AridzonaShooter: Ramblings
A year in the life, Pt II
Or, where are we headed?
7 January 2007
Oh, yeah. Happy New Year, 2007. This will be, assuming it
ever gets finished, Part II of the post below, from 1st January, "A
year in the life." That was where we've been. This will be
where we're going.
Travel
We did a lot of travel the first year out. Full-time RVers refer
to this as "vacation mode," where newbie full-timers rush about,
trying to pack in a whole bunch of places they want to see. A not
uncommon phenomenon. Yup, we qualified, although in our case it
was less seeing "stuff" than seeing people. Either way, we saw a
lot of country, but we didn't see a whole lot of country, if you can
see the distinction.We've throttled back. '07 looks to be a continuation of the second half of '06, where we spend several weeks in one locale. We were in the Phoenix metro area for a couple of months, now we're coming up on about 6 weeks outside of Wickenburg, which is just about an hour northwest of Phoenix.
We'll be heading out within the next few days, toward the next destination, which is likely to be the general vicinity of Crystal City, TX. We'll probably spend a month or two in that area. The big question now is how to get there. It could take us from three days to three weeks, depending on what we find along the way. I'm in no particular hurry, nor do I have a particular plan, other than that I'll probably stay a few days to a week...or so...in Deming, NM.
Budget
This
full-timing thingy is turning out to be a bit more spendy than we'd
anticipated.
Folks thinking, planning or considering the life keep asking "How much does it cost?" The best answer I've seen to that is, "How much do you have?" I wish I could give attribution, but can't, sorry. However, in our case, the answer is just about right. When we first thought about doing this life, gas was less than two bucks a gallon. Things have changed a bit. It seems almost everything is a bit more costly, and we find we've gone over budget on a regular basis. Like to the tune of close to $1000 a month in '06.
Of course there were a couple of extraordinary expenses last year. We probably won't be putting another transmission in the truck. We probably won't be buying a second satellite internet system. And as we've mentioned already we did a lot of traveling in the second half of '05 and in '06. We've cut back on that, and find ourselves staying in one spot longer.
Hmm...capital, being finite, I suspect we're going to have to do some cutting back if we don't want to end up with no savings safety net. I wonder how the Quilter is going to react to the news that she's not going to be allowed to buy any more fabric?
Okay, I'm back from the hospital. Those bruises will heal, the stitches are only a minor discomfort...
Guess we'll have to figure out a different way to save money. I probably eat too much, anyway.
Folks thinking, planning or considering the life keep asking "How much does it cost?" The best answer I've seen to that is, "How much do you have?" I wish I could give attribution, but can't, sorry. However, in our case, the answer is just about right. When we first thought about doing this life, gas was less than two bucks a gallon. Things have changed a bit. It seems almost everything is a bit more costly, and we find we've gone over budget on a regular basis. Like to the tune of close to $1000 a month in '06.
Of course there were a couple of extraordinary expenses last year. We probably won't be putting another transmission in the truck. We probably won't be buying a second satellite internet system. And as we've mentioned already we did a lot of traveling in the second half of '05 and in '06. We've cut back on that, and find ourselves staying in one spot longer.
Hmm...capital, being finite, I suspect we're going to have to do some cutting back if we don't want to end up with no savings safety net. I wonder how the Quilter is going to react to the news that she's not going to be allowed to buy any more fabric?
Okay, I'm back from the hospital. Those bruises will heal, the stitches are only a minor discomfort...
Guess we'll have to figure out a different way to save money. I probably eat too much, anyway.
Life
As
mentioned, we did a lot of travel. We saw a lot of the country,
but...didn't see a lot of the country. The view from the
interstate just doesn't convey the feel of that this country has to
offer and see. There were bits and pieces, here and there, that
we stopped, smelled roses and such-like. But not enough. We
are right now on our way to TX. It may take us a month to get to
wherever we finally end up staying. We kinda sorta have an idea
of the general area we'd like to get to. But we haven't gotten
there, and we're subject to being distracted on the way. I guess
what I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to make a bit more of the
journey, as opposed to concentrating on the destination.
We've done some 4-wheeling. I've done 'way, 'way too little shooting. As for hunting and fishing, well, so far, not enough. Come to that, I've done 'way 'way too little of all those things. There is a budget component to that, but that's only a part of it.
Heck, I finally picked up the new Springfield I'd had semi-customized back in September, and so far only have about 250 "break-in" rounds through it. I do have a variety of JHPs it will eventually get stoked with, but have yet to get back to the range to confirm reliability.
So, it seems I've just figured out what's missing in my life. Other than loose wimmen and boozing, I've been missing many of the activities that used to keep me satisfied. Now that I have defined the problem, I can work to solve it.
On the good side of the ledger, there are occasionally interesting, or at least enjoyable shows on the Sci-Fi channel, and we seem to be pretty well on our way to figuring out this satellite internet thingy, so when we're parked in one spot for a few days or more we have internet. And we are no longer dependent on trying to find wifi hotspots or parks with wifi available or wifi at ridiculous prices. That is all a very good thing.