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Rockport Musings

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

written Monday, December 22, 2008
Rockport, TX

I’m in one of those unproductive periods that pop up every once in a while. Writing in the blog is easy when we’re out exploring historic places, national parks, dramatic terrain, and the like. But often, when we park in one spot for an extended period of time, my mind takes a break and my writing muscles start to atrophy. A friend of mine claims there is no such thing as writer’s block — only laziness. That may be. But whatever the reason there’s been a paucity of posts to the Sabbatical blog this month.

I thought it might be interesting to recount a few statistics about our lifestyle in 2008. These all relate to where we park the bus-house — campgrounds, RV Parks, and boondocking — and some statistics about the bus-house itself. And these are all for the year 2008:

Number of Camps/Moves:  59
Average Stay: 6.2 days
Longest Stay: 44 days (In Wisconsin for Wedding)
Total Cost of Camping: $4,911.10
Average Cost Per Day: $13.42
Most Costly Per Day: $31.00 (California — where else?)

Bus-House Miles Driven: 9,941
Gallons of Diesel: 1,310
Miles per Gallon: 7.72 mpg
Cost of Fuel: $4,953.35
Average Gallon: $3.78/gal
Cost per Mile: 0.50/mile

Considering that my last property tax bill for one year in the western suburbs of Chicago was almost $8,000, spending $10,000 for camping and fuel, two of our largest expense categories, isn’t too bad.

T

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Preparing To Move

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 — near Three Lakes in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

It’s hard for my fingers to punch out ‘September’ on the keyboard. Summer can’t be over already, can it? If I look at the thermometer it says… what?… 81f degrees! That certainly makes it feel summer-like. And there’s humidity to spare too. But I’ve grown up in the Midwest and have had to deal with extremes most of my life. Just watch — by tomorrow it’ll be in the 60’s for sure.

We’ve gone from a crowd of about 10 people here at Camp Soldner on Sunday to just the two of us today. Even our neighbors Bill & Nan are out exploring today. It’s a chore day today anyway. Since we’re leaving toward the end of the week we’re working through the punch list of little chores that have to be done before moving day — things like defrost the freezer, check tire pressures and mechanical systems, clean windows — especially the windshield, re-organize the basement storage bins, make phone calls — all kinds of little things that tend to be put-off until just before moving day.

People sometimes wonder what we do with all our time. They think we’re retired and just sight-seeing, on a permanent vacation, taking it easy… having the time of our lives… hours of relaxation every day. The reality is that we have chores to do just like we did when we lived in a regular house — and maybe more. Despite the small size of our current home, there are a lot of things that have to be maintained or repaired because these things are all bouncing down the road and taking shocks from potholes and rough pavement. So we have an ongoing punch list of stuff that has to be addressed. And did you ever have to wash the exterior of a bus? We’re getting pretty good at it but it still takes the better part of a full day. So living the fulltiming lifestyle ain’t all relaxation and romance — but we still would not give it up for any other at this point.

T

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Resources for the Bus-House

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 — near Beaver Dam, Wisconsin

While we’re parked out at the farm near Beaver Dam or at Camp Soldner in the U.P. of Michigan, we ocassionally have to pack up and drive the bus-house to some nearby campground to dump our waste tanks. In both cases, we do have access to some limited electric power and can stretch hoses about 150 feet to fill the fresh-water tank, but there’s no place to dump tanks.

A while back I wrote this piece about our ability to live independently of outside resources. I thought I’d revive it now:

The bus-house, like a regular “fixed” house, relies on certain resources from the outside world. Among these are fresh-water, sewer, electric power, and propane. There are others… phone, internet, television, radio… but these are all wireless and don’t limit the length of our stay.

Of the big four, the addition of a solar array on the roof earlier this year has been a big positive with regards to electric power. We’ve always had the ability to run our generator for larger power demands and to re-charge the house batteries. But as quiet as it is, the generator does consume diesel fuel ($$) and we don’t like running it when we’re away from the bus-house for any period of time. The solar panels have pretty much taken over the battery charging responsibilities. As long as the sun shines and as long as we’re not wasteful in our use of electricity, we can survive without being plugged into the “grid” indefinitely.

Propane is another outside resource that doesn’t impact our length of stay very much. We carry about 25 gallons of it and it lasts a very long time — especially during the summer when there’s no need to heat the bus-house. Besides the furnace, propane is used by the refrigerator, the water heater, and the cook-top. It’s easy to go the entire summer without danger of running out of propane.

So that leaves two critical resources — fresh-water and sewer. When parked without a water hookup for an extended period, we go into “water conservation mode”, which means extreme limits on water use. I won’t go into all the little techniques, but let’s just say we’ve found it’s possible to survive for a while using just 7 or 8 gallons of water per day. But after two weeks or less, we’ve got find a place to refill. Our waste tanks can be stretched to go up to 2 weeks too.

So about every week and a half or two weeks, it’s necessary to “re-connect” to the outside world. Often this means we’ve got to get into travel-mode and physically move the bus-house to a place we can re-fill with fresh-water and dump the sewer tanks.

It’s a small price to pay for the freedom of living this nomadic lifestyle.

T

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Project Day

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Friday, May 2, 2008 — Vancouver, WA

We had a nice day Thursday, yesterday. Since we’re getting down to the last few days, we took advantage of the weather and finished up a few projects around the ol’ bus-house.

First, we installed the windshield sunscreen that we’d ordered a few weeks ago. When we’re parked facing unshaded sun, especially in the summer, that big windshield allows a lot of solar heat energy to come into the bus-house and heat things up. This sunscreen will reduce the heat-gain. It’s made of a heavy woven poly fabric that blocks 90% of the incoming sun’s rays. Because solar rays don’t produce heat until they hit something, it’s important for this material to be on the outside of the bus-house — so the heat says outside. In addition to reducing heat-gain, it helps reduce damage to fabrics, plastic, and leather interior surfaces.

The process of installing the sunscreen isn’t easy due to it’s size. After borrowing a second ladder from a neighbor so we both had one, Dar and I went to work. The idea is to stretch it out in the approximate position it’ll go and hold it in place with big strips of masking tape. Then adjust and adjust and adjust. Once it’s where we want it, I’ve got to drill (yes, drill!!) holes in the exact right spot so the base portion of the snaps can be installed — screwed into the hole and a small bed of silicone sealant. 7 snaps — 7 holes, no major mistakes, and I think the job looks pretty good.

IMG_5277-1.JPG

The sunscreen kit includes panels for the drivers side window and the passenger door window as well. Being considerably smaller, they went up quickly. Overall, we’re happy with the finished product and are looking forward to a cooler summer.

The second project I completed was the installation of another fresh water filter in the outside water bay. The bus-house came from the factory with a “whole-house” water filter. The filter-element we put in this filter is a good one that removes almost all foreign particles as well as improving taste and smell. The problem is that it only filters water as it’s going up to the faucets and fixtures to be used. Water that goes into our fresh-water holding tank isn’t filtered until it’s used. We wanted to keep the water in the holding tank as clean and odor free as possible too.

So, I ordered and installed a second filter right next to the first, but this one will filter all water coming into the bus-house even if it’s going to the fresh-water holding tank. The filter element in this cannister is very much like the one above, but a little less aggressive so as to prolong it’s lifespan.

A week ago I also installed an under-sink drinking water filter and separate drinking water faucet on the kitchen sink. This filter has a high quality ceramic cartridge and removes 99.99% of bacteria and other nasty bugs that can be in water from poor sources. The water that comes from this fixture is now filtered three times and should be better than most bottled water. We’d like to stop buying and hauling around bottled water if we can. It’s expensive and heavy.

For dinner, we got together with Ron & Sue, and Tom & Rose from our old neighborhood in Vancouver. We had a lot of laughs, a great time. It was fun getting caught up and reconnecting with these good people.

=======

Joke of the Day (from Ron Wiltsey)

These two old guys are talking. First guys says “Next week I’ll have been married to the same woman for 60 years!”

Second guy replies “Wow, that’s great. What are you doing to celebrate?”

First guy: “Well, for our 40th, I got her a trip to Italy.”

Second guy: “That’ll be hard to top. So what are you doing this year?”

First guy: “Bring her back.”

========

T

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Useful Stuff #4

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 — In wet, rainy, Vancouver, WA

Another in a continuing series about our list of stuff we find useful and would have a hard time doing without. This list is all computer-related.

16) Laptop PC’s: One purpose of our Sabbatical is to exercise personal creative talents. Through writing and photography we’re both documenting our journey and expressing ourselves with the goal of communicating, entertaining and amusing our readers. Additionally, email has become a primary means of communication with others. All of these things require a personal computer. We have two Dell Laptops so we can both work at the same time and so we have some redundancy in case one or the other machine poops out. Our machines are average sized laptops, both running XP (so I have only one operating system to support), and have been remarkably reliable and trouble-free. (knock on wood, turn around three times to the right, throw salt over left shoulder). We could not be without these machines.

17) Canon Printer: We wanted computer peripherals that are small and easily stowed, but that still produce high quality results. Our printer is a Canon i70 portable that is so small its stored in a cabinet, upright, like a book. It’s not much bigger than the typical hard cover novel. And it produces exceptional results in both color and black and white. Our need for a printer isn’t great, but having one is necessary. This one is perfect for us. Top notch.

18) Canon Scanner: Same requirements for size as above. The Canon Lide30 scanner is slightly larger than the printer, but very lightweight. It doesn’t need a power supply either, as it’s powered by the USB port of the PC. Just like it’s printer brother, we don’t use it often, but when we need to scan a document in order to fax or email it to someone, it really comes in handy. Also, because we’re almost paperless, anything we want to save long term is scanned and stored on a harddrive so we can ditch the paper. Wonderful machine.

19) External Data Storage: USB thumbdrives and external USB harddrives have made the process of data file storage, backups and transfers so much easier than it used to be. Whether it’s moving a file from one PC to another, or backing up our PC’s, they’re quick, trouble-free, and very reliable. In addition, three or four times a year we try to burn DVD’s of our photos and other work that can’t be replaced and send them by mail to a safe and secure location away from our bus-house.

20) Website Software: Also called an HTML editor, there’s a wide selection of them in the marketplace. Some are free, some complicated. If you know what you’re doing, you can even use most modern word processors. I chose SiteSpinner by Virtual Mechanics as it seemed to offer the right mix of features and was relatively simple to use. I’m not an expert in this field and I don’t know much about competing products, but I do know I find this product useful and it works great for my needs. Combined with a competent webhost (I use Yahoo, but there are many out there), our website has become the primary means of keeping friends and relatives up-to-date with our explorations as well as a means to publish our creations.

Even more to come at a later date.

T

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