Moving Archives » Nerds on the Road

Last Days in New Orleans

Published on July 29, 2010 by Katya in the category RV life | 1 Comment

Planning to leave New Orleans is just like moving all over again. We don’t know anyone and we have a bunch of crap to get rid of before we can go.

Well most of it is crap except of course the Brougham, our home and/or project for the last 11 months. I would do whatever possible to leave it with some family or friends who can use it while we travel in the trailer till I can work on it more, but everyone I know is thousands of miles away. So we have to sell it due to the excessive costs of having an RV, trailer and truck – insurance, gas and possible extra costs at parks for being selfish hoarders…and I don’t have a drivers license.
Anyway, throughout our travels I have tried to take photos of the Brougham, most of them have Ross in them so I didn’t use those but what I had left over I made a video for its sale. I went into excessive detail with the craigslist add as well, going over every repair and addition I could remember to try to seek out people who actually give a crap about vehicles (as opposed to ads that say “74 dodge camper, runs and drives $####, mechanics special). So here is my sad sale video, well, stills made into a slideshow and put on youtube, with music from youtube’s music selection which is totally terrible.

Ross already sold the 5th wheel hitch, goose neck adapter plate (both came with the truck) and our hitch shelf and the only junk laying around outside now is the hitch shelf extension and adapter, and half of Ross’s extensive tool collection. We have no idea how moving and driving with the trailer will be, it hasn’t been moved since we bought it and neither of us have driven with a trailer this long. Truck and trailer together will be over 50 feet long and interesting to maneuver in.. or not maneuver in. Planing on how to pack things without them flying around while we drive, tomorrow.

Jude park has been really great to us. Even if we’re not the most social people, the owners, previous and present, have been really lenient about having the RV here and us staying so damn long. About 70% of the people here are men working locally, construction or otherwise, staying in older trailers and driving big trucks. The other 30% is a regular rotation of older couples you never see and people crazy enough to stay in tents in this humidity (usually they’re put in the very back next to the trailer shaking loud train yard). I guess when coming to New Orleans, staying close to town to party is better for most people than staying a little further, where you can see the swamps and armadillos in the state park.

Jude has a pool, which through the owners, has gone from bug infested mud puddle to clean, resurfaced and lit. It used to get used about once or twice a week by people who mustered up enough to bear the nastiness for a cool dip but now there is almost always someone in it throughout the day – or the hot tub next to it.

The only negative things, that I cant wait to have a break from, are the really cramped spots, with barely enough room to extend your awning (depending on who parks next to you) and the crashing train yard that I cant even go explore due to a massive poisonous snake filled wall of vines and barbed wire. Seriously.

The south itself is what has made it bearable to stay here so long. As much as I love the southwest, if this was Pecos, Texas, Id have driven off in the RV by now – even if only into a ditch or off a friendly canyon. The weather has been consistently interesting, storms, heat, humidity and always awesome clouds, and the fact that it’s one of the most interesting cities on the planet, has kept us fairly busy although with working weekdays, we don’t get out as much as I would have liked.

Hopefully these are the last few days, although we still don’t have a set destination (probably west Florida then west again?).

Rain on my Windscreen

Published on September 21, 2009 by Ross in the category history, RV life, travel, work | Leave a comment

My car in the RainI’ve been driving through life for a while now without any working windshield wipers.  And Portland’s not the right city to do that in.  For a while I didn’t care too much; it didn’t bother me that I couldn’t see where I was going a lot of the time, just a blur of rain, and the outline of some road to follow.  But increasingly I wanted to be more proactive in determining the direction my life took, seeing a little further ahead and not missing turns.

The first and most obvious change I needed to make was to move – somewhere different, somewhere drier.  Despite this strong desire to leave Portland, I found myself not doing anything about it.  I’d look at new cities around the country, look into emigrating to Australia, even jobs on various Caribbean islands, but only halfheartedly.  Maybe none of these options seemed right, possibly because Katya was not involved in them, and certainly because I just felt I’d end up doing the same thing in a new place.

There was also fear, a resistance to change, however much I wanted it.  Even once Katya had convinced me of how great traveling the country in our RV was going to be, I was still reticent, finding it hard to  fully commit myself to doing it.  To some degree I forced myself by making commitments to Katya that I would do it.  Once I did that there was no going back.  Looking back on how I felt then – worried about leaving everything, veering a little further from being a ‘responsible’ member of society – it seems silly, considering how excited I am about it now.  There were three main reasons I was resistant to leaving my life here – my cats, my stuff and my job…

mimbo2The hardest task I’ve had has been to find new homes for my cats.  There were 4 of them needing homes, all of them very important to me.  Finding not just homes, but really good homes where they will get the attention they need and deserve, is hard.  So far I have found great homes for two of them, Chompers and Fatty.  Mimbo and Stumpy are still with me, though I have potential homes for both of them – I just hope they work out.

I’d worried about getting rid of all my stuff but, when it came down to it and I really looked at what I have here, I realized that, other than my cats, there is very little in my apartment that is precious to me.  I listed a few of the important items on my bio page – my bike, guitar, laptop, phone and beginnings of a Nike collection.  Few items as there are, it’s going to be interesting working out exactly where all of them are going to go in the RV.

With one exception, I am looking forward to getting rid of everything else.  I’ve already enjoyed going through my apartment a few times, filling bags with garbage, others with items for donation, collecting clothes and small things I can sell.  It’s felt good to see the amount of ‘stuff’ decreasing.  I will be holding an open house some time soon, advertised on craigslist, I’ll just have people show up and, hopefully, over the course of the day, buy up everything.  The one thing I’ll miss is my car.  It’s going to hurt to sell it.  Admittedly it’ll be nice to have the cash, but I’ve really enjoyed driving that car.  Now If I could somehow get the engine and transmission just…moved into the RV…I mean, how hard could it be?

Finally, my job – it’s important to me.  For a long time, while considering leaving, then planning it, I wasn’t too excited about the prospect of having to quit.  It bothered me to have to go tell my boss and the CEO that I would be leaving, because I feel genuinely valued there and I felt it would be a loss to both me and the company if my relationship with them ended.  The idea of working contract jobs on projects I don’t care about for companies I care even less about doesn’t appeal to me.  Thankfully, I don’t have to do that, as I will continue to be a full time employee with my current company.  We will review the way things are working every 30 days, as neither they nor I know exactly how working from the road is going to go.  Whether we are way off the grid and working over a 3G wireless connection, or in an RV park on WiFi, we intend to be online full time.  We’ll see just how well that works out.

With the cats slowly finding homes, my stuff being sold or donated, and my job still mine, I’m pretty happy right now.  The morning we turn in the keys to our Portland apartment, and drive out of the city, I’ll be beyond happy.