live. work. dream.

Slab City: love it or hate it.

Lovers are tolerant individuals who respect the many different lifestyle choices here. Haters just can’t seem to turn away from the trash heaps and shiftless drifters, and usually depart within 24 hours.

One might assume that Slab City Lovers are younger folks on the fringes of society, but as our neighbor Bernie demonstrates, that just ain’t so.

Bernie and his wife are snowbirds, spending summers in Washington and winters here at the Slabs.

He built this RV himself, handles all of his own rig maintenance, and is building a new cottage by hand back in Washington. A former HVAC repair man, he spends his afternoons lounging and riding his ATV around the desert. He and his wife have been vegan for the last 40 years.

Bernie is 80 years old. His wife is 75. They’re just one example of the many reasons why we love staying at kooky places like Slab City.

Because you just never know who’s going to rock your world here, like Don the musician.

We hit the road yesterday for the first time since early December. And as with all first days on the road, things didn’t go quite as smoothly as we would have liked. We are definitely rusty.

First, we missed our exit to the Slabs, and almost ended up in Quartzsite. Drove about 25 miles out of our way.

Next, when we were in search of water, we took a wrong turn and drove another 10 miles in the opposite direction. The small road we were on was so flooded from the recent rains, we couldn’t find a dry enough place to turn around.

Once we got to the Slabs, I opened up our door, and saw hummus everywhere. Good thing the flour didn’t spill too!

As I proceeded to clean up the mess, Jim tried to turn on the Motosat dish. Guess what? That pain in the ass dish is acting up again, and won’t go up. Thank Dog we have Internet redundancy with our MiFi setup. If we couldn’t get online to manage Tripawds, we would be on our way to the nearest service shop. Apparently our F2 motor is dead . . . again.

All this, during our first day back on the road. In the past, I might have fallen apart at so many mishaps in one day. Because when you’re new on the road, multiple screw ups in one day happen a lot, and they can be upsetting. At least to me they were. Jim’s always been a little better about not letting them get him down.

But after almost three years on the road, I’m happy to say that we are both able to handle these things with a smile.

A few cocktails also work wonders.  Good thing we’re stocked up.

Our time in L.A. is nearing an end. Over forty days of living in the big city, and we’re getting homesick for our rig. It sits outside under a tree, and the birds are having a party on our roof. It’s time to get the rig out from under the shade, and under a blazing desert sky, where it belongs.

Any time we spend in cities is reassurance that we did the right thing by choosing to live like hillbillies.

We drove on the freeway, and it took us nearly two hours to travel 29 miles. Things are too fast, too crowded and just too much for us.

We’ve had a good visit with the family. Also met some world-renowned canine health professionals and interviewed them for Tripawds. And last week, ate at two of the best Asian restaurants we’ve been to in a while. Both are located in the San Gabriel Valley, where my parents live. These dining experiences reminded us that living in the city isn’t all bad.

Happy Harbor in Rowland Heights served up the best dim sum we’ve had since San Francisco. We also ate at a funky little 40 year old sushi joint in the Hacienda Heights ghetto, Akasaka.

We haven’t had sushi in over a year. We just have a thing about eating sushi anywhere other than the coast. It’s just wrong, and to us, the freshest sushi you can get is definitely worth the wait.

The plan is to leave here on Sunday, after the rains end. We’ll head straight for Slab City, where we a warm desert is waiting for us, with dark night skies and solitude.

Angelenos are getting all worked up over the rain that’s been falling on Southern California. Yesterday, a tornado warning was announced, and minutes later a small “tornadic-like” formation touched down and blew over a car. The hills are sliding and freeways are a mess. Parents are keeping their kids home from school.

Even though this kind of weather action is mild in comparison to our old stomping grounds of rainy, wet Humboldt County, we’re still glad to be staying in a stick house while riding this episode out.

The Los Angeles area hasn’t seen rain since Christmas. I was hoping we wouldn’t see any bad weather this winter, but it is January after all. When the rain started falling, I had to dig our rain jackets out of storage in the RV. Even funnel clouds and heavy rain won’t stop us from going outside every day. That’s because Wyatt Ray just won’t cut us any slack. If our one year-old puppy doesn’t get three walks a day, he will eat the furniture. Morning, noon and night, he begs to go outside for a walk, and we comply. Dogs are great at getting you to break away from work and into the great outdoors.

One morning, as Wyatt led me on a walk during a heavy downpour, my soaking wet clothes were an unpleasant reminder that the Gore-tex water-resistance on my gear is fading away.

Gear lust started whispering in my ear again; I want . . . I want . . . I want. . .

Time to start looking for something else, like maybe a new Berghaus jacket?

Our rig has been parked on the streets of L.A. for the last few weeks, while we catch up on the chisme with family and friends. Life here is as hectic and noisy as it gets, and every day Jim and I are reminded of why we chose to leave urban living behind.

We started 2009 with one goal; find Jerry’s Acres. Seven months into it, we did. Our Colorado retreat now sits underneath several feet of snow, waiting for our return.

With that behind us, we’re getting the other big part of our life in order, namely, making a real income again.

Our defnition of “real income” is different from most people’s. While we would love to be able to spend money on the finer things in life (like picking up a $20 bottle of wine instead of our old standard, Two Buck Chuck), we also aren’t willing to surrender our freedom in order to do so. My very short gig at Satan’s Castle was a good reminder about that.

People wonder, what do we do. How do we make any money? Well, we don’t do any one particular thing anymore. We don’t want to have one business again. And we don’t want to rely on one job to bring in money. We believe that putting all of your eggs in one basket is risky business, much moreso than varying your skills and finding multiple ways to generate income.

For us now, tiny bits of money trickle in from various web-based outlets that utilize our technical, design and writing skills. In 2010, we’ll work on building up our income revenue streams in these areas.

The money is iffy, the hours are long and uncertainty always looms over our heads, but we are much happier than we ever were in our previous lives. While we are still officially in the red and dipping into savings, I know that 2010 will be the year we are back in black, finally. It would be great if we could actually contribute to our retirement accounts once more. When that happens, I’ll know that we’ve truly been successful these last two and a half years.

On that note, I’ll say “Adios!” to 2009, and give 2010 a great big welcome. May this year bring the prosperity, joy and peace that we all need more of in our lives.

And many thanks to all of you for being a part of our world. Life would be pretty boring without you!

Regular readers may remember that Jim and I aren’t exactly big gearheads. With our frugal lifestyle and relatively non-existent income right now, we must carefully choose the gear we need, to get the most out of our budget. And we understand that there’s a difference between being cheap, and being frugal. Buying cheap gear is always more expensive in the long run.

Take for example, this North Face jacket I’m wearing during our stay at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado. The jacket has served me well for the last 8 years, but lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time for a replacement. This one was cutting edge at the time, but by today’s standard it’s bulky, heavy, and army green isn’t exactly the most flattering color. It’s also overkill for our winter travel adventures in the temperate southwest and should probably be left at our Colorado home base.

Coincidentally, I was introduced to The North Face Resolve jacket today, through Webtogs, an online retailer specializing in quality outdoor gear.

The North Face Resolve jacket features include:

• seam sealed, waterproof, breathable fabric
• soft, lined collar
• stow-away hood
• mesh-knit liner
• storm baffle front zipper with double front closure
• big pockets on both sides
• athletic cut with a drawstring cord for tailored fit

As you might be able to see in the photo, I’m a walking billboard for North Face gear. My boots and jacket are North Face and so are the base layers I wear. Their products last forever and hold up beautifully, making them a frugal RVer’s dream.

The North Face Resolve jacket looks compact enough to fit in our tiny RV wardrobe closet, yet sturdy enough to give me the protection I need from the spring rains in Texas.

With Christmas around the corner, I think it’s time for an upgrade, don’t you?

How can a new dog ever live up to the expectations set by your Forever Dog? Your one true dog who was so nearly perfect, so obedient, so smart, and so loving?

Well, he can’t. And you shouldn’t expect him to either. Because every pup is his own dog, and has new, different, and important lessons to each you.

And so, we are back at our place in Colorado, trying to get into some kind of routine and regular training schedule with our new Tripawd hero, Wyatt Ray. Wyatt is definitely teaching us different lessons than Jerry did. Mostly about patience, and dedication to the positive role that structure plays in life.

Considering the rough start he had in life, he’s doing pretty well. We know Jerry’s watching out for him (and whispering in his gigantic ears, telling him to stop chewing up our house).

Here’s a quick video Jim made for our Tripawds site, that shows us in our backyard and along the roads where we live, with Wyatt, Tripawd extraordinaire.

Over two years ago, when our last box got taped shut and we bid farewell to our remaining stuff, I wasn’t sure if I could live with the few essentials that we had packed in the rig. I assumed we would end up buying duplicates of things we had put in storage.

But in all this time, we only needed to acquire a few household things that we had put in storage. They were:

• Two kitchen serving spoons
• Some dish towels
• Drink pitcher
• Toaster
• Cookie tray
• Rechargeable batteries
• One Pillow

Keep in mind that this is just household stuff. The clothes we’ve acquired along the way are a whole different matter . . .

I’m kinda proud of what we’ve lived on for the last two years. One rule we’ve lived by for the fulltiming RV lifestyle is, when it comes to kitchen stuff, whatever utensils we have in the rig must serve at least two purposes. A single use tool has no place in the RV galley. In our new home base, I think I’ll stick to that rule.

The best advice we got for packing? Carol White’s Live Your Road Trip Dream book. Don’t hit the road without it.

Ah, the joys of puppyhood.

We left our new home to go work at Vickers Ranch again, but just for hay season. Well, let me clarify: Jim came here to go buck hay after I volunteered him. I came to help out wherever I’m needed. The hay season went off without a hitch, and the guys finished in record time, just before the rain started this weekend.

We’ll probably hang out here for just another few days, then return to our new digs. There’s a certain puppy who needs some serious training that he can’t get iright now, with so much activity and animals of every sort running around making him crazy.

It was always apparent that we didn’t get rid of enough stuff when we left Eureka in June 2007. Our $250 a month storage bill said it all.

When we hit the road, we hired a moving company to store our stuff, thinking that someday we would be willing to pay to ship it to us, wherever we landed. But until the moving company actually put it all in their warehouse, we had no idea how much our storage bill would be. By the time we learned what the damage was, it was too late.

The Horrors of Excess

While in storage, our stuff took up five crates at 4′ x 7′ x 7, for a grand total of 980 cubic feet. Once we closed escrow on our house and saw what our finances looked like, that there was no way we were going to shell out the $5k the moving company wanted to deliver our stuff, so we opted to go get it ourselves.

The only problem was that I never actually saw how much space our junk took up, until we landed in Eureka for just one stealth night in August. When we arrived at the moving company’s warehouse with our 26′ moving truck, our jaws dropped.

A massive amount of boxes were stacked  and waiting. At first, the two movers we hired to help load weren’t even sure if it would all fit. As they started loading, I began making piles of stuff that we would ditch if it didn’t.

I wanted to cry. All this time I thought that we had really downsized. Who was I kidding?! The excessive boxes of clothes, kitchen stuff, and knicknacks, was unreal. I kicked myself up and down the parking lot, cursing at our naivety in thinking we had gotten rid of all but our essentials.

Eventually, the movers made it all fit. We left Eureka in less than 24 hours, and lugged it back to Colorado.

Note to Self: Lesson Learned

Two years ago, I thought we were keeping only the essentials. But I’m not the same person I was then. The road has taught me that I don’t need much to have an enjoyable life. I don’t need eight pairs of jeans, or three different sets of dinner plates to feel complete.

Sure, it’s nice to have some of my favorite things back under our roof, like my card making stuff and my bread machine. But when it comes down to it, I’ll take the incredible journeys we’ve had over all of our material possessions any day.