Much to our relief, we finally heard back from the trailer repair folks. The trailer is back.
The repairs aren't perfect. They did the best they could within the agreed budget. It's good enough to roll and will continue keep our stuff safe and dry while traveling.
The thin aluminum skin on the front of the trailer has some new patches and some of the bumps aren't smoothed out perfectly, but we're OK with that so we loaded it up and are feeling less scattered around the state now.
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| Chics Dig Scars |
The new tires and rims perform perfectly - no sign whatsoever of the terrifying tire-destroying wobble.
When we were dealing with the original house > RV downsizing the part we struggled with the most was the garage. We tried to imagine the things we'd be doing on the road and packed those relevant tools and hobbies on the bus and trailer first, leaving a giant mountain of tools and hobbies in the garage still that had to be re-homed. The problem with this method was that each of the things in the garage let-go pile had been acquired the same way. So letting go of the drysuit meant letting go of my dream of scuba diving with a giant octopus in Puget Sound. And letting go of the mini motorcycle in dusty pieces on the garage workbench meant letting go of the hope of the grandson someday riding it around the neighborhood.
This second purge with the trailer was significantly less emotional. We had imagined we'd be doing all our own RV and motorcycle maintenance on the road. Sadly, we've yet to find an RV park that is OK with this so we let go of half the tools and the waxing stuff since we'll have to hire most of these things done on the road anyways. My shoulder still hurts remembering the last time we waxed the boat so the wax tools were chucked with a gleeful giggle. We shed quite a bit of weight out of the trailer, in fact I can now move the tool bag myself, a big win because it means I can extricate my bike without Lance's help while he's recovering.
This second purge with the trailer was significantly less emotional. We had imagined we'd be doing all our own RV and motorcycle maintenance on the road. Sadly, we've yet to find an RV park that is OK with this so we let go of half the tools and the waxing stuff since we'll have to hire most of these things done on the road anyways. My shoulder still hurts remembering the last time we waxed the boat so the wax tools were chucked with a gleeful giggle. We shed quite a bit of weight out of the trailer, in fact I can now move the tool bag myself, a big win because it means I can extricate my bike without Lance's help while he's recovering.
Which brings me to... surgery #13 is scheduled for March 8th. We tried to avoid it but can't. Hopefully this will be the last one - it should be a simple procedure with weekly follow up cast changes until healed - we expect all this foot drama to be behind us for good by early May. In the meantime we are on a short leash - we have to report in to Vacaville Kaiser once a week. Thinking back to our impromptu stay in Paso Robles, I expect there's a lot to see here in California that we typically drive right by, so we'll pick some one-day drive destinations for our weekly assault. This should help relieve the wanderlust somewhat. The first one will be a pre-surgery Death Valley National Park trip in early March. Maybe we'll get lucky and the timing will be right to witness a desert wildflower superbloom.
In the meantime we'll enjoy this part of California and all it has to offer. This time of year that means all the dungeness crab we can gobble. Yum.
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| Oh yah baby - dungeness crab cooked to perfection |