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Post by Don on Apr 8, 2018 6:44:26 GMT -5
I thought since I was stuck due to weather today, I'd catch people up on why I've been MIA lately. We took a 5-month trip last summer in our little Class C RV and it convinced us to go back on the road. Since October we've fixed all the hurricane damage to our house (almost all cosmetic), polished and sold the house, moved back on the road and traded our Class C for a roomier Class A. So things have been a little busy. We still have to find a suitable "toad" to pull along behind us and finish moving/disposing of some things in a storage locker, but the process is nearing completion. I'll toss in a couple of pictures of the new digs. I'm also taking an RV Technician course to learn more about all the systems RVs use and how to maintain and repair them. That will help me keep down my bills, as well as help out friends and family who have issues they need help addressing. On top of that, last spring just before our trip I managed to pull a small hernia. I finally got around to surgery for that last Monday, and I've been in drugged recuperation mode since then. I'm finally getting my feet under me again and life should return to something approaching normal in the near future. So what have you been up to lately?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 7:39:10 GMT -5
Congrats on the RV, but sorry on the hernia, Don. The RV looks cosy!
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Post by Don on Apr 8, 2018 7:55:16 GMT -5
Congrats on the RV, but sorry on the hernia, Don. The RV looks cosy! Thanks, Cass. The hernia was a small one, and not a major operation. That's why I could put it off almost a year. The new (to us) Class A has tons of room. It's even a bath-and-a-half. When you're both getting up in years, two toilets is most certainly NOT a luxury. If you want cozy, take a look at the Class C we were living in before. We gained 5 feet in length, a foot in height, four tons of weight, a half-bath, and two slides that make the inside much roomier. The second pic shows the two next to each other while we were making the move. The Class C was a great little runabout -- the Class A feels like a land yacht. (and it stops just about as quickly as one) I'll miss being able to go anywhere a big pickup truck could go, but for full-time living, a little more room is required.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 8:37:37 GMT -5
oh, yeah, if you're going to live in it full time, cosy is the way to go.
Until my uncle got too frail to manage it, my aunt and uncle lived on their boat half the year. I was surprised at how cosy and room it was (like the Tardis, it felt roomier inside than it looked from outside).
I take it there will be some roads and such where this one won't be allowed?
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Post by Don on Apr 8, 2018 14:00:29 GMT -5
RVs have an advantage over boats; we can have slides to produce the Tardis effect when we're parked. Our little Class C didn't have that magic. Size-wise, the problem is site availability. We can go basically anywhere I'm brave enough to take it. There are some parks that don't have sites long enough. We could fit almost everywhere at 30 feet. At 35 it's not as easy. Older parks have limited numbers of sites that fit, if any. Yellowstone used to have a 30' limit for their one RV area with full facilities, but they can now handle a limited number up to 40 feet. A lot of older state parks can be a real challenge. OTOH, we can still use the vast areas of national forests and other public lands that are available for free, dispersed, self-contained camping. At Grand Canyon I know of a logging road just outside the south entrance that works nicely. Interesting you'd mention boats. DW and I lived on a 31' sailboat for the last five years before I retired. Loved that, too. Nothing like waking up to dolphins chittering at the side of your boat.
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Post by maxinquaye on Apr 25, 2018 21:07:12 GMT -5
That looks really nice, Don. My partner has an old camper he inherited from his parents, but it's a wagon and needs a car to pull it around. It's rather run-down, though, and we've talked about fixing it up. Not to live in, but to be able to go places and not fuss with hotel bookings and stuff.
What I've been up to? Since about a year I've tried to build my journalism up, but I've hit a snag that I'm working to fix. Most of what I write don't end up online, because most of what I write are published in in-flight magazines, trade magazines, and so on. It's not like The Guardian.
But I also don't want to do that kind of journalism because I'm neither arrogant enough to think that I'm this heroic figure fighting The Man, nor do I really want to write news about politics, because politics make you cynical. Alcoholism is a big danger because of the growing nihilism and cynicism one develops in news journalism. Besides, there's no money in it. I make enough writing my stuff.
What I write? There's two jobs that really stand out over the last year. Imagine the sort of man who arranges little leagues. Who becomes a coach, drives kids around to games, and basically becomes a surrogate father figure who lives for the kids and the games and seeing the kids grow up good. This guy I wrote about was like that, except he was active in Homs in Syria before it collapsed into war. Now he's trying to rebuild his life here, and every waking moment is spent trying to find out what happened to "his boys". When I talked to him, he had found maybe half of them. Half of those were in graves. Half of those remaining were scattered in refugee camps, and the rest was still in Syria. The half he hadn't found, he kept trying to locate.
The other thing that stands out is more recent - about this guy who drives around tuning pianos. I followed him around for a week or two, and it was just as quirky and interesting as you can imagine. I was fortunate to see him work on everything from a home piano someone had bought for their son to a 18th century precursor to the piano, a pianoforte.
This is the kind of stuff that is interesting. Stuff the politics. I can blab about that privately, on twitter, or here, but I don't want to work with it. I have some leads I'm following up now, but as I said at the beginning, it's a bit more difficult when nothing of what I write ends up online. I can't make the process of getting people to talk easier by showing them what I do, and that I'm not there to turn people's lives inside out.
I should fix that over the coming months, because I've been teaching myself to be a videographer. I'm making micro-documentaries in the same style as my other work. I'll do a revamp of my own blog and post it there. Or something.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2018 8:37:56 GMT -5
I'd love to see the micro-documentaries!
I've been a bit AWOL because my crazy German friend is in town.
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Post by maxinquaye on Apr 26, 2018 13:37:13 GMT -5
Everybody deserves a crazy German friend. Mine is called Günther. Yes. Really. He's not here though. Maybe he should be.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2018 13:40:03 GMT -5
Mine is Martin. On Saturday, he had me walking more than 8 miles all over town, stopping repeatedly for drinks. On Sunday I was a useless vegetable.
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Post by robeiae on Apr 26, 2018 14:57:38 GMT -5
So, what's different?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2018 15:12:59 GMT -5
Well, on Sunday, I felt too lazy to conk you over the head with my cast iron frying pan. Today, I don't.
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Post by maxinquaye on Apr 26, 2018 15:36:04 GMT -5
Mine is Martin. On Saturday, he had me walking more than 8 miles all over town, stopping repeatedly for drinks. On Sunday I was a useless vegetable. After visiting my crazy German friend during Oktoberfest, I don't even try to compete in drinking games with him. Those glasses they use are big. And they carry around six at the time - at least the serving staff does. But Günther didn't have any problem holding up his huge glass.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2018 20:20:18 GMT -5
Oh, I absolutely don't try to compete. I'd die. I've become a master at sipping reaaaaaaaalllly slowly and alternating with non-alcoholic drinks.
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Post by michaelw on Apr 27, 2018 3:42:31 GMT -5
Mine is Martin. On Saturday, he had me walking more than 8 miles all over town, stopping repeatedly for drinks. On Sunday I was a useless vegetable. Oh, I thought Heidegger was dead.
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Post by robeiae on Apr 27, 2018 5:48:16 GMT -5
That would make Cass Hannah Arendt.
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