and most of the things we want to see are somewhat weather dependent. My favorite part of seeing the sites is taking pictures and this is no fun to do in rainy conditions. If it’s too cold we can bundle up, but I have personal limits on that sort of thing, especially when it’s really windy.

When we come to an area I make a list of things I want to do. I try to combine bad weather activities with outside ones, but frankly the bad weather activities are far less interesting and they generally cost money. The very best things to do are almost always outside and free and consequently the bad weather items on my list are usually much shorter. Again, this is very different than living in a sticks and bricks. We had all the creature comforts in our house, and if we wanted to wander out in bad weather we had our favorites restaurants, movie theaters, shops, etc. That’s not the case now, and that’s fine, because this life isn’t about all that, but you can’t do the cool outdoor things every day. Well, to be fair, you can, but I am simply not that hardy. When we come to an area the bad weather days happen, but the need to get “settled”, catch up on errands, or other chores make it OK. I actually appreciate some of those days. But once all those things are done and we’ve been in a place for awhile, the bad weather days are not so great. We start to get on each other’s nerves. We get a little snippy and the inside space, which normally is just the right size, starts to feel a little small. We have been doing this long enough now to recognize we need to give each other some space under these conditions, but where? Outside is somewhat off limits and inside feels confining. Either one of us could jump in the truck and run some errands, but that almost always involves spending money. So it’s a big challenge, and one we are still trying to work through, and I wanted to mention it, because it rarely happens when we are new to an area. Probably because just getting acclimated is an activity in and of itself and that can be done regardless of the weather.

So I recognize the pattern, but let me talk specifically about this “hub” of the Redwoods. We have been here a couple of weeks and had great weather (comparatively) most of the time we have been here. The average rainfall in November here is 11 inches and we have gotten nowhere near that, but even when it’s not raining dark falls very, very early. As I have mentioned the high canopy almost completely blocks the sun and it is dusk by 3pm and pitch black by 5pm in the trees, even on a full moon night. We’ve been battling the gloom with an almost constant campfire (wood is free for us here, and a great advertisement for selling more so why not?) and that helps, but by 9pm I feel ready to go to bed every night. In the mornings it doesn’t get light inside until well after 8am and really it’s not truly daylight until close to 10am. So that’s a short day in the groves. When we travel farther afield it’s different of course, but we are living here and work, meals, and the desire to experience the groves themselves keep us inside the forest. We have started to think of it in those terms. There is inside the groves and outside and it does feel like two totally different worlds. Throw in some rain and it can lead to a wet, miserable day. The first week we were here we thought the rain was neat and charming, now not so much. (See? The bloom is off the rose.) If our pattern was moving frequently, we would simply move on, actually we probably would have moved on before it even became an issue, but we are committed here and it’s very important we don’t start to feel like we are stuck here.

“Being Stuck” is an emotion I felt often in my previous life and not one I ever expected to have to deal with on the road. My house is on wheels, for heaven’s sake, and we can always move on, that’s sort of the whole point. When dreaming about the lifestyle that’s exactly what many people envision, but it’s not always that simple. Budgets, family, work, weather, and availability of campgrounds can conspire to keep you in a place longer than you want to be. Every single person I have become close to has experienced that feeling at least once. The good news is you do have more choice than you had previously, but at least for myself and all the people I know it is not a 100% footloose and fancy free lifestyle. So that leaves us with figuring out how to combat those feelings. I imagine this is going to vary completely based on individual personalities and the unique situation and to be honest we are still figuring it out. After a year, we now recognize when we feel that way, which is a good thing, but we don’t always know what to do to fix it, short of moving, which isn’t always possible. But we have learned a few things to help lighten the pressure a bit so I thought I would pass them along.

Be extra nice to each other. No, seriously, extra nice.
Feeling stuck is a state of mind, not being. Recognize that and try to mentally adjust your attitude a bit.
Breathe through it, it does pass.
Get out and do something. Even if it’s not optimal or a thing you normally would do, just getting out is enough. Be careful though with this, because if you spend a lot of money frivolously, that could actually make it worse.
Work on a project. We all have things we have been wanting to get to in our home. Deep clean, build something, reorganize. Just be careful here to not bite off too big of a project or you could feel more resentful.
Spend time with people. Arrange to see friends on the area or put yourself out there and meet new people. Social interactions aren’t really weather dependent and can add a level of newness to a place that is becoming stale.
Take the first decent weather day you can and take an all day trip to a new place. Just the drive can reignite your excitement in the area and it can evoke the feeling of newness you had in the beginning.
Try new things you wouldn’t normally do. Volunteer somewhere, take a free class in the area, try a new craft. There are endless possibilities and you might just land on something special.
Remember it’s temporary. The feeling will be gone when you move to the next place.

Our most recent day to try to combat the “stuck” feelings was spent visiting all the kitschzy little shops up and down the Avenue of the Giants. Many of these attractions have been here since the 50’s and most have seen better days, but they usually cost just a few bucks each and they were a good rainy day activity. It didn’t totally cure the feelings, but a couple of them were a lot of fun and we successfully avoided the trap of buying stuff we didn’t need in the gift shops. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see any of them, but they were fine for “filler” activities, because unfortunately every day can’t be exploring the Lost Coast.

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Looking up from the inside was really cool

Here’s the view

The legend of Bigfoot store had some really cool locally made stuff

Dede you would have loved this place

The bigfoot carving was fun

Loved the sign in the middle

I adored this sign…would have bought it but didn’t like the material it was made from

Really cool, unique birdhouses

Lee loved the little wagons

I was so tempted by this hummingbird feeder made locally but $33 was too pricey

The One log house was great and only $1 to go inside

Front door

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I think this was originally the bathroom…so weird with the curved wall

The gift shop had these cool pieces of redwood

I picked this one

Lee had an idea to try to take a piece and attach it to our table in our living room. Loved the idea and at $20 for the above piece not too pricey. Update: Unfortunately the piece was too small and when we went back the next day no piece was quite right. They were kind enough to give us a refund. We went back to the Burl n Drift wood shop and even walked through their storage barn but still couldn’t find the perfect piece. The owner talked about cutting a piece down for us, but then we were looking at around $150 and after their process you lost a lot of the natural look. A cool $20 idea was quickly turning into a much more expensive proposition, plus the owner was pretty condescending. I get excited about wood, but obviously to him he is less artist and more businessman and treating me as the “little woman with the goofy idea” is not going to separate precious dollars from my wallet. If he would have seemed at all enthused by the idea, I would have been happy to spend a little more.

Confusion hill

Largest free standing wood carving in the world

The place was pretty beat up

Lee trying to stand up straight

The house is built on the hill in such a way gravity appears to do weird things . Unfortunately it was too cheesy even for me and simply not worth the $5 each

Chandelier tree was one of the drive through trees

Beautiful tree and unlike the other one we saw very much alive

The car is completely inside the tree and totally hidden

For only $5 a car this was well worth it and the grounds are large and very pretty

See how small the car is coming out the other side

No way our truck was fitting in here, but you can walk it. For only $5 a car this was well worth it. The grounds were large and pretty and they even had a little pet area. Plus you can’t go to the Redwoods without seeing a drive through tree!!

Lessons Learned

When dealing with “feeling stuck” try some of these things. Nothing is a silver bullet solution but they can help

Be extra nice to each other. No seriously extra nice
Feeling stuck is a state of mind not being. Recognize that and try to mentally adjust your attitude a bit
Breathe through it, it does pass
Get out and do something. Even if it’s not optimal or a thing you normally would do, just getting out is enough. Be careful though with this, because if you spend a lot of money frivolously, that could actually make it work.
Work on a project. We all have things we have been wanting to get to in our home. Deep clean, build something, reorganize. Just be careful here to not bite off to big of a project or you could feel more resentful.
Spend time with people. Arrange to see friends on the area or put yourself out there and meet new people. Social interactions aren’t really weather dependent and can add a level of newness to a place that is becoming stale.
Take the first decent weather day you can and take an all day trip to a new place. Just the drive can reignite your excitement in the area and it can evoke the feeling of newness you had in the beginning.
Try new things you wouldn’t normally do. Volunteer somewhere, take a free class in the area, try a new craft. There are endless possibilities and you might just land on something special.
Remember it’s temporary. The feeling will be gone when you move to the next place.

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August 14, 2015 by Lee and Tracy

A Not So Good Week

I was going to title this post a terrible week and I actually starting typing “terrible” and stopped, because terrible is a ridiculous overstatement. I am sitting in a beautiful place, with people I care about. I have my health, my husband, and enough food on the table and I am living this really cool adventure. I mean really, how terrible could things be? As my kids say, “first world problems.” And for those of you who would give anything to trade places with us, let me apologize in advance. I fully realize that my one year ago self would have felt the exact same way as you probably do. When I was in my home,waiting for it to sell, I would have given anything to have the kind of week I have had this week. The irony of that does not escape me. But as grateful as I am to be doing this, I still have bad days. Not many, and certainly I have had very few bad weeks. They do happen though, and since I want to portray as balanced a picture as I can I’m going to write about it. (None of this applies to me, my life is a never ending sunshine parade of happy awesomeness. I have no idea what she’s always whining about. I try not to listen, lest it harsh my groove. – Lee)

There’s no pretty pictures in this one, no fun activities (except dinner with Howard and Linda last night ) and really that’s the crux of the problem. Being full-time and working from the road is an interesting dichotomy. Linda put it beautifully last night when she said I still have a foot in both worlds. It’s a bit of a split personality because you are in beautiful “vacation-like” settings but you’re not on vacation. So sometimes the beauty around you can get completely displaced by other things. It doesn’t have to be work that does this, either. Family issues, money issues, health issues, can all have the same effect, but hopefully those types of things don’t happen with the same frequency as work problems. Most of the time my work is great. I truly am grateful to have a steady income and the flexibility to work and live this lifestyle, but it was a stressful week and this was coupled with not doing any fun things.

Basically my life working on the road falls into 4 major categories and 3 of the 4 are just fine. I’ve boiled it down to the following scenarios;

Work is good and there’s lot’s of fun stuff to do – so that’s the best of the best.
Work is good but nothing much to do – that’s still fine, sometimes you just need to chill.
Work is stressful but there’s cool stuff to do – that’s when I really appreciate the lifestyle in comparison to my old life. Having a bad day? Take a walk on the beach, have cocktails with friends, take a nature walk, watch the hummingbirds for awhile. These are all great stress relievers and really helpful in putting work in perspective as to its relative importance in your life.
Work is stressful and there’s nothing fun to do. (I would have stopped the list at #3. Nothing good happens after #3. – Lee)

So the last one is where it gets interesting, because obviously there is always something to do. Nature is still out there, and the things I listed in my third category haven’t changed, but they aren’t having the impact they should. So I have to wonder “Why?”. Why do I have a day, or in this case, several strung together where the surroundings don’t elevate me from the work stress? Why do some days I sit here at my desk working and look outside with wonder and other days I see the same view and either ignore it, feel cooped up, or resentful that I am not out in it? It’s a good question, and frankly one I have not totally figured out. Obviously mood has quite a bit to do with it. Sometimes you’re just in a bad mood and nothing can make you happy. But mainly I think for me it’s the newness of our surroundings that can elevate category 4 into a category 3.

Before I explain that last statement, I’d like to point out that we had a very nice impromptu dinner with Howard and Linda last night, and we spoke quite a bit about this. They’ve been doing this for 10 years and getting their perspective is very helpful. Plus, just having people you admire validate that you’re not a crazy person is wonderful, so thanks guys, for spending part of our night letting me talk this through. (I was there, and I can assure you that at no point did anyone even suggest that she is not a crazy person. – Lee) So, on to the explanation. When we get to a new place, I rarely have bad days. I am so transfixed and excited by the newness of our surroundings that almost every day is a 1-3. But after a few weeks, the newness wears off and if this corresponds with a bad work week number 4 happens.

I don’t have bad work weeks much. I really like my job and feel good about what I do, but it happens. Also, when I was living in a sticks and bricks the bad work weeks almost always results in number 4 versus number 3 because it was hard for me to find things to transport me out of it. So this lifestyle has had a major, positive impact on my life which is maybe why when a number 4 week happens it can be so jarring. I know I am happier than I have ever been, but I question how much of that is due to the newness of the constantly changing surroundings. And if that’s the case, is that necessarily a bad thing? This is where my small town upbringing gets in the way. I love the way I was raised and the ethics it instilled in me, but in some respects it can be very limiting. The small town mindset (for lack of a better way to explain it) is suspicious of the adventure. Suspicious of the newness, and the feelings it evokes. I have known people in my life who have an adventuresome spirit and always wistfully thought, “I would never have the courage to do that”. But surprise, here I am being the adventurer. Mostly I am embracing it despite the terror it sometimes evokes, yet a part of me, the small town girl part, is waiting for it all to go horribly wrong. She’s a real pain in the ass, by the way. (I concur. – Lee) I appreciate what she’s done for me in my life, but I’ve outgrown her in so many respects. There’s a whole wide world out there and I want to see some of it before I go. And I’m happy, really happy, in a way I’ve never been before. But the bad days let in the doubt, and that can start a tough downward spiral to fight my way out of.

So let’s look at it head on. Write about it, talk about it, say the thing out loud to lessen it’s power. That’s what Howard, Linda, and Lee let me do last night and I felt so much better afterwards. Maybe it is the newness that appeals to me. As Linda said, the newness leads to growth and life enrichment. And yes, I know as time goes on there will be less new. We will need to stop in places for longer stretches so Lee can work. We will go back over territory we have already covered. We will get road weary and just decide to stay for a while in a place. That’s all part of the life too. Every day can’t be Eagles and Waterfalls although that would be great, wouldn’t it? There will be rainy days and boring days and category 4 weeks. The real question is: am I spending more time in categories 1-3? The answer thus far is a resounding YES! If that changes, we can reevaluate, but for now that small town girl needs to shut the hell up so I can get on with my adventure. (I concur. – Lee)

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