NomadicScribe.net

Yeah, so things didn’t really work out like that (do they ever?). It took all day for the garage to fix my car (they replaced the boots, not the axle), so we didn’t leave Ada until 5pm on Thursday. Karen Jean generously offered to pay for a hotel room for us Thursday night, and we accepted, staying at a motel near Amarillo, TX. Friday night, however, we camped out at the Grand Canyon, and checked out the sights this morning (Saturday morning). Pics coming soon for all of the above.
Tonight we’re in a motel room in Salt Lake City. We were going to camp at Bryce Canyon, but didn’t have a number for them (and because of shitty cell reception, couldn’t get one) so we couldn’t make a reservation, so by the time we got out there, they were well past closed. We decided to just dig in and drive another 3 hours into Salt Lake City so we can get a head start tomorrow morning. We will run some errands and then see the Bonneville salt flats on our way to the Sawtooth National Forest near Twin Falls, Idaho. After that we’ll camp somewhere near Eugene/Dexter, OR on Monday and Tuesday nights.
I also want to give a shout-out to my “homies” in Austin, whose company I miss!
Also, thanks to everyone leaving comments. It’s encouraging to know that people read this thing!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll have the front axle of my car worked on (eek!) because of a torn boot, and then we’ll head out to Oregon. We’ll drive and camp in the areas of: Albuquerque, NM; Flagstaff, AZ; Salt Lake City, UT; Twin Falls, Idaho; and Eugene, OR. On Wednesday and Thursday, we’ll join the Lost Valley community for their monthly visitor days and interview some of their residents, including their founder, Dianne Brause!
We have our itinerary and map online.

Finally had a chance to take pics of the tent. Check it.

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Here we go. (mpg, 8.1 MB),

We are finally out of the apartment. We’ll be in Dallas for a few days to put stuff into storage, organize our gear, and then we’re off!

So we’ve been running around for the past week like chickens with our heads cut off. Posting 10 things on craigslist in the wee hours of the morning makes the next day very hectic. Try doing that twice in a week. We have finally gotten rid of most of our furniture (only a broken desk is left). I dropped off 7 bags of clothes, sheets and towels at Goodwill about an hour ago. The hardest thing was sorting through all the sentimental stuff I’ve been dragging with me forever. I probably had 4 boxes of pictures, notes, writings, etc. which I never really looked at, but brought with me every time I moved. I’ve whittled it down to two boxes. I recycled a lot of the stuff I held onto from Y.O.U. (Youth of Unity) - newsletters, notes, etc. I still feel a little bad about it, as if I’m throwing away old memories. But then, if I never looked at them, what was the point of carrying them around? It’s like that with so much of the clutter we’ve gotten rid of. We carried things around because we might need them in the future. But no more.

I have two-weeks worth of clothes. Seven t-shirts, seven collared shirts, five pairs of pants or shorts, underwear, socks. I’m putting some of my “fancy” clothes into storage. I haven’t worn them recently either. The only furniture I’m retaining is my black “Dr. Evil” chair, which is both very cool and sentimental (my Dad bought it in England in the 60’s and brought it to the U.S. when he moved here). I’m entrusting friends with some books, movies, a socket set. Pretty much everything I own will live in my car. This is how I spell freedom.

We went on a trial run camping trip this past weekend to Pedernales Falls state park (about an hour outside of Austin). Our tent totally r0×0rs. April really did her research on this one. The tent is the Base Camp 4 from REI and it is the Winnebago of tents. It has a door on each side, many pockets on the sides in the inside and a hook at the top to hang a lantern. The rain fly extends out over one of the doors (extra pole to hold it up) so that you get sort of a little porch - I think that’ll be great during the rain. One of the more awesome features is the fact that both the top of the tent and the rain fly have matching vents, so that you can have everything all sealed up and then pop open these little zippers at the top of the tent to get some fresh air in/out.
I’m also very pleased with my self-inflating mat and the sleeping bags. The flannel sleeping bag liners we got make it seem like we’re still sleeping in sheets. More later. Still have tons of things to sell on craigslist!

I am posting this from my powerbook through my new RAZR V3 cell phone (acting as a bluetooth-connected modem). While it’s definitely not as fast as broadband, it does work. I tried two different bandwidth tests and one of them timed out after 3 minutes and the other one tested as 3.6 KB/sec down/2.1 up. W00t!

We now know that my last day will be Monday, January 23. This will give me about 7 days to finish planning, get rid of all of my stuff and to get our apartment cleaned out and cleaned up. I’m making a final list in the wiki of the little things that will need to be done, but some of the biggest are done. I finally got the balls to call friends and family that I haven’t talked to in a long time. Hopefully I’ll be able to see them all as we pass through.

I’m still looking for a home for Samatha. I have one posibility, and if that doesn’t work out I’ll take her to stay with Grace (Benjamin’s Mom) as a last resort. That is definetely a blessed emergency blanket. Now I know no matter what Samatha will be ok.

I whipped up a logo for the site and the wiki. w00t!

We still have a lot of planning left to do, but we have a few dates:
Jan. 13th - Benjamin’s last day of work
Jan. 20th - (weekend) camping trip to try out the packing and the gear
Jan. 27th - April’s last day of work
Jan. 28th - going away/take the rest of our stuff party

I realized today looking through the wiki that there is so much information that I’ve attained that I haven’t added yet. I’ll work on that tonight.

In other news, Benjamin and I bought our first pair of the awesome Liner and Wool Hiking socks I described on the gear page (and in the christmas list) and I think I’m in love. There’s no turning back, and I’m really pleased that at least that part of the equipment fiasco is solid. (remember socks… on a trip like this… is a big deal!)

We moved our furniture around in the apartment and moving all the stuff that goes in and on top of the furniture we moved is really intimidating. I still have to get rid of ALL this stuff… before Febuary!