Rolling With The Mishaps

When life is your vacation, or vacation is your life, mishaps will happen. Paradise will not seem like paradise, but the moment is going to pass you by, so you might as well get back to paradise as soon as you can. We've run into a couple of problems along this road, but thankfully, so thankfully, Chris and I both know how to "roll" with it and pretty soon the sunshine is shining again and we emerge on the other side with a lesson learned or a funny story. I am happy to report that Chris and I's largest argument on this trip was over some burned rice way back in CA. I left a pot of rice on in the camper and went outside to socialize. I forgot about it until we all smelled the smoke coming from inside and somebody thought I could have been a bit more diligent about not burning down our camper.

Rain, Rain, Rain

I would say our most consistent complaint is Internet and rain. If you look at the rain predictor for any city we roll into, rain will be forecasted for the next day. No joke. These days we typically find an indoor activity, a museum, a library, a coffee shop. But they require other logistics as Chris usually rides his bike to work and if it's raining we all get up and get going and coordinate when and where we will be able to pick Chris up again. Not a big deal, but when you have a week to explore and a crew that likes to be outside, it gets old. Most recently we had some friends fly from CO to Maine to visit and they had ONE sunny day. The other days? 100% rain the ENTIRE time! Thankfully, this crew also knows how to roll with it and we had fun ducking into shops, wearing our raincoats in the woods, and finding yummy lattes to sip throughout the day. Our Internet has been pretty dismal, but Chris is always able to get into a coffee shop for consistent work which has been nice. For me, it's been a bit annoying and wracks up my data, but small potatoes and really nothing to complain about at all.

Chris' travel schedule adds a bit to the experience with super early mornings and late nights and canceled flights and extended trips, but it's also what allows us to travel, so it's not really looked at as a hardship rather than an amazing opportunity with some challenges.

We had the old rock-in-the-ear episode that brought us to an urgent care in Flagstaff, AZ.

We had the boondocking expedition when our propane broke and we had no heat and no power on a cold night and we all bunked in the boy's bunks to keep warm.

So cold but we got to wake up here!

We've had the tanks fill up with no sewer hook up and we did a night time sneaky move where we dumped directly into a (luckily placed) manhole next to our camper.

We've tried to park in the dark and missed a tree by literally 2 inches and had to just stop moving the truck so we all slept at a weird angle until the sun came up and we could try again, revitalized by coffee.

So close!

We've had the fender break. And many picture frames. And the AC cover on the top. And the door handle. We've had flat tires and leaking tires and a worrisome light come on in truck that basically said "imminent failure-pull over now." I'm not sure if I wrote about that, but it was when Mom was visiting in New Orleans and we were out in the middle of nowhere...truly, nowhere. There were swamps all around and the light came on. The manual book says that if the light comes on, the truck will stop running and it will most likely not restart. We rounded a corner and a Ford Dealership appeared, almost like a mirage, but real. I pulled up on the side of the road and a technician was there to greet me. I pointed to the dash and he had me turn the truck off, then on and reset something. He said we'd be fine, and we have been. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen and by far the cheapest and most efficient car repair we've ever received!

We made too tight of a turn into a gas station and the trailer pinched a bike in the back of the truck which tore off a piece of the trim on the trailer. Unfortunately it was a major piece of trip which left a nice hole to the interior of the crawl space. Unfortunately we then drove through a massive rain storm in Dallas. Fortunately, Chris is handy and knew how to take it off, pound it mostly back into place and apply silicone to prevent any more leaks after the sun had dried things out for a couple of days.

Last weekend when we went to pull out of our campsite Chris saw a leak under the camper and looked. Water was dripping from the access panel which is never a good sign. He took off a screw, and water just POURED out. Dirty dishwater. It was past the departure time, so he pulled forward to a grassy field and took out another screw. More water. In fact, the entire underside of the camper was bowed out with the weight of the gallons of water. I had visions of shipping home all of our belongings as I figured the camper was totaled. I thought for sure we were going to have to find a hotel to stay in as the camper, our home, was fixed. It took an additional two hours (on a long travel day) and Chris rolled around in a lot of dirty dishwater without access to a shower, but best we can figure, all is Okay with our box on wheels. We think somehow a clog happened in the sink line and overflowed the holding tank before dislodging (a clunk I heard 5 days before this) and refilled the holding tank. Confusing, I know, but the good news is that we haven't had more water leaking and we had 2 long travel days that we left the access panels off so a lot of nice dry air got under there. Chris was amazingly upbeat throughout the entire thing which helped keep me calm, only to later confess that he felt he was going to vomit with nerves and thought our trip had just come to a sudden stop. It looked THAT bad!

He didn't really feel like smiling

In the Dominican Republic Austin was sick. Then Chris was sick. Then my dad and I. Jenni got it after we were home as well as Oliver and we have all been successfully coughing with clogged ears for weeks. I was also lucky to get a skin infection that seems to have left a permanent scar. Oliver had an earache that resulted in hours of screaming and 11PM runs to pharmacies where only bits of communication can happen because I've never learned Spanish. It turns out both of the boys got a case of swimmers ear. Their bacterial infection was so bad that Oliver landed himself in a Dominican hospital for a couple of hours hooked up to an IV of antibiotics (a strange experience to say the least as everything is written in Spanish, the doctor was great, but the very friendly nurse spoke no English and there are no written consents before treatment). He then got to have a follow up shot in the butt the next day. Afterwards, the boys had to have a week where they were not allowed to get their heads wet. In the Dominican Republic. Directly on a beach. With a POOL in our backyard. In a heat index of 108!

Finally a smile

We also had an intruder that came into my parents bedroom as they were sleeping with Oliver to steal my mom's purse and both of my parent's cell phones. He was so sneaky that he did this around 6:15AM, in the light. My dad saw him go past but he thought it was Austin playing their spy/FBI/CIA game that had been going on for the past 10 days. By the time he realized it wasn't Austin and got out from under the bug net, the guy was back down the stairs and gone. This proved to be more of a nuisance than something we were scared of, though we did employ a night security the remainder of the trip.

And then, there was yesterday. A beautiful day by all accounts. Chris was on his work trip (he travels every other week which keeps our travel schedule pretty busy!) but due back around 11pm. His flight was then canceled and after his trip two weeks ago when he had a canceled flight and a night spent outside Laguardia, he decided to purchase the last ticket out of Kansas to get back here to the tune of $1100. That will now be a nice fight with Delta as they were in the wrong...but that is another story. His flight was now due to arrive at midnight, so we decided for him to take Uber back rather than us picking him up. I was putting the kiddos to bed and did my news check while they fell asleep and quickly saw the headline "Did Convicts Get into Vermont?" Currently there are two crazy murderous convicts who escaped an upstate NY jail. That happens to be approx. 42 miles away but across Lake Champlain. Close enough to make the news and have us checking the story, but nothing to worry about. Then they were supposedly spotted about 25 miles away, but still on the other side of the lake and the ferry was being watched. Then the story progressed and by the time I was reading it last night around 10:30 as the kids went to bed, they were searching a town 14 miles away, on our side of the lake, with a focused effort on public campgrounds on Lake Champlain. We are currently parked in a public campground on Lake Champlain. It sent chills down my spine.

There have been times when I get gruesome headlines that play in my head when I feel like we are in over our heads with the kids. These are times like when we crashed a hobie cat into some cliffs, when we were ziplining in the Dominican Republic or hugging the cliff sides of the Bee Hive. I have them when the boys and I are hiking in bear country and we haven't seen anybody else for an hour. But they feel unreal. This headline last night was real, and it was saying there was a possibility two crazy convicts could be outside my camper anytime. I hung the keys in the truck's ignition and a sign on the door of the camper that the keys were in the truck and to just take it. That's all I could really do. And then I texted about anything and everything until Chris got home around 12:30AM. Having him here let me breathe, re-read all of the news stories and talk myself into the reality that they had most likely not been able to come to VT and if so, had probably gone to a state park where there are cabins to hide in. We were able to sleep and now we are watching the story play out in NY, sadly for those residents, but safely away from us.

Through all of this and more, it's been barely worth writing about. Because the good, the amazingly good times, dwarf them to the point that they are not really noticeable. They don't really fit in with the rest of the stories in a quick blog entry of a place because to give them space would give the impression that these moments took away from the experience, and they don't. I think if somebody was to do a trip like this, I would have to say, things are going to happen. Traffic and weather is going to suck. Internet is going to be questionable. Things will break and doctor visits will have to happen. But who cares? If we didn't have some level of difficulty on this trip, it might not feel like quite the adventure. I think with Chris and I both generally being upbeat kinds of people and having relatively high levels of energy helps. Having two awesome kids who know how to play with each other and have fun really helps. The trials-of-the-day, or the larger trials-of-the-trip add to this year in a way. Or in other words, life on the road is all in the "steering" of the attitude, unless the rice is burning of course.