It's not easy, but it gets easier

OH RHONDA!!!  Feels like we are saying that every day.  What needs fixing now?!! She has been behaving like an ailing, old, crazy aunt.  At first, seeming so sweet & willing, and then she gave us that huge scare/near accident that has had us dotting on her every whine & complaint ever since.  “Dear, get me some new window sealant”, she said, “I’m leaking rain all over your front benches”.  And then “Darlings, I’ve nearly tossed my center roof vent off completely! Don’t you love the new sky-light I’ve created?” Or “Oh dear! I seem to be dribbling your grey water everywhere we go! Jason, be a doll and try to patch that up?” She’s been  saying that last line for days and poor Rienks has been under there with epoxy, putty, and anything he can think of attempting to patch up Rhonda’s persistently leaky grey water tank.  And here’s the thing - J and I just don’t have any live-in experience with ailing, old, crazy aunts…. We are struggling daily to meet Rhonda’s needs!  And the tensions can run high, if you know what I’m saying… care-giving can be very stressful on a relationship!

Ol' Aunt Rhonda - she can be a little demanding

It’s been 1 week since we crossed into the states. Sitting here putting “1 week” on paper, I had to check the calendar to be sure it wasn’t two… It has felt much longer than 1 week.  The thing we are seeing the most of in every town is Home Depot & Walmart.  Like we are on some disturbing tour of hardware stores & cheap stuff.  “Adjustment” would have to be the one word to describe the first week.  Adjusting to J & I being back together - like 24 hours a day, in 97sq ft of space. Adjusting to life on the road - read “spending massive amounts of time figuring out where you will sleep, eat, shower, and be safe”. Adjusting to life with Rhonda.  She’s just like all of us, the ol’ girl - lots of imperfections. In the beginning, when we first met, we didn’t notice most of them… and as people tend to do, and we saw a lot of what we wanted to see in her.  Now, we are getting intimate, real fast, and the cracks (literal cracks) are starting to show.  Here’s where the lesson is - we have to STAY; no choice but to get to know her better, and accept her imperfections, try our best to make the most of each situation.  And, we loved her from the beginning.. our eyes shining with adventure, her promising to house not just us, but our dreams & hopes of what this trip would be.  And now? Well, we must love her anyways.  We are here, on the road, thousands of miles from our respective homes. As for "our home", J & I together? We don’t have one (yet!). Rhonda IS our home. So we don’t have a choice.  I think the lesson is beautiful all the same - us being forced into it and all. How many times do we first meet someone (acquaintance, romantic, co-worker, teammate, whoever!), and at first they are the most amazing/friendly/interesting/hilarious person we know.  Then, after a few days, or dates, or weeks of working with them (when you get to know them more) you start see a few of their faults.  Maybe they have a short temper, or can be petty.  Whatever it is, their faults and imperfections peek through.  What is your first instinct then? Phase them out? See less of them? Talk about them with someone else who knows them and has surely noticed “X” about them?  

Well what would happen if you stayed? If you saw those faults and instead of turning away from the person, you tried to like or love them anyways? What would you see if you looked a little deeper? We are all different, and none of us are perfect…. And just like Rhonda, as we age, we all have our own cracks, dents & weak spots - places where pain, or past insults have made our structure less strong, less shiny, with spots that creak and whine under pressure. 

Our “Rhonda Metaphor” had us thinking. And me being a woman who enjoys her “beauty-time”….. Well, what if we gave Rhonda a mini-makeover??!!  A little injection of fun, to lift all of our spirits and raise the general vibration… I know I feel like I need one and I’ve only been on the road one week - Rhonda has been for over 30 years!!  Something cosmetic and frivolous, after all the structural poking & prodding she has been subjected to? A little pampering.   

Today we gave Rhonda a new stripe.  We did away with the burnt-orange of the 80s in favor of a pretty “Vintage Teal”…. from Home Depot, of course. 

-S

**Update: This was written about 5 days, 7 towns and 5 states ago, and I am pleased to say we haven’t seen the inside of a Home Depot since! (Everyone knock on wood…. )

'After': Rhonda feeling fresh in Vintage Teal

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