Author: Dave

Earlier tonight I thought about being home again.

I don’t find myself thinking of being home often, instead I mostly think about how much I’m enjoying this trip and how I hope the back half feels as unhurried and appreciable as the front did. But, tonight I found myself thinking about sitting in the backyard or in the driveway, enjoying the weather.

In my heart I know that I’ve chosen to be fully absorbed with this trip not only because I truly want to be present for it, which I most certainly do, but also because being absorbed helps me not think on the large scary unresolved and unknown thing waiting back home. Namely, what in God’s name will I do with my career thus far in the “after.” I’ve actually been proud at how I’ve not let the thought eat at me, but the fact still stands that I’ll be coming back to limbo.

We were in an art museum earlier, the exhibit was on impressionism, and I loved reading the little printed biographies pasted-up alongside each piece. One that stuck with me was about an artist who, prior to becoming an artist, was working as a banker. Once, when loaning money to an artist, he took possession of the artist’s paints and brushes as collateral. When the artist never came round to collect them, the banker began tinkering. And thus his latent passion, and considerable talent, was revealed.

The job I left, the thing I’ve been perfecting for nineteen years, the only real job I’ve ever had, the job I felt I was really good at, is finished. Done. Over. A first-world problem to be sure, as I’m still employed, but still something that’s awfully scary to me. Going back to nothing in particular, trying to find the next thing, restarting, rebuilding…

So I think I’m sort of on the lookout for paints and brushes. I mean, scary is scary is scary, right?

Goodnight.

Tough mornings with the kids lately. It’s become hard to get them up, fed, cleaned, and readied for school before it’s near, or even after, 10am, and that just doesn’t hunt. It’s always a ln argument, without fail either or both is all but guaranteed to add a sour note to what starts as a nice quiet routine.

Today I got angry, told them we’re going to remind them how good they have it by moving to a “just like it’d be at home” style schedule for the next several days. Up at 6am, readied and breakfasted by 7:30am to head to school, no fun extra-curriculars until after 3pm, etc.

I think it’s a good idea, and am going to propose to Sharaun. It’ll bring hell from them, to be sure, but maybe it’ll help, also. It’s not that I’m wanting to “punish” them with the normal… I just want to free us from the spirit-sucking 9am-10am exercise of pushing a rock uphill, it’s become a turd right under our first bootfalls and that’s no fun.

I’ll let ya know. Hugs.

Rain again, and it doesn’t look that my most recent roof sealing maintenance quite got all the water entryways taken care of – there’s still one persistent, but thankfully small, leak up in the front cab.

Since I knew we’d be getting rain overnight (though I underestimated how much), I did another walk around visual inspection yesterday afternoon. Found maybe one or two possible culprit spots and will have to try and seal them when the rain stops. For now I put a towel down and that’ll have to suffice.

I know that we’re heading into country where winter is real, and I’m hoping I’ve planned a northward tack that’s non-aggressive enough to keep us below the worst of it, moving up the latitudes as we move closer to Spring. Still I expect we’ll encounter late snow at least somewhere along the way, and we’ll certainly hit the New England mud season.

I am a little leery of weather on this leg of the journey, I worry a bit about being stuck in the RV with too much rain or snow, ending up with cabin fever or simply just longing for sunshine. I continue to believe, though, that we’ve got plenty of beautiful days ahead of us where we can be outside exploring, swinging in hammocks, sitting by fires.

OK, time to jump in the shower and get ready for the day. Savannah by evening. Peace & safe travels.

We’ve reached the halfway mark of our year on the road, the endeavor Sharaun and I called “doing what matters” (all my spreadsheets begin with “DWM_”). On the one hand it feels like it’s gone by way too fast… and on the other there are bits at the beginning we have a hard time believing were connected to this same journey.

Being a momentous occasion, though, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on a couple things. One, I wanted to do share some of the statistics I’ve been keeping, even if they’re not of interest to you, dear reader, I’ll have them here for posterity. Two, I wanted to go back and revisit the “what I’ve learned so far” bullets I captured at the 25%-compete mark.

Since the latter is a pretty heady and cerebral self-examination type thing, and the former is a nice easy data-gathering exercise, can you guess which one I’m choosing to lead with? Right your are! Here, then, is a nice selection of data about the trip so far, for all you nerds:

Driven: 7,017mi
Stops: 63
Nights/stop: ~2.3
Cost/night: ~$22
Fuel: ~$1900
States: 11
National parks: 6 (11 NPS-managed areas)

Just as a point of clarification, the average cost per night does include free nights spent with friends and relatives or in parking lots of Walmarts or Cracker Barrel or Bass Pro or whatever. Also the gas is pretty correct, but does not include propane, which might be another $200-$250 this far.

Anyway, them’s the details thus far.

Peace.

Sometimes, when I look at my hands in the right light, resting, say, on my knees or on a table, palms down, I see my age there. The size, the criss-cross of tiny lines and the little scars and the color.

Other than that, even with all the gray in my travel-long beard, I don’t often see my age. I don’t feel particularly old, so maybe the feeling overrides the seeing. I mean, we’ve got an almost-teenager and will be married twenty years this year and are currently mired in a “midlife opportunity,” but I still don’t feel old.

But my hands are where I see it, don’t know why.

We’re halfway through this week, almost over the hump of our year on the road. I already wish we had longer. Did the first rough planning of where we’ll be when on the back half, but am purposely keeping it loose and open to serendipity.

Let’s get moving. Peace.

It’s a gray morning in South Florida. The humidity has everything sticky, even the air feels like you could push it around. We ran the air conditioning all night just to dry out the place a bit.

I misjudged two people pulling into our campsite last night, neighbors on our immediate right and left. Both were those quick snap judgments we humans, or at least me, are so unfortunately prone to. The first, because he had his truck parked in our spot as we arrived, and the second based on what he was wearing and the state of his campsite.

Soon after we’d parked, and as I was out getting the kids’ bikes down, I learned how miscalculated I was when both neighbors came calling separately to introduce themselves, welcome us to the loop, and ask about our journies – the RV campground version of delivering a meatloaf on move-in day.

Chris, a mortgage broker with a flight attendant wife, had his rig in the shop and the whole family was living in a large tent in the meantime. With no storage, they’d taken essentials from the vehicle and tucked them around the site, mostly stuff for the kids and thus strewn around as kids will do. Preconceived notions & bias: 1, Dave: 0.

Antone, a tax adjuster, and his family were waiting for escrow to close on their new house so they could get the keys, the old house having already sold. He moved his truck almost as soon as he saw us pull into the loop, and apologized for having it there initially. Preconceived notions & bias: 2, Dave: 0.

Each family had kids, and they, unsurprisingly, hit it off, playing like long lost best buds. Cohen and Antone’s kid, in particular, played well into the dark and chose to eat late dinners rather than stop. Preconceived notions & bias: 0, children: 2.

“… Unless you turn and become like little children…” I think someone said that once.

Peace, hugs.

8pm in the Everglades.

The oak that was too damp when we bought it last week at a campground up north finally dried some and is burning fairly well in the fire pit, not a showy fire but hot and consistent. Every once in a while it gives one of those massive pops and sprays sparks.

Cohen’s in the RV taking a shower and Keaton’s sitting out with me playing ukulele. The mosquitoes are out so we’re both sprayed down and I’ve set the little portable zapper lamp we got for Christmas ten feet or so away. It’s popped a few bugs, but I’m still unsure if it was worth it.

We rode our bikes to the visitor center today, left around half past ten for the eightish mile round trip. Everyone did well, but we all underestimated the distance, heat (80° today), and difficulty of terrain (grass, some soft almost-mud, and potholed bedrock). We also should’ve put on sunblock, didn’t think we’d be out so long.

It’s beautiful here, I’m glad we came.