If 2020 was a drink…

…it would be a colonoscopy prep.

Crazy year. Surely, the one where nature sent humans to our rooms to think about what we have done.
As we were talking one night Tamara, unimpressed by her last months of school experience, designated this year as the worst of her life. “It is not all bad?” we remind her. There are good things that happened too. The pace of life slowed down allowing us to relax more, busyness of a daily hamster wheel is gone, and , with that, there was room for crazy ideas and time to implement them.

..Twas one night in early May, a day after I accepted a new job offer, when Sol had an idea. “Since flying to California this year was not happening how about we drive? “ he says. “Are you nutz?!” I say “ I mean…… sure, honey! We will just hop in a car and there in three days of straight though driving, right? We will skip the hotels and restaurants as they would not be safe… and kids and a dog will follow along with the plan… And by the way, I am starting a new job… so, I will be working throughout the trip..?” My reductio ad ridiculum method backfired as Sol took it as a plan of action. Crazy year.

There were a few problems that needed addressing for the plan to materialize.

First problem: how to travel across the country with minimum human contact?
Couple of weeks later – a solution. Sol pulled a 2005 JayBird down our driveway and onto our front lawn. Kids decided that they will no longer sleep anywhere else but on their new bunk beds in the rig, neighbors asked if it was Sol’s new bedroom; we got on with planning. By we I mean Sol, I had a new job and grad school to finish.

Most seasoned road warriors plan their cross country trip a year in advance, carefully figuring out each campsite and rest area. Sol had us going with the maps and schedules inside two weeks. We only had a few little things left to work out:

• How are we going to travel across the country and work? With two young and high energy kids?
• How are we going to travel across the country with a young and high energy 100 pound dog?
• How to travel across the country in the middle of a pandemic as lockdown rules are changing daily and hot spots emerge in more and more places?
• How to travel across the country and teach young high energy kids?
• What to name our blog? Because nowadays if you don’t blog are you even travelling across the continent towing your own retro efficiency on wheels?

By the time we pulled out of our driveway for the big trip we had the blog thing nailed down.

Anyway…
The words like tongue weight, dump sites, dry camping, and KOA entered our lexicon. The plan was hatched, the maps were drawn and poked with various color pins.

We would leave at the end of July, take a southern route on the way out and come back via northern route. We had southern route figured out as far as Nashville and northern as far as Yellow Stone from the other side.

The JayBird would solve the hotel and food problem but needs to be light enough for the Jeep to tow it and have enough food and supplies to keep us mostly self-sustained on the road. The problem of the rig weight needed to be solved because we were overweight even before weeks’ worth of supplies were loaded.
In the coming month Sol disassembled and reassembled half of his Jeep and a rig in effort to reduce the weight and prep them for a long trip. All the unnecessary things like window treatments and some doors were moved out of the rig to reduce the weight. All kids’ trip books were bought in soft cover. Everything got weighed on the way in. Still, somehow, about 20 stuffed toys found their way into the girl’s bunks in the retro-rig.

I had some figuring out to do on how to remain productive on the way. Mobile hotspot would give me an internet connection secure enough to work on. Jeep would accommodate power needs for my computer and noise cancelling headphones will allow for meetings. I bought a lap desk and let my team know that I will be working on the road. “You are a brave woman…” they said.

At the end of June Sol and girls took the rig and the dog on a maiden voyage to a nearby campground to test it out and to let me half ass through my master’s thesis and graduate.. again.
Mid July we took a rig to the beach for three days to give it a big test. We quickly realized the limit of a grey water tank capacity on that trip. As well as few other things.