Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Takin' a Break. A Cold One.

And NO the break will not involve cracking open a crisp cool can of beer and laying back in a lawn chair to watch the sunset over the California hills. Our "cold one" will involve cracking into the world of sub zero wind chills and face freezing temperatures. We are not going to Siberia.... but close.... we are going to visit my hometown in Illinois. Since we have been enjoying the beautiful weather, beaches and scenery here in Cali for almost 6 months we thought what better way to shake it up than a road trip to Rockford in January and February?! Yee Haw!

We have not visited with my family for almost a year and a half so it is high time we make a pit stop. Even though the pit stop is over 2000 miles away. Lucky for us Hwy 80 is right outside our trailer door and it will take us about 1,950 of the necessary miles to get there. Now that is an easy route. I think we are going to head out this weekend (sans the trailer, it will stay here) and take about 4 days to drive across. As soon as we make it over the pass in Tahoe we kiss the warm weather goodbye! I love a good old school cross country peel out fully saturated with truck stop seediness, loud music on the highway and the novelty of staying in a hotel room. I can't wait to hit the road. Our route takes us through Nevada, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa. We have seen most all of it before but not in winter.

We will spend about a month in Illinois before heading back out here to pull the trailer back down to Carmel Valley and ready ourselves for the Spring and Summer seasons there. Even though the economy is lower than snake shit Billy is hoping to get a foothold in the Carmel art market for the future. Rudy has not yet had his fill of Dog City and I have not had my fill of knowing that I am living within miles of Clint Eastwood.

We did make it through our date at the Airstream repair shop and hopefully our leak is fixed. They caulked it up and tightened everything down. We also found out there was a recall on a part in our Dometic refrigerator and they replaced that. If you have a newer AS you should check to see if your fridge needs the fix too. It is an easy fix... only takes about 5 minutes for the tech to do it. We are going to deal with the bed platform ourselves. I did not have the patience or energy to battle out trying to get the thing replaced at the dealership. We are going to clean the whole area again and leave it set up with dehumidifiers while we are gone to totally dry it out. If the problem arises again we will have to replace the wood. And we do plan to get the mattress up and off the platform with either a box spring or some kind of foam insulation. So hopefully it will be all set.

I am off to begin the packing process. Let's see.... Eskimo Parka? Check. Ice Scraper? Check! Moon Boots? Dammit. Anyone have a pair they can loan me?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have a great winter road trip! If your bed platform is bare wood then seal it with an oil base paint or lacquer. That should take care of any remaining mold spores and keep them from re-establishing a colony. After that, if you still want something between your mattress and platform, then staple indoor/outdoor carpet to the platform. It's inexpensive, doesn't hold water, but provides just enough space to keep the mattress off the platform in case there is another leak.

Bethany said...

Hi Forrest. Thanks for the advice! I told Billy what you suggested and I think we will look into sealing the wood and the idea of knowing that we are sleeping on a hidden bed of outdoor carpet is just goofy enough that I really kind of like it! As long as it is the faux plastic green grassy carpet that is.

Thanks for the good road trip wishes... we are set to take off Saturday!