2018 Recap - Wonder Of Wander

Happy New Year All,
Welcome to 2019!

It’s been a helluva year or three. It’s been a while since I’ve really sat down to write, but I promised myself I would make a better attempt at it in 2019, so here goes.

My 2018 Recap.

At the start of 2018, I had gone from working as a Project Manager for my friends Thim and Tony’s home in the Hudson Valley region of New York to the General Contractor. I thought I had retired from Construction work, but they needed me and I was thrilled at the opportunity to help them on this major project.

Here I was, in the middle of winter, dismantling a Lincoln Log Shed to be reused in the restoration of the log home. 500 liner feet of logs needed to be replaced. I was excavating a hole for the installation of a 500 gallon underground propane tank, removing a porch so we could pull a 1000 gallon buried oil tank, removing a concrete sidewalk and demolishing the old deck in preparation for a new one in the Spring and demolishing a masonry chimney while my subs were installing a new metal roof, upgrading the entire heating system to a state of the art – high efficiency unit, installing multiple Split Air Systems. January was certainly busy and all this was happening in between snow storms and sub freezing temps.

By February 2018, the new roof was now on, heating system in and 500 liner feet of logs replaced and winter was hitting the North East hard. I went back to San Francisco for a month to relax with my friends, the owners of the house, before they move East and into the home. I fully expected to return in March and finish the house before they arrived in April, but the project kept growing and growing and growing.

I didn’t get it all done for April when they arrived; in fact, they arrived just hours after we had torn down a ceiling and added spray foam insulation. Their first day in the house was spent helping me up the ceiling back up. They had one space that was safe – their Master Bedroom. The rest if the house was fully under renovation. Week by week, I would complete a section of the home and turn it over to them.

I also began to think about keeping all these tools I had acquired for this project rather than selling them when I was done. I had already thought about getting a car, SUV or van to travel in as I would like to be able to carry a kayak with me as I was traveling, not just the bicycle. (I’ve been traveling by bicycle and Amtrak train for two years). I settled on a Ford Transit T-250 van that would eventually be called Savanna. I was going to head to the South West for the winter and customize (upfit) it and turn a cargo van into a fully self contained Class B RV. No longer living in Vermont, I asked my dear friends Steve and Marian if I could use their address to register the van – in Oregon and that is where she got registered.

By the time June arrived, the majority of the interior was completed, but we were waiting on permits for the new deck. Having thought I would have been done by now, I had already scheduled a few Pet Sitting gigs around the country. June found me heading to New Smyrna Beach Florida for a month to Pet and House sit on the bay. It was a great change of pace and I got to enjoy some kayaking with Alligator, Dolphins and Manatees. When I returned to New York in July, the project had grown some more and I jumped right back into it, but I was scheduled to be in in Boston for the month of August, Pet and House Sitting again. I was also going to meet up with Thim and Tony and a few other friends for a vacation in Provincetown, MA.

I spent 3 weeks living just a block from Davis Square in Boston and it was truly the highlight of the year. I so enjoyed that city and the Suburbs around it. I did a full Historical Tour, visited the location for the Shot Heard Around the World, Skinny dipped in Walden Pond, the very lake where Henry David Thoreau skinny dipped, Climbed to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument and so much more. The best part, I did all of this on foot or bicycle. The bicycle trails were wonderful there. When it came time to leave Boston, I met up with Thim and Tony and we took a ferry to Provincetown. If Boston was the highlight of the year (it was) then Provincetown was the cherry on top. Provincetown was simply another amazing experience.

September found me back to work on the Log Home and rushing to get my projects done for I needed to be in Louisville, KY by November to help anther friend install a Wood floor in her home, but that to would get delayed – again, as I was still working on the Log Home. I also realized that I had acquired too many tools on this project to now fit in the new van with me living in it. I had to come up with something quick.

By the time December rolled around, I had acquired a small little trailer to pull behind Savanna for my tools, that is, until I could upfit her and get everything inside. I didn’t want to be hauling a trailer all over the country as I travel. I had also received a very generous offer from my dear friends Colleen and Dale in Olympia, WA. I had first met them when traveling in Sandy the Bus back in 2013. They were in need of a house sitter and they had a large heated garage for me to work on Savanna. While I had planned to go to the warm south west and rent a place to work on Savana, this was an opportunity I could not pass up. In exchange for the opportunity, I would enlarge their garage door so their new Class B+ RV would fit into the garage after I was done. It was a Win Win situation.

It was a very early December 3rd, when I climbed into Savanna the Van and pointed her west. Some 13 hours later, I arrived in Louisville, KY for my next gig. I’d be putting in a new Eucalyptus wood floor for my friend there as well as a few other odds and ends. I would have loved to spend more time in Louisville, but my schedule was tight now. On my way out here, my friends in Oregon asked if I would like to join them for Christmas and New Years and then after, Pet Sit for them for a few days. So now I needed to be in Newport Oregon by December 24th and then Olympia Washington by January 4th. I got the floor done quick and on December 19th, I once again climbed into Savanna and headed west.

The trip between NY and KY had been long, wet and tiring. I thought those days were behind me, but now snow was coming in and I needed to hurry before I got trapped on the wrong side of a Mountain Pass or worse, in the Mountain Pass. I was so focused on Snow, that I forgot about the winds. I was driving through Wyoming and about 6 hours from Salt Lake City where I had a friend waiting for me on a snowmobile to take me to their mountain home for the night when I ran straight into a huge wind storm on I-80. It got so bad, they shut the road down to all high profile light weight vehicles. That was me! I was literally stuck in the middle of no where on a dirt road exit off the interstate. Well me and about a dozen truck and another van like Savanna. Turns out, they were Oregon bound to and traveling from Boston.

I knew I didn’t want to wait out the storm here which was predicted to die down by about 6pm. Since it was now noon, that would be a 6 hour delay and I didn’t think my host would want to be picking me up at midnight on a snowmobile. When I looked at the map I realized I had a friend about an hour to the south and another a few hours north. The souther route would swing me around to the bottom of Salt Lake City and then I would lose a day as I’d only be 6 hours away in 24 hours. To my north was another friend, but they were about 6 hours away, however, the weather also looked better to the north so north I went to Billings Montana. I fought the wind all day. I passed numerous accidents where tractor trailers had been blown over. Also one blown over RV, a small cargo trailer that was abandoned on the side of the road as well as a cargo box that tore off someones roof. I reached Billings around 10pm – tired and stressed.

It was really good to meet up with my friend Mike and his wife Maggie. I hadn’t seen them both since 2013 though I did meet up with Mike on a West Bound Amtrak train I was on back in 2017. I left Billings the next day and made it as far as Butte before stopping for the night at a Truck Stop. As I had been, I’d be sleeping in the van with the outside temps predicted to drop to 9 degrees. The next morning, I ran into a guy I had passed a few times the day before on the road and we chatted for a bit before I hit the road.

The weather out of Butte was Butte-eh-ful, but by the time I reached Missoula it had deteriorated. I was beginning to see snow and I was getting up into the first Mountain Pass. Though the road signs did not indicate bad weather ahead or the need for chains, I soon found myself in really bad weather and the road was now snow covered as I climbed up the mountain. Meanwhile, I’m driving a lightweight vehicle and pulling a loaded trailer with no brakes. This trailer relies on the vehicles braking system. This was the last place I wanted to be and now – here I was. My first thought was, I need to get off the road and as soon as I got to the first exit, I realized – you can’t. None of the exits had been plowed meaning the exits were far worse than the road. I was stuck on the road and my biggest fear were that the impatient people driving behind me would soon try passing me. As each one passed, I just waited for the moment they would lose control and crash into me. However, that wasn’t the fear. The fear was for all the vehicles behind us that would not be able to stop if there was an accident. When I finally reached to the mountain top and began my decent down the other side as I crossed into Idaho the weather quickly turned from Snow to Rain and the roads were being plowed on this side. I pulled over the first spot I could and took a breather. The rest of the trip to Newport Oregon was much more relaxing.

On my last day on the road, I was traveling down I-84 along the Columbia River and noticed all these Falls coming out of the mountain range to my East. One of the really caught my eye and I turned around and went back. I had discovered – in the same sense Columbus discovered America – Multnomah Falls. I ended up spending hours there. I even hiked to the top of the Falls. I truly felt like I had arrived, but why then was something bothering me. Something that had snuck up on me the night I crossed into Oregon -mMy new Home State?

I arrived that evening at my friends Steve and Marina’s home in time to celebrate Christmas with them. Christmas Day dinner was fantastic and I posted some pictures of us all having dinner. That is when my friends 5 hours to the north in Washington, where I’d soon be headed to work on Savanna, noticed something. A friend of theirs. Yes, here I was having dinner with some motorcycle friends in Oregon and I was sitting next to a friend of Colleen and Dale’s in WA. Colleen and Dale are VW friends and have nothing to do with motorcycles. Turned out, they knew each other and had traveled together in a Photography Club. Such a small world – TRULY!

New Years Eve came and I was excited to watch it from the West Coast. I had celebrated New Years on the Atlantic, Gulf and now the Pacific coast, but little did I know that despite watching New Years Rocking Eve on TV, they (the station) had recorded it so I didn’t get to see the ball drop in Times Square at midnight East Coast time, where I stood just a few years before this, but instead, they would show it happen when it hit midnight West Coast time. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I need to find a real New Years Celebration here for next year as I’ll be back here again in December 2019.

After New Years, I loaded up Savanna and on Jan 3rd, I headed north for Olympia, taking an Overnight stop in Portland to meet up with some old and new friends. I arrived at my new home in Olympia where the work on Savanna will begin as Colleen and Dale take off on their journey south in their new Leisure Unity RV.