PP #15: Our house is a very very very fine house
Project: Pioneer #15, January 17, 2024 (Wednesday 9am)
What a week and a half! We pulled the trigger on a new-to-us home and drove ol’ Henrik 2.5 hours to seal the deal and tow the new rig home on Thursday. In my last post, I gave my process for buying stuff, using it, and then selling it for a profit. Another item is to always, always check the details carefully. When buying a vehicle or house, the stress is usually high and paperwork is flying all over the place. Mistakes are made, and often not in your favor. When we bought a car for Giavana years ago, we caught a mistake by the dealer and turned it into a big discount for ourselves. As well, the RV dealer we bought our new home from made a mistake, we pounced, and got an incredible deal. We bought it for pretty much what we’ll sell the much smaller Red House for. And, someday we’ll sell it for a profit due to that. Don’t feel bad, business is business.
Project: Pioneer is the live reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle, just at the start of winter 2023. (Audio at this link, Apple, and Spotify)
Due to a wire transfer snafu, it was a long day closing everything out, and we ended up getting on the road home much latter than planned. We arrived home after dark, resulting in some drama and hub-bub in the hood. Sheesh, it was only 7pm! All we could do was park the new rig, still attached to Henrik, and crawl into Red House to pass out, for one last time.
Over the next three days, we scrambled to dismantle the winter skirting and plumbing on Red House, clean her, move her, put the new rig in place, hook that up so we had heat, water, and power, and then start transferring all our (remaining) crap from one RV to the other. Of course, this was during the usual horrible weather, a common theme in everything we’ve tried to do lately, if you’ve kept up with this journal.
During all this, we went to our storage unit to dig out the original sofa we’d taken out of Red House in order to build a workstation in its place. We’ve been to this storage place a dozen or more times. There are about a hundred units inside, and there’s never been anyone else there. Of course, this time, after we’d emptied the contents of ours, scattered all around it to get to the sofa, the guy who rents the adjoining unit shows up and we have to move it all so he can get to his. What are the odds?
Then, we pulled Red House out of our site and into an empty one two slots down. It had been empty since the original resident got caught cheating on his wife (mentioned in an earlier journal post) months ago, and they packed up and hightailed it out of Dodge. Of course, that one day we had Red House there a lady showed up all mad saying she had rented the spot but hadn’t bought an RV yet. She assumed the owner was double-renting it and came up to us in a huff. More drama. She had never been around before. What are the odds? The morale of the story is “don’t tempt fate.” I try to live by that, but when you’re exhausted, you often take shortcuts.
It was a grueling three days. We now own a fraction of the possessions normal people do, but still found ourselves asking, “Why do we have all this crap?” Some went to the dumpster. There was a line in a recent western show we were watching. A Native American had to escort a pioneer woman to safety after her covered wagon was burned, and she had a lot of crap too. He said to her, “The difference between what you need and what you want is what will fit on the back of your horse.”
I was racing against time on Sunday to get the skirting around the new RV. It was damn cold, but supposed to get much colder that night and the following nights. If I didn’t get the skirting on, our new-to-us RV would likely have frozen, perhaps burst pipes, no water, no flushing. Plus, Packers kickoff was at 4:30 in the playoff game against Dallas. Priorities! I finished and made it through the door with just enough time to strip and crawl frozen, wet, in broken-bodied old man pain, into our nice new huge bathroom for a long hot shower. Giavana, the angel, had laid out fresh dry clothes and had the extra-strength Tylenol ready. We relaxed in our nice heated, massaging recliners with the potato skins and wings she cooked up, and drank a little red wine from the bottle, like two hobos, because we had no idea where our glasses were and were too tired to look. Packers won in a big upset, too. What a wonderful end to a very, very difficult few days.
If you’ve been following this pioneer adventure so far, you can probably guess what one task I left undone. Like before, the last item I procrastinated on was hooking up the sewer. We now have the luxury of much bigger black and grey tanks, so it wasn’t as high a priority as electric and water. Plus, poop. It will be much easier, as we backed the new rig in such that the existing hard plumbing I already ran will just about fit. I’ll just need to cut some PVC and put the pieces together. I’m planning to do it tomorrow (heh), but those tanks are filling.
So, our current status is Red House is at our local RV shop getting winterized and ready for sale (how sad!). Giavana had to leave just after our weekend debacle for some travel. I’m hustling to get things all nice and set up for when she returns on Thursday. We have so much more room now! In Red House, we literally had to turn sideways to get by one another in the very short space we had. It was purely claustrophobic. Now we feel like we’re in a real house. Bigger fridge, bigger everything. A separate bedroom instead of just a privacy curtain. Space for items we previously had to put in our deck containers out in the cold on our patio, or in storage. We have a home theater system in front of those luxurious recliners, and I’ll be mounting our other TV up in the bedroom. We could tell little Pia was very down in the dumps in Red House. She had no room at all to move around. Now she’s happier, her own bed on the floor and lots of space to visit us both during the day when we’re working or relaxing. It’s only a 30 foot long RV, but it feels like heaven. See the perspective comments I made last time!
We need a new name, though! It’s not Red, and there’s only ever going to be one Red House. This RV model line is called Imagine, also the title of one of my favorite songs of all time. John Lennon asked in that song, what if we gave up on all these ideas in our various beliefs that cause so much divisiveness among us? No countries, no borders, one species populating one small blue sphere, a speck in the universe, and just shared and were kind to one another? Our RV has “Imagine” in big letters on the front and back. I’d like to get some vinyl lettering to apply below it, “all the people, livin' life in peace…” Maybe after I get the sewer hooked up :-)
Now that we’re settled, I’ll get the pics out to you paid subscribers this week (promise!) so you can see the differences for yourself. I’m really hoping life settles down and slows down for the rest of this winter. I want to get back to writing, my awkward, untalented attempts to play music, us both relaxing more together, seeing family more, leisure reading. I want to write that spirituality/after life post next, I’ve been looking forward to it, making notes, and want to do a good job since it’s a lifelong curiosity and passion of mine, and has been quite a journey.
As I wrap this journal post up this morning, it’s single-digits cold and snow-covered outside. The new rig is holding up so far, it has the arctic package, but…it’s an RV, not a house. I’m nervous the tanks will freeze. Winter RVing is tough, I don’t think I want to do it again. Head south, old man! Not Florida, sadly, as it’s become a haven of Dark Ages anti-science anti-medicine cultism. The resulting appearance of fun stuff like leprosy and malaria are not surprising. If we have another pandemic (and we’re sure to), there will be lots of property for sale! Until the climate change and Mother Nature claim it, that is.
We’re being presented with choices this election season. We have candidates who cater to the most unGodly instincts we have built in—distrust of anyone who is different, hate, greed, divisiveness. It could be the ultimate test, for the Rapture, to easily identify and separate the good from the not good. We know what happens then. Be good. Be kind. Be compassionate. Help those with less. Be forgiving. Disavow your base instincts. You’ll find yourself happier. You may find yourself in heaven someday, rather than whatever alternative there is. I’ll elaborate more next journal!
What’s next? Imma get this sewer done! We’re hoping Red House sells quickly, to be done with that last part of this transition. We’re already well into January! In a few short months we’ll be picking out our site for the spring and summer, down in the wooded normal part of this property. Giavana gets home this week, and we should start to settle into a new routine in our new humble abode. But, you never know what’s in store next. It’s never a dull moment here! Please share this post on your socials!
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Mark Twain
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