Fire up the Winnebago and let's get out of here!

it's been a rough week.  things we didn't address in our last few weeks in PA are now perched immovably in the middle of the room, getting tripped over every time we turn around.  they're very nice elephants, but they're taking up a lot of space.  head space, heart space, conversation space.  it's getting tiresome.  and Michael's elephants appear to be distant cousins of mine (or entirely schizophrenic), and I thought we knew the same ones. 

it's all a product of getting out like we did, which involved head-down slugging though boxes and lists, cranking the music, and avoiding the big conversations because if we didn't, we'd never get out the door.  the door that was swinging shut thanks to weather and rent and the knowledge that if we didn't hang on tight and JUMP the trip would never happen.  we jumped :).

one month later, we're still in Knoxville, staying with Michael's sister Keren and her husband Bobby, and not able yet to move on.  the finances aren't quite there, the plans not unearthed that will give us the feeling that we've got enough figured out to make the next jump.  it's a big tangle of faith and work, and the desire to work without being forced to pick jobs that can pay over jobs that can't.  i can't articulate much more than that right now, the words aren't there yet, we just need to figure out the money stuff.  every time we look at it head-on, talk about it, and try to tackle it, it seems to squeeze itself just out of the picture and into peripheral vision before we can pin it down.  everything we run at is getting tugged just out of reach.  not giving up whatsoever, just changing tactics and tackling the things we CAN do right now, like finishing up the laundry-room-to-sewing-room transformation, installing stuff in the camper, tracking down water pump issues, and getting out and about to see stuff around here and learn about TN. 

onward ...

... and you are perhaps still wondering what the title means? well, not everything this week has been hard and there are a few stories to tell.

first off, we went to the Ijams Nature Center on Wednesday, taking advantage of a rare non-rainy day that stayed well above freezing.  it's just outside of downtown Knoxville, and has a couple old limestone quarries as well as lots of trails, river access, and a cute little visitor's center with pretty things like this lovely creature ... 

A mostly-buried albino Eastern Spiny Softshell turtle, native to TN.

we hiked, snacked, rambled, talked to a salty old fisherman who had the thickest TN accent we've yet encountered, realized that explaining who we are and where we're from/what we're doing is going to take some practice, took a 'shortcut' between two marked trails that involved scrambling up the nearly vertical end of one old abandoned quarry while following Douglas' lead, took lots of pics, and had a grand old time exploring together, without any agenda.  it was a free day that was long overdue.

another delightful (to me!) bit of the week is Keren's ongoing battle with the boys over their use of the words "Duh!" and "Doody!", which is nearly incessant.  i'm DELIGHTED to have help in this arena, I've been waging war on it for over a year now.  they came up with the creature (with their cousin's help), and it apparently has a negative IQ,  fights with green apples as its only weapon, and does everything wrong.

Keren's idea was to award kisses to the boys for each time she heard either word, and of course they were climbing all over her to get them each time they were promised.  or not.  then the other day fynn asked to have his nails painted, and she cheerfully obliged.  douglas was watching, and she offered him the option of having his nails painted also, with the understanding that if he left it on for 24 hours, she'd considere it payment for the Doody talk, in lieu of the kissing bit.  he chose the polish :). 

another delightful interlude started thursday morning, with a frantic pounding on the front door at 7:30 am.  (that's Keren/Bobby's front door, we've been sleeping in the house almost every night.)  Keren went to the door and i could hear a man's insistent voice shouting something, and then the slam of the door of our truck.  i got up, threw on clothes, and went out to see what was up.  keren was trying to talk a half-naked man (seemingly wearing nothing but a bright pink towel around his waist) into getting out of Matilda's front seat, while he fiddled with buttons and frantically looked for a key, hollering about the need to "Hurry up and get out of here!!"  i was fully awake by now.  

i've had my moments in the last week of hurry-up-and-get-out-of-here-we-need-to-keep-moving-or-everything-will-fall-apart panic, but it never involved a pink towel, a delightfully earnest but entirely-tripping-out-big-time neighbor, or quite so much urgency and drama.  and so it became a morning of the most entertaining sort. 

he was convinced that a plane had landed somewhere nearby, and its wings were gone and the roof ripped open.  he wanted the cops called, and insisted on it.  he was seeing things either very sped up or slowed down, depending on the moment, and was deeply disturbed by it all.  we all had to "Get Out!  Don't you see that?  Don't you believe me?  The roof is ripped open!"  i really should let Michael tell the story, as he ended up talking the man out of the truck, taking him home and talking to him, and chasing the three hyper little dogs back into the house every time the guy opened the door to ask "Why aren't they (the cops) here yet??", or better yet, to try to show Michael that when the door was opened, there were four doors instead of one. 

the story kept changing.  the downed plane was in the local park, and then it was his house  instead, so we should "Fire up the Winnebago" (pointing at our camper) "and all get out of here!  It's going to blow!"  Keren and i watched from the sidelines, while Michael kept him occupied and we all waited for the patrol car to show.  one finally did, and after asking if the guy was violent (Keren assured her not at all) she went in and took over.  a 2nd squad car arrived, and then an ambulance, and they eventually escorted him (and his towel) into the waiting ambulance, and that was the end of the morning show. 

it's been a rough week, but certainly not a boring one!

onward ...

The things we need to do at Keren and Bobby's

The grown-ups talked about what needed to be done like putting up dry-wall, and stacking logs.  Then they went to the store and priced everything out for putting up dry wall in the laundry room.  And we picked up a load of free wood, and unloaded it and stacked it in the back yard.

And we broke down a fence and we screwed steps into the tree. 

Then Dad climbed the tree with a chainsaw and we pulled a rope to make the tree not hit the house. 

And Dad and Bobby put up dry-wall. 

Me and Douglas pulling out nails.

-- Fynn

MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT LIFE ON THE ROAD

I like the ability to just stop on the side of the road and go sleep in the camper when we all get too tired of driving. My bed is the 3’ x 2.5’ x 6’ top bunk at the back of the camper, and I still managed to fit all of my things (books, Lego, and toys) on one tiny shelf at the end of my bed!

My window

My light

Sometimes Edmund sleeps under the left side of the shelf at night. One time, we while we were driving he sat there at the window the whole time. What really surprised me is that they didn’t barf while we were driving even after they got out of the bathroom! We’ve also started training them to be let out wherever we are, and to come back to where they were let out from, such as Keren and Bobby’s house.

Maiden Voyage part 2 : Christmas Jam

Two hours of 60 mph in steady rain brought us about 30 miles from Harrisburg on 81.  We pulled into a Pilot and parked at the end of a row of sleeping tractor trailers.  We staggered out and went to check on the cats who had been locked in the bathroom.  The trailer suddenly seemed very small next to the big rigs, but it was still exciting to be a part of those-that-sleep-on-the-road. The cats were curled up together on a towel sleeping like this-was-how-they-always-did-it.  We got the kids out of the truck into their bunks and Bethany and I headed for the big neon DINER sign.  I was starving.   We’d lived on nothing but snacks for the last 36 hours, and I could already taste a big greasy cheese-burger and fries.  I’d forgotten it was Christmas Eve.  The diner was closed.   We went back to the camper, crawled into bed, and fell asleep to the pitter-patter of rain on the roof and cat-feet in the camper.

Four hours later we awoke to no rain and the sun breaking over the tail-end of the cloud-bank.  This was a truly fantastic Christmas morning.  I just went back and checked weather history to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating when I said it had misted for 2 straight weeks, and found that on Dec. 15 the sun HAD come out for 2 hours in the morning, but that was it.  From the 10th on it had been sunless.  There was a Ray Bradbury story we read in grade-school about these kids living on Venus where the sun would shine for 3 hours every 7 years.  It felt about like that.

I grabbed my moustache-soap and the kids, and we headed for the Pilot restrooms to freshen up.  What a motley lot of transients deck the halls of a truck-stop on Christmas morning!  It was an honor to belong in a way I never had before.  I fell to conversating in the mirror with a trucker fascinated by my waxing process.  Turns out he used to be a scenic working on set designs for commercials in Atlanta.  Anyone remember a Nintendo commercial for a Star Wars game where Darth and some storm troopers burst through the door on these kids playing the game?  This trucker was operating the fog-gun on his back under the bed.

We got the cats back in the bathroom, hopped in the cab with some fresh coffee and beef-sticks, and hit the road by 8:30.  SUN!  If all went well, we’d hit Knoxville in time to open the presents Keren and Bobby had for the kids before Christmas was over.  We hadn’t had time or mind power to get the kids anything ourselves, but we all agreed a camper on the road was what we’d all wanted most.  Just when it seemed my confidence would allow me to keep up with traffic at 65-70, the winds began.  All through Maryland and into West Virginia we were yanked this way and that, forcing us to go 55-60.

We made our first stop at the West Virginia welcome center.  Bethany went into the camper to get something and discovered the bathroom door had not been latched properly.  The cats were at large and quite at ease.  Well, that was that, then.  Actually, it was a relief.  We had hoped they could adjust enough to watch out the windows while we drove, but no-one expected this much progress in half a day. 

By now everyone was ravenous.  I could tell by the way Douglas and Fynn said such beautiful things to each other.  We determined to pull off at the next exit with food.  A mile before the exit the truck started losing power.  All of it, really.  “What’s happening?” Bethany asked, as I futilely kept tromping the gas, pulling to the side.  “I don’t know.”  The truck putt-puttered to a stop, and the battery light came on as it coughed its last and died.  “Maybe it’s the alternator.” I remembered noticing 2 weeks before that the headlights would brighten slightly when revving the truck at an idle.  I turned the key off, then on.  The truck turned over sickly but did not catch.  We looked under the hood, feeling completely inadequate at diagnostics.  My stomach was singing a mournful song of auto-cannibalism.

“Maybe having the heat on in the camper is draining the truck battery,” Bethany suggested.  “That’s run off the propane,” I said.  “The fan is electric,” she said.  “Oh, yeah, right!”  We turned off the heat.  We hauled out a compact battery charger we were bringing to give to Keren and Bobby, hooked it up, and what do you know?  VROOOM, VROOOOM, VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!  Matilda was back in action.  We revved at high idle for a while, then put it in gear and headed for the Waffle House.

“Do we turn it off?” Bethany asked in the bank parking-lot next to the Waffle House.  “Yes. If it doesn’t turn back on, we’ll figure it out.  At least we’re in a town now.”  Matilda was purring normally and if there was still a problem, I didn’t want to pussy-foot around it.

I can’t remember ever enjoying a Waffle House meal more than that.  I had a bacon-egg-n-cheese on French toast with hash-browns and everything else my family didn’t eat.  Douglas, who is normally Bethany’s gluten-free partner, was allowed to eat Waffles for Christmas.  It was bliss.

The truck started fine.  We headed into Virginia.  The wind stopped and I got up to 75.  The sunlight on the Blue Ridge mountains was glorious.  They were really blue!  And only got more so as we enjoyed a fantastic sunset.

When night settled, we received a text from Keren: Dear Douglas and Fynn, This is Santa.  If you don’t make it to Knoxville before midnight, I’m taking all your presents back up the chimney!  We laughed.  Then we noticed the running lights of the camper winking off and on in our mirrors with every bump.  We pulled off at the next exit, strapped on our headlamps, and went to investigate.  We unhooked the supply at the hitch and there it was: a bent prong in the plug.  A small flat-headed screwdriver unbent it. All the lights came on, and we were back on our way.

We got 3 miles farther before the lights started winking again.  AAAAAAAAAAH!  We took the next exit and found a well-lit gas station this time.  I crawled under the truck and began checking the truck wires surrounding the hook-up.  Two sets looked hand joined with electrical tape.  I held one and wiggled the other.  “Bethany! What are the lights doing?”  “Nothing.”  I held the other and wiggled the one.  “They’re flickering!”  I stripped and sanded the wires and twisted on a wire-nut.  Bethany fed me tools.  The lights came on and stayed on.  Not a flicker.  The store there had camper bulbs (2 were out) and we got a jar of Nutella for Fynn and a jar of Homemade Black Cherry Jam for Douglas as Christmas gifts.  We had to get them Something!

It was about 9:30 and we were back on the road.  The wire problem was fixed, and it sure explained the burning brakes on the top of that first mountain!  It looked like we’d hit Knoxville by 11:30.

At 10:30 the truck began losing power.  I tromped futilely on the gas as we putt-putted to the side of the road.  The battery light came on but the headlights didn’t dim.  This made me think it might not be the alternator.  We were out of ideas.  “Maybe it’s the timing belt,” I posed, remembering a similar incident with my dad when I was about 9.  I found out later Matilda doesn’t even have a timing belt.  “Um, I guess we pray.” I said.  We told God we didn’t know what to do and we could use some help.  We tried starting the truck.  I came to life like nothing was wrong and after a few minutes of revving we pulled back on the road, and made it into the city limits of Knoxville by 11:58.

Four hours of sleep wasn’t much to go on, considering that had been the average for the last few weeks, but we were almost there.  The impending relaxation was palpable.  Keren texted to say we shouldn’t go the route Map Quest proposed but should come a different way.  An easier way.  Now my sister is a very visual person, so things like what color gas station sign can be seen from a curve to the left, or how high the Starbucks sign goes above the trees, stick in her mind a lot easier than which direction North is and what number exit to take.  Bethany was tearing her hair out to establish where to put Map Quest down and pick up Keren’s texted fragments and clarifications.  Exit 6 was actually exit 3A which would have been the first exit after exit 5 were we going East not West.  But after a Merry tour of Knoxville’s North side and Bethany got Keren live on the phone, we were guided into the skinny lanes of Sherwood Forest, Keren and Bobby’s neighborhood.  It was 12:30.

I was able to back the camper down a hill and turn into their 40 foot drive in one shot.  The satisfaction of that helped unclench my jaw a bit, and all remaining frustration was squeezed out with bone-crushing hugs from Keren and Bobby.  It was a good landing.