A step closer to getting the new house!

Well, it is looking pretty good for the house. It’s just an awesome property. There is a 3000 acre preserve owned by the city that is right next to the property. It has lots of trails for biking and horseback riding. As a preserve this huge area will not get developed. Very cool to have this set aside right in our back yard!

I just love this place and it’s looking real good that we will get it.

Yesterday we sent an addendum to the contract for terms that are required as a result of the appraisal. There may be some negotiating to see who pays for what repairs. We expect that the seller will pay for all the repairs but still need to hear from the seller.

Very good family friends have just moved back to san diego. They lived in Paris for the past couple of years and flew into LA Monday night. We surprised them by bringing the bus up to pick them up at LAX. Several friends came with us and it was a fun welcome back party! Champagne and laughter and food. There were four ladies, six kids and Me, the driver (BTW I only had one sip of the champagne for the welcome home toast). It was a blast and Sophie was surprised to see we picked her up in our bus. She hasn’t had a chance to see it since we finished it. The kids were playing back in Ben and Eva’s room most of the time. For me it was just awesome to look in my mirror and see everyone having a good time.

I think there will be a basic difference now in the way we use the bus. For the past year the bus has been our home and our platform to live a traveling lifestyle. In the luggage bays I have all my tools, spare parts for the bus, gold mining gear, fishing gear, survival gear, camping gear, and gear and gear and gear.... On the car we have bikes and boat and stuff that just couldn’t get squeezed into to the luggage bays.

But now I see us using the bus more as a vacation RV. Most of the gear we have now won’t be needed on the bus all of the time. We can just bring what we will use for that trip. The mentality of vacation travel verses "the traveling lifestyle" will be much different too. We loved the traveling lifestyle, don’t get me wrong, but naturally there’s going to be a difference as we use it more for vacations now.

The past three weeks has been an intense period! I am looking forward to things settling down a bit and spending more time with Sylviane and the kids.

Some news on the house.....

This roller coaster has been a nerve wracking ride with thrills and tense moments. We did not hear anything yesterday as we expected to, regarding our offer for “The House”. Last night and morning was a bit low and we were looking at other possibilities from the list we have on line.

There were three houses that we liked the most out of all that we saw. But still none of them fits us, not nearly as well as the one we really want. "The House" fit us just perfectly. Looking at everything else on the market made us want “The House” even more. I felt drained, and I felt tired. I wasn’t feeling as positive as I have up to this point.

I called the lending agent to ask a question but only got his voice mail. He didn’t call back for awhile.

Finally I saw a call come into my cell phone...... it was from our agent!

He said that we had a counter offer from the Owner (a bank). So now we are back in the game after feeling like we were out. The news of the counter offer finally, slowly, sunk in, it looks real good for us at this point!

There is still a concern about how the appraisal comes in, and what things need to be fixed to be eligible for an FHA loan. But we are still in the game and in the lead. It looks real good right now but it’s not for certain. Dang this feels great. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I will keep everyone updated as we hear more.

Memories and Feelings

Sylviane has said much of what I am writing here but I want to share my perspective. Some of what I write here has already been said on the blog, but I needed to repeat it just to try to make sense.

Living on the bus the past 11 months has been an awesome experience. As we contemplate settling in one spot, many of the memories and feelings flood back to me. From our stay at Malibu beach, Campland on the Bay (San Diego), the desert in Quartzite Arizona, Disneyland, windy Bodega Bay, Mendocino and Quincy. The hiking and fishing, crabbing and gold panning, the exploring of new towns and new rivers all come back to mind. Swimming in the surf and time with the family. I think time with the family just hiking together, or telling stories around the campfire were awesome. The special things like abalone picking, horse back riding, seeing all the deer and so many other things, are great memories too. This has been a trip we will all remember for the rest of our lives.

One of the reasons that we wanted to travel is to find a place to settle down. My goals were to just work remotely via computer wherever we found the most desirable location to live. Be that Mendocino or the Sierras, Oregon or anyplace in the country that we decided was the best. Of course the thought of not living near the ocean is just out of the question. We tried real hard to convince ourselves that maybe if we found a place with a river and/or a lake that we could sacrifice being close to the ocean. But after a lot of thought and discussions we decided that we just can’t live away from the coast. Mendocino was awesome. We all liked it a lot. The fishing, the abalone, the basic attitude of the residents, are all great. But it was very secluded. Sometimes my job would require me to meet in person. It is hard to avoid meeting in person or on jobsites completely, even though I would like to do all of my work remotely I now have learned that is not practical. To fly out of Mendocino was a tough couple hour drive to San Francisco, then another flight to wherever I needed to go.

Not sure I ever described what I do for work on this blog so I will give a quick idea of what that is:

I work for a construction company as a project manager. So I negotiate and write contracts, change orders and basically over see specifics projects to make sure that it completes on time and below budget. I also work to insure the client is happy with our services. I made arrangements with my employer that I would work half time for half pay as we traveled. It has worked out generally well. The biggest frustration was having poor internet and cell phone signals, often we had a complete lack of service. It was taking much more time for me to do my work, often I worked 5 or 6 hours in stead of just 4 hours. There were so many fun things to do like fishing and panning for gold or getting some more abalone, that sometimes I felt like there was not enough time to do all that I wanted to.

A month or so ago Sylviane and I decided that we definitely want to end up living in San Diego. Up until 12 days ago we had planned to travel at least one more year. But I tossed out the idea to Sylviane that maybe this is the best time to buy a house. We know where we want to live and it appears to be a very good time for buyers right now. When we add into the equation that our cash flow is slightly negative as we are traveling, the conclusion is that we may not have the cash in a year from now to buy a house.

I expect that we will still be able to take extended vacation several times a year. The bus is all set up for working as we travel. Depending on what stage a project is in there will be times that we can take month away without affecting the project. The start and finish of a project takes the most time so during those periods there is extra work. I don’t mind that type of "seasonal" highs and lows, if fits my style.

We looked at a house last weekend that we like a lot and made an offer. With luck we will hear tomorrow if they accept it. I hope they do because we all love that property.



Bill

Catch of the day

I woke up early today so I took off to go skin diving to a new place. I heard it was good for abalone. It was great diving. Diving in the kelp beds is a treat. I saw some jelly fish, a small eel abut 16 inches long, a china cod (that I shot at and missed, darn it), and lots of nice abalone. I like to be in the kelp forest, it looks so cool shifting back and forth with the serge.

I get some exercise doing something I love, plus we get dinner too, it’s hard to beat that! I got three nice abs, there’s only two in this picture, I put the biggest one in the freezer. The fish I speared is a sea trout (also known as a greenling).

It felt good to get some exercise, not just the diving but the walk back up the cliff, and the hike along the trail on my way back to the car was a work out too.


Abs are a lot of work. But it is all fun work. First the diving, then clean the abalone, clean the dive gear, pound out the abs, dip them in flour, egg/beer mixture and finally pat on the bread crumbs. During this last phase of putting the abs in the beer batter the kids asked if Mom would show them some yoga poses. Here’s a quick pic that I took.

Sylviane has been doing yoga each morning and now the kids are starting to get interested in it too.


Dinner was great, there were no left over’s.

Tomorrow is Ben’s eighth birthday. He is so excited, so is Eva. I will wake him up about 5:30 so we can go get some abalone to start the day off. :)

Bill

Crabs for dinner

The kids and I set out yesterday to hunt some crabs and what a blast we had. Sylviane helped us get a picnic lunch together and put sunscreen on the kids. I grabbed some squid from the freezer and got our gear ready. We have these new crab snares that we wanted to try out. They have small cages made of wire mesh that form a cube of about three inches. It has a hinged door to open and insert the bait and some heavy fishing line rigged into loops that will snare the crabs. Ben, Eva and I each had a snare and we walked out to the rock coast and set them out. Eva caught the first two crabs and oh what excitement. Ben was so cool saying "wow Eva you are good luck for crabbin". Her smile was priceless.

We spent the whole afternoon out on the rock just pulling up the snares and yelling "a crab, a crab, I got another crab, get the net dad!". It was the best day I ever had getting crab. Ben caught several crabs at one point and Eva hadn’t got any in awhile. Ben said "hey, Eva come try my 'good luck' spot and after you get two we can switch again”. It was a fine plan because sure enough Eva got crabs in a short while. It never stopped being exciting every time we pulled up the snares and saw a crab. Each of us used the measuring tool on the crabs we pulled in to see if they were legal size. Ben really liked to pick up and handle them and I kept worrying that he was going to get pinched. Pretty soon Eva was getting into grabbing these snapping critters and loading her own into the bucket.

Eva did so well that soon she had gotten more than either of us boys. Ben decided Eva was good at deciding when to pull up the snares because she was a natural to know just the right time, so he asked her to decide when to check. She liked that responsibility. The kids wanted to stay and keep on crabbing, it was such a fun after noon, but it was after 5:00 and time to go cook dinner.

What a meal! We ended up getting 3 dungeness crabs and 11 rock crabs. I put two of the biggest in the freezer for another day and cooked up the rest of them up. Eating crab is a messy business but it’s just as tasty as it is messy. We decided next time we will eat them outside.

Bill

Awesome abs

About 30 years ago my dad let me take scuba diving lessons and he learned at the same time. We used to go out diving at the kelp beds in San Diego and hunt for abalone. Sometimes we got skunked but we usually managed to get a few nice abalone if we made three dives. Now days they don’t even allow the take of abalone south of San Francisco because there are so few left.

Let me tell you this place we are at now is just awesome for abs. We first came here a few years ago on vacation mostly just passing through, that is when I heard that there are abalone here. And that is also when I started planning for the time I could come see if I could actually get an abalone again. It's been over 15 years since I got one of the tasty creature...

It is not allowed to take the abalone using scuba gear so you need to free dive for them or by rock picking. Five days in a row we both got our limit. That is a lot of abalone! Ben is getting good at finding them and prying them off the rocks, and let me tell you that is no small feat. Low tide is the time to go "rock picking" as they call it.

We just suit up and go feel the rocks below the surface of the water until we feel an ab, then we pry it off and measure to see if it’s at least the legal size of seven inches. We are allowed to take three each per day but not more than 24 in a year. It is very regulated and with good cause. There are a lot of poacher out trying to ruin it for the rest of us. Every week there are reports of the game warden arresting someone or a group of people poaching. To do it legally we need to buy an abalone card. It has 24 tags and we must attached a tag to each ab as soon as we take it out of the water. We write down the date, time and location we took the abalone on the tag, and again the same info on our card.

My good friend Joe used to go ab diving with me often when I first learned to scuba dive and I wish he could be here to see this place.

It seems like the ab hunt takes the whole day even though we have been getting back by 9:00a or so with our limits. First I need to clean the wetsuits, then we go to the this cool cleaning station the RV park has set up for cleaning the abs. After we get them all cleaned and sliced we need to start the soup, made from the trimming, and pound the slices. It’s a ton of work but oh so worth it!

Have you ever eaten Abalone?

Bill

"That’s why we call it Blowdega Bay"

That is what the park ranger called Bodega Bay when I asked if the wind always blew so hard. Prior to arriving at Bodega I had visions of launching our sailing dingy and fishing up a storm while visiting this area. The first day that I mounted the mast on the boat, and pulled the halyards to raise the sails, the wind just kept gaining strength. Finally by the time I had the boat ready to launch the wind was blowing about 25 knots and gusting over 30. Ben was even more bummed out that me when I decided it wouldn’t be safe and we had to abandon our sailing trip. The next day we tried again. But still it was just too much to set off at the boat ramp. The wind wasn’t so bad across the sand spit at the beach so we wheeled the boat over to give a go at a beach launch. I had the mainsail reefed down hard and we did manage to get out on the water with our fishing poles and gear. Ben, Eva and I took off with a spurt as a gust grabed the sails just as I pushed away from the beach, it left me wondering if this was really a good idea. I told the kids to hold on tight as a gust healed us over. I eased the mainsail sheet and headed into the wind but my heart was thumping a bit. I came about and headed back to the beach where we launched from. A few more gusts, and lots of tracking down wind, and we finally got back to the beach but further down wind than where we began.

So I unloaded the kids and fishing gear and figured I should get out by myself just to learn how the boat handles in these conditions. I did ok and I was more at easy not having to worry about the kids but still it was just too gusty for this little 10' dingy. Most of my sailing experience was on our old yacht Thelma, she liked these types of conditions.

The cold wind never let up and we didn’t even try to sail after that. We did have a bunch of fun in Blowdga bay despite the cold bitter wind, especially at the very cool location on the bluff that had trees that made a natural fort of sorts. The trunks and branches were huge and grew along the ground making a great jungle jim and rising up to a canopy that resembled a roof. The kids each found there special spot to have their picnic. I brought my plant book to try to learn what local plants are edible. Eva fell off a branch and twisted her ankle, she ended up hopping on one foot for a few days but she is doing better now.

For a school trip we went to the marine lab ran by UC Davis. They gave us an educational tour and it was very cool. Ben was able to answer a few of the questions asked by our tour guide too, he already has learned quite a bit about sea creatures.

Oh yeah I collected up about ten small sea urchins when we went to the tide pools and ate some nice uni. Lots of work and much smaller egg sacks than the ones in San Diego but still they were tasty and fresh.

Hope to have more to say in the next few days. With luck I will get to do some spear fishing and we will be on an ab hunt...

Bill

Lots of wild animals here at Mom’s house

Our bus is parked about 150 yards up from My Mom’s house. It’s been a great visit for us all, and the kids are loving this time with Grandma.
I was happy to see our friends Mellissa, Ryan and their kids come to visit us here in Crestline a week ago. It was fun to see the kids play together again. They were in Joyschool (a neighborhood preschool, taught by the moms) together when we lived in Poway.

Early Wednesday morning Isabel saw two quail through the window of the bus. Sierra, Ben and Eva came to the window and saw them too. I didn’t see the quail then but did see them Friday. These mountain quails are bigger than the ones I see around San Diego area.

Thursday I was sitting in the slide out talking to Ryan. Ryan was facing me and all the sudden he blurted out "hey, there is a bear out there". I turned around and, no kidding, there was a huge bear lumbering up the hill toward the bus. We called out to all the kids and they came over to see it. Every one saw the bear through the big windows of our slide out. The kids were so excited, they were yelling and talking loud. Shhhh.... be quiet guys.... but hey, can’t really blame them for being excited. The bear heard our noise and stopped. He looked at us but then went on about his business of walking slowly toward the bus. No one had a camera at hand so I wanted to try the video camera. I tried to be quite as I opened the window but the click noise of the window latch made the bear move away. It’s rare to see bears up here. I have only seen one about five times in the last 40 years. In the past 10 or 15 years Mom has seen bears more often than when I lived here. This was by far the biggest bear I have seen up here.

I was walking down the dirt road to Mom’s when I saw this cat dashing behind the big fir tree over to an old tree log. It looked much bigger than a bobcat and I figured it was a mountain lion, it made my heart beat a bit faster. It crawled up on top of the old log and bounced down on the other side. Then it crept up along the side of the log. The cat must have been hunting something judging from the way it was moving. As it came to the end of the log it faced me, I was about 30 yards away, I could see the toughs of fur on its face. It was obvious that this was a bobcat. The tail was short, maybe four or six inches long. I stood as still as possible. After a few seconds of staring at me he went on about his searching. I slowly moved away and back to the bus to get the camera but it was too late. By the time I came back it was gone.

On Monday the kids also saw a coyote walking down by Mom’s house. It has been so cool to see so many animals! I am especially pleased that everyone was able to see the big bear.

Bill

Soupe aux orties

This is a good time of year to collect stinging nettle. We are here at my mom’s house in Crestline, it’s just down the hill a bit from Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear. The kids and I saw a bunch of young stinging nettle plants over by the water tank. Sylviane’s family has always collected the nettle to make soup. It has vitamins A, C, D, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. Lots of good food value. Here is a link to wikipedia about stinging nettle, down toward the bottom of this link it talks about the food value.

I know it seems weird. This plant that will sting you and give you a rash is so good to eat. After getting some gloves and scissors we went back and collected enough to fill half of a large paper grocery bag.

Here is the recipe that comes from Sylviane’s mom.


Bluette’s Recipe for: Soupe aux orties (Stinging Nettle soup)

Wear gloves to collect, get the young plants. Do not eat if the plant has already blossomed. We picked the ones that were 8 inches or less in height. Once back at the bus we washed the plants with water, cut off the leaves and discarded the stems. We then minced the leaves.

Chopped an onion and sauté until soft
Add about 6 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed to ½ inch, then sprinkle with a tablespoon of flour. Sauté for about a minute then add water to cover potatoes by 3 inches or so.
Season to taste (we used vegetable bouillon)

Cook until potatoes are soft.
Use a wire whisk to break up the potatoes to almost an smooth texture.

It is delicious. :)

Bill

Having a nice time in Switzerland

Our trip went well. It sure is easier now that the kids are older, they did great. Here they are looking at the plane that will carry us from San Francisco to Frankfurt Germany.

Ben is passing the time on our layover in Germany by reading his Indiana Jones book. His aunt Kathy gave him the book for Christmas and he just can’t put it down.

Ben, Eva and two of their cousins, Louis and Maurice. It’s great to see them all play together. I especially like to hear the kids speaking French so much. At home Sylviane has always spoke French to the kids and sometimes they talk back in French, but over here they speak French to everyone and I just love to hear them do it.

After a nice lunch at a local restaurant on Saturday we walked back on the back roads. It was about 3 or 4 kilometers and a nice sunny day. Here is Sylviane and her brother Stephane.

Bill

Sylviane went to the Homeland Security Office (INS) for her Test/Interview today

We had a list of questions that may be on the test to study from and Sylviane knew all of the answers.

I didn’t know all of the answers to begin with but I read the questions to her to help her study so I learned a few things too. I am still not sure I could name the 13 original Colonies but I do know the 4 amendments that guarantee or address voting rights.

Sylviane did great on the test, of course, but there was one question that stumbled her up just a little bit.

She wasn’t real quick to answer the question "what is your address". lol

We should find out in 4 to 6 weeks when she is scheduled to take the Oath and the ceremony to become a citizen. I have heard it is a nice ceremony.

This is a special day!

Bill

a couple of updates..

We got home from my Mom’s house Saturday to realize a live band was playing here at the campground. It was late but Eva (and to a smaller degree Ben too) really wanted to go check out the band. Eva and Sylviane danced the whole time they played. I started to dance but half way through the second song I looked down and remembered I had white socks on with flip flops…. Certainly not the cool fashion statement, I left the floor. I did finally take off my socks and rejoined the ladies for a few more songs.

Yesterday Sylviane took the kids to walk at Poway Lake, she went with Marie Laure and her family. I mostly goofed off yesterday but I did modify the plumbing so we can use the City water. Up to this point I had to fill the fresh water tanks and use our bus water pump to serve our needs. It’s nice not hearing the pump anymore and even nicer not to worry about the tank running dry. With the clothes washer we go through quite a bit of water.

Today we moved the bus again to our third spot here at the campground. We went ahead and drove over to the boat ramp area and gave her a bath while we could. I did notice one of the bus batteries is shot so I need to get that replaced by the time we take off at the end of this week.

Oh, I don’t think I mentioned that I got a couple more hoop nets before Ben and I went out last week. Now each of us has one. We had a great time pulling up the hoop nets. We launched at La Jolla shores, there is an area of the beach that is set aside for launching kayaks and small boats. Out in the open ocean waters of the Pacific! Very cool. We had no wind so I rowed for 30 minutes to get out to the kelp beds. No worries, I need the exercise. We had some nice warm barley soup that Sylviane put in a thermos for us, it was so nice to have in the cool night. We were too busy though to eat it all. As soon as I pulled up one hoop net I just had time to row to the next to see what was in that one. All the bugs were short but what a great night. The sunset was awesome (see the pic above). There was a seal that swam close and checked us out quite a bit. Two of the hoop nets had the bait stolen and I think it was this seal. I taught Ben how to use the shore lights to mark the location of the traps. Actually it’s pretty hard to find them in the darkness even though we had a flashlight. We looked toward La Jolla shores (East) and lined up a light near the beach with a light up on the hill, this gave us one line. Then we looked south to the city of La Jolla and lined up the close street light with lights on the building several blocks away, this gave us our second line and the fix we needed to get back to our hoop nets there. We also had two nets in a different spot but it was near a big permanent buoy that was easy to find.

Ben wrapped up in a blanket on the way from the kelp beds back to the beach, it was cold and we were tired but we had a fun and memorable evening.

Bill

Campfires

There is something about campfires that is good for the soul.

Every night we sit as a family and Sylviane (sometimes it’s me) reads a book out loud before the kid’s bedtime. We have been reading the series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little house on the prairie and such) lately. The other night we had a campfire going and decided to read out by the fire. Eva, especially, seems to like the fires.

Bill

Legoland

Yesterday we made a visit to Legoland and had a nice time. Grandma and Grandpa came to our campsite on Sunday so they came too. Sylviane and I even got a date night Sunday! We hit the Hard Rock Café for some drinks and food, then headed across the street to see "Burn After Reading", anyone else seen it? After the movie we stopped into a very pleasant Spanish restaurant call Sevilla. The cool thing is that the Spanish atmosphere brought back lots of fond memories for Sylviane. She went to Spain often as a kid on family vacations and also went there as a young adult. We discussed how awesome it would be to travel there.

Saturday would have been Dad’s 84th birthday. Brought back some touching memories for me. We all sang happy birthday for him.

I bought some wheels that strap onto the bottom of our sail boat so I can just push it down to the boat ramp, then back to our RV spot when finished sailing. I like to be able to just go whenever I feel like it and not have to load it on and off the car. The kids and I have been out sailing several times, I even took a midnight sail by myself one night, very cool stuff!

I am spending more time than I expected at this point to wrap up the church project and there are still plenty of bus project that need to get done. I try to tackle a few when I can. I did get my computer/work desk installed last week. Now I have a work station that allows me to be more efficient. We even have the printer working. Next on the list is to adjust some of the plumbing, and get an awning set up over our slide out.

Bill

Our first trip

It took extraordinary effort to get moved out of the house and into the bus. We still don’t have all our systems working and tested and we do still need to finish up some work on the bus. One of the items I didn’t get fixed yet is the windshield wiper. The wiper motor gave out about 3 years ago and it’s been on several “to do” lists during that time. As we left Modesto the weather reports called for hitting rain on the way so we washed the windshield real good and put some RainX on it. As it got dark we did hit rain just as the darn directions from Yahoo Map had us on some small twisty roads in a rural area. I am sure the poor folks behind us had choice words for me but I had to go slow. The RainX (it’s a product that helps water bead up and get off the windshield) did a good job and it was only bad when oncoming cars left their darn high beams on. We found a nice Italian restaurant in the town of Bodega then crawled our way the last 10 miles or so down into Bodega Bay. And here we are, in our first RV park!

Going through Oakland Eva started up singing and we all joined in loudly: Come on vamenos, everybody let’s go, I know we can do it, so come on let’s get to it. Where are we going???? Bodeeeega bay. Where are we going. Bodega Bay. Where are we going Booooodeeeeegaaaaaa Baaaaaaaaay, yeah! Ben only sung once. After the third time we sung this Ben was annoyed and wanted us to stop. But we didn’t.

The Honda Pilot towed just perfect. We decided not to use the Brake Buddy (braking system for the towed car) as it was the first time we even tried towing the car. Ian at Modesto Hitch did an awesome job to set us up. In all of the chaos of working on bus and moving from the house to the bus, I did lose the electrical cord that connects the lights from Bus to toad, so our departure was delayed for a couple hours as I tracked down the parts and made up another one. It all worked great.


Saturday morning we checked out a different park out on the beach but there isn’t any places for a forty footer. We took a walk down the narrow concrete breakwater and saw some people using hoop nets to get crabs. Now Ben wants some hoop nets (me too….. but we’re gettin ‘em for Ben….). All day Ben was asking when we get to go sailing and fishing. Eva only asked about a dozen times. Wind is still a little gusty so we’ll wait till tomorrow.

Writing in this blog is new so bare with me (I’m sure I’ll do better in time). As I write it all seems a little disjointed. There is so much to write but it’s not easy to select just what to put down here.

It feels great to be out enjoying this bus after 5 ½ years in the making.

Bill

Busy and intense!

Things are just crazy busy lately. Working hard to get the church finished and busy getting the bus ready for us to call it home.

Waterproofing the slide out has been a real head scratcher but we are making some progress. I am also making sure the black water tank hold water perfectly. I noticed just a slight leak a week ago and had the fitting off and back on three times now. I filled it up with fresh water and it does look like it is holding tight. I was bummed to see it leak a week ago but real happy I decided to make a final test with fresh water BEFORE we used it.


Bill

Yard Sale

Sylviane is out front right now selling most all of our stuff. I have been moving stuff out there all morning and just started a loaf of bread in the bread machine. The house is getting quite empty now and sounding a little hollow.

The old boat rule is “if you haven’t used it in a year then get rid of it”. Sounds like a fairly liberal rule but it’s amazing how much stuff we end up with and don’t really use. Some of the stuff is not easy to get rid of, they have history and some have sentimental value.

Yesterday I brought the bus to get the hitch installed. First step was to remove the rear bumper. Ian (the shop owner) got the bumper off and now he will build the hitch receiver to be within the bumper. I like this approach because it will not take away any ground clearance in the back (the other installs I have seen on MCI buses were mounted just below the bumper). I also set up an appointment with a shop that can check my suspension. The front suspension doesn’t seem quite right since I took off the kneeling system .

Bye for now. I need to see if Sylviane needs any help out front and I really need to get my garage stuff organized and crated up for the bus……

Bill

Installing the bunk railing.

The kids took apart the bunk bed they have been using so we could use part of the railing in the bus. I welded a piece of the railing to the upper bunk in the bus.

We needed to take some pictures to use for insurance purposes so we put the kids mattresses in the bus. So much excitement we just had to sleep in the bus that night.

We plan to move into the bus full time at the end of this month. We are busy getting the bus ready and going through the entire house and sorting our stuff. A pile for the yard sale, another pile for stuff going on the bus and a third pile for what we are keeping but wont fit on the bus. This third pile should be very small, at least that is the goal. Mostly it will be pictures and books that we can't part with.

Bill