Woo-hoo! Well, it’s official…we are now on our Radical Sabbatical!
I wanted to catch you up on what’s been happening as well as to let you know what to expect from the blog in the coming months.
Last week was pretty crazy…I had some minor surgery to rule out cancer (negative–thankfully!), followed by 2 days of being “under the influence” of anesthesia and feeling like someone had taken out my brain and replaced it with cotton balls. Then an unexpected root canal to end the week, and I was DONE. All while trying to whittle down our 2-page to-do list, pack the apartment, sign 3 new clients to contracts in my business, and finalize the plans for the first stage of our new life this week!
Whew!
Catching Up
On Saturday we picked up the RV from the most amazing dealership, The Car Show in Colorado Springs, where owners Dave & Kate Unruh had been storing it for us since our purchase in April. These people are AMAZING! If you ever are in the market for an RV, whether new or used, or an automobile for that matter, The Car Show is worth the drive! Their son Jeremy, and salesman Dave Young, did a terrific job getting us through the process with no hassles.
Dave and his other son Will made sure the RV was in good-as-new, spotless shape; with new tires and parts, steam-cleaned carpets (twice!), and essentially made our 2006 Trailmanor 3124KS like a new RV trailer! It was thoroughly clean inside and out, everything functions like new, and their whole crew also assisted us rookies with getting the proper hitch, brake controller, and load equalizer installed on our Ridgeline!
Sunday was the day of our “Open RV BBQ” and we were blessed to have 8 of our very good friends join us on the Highway 128 ridge open space overlooking the Flatirons for our sendoff on this adventure! Some hot dogs and chicken on the grill, other summer cookout food, and a birthday cheesecake for Tim helped round out our get-together. Our very talented photographer friend Happy Sohi of Sohi Photography graciously agreed to photograph us at the end of the BBQ, and her gorgeous images are included below…we love them, and if you weren’t at the BBQ it will give you a sense of what it was like!
Monday was moving day…out of the apartment and into a 5×15 storage unit. We sold many of our furniture items, keeping only what we really loved, and despite having very few belongings still ended up feeling a bit like we have too much stuff! The day was carefully scheduled weeks in advance:
- Uhaul truck to pick up at 9am
- Movers set (and confirmed) to arrive at 10am
- 2-3 hours to load apartment and garage, drive 2 miles to storage unit and unload, then return Uhaul truck
- Leisurely return to apartment, put remaining items into RV, shower, close out our lease with the property manager, and be on our way around 6pm, at the latest
Yeah…NO!
So….we figured things were going to be a little off-schedule when 9:45 arrived and our truck was ready and waiting, but no call from the movers for directions to our place. Worse….nobody answered the phone when we called to ensure that our re-confirmation was still confirmed. We finally realized at 10:20 or so that they weren’t going to show up, and repeated phone calls were going straight to voicemail. And this was the same company that moved us in August of last year, doing such an amazing job that we raved about them to all our friends!
So Plan B was activated: Google and call as many other movers as possible to find a crew of 2-4 guys to come over ASAP and load/unload our truck. At this point, we were hoping to avoid Plan C, which was Tim and I start hauling things ourselves. 🙂
After a flurry of calls, and a few cuss words, we finally found 4 guys who could help us out…but not until 2pm. That was cool, though, and they did a terrific job. It just meant that our “leisurely” part of the original plan turned into a 15-minute scramble to get the remaining items outside the apartment door in time to return the keys/garage remote/pool pass to the property manager. Oh, and no shower after a long, hot, sweaty day. 🙁
But in the end, it all worked out well, and around 6:30pm we left on our Radical Sabbatical with the truck and RV haphazardly loaded down…and made it to the Walmart parking lot about 2 miles away. There we set up the RV and spent about 2 hours organizing things and rearranging the load, while taking breaks to watch yet another amazing sunset! Eventually we prepared to hit the road again, and decided that if we could just make it to Laramie, Wyoming (about 2.25 hours away) that we would stop there for the night.
The trip was uneventful…we were tired, but happy to be together and on the road with our dog, our new life stretching out ahead like the endless yellow and white lines on the road in front of us!
Then today we awoke to a 1-hour delay in departure caused by a water hose that would not detach from our camper, resulting in an unexpectedly heated adventure that involved KOA staff and finally a very talented mobile RV repair man named John, who quickly determined our problem and was happy to take $25 off our hands for the trouble. All in all, except for the fact that we need a new water hose, it worked out just fine, too!
Today we traveled for what seemed endless hours through Wyoming and stopped for the night at the Brigham City, Utah, KOA…which is about 45 minutes north of Salt Lake City on I-84. The campground is shaded and lush with green grass, and the bonus is that it also sports a great view of the Great Salt Lake…lovely in the distance! Sorry no pictures tonight…we were just happy to get off the road.
What to expect
We intend to post daily from this point on…unless we mention otherwise! We’ll also be taking more photographs, both with my camera and our Droids as we travel, and between here and our Facebook page, we’ll try to include as many as we can for you to see!
We are looking forward to changing the view outside our offices, and want to be sure you all realize that we’re not on vacation…we have just decided to work from a variety of places! In light of that, we are getting ready to launch a “show us your office view” post on Facebook, so whip out that phone of yours and take a quick picture of your office space and/or the view from your window/door/cubicle and post it on our page! We’d love to see a mosaic of workspace views! Watch our Facebook page for this…you should see it in the next day or two!
I’m going to leave you with a bunch of the photos Happy took…just click one to start the slide show and then click the right side of each subsequent picture to advance the show! Once we get set up in Washington we’ll photograph the interior and post them for you to see as well! And finally, one of my favorite quotes by a man I respect very much, Ronald Reagan:
My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose–somehow we win out.
Happy Wednesday!
by candy
show hide 6 comments