Good Morning from Newport, Maine

Murphy's Law & the Black Cat

So where did we leave off? Our first night? With crisp autumn sunrise pics and farm kitties? 

Well, "day 2" did start off quite idyllically - our first morning in Rhonda.  We woke up early, took our time, made a breakfast of eggs, toast & avocado, and coffee.  And off we went, waving to Claude on his tractor as we pulled out. Then, a black cat crossed our path on the way out of town. Ba-ba-bammmmm, little did we know what the day had in store for us!

First stop was Canadian Tire in Lévi, QC - one of the bolts on the bumper adapter (the adapter allows us to put the bike rack on the back of Rhonda) has sheered off. Crazy (and dagerous!) since we just bought it at Orleans RV 10 days ago. J did did some F1-like speed-change of the busted one and we were away. We had about a 7 hour drive to our next stop in Moncton where we would catch up with some friends from my uni days.  We haven’t seen JP & Rachelle since our wedding - so we are way overdue! And we have received confirmation that my passport (containing the precious visa) will be sent to Moncton for pick-up.  Feels like all the pieces are right where they should be, and I take my turn driving.  Not going to lie, we are both a bit tired - first night in Rhonda was short and we def need to get used to our new “compact” bed - especially Rienks, who only "kind of" fits on a diagonal LOL.  

Rienks is dozing in the passenger seat, and I’ve just teed up some favorite tunes to sing along to as we cruise along the St-Lawrence river.  Not even 2 songs in, we go over a quite large seam in the highway, that sort of wakes my sleeping beauty. I look over to smile at him and “SHIT, Fuck!!” excuse my french - Rhonda’s passenger side wheel is engulfed in smoke… We slow and pull over on the side of the highway, run back to Rhonda…. Now our smoke detector is going off, yelling “FIRE, FEU, FIRE” at us, over and over, through it’s high pitched beeping.. We are throwing windows open, smoke & the smell of burnt rubber has completely taken over poor Rhonda!!! When we finally get the fire alarm off, orange cones set behind us on the shoulder, we can see that Rhonda’s passenger-side wheel is all the way back in the wheel-well.  Where the axel is attached to the frame at the front has “come undone”, metal peeling apart from metal. Not good… Call insurance, they send a tow truck…. we wait. I have to pee (surprise), but what luck - we have a bathroom! I turn on the water pump, pee, and go back to pacing around Rhonda.  We tried to somehow use a ratchet strap on the right side to pull the axel up a few inches off the wheel well so we can maybe limp to a garage to save ourselves the towing fee…. no luck.….. Well, now we notice TONS of water seeping out of the trailer seam behind the affected wheel! As if the smoke & heat engaged some secret hose & sprinkler system (maybe Rhonda is a genius LOL).  In reality, the high heats in the wheel-well had melted 2 of our plumbing hoses under the sink. When I turned on the water pump to use the toilet, all the water from our clean water tank came seeping out…. all over our dishes & tupperware - which are also covered in burnt black debris! It’s like a terrible comedy where everything that can go wrong will…Murphy’s law & that damned black cat!  This is where that Facebook photo comes in… us watching Rhonda get hoisted onto the tow truck.  I was laughing and crying all at the same time. This is just under 24hours since we pulled out of Orleans, how is this even possible?!!  

Rhonda being carted away; the damage

The guys from Atelier Carois in La Pocatière came to get us. When we arrived at the garage we were both expecting the worst: a few days layover in this quaint little french village (as it was Saturday afternoon) and hundreds of dollars in towing and welding.  Super thankful I speak french - as these guys don’t speak much english. They performed a miracle, fixing up Rhonda - in about 30 minutes!! They did a great job, even welding a bit of support on the left side as well, just to be safe. The bill was also very manageable, which was great to find out.  In the drama of it all we were so lucky - these guys don’t usually work Saturdays, just happened to be there finishing a job; Rhonda had brand new tires, so when it happened we didn’t have a blow-out that could’ve caused an accident.  So a big gratitude shout out to the universe on this one!!!

So, we jumped on the highway and decided to cautiously push through to New Brunswick that night. We made it to JP & Rachelle’s house shortly after 12:30AM. Greeted with a cold beer, and a warm bed, both of which were well deserved…… 

Next post - our time in Moncton, NB…. already playing catch up on here! Sigh!  

Sometimes you just gotta "do yoga about it"! Some breath & movement while waiting for Rhonda's repairs - beautiful farmland & sky to call our frazzled nerves!

Rhonda Baby!

**Disclaimer - we had a pretty eventful 2nd day on the road that we will share as well.  But let's wind it back to Day 1, written before things got too crazy...... 

Bonjour!! Comment ça va? In our second post, we are stoked to introduce you to our RHONDA! But first…. Where we are blogging from :) 

Sunrise from our 'bedroom' window

Ouff. Parked and level in deep in French-land, Québec! On our first night in Rhonda. Its COLD! We are staying at Claude’s property, at cool little Organic farm in Nicolet that we found on “Boondocker's Welcome”, a cool website that provides a network of people who are looking for a place to “Boondock”,(dry camping, basically, staying anywhere, not a regulated campsite) with people who have land or space for campers or RV’s, and want to meet new people and help others out who are traveling. Claude is really nice, has a great spot here. We have met a few of his kittens. He’s doesn't speak much English, so Steph (my Bi-Lingual Beauty) is doing much of the talking. Gonna hang here for the night, then on to New Brunswick tomorrow for Moncton.

So Rhonda… we made a little video today kinda giving a once-over of the old-bird. She's a beauty. Loves it. She's an 84 model and we got her in pretty good condition. She's dry, which is great as I have excelled at drilling holes in her, from the roof, to the walls and floor. Done quite a bit of work to her: We have installed solar panels (video to come), 2 100Watt panels connected to a 12 volt 3 battery bank, to power the DC system and also a 2000watt inverter for our AC stuff. i.e. computer/iphone/camera chargers, toaster etc. Also had to re-caulk all our windows and doors. New freshwater tank connectors with lock. Plumbing, uff, what a nightmare, we waited for about 4 days for a simple T connector from an RV shop, so we could connect the hot water tank, only to get it from another shop and find out after it was all connected that we had a hole in the hot water heater. What a fuckaround. Had to rip out the whole tank and propane system for it. Lost a bit of weight which was nice but no hot water, which is gonna suck on these cold days in New England and Canada. Oh well… gonna have to tough it out, puts hair on your chest right? Propane fridge seems to be woking fine, fingers crossed. Furnace works, again fingers crossed (as I am writing all this, the furnace went out, cute). We have a Carbon Monoxide/Smoke Detector combo, which will be comforting when going to bed with this 30something year old furnace kicking-in throughout the night. 

Fashion is cyclical right? We have done away with the 90’s cushion covers and brought back the OG, 80’s, plaid, rust-orange & brown covers. Lots of scrubbing and washing. Steph made a few new curtains with some thrift store fabric, using a sewing machine older than us all. SO Yea all in all its came together, with our long wait from the Visa people.

So tonight is gonna be a real test to see how long the DC system works for, throughout the night. The furnace can’t draw that much power from it, to run the little fan, but we will see…. nothing like a little body heat to keep us warm, right!?

Ok well we dont have any WiFi tonight so not sure when this will go up, hopefully soon! Thanks for tuning in and hope we can get some of these vids edited and posted as well!!

J

We almost had to take this lil one along

Here we are!!!  Join J & I as we learn to blog :) So many journeys have brought us to this, all culminating (as they tend to do!) to our 'Here & Now'. We are both entering brand new travel territory with this adventure - tackling the East Coast in our beauty lil camper, Rhonda. Together, we are looking for "our" town....  A place to call home. Will we find it? Part of me is secretly afraid we won't ever find "our" spot; always searching for a perfect (unrealistic) combination of all the places we have lived. But alas, facing fears is part of it... and I am also afraid of how I will cope with only 3 little compartments for clothes! LOL the struggle is real.

J & I will both share in creating posts. We hope you can enjoy our different outlooks & writing styles; his & hers perspectives. We want this to be a space to share our journey with you.  I want to share the good (of course!), but also the challenges & frustrations.  I know J is excited to share a lot of the tech & construction side (i.e. the amazing solar power set up). There is inevitably going to be yoga going on, and I sure hope we get to do some water sports too!

After our nearly 22 months USA visa process - read "a lot of time apart as we couldn't live & work in the same country" - we are beyond stoked for this adventure together.  Not just being happy & excited FOR each other, but being really stoked WITH each other about the same project. People always asked how we managed the distance. Well the answer is that we were always working for a common goal - us. We were just coming at it from separate angles. But yeah... YEAH! Just a little bit excited to be back at this thing called 'life' side by side again :)

First thing's first, I guess - to start at the beginning. Our beginning. If you know us already... feel free to peace out, since you probably already know this part! I'll try to make it a quick & trimmed mash up of the last 8 years. Our friendship started doing a waterski show in Malaysia in 2007. We skied together again later in 2007 in Germany, and then found ourselves both working at Seaworld in Australia in 2008.  Our romance started sometime then, in the spring of 2008, which was really the fall, since we were in Australia.  We fell in love really quickly, and had moved in together before the end of the year.  When the waterski show at Seaworld came to an end-of-an-era closing - having their last show after 38 years - we flew back to North America in August 2009... Not without an extended layover in Fiji, when J proposed on the beach! 2010 had us back in Germany, waterskiing at Holiday Park for the last time and planning our Hawaiian wedding. October 12th, 2010 we said 'I Do' next to the ocean in Maui with 55 of our closest friends and family there to celebrate with us. A real dream come true!  Within 6 weeks of the wedding, we were both offered a 13 month contract performing in Waterworld (the longest running, #1 live action stunt show in the world) at Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan.  This was another dream come true - talk about dharma, for my yogi friends out there. We wound up staying in Japan for 3 whole, unreal, amazing, incredible years! The end of our time at Universal Studios Japan coincided with the start of my Spouse Visa application which would (finally, eventually, maybe even any day now) allow me to live with J in the USA. This process is now 21 months and counting.  This "visa period" has been strange for our marriage, but also a time for personal growth.  J went to do Waterworld in Singapore. I went to India to study yoga and obtain my teaching certificate. I went back for my first Canadian summer in 13 years, where I waterskied for Canada's National Show Ski team, and started Suptopia - my SUP yoga business.  In the fall I headed back to India to teach yoga, while in the winter J moved to L.A. to be one of the few performers who has done Waterworld at all 3 locations. We spent most of the spring together in L.A., but I took time for a few yoga courses in Texas & Florida, before heading back to Canada for Suptopia's second season.
Throughout about the last half of this story, we have continually been asked "where will you settle down?".  Honestly, we haven't had a clue! The East Coast seemed to be nearby-ish to most of our family and we often talked about an epic road trip to find a great spot to settle in. Our definition of 'nearby' got somewhat looser after living in Australia, Germany and Japan, lol. When J came to visit at the end of August "the" East-Coast trip came up again... Was it time? Should we do it?? A couple bottles of wine, and a shared twinkle in our eyes decided that we should.

Next blog post, we promise to properly introduce Rhonda, our 1984 Bonair "glamper" - in all her magnificent 80s glory :) The full tour.