In some ways yesterday’s highlight was the conversation with our agent round about noon. We have passed all the “danger-points” short of the buyer’s final walk-through and actually signing papers. I can start thinking this is actually going to happen instead of worrying about a repeat of last year’s failed sale!
We had one appointment to deal with, but aside from that the day was relaxing and tiring. Relaxing because the nervous jitters are finally settling down, and tiring because all those trips up and down the stairs while loading Journey guaranteed that this morning I’d be achey.
The trade-off was getting Journey’sbasement pretty well re-loaded and re-arranged – at least for the initial go-round. There are a couple tubs to load in but I think the spaces provided are adequate.
While I was working on the basement Peg gave all the cupboards a good scrub. When she got done with that she loaded most of our clothing onboard. We’re gradually getting organized, seeing as we haven’t known where anything has been since we got back to Cudahy.
We’re intentionally keeping anything of value in the school while the coach is just sitting there on the tarmac — any of that stuff will go on board at the last minute. I like my neighbors here but no sense in tempting anyone!
We had time for a nice long walk — but when we got to the marina the breeze changed directions and we ended up spending time sitting on a bench just chatting about where we are in the process and what needs doing in the next week. It was a good time for touching base with each other about things we’ve been working on independently. Good to stay on the same page. And good to feel safe about planning and looking forward.
My new iPhone arrived — we had to pick it up at FedEx and I’ll get it activated sometime in the next few days. I finally got the current one backed-up so I can do a complete reload.
I notice Fulton IL has flood warnings — so we’re hoping by the time we get to Thomson Causeway all will be well. I checked their website and saw no warnings.
As we slowly begin loading gear onboard Journeythe staging inside the school is unreal! Piles here… Piles there… Piles, piles, every where! If I thought I couldn’t find anything for the last 8 months because some of our possessions were in the school and some in Journey,well, that was nothing compared to the temporary feeling of loss-of-control that we are in for the next couple days. I’m not sure what we’ll eat, or where, what we’ll wear, or not wear, because everything is getting sorted and resorted. I’m looking forward to completing the transition. But — It’s all FUN!
We aren’t in a big hurry to cram things into Journey— meaning we have 4 1/2 days to finish the process. Last year we did it all in about a day and a half. This year stretching it out is helping to fill the time and keep the pre-closing jitters under control, So, a little here and a little there is the order of the day. Do some other chores in between — like taking the CR-V back to the dealer for the seatbelt install, run to the bank for some currency changing, etc.. But the biggest part is getting things ready so that on the weekend everything can go onboard with order and purpose.
I guess one change in retirement that I enjoy most is not having to do things in a hurry. All my life I’ve either had deadlines handed to me, or I’ve made them up for myself — I seemed to need deadlines to get things done. Now I get my job done, but I am more willing to have multiple projects in the air at one time and to putter with one for a while, then putter with another, without obsessing about completing one before starting another. It’s wonderfully liberating. It makes for longer stories though.. 🙂
We continue paring down our possessions. While we’re in transition more items move to our “to be stored in Milwaukee” pile. It’s not a big pile — we don’t have that much stuff anymore. But I guess I have not yet gotten over downsizing; I’m moved to pare our possessions further. By the time we leave on Monday we’ll have moreroom in Journeythan we did last summer.
It’s the funny little things that have huge emotional attachment. For example, I don’t shave a lot. Most of the time I sport a beard. But I have a shaving brush I bought before we were married and a shaving mug that belonged to my dad. I brought them with us last year — and used them… well, maybe once.
Contrariwise — I almost put our blender into storage before thinking that we’ll be spending more time in warmer climes and the ability to mix up a smoothie or a frozen margarita might just come in handy — so that came OFF the “to be stored in Milwaukee” pile and back onto the kitchenpile. Win some, lose some.
There will be no leave-behinds in the spice category — most of my spices are already onboard — on one of Michael’s new spice shelves. For the next 4 days I cook bland food. If I get around to cooking at all. (just a personal choice there, no other reason.) Actually, we have frozen tuna steaks in the freezer, and shrimp, which will be gone before we leave on Monday. I picked up some luscious asparagus last night. Yum Oh — Asparagus in the Spring
Last year I stressed out because I had no idea how to get rid of 45 years worth of accumulation. I simply was not equipped to divest myself of that much in such a short period of time: I used to like my stuff. This year I am so on board with continually trimming our belongings that I’m having fun with the process even if I do winge on about it. Talking about it -– making fun about it keeps the pre-closing jitters at bay. It’s a coping mechanism. But the reality is that we know we fitin Journey. We’ve proven that. So, now the re-loading is simple; and there’s that added incentive to make life simpler and easier by trimming even further.
Future RV Mods
I finally got around to our DISH account — late in the afternoon. It took an hour and a half, but everything seems to work fine. I was all ready for a long conversation with Tech Services — and ended up doing the whole thing all by myself. It helps if you don’t over think things — they really do a good job of making things self-installing nowadays. As a geezer I’m not used to things working quite as nicely without human interference.
That said, with everything in place and working there are some changes to the wiring in Journeythat I may undertake over the next few months. Being a 2002 coach, when we got her she was equipped with analog TV’s — which we changed out over this past winter. Now that we have fully joined the digital age I can see that a little re-wiring of the entertainment center may better suit how we live. After we have lived with the new TV’s and DISH for a couple months I’ll figure out what lines need replacing and how to make this coach a home. More on this over the summer I suspect.
Procrastination
I’ve intentionally been putting off some leaving-town-chores. We changed our address 1 year ago, with Mike & Katy planning their move to Graham street I will need to change addresses all over again. They do not yet have the second address for the new property and things like changing my automatic prescription refill are best not changed too many times. So, there are some items that I’m leaving go until after we have finally cleared out of Cudahy. I will have to be back in Milwaukee at least once before September — those details I should be able to finalize in a day trip.
Eight Days Till Closing?
I keep hoping all things are moving in the right direction among those details we have no control over. We got the Title documents by email last night. I guess that’s good. Seeing as I understand nothing about real estate transactions I freely admit that every time the agent sends me something I freak out a little. Control freaks like me don’t like being out of control, and there’s nothing more out-of-control than not understanding what’s going on. I have to say, I’m so glad that Kathryn married someone like Michael who has a much better sense for business than I ever had. I’ve never been happy to deal with money. And every time I’m forced to do big transactions I’ve always been uncomfortable. But put me behind a camera and I’m quite at home. Or behind a keyboard. We all have our strengths — real estate is not one of mine. Soon I won’t have to worry about it.
We’re actually down to single digits before closing! Hooray! More about that in just a moment.
this is what the bugger looks like
I finally found out what Peggy lost the day she came home from work to say, “Something fell off the car on my way home, but I don’t know what it was!” Turns out the Catalytic Converter heat shield was missing. This I know because when you take a Honda into a dealer they go looking for every change to make a few bucks off of your fortuitous appearance in their service bay. But on a positive note, the reason my SRS light came on turns out to be a fortunate seat belt issue (meaning they’ll fix it — hopefully today when the part arrives — for free). And they took care of my recall. While the car was in the shop we also had the tires rotated and wheels re-aligned (which my daughter told me I needed doing — smart aleck kid! 😀 ) And we had something or other with the read stabilizers — long story short — it’s ready for the better part of a year’s being towed and going places….. let’s put a √ after that item on our getting ready for the road list!
We started loading up yesterday. Not a lot. It amounted to 4 small boxes worth of books and paper stuff. We carry our own library along in Journey. Not a lot of books but enough for our needs:
cabinetry in JOURNEY — before the new floor
Rhyming books for Peg
Novels for us to read
Bibles and devotionals
Campground directories
Bird and Tree identification references
Cookbooks — bare minimum: Joy of Cooking, 1 bread cookbook, and 1 vegetarian cookbook
This takes up …. I guess… about one of our interior storage bins. It’s kind of hard to judge because we place the different categories in different parts of the coach. More loading today in between raindrops.
Date for Buyer’s Final Walk-Through
The best news is that our Agent texted to inform us the buyer will do their pre-closing walk-through 1 week from today — June 5! It’s beginning to feel like this is actually going to happen. We came so close to closing last year and it didn’t happen. Part of me is still afraid to actually believe it’s going to happen, I don’t want to be disappointed all over again. But it’s looking good so far.
We’ll be in town from the campground anyway. So I’ll unlock the door, let the buyer in to wander, and if they have questions about anything they can ask away.
Nine Days till Closing?
The only service shut-off I have yet to take care of is AT&T Uverse — I’ll wait a couple days for that — I can turn them off instantly. I would like to get our DISH account set up today. See how that goes, and how busy I get during the day.
That gets us to 9 more days till closing.
And 6 days from now we will have Journeyloaded up, the house emptied out and off we head to Bong Recreation Area for the first 12 nights of our new Life Unscripted.
Before the family arrived yesterday I did have time to finally make a decision about our Verizon Wireless account. We’ve been Verizon users for a while now and between three lines two of them are up for upgrade. I’ve been dawdling about renewing our contract in part because of our data usage. I have a MiFi unit that served us very well last summer, but changes to the accounts offered by Verizon, and changes to the iPhone had me wondering whether I might be better off getting Peg (who never uses her phone) a smart phone while the iPhone 4 was still a free upgrade. Why get someone who doesn’t use her phone a smartphone? Because the iPhone is not MiFi capable. I thought that having two iPhones would give us a backup AND allow us to drop one line. The net difference is only $10.00 a month but it sounded like a good idea. Except today I finally got confirmation of my fear — the range on the iPhone MiFi is limited, if a call comes in while you’re using the broadband Verizon will knock you offline to answer the voice call. So, I upgraded my existing phone, and changed over to the Share Everything plan. After a couple months of use I’ll be able to tell whether for US two smart phones would be a good choice or not. And I can always upgrade the second line later.
Today is most likely to be spent running about — haircut and Honda service primarily.
Ten more days till closing?
Consequently today’s is a short entry.
We had a nice time with M&K yesterday but I was so tired I wasn’t very conversant. Sigh. Nevertheless it was good seeing them. It looks like we’ll be spending time together both of the next two weekends.
Our countdown to closing may be down to eleven but it’s a more sober day I guess. Michael and Kathryn attended a funeral yesterday — a cousin who passed “too early.” But then “too early” seems too common for too many. And today is Memorial Day — the day we nationally celebrate and honor those who died for the security of this country. So, it’s hard to escape death for a day.
I never served in uniform. Neither did Michael. That said, parents and uncles and grandparents did. Some to greater risk than others. Peg’s dad saw service in Europe during WWII. By contrast my dad spent the entirety of WWII in the U.S. at coastal defense sites manning a diesel-electric generator. Time and change happen alike to all men. Our immediate family escaped the pain of loved ones lost in battle. None of which means that we aren’t thankful each day for the freedoms that anyone with a few years on the clock find unable to be forgotten. The world today is not the world I grew up in, and I don’t think there’s a day goes past that the changes have only been possible because of the huge cost we have paid in lost lives. So, thank you to all those who gave the last full measure of devotion.
Nah…. we’re not gonna have a picnic. Too Cold!
That said, we’ll be seeing M & K today for a quick meal — I expect he’ll be wanting to work for part of the day. Michael doesn’t rest much. 😀 Seeing as they are coming here and we don’t have a lot of furniture in the school the invite was for a “quick” meal. Right now we’ll take all the family time we can get before we head out for our new adventure.
We have been fortunate to have an agreeable family. So, this time will be sweet. We’ll have a good time, eat a little, drink a little and I hope we’ll all be thankful for the family we have and the lives we’ve lived together and apart. With a bone-in ham and plenty of ‘tater salad and stuff it will be a nice day. We wish the same for our extended family in various parts of the country — and friends throughout the world.
Yesterday I accomplished a fair bit in Journey.Nothing huge, but each step necessary. I kept finding myself stopping to look at manuals and to admire the new floor and sofa. I spent a little time moving things around inside, changed some shelving around and started reading the manual for our DISH receiver and the new Traveler antenna. Whew — who woulda thought the manual would be that long!
I was happy to find out that neither Peggy nor I are very good at math. We have attempted checking our road clearance from the ground up, and it seems we can’t add. Previously, we had measured from the ground to a point in the RV that was near shoulder height, and then measured from their up. Somehow the both of us had our numbers wrong because when I got on my new Xtend & Climb ladder and measured from the top down in one measurement I came up with a measurement nearly a foot lower and closer to what Winnebago advertises as their height. So, that’s good!
I also got some little ditzy things done — our jack blocks are made from glued 2 x 6’s and I wanted to attach short ropes to each so that we only had to get down on all fours to put them in place and we could pull them out while standing.
I did other things too, but I think a lot of this week will be like that…. little changes that make some appreciable difference — TO US. There’s no right way to RV.
Eleven More Days till Closing?
Intermittent rain is in the week’s forecast. I’ll be loading our belongings in gradually – between rain drops. Michael will do another oil change and service for the CR-V. I need to phone in utility cancellations. Mike and Katy are coming over next Sunday to do the final push: disassembling furniture and hauling what needs going to their house for storage. Before then, I hope much of what we have will already be on board. In fact, part of me wants to load up early and head out to Southern Kettle Moraine for three or four nights before we show up at Bong on the 3rd of June.
It’s an exciting time. We are so looking forward to the unknown, to Life Unscripted. But on one or two occasions in the last couple days it’s been a bit scary too. Up till now there has been the psychological concept that we had a safety net in case for some reason we decided at the last minute that we didn’t want to RV. But the deal is getting real close to closing and it’s sinking in that it’s a reality: we will soon be people who own no physical place to call their own, we will soon be travelers, vagabonds. Don’t get me wrong. Neither of us has been entertaining second thoughts — this is the right thing for us to do. But a safety net is a safety net and our psyche’s and psychoses are what they are. They don’t ask for logic and they don’t demand order. Consciously I’m looking forward to the adventure, the excitement, the uncertainty of our new life.
I have to say that my self-ness is finally returning a bit at a time. It’s been hard to accept that the drama of waiting to sell Journeyis nearing an end.
Which only means that this week is going to be crammed jammed with chores. We have one week and one day before we head out in Journey.There’s a lot to be done!
Now that I once again have a ladder tall enough to get up to Journey‘s roof I have some topside cleaning to do. I want to decided whether I’m going to change out our crank-up TV antenna with something higher tech and better wind configured. And — an important task — to remeasure her from ground to tip-top tip and assess our new road clearance. I don’t think anything we’ve added has changed her but it never hurts to double check!
I’ll get our DISH network receiver setup this week.
Rearrange RV storage – inside and out
Find a better storage solution for the few tools I still have — right over the driver’s tire is not a good place — too much weight there already! 😀
Start bringing our possessions out and stowing them inside.
Evaluate how we’re going to travel with computers — we are bringing along different gear than we took with us last summer and what worked then will not work now.
And then there’s photo gear to stow — with re-configured sofa storage.
And spices! Oh the spices! And rearranging the new spice racks Michael built for us.
Curbside Storage
Driver’s Side Storage
On a positive note – read that as “NOT A COSTLY” note – I double checked our RV tire build dates and it seems I had mentally added a few years to their age since we first took delivery — we have a good three to four years usable life on them (in terms of rubber life, not tread) so there’s no need to contemplate replacement for some time. Tires are one of those things I would have replaced before we went mobile if we needed but given my penchant for waiting till we are right on top of something before I do it, I would have waited till this week to do so.
our CR-V (before the Blue-Ox installation
On a negative note — we got notification from Honda that our CR-V needs a recall repair — and coincidentally, when we got back to Cudahy our SRS light came on and stayed on indicating a problem with airbags or seatbelts — so we’ll get that done too. Don’t like the problem with airbags though…. gonna get that checked out right a way.
Then there are the myriad of little things that any soon-to-be-mobile-person needs doing. I’m going to have my prescriptions transferred to Auto Fill so they’ll arrive at Kathryn’s house and she’ll Express Mail them on to us wherever we are. At least until I go on Medicare next February. After that we may re-thing that choice but for now our current pharmacy price is better than I can get at ANY of the nationwide options.
Our new Missouri Botanical membership cards arrived during our trip! Glad to have those. We are hoping to get as much use out of them this coming year as we did in the past. We hopeto spend a lot of time in botanic gardens and wildlife refuges in the next few years!
Twelve Days till Closing?
Well, I have a coach-full of stuff to do today, so I better get started.
I thought I might have time to post yesterday after picking up Journeybut it turns out we found a lovely little garden spot to visit and time did not allow.
We arrived at Bradd & Hall at noon. Bradd met us and by the time we had the paperwork complete, Journeywas ready to go.
And she looked marvelous! We didn’t realize, but the flooring we had selected has been their most popular finish. And all I have to say is that after 31 years in the business they do a slam bang job! There are a lot of nice detail touches that they include with their work and we could not be happier with the final result!
As time from specifying the materials extended we both realized we were having problems remembering the colors we had selected, but in situ everything looked as good as we hoped. When we have her back in Cudahy so that the dinette cushions can be installed I’m sure the completed job will exceed our expectations in toto.
Red Maple Flooring
Flooring against the sofa
Slippers in place to prevent damage to the flooring when the slide moves in and out.
Flooring with the new kitchen faucet in place
Sofa
Sofa
Nice little details in the driver’s compartment
Nicely Done Guys
Carpeting in the entry way
closeup
They didn’t finish the flooring until about 10:30. So by the time they got the faucets in place it was right at noon.
After bringing Journeyto the hotel we had a celebratory sundae at Culver’s and took off for the new little botanic garden called Wellfield. The name derives from the location — 13 city water wells bring water up from the aquifer for the city of Elkhart and a new garden is being built adjacent. This is a tiny gem with the potential for real greatness in a tiny garden. I look forward to being able to re-visit in 5-10 yrs when the construction has settled into green plants.
And of course, because the garden is a member of the American Horticultural Society of America our admission was free. We love our MOBOT.ORG membership.
We ended up the day at Sauk Trail on 17. I walked away satisfied but a bit confused by the place. I really felt as if they didn’t know what they wanted to be. They specialize in smoked meat – in other words barbecue. But there are also other delicacies like smoked salmon. My problem with the place is that they’ve done it up like a fine dining joint along with prices to match but somehow BBQ wants butcher paper tablecloths and paper towels for your fingers. The foot was tasty and we went away satisfied with the experience but I see no reason we would ever return. Once was nice.
along with our smoked salmon we also had smoked cream cheese with spicy (pepper) jelly
pound cake, lemon curd and fresh berries
We’re on our way back to Cudahy today. We have a little over a week to finish loading Journey, sorting out the final leaving-Cudahy details, and getting ready for the closing. We leave for Bong on the 3rd of June.
Today is a red letter day! Not only are we down to two weeks till closing, we’re also in Elkhart about to pick up Journeyfrom the re-fitters.
We’ll have pix to show you later but right now we’re just pins and needles. We’ll grab some breakfast and kill time until noon and then check out the workmanship.
The drive over on Thursday was interesting — I think more people are beginning their holiday on Thursday. Anyway, we’ll hang out here in Elkhart one more night and return to Milwaukee on Saturday.
From the Far Side of '70 
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