You’ll find us posting now on the new Our Travels blog which has nifty per-entry photo galleries, video galleries, and map.  If you are subscribed via RSS you can choose between a Full Post Feed or a Blurb Feed.

I’m excited to finally be able to turn this page - so hope you make the jump from “talking about it” to “doing it” with us!

We are much closer however.

Over the last few days we’ve:

• Brought the trailer in for a new set of tires (finding in the process that the original tires on the trailer weren’t of a high enough weight rating to handle the trailer when empty - seems like it shouldn’t be legal to sell that way).
• Brought the trailer to a local RV shop to inspect the bearings and brakes.  While there we also had them fix the electric element in the hot water heater.  I’m sure I could have figured out the repair on my own but it was just easier to have them throw it on the bill. 
• Cleared additional stuff out of the shed and garage - most of it just by putting it by the road with a “Free” sign on it.
• Received the bike cover to protect the bikes when hanging on the back of the trailer.
• Done additional packing in the kitchen - most of the cupboards are now empty.
• Added plastic drawers on top of the existing wardrobe in the kids room, secured by tie-downs mounted to the countertop surface.
• Added small wire storage shelves in the kids bunks to hold a book or two.
• Done some cooking and baking to both use up supplies and stock the trailer a bit.
• Adopted out the quadcycle to a friend of Data.
• Brought the truck in for a unexpected repair of the AC system - it wasn’t switching the vents from defrost to dash.
• Built a router mount / charging station / backup station / iPhone holder / wiring organizer.
• Purchased new Bibles for Data & Storybird
• Purchased some new books, DVD’s and CD’s

Remaining on my list are mainly:

• Getting my laptop configured for daily use.
• Figuring what tools to bring and moving some of the remaining tools from the garage to the basement.
• Making a final decision on wardrobe and moving clothes from house to the trailer.

I think we’re still looking good for a weekend departure.

This is Opal posing with Data and Storybird.

When we moved into our house 14 years ago Opal and her husband Oliver were the first to make contact with us.  We had a bunch of cars in the driveway with lots of loud, young help, and Oliver walked across the street.  I remember him as a man with a demeanor that was easy to mistake for gruff at first, until you talked with him.  Watching him walk over I was prepared to tell him we’d quiet down and try to not be so bothersome, but rather than complain he offered us the use of his front yard for parking.  Once we got more familiar with Oliver we learned he had been a Baptist minister and he and Opal and their family had lived in the Holy Land for a while.

Oliver passed a few years ago, and Opal has been on her own ever since.  At 91 she still drives herself around and only just this year started hiring out the mowing of her lawn.  We’ve typically taken care of her driveway in the winter time, she provides the snowblower and we provide the labor.  I’ve been over to fix the odd house and computer issue, and Opal returns the favors with gifts for us and the kids from her frequent travels.  Just last year she travelled to New Zealand with her son.

Opal is a storyteller, both verbally and in writing.  She grew up on farms in Iowa and Northern Michigan along with a sister and two brothers and has quite a recollection for farm life.

We’re going to miss some great neighbors!

Or is completely emptied out.

Between rainy days and colds/allergies we’re not quite moving at the pace we’d like.  The biggest things on my to-do list are:

• Getting the trailer internet infrastructure mounted more securely.
• Deciding if the external cell phone antenna I purchased is going to be worth the installation hassle.  I’m told I’ll see as much signal loss in the antenna cable as the antenna offers in gain, yet just can’t believe it wouldn’t be better than the aircard sitting inside the aluminum-framed trailer.  However - I can’t re-purpose the trailer’s tv antenna wiring as it’s a different impedance than the cell antenna uses - so installation will require putting a hole through the trailer exterior somewhere.
• Getting a charging station setup for all the rechargeable gear we’ll have.
• Getting the electric element in the hot water heater replaced.
• Getting the trailer tires replaced and brakes/bearings inspected.

Another reason to stick around just a day or so longer is Artprize in Grand Rapids - a socially-driven art contest with $449,000 in prizes determined by public vote .  We went last year and really enjoyed viewing all the artwork.  This is something we’d surely attend if we ran across it while traveling, so it seems silly to miss it just because it’s local.  Artprize officially starts next Wednesday, so we’re thinking of skipping the busier first-day and attending on Thursday.

We’re also expecting a couple of paychecks that it would be nice to have in the bank before we leave.

At any rate, blogging doesn’t really help get us on the road so I’m off to aggregate more excrement..;)  In another couple of hours we’ll take a break to have our 91 year old neighbor over for dinner.  She’s been a bit of an adoptive grandparent so we want to make sure we get a good visit in before we leave.

Just as a reminder - here is how the living area of the trailer came as-purchased.  This is a very typical arrangement, with both table and couch designed to make down into beds:

We removed all of it and sold it via Craigslist.  This allowed us to start with a blank slate:

We realized that some chairs that we had in our living room (and had planned to get rid of as part of this trip) might work as trailer furniture.  They are “Chadwick Lounge Furniture” from HermanMiller, and we’ve had them for years.  They are low, all-foam, and have been great kid-friendly pieces. The nice thing is they are armless, which means you can separate them as individual seats or push them together for a small love seat.  While the covers were looking their age, the foam structure was in great shape yet.  A quick test-fit confirmed that they would work well in the space.  We found a local friend of a friend who could recover them, sourced some industrial fabric at the HermanMiller company store ($23!) and now they’re in place and looking great:

To that we added some Ikea Poang chairs.  Here’s the arrangement in travel mode - it all fits against the wall so the slide-in can still work correctly:

To make up for some of the lost dinette storage we purchased two 1’ x 1’ x 30” wall mount cabinets from Lowes, bolted them together, gave them a couple coats of polyurethane, and made a top surface from wood stained black and given several coats of polyurethane.  This cabinet is secured to both the floor and the wall.  The nice thing is with the freestanding chairs once we are parked and the slide-out is out we can re-arrange the furniture for a much roomier living area:

The trailer is really feeling much more livable with comfortable spots for everyone to sit, and the ability to stretch out legs without feeling like you’re blocking a walk way or blocking someone in the the kitchen.

The biggest puzzle will be if we need to eat inside.  To that end we will have a small folding table along with some Tupperware trays that we’ll attempt to make do with.  Otherwise the plan is to eat outside as much as possible.

The only remaining purchase is a HermanMiller Scooter Stand for use as an additional table and laptop stand while working.  Luckily we can source used ones locally for about 1/10 of the price of them new on Amazon.

We want to purposefully step out of our comfortable house in a quiet and safe neighborhood in a clean conservative city, shake loose from a all-too-familiar daily routine, and seek adventure in the form of new places, new experiences, and new friends.

Nine years ago I was in corporate America, working at a large local office furniture manufacturer.  I remember people standing up in their cubes, and the TV news being displayed on a large wall monitor that usually displayed IT Call Center statistics.  On this day it was instead tuned to the news, and work slowly stopped as we all tried to take in what had happened (and was still happening).  The replays of the airplanes crashing into buildings will be forever etched on my mind.

I encourage you to take a moment to stop and pray for, remember, and honor those still affected by the events of that day.  Regardless of your political or religious views there are kids and spouses who’ve had 9 years of being without a loved one, there are those still physically suffering from injuries, and there are those knocked off a path of “normality” doomed to suffer a lifetime of nightmares and mental issues.

As I write this I fear that what I’m about to say will look like I’m trying to minimize or make light of the events of 9/11 and that surely isn’t the case.  Rather, my purpose for writing this post is just to show that in spite of the intent of those attacks there are stories of positive things happening in the aftermath.

For us, I can make a direct correlation from the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 to our being able to take a year-long road trip adventure.

The 9/11 attacks significantly affected the office furniture industry.  By the time the following April had rolled around my employer was going through the 3rd round of significant layoffs, and I was included.  I tried to find another job, but only found project work.  Faced with the alternative of putting the house on the market and moving my family to another state, I took the project work and started Boyink Interactive.  Being that I could work anywhere with an internet connection, this step really made us location-independent.  We just didn’t realize it right away.  I worked for clients around the world but stayed in my West Michigan basement.  A few years pass, my kids grow into pre-teens, and I start using this piece of software called ExpressionEngine.

In response to seeing a need for EE training, I started Train-ee.com.  That effort led to doing classroom training.  The classroom training got us traveling again.  Doing that traveling we realized we could land in a strange city and figure things out.  After a couple of trips we felt a desire to travel more as a family - for a number of reasons but not the least of which is that it would offer our kids an amazing addition to the home-based education we’ve been providing them.

Thus the Adventure was born.  Would we have arrived at this point if the attacks of 9/11 had not happened?  I can’t say for sure, but my gut feeling is no.  I think we would have stayed in the “steady paycheck, good dental, 3 weeks of vacation a year” comfort zone. 

Again, my intent is not to minimize the events of this day nine years ago.  But I can look at the trailer taking shape in my driveway, at the still-getting-organized mess in the basement, at the mostly-empty living room, at the maps and charts tacked up by our dining room table, and make a direct connection to those terrorist attacks. 

And it makes me smile. One of those smiles that’s usually accompanied by the showing of a middle finger.

But I would never do that….

The materials and installation labor were provided by an old Jeeping friend - Frank Sanborn out of Charlotte, MI.

More than advertising, we wanted a conversation-starter.  I read the book Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, in which he tells the story of his long road trip around the USA with his dog Charley.  When Steinbeck would get to a new campsite he would let his dog run, knowing it would find people to meet and beg from.  Steinbeck would then go “sheepishly” to retrieve the dog knowing he’d be able to then start a conversation. 

We don’t have a dog, and the kids were unwilling to play the role, so the next thought was that getting our logo/tagline on the truck and trailer would serve as that conversation-starter.

Here’s what we started with.  Forest River was evidently pretty proud of their Rockwood name, judging by the size of the rear logo.  From what I can gather that brand is now defunct, and even if it wasn’t it seemed silly to give them any more promotion (I even hate the small dealer decals car lots put on cars).

So Frank started by removing the large logo:

Frank’s been on his own for four years now doing signage work through Sanborn Signcrafters, but before that he worked at a company that served the RV industry.  I’m not sure if he was taking off his older work here and replacing it with new…

We’ll usually have a bike rack loaded on the back with 4 bikes on it, so I wanted our logos up higher where they wouldn’t be blocked. Once we had decided on placement Frank did the installation:

They came out looking really sharp (once again a hat tip to local web designer/developer Ray Brown who designed our logo):

Don’t miss Franks own logo that he modestly put down by the tailight:

From there it was on to the truck:

And the finished product:

The colors of the logo look really nice against the pewter color of the truck:

And here’s the craftsman posing with his work:

Thanks again Frank!

With the exception of the 3G USB stick, all of this equipment was ordered through the 3GStore.  While their site isn’t a winner from a visual design point of view, it’s well-done from a business point of view.  They tell you what they like and dislike about each product, their on-line chat was quick and helpful, as was their email based support.  So far everything about my experience with them says they know what they are talking about.

It looks like our equipment is going to consist of two laptops and my iPhone.  Possibly a printer - we haven’t made that choice yet.  What I wanted to avoid was having to always re-configure the individual machines based on if internet was available via a cell card or campground wifi.  I wanted the head-end of the system to be able to switch between available sources, keeping all downstream components ignorant of where the connectivity was coming from.

The 3GStore answered that with the heart of the system I ordered, the Cradlepoint MBR1000 Router.  You can read the specs on that page, but the sell point for me was being able to plug-in both a wifi source and 3G source and have the router choose, and even failover/failback.  It’ll even do load-balancing if we have higher bandwidth needs.  Cool!

From there I needed the equipment to feed it both wifi and 3G.  For 3G the big choice was which provider.  I have AT&T on my iPhone and it’s been average.  Fellow road-trippers the Technomads recently had issues with Sprint which sent them off researching other connectivity options.  They recommended the Millenicom Advanced Plan which will run $60/month with a 10GB usage limit.  This is double the 5GB plans both Sprint and Verizon offer directly, and the Millenicom plan is said to use the Verizon footprint anyway so coverage should be the same.

The USB device with the Millenicom plan allows an external antenna, so I ordered the Omni RV Antenna.  It uses standard coax so my hope is to get this mounted to the crank-up TV antenna currently on the trailer, and just tap into the trailer’s coax wiring for getting the signal to the router inside the trailer.

I hope to use campground wifi to keep me away from the 3G 10GB limit, so I also purchased the recommended Pepwave Surf Mini, to which I’ll add a Hi-Gain Antenna for better reception.

With equipment, startup fees and shipping my costs were around $665.00 - which seems pretty reasonable. Let’s hope the installation and usage goes as well as the ordering process did.