Although I am very much enjoying our brief break away from the Dutchess with her temperamental breakdowns and the hair-raising hail storms we’ve endured under a paper-thin, leaking roof, I still want to keep moving, even if it is just plans to keep moving, 2-wheels, train wheels, any new form of transport, in the pursuit of adventure and seeing old friends again.

In particular the idea of crossing continents by foot in the ancient tradition appeals to me more and more each day my back heals, inching me closer to the dream of hiking the Appalachian Trail solo next year. It spans over 2000 miles, from Maine to Georgia and with Nathan’s amazing support I’ll be able to take off 3 months in 2010 and another 3 in 2011 to complete the trail. It’s been all I could think about for weeks, planning my gear list, figuring out how I was going to save up for it, creating a website…

Well, until Nathan went and bought himself a beautiful Stella scooter… we’ve been zipping around Pennsylvania on it having so much fun… and now I desperately want one too, so that I can strap on a backpack and go on a fantastic cross-country roadtrip! This dream has been on the backburner for a few years, inspired 100% by the amazing woman behind Vespa Vagabond. Her story and photos are spellbinding. I would love love LOVE to meet her one day.

This is Nathan’s Stella (he has the blue one):

I really fancy the retro army green one for myself!

But it in the interest of choosing something different (with an automatic transmission) these are the other two I’m mainly deciding between -

IL BELLO 150cc
(lots of storage for cross-country trips and a fantastic classic waspy shape)

TNG Baja 150
I love its ugly bug-eye, rugged looks. Fantastic off-road setup, lots of areas to strap on a tent and backpack. I’d probably paint and customise it – its just begging for it!

It also looks like something I could ride on through Africa some day… seriously though, I have an overwhelming amount of adventures to save up for and think about so I’m going to just let that thought drift away!

In 2 weeks I fly out to Portland to visit some of my oldest friends who run the surprisingly famous Sock Dreams. I love visiting them – always feel so at home, and Portland is one of those places I could comfortably live forever and feel very very content.  It’s scary how content I feel there. Scary, because someone like me should really keep moving…

I’m hoping Nathan will meet me in Portland where we can take a train ride back to the RV in Las Vegas. A multi-day train ride together would be so much fun!

The joke was on her when she realised it was Las Vegas New Mexico and she’d be in a greasy repair shop! Oh how we laughed and laughed about it. In our seering hot tuna can on the side of a lonely desert road while Nathan hitched a ride into town via passing truck to call Geico.

Mmmmm! Such a sexy truck.

The guy who towed us was such a sweety, took care of the fussy old lady and helped us out by recommending local repair places that were family owned and honest, recommending places to eat and visit in the area. He also recommended the cheapest motel which is conveniently right next door to the repair shop. Thunderbird Motel. They must think they’re in the Las Vegas that counts because the lodging was $75!!! For a motel room! That’s the highest by probably double we’ve ever paid for a motel and its the grottiest one we’ve ever stayed at. However it was the cheapest in the area.

We had good news this morning. Las Vegas Diesel Repairs & Welding called us first thing to let us know it’s the ignition acting up. The repairs will only set us back a few hundred including a quick tune-up, breaking the record for us as our repairs are usually in the thousands. While we wait for her to get fussed over this morning we’re going to explore the old town and shops by foot or bike. It should be a great day! Then just 70 odd miles to Taos. We can’t wait!

If it wasn’t for these guys, I don’t know what I would have done. When Nathan had some strange symptoms 2 weeks after his appendectomy, Jenn and Greg were the ones who finally convinced him to go back to the ER to get checked out, and it turned out after a CT scan that he had some serious complications.

The day didn’t start off too well either. I’d planned the day around tying up and sending off our taxes. But before they arrived on the scene, our grey water had backed up into our shower again (which we use as a closet), the sewage was full (we didn’t have a hookup), our propane ran out and Nathan was getting increasingly stubborn and upset with me about my repeated insistence that he go to the ER. While he took a shower I (sneakily) called the White’s to collect Tristan for a play day so I could figure out how to solve all these situations.

When they arrived to collect Tristan they had a very brief and effective chat with him about going to the ER right away. I remember him sitting in the doorway step looking down at his flipflops sheepishly while they spoke, looking up with big wide eyelashy eyes and saying, “hokay.” Nothing short of miraculous. And they made it look so easy.

After they drove us to the ER to get him safely checked in, Jenn took Tristan off to play with their amazing kids all day, where they volunteered at the Food Bank. Then Greg helped me dump the sewage and grey water, and drove the RV to get the propane filled up. As I didn’t know what the plans were with Nathan, Greg took some clothes for Tristan to stay overnight. Nathan was admitted and I spent the rest of the night filing our joint tax returns (Federal, State and City!!) then collapsed into bed.

Yesterday I spent almost all day at the hospital and they kept Tristan again for another day of fun and overnight. When I spoke to Tristan on the phone yesterday he was excitedly telling me about how much fun he was having playing with their amazing three kids — Sunny, Kesley and Austin — at the Food Bank and the park, and how badly he wanted to sleep over again. How he got to stay up till midnight and how it was his first ever non-family sleepover. He was so proud. But the Whites are family to us now. They made us feel incredibly comfortable about leaning on them as much as we need to and for the first time in my life I didn’t feel awkward about it. It really did feel like I was asking family for help, and that’s how I know they are family.

Tristan playing with one of his little friends

Nathan was discharged today so they brought me to the hospital to collect him and took us to Walgreen’s to get his prescription. I have him safely tucked into bed back in the RV where he is on a regimen of Family Guy, pain meds, a month’s worth of antibiotics and the usual treats he bleats for. I am fully prepared to entice him into eating food with the promise of milk and cookies. No matter how small an appetite he has, he always has space for milk and cookies.

I love the Whites and hope to make it up to them some day in an equally big way. Once they’re back on the road for their next adventure I hope we’ll get a chance to join up with them and make a caravan of it. Friends have become increasingly important to us, a rare luxury, and more valued than ever on the road.

Life has been full of surprises lately, and a few days ago this beautiful old relic of the hometrucking past came rolling in right next to us. I couldn’t believe my luck! It’s been a dream of mine to live in one of these beauties for as long as I have dreamed of living in a treehouse, but I never expected to actually see one from the 70’s still on the road.

The suspension is shot so these days it has a full entourage. The current owner is a really lovely, interesting guy who trails it to nearby festivals and runs a little coffee shop from it. His own matching hand-made truck top serves as his home on these occasions, his dog the most wonderful companion. Oh how I squealed with disbelief when I saw it for the first time! My heart raced. The add-on body is still in solid shape, and with a few repairs and replacements I could see her back on the road… me behind the wheel! hee hee

If you’re also nuts about housetrucks and housebuses, check out housetrucks.com.

Life in Marathon TX:

It’s absolutely beautiful here, desolate, isolated, hardly worn but well lived in… I hope my photos today and in a few days manage to bring that out and tempt you to come out here on a whim. It is a special town, but most of all I’ll miss the warm and fascinating people I’ve met here, many who have travelled from very far and stopped here for the night on the way to somewhere else, only to discover Marathon is the home they have searched for all their lives.

It’s got a magical hold over my heart. I will think of this place always.

Marathon Motel & RV Park Review

This little gem is a little further down the desolate highway 90 from where we’re living in the middle of nowhere, TX… amazing!

The work was located on the outskirts of Valentine, Texas near Marfa in 2005 on desolate ranching land with no other visible trace of civilization. The artists Elmgreen and Dragset states:

“As one drives toward the artwork it will appear to be a large minimalist sculpture, as one gets closer it will look like a luxury boutique where a display of Fall 2005 high-heel Prada shoes and bags will be seen through the store front windows… blends into the exciting historical structures of the area in which it will be placed… As we purposefully will not preserve Prada Marfa, it will eventually become a ruin so that even in a future decayed state it will remain relevant to the time in which it was made…”

Perfect. There are so many beautiful ruins of past civilisation around here and so many to explore. Marathon Texas, where we’re living right now, is such an amazing place to live. Its so disconnected from the rest of the world, anything goes out here. I’m really keen to explore Marfa!

They returned home with stories about how Pud didn’t want to go to her because she seemed annoyed with him bothering other people while at the same time not caring about where he’d been, and how they had given him the totally wrong name, and how he was afraid of Tristan’s stick instead of wanting to play with it, and it does seem that he really really really wants us to be his new family… and though I can definitely vouch for the latter I know better than to completely believe she wouldn’t miss him or doesn’t deserve him, and he is a very well fed dog. He has them bewitched and no owner would be worthy of him in their eyes apart from the ones Pud chooses. Besides, we’re already pretty squeezed into this small home and Pud’s still a puppy – promises to grow to a small horse some day with an appetite likely to match even Tristan’s. Pud knows the way here now and comes to visit the boys to make double sure we don’t want to keep him… oh man. Nathan says, “Just three more visits and we have to keep him.”

A dog that chooses you is the best dog to have, and even better if adopted on an epic journey across the continent so he can hang his big doggy tongue out the window as cars and trucks blow past us…and even better that he comes from the little town of Marathon, a town we love almost as much as Pud.

Every now and then Nathan looks at me with puppy eyes, telling me about how he loves Pud as much as “5″, then wanders them off in the distance sadly for a moment but then a big smile floods across his face and his eyes sparkle, making fractionally small darts around and I can see him playing over future memories of us and Pud, Pud and us, etcetera etcetera… he keeps on hoping.

Oh Pud. You have us all muddled!

It didnt last long before our hanging-out neighbour Brett came round and coaxed me into going on a hike. He’d had the same idea and knew the perfect route – the Barton Creek greenbelt. Its just a few blocks away from the RV park, and after a short trip through an amazing children’s playground wonderland and past the swimming pool we found ourselves at the beginning of our 6-mile round-trip hike. The bed of the dried up river which we would be making our way up towards an amazing cave. The rest of the aventure continues in the gallery…

(pics aren’t the greatest quality because I took them with my phone)

After we got back from the hike it was cooling off a bit so we decided to invite some friends round and make milled wine. I make it from scratch with cheap red wine, oranges, whole cloves, cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, brandy and a touch of sugar. The RV smelled amazing!! We chased that down with buttermilk pie from Austin Java and shortly after that I was dropping off to sleep. It’s a glorious feeling falling asleep to being absolutely and completely exhausted and satisfied.