Plan A or Plan B (or Plan Alpha and Plan Bravo for you military folk our there) is usually how we hope life unfolds, having dedicated ample strategic planning before enacting surgically precise decision-making to effectively direct the outcomes at major forks in the road. That’s simply not how living this nomadic existence has played out as our circumstances change often all the time.  Having already cycled through the alphabet a few times with our continuously evolving plans, Plan Charlie Foxtrot seems an apt title for where we presently find ourselves.

I will try my best to cover the last few weeks in one general post, but will likely come back to flesh out some of the experiences that merit more attention.  As Flight mentioned, we have been a little, ahem, preoccupied as of late.  Our (mostly Flight’s) intent planning for the summer had us celebrating Firebolt’s 9^thbirthday in Bend, Oregon, on July 12^th.  I know my last post we were traversing Kansas over Memorial Day Weekend just before getting to Colorado.  So much has happened in the meantime.  I promise to go back to share our amazing adventures in Colorado, New Mexico, Colorado (again), and Utah, and all the wonderful experiences we had before getting to Bend, but let me read you into the latest chapter…

We left Park City the morning after the 4^thof July.  We celebrated our nation’s day of independence tucked into the Wasatch Mountains and got on the road again fairly early on the 5^th.  Our destination:  Bend, Oregon – WOO HOO! – the most likely candidate for our next permanent address.  However, as it’s quite a haul from Park City, we knew we wanted to stop for the night en route.  Last time we made this trek, we were, ahem, underwhelmed by Boise, so we opted to go through and overnight in NV.  Winnemucca to be exact.  Our night was spent at the Winnemucca RV Park, which is known for its proximity to late-night Rodeo events.  Actually, we were unaware of said notoriety, but we are now quite savvy.  Knowing we had another long day’s drive the next day, we opted not to check out the barrel racing or the cow wrangling, but heard about it well into our slumber.

The next day was an interesting mix of events.  First and foremost, we made it to Bend, however, it’s the journey that was interesting. Not so much in the scenery (have you been to that neck of Nevada?), but the CHECK ENGINE light that began flashing. The light had come on (and gone off) intermittently and we’d had Davista inspected in Durango and they found nothing. With the newest development of the flashing light, Flight and I immediately slid into P-3C crew roles and he was concerned with safety of flight and I was documenting every time it would flash, duration, etc.  Try as we might we couldn’t corroborate why it would come on at any given time sometimes as long as a few minutes, sometimes as short as five seconds.  It was during one of these periods of mental gymnastics in between light flashing episodes that we blew by a police officer conducting a routine traffic stop of a truck.  Distracted by safety of flight issues and unaware of the recent law that requires every vehicle to pull left if possible and yield a lane of safety buffer to these professionals, we neglected to comply.  We were pulled over shortly thereafter and given a hefty fine.  Lesson learned.

On our way through one of the towns along HWY 20 (Burns, I think it was), Flight purchased a device (the fancy title escapes me at the moment) to read the engine’s error messages and we learned that Davista’s engine was misfiring on cylinders 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. Um, what?!  That was strange as it didn’t feel like it was misfiring. No skipping, nothing.  I’m sure Flight will give his (read: more informed) perspective on this as well, but we were flummoxed by the intermittently flashing cue.

We rolled into the first of our campsites in Bend, the Crown Villa RV Resort, heartily perplexed, but turned our focus on getting to know our prospective new town. Only the day after we arrived, Flight got to try out commuting to work from Bend.  This was a big deal as his commute to work is the only potential drawback of living in this amazing community.  While he was gone, only a slightly less bigger deal (at least to me) was that Keeper and I packed up and moved Davista down the road to the Thousand Trails resort, which is about twenty minutes outside of town.

During our transit I, too, was favored with an intermittent check engine light.

Flight’s trip was a relatively short one and he met up with us in Farewell Bend Park just as his folks were rolling into town.  Surprising Firebolt (and Woodsprite – but not Keeper as he can now keep secrets), Grammy and Papa met us there as well.  We were delighted to learn it’s only a 7.5-hour drive to make the transit between Bend and where they live in the Bay Area.  After we all stayed at the campsite, we rented a house in Mount Bachelor Village for a few days to better accommodate all of us and celebrate Firebolt’s birthday in style.

While tucked into a “real house” (as Woodsprite says), we turned to some pressing issues with both our house on wheels and our sticks-and-bricks house in Maryland. Flight called no less than half a dozen mechanics and got as many varied potential diagnoses for the misfiring error codes.  Most critical was learning whether or not we could continue to drive Davista or had to have her towed to a mechanic lest we cause further damage to the engine.  It was 50-50 on that recommendation too, but at the encouragement of the Ford warranty folks, we arranged to have her towed to Portland, the nearest shop that could handle Davista’s size, which was only 178 miles away, to be exact.  We are very glad she was still under warranty as that fee alone would have been a pretty penny.

 

Almost simultaneously, we received an offer on our house in Maryland.  After Flight and I realized we needed us (just a little younger) to buy our house, I had been praying that such a family would find us.  Enter the Navy family who put in the offer – he would be teaching at the Naval Academy for the next six years and they were expecting their third child in December.  Excellent!  We were sorting out the details of when inspections would happen (necessitating opening the pool), signing and sending paperwork back and forth with our realty team, scheduling dental appointments for everyone, determining when we’d go back to pack out, how we’d pack out, where we’d store our stuff, etc., all interspersed with Flight’s conversations with various mechanics and his debriefing me on what he’d just learned and my planning an appropriate birthday celebration for our soon-to-be 9-year old.  At one point, Flight realized Papa was listening to our very orderly discussion about all the stuff we were wading through and said something to the effect, “Hey, Dad, you might think this is an unusual occurrence with what you’re hearing us work through right now, but, seriously, this is like almost any other day.” And he’s right.  This nomadic experience has really helped us embrace the adage “Semper Gumby” and has honed our ability to plan important missions (big and little) to allow as much future flexibility as possible, because plans change all the time. At least ours do…

So, just to sum up – house offer accepted (for much lower than we’d anticipated, sigh…) from a Navy family like ours, sorting out how to remove and store our belongings, Davista being towed to Portland to be fixed (we hoped), and Firebolt’s birthday party in the works.

 

After our day honoring Firebolt’s nine years (that will have its own post when I can get to it), we returned to Davista.  We spent a few days packing up what we’d need in MD (including all the superfluous stuff we no longer needed in Davista but didn’t want to jettison altogether), transferred Flight’s mountain bike from the back of the Subaru to on top of our bed in Davista, watched our house get loaded up on the tow truck, piled into the Subaru, and headed to Portland.

 

For the night of the July 17^th, we stayed at a hotel only five minutes from the repair shop and maybe eight to the airport, which was most fortuitous as we had to drop Flight off at the airport so he could get to Boston to start his next trip. Because Davista didn’t arrive at the shop until after he departed (apparently the highway was closed due to an accident for nearly two hours – we had just squeaked through!), we weren’t sure how long she’d be in the shop.  It could be weeks (if an engine change was necessary) or only days (if it was only a computer glitch) and we wouldn’t learn anything until the following day.

Flight’s trip brought him right back to Portland.  While he was flying back to meet us, the rest of our gaggle made use of our day to check out Fort Vancouver located across the Columbia River.

 

That was a lovely outing, one I’ll write more about in another post later.  After chatting with the mechanic, we learned it would be at least a week before we knew more, so we made plans to fly back to MD to pack out our house.  In the meantime, we enjoyed dinner at some amazing Food Trucks (those are plentiful in the foodie city of Portland!) and then returned to our respective hotels, planning to meet Flight at PDX in the morning to fly back East to oversee the installation of the new pool liner and get packing.  Flight was the Captain for our flight back – that’s always fun!

After an uneventful flight and sleep in Boston, we returned to the Logan to catch a flight to BWI. We arrived at the house late Friday afternoon, a little taken aback by the dead front lawn (apparently it hadn’t rained for six weeks) and the empty and uncovered pool showing the drained cement pond, but happy to see “Under Contract” posted above the realtor’s sign.  That placard served also a figurative sign for me indicating it was go time, and I spent an industrious evening packing out my home office as the first of the torrential downpours began.

The next morning came very early (we were happily acclimated to the West Coast time zone) and the chimney inspection was scheduled sometime between 7-9 am.  The inspector was a no-show, but we learned later the buyers’ agent neglected to let ours know it would be a little later in the morning.  Due to the added inconvenience, we opted stick around and continue packing during the inspection.

Chimney inspection looked great!  So far, so good, until the prospective buyer let it slip that they were reconsidering the purchase of our house.  Ever the gracious man, Flight said, “Okay, could you please let us know.   Soon.”  He said, “Yes, we’re taking the weekend to think about it and will get back to you on Monday.”

After that bomb was dropped on us, Flight and I took a moment to regroup and went into planning mode, yet again.  We weren’t sure if we should keep packing out or leave the house staged, and ultimately decided we would ride that fence until we knew for sure.  There was plenty of stuff we had yet to sort through, a necessary (albeit less than desirable) activity regardless of how far into the future our impending move stretches.

After a hardcore day of boxing up many things we probably don’t need, we popped over to our cousins’ house for a short visit before Flight departed in the morning for another work trip.  When I said it was torrentially down-pouring, I wasn’t kidding.  Their basement was flooding and we spent much of our visit working to minimize water intrusion and do our best to pump out the lake pooling in their basement.  Oh, and did I mention his business was getting hacked? You simply cannot make this stuff up…

When Flight departed for his trip in the wee hours the next morning, it was raining.

It rained all day.

And rained.

And rained.

The deluge continued for days.  So much so that our classy “cement pond out back” started filling up and, although I didn’t think it was possible, it looked even less appealing than it did upon our return.

The swamp that is known as Maryland attempted to reclaim our backyard.  I busied myself with setting up play dates and sleepovers, and packing out the bar in the basement and the kitchen until we finally heard from our prospective buyers on Tuesday morning.

They backed out.

The house was too much for them, which was understandable given they had just come from a 1600 sf apartment in Italy and were first time homeowners.  Why would a 5800 sf house on an acre with a beautiful pool be overwhelming? We found it so, and we already owned it. !!  I just wish they had figured that out a little sooner.  Flight and I spoke between his flights and agreed that we should proceed with getting the first of our PODS and start packing.  Regardless of how long our house is for sale, we realized that returning to Maryland was no longer a viable option for us.

When Flight came back from his work trip, we rather unceremoniously removed the “Under Contract” and collectively focused on packing, because at this point we were sure we would not be returning here to live once our travels came to a close.  As the elements whipped around outside, Flight and I took a moment to commit to a decision, the biggest one we’ve made since departing Maryland nearly a year ago. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been plenty of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth associated with identifying and reserving the perfect campsite along the way, but we’ve wrestled with nothing on this magnitude.  With the deal falling through, we were faced with making the call to choose Plan Sun or Plan Moon.  We knew that it would be fiscally irresponsible to rent or buy a house while still being saddled with this house, or this “albatross” (Flight’s perfect description).  So as we surveyed the backyard swamp, we arrived at a decision.

Plan Moon it is.

Moments after we committed to Plan Moon, we called the kids into the living room to read them into the latest change in plans.  We spoke first of immediate concerns, namely where we’d be dining that evening, and then followed up with our plan to stay on the road for another academic year.  Much to their credit, an additional year of continued travels was met with nothing more monumental than a shoulder shrug and, “Okay, what’s for dinner again?”

Holy resiliency.  May we continue to learn from their gracious flexibility as we plan for what comes next…

Although we’ve yet to catch up with respect to writing, we’ve reached the end of phase one of our journey, and I wanted to provide an up to date map of where we’ve been since we started at the end of July.  We return to Maryland this week, and intend to base out of there for the Winter while we re-group with respect to the sale of our house and prepare to resume our journey in March.

The home sale has been largely hands-off since we departed, but it’s been a source of well-documented frustration for us, culminating in our final showing a few days ago.  After waves of positive feedback dotted by some neutral comments (but no offers, save for the shady one from the felon), our last showing netted overwhelmingly negative comments from the realtor, informing us that her buyers have zero interest, our house is confusing, too flawed for the price point, and should be completely repainted on the interior, despite the fact that we did that just prior to putting it up for sale.  So… thanks for playing I guess.  Where’s that ‘reset’ button?

At any rate, here’s our map as of the beginning of December.  As you can see, we put the hurt on California this Fall, and two of our three kids have expressed desire to live there, which was unexpected (and probably won’t happen).  The criss-crossing of California wasn’t in the original plan, but turned out to be a stellar way to spend the season.  We’ve stored Davista and Toad in Seal Beach, CA and intend to pick them up, along with the rest of our journey, when we return in March.  In the meantime we’ll post sporadically from Maryland.

Cheers!!

When I was teaching at the Naval Academy, midshipmen would often ask me about my experience in the naval aviation community as they were wrestling with whether or not they wanted to Fly Navy after graduation. While there are plenty of positives to cite, I would always share the one drawback as well: “Living by the Flight Schedule.” Although it was kinda fun as a junior officer not knowing what I’d be doing any given day until 1800 the night before, the inability to plan anything eventually wore on me. I definitely wouldn’t prefer to live that way now, especially given Flight’s schedule and with three monkeys in tow. Even after explaining how challenging it might be (e.g. your best friend asks you to be her maid of honor in eight months and you can’t commit to it until maybe a week prior to the wedding, if then…), I would still get a unconvinced eyebrow raise from most midshipmen until I shared the following sea story.

Back in the day our squadron was on “surge” status, which meant we were within the six-month window prior to deployment and, if our assets were needed anywhere in the meantime, we should be prepared to pack our bags and go. It just so happened that a new Russian submarine, one on which our Navy had yet to collect any intelligence, had just pulled out of port and was near enough to Alaska for us to trap, or record its acoustic signature. As the “surge” squadron, we quickly launched to establish a detachment site in Alaska to run a “flap,” which meant we would schedule round the clock operations to maintain overhead tracking of this target of interest while we simultaneously gathered data on its gear aboard.

For those of you unfamiliar with Navy P-3 squadron (VP) operations, such a flap requires three aircraft to be airborne at any given time (one crew on top of the target, one flying home having just turned over with the “on station” crew, and one flying out to relieve the crew “on station”), another crew pre-flighting a fourth aircraft to launch shortly and another crew debriefing their mission, along with all the maintenance and crew rest requirements in between. As you may imagine, there are a lot of moving parts (literally) and all operational planning must have redundancies built in to account for some of these parts not functioning as advertised (usually due to operational wear and tear). This particular flap was such a big deal that the whole VP community was salivating at the opportunity to participate. No kidding, squadrons based in Hawai’i wanted in on the action – even squadrons who were currently deployed to Japan (where we would be deploying in a few months) were scrambling to see how they could be part of the flap back home.

Curious as to what my crew would be tasked to do the following day as the squadron geared up for this detachment, I popped into Schedules to see if that had yet been decided. As of 1400, we were on tap to go to Oahu the next day for about a week so that one of the Hawai’i squadron’s crews could get in on the submarine action. Sweet!  I had this vision jump into my head and was suddenly far less interested in the submarine…

After mentally reviewing my packing list (did I have to pack my sandals and/or my flip flops in addition to flight boots?) and being seasoned enough to know how quickly things can change, I stopped in Schedules again just to double check the ever evolving “rough” (schedule draft) before I departed for the day. I learned that Hawai’i was off the table. Bummer. Instead, my crew was staying home while I was navigating a logistics run up to Alaska. “Well, that’s sounds considerably less fun,” I thought to myself as I headed home and went about my plans for the evening.

When I got home from Scottish Country Dance Class at 9ish, there was a message waiting for me. “Call the duty office ASAP.” Oh geez. That’s never good. I made the call and was told, “Pack your bags. You’ve got a 0800 preflight for an 1100 go. Your crew is flying to Japan tomorrow. We don’t know for how long, so pack for three weeks.” Um, what?! Roger, Semper Gumby. So I packed. And we went to Japan. Two months early for deployment. (Spoiler alert – it was only for ten days). Yikes. At least I got to do some pre-deployment reconnaissance…  Like I said, that crazy inability to plan even tomorrow due to shifting world events really got old after a while, however it did prepare me well for life as an airline family in general and for this deployment in particular.

One of the privileges of being married to an airline pilot is that we are able to travel fairly easily, although we must be extremely flexible when we do so. Often we can fly to most places we’d like to go either for free (with Flight’s company) or deeply discounted on other airlines, but always, always, always as standby passengers (meaning we’re never sure we’re actually on a particular flight somewhere until we’re airborne and the plane’s wheels are in the well). As such, our plans must always be malleable enough to accommodate changes and we will travel to the airport with plans G, H, I, J, and K in mind (typically we’ve already moved through a few plan modifications by the time we get to the gate), because we expect things will continue to rarely go as planned. Being in that practice has set us up well for this current deployment, which is far more like an extended flap than I had first realized. We have easily rolled with any schedule changes necessitated by events well beyond our control (e.g. wildfires ravaging Oregon) or additional requirements due to our own self-induced drama (see Captain Crunch).

Our general flight plan has been to make a wide sweeping counterclockwise trek circling the United States as we chase mild weather. We pulled chocks in Maryland and got on the road at the end of July, only nine days after committing to actually doing so. Early into our travels we found that locating campsites last minute, especially those in desirable locations, was rather tricky in the summertime and nearly impossible on summer weekends. It became especially critical to lock in sites at those key times as well as reserving places that readily fill up regardless of the season and, fortunately, Flight has been all over that. Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in late August come to mind, as do several choice California coastal towns throughout September and October.   Aviation-trained to be Semper Gumby, our trip has flexed to meet those critically scheduled campsites while making the best of a few other destinations loosely along our planned route.

Another variable for our route planning is Flight’s work schedule. Unique to the airline industry is Flight’s ability to continue to work from wherever we are on the road, as long as we are near a reasonably sized airport so he may commute to Boston to start his work trips. Additionally, his seniority in the company is such that we can usually plan his schedule around our intended path (taking into account where we might find commutable airports near by) or, once his schedule is published (typically a month out), we can modify our travel route to make his commuting to work a little easier, if necessary. We’ve also been very fortunate in that Flight has had several weeks of vacation over late summer/early fall, meaning his work schedule has been relatively light. Starting in November it’s going to get real and our travel tempo will need to shift to accommodate his more frequent commutes and absences so we can maximize what we get out of this experience as a family.

How do we plan to make it so?   Great question, I’m so glad you asked. If Flight has a trip, we can plan to stay put a little longer so he can still see some of the environs. Wherever we are, we do research on the top ten things we’d like to see in the area, discuss what his priorities among these are and try to schedule our “Field Trips” accordingly (e.g. we plan to drop Flight off at the Las Vegas airport and the kids and I will head directly to the Hoover Dam to study agriculture, water maintenance and hydroelectric plants without him, and he’s good with that). Amazingly, we are handling the planning and execution of our macro schedule reasonably well, yet, as with any deployment, the manifestation and impact of the human factors aspect can’t truly be known until you’re actually executing flap operations.

In aviation “human factors” is the term encompassing all aspects of being human while doing things a human was not necessarily designed to do, and includes everything from crew rest to mid-mission bathroom accommodations to what might be taking up mental real estate and can’t be compartmentalized to post mission impact (e.g. PTSD). When planning an evolution from an operational perspective, it’s easy to solely focus on how to best accomplish a mission without taking into account how the completion of said mission (or failure thereof) might be experienced by those executing the flight schedule.   Flight and I have been guilty of doing just so, although not intentionally in a “Suck it up, Buttercup” kind of way. Instead, it has been mostly due to our not knowing exactly what we were getting into. Don’t get me wrong, that’s part of the fun of this whole adventure, but really we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We probably still don’t. Again, part of the challenge and joy of this nomadic lifestyle.

Flight and I did know that this deployment would affect each of the kids (and us) differently, but as to just how we had hypothesized at length before we departed and most of our musings were not quite correct. Keeper is at the age where he is feeling every aspect of our year on walkabout most acutely. However, given the transitional phase of adolescence, that may have been the case anyway. He has been holding strong to online connectivity as that is the main tether to his friends back in Maryland. When we are without that social lifeline, he feels its absence most. Because we all live in such close proximity to each other, Flight and I are keenly aware of any of Keeper’s shifting moods and are working to meet him wherever he is, which often necessitates giving him some space and allow him to retreat to his “room” and close his “door” (curtains) until he’s willing to read us into his state of mind. Probably sounds a lot like parent-adolescent behavior anywhere. So we’ve heard – we’re not sure as he’s our first to reach this transition.

Firebolt is an interesting mix of opposing characteristics. While she is above and beyond our most social member of the family, she has recently self-proclaimed her shyness, all the while chatting away with any kids we encounter which, unfortunately, has been fewer than we’d hoped. In her daily existence, she seems to prefer to live life far from the edge, yet will surprise us by being the first to volunteer for a crazy hike like Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park – !!! She is a most compassionate and caring individual and feels everything deeply, but has an almost hardline justice streak and can quickly get her Scottish ire up when her sense of fairness is breached. Firebolt seems to be taking to our travels well, constantly reading and singing, but when pressed rates the experience with a lukewarm “okay.” I guess time will tell on how she chooses to remember our trek.

WoodSprite is just a sponge, soaking in every experience, as well as being a constant source of entertainment. She is one funny kid and I think we’ll probably see her on stage at some point. No kidding, I have a deadpan video from last year of her saying, “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday night.”  We often overhear evolving improv between her and Firebolt and are blown away by their witty repartee.  When I think back to my own memories from the Kindergarten years, I can produce distinct snapshots of people and some places, but the storyline behind each of those is likely more based on family narratives instead of my own fuzzy recollections. As Flight observed at two months into this adventure, I too am hoping that WoodSprite will fondly recall this journey as a joyful play list of family memories.

One of the unforeseen positives of this adventure is that the kids have really grown close. Believe you me, there’s still plenty of sibling picking at each other in the back of the Subaru (makes us very thankful for the motorhome during long transits!), but they have become very good friends who kindly support and encourage each other and play together well.   I am thrilled with that unintended side effect of our travels.

Probably the most significant oversight we made that Flight has already touched on in his summary at two months in has been our lack of involving our kids in the planning and execution of this deployment. We started out pretty well getting their inputs as we prepared to go (see here for a run down on our departure), but, as soon as we got on the road, the training and operational plans have been unintentionally kept between me and Flight.

One of the common recommendations I’ve read in raising children is to be sure to give them rules and boundaries so they feel safe and can therefore thrive. We have neglected to define our kids’ daily existence by failing to appropriately manage their expectations. Shame on us. In our defense, we are just now figuring out exactly what we are doing with enough lead time so that we can coherently communicate those plans to the rest of the clan. It has also helped that we have transitioned to the academic year and can routinely give them more concrete assignments to focus their mental energy. I’ll give another (better, I hope…) update when we’ve made it through the transition and I can draw some conclusions on how the roadschooling adventure is going in earnest.

To better help us communicate the big picture, we purchased a small dry erase board calendar with a stretch of corkboard at the bottom and it is now firmly posted on the outside of the bathroom door. Although it may seem odd, this location is the center point of Davista and has now become a Combat Information Center (CIC) of sorts. Posting pertinent scheduling info has been a huge improvement for everyone involved – I’m not sure why it took us so long to figure that out.

In addition to having a picture of where we’ll be in the upcoming weeks, the kids know when it’s a travel day, how long we’ll be underway while driving, how long we’ll be at any given campsite, etc. The not knowing had made a tricky existence for them – they’ve all expressed how much they now appreciate having a map and a list of where we’ll be when, so they can plan appropriately, although I don’t know what exactly. Maybe their calendars are thick with social obligations on which I have yet to be briefed.

One thing I have noticed is we have had to modify most family rules, or I should say we’ve had to provide more specific guidelines because non-compliance has far greater potential for catastrophic outcome. One such example: not putting laundry actually into laundry bags can interfere with the slide’s operation as we expand or retract our port-side wall and break our house. That would be bad. Another would be not putting the lid to the commode (the toilet seat is a given) down means any towels or articles of clothing drying in the bathroom now has the opportunity for a swim in the bowl whether we are driving or not. Not necessarily catastrophic but certainly gross. Closing all cabinets and drawers is critical not just so we don’t bonk our heads or shins, but the contents of which might (proven) become projectiles as we wind our way down any road.

One last observation before I close (whew, this is a long post!)… One aspect of daily life has become far more efficient out of necessity: our ability to plan what we eat and eat what we plan. While living in Maryland the concerted effort to efficiently meal plan was usually overcome by the ease of running to one of the nine grocery stores nearby after wastefully throwing out what wasn’t used in time. Now that we’re on the road, everything needs to be thought out well before we’re at a campsite, which is sometimes located in the kingdom of Far, Far Away. Some observations:

• The offered hook-ups at intended campsites drive much of our meal planning efforts. Whether or not we’ll have access to electricity to: run the Instant Pot, the microwave, or the electric hand-mixer will dictate much. If so, great, those meals are good to go and will pepper our upcoming week’s menu. If not, will we be able to run the generator? If Generator Ops are feasible, we’ll try to minimize that necessity. If Generator Ops are a no go, then, alas, we must grill or use the indoor stove-top or oven. Or leave our kids with grandparents to luxuriate in Healdsburg’s newest culinary mecca (unfortunately cost prohibitive to repeat more than almost never again).
• We are getting much more adept at grocery shopping for our space limitations, then planning for and making the most of any and all leftovers. The few items we’ve had to pitch before using include mushrooms (I just don’t trust them when they’re moldy and Flight and I are the only ones who might eat them…) and avocadoes (I swear it’s tricky to get good ones in some states).
• Water limitations (both what we can carry to Far, Far Away and how large our grey tank isn’t as it catches all the post dish-washing drainage) are not something I previously had to consider. Sorting out what pans to use to cook meals depends on whether or not we have a readily available dump receptacle at our specific campsite. If not, tidying up after meals requires reliance on skills I learned at Girl Scout Camp. (e.g. Boil water in the lone pan/pot used for cooking, add soap, and then wash the other dishes in said cauldron, before dumping the wash water outside and allowing only the rinsed soapy water to go down the drain and into the grey water tank).

So, overall how is our flap going? Pretty well, all things considered. From an Operations perspective, I am stoked that we have now roped the kids into the experience as we try to make the most of our travels. Sure, we can always improve how we do business, but I’m hoping our constant (sometimes obsessive) self-assessment will inform the ways we better move forward. As we continue to streamline processes and roll with the impact of our human factors, we may just figure out how to live on the road, at which point, true to our Navy training, it will be time to shift gears and assume a new posting.   What that might look like is a discussion for another time…

*(during which we planned the rest of our year)

**OK, I KNOW.  How can I, how can anyone say something like that?  There are so many factors that go into a “good meal,” including the company, the setting, the vibe, the food origin, who prepared it, etc etc etc.  I get all that, and have had countless amazing meals, some as simple as pizza with good friends.  So by all means take my title with a grain of salt.  I do.  But I will say this.  Tacco and I have had a handful, probably fewer depending on how you define handful, of crazy high-end dinners.  The destination restaurants that require reservations months in advance, where it’s prix fixe, you have a constellation of wait staff popping in and out of nowhere bringing you course after course of artfully presented things you’ve never tried or often even imagined, accompanied by waves of the sommelier’s suggested wine pairings, and you leave completely overstimulated and hazy, wondering what on Earth just happened.  We’ve very much enjoyed all of them, yet after each one we’ve said “I’m so glad we went there and did that, but we won’t be back.”  After this one, we both said “I know we can’t do this, but I want to go back.  Soon.”

Here’s what happened.  We were offered an overnight date night by my parents, i.e. they watch the kids and we go somewhere and come back in the morning, and we jumped at the chance.  Not only were we jonesing for the alone time, but we were overdue to get serious about working out what would happen at the end of October when we had no more campsite reservations and an empty, unsold house awaiting us in Maryland.  We do our best life planning over dinner out, it seems.

San Francisco was the obvious date night choice, and while semi-trapped in my Dominican layover hotel I went about doing some research into what we might do.  My Dad happened to send me an article on the “10 sexiest Bay Area dinners” (Sexiest?) and near the top of the list was Single Thread in Healdsburg, in the heart of Sonoma wine country.  It’s a fairly new restaurant that my parents had gushed about previously, and had received uniformly jaw-dropping reviews, no small feat in the SF area.  This was not the type of place I had been considering, but reflexively I checked out their website and reservations tab, and was shocked to find one table for two available at 7:30 PM on the day we were planning to have our date night.  I double-checked and triple-checked, thinking I must’ve clicked the wrong month.  Maybe the wrong year.  Nope.  So after a brief discussion and not too much thought, which almost certainly would’ve caused us to balk, we went for it.

I included the hyperlink in case you are interested, and will refrain from discussing anything that the restaurant’s website couldn’t describe better itself, other than to say it was preposterously good, on every axis.  Food largely sourced from its own local farm, slight Japanese bent to the theme, not the least bit stuffy (kinda the opposite actually), and every dish was a revelation.  Here’s a collage of pics – any one of them can be clicked to see full size if you’re into that sort of thing.  This post excepted, I generally try to avoid food porn.

So OK… wow.  AMAZING meal in an amazing town.

Probably more importantly, we were able to take inventory of where we are as a family, whether we’re meeting our goals, and what we plan to do.  Let me see if I can sum up.

Tacco does not want to return to Maryland, which I understand.  Though we do miss our friends and family, we’ve developed a momentum that will almost certainly be killed by settling back into our house.  And it’s unclear to what extent we will settle.  Tacco wrote about her uncomfortable experience of being back in the house alone for a few days with it in a “ready to show” state.  My experience (a one day stay) was similar – I didn’t even sleep in my bedroom… just took my luggage down to the basement, tried not to disturb anything, and slept on the couch.  If we return, it will likely be some extension of that same phenomenon, given that we’ll probably leave our fully loaded motorhome on the West Coast rather than drive it all the way back to Maryland, store it, and winterize it.  Plus we won’t want to fully re-integrate ourselves into the various social commitments (Scouting, sports, etc) while knowing that we plan to leave again in the Spring.  I think it will feel like living in someone else’s house on an extended visit.

That said, I really don’t see any viable alternative to returning.  Even if we decided that we could sustain paying a mortgage and all the other expenses for a house in which we weren’t living (and we definitely didn’t decide that), the house can’t just sit empty through the winter.

Our winter plans were fairly amorphous anyway.  We didn’t want to just spend a few months doddering in Florida with all the other snowbirds, waiting for it to warm back up, so we talked about a ski month, maybe a few weeks abroad…  While that won’t happen now, what we are planning is not too far afield.

The kids definitely do want to return to Maryland.  When pressed, however, it’s always about the friends they miss.  Being back could break heavily either way for them.  They could realize that they didn’t really miss it after all and that their friends are busy with school and moving on, or they could cling to the return of some semblance of familiarity and make leaving again even more difficult than it was the first time.

I’m somewhere in the middle on the kids-to-Tacco spectrum of desire to return, though closer to Tacco than the kids.  My gut reaction to flying back and taking a few months off the road schedule is relief, but it’s followed closely by distrust of that relief, as I think it will come with baggage.  A clean cut would’ve been preferable.  But of course that ship has sailed.

So, after much conversational noodling and what-iffing down various forked paths, punctuated by the oohs and aahs brought on by the aforementioned best meal ever, the current iteration of The Plan is this:  We’re going to keep on traveling, staying generally in the West, until early December, at which point we’ll park the RV and Toad (only unloading / shipping home what we absolutely need) for storage at a military base in Southern California.  We’ll fly back to Maryland, take the house off the market, and re-group.  We don’t intend the house to be a “home” as much as a “home base,” as with the kids not in school, we’ll take every opportunity we can manage to continue in the spirit of our trip.  We still may do a winter month in the mountains, though it’s looking like we’ll do that back in Bend rather than Park City or somewhere crazy like the Alps.  And in the early Spring we’ll put the house back on the market, fly back to California, pick up Davista, and hopefully jump right back in.  There’s so much more to see.   Always.

We still don’t know where we’re going to live, and at some point we’re really going to have to get serious about that.  But at least we have a workable plan from which to deviate again and the kids have something solid to look forward to.