Life on the move

We’re still total newbies at this but here are a few observations about a life on the move.

Driving

  1. Whats up chuck.  Chucking is the forward to backward motion experienced due to the constant push/pull of the truck and fifth wheel combo as you encounter undulations in the road.  This motion can make you ill (leading to possible upchucking) and makes it hard for kids to do homework in the car.  We do NOT experience any tail waging the dog motion thankfully
  2. Where is Waldo.  Every place we go is unfamiliar.  Street signs are all too small to read.  No matter how well prepared I think we are of our route or how confident we are in Google maps we very often find ourselves off route.  This is hard enough in the beast….but when we’re dragging a 38 foot house behind us it just adds to the stress
  3. Go green…NOT.  The beast does a fine job of pulling Ava down the road but it comes at the cost of consuming a large amount of diesel fuel.  I get pretty pumped when we do better than 11MPG.
  4. Park it.  The crew cab, long bed beast is….BIG.  And finding a place to park it can be tricky.  Especially when we get into an urban area.  Usually one of us gets out to be the spotter as we thread the needle between a Mini Cooper and Smart Car.  Way more than once I’ve been very glad we did not have a dual rear wheel truck…perhaps it would help with chucking, but parking would be MUCH more difficult.

Home

  1. If the house is a rockin’…it just means somebody moved.  When you move about the house the whole house moves.  You feel everything.  Especially kids jumping out of their bunk bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
  2. Tanks a lot.  Or rather tanks a little.  We’ve only stayed a few nights at places with a sewer connection.  Other than that we are limited by our grey and black tank capacities.  We have always had water and electric so its not the source but the disposal of water that is limiting.  You learn little tricks.  Don’t let water run while you are lathering your hands.  Use campground showers and bathrooms when you can.  Go to the bathroom before you come home from exploring.  Ordering the washing of dirty dishes.  While waiting for water to get the temp you desire capture the water to be used later.
  3. High priced, limited data.  We’ve always had unlimited data at our sticks and bricks home.  Sure there are bandwidth limitations so when you have a room full of kids playing on a Minecraft server and you and your hunny are trying to watch a movie things bog down.  But now we buy data by the gigabyte.  Its not cheap so you become aware of everything that uses data.  Videos are the #1 data user so those are pretty much banned.  But auto software updates are big, unpredictable and on mobile devices hard to disable.  These devices assume that when on a wifi connection its unlimited data which is normally true.  But for us, its not.
  4. Propain. At our stationary home we have natural gas that we pay for based on usage, but we never have to worry about running out of fuel.  But when you run on 2 bottles of propane that changes.  The first week we were in some pretty cold temps at night so we used a lot running the furnace.  Its less now, but still one of those things that you have to deal with: finding a place that refills propane bottles in an unfamiliar place.  Its a pro-pain sometimes.  If we were going to do this longer we’d probably pop for some electric heaters to utilize the power we’re paying for at the campground.
  5. Contents may have shifted during the flight drive.  Once we arrive and get the house all unfolded you get to see the carnage that took place.  We’re figuring it out but we still get surprised when we open a kitchen or bathroom cupboard and stuff comes spilling out.
  6. The door is always open.  Or closed.  Doors swinging open/closed because not perfectly level.
  7. Water water everywhere.  But it always tastes different….and sometimes bad.

I’ll probably update this as we go along but thats a quick look at life on the move.

3 thoughts on “Life on the move

  • February 19, 2016 at 3:11 am
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    In reference to heat, Lasko makes a small but powerful electric heater…. You would be surprised at how much it helps save propane and how small the best bit is. I think Home Depot and others sell it.

    Reply
    • February 19, 2016 at 5:00 am
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      Ok….we’ll be sure to check it out! We’re using the heater a lot less now…but some evenings it still gets pretty chilly (for the south).

      Reply
      • February 20, 2016 at 2:01 am
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        I think they are 25.00 at Home Depot and really put out the heat.

        Reply

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