American Muscle, Detroit Gold & Saying Goodbye

My family made a very difficult decision a few weeks ago to say goodbye to a long-cherished 'family member'.

Daisy has been in my family since 1965, when she was purchased new by my eldest aunt in New York in 1966. She is a 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible.

 

 She lived in California for many years and she is the vehicle that I first saw the original Muppet Movie in at a San Diego drive-in during the summer of 1979 with my cousin Ernie Scholz- we were six years old at the time.

She came to live with my dad in Texas about a dozen years ago, as we wanted her to remain in the family.

My dad and I have worked on her carburetor, washed her, waxed her and enjoyed long drives in her. She was intended to be an early inheritance at some point, as she held many fond memories and is a gorgeous piece of industrial art.

Several months ago, my dad asked me if I was ready for my inheritance and could I make the necessary accommodations for her. We discussed options back and forth and Katrina and I decided that our present lifestyle was not the most suitable situation for maintaining a classic car and that the storage and maintenance expense would be significant and would likely require us to go back to a more traditional lifestyle that we no longer desire and possibly couldn't afford comfortably long-term.

We shared our concerns with Dad, who was very supportive and understanding and we decided to pursue other options for Daisy.

This week, Daisy joined the extensive Gullo Ford Family Museum collection, where she will be on display for the enjoyment of many for decades to come. If you ever have a chance to visit the collection, please say hello to her from us. It's not often that a family heirloom finds its way to a museum in your lifetime.

As sad as it is to see Daisy go, we know she is well cared for and loved.

'Hippie Van' now takes the lead as the patriarchal vehicle in the Holt family as he enters his fortieth year and possibly the half-a-million mile mark one day soon. He has not been driven much in the last fifteen years and his newly rebuilt engine and transmission should help to change that very soon.

In the meantime, I am keeping up the family tradition with Molly (Jeep), as she prepares to celebrate her 25th year this July. My dad and I drove to my hometown of Cocoa Beach, Florida on July 14th, 1990 to pick her up. I was seventeen.

I am reminded in writing this that many of my fondest memories with my dad revolve around these and other vehicles. His passion for collecting and maintaining his very own 'pieces of industrial art' have always been a part of our relationship, and washing the cars every Saturday was a childhood ritual that I will never forget. He taught me how to change my own oil and tires, lube a chassis and gap a spark plug.

 He knows the answer to any and every mechanical question there is to ask about any internal combustion or nuclear powered engine ever manufactured.  He can look at four square inches of a fender, bumper or tail fin and tell you the year make and model of any car built after 1950. He owns every issue of Car and Driver and Motor Trend since 1969. He has one hobby and one passion and he’s dedicated a lifetime to honing his expertise because he is simply overcome with curiosity about all things automotive.

We bought my first car before I was even old enough for a driving permit- a neglected '78 T-bird that had sat for years in a field in Virginia. We spent two years rebuilding the engine (using the onion skin manual that my dad ordered from Ford for $100) and polishing off the oxidation until she shone. I owned that T-bird for fourteen years and more than 260,000 miles. She drove from Texas to Alabama, Oklahoma, all over Florida and the southeast, and she towed my worldly possessions from Alabama to Utah as I fled an abusive relationship and a case of bronchitis so severe that my dad ended up driving me from Houston to Salt Lake City at a moment’s notice while I slept fitfully and heavily medicated most of the way.

My own Detroit fascination is homage to him and a continuing tribute to the amazing man who has skillfully shaped and continues to influence my life today. 

One More Reason That My Wife Is Totally Awesome

This morning before work, I was goofing around on the computer and trying to clean out my email and FB notifications. I subscribe to several deal sites like Brad's Deals and Living Social, and I saw an intriguing ad for a waterproof wireless shower speaker with a really funny video ad.

Basically, this dorky guy is trying to be studly and sexy in the video (and he knows that he isn't), and is talking about how many and heavy metal this speaker is... Cut to a silhouette of him laying in the tub with candles and bubbles listening to "On the Wings of Love" while turning on the water with his big toe. It was fairly amusing.

Anyway, Katrina is flitting around making our breakfast shakes and lemon tea and isn't really paying attention to me. About 20 minutes later, while I am washing dishes, I start belting out a comedically off-key rendition of 'On the Wings of Love', to which Katrina stops short and gives me this really odd look.

"What's wrong?" I say, genuinely concerned that she, after all these years, suddenly thinks this is my real singing voice.

"That's SO weird. I was JUST thinking that song in my head." She sort of tilts her head speculatively.

"What are you thinking?" I ask.

"Well, I knew that is was just a matter of time before I developed super powers", she replies with a straight face, "I just sort of hoped that it would be either magic or the ability to fly, but I guess mind control is pretty good, too."

 She laughs and then says, "Please tell me that we recently heard that song before I think that we're now sharing one brain or something..."

And THAT is one of the many reasons that my wife is freaking awesome. Super powers- her totally rational explanation for the not-easily-explainable. That, or a Vulcan mind meld...

God, I love this girl!

The Space Between

I have not updated in months, because it was just too difficult to follow the timeline that I was trying to maintain, but I am overflowing with thought and I need to share!!! So here's my latest (totally random) blog:

I am sitting at a picnic table in front of my RV, less than ten feet from a roaring campfire, in an insanely popular and lovely state park- and I’m pensive.

We have new neighbors this evening- from Pennsylvania- and they've commented, as have many others, how young we are compared to other hosts they've encountered. A common conversation thread includes:

·         You must love it- no responsibilities, fun all the time, just playing.

·         You must travel all over. I’ll bet you’re never in the same place for any length of time.

And most commonly (and obviously),

·         How?

We've been full-timing for a year-and-a-half, and traveling for about 7 of those months, and as I ‘settle’ into the ‘reality’ of living this way, I have begun to develop an awareness of the uniqueness of our particular circumstance.

Most of our friends and family are ‘stick and brickers’- that is, the majority of their lives are lived in a perma-structure of stick and brick creation. Some of them may be weekend campers or RVers, but their modular existence is in the nature of recreation, so when they are in their RV’s or tents, they are usually pursuing other entertainments or activities and are using the modular structure as a ‘hotel room’ to further enjoy their outdoor activities.

Some of our family and friends (Katrina’s parents and our camp hosting friends from Croft) are ‘full-timer lites’- when they RV, it’s often for months or seasons at a time, but they still have S&B homes and in the cases of all of our Croft friends, at least one spouse still works at a job that he/she must physically show up for most weekdays. These folks understand our hopes and dreams, because many of them share a similar vision, but they still have the ties that anchor them to ‘respectable’ society. In other words, most people don’t view them as fringe-ists or as completely unhinged- just slightly eccentric.

Lastly, there are the other full-timers that we know- The first group of folks are our friends from Salt Lake in the “RV Pit”, who are mostly just young families and folks our age struggling to live in an economically challenging situation and trying valiantly to get back into ‘respectable’ living.

The second group of full-timers are the retired camp hosts that we meet at the parks where we volunteer. Almost without exception (a widow, widower and single older lady not yet retired) all of the hosts are retired couples with big rigs and guaranteed income just looking to travel and stretch their accommodations dollar as far as it will go.  They are the appropriate age and demographic  to make vagabonding socially acceptable.

Enter the Brolts (my amusing haplology of our last names- kind of like Brangelina, but classier). We don’t smoothly fit into the niches of polite society- we aren't retired in our big rig, we don’t have a ‘settled’ place to return to (an ideal that my mother frets herself into foaming fits over- repeat five times fast)  and we’re not transitioning between the two.

We’re a bit of a conundrum. This entire issue really lies with me- someone from one side (an S&Ber, for example) will make a comment- perhaps about how lucky we are to be on a lark and just enjoying no responsibility- and it will irk me no end.

Do you really think that I have no responsibilities whatsoever?

How do you think I support myself and my wife, pay my bills and put food on the table?

Feed my cats?

Buy gas?

Repair Justin the Behemoth Beaver?

Buy awesome shit that I can’t live without?

So I sit in front of a campfire and ponder my life. I think about an internet meme that I once saw that depicted a vignette about Lesbians. I’ll include it below because it succinctly illustrates my next point (please don’t be offended at the slightly risqué- ness of it- I didn't create it)

So, off-color though it may be, the above is a good generalization of my current challenge. S&Bers think that we’re just hanging around the campfire all of the time, doing nothing; and the retired folk/Lites, wonder why we’re always inside on the computer working instead of out by the campfire like them.

It’s like we’re in RV purgatory…

New Year 2014!

Well, I swore that I would be more diligent in keeping up with this blog, but that resolution has yet to  be fulfilled. Perhaps the blush of a new year filled with hope and new opportunities will hold me to some of my literary promises.

As for this story, let's pick up where we left off several months ago.

Polk County Courthouse

I am married... I am in Des Moines in September with my new wife, which sounds lovely, and is for the most part, except for the weather. My God, it's hot! And muggy- let's certainly not forget the muggy. And I am in jeans and a button-down and suede (good choice, Jenn) shoes.
We are trudging back to Justin Beaver after filing our papers and we are now coming down from our adrenal overload of the past two hours and are starting to feel the effects of a 'three hours of sleep in the jungle' kind of night.  The sky is threatening and there is nowhere to sleep or have a (much needed) shower in Des Moines, so we are heading out in hopes of a breeze or a truck stop, anything but the oppressive monotonous stillness of the weather in the city.

Wedding Ring

We drive towards Missouri, trying to eat up some miles en route to our first destination of Asheville, NC. Initially, we had hoped to honeymoon in Memphis or Nashville, or someplace romantic- and not boondocking in front of my mom's house- but with all that has happened on this trip, we feel that a 'bat out of hell' approach is best in this instance.  We travel a few hours, through torrential rains that are not cooling or refreshing, at all, and I am tired and hot and sticky and grumpy and hungry... We stop in a small town in Missouri that we later find out is named Holt (kismet!!!), and we stop at the first place that we find open that isn't fast food. The New China Buffet with over 100 items turns out to be the nastiest Chinese restaurant in the free world. We eat and laugh because, of course our wedding meal would be awful! It's just the universe's way... But we're happy despite the food and fatigue and we decide to see if Holt, MO has a place for the Holt's for tonight. Twenty years notwithstanding, a hot shower and air conditioning would make an excellent wedding night gift. We find a motel that is only slightly questionable and back the Beaver into the spot right in front of our room. We feed kitties, grab what we need and tun the AC on high and the shower on hot... and then bathed and cleaned and fed, we sleep.  Blissful dreamless sleep until the crack of thunder (apparently under the bed) makes us both jump to our feet. It is pouring  down rain outside and the RV windows are open for the cats. I put on my shorts and run barefoot to the RV to close all of the windows while thunder and lightening and the heavens erupt. I am soaked through when I return to the room and collapse back into bed after a quick wardrobe change. Our hotel is built into the side of a hill and our room is right at the juncture, so once the thunder stops it's pealing, we sleep through the rest of the night. We find out the next morning that we have slept through an F2 tornado. All is fine with Justin Beaver but the cats are pissed! We pack up under sunny skies but watch the ominous blackness to the East (of course,  the direction that we are heading). We hit plenty of rain  but no significant weather or issues until we reach Cape Girardeau, MO, where I discover while fueling, a gasket seal is blown on my rear tandem wheel hub. Not taking chances, I locate a diesel repair shop and $135 later, I have a silicone repair that took about thirty minutes and will hopefully hold for awhile.
We make it to just East of St. Louis before nightfall and spend a noisy night in a Hampton Inn parking lot right next to the freeway. Up and early the next morning, we finish the rest of the trip without incident. Two days later, we pull into my mom's drive, where we will spend the next ten days working until it's time to leave for (finally) Myrtle Beach.

Finally legal!

While in Asheville, I have dinner with my aunts and cousins, who share with us wonderful wedding presents and we also drive to Spartanburg, SC to see my cousin, Jimmy and his wife, Patricia, and to see Croft State Park, which is our next assignment after MBSP. Patricia also made us an unexpected surprise of a wedding cake, which was so kind and thoughtful (and not to mention delicious!). What a wonderful gift to celebrate with our family on so many occasions.

We weren't originally thrilled about our scheduled time at Croft State Park because it isn't a well represented park. I chose it mainly because of it's proximity to my mother, it's lack of snow, and a YouTube video on trail biking that I found. Once we arrived, however, my attitude completely changed. Ranger Dave took us all on a hike down to the river and the mountain bike bridge, and he also took us to the lake and up a closed pass in the park. We had a great time and were really looking forward to our next assignment after MB. as a fotnote, I am actually writing this update from Croft, having been here for a little over a months now. 
After ten days spent with family and friends, we were ready to hit the beach!!!

Stay tuned for our further adventures in Myrtle Beach!