Driving eleven tons of road house? I thought that would be terrifying but I found out I love it. In fact, I love it so much that if the unthinkable happened to my family and I had to start over and Uganda was not an option I would totally become a trucker. I'd also be the only one listening to MC Hammer, Seal and Sting.
Meals? Harder. This is one I thought I had in the bag because I'm a great meal planner normally. But there is no Publix out here and the teensy gas oven still mystifies me (think undercooked tater tots and overdone bread) and that pesky time issue comes up too. I feel good if we have a home cooked dinner at all. Round it out with a vegetable? Not unless you count Pringles. My children are not complaining. I know there are kids out there who love vegetables. I'm sure their mothers cook wonderful nutritious meals for them then tuck them into bed beneath the fourteen moons of the planet Ozona where they live.
Cleaning. This one is ironic. The Bob T is it's own little Twilight Zone of space/time warpage. Drive it down the road and you might as well be hauling the entire continental shelf. Give it a general cleaning and you doubt it is even the 340 square feet it claims to be. Try to find something you KNOW you packed in here somewhere NOT TWENTY MINUTES AGO and you will feel like you moved into the Death Star.
And speaking of huge, this rig attracts attention. We have yet to roll into a campground and not have several people stare. Maybe it's the gravitational pull. Or maybe we look like newbies. Yeah, that's probably it. I'm basing that guess on the fact that I have actually seen people grab a frosty beverage and sit back in their camp chairs to watch us back it in. I do the actual backing while poor Kevin has to stand outside and try to tell me which way to aim. He got the hard job for sure. If I had to give him directions I would have lovingly and accidentally sent him floating down the Rio Grande.
When we were camped at Big Bend a fellow full-timer (Hi, Frank!) told us that every time we roll down the road it's like subjecting our house to a magnitude 7.4 earthquake. This explains the molding that fell off, cabinet door that cracked, jack switch that broke and abnormally high tides at Corpus Christi. We average a newly broken piece of house every two days. If this keeps up I'm considering renaming the Bob "Richter."
But overall, we can't complain. It's all a great adventure and we embrace the challenges with the knowledge that it makes good blog stories. Frank also told us that his research (4 years worth) revealed that it takes a solid two months on the road before it feels normal. I believe him. That means we have 30 days to go.
I hope you are all still with us for that.
-Jenni