Today we are near Albany NY and – for the first time – west of our starting point! Wonderful to touch base with our old friend Albin, whom we first met at the 1986 Eastern Tandem Rally – almost exactly 30 years ago. We spent a very relaxing evening with Al, both reminiscing and talking about the future, also listening to music and enjoying a fantastic, home-cooked meal (I’d like to say, “…and helping Al in the kitchen,” but it was more us watching Al in the kitchen). Thanks, Al!
We’re now through the third of our scheduled stops and our third week on the road.
From Lewiston, ME we headed over to West Gardiner for a drive-by jam session with my friend Wilbur (aka “Cowboy”) from Blues Guitar Unleashed. This was the inaugural music stop on the trip and the first field test of the suitcase drum kit. We’re calling it an unmitigated success. Wilbur and Naomi are also RV’ers, so we had a lot of (non-musical) notes to compare, as well. We all had a great time, and Sue and I very much enjoyed getting to know Naomi and Wilbur in a closer and quieter setting than the big jam sessions where we’ve met before.
We didn’t get any photos (still working on developing effective travel-blogging routines and habits!), but Wilbur got a couple of us:
Getting together with my Bates College classmates from 40 years ago was a total blast. The college and ’76 reunion committee set a new standard for reunions with this gathering.
This was the second of our scheduled events, in which we attended the graduation ceremonies at Reading Memorial High School in Reading, MA.
Our youngest niece is now a high school graduate, and we’re just as proud as her parents. Continue reading “Pomp & Circumstance”
Northfield Associates and Newagen Group celebrated a long and fruitful history of collaboration this week as Northfield’s mobile office visited Newagen’s northern office in Southport, Maine. The occasion also marked the first time each organization’s Business Managers have met in real life.
The northern office is beautifully situated on the island, overlooking a secluded cove. The directions to the office included: “when the dirt road turns to single track, keep going until you see my truck parked in the trees…” We woke to the cove, island and wraparound deck hugged by the dense morning fog. A grand time was had by all. Thanks, Dave and Diane!
And Sue got to hold a monster cat on her shoulder! He just climbed up there and purred.
Very happy about this…
The adventure begins.
In the short time that we’ve owned our motorhome – a 2008 Winnebago View 24J – we’ve made a few modifications that we’re really pleased with. These include replacing the “house” radio/CD/DVD player in the galley with a framed photo of our backyard and installing a unit into the dash that can handle all of our media needs; adding swivel adapters to the seats up front; installing USB power outlets here and there; and a handful of power-related upgrades.
This is kind of a geeky post, so if that sort of thing interests you, do keep reading – if not, you’ve already got the gist of it.
Yes! Our rolling home has been freed from winter storage. We hooked up the batteries, checked the tires, started ‘er up and drove off. Awesome!
Now the crunch begins – five weeks to get the stationary house ready for a house-sitter, de-winterize, clean, service, and load up the rig (also fix a couple of things and make a couple of mods), check over the bikes & make sure the new bike rack works, pack up the instruments, check our total weight (and figure out what stays behind? Hope not!), say goodbye to everybody, and hit the road.
We went over to check on the RV in storage this morning, not having seen or touched it since we shut the door at the beginning of November. I wasn’t sure of the best way to deal with the batteries over the winter, so I’d opted to try the simplest solution first: charge them up, disconnect them, and leave them alone. This morning I was very pleased to find all the batteries holding a pretty good charge — 12.2V on the coach battery (50-60%), 12.35V and 12.42V on the house batteries (70-80%) — so we should be able to hook ’em up and drive away! I won’t even bother to put them on the charger until we get home. Also found no evidence of any long-term mouse infestation, another big relief.
