Just Keep Going

What Went Wrong Part II

“You need a new engine.” Mickey said. I needed to sit down. There were no empty chairs. I leaned against the wall of the office. We had been at Junge Ford for a few hours. I was nursing the baby when an employee came to get us. Greg went with the employee into the office alone. I didn’t want to talk to them while I was nursing. Greg came back quickly and told me what he had been told. I couldn’t process what Greg was saying. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, I just hoped that he had misunderstood. A new engine in the truck that we just bought. No, no that can’t be true. This can’t be happening! I finished nursing the baby and handed him off to Greg.

“I’ll go talk to them.” I said as I headed for the office. Greg must have misheard. This can’t really be the situation.

As I leaned against the wall, spluttering about how we just bought this truck less than two weeks ago, Mickey looked at me with sympathy in his eyes. It was true, the truck needed a new engine. It had a cracked cylinder and was unsafe to drive. I felt sick. Minimum of $10,000 for a new engine. I was trying not to cry. I was so angry. How could Barber Ford not know that they were selling us a piece of shit?

We had no warranty on the truck due to its age. We had to buy an older truck because we couldn’t get financing. Why couldn’t we get financing? We couldn’t get financing because we weren’t currently employed. Our excellent credit scores were worthless in this situation. Why didn’t we know that this was going to be an issue? We didn’t know that employment was the key. I did months of research on RV life. Paying cash for the RV and the truck had wiped out more than half of our budget. We still had enough to live off for about six months without jobs. Our $21,000 truck was now going to cost another $10,000 at least. There goes a huge chunk of our remaining budget.

Junge Ford was kind enough to let us leave the fifth wheel sitting on their lot while they worked on the truck. It just so happened that there was a hotel across the street from Junge Ford. We grabbed what we needed from the RV and moved into the hotel. We were able to get a room facing the Ford dealership. This allowed us to look out the window and make sure the fifth wheel was still there. Junge gave us a loaner vehicle by day two, thank God!

We didn’t know exactly how long we were going to be stuck in Iowa City. On the bright side it was nice to have a break from the challenges of RV life. We were stuck in limbo, but at least we didn’t have to worry about the air conditioning acting up and I could take as long as I wanted in the shower. It was hot of course, so we headed to the Mall. Coral Ridge Mall thankfully had a lot to offer. The Iowa Children’s Museum is in the mall. Greg took the kids to the museum while I went to a movie. The Children’s Museum was full of interactive displays. Our daughter had a great time!

I went to a movie, alone. I mean, alone. I was the only person in the theater. It was a weekday morning, but still surprising. That’s the only time I have ever been the only person in the audience at a movie. It was a novel experience. We drowned our sorrows in good cupcakes from Scratch Cupcakery. I love to cook and have a sweet tooth. The cupcakes from Scratch Cupcakery are legit. Sugar of course will not solve our problems and reality came calling on day four.

Junge Ford managed to get our engine replaced in four days. The total bill, $13,367.55! I leaned against the wall again feeling utterly defeated. I had reached some kind of acceptance that we were going to be out another $10,000. An additional $3,000 was just another demoralizing hit. It was time to call Barber Ford. What to say, what to say… I can’t say what I want to say to them. I used Junge’s landline to bolster my credibility. I reached the salesman who sold us the truck. I gave him a quick rundown of the situation and he said, ‘let me get you my manager.” I spoke to the manager and suggested that he speak to Mickey. They spoke on the phone for a several minutes and then the phone was handed back to me. I don’t remember the conversation that followed very well, but it was awkward! I wanted Barber Ford to pay the whole bill, but I knew that was a pipe dream. They were not legally obligated to help us in any way. I did my best to balance ‘please help us because it’s the right thing to do’ with ‘if you don’t help us, I’ll tell everyone’. I do not take kindly to being taken advantage of and that is how I felt. How hard should I push? If I push too hard, I may not get anything. Where is that ‘Midwest nice’? We reached an agreement that Barber Ford would pay $3,000 of the repair bill. I handed the phone back to a Junge Ford employee and he ran Barber Fords payment info. This left us with a bill of $10,367.55. The truck being a crew cab was part of why it cost so much to replace the engine. To access everything, the entire cab of the truck had to be removed. This added hours of labor to the bill. We thanked Junge Ford for their help and kindness. They really were very nice folks.

One more stop for cupcakes and we hit the road again heading west for the 2019 Iowa State Fair. Sioux Falls would now have to wait until after the Fair.

What Went Wrong Part I

We hit the road for our first big drive. Sioux Falls, South Dakota here we come! We were going to Sioux Falls to visit Kelly who I(Christy) have been friends with since middle school. Kelly was a bridesmaid in our wedding. I hadn’t seen her since I attended her wedding in 2012. She hadn’t seen Greg in more than ten years. We were all excited to have our kids meet each other.

Our first stop was at Lakeshore Camp Resort in Portage, IN. We broke a cardinal rule and arrived after dark. Arriving after dark makes everything much harder. When booking online or on an App, you never know what you are really getting yourself into. This was not what we had hoped for at all. The place is huge. It felt like we weren’t in the right place, but we kept following our GPS and found ourselves at a huge gate with a check point/gatekeeper. We were allowed entry and given directions to our pull through RV site. From the gate to the site took us 10 minutes, that’s how big the place is. We passed street after street looking for our street on a dark narrow road with plenty of tree branches that looked too low. There were people everywhere for the first several minutes, loud music, dancing, screaming children, and plenty of people holding beer cans crossing right in front of us. Turns out this resort has a lot of fun features that we never got to see including a music venue where a live band was playing. This was a very stressful drive. Thank God we were in a pull through site. A pull through site is a luxury we were only enjoying because the resort was fully booked! Greg and I used a flashlight to get the RV hooked up, did not unhitch, and got the kids to bed as quickly as we could.

The next morning, we were in a hurry to hit the road and the RV was not in the mood to co-operate. I was getting to the end of my keep calm and try again, when thankfully the couple in the RV next to us came outside. They had a cute little white poodle mix who helped my anxiety. The husband helped Greg problem shoot the right rear axle problem while I got to take a seat with a cute dog and talk to the wife. They turned out to be from South Bend, IN and this was one of their favorite places to take a quick vacation. They were a black couple and I really wanted to ask them about their experiences living in the mid-west. I got the impression that these were truly kind people, so I went ahead and brought up politics. I asked them about Pete Buttigieg who I am a big fan of. The wife got excited and told me that they know him. I asked her if he was as great as he seems on TV, she said “absolutely”. We talked excitedly about him. We briefly discussed the increased racism that they’ve experienced since 2015. Just as we were really getting into a deeper conversation about the 2020 election, our husbands solved the problem. I didn’t want to leave, but I knew we had a long day of driving ahead of us. Juneau is not a very diverse community. This was what I wanted more of for us. I wanted all four of us to meet new people with different life experiences and learn from each other. Greg and I both thanked the husband for his help. I gave the wife a hug, the dog a pat on the head and we were off.

We drove on I-80 west toward Iowa City. As we drove, I kept noticing this pulling or lurching feeling. The roads we had been driving on were in bad shape for freeways and had patches all over the place. At first, we thought that this feeling was related to the road conditions. We checked the hitch when we made a fuel stop. Everything seemed fine with the hitch, the roads were in better shape as we went but the feeling persisted. I knew something wasn’t right. We agreed to stop in Iowa City to get it checked out.

North Liberty, Iowa, which is just north of Iowa City has a ford dealership called Junge Ford. We were able to make an appointment for the next day. In the meantime, we had to figure out where we were going to park for the night. We needed some groceries and we like exploring new Costco locations. The Costco we located on google maps was our first stop in the area. However, as we got closer, we were increasingly confused. This Costco didn’t look like any Costco we had ever seen. We couldn’t see the parking lot. Towing an RV means you must be careful about how to enter and exit parking lots and of course watch your clearance to make sure you don’t hit any tree branches or pass under a low bridge, sign, or parking garage that’s shorter than your RV. We often drive around looking for the safest option for turning into a parking lot, but this time we couldn’t find the parking lot. We did find the loading dock on the back of the building though. Plenty of space back there! We parked behind the building as out of the way as we could and headed inside. We opened a door and instead of the store, we were entering a parking garage. This Costco’s parking lot is a covered garage attached to the store. It’s the only one like that I’ve ever seen. We found a manager to talk to and they kindly agreed to let us stay overnight where we had parked.

Now, place to park check, food check, A/C? No. It was hot, and we had no way to run the A/C, or much of anything with no hook ups. We headed to local mall to escape the heat. We took the kids to a family friendly movie and slept that night in the innocent bliss of people who don’t know financial devastation is on the way.

5. But it’s my money…

https://youtu.be/HZqgaQrgAY0

Post 5. But it’s my money… Enjoy this 26 minute video.

4.Shit gets real.

We left our home in Juneau Alaska on June 6^th 2019. We bought an RV, got rid of most of our earthly possessions, put our house up for rent, and took off into the great unknown. We planned to travel for about a year visiting places we had always wanted to see, checking out places we might want to move to and bonding as a newly enlarged family of four. Here we will share pictures, videos and lots of stories from our travels. This is JUST KEEP GOING!

Apologies for the delay on posting this. For this post we recorded some audio and below you’ll find the pictures that go along with what we are talking about. We tried to edit this together as a video, due to technical difficulties(file formats, PC’s & iPhone grr) that could not be accomplished at this time.

You might notice that none of what we were eating involved cooking. One of the many issues we had to figure out was how to use our gas stove/oven and getting the water that came out of the kitchen faucet clean. We did a lot of eating out and eating cold foods. We also went through many gallons of water. You can buy gallons of drinking water at most big grocery stores and once empty, return to refill those jugs for thirty-nine cents. We would refill each jug a couple times and then recycle and start over. We eventually got to a point where we were comfortable drinking the water, but this is an ongoing RV life issue when you are traveling.

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Next time on Just Keep Going, we buy a truck and leave our first RV park!

3. Leaving the Other Nest

Our time in Washington was short, but very sweet. We made the short drive from Bellingham to Greg’s parents house in Bothell on day seven. Our son turned eight months old, and with that, we lost track of what day it was.

Unpacking and repacking was a big chore! We had to unpack Greg’s parents car and repack everything for flying to the mid-west. I packed and repacked our stuff over and over, until I had every suitcase packed to forty-nine or forty-eight pounds.

Stunningly beautiful roses at Greg’s parents house.

My cousin Nellie, her husband Steve and their daughter joined us for Sunday brunch.

Who’s idea was it to put ice cream on waffles? On behalf of parents everywhere, thanks! Not.

As usual meeting the newest family member was the highlight. Who could resist that face?

We spent less than a week in Bothell, but we managed to see several family members and friends.

The first big highlight of our travels was getting see Elizabeth Gilbert. You probably know her as the author of Eat Pray Love, but she has written many books. She was making a stop in Seattle on her book tour for her new novel, City of Girls. Greg’s Aunt Anne was in town to help care for his ailing Grandmother. Aunt Anne got to be my date to the book tour event. It was a fantastic evening! Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my heroes. She is unapologetically herself. She is an excellent writer who’s words speak to me deeply. She is also a fearless world traveler who has incredible stories of incredible people from all over the globe. She is an inspiration. Aunt Anne and I excitedly talked all the way home about the wisdom and lessons that were shared and how her honestly cuts right through walls.

Saying goodbye is always hard. It is a little easier though when you are super excited about what comes next. Saying goodbye to Greg’s parents is scary. We are used to living in the same place as his parents and mine. His parents have just moved back to Bothell Washington. This is why we are saying goodbye to them in Bothell, instead of Juneau. We rely on our parents for babysitting, moral support and physical help. What does physical help mean? So many things!

“Hey, do you have a thingymajig? Can we borrow it?”

“We’re trying to fix the (name any appliance), and we can’t get the… Can you come over?”

“Hey Dad, do you know how to…”

“Hey, can you drive me to my OB appointment next Tuesday?”

Our parents are very supportive and have helped us a great deal. We really appreciate them. We are going off into the unknown without them. We don’t have mechanical skills, or electrical or plumbing skills. We know that things break on RV’s frequently. The learning curve will be steep. We have to figure out everything on our own. We don’t know what we are doing or what we are getting ourselves into. Thank God for the internet! Without the internet I don’t think we’d be doing this on our own. Every RV has it’s own quirks. We will be faced with many challenges. This will be a test of our abilities and a test of our marriage. Not to mention we are doing this with our two kids. Will we falter? Or, will we rise to meet each challenge as a team?

No matter what happens, we are leaving the nest completely.

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Next time, we finally get to the RV!

2 Jury Duty

Day 2. Oh, cell phone coverage when you’re on the ferry, you are cruel and unusual. In a moment of coverage, I was able to check my e-mail. I had an e-mail from the State of Alaska Court System. I was very surprised to see those words in the sender field. I’m not sure I’ve ever received an e-mail from the court system before. I thought for a moment it might be a phishing e-mail. It was in fact from the State of Alaska and it was a notification that I was being called for Jury Duty. Are you freaking kidding me? Now? Now that I’ve just left town for extended travel? We took this unwelcome news in stride. Hoping that I’d be able to get my jury duty deferred to another time.

We drove off the ferry in Prince Rupert, British Columbia at approximately 3pm. Once we got through customs, we saw a deer by the road before we even left the city limits. So cool! We drove to Smithers as quickly as we could with a baby in tow. On the way, our daughter was already talking about spending the “toonie” that the Tooth Fairy had left her on the ferry. It’s only 200 miles to Smithers, but we didn’t make it to our hotel until 10:15pm.

Day 3 We stayed at The Prestige hotel in Smithers and it turned out to be a nice place to stay. Trying to get going in the morning with kids is such a challenge. We tried to get out early but didn’t manage to leave until after 10am. Our daughter lost her second tooth that day. We made several stops on our way to Quesnel.

A nice break in Prince George for food and a new booster seat broke up the drive. When we left Juneau, we left with a booster seat for our six-year-old that my parents had been using. I had sold the other booster seats that we had without realizing that this was a mistake. The booster seat my parents had turned out to be a three-point harness booster seat instead of a booster seat that just uses the seat belt. This meant that our daughter could not secure herself without help. We bought her a new booster seat at Canadian Tire. There was just one problem. What to do with the no longer needed, large seat? Greg tried to act casual as he disposed of it. Rest assured, we did not litter.

We arrived at the Quesnel Ramada Inn at 6:30. This was the first Ramada we’d ever been to that we’d never go back to. Everything looked dirty, the ceiling, the walls, and the towels even. Walking around barefoot in the room turned the bottoms of our feet black. It was so gross! I took the time to leave a review.

Day 4 It was a very long day of driving! Nine hours after leaving Quesnel, we made it to Bellingham. We were exhausted and starving when we got to our hotel. My best friend since the age of three, Amy lives in Bellingham. We were so happy to see her and the Chinese food she brought with her to our hotel. Our daughter was so happy to see her Godmother! We were happy too, but the excitement of a little kid is on a whole other level.

Day 5 After getting to spend the night at Aunt Amy’s, our daughter proudly stated that she got to have bacon and hot cocoa for breakfast. That’s what Godmother’s are for, right?

We had a really nice visit. Amy showed me around town. Until then I had only seen the area from the Alaska Ferry Terminal to the freeway to drive south.

Amy and I in front of the bar that Ted Bundy frequented. We did not go inside. I wonder what it’s like to work somewhere evil used to hang out at.

Day 6 Bellingham has many beautiful old houses. I really enjoyed Amy showing me the historic neighborhoods. The Victorian architecture is so fun to look at. Victorian homes have so much character and are so regal.

On our last evening we all went out to dinner at a fabulous Italian restaurant. The food was so good! It was really nice to see Noah again. We hadn’t spent any time with him since we went to Hawaii together in 2016. We don’t get to see each other enough. It’s truly a joy to see the love that Amy has for our children. She is a true best friend forever and I’m so glad that my children have her in their lives. She was the first loved one that we got to visit, and we planned to visit many more.

‘Hey! Why do you get chocolate and I don’t?!’

Coming up, leaving the other nest. Thank you for reading, Just Keep Going!

1 Departure

Our daughter lost her first tooth at her grandparent’s house on our last day in Juneau. It’s moments like this that we don’t want to miss in our kids lives. This first tooth was a big deal and we were too busy frantically packing at the last minute to experience it. As we are with our kids full time we look forward to being present for many milestones to come.

Watching Daddy drive the car onto the Ferry at 3am.

Thankfully the Alaska Marine Highway System employees let the kids and me board early. Nothing like waking your kids up in the middle of the night to travel. By the time I took this picture of Greg driving onboard the kids and me were settled in our stateroom.