We had one week in Switzerland. Jet lag ate most of the first day. So by the time we got moving, I was running the math in my head. Six days left. Every hour had a job. Marissa and I went with Ben and Michelle, two of our closest friends. No kids on this one. Just four adults in a country that looks fake in pictures. One morning we drove 30 minutes to a mountain town built around exactly one thing. You take the gondola up, then you come back down the slope. Bikes, carts, or a toboggan run....
about 5 hours ago • 4 min read
July 1, 2015 We're driving home from Florida in our new-to-us 43-foot Sandpiper fifth wheel, and I need fuel outside Chattanooga. If you’ve ever pulled something long through Chattanooga, you know there isn’t much that’s easy to get in and out of. I spot a gas station and think, “I’ve been driving this thing for a month. I can whip it in there.” I don't successfully “whip it in there.” Those concrete barriers at gas stations exist to protect the pumps from people like me. On this day they do...
14 days ago • 5 min read
I told my dad first. We were standing in his kitchen and I laid the whole thing out. We'd sell the house, buy an RV, and live in it full time with his granddaughter Hensley. I had the timeline and the reasons. All of it ready. He looked at me and said, "What, be a gypsy?" A few days later, I had the same conversation with Marissa's mom. Same plan. Same careful explanation. She heard us out, paused, and asked, "Be a hippie?" Neither of them was being cruel. These were two people who loved us,...
28 days ago • 4 min read
I’m giving away a freebie at the end of this issue that I'm hoping will help a lot of people with RV Overwhelm. Would love to hear what you think.The install is almost done when I open the manual and realize we've just wasted $3,500. It's the fall of 2015, and we're leaving the next morning. Reservations at Fort Wilderness, then a resort down in the Keys. Our first big trip in the 38 foot motorhome we've finally landed on, towing a 2008 Jeep Wrangler behind it. I'm sitting in the waiting room...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Last week, Marissa got up at 4:30am and drove two and a half hours away to support her brother Martin. He and his wife were adopting Terrence, their son, and the family wanted to be there in court when it happened. What she didn't know was how long it would take. She ended up sitting in that courtroom for almost three hours. For most of you, three hours in a courthouse probably sounds like cruel and unusual punishment. For Marissa, who proudly says we have not spent a lot of time in court, it...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
It was my third day RVing Ireland, and I hadn't slept much. I'd been driving five hours a day with my passenger-side tire riding the painted white line, less than three inches of cushion before I was off the road entirely. The lanes weren't really lanes. They were closer to bike lanes with paint. This is what 80% of the roads we took in Ireland were like... Marissa was watching the side mirror and repeating one word: over, over, over. GPS couldn't be trusted, so the paper road atlas lived on...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Five years ago, I was sitting in our fifth wheel watching TV. I went to stand up, and next thing I knew, I felt something pull in the side of my neck. Not from lifting anything. Not from a fall. From standing up. Marissa and I have a running joke about how pain works at different ages. In your 20s, if you got hurt, you'd shake it off and forget it ever happened.In your 30s, you'd still be hurt, but at least you remembered how it happened. In your 40s, you just wake up hurt. You don't even...
3 months ago • 5 min read
I checked my phone this morning and it told me something I didn't want to see. For the last five months, I've been on the exercise bike three or four days a week, at least 30 minutes a session. Marissa and I have been walking together once or twice a day, 30 minutes each. By any normal definition, I've been working out consistently. So when I opened my health app this morning and saw my VO2 max, I had to read it twice. It was below average. And it had gone down. VO2 max is one of the...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Marissa and I were on the phone with the dealer, listening to the offer. Neither one of us saying much. Because we knew this was thousands less than what we'd hoped for. Nine thousand less than what we'd started with on our listing price. That was the price we paid to have this Class A motorhome sitting on a consignment lot, owned by a dealer who did not show it well. Did not make the appropriate changes. We'd taken out a closet to build a bed for our kid, and we'd told them expressly to put...
4 months ago • 6 min read
In the 1930s, a man named Colonel Tooey had a problem. He was running a jungle cruise attraction at Silver Springs in Florida, and he wanted monkeys. Six of them. He imported them, dropped them on a small island in the middle of the spring, and figured that was that. This goes without saying, but don't. touch. the. monkeys! What he didn't know, or maybe didn't believe, is that rhesus macaques can swim. All six swam off. He bought six more and tried again. Same result. Twelve monkeys total,...
4 months ago • 4 min read