Wednesday, August 29, 2012

What The Hell Am I Doing?


For those of you just joining this blog or who may not be apprised of what has happened here is the story. A few months ago I sold almost everything that I own, bought an RV and decided to travel across the country. Crazy you say? Yes it is. Let's meet the participants...

That is me. I am the idiot who decided to take the insane trip.  




his is Andrew. I'm not sure why he is here but he drives the RV and does useful things like make sure it's filled with oil and keeps me from having a mental breakdown.  
















And this guy is Almont. My friend Christina decided that there may not have been enough of us so she gave us a companion. He isn't very chatty but takes things as they come.  
  

That's Bella. She is cute. And that's about it. 


The plan is this. Leave Fargo and drive to Seattle, which we have already done. It has been an eventful week and a half and as I write this I can't believe that is has only been that long. It seems some days like we have been doing this for a year. We will spend some time seeing cool things and having weird stuff happen which I will update you on in the following days. Then we head to a neat little farm in Idaho for about a month to work. After that, across the country again with stops in various places to St. Louis for the Men's Roller Derby Association National Championship in October and hopefully to the east coast for another stay on a farm there. In the end the goal is to be in Fort Collins, CO for Andrew to go to school. We have to goal of seeing all 50 states in three years. For those of you keeping score at home so far we have MN, ND, MT and WA. We did drive across the small part of ID so you can count that as well. See you all on the road!

















Sunday, August 19, 2012

Never To Many Clamps


My RV is very old and the cabinet doors have a habit of slamming down on your fingers at the most inopportune times. Usually when I am trying to put the peanut butter back or find a place for the chips. My head and fingers have started to dread visits to the places that we keep everything that we need. 

I found the solution to this problem at the most unexpected place. I went to a wedding. Two friends were getting married… to each other and I was lucky enough to score an invitation. As most of you know I am not generally a fan of weddings but this wedding gave me a huge boost of hope and joy for a few reasons. First of all it was sort of like a mini reunion. Several of the people that I went to high school were in attendance because they had kept in touch with both of these people. I remembered how I felt when I was in high school with these folks. They are smart, interesting and motivated people. Not exactly how I felt back then. I felt more like I had no direction or motivation. I felt out of place pretty much everywhere no matter how kind people were. When I saw all of these man and women again they were kind, joyful and successful. They had lovely families and wonderful stories in which they contributed good things to the world. I went into the day feeling overwhelmed by the impending trip and lifestyle change and left feeling revitalized, encouraged and excited.
The second thing that gave me hope was the clamps. The groom’s father passed away a few years back and was a large fan of clamps. Rightly so, they hold things in place, temporarily fix things and organize. They really are the all purpose tool. Every table came equipped with its own set of lovely clamps which we were encouraged to take with us. It turns out that these clamps are the perfect size and strength to hold up my cabinets doors. It was almost like someone planned it that way. Someone mentally said “Here take these useful clamps and a whole bunch of joy!” We don’t know the impression that we leave in life by just being who we are. Sometimes life can be hard and we are afraid to take the next step towards joy for fear something will break or fall apart. And in the end we realize that as we go through life and all we really need to succeed is the love of our friends… and maybe a few clamps.