About that date...

Robin and I received official notification that our new reporting date to Miami is now (**drumroll**) October 26th, 2008.

This is significantly sooner that we'd originally been offered, and a great thing for us in the scheme of reporting to a new facility in time to bid for days off and vacation time.

While we are excited, very excited in fact, that we get to go earlier than the first date (in January '09) and enjoy the winter in Florida amongst the snowbirds we also now have a shorter deadline to accomplish the myriad of things required of us before we pull the plug on nearly 25 years of residency in the same town. Oh boy, there's a lot to get done! I was planning on a full month just to clean the garage! Now I have to schedule a weekend for it.

Well, stay tuned .. I gotta get to work! :)

Wanna see it?

Just got around to posting some selected photos of our new dwelling.

Just for fun, here's what 'downsizing' really means :)

Photo Album

Enjoy the tour.

We're going to do a "walk-through" and formally accept delivery of the coach in 5 more days. It's excitig and we hope to hook up and pull it around and practice backing up

About Hope

I have a lot to write about...it has been an amazing couple of weeks, full of highs and lows, hopes and disappointment and miracles and loss.

About 4 weeks ago I travelled across the northwest pulling a trailer and stopped to visit family in three different cities along the way. One stop was in Spokane, where the majority of my side of the family resides and I spent some quality time with my mom, brothers, aunt, uncle and cousins. We had a great time visiting and catching up, even though I was on a pretty pressing schedule.

Shortly after I left my uncle became confused of mind and speech and was taken to the hospital for tests where it was discovered that a tennis ball sized tumor was residing in his frontal lobe, pressing against the brain and causing terrible trouble. This is called "Gleobalstoma"(or Glioblastoma) and it is brain cancer and was at stage IV, very bad. He was given about a week to live if there was no surgery and the prognosis was less than hopeful for a succesful outcome even with the surgery to remove the tumor. Dire predictions of post-operative coma or paralysis made it look pretty hopeless. I spoke with my relatives by phone daily to keep updated on the sitatuion and it was decided that they'd try the surgery and hope for the best. This really wasn't much of a decision, as the outcome of waiting would've been a very quick death for my uncle.

The family was in a lot of turmoil, and the worst of it is simply facing the unknown spectre of a worst-case scenario, but the clan is tough and resilient and determined so we gathered our prayers and set to work supporting my uncle through this ordeal.


The surgery, about 6 hours worth, came off without a hitch and Howard made it through the recovery portion and into ICU. I received reports (phone calls and text messages) the he was doing better than expected for such a massive surgery and the doctors were surprised by his post-op progress. He had come out if able to speak a few words, and within a few hours he was tracking with his eyes and responding to people. Soon he was without a feeding tube and was taking nourishment by mouth. This was all on Friday (8/1).


Saturday morning (8/2) I received a few more updates but was suddenly overcome with an urge to go see him; to be with my family and to see if there was anything at all I could do to lend support to the recovery process. I have no idea where this tug came from, it just slipped into my thinking while I was at work. I had toyed with the idea of flying up there, but airfares for the short-notice purchase were extremely high so I had written off getting to go back to Spokane in the near future, content to just keep praying and keep connected as best I could.

I told Robin about my desire to go, and she supported me completely, so we dropped everything, took off early from work (we do keep pretty much the same schedules) and prepared for my second drive up there in a month. We packed up, got a quick oil change for the car and drove pretty much all day to our stop in Billings, MT. The next day (Sunday, 8/3) we drove the breadth of Montana and through Idaho and to Spokane, arriving in the evening and proceeding straight to the hospital to see Howard in ICU.

There's something about the first sight of someone close to you in the hospital, connected to monitors, IVs, circulation trousers, and all. It's a surreal vision of someone you know, but it somehow doesn't seem possible that this is the same person. The huge incision in the skull was held together by innumerable staples, and his countenance showed that my uncle was obviously under a terrible strain from the surgery. It's a challenge to take it all in, yet it's family so whatever it looks like, it's still the man I know and care about.


We visited, Howard responded, we prodded for recognition and responses. He faded in and out of the pain medications and took minutes of rest follwed by short times of awareness and communication. We left and had dinner with our family, then Robin and I retired to a local motel to get some much needed rest.

Monday (8/4) we spent time with Howard and did what little we could to support my aunt and other family members. This day Howard was a little more talkative, and was able to take food on his own once a spoon was put in his hand. It appeared at first glance that his progress was way ahead of what was predicted, and that a recovery back to some semblance of normalcy might indeed be in the future. We all knew that this would be a hard road of recovery, and that the life we had known before might not ever be, but seeing his quick recovery thusfar was showing us that we shouldn't underestimate what God could do here. The hospital staff had decided that they could move him out of Intensive Care and up to a normal ward since he was doing so well.

There was a lot to celebrate here, and we took heart in the precious time that we got to spend with him there.


Tuesday morning (8/5) we visited again, and he was moved to his new room on a regular care floor. He was talking, eating, and moving better than the previous day, and the therapists got him out of bed and into a chair to let him sit up for a while.

Robin and I needed to leave and get back home and back to work so we bid farewell and set out for the house, stopping in Coeur D'Alene to briefly visit our daughter and grandkids.


The trip home was going well until about 10:00 P.M. when I received a text message, then a phone call that Howard had suddenly passed away, a suspected blood clot issue that had taken him from us in mere seconds. There was nothing anyone could've done. One moment he was sitting and eating and then he was gone.

The next hundred or so miles were pretty rough, and we considered turning back around since we were only 7 hours away, but there was little we could do so we proceeded home the next day and waited for the rest of the family to make further arrangements. What a sudden turn of events...all that hope, the excitement and anticipation suddenly yanked out from under us. It all seemed so unfair, in spite our openly affirming that we would only hope for God's will in this matter. Sometimes His will is hard. This was hard. There would never be a satisfactory answer to the 'why' question.

Robin and I flew back this last weekend (8/9 - 8/12) to attend the funeral. Uncle Howard was honored as a husband, father, friend and veteran of the U.S. Navy. He was given a beautiful service and a suitable resting place.

I just want you to know that I was honored and blessed to know him, I will miss him dearly, and it would take a day to tell everyone what a fine and honorable man he was. Our world will be different without him. There will be a hole in my heart forever.

I cannot discount the time that Robin and I got to see him and be with him after the surgery. I am so very thankful that we were allowed to spend time with this great man before he passed away. He was a wonderful fellow all the way through, you didn;t need to make any excuses for him anywhere because he was honorable and decent and strong in his beliefs. He was a great storyteller, a wonderful card player, and great friend and a role model.

Just ask anyone who knew him.

Farewell, "Old Paint"

I sold and said goodbye to a piece of machinery yesterday. I normally do not get attached to such things and I usually scoff at those who do; who name their cars, who think that their vehicles, appliances or tools have personality traits or develop attachments to inanimate objects. I likely do this to prevent myself from taking it personally when a device or machine behaves poorly or refuses to work at all. I know that a piece of machinery does not care what kind of day I've had, how much of a hurry I'm in or what my mood is so I try not to get too involved in trying to decipher the whims of a hundred moving parts at any given moment.
So forgive me now as I wax melancholy, because I am sad to let this particular machine leave my life.
I've been riding motorcycles pretty much all my life, but until I bought this KLR650 I didn't really have a 'relationship' with a bike. Prior to this particular bike I raced, I diced along the roadways, I climbed hills and cruised highways all on board two-wheeled conveyances that were tons of fun, fuel efficient, and occasionally adrenaline generating.




Farewell KLR

But until I decided on a purpose-driven purchase, I hadn't really come to grips with buying a machine that I would customize, plan around, and test for a particular mission. This purchase came after much soul-searching, re-searching, surfing, dialog, and eventually hunting to find the right one. Planning for the ultimate-mid-life-crisis-adventure-motorcycle ride was a big deal in so many respects and determining the right motorcycle was both daunting and rewarding.

This bike filled the bill with all the check-boxes filled and it ended up being exactly the right machine for me and my big plans. By the time it was all said and done I had ridden a little over 5,500 miles in one trip, and pushed every limit the bike had; both highway and off-road, just to have the bike reward me with a "sure, we can do that" response. We've been cold and hot, wet and muddy and arid, to 12,000+ feet and to sea level and covered miles of pavement and rocks, and sand and mud and fields without so much as a single bauble of complaint.

I had fun ... I grew to expect and depend on a reliable and exhilarating ride, and I grew to love the machine.

Sheesh .. I'll miss it.

Thanks for you're understanding :)

Getting Hitched

Today we drove the new truck, now lovingly referred to as "Fordzilla" up to the RV dealer to have the sliding hitch installed. IT was a quick and painless installation and we absoultely love the idea that in only 3 minutes we can have the hitch back out and use the whole bed of the truck again.
The good side is that the hitch is readily removable, and the bad side is the same thing. We are discussing ways to make it a litle less easy to steal it, and I'm sure we'll come up with a simple, elegant, and inexpensive solution soon.

We toured the 5th wheel again this morning, with all the sliders put in this time. This is the first time we seen the interior all closed up and ready for transport. It is very cool how it all fits together, and amazing to see how tight things are when it is closed up. There is virtually no living space available with the sliders in, but they thoughtfully left full acces to the bathroom and even the refrigerator. What more could you ask for when travelling across the country than to be able to pull over for a rest stop and get the head and the fridge :). We are hoping that the dealer will have the unit (called a 'coach') into the shop and made ready for delivery to us in just another week or two. We're really not sure how the timing will all work out, or whether we are really ready to take delivery just yet, but when it's ready we'll likely take it and do some shake-down trips on our weekends. As with any new vehicle, and RVs inparticular, there will undoubtedy be some squawks to turn into the dealer and we spend some time aboard. This situation allows us to try it out for several weeks, and have anything that's not perfect fixed up locally before we go cross-country. Thankfully we've purchased a major brand (Keystone Montana) and there are numerous dealers and facilities along the way that we can go to should we need anything along the way. Yahoo!

Another Beautiful Day

High in the 90's today, clear blue skies, light breeze and a view of the mountains.
I have tor remember all this stuff as we prepare to head to the east coast. Watching the weather reports and RADAR maps for Florida has been .. interesting .. It just doesn't cool off there at night, so I can see why the big city doesn't really come to life till 10:00 P.M. on a regular basis.
Well, that'll probably fit our lifestyle OK, as we will be hiding out in an RV park somewhere, and only sojourn into the metropolis on our weekends. Besides, there are tons of beaches to discover and explore and a whole new part of the world called the Everglades to have a look at.
Tomorrow I'll be sleeping most of the morning and noon-time away, recovering from this stay-up-all-night and work thing we do around here. After that I'll likely poke around and continue trying to set up a wireless network in the house using only the cell phones as modems and connecting the computers through them via BlueTooth to hit the Internet. It'll likely be much slower than DSL, but for the price we wil be happy. It will also serve us to learn how to do this since these RV parks don't normally sport WiFi and we're not ready to hook up satellite TV/Internet yet (at $1,200 for an antenna, it may be quite some time! :) ) Using the cell phones' data plan should allow us to get on the internet pretty much anywhere there's digital coverage, and with Verizon it's quite a good coverage map.

Then I'll finish the projects on the KLR650 and deliver it to its new owner (sniff). I will be very sad to let go of this machine, but it's necessary to sell it both for the liquidity and the storage space problem while travelling and when we arrive in Miami. It's been an excellent machine, transporting me to the top of Alaska and climbing some amazing slick-rock in Moab. I hope it serves its new owner as well as it has me.
The list of "SOLD" items continues to grow, and it won't be too terribly long until we will be trying to pare down the last few things so we can move aboard the fifth wheel.
What an exciting week it has been!

IT'S HERE!!!

The new home has arrived! We got to go do a short tour of the new 5th Wheel a couple of days ago. It just arrived from the factory and is beautiful in every respect. We did our walkthrough and gave hem our first little squawk list. We'd asked for them to ~not~ install a TV in the bedroom, but they did anyway so the local service folks will uninstall it and give us a storage closet instead. We'd also ordered this unit with a convection-microwave, and it came with a standard microwave installed so they'll make good on that.
We made an appointment to get the hitch installed in the truck on Monday, and since we'll be there in the morning we can spend some more time fine-tooth-combing the new dwelling and see if we can start figuring out how we're going to move in and live there in the near future. It's exciting beyond measure, and it drives into sharp focus the fact that our planning is starting to become reality.

We've been showing the house about 2 or 3 times a week, and we're very hopeful that it will sell soon, before we have to beging making too many payments for the new wheels, RV, and moving expenses. Your prayers would be coveted toward that end.

On another note, I went down to get license plates for the truck and got my dose of sticker-shock; to the tune of nearly a grand... I thought for a while that it might be less expensive to just not register the thing and see how much it'd cost to pay for the tickets we might get :) but decided against it. And... since the truck is less than six months away from purchase, it would fall under a 6% sales tax hit if I tried to register it directly in Florida. So, we'll just make sure we're all legal and above board and play by the rules.

Now, I gotta go get a nap before the mid-shift tonight. :(