PackRat 101

One of the most difficult things I have found in downsizing into an RV is the issue of my hoarding skills.   How the heck can I keep them finely tuned if I have no place to put anything?

Last September, We were forced to move from the RV back into the house. Of course, we had lived in here for 3 years before that so there was a well worked out “packing density” that allowed us to have what we wanted and needed… out of sight.  But once in the house, that was slowly dismantled over the ensuing months as we needed various things in there, like meds, sleep gear, vitamins, Katie stuff, tools, cosmetics, underwear..etc. The initial offloading took 54 trips just to get the stuff that we knew we had to have in the house. That was over a 3 day period (I counted because no one would believe we had that much stuff in here).

Trying to get the RV reloaded in 2 days was impossible without shortcuts and assumptions.  The shortcuts were mostly in the form of piles of things stuffed into grocery bags, boxes and pockets.  I figured that once we were setup here, I would take the time to sort it all out and put it back…. uh… NOT!  Even on my best days, my memory was not up to that task so thus far, the packing density is quite low. There is leftover space over, behind, under and inside of other things which must be compressed if I am to get all of these things back in here. Today, I launched into phase I.  I started with the rear overhead cabinets which hold most of the office and records related items. I had previously found a bunch of shoe box type plastic containers with lids that just exactly fit the space.  I had packed most of these but many were still a mixture before we moved into the house.

Today, I pulled them all out and collated the contents into specific bins for specifically related contents. e.g. program CDs, RV related CD/DVDs, USB related stuff, Audio stuff, Network stuff, Pet stuff (2 containers), etc.

That work eliminated 2 boxes and 3 grocery bags and it is all behind cabinet doors. More important, I can now find my meds on demand.

However, as you can see, there is still a lot more to go through before this will look like a home instead of a pack room.

Merrily had a great day, too and takes her first on the road drive, tomorrow. She has now done all of the current practice field exercises at least once and did quite well on all of them.  I think this is going to work out very well.

ttfn

… And so it begins…

Trite title, I know, but it’s true. The circumstances of the past 2 months have closed some doors and opened this window to full timing, big time.  We planned for this day for so long and now, it is really happening.

One of the items on our to-do-to-go list was for Merrily to go to truck driving school.  You have seen the rig we have in other posts. She has wanted to be comfortable driving it under most circumstances and said so several years ago.  I attended the North Carolina Truck Driver Training School at Johnston Community College in the summer of 2004 along with my oldest son. That was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life…. but worth every ounce of sweat and tired.

Now, Merrily is going through the same course to train her skills to work like they should to be safe and confident in all situations.  Down the road, options for workkamping will be a lot more flexible if we both have a commercial driver’s license (CDL) so she is going to get hers, now.  Not that driving an 18 wheeler is in the plans but team drivers can make a serious dent in income in a pinch. More likely we will pick up a few gigs driving shuttle busses or tour busses in places. There is a lot of demand for licensed and certified drivers in places like Alaska, and National Parks.  We will see what develops.

Meanwhile, the first of 8 weeks in class is drawing to a close. Each day is about 3 hours of classroom time and the rest of the 10 hour day is divided between working the field exercises (backing, coupling, serpentine backing, offset alley navigating, Pre-trip inspections, etc. The objectives of the class make it imperative that every learned skill is automatic and tightly tested before certification. This makes a graduate a professional driver.. not just a truck driver.

My son has driven for TransAm trucking out of Kansas since 2004. He loves the work, hates being gone from home so much but now owns his own truck and has nearly 1 million miles under his belt.

Although I have never driven professionally, it is a keen confidence I have when I sit down behind the wheel of our HDT. It Is a more comfortable and natural place to be than behind the wheel of my automobile and that is totally to the credit of this Truck Driver Training Class.  A lot more folks can pass the NC CDL licensing testing than can graduate from this class. The requirements for passing the course are just that much more rigorous than the state examination process, and that is not easy.

I will be working this blog a lot more frequently, now that we have some real movement into full timing in play. Much of the daily work was very non-full-time related so I stopped wasting everyone’s time trying to make it interesting.

BTW, Katie is doing well. She made it to 100 days, as I previously mentioned but then had a couple of seizures a few weeks apart. Now she is back on track and on her 50th day without a seizure.

TTFN