Let's Go, Already!

Here is 2 weeks worth of clothing, plus toiletries.

At this point, I just want to be on the road. I'm tired of thinking and re-thinking about what to pack. Last night I did laundry, so now my favorite most comfy underwear is in good order. After following the weather closely for a few days, I've exchanged a couple of tank tops for a couple of long sleeved things. In Copper Harbor, one of the places we plan to stop, they've been having high temperatures of around 60. That's none too hot where I come from. And when you are on a motorcycle, things are much cooler.

Kate has a job interview today. I set up public transportation for her earlier in the week. When I got home yesterday, I had a message from someone over at the LINK informing us that the staff at the ARC was having a training day, and no one would be there, so she was canceling Kate's ride. Well, the staff of Employment Solutions also uses that building, and they will be there! I had to leave a message and hope that this can be straightened out before 9am, when the bus us supposed to come. (Update: It all went well and Kate thinks she's got the job.)

I drew up an extensive document with every piece of information I could think of that might be useful for my parents. I come from a family of people that don't worry that much. I present this document to my parents, with doctor's names and phone numbers, prescription names and dosages, health plan info, and all the info for Kate's ARC activities for the month. My mother says, "What do we need all this for? Do we have to take Kate to the doctor?" I say, Mom, what if something happens? She says nothing will happen.

At work, I'm trying to get all loose ends tied up. It has been quiet for a week, but yesterday a big job came in and I have to get everything organized with that. I have meeting notes to prepare and an evaluation to do. My goal is to not get any phone calls while on the road. The people where I work will not hesitate to call you. There was a question about a job and my boss made me call someone who was doing nature photography in a kayak in some wild location. Cell phones are of the devil. I remember my first major motorcycle journey. We were traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway. The scenery along that route is from God, (unlike cell phones) and we were gazing out over misty mountains, and my cell phone rings. I look at the number coming through, and it is work! I almost cried. I let it go to message and when I listen to it it is my co-worker calling me to ask if I had ordered blank CDs. Lord have Mercy, can't you figure that shit out for yourself? I always leave a list of all vendors. And, what if you order more CDs, and then find out that I ordered them as well? They don't have an expiration date. It's not like someone ordered gallons of milk and now we need to make a lot pudding to use it up. (I had to do that once to use up extra milk) I have since made it known that only a dire emergency merits a call on my vacation, which I consider almost sacred. I know, I could shut the phone off, and I would, were it not for Kate.

Meanwhile, my husband is taking a ribbing at work about taking an entire 2 weeks off. He's been with the company 3+ years and STILL only has one week vacation. That is of the devil, too, if you ask me. So not only is he taking 2 weeks, but he is taking one week unpaid. The people he works with think he has to be rich. We go through this a lot. My husband owns 3 motorcycles. They call him Joe Money. But I would bet that all of his bikes together cost less than one of those stupid SUVs they all drive. No credit card debt. He maintains an old Toyota pick-up as his 4-wheel vehicle. It is all about choices. People where I work are making a stink about how lucky I am to be taking 2 weeks, but they would be in Las Vegas or some Club Med destination. I couldn't do 2 weeks of that either! Most women I work with would never do this trip just based on what it would do to their hair. I will have bad hair for the next 2 weeks. I'm bringing 2 hats.

So I think this is likely my last post for a while. I'm thinking I will have a little bit of WWW withdrawal, not being able to look at CNN every half hour, not to mention any number of other time-killing sites plus blogs galore. Of course, I don't expect to be bored out of my skull all day either.

Have a nice 4th of July, OK?

Trip Preparations Begin in Earnest

Here you see Olive just before a test tow. We wanted to make sure she was up to the task.  Olive is my car, a 2007 Toyota Yaris. We started calling her that because the name of her color is "Olive Mist." We started out calling her "the uterus" because we thought the name Yaris kind of sounded like uterus. Fortunately, it didn't stick. The Motorcycle is a BMW named Gretchen.

My previous car was known as "The Oatmeal." It was a Saturn SL1 that I bought when the transmission went on my "Welfare Mother Car." For the record, I was never a welfare mother. When my first husband left (at my request) he let me keep our only car, which was a 198o-something Thunderbird. It was not a cool car by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, it looked like a typical welfare mother car. We had bought it used, very cheap. He went out and bought a Miata for himself! (If you know the Miata, you know that it is a sports car with only 2 seats. He had one ass, and his  2 children each had an ass, that means 3 asses but only 2 seats. That could be a post by itself.) When the transmission went on the welfare mother car, I had to find something else and bought the Oatmeal used for $7500. It was a very basic car, roll down windows, standard shift, no power steering and the color of oatmeal. What a great car it was. So reliable. After a while, we had shortened the name to "The Meal." I drove it into the ground. That's when I bought my first new car ever, Olive. 

Check this, Olive gets 40 miles per gallon in mixed driving conditions. She gets 42 on the highway. Olive is also able to pull about 700 pounds of motorcycle and trailer with no problem. We took her out on the highway, and up a notorious hill named Jugtown Mountain. It is notorious because when it snows, trucks can't make it up that hill and traffic snarls. We figured if Olive could do that, we'd be OK for the trip. I'm starting to get very excited! I've washed and ironed all of the clothes I want to take. I've paid all of the bills for the month. I need to buy some travel-size items. Make sure Kate"s prescriptions are filled. Write down all of the info my parents might need and I think that's it!

A New Hobby $$

I just ordered $40 worth of stuff off the internet for my new old sewing machine. I was dancing around the subject with Joe, and I asked if I can have my sewing machine running for my birthday. (October) He said it was no big deal and he could have it running way sooner. I want it running tomorrow, but I can't do this without him and I don't want to be a pain in the ass. Just the same, I doubt this will be done until after we come back from our vacation.

Only 17 days until we leave on our epic motorcycle journey. It rains pretty much every day here in New Jersey lately. We are hoping they have a different weather pattern in Michigan. In fact, we've been sacrificing animals to the Sun god. Between tha rain and trip preparations, I think Joe is about to go off the deep end. He has taken apart, lubricated, serviced, inspected, or replaced every moving part in my car, the motorcycle and the trailer we will tow it on. He says we will be packed on Wednesday night, not Thursday, which is the night before we are leaving. He says that I stay up until midnight packing the night before a trip and that drives him crazy. He wants us to be well-rested and leave at 5:30 am, and all we should have to do is get on the bike and go.

All this is fine. But as we were getting ready for work this morning, he announces that he is packing his bag TONIGHT. I had to start busting his balls. "Yo!" I said, "Let's drive to Michigan this weekend for a test run! On Thursday night, let's sleep on the floor NEXT TO the bike so we don't have to go all the way downstairs and across the yard to get to the garage. We'll put the coffee maker in the garage!" He pretended to cry and whimpered about how much he needs a vacation.

We actually are going to test the hitch that is installed on my car and make sure it is OK to haul the bike. My car is not very big, but we've driven around some pretty fat people in there so it should be OK.