It's All Jenga, Up In Here!

 One of the many challenges we find, living this nomadic life, is...achieving balance. 

Seems apropos for a geologist...

Balance, in how we spend our days: some are spent not 'doing much,' if one defines 'doing much' as useful activities. We define doing much as collecting experiences be they really active...or watching a Starlink chain, glide silently, through the dark skies of night.

       

Not precisely what we saw, but close!

Balance in how far we drive, a rule of thumb being 4 hours per day. 

Balance in how we measure our success, in all things, but to the point of this essay...where to put stuff!

A genuine AI view of our basement...

Driving: Some days, we might drive as few as 2 hours a day, and rarely, we might find ourselves driving 6. it's all about 'reserve,' that illusive day-to-day, changeable target of what we have in our gumption tanks. When driving to our next destination, the two points above are related; the joy is in the journey.

A musical interlude to that point...

https://youtu.be/C9bMqIwemIA

Measuring successes: that's an easy one, at least at first glance. When we began this crazy idea of full-timing the RV life, our main goal, our inviolate North Star, was to get experiences over things.

Experiencing bending over, under a thing...

We--all of us, mostly--live our lives, getting things: houses, cars, sheds full of tools, animals, ya know...things. They are all useful, but are they necessary, to enjoy this journey?

Mostly, no.

What we did: when packing, which was done in a blind rush, just before we took off, was to arrange stuff in the trailer than seemed to make sense, and in the quantities we felt we needed.

well...we were about half correct! Along our last four month's path, we've winnowed down a lot of stuff: WHY did we think we needed three sets of measuring cups? WHY did we bring the keyboard for the Mac computer, a computer which is residing in our storage container, in Denver?

It seemed like a good idea, at the time!

We have arranged...rearranged...moved things around...disassembled closets and cabinets and under-chassis storage, multiple times, not only to make more organizational sense of various areas but to get it all to fit!

We have created a thirty-five foot long 
Jenga puzzle...

Not *exactly* our RV, but you get the idea!

So, onwards, in our adventure: next stop: San Antonio, Texas!

Our Journey.....

 March 27th, 2025

It's time.

The temperature is rising. about a week ago, the temps suddenly rose to 100F, and the locals assure us we'll see sustained weeks of 110,  The LTVA (long-term vehicle area) permit ends in about 2 weeks. We are getting itchy to move on! We'll be packing up, and moving down to Imperial Dam, at Senator Wash. It's another BLM LTVA, so our pass will work there, too.

Have we mentioned it's getting hot?

😅😓

We've learned a huge number of things,  at Quartzsite: how to monitor and manage our limited water supply: how to poop other places (to further our limited water supply!); how to cook wonderfully delicious meals in cramped quarters: how we were correct.

Correct? How were we correct?

We had it correct, this way: we love the time we spend together, in our tiny home, we were correct in the assessment we had a strong-enough partnership to survive, surmount, and surpass any challenges (and there are a TON!), we were correct in dumping much of our worldly possessions, and pursue a nomad lifestyle.

Remember us saying, in past updates, that we wanted to collect experiences, and not things?

It's hard to convey the lightness of being this lifestyle presents: day to day, we awake with a sense of "what's next?", unlike the feeling of being rooted in a single place, which is more like, "Yea...what's next is go to work/repair things/go shopping/pay bills/plan on doing things."

Wait..what's that you say? 

"How is anything different than when you were living in Colorado?"

It's different.

Out here, there's the road. Out here, there's a daily tingle, a sparkle that can sometimes be subsumed by the sameness of rooted-in-place living. Certainly, being retired makes a huge difference, but it goes even farther than that.

Out here, there's a type of intentionality that isn't always expressed or available, at a fixed location. we get...comfortable. We get used to the '9 to 5' patterns, to the set of things that, because you're in a set location, become...rote.

It's...  not the same grind, day to day. It's a grind, but a far less-abrasive grind. it's a grind we have fully chosen, a grind that has, as its goal, for us to see things and places we have never seen before. The immediacy of the choices we must make are exhilarating,

Some of those places and things...

An interesting rig!

Us, at Mittry Lake

The rear of the The Beast!

One of the vintage tanks, on display, at Yuma Proving Grounds

My bestest travel companion!

In a fixed location version of home, you have a far narrower 'path' to experiencing those things: weekend getaways, vacations that often are fewer than two weeks, or quick daytrips to nearby places. 

On the road, we get to spend hours arranging those trips, we delight in reading maps and brochures, happily planning those trips. We are continually 'trip tikking' our journey; we aren't just taking two weeks and hurriedly grasping at an adventure: we are intentional in our quest.

The poem by Joe Henry looms large..

Eagle feathers bound in wax

Won't get us to the Sun.

The dream's the thing

Our holy wings

Our journey just begun.

Seeya soon!