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Jun 4

9 Comments

Hellbent On Change

Spot #8

Spot #8

With little fanfare, yesterday we arrived back to HMB and quickly got ourselves settled.  They say home is where the heart is, which for us seems to be somewhere else.  Because we yearn to be continually elsewhere, I particularly hate this phase of our travels – its symbolism affirming our ‘rootedness’ as being someplace other than where we really want to be … on the road.

Yes, our home is mobile and we do enjoy freedom we never experienced while owning a house, but our current situation is really a tease of what life might be like if we were on the road full-time.  If only.

Having spent 16 of the past 21 days traveling, we have no fixed plans for our next trip.  We will go somewhere over the July-4 break, but nothing is solidified at this point.  For now, our next trip seems like forever away.

During the drive yesterday, Kelly and I discussed (yet again) our desires to make a change.  A big change.

We just need to think through some important decisions.

We both have good jobs which for now tie us to the Bay Area.   We also need to be thoughtful about disrupting our long-term retirement (financial) plans.  Any decision to walk away must be done so responsibly and only after having been thought through completely.

Today is Kelly’s birthday and for a few months we are once again the same age.  It’s silly, but I enjoy sharing the same number with her.  As a birthday gift to Kelly, we are committed to having full-time travel plans fully baked and ready to execute by this date next year.  Our promise to the other is this:  Project Launch will be ready for primetime.

I want to believe such a gift will be a wonderful present to my wife – the woman I love.

Until then, we have a lot of thinking to do.

Apr 14

A Day At the Races

My buddy Tim is an amateur race car driver and today I went to watch him compete at the Leguna Seca Raceway.  The track is located in Monterey, about 100 miles from my place in HMB and makes for a spectacular drive along the gorgeously famous Pacific Coast Highway.  Under sunny blue skies, first thing this morning, I made my way to the track, anxious to view my first-ever raceway event.

Raceway map

Leguna Seca raceway map

Not entirely sure what to expect, I arrived to the track to find some serious gear.  Tim takes his racing fairly seriously and I can only imagine what he spends in a year on this hobby of his, but surely, he’s outspent by orders of magnitude by many of the people here.  For an amateur event, I was amazed by how many drivers brought along paid service crews, mechanics, and location spotters … I would never have anticipated this.  Btw, Tim drives and races in the Formula Ford category.

Overlooking the Paddocks.

Overlooking the Paddocks.

Upon arrival, Tim suggested that I spend some time at turns 8 & 8A … aka ‘the corkscrew’.  Apparently, this turn is pretty famous in US track racing so I was eager to see the action first-hand.  Essentially a downhill s-curve, this section of track is definitely an ideal location to view the action.

Tim entering the corkscrew

Tim entering ‘the corkscrew’

Negotiating the 'corkscrew'

Negotiating the ‘corkscrew’

Tim manages the downhill section of track

Tim manages a downhill section of track

Coming out of the corkscrew with good speed, drivers are quickly required to brake hard and maneuver through turn-9 before accelerating into the final stretches of the 2.238 mile course, but not before a subtle reminder of the raceway title sponsor.

Mazda everywhere

Mazda everywhere

As it turns out, I spent most of my time viewing from turns 8, 9, 10, & 11 … essentially the back-half of the raceway, and also the most technical.

Tim, pushing back towards the start/finish

Tim, pushing hard towards the Start/Finish line

Atop pit-row, overlooking the Start/Finish line

Atop pit-row, overlooking the Start/Finish line

Following the morning race, Tim had a few hours to kill before starting his second race of the day.  In between, he cleaned and prepped his car, scoured over downloaded race data, and also critiqued his morning run by way of downloaded on-board video.  He also served me lunch … he’s good like that.

One thing which really surprised me was the accessibility to everything.  Granted, this was an amateur event, but as you can see from the iPhone video below (cars awaiting entry to the track), people are as close to the action as they want to be.

All in all, a really fun (and interesting) day at the track.

Tim's mighty Honda engine

Tim’s mighty Honda engine

Mar 30

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Spring Cleaning

Nearly eight months have passed since Kelly and I made our life-altering decision to drastically simplify our lives by way of a major downsizing.  It was not all that long ago we were living in a (by our standards) way too big house we didn’t need or effectively utilize.  Today our Airstream home is 188 Sq Ft of efficient awesome.

But … just like our former big house, our current tiny home does have one significant downside – dirt.

And so it is that today, while most people around here were outdoors in the warm air under sunny skies, enjoying themselves adorned in shorts and flip-flops, protected with a fresh lathering of sunscreen, Kelly and I spent the day – all day – scrubbing the interior of our home on wheels.

Doing our best to look like trailer trash

Doing our best to look like trailer trash

Once we had most of our crap possessions outdoors, it was time to get busy cleaning. Today’s activities were not cursory in nature – they were nothing short of thorough and complete.  Every surface was scrubbed – walls, floors, and ceilings.  All drawers, cabinets, and nooks were emptied and washed.  Nothing was excluded from the fun.

IMG_2711

Scrubbing the pantry

Kelly even washed the curtains (and initially re-hung them upside down).

Clean curtains hung upside down

Clean curtains hung upside down

Not to be outdone by Kelly’s efforts, I tackled each of the two fantastic fans.  We run our fans often and despite my on-going efforts to minimize the accumulation of dust, the amount of crud removed was disgustingly nasty.  Each was disassembled and wiped down.  Now, I’d have no hesitations eating off either one.

Main fan body assembly

Main fan body assembly

Content with the outcome today, I write this posting fully appreciating our efforts … and the satisfaction that our home is once again crazy-clean.

Mar 13

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A Stark Reminder

This trailer is in bad shape

Remains of a trailer rollover

Living in a mobile dwelling affords Kelly and me a number of advantages.  Chiefly, opting to live small allows us to maintain a fairly simple day-to-day lifestyle and at our leisure, hitch-up and hit the road … our address literally anywhere we desire.  Never did we feel such freedom when our home was firmly affixed to a proper earthen foundation.  Consequently, traveling felt temporary – always knowing that sooner or later we had to return home.

Interestingly, when we are on the road now, things somehow feel different.  I think now we enjoy the best of both worlds really … on the one hand, we maintain a comforting familiarity of our ‘stuff’, but with the ability to situate ourselves against the backdrop of a changing landscape.

It really is quite the compromise.

Because we travel with almost everything we own, there is some level of “what if” anxiety when towing.  Kelly and I routinely discuss what if something bad should happen en route?  Surely we’d be screwed … all of our possessions littered along some roadside ditch is not a situation either of us wish to experience.

And so it was that today I laid witness to a roadside accident on my way home from work – a scene not too dissimilar to that of my worst case what if fears.  What I saw was a pair park homes situated on the shoulder of the road – one rolled over to its side and totally destroyed.

toppled on the side of the road

toppled on the side of the road

This particular road  I was traveling (State Route Hwy 92) is familiar to me.  I use twice daily as part of my daily commute and it contains a number of switchbacks as the roads travels up and over the San Francisco bay area peninsula ridge line.  Situated between the ocean and the bay, the ridge is often encased in thick fog, severely limiting views for all drivers on the road.  I cannot help but wonder what caused this accident — fog, driver complacency, deer scampering across the road – could be anything I suppose.

I doubt I’ll ever know what happened, but looking at someone’s home splattered across the road is a stark reminder that accidents can happen at anytime and I don’t want to see Mabel – my Airstream home on wheels facing a similar fate as this trailer.

That would really suck.

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