farm pics

i hadn't been planning on spending the summer here, but i am glad i did. the weather has been mild and wonderful, only getting warm and muggy a little this last week or so. i have been getting alot done and experienced alot of spiritual growth, for which i am deeply grateful. i keep saying that it doesn't get much better than this, but then it does :-)looking out the rear window of the rondyvan at mutt surveying his 100 acre kingdom.

my brothers have been working hard at returning the farm to it's native habitat, planting wild grasses and reintroducing wildlife to the area.

i grumbled alot about that at first, as i am not one to handle change well. i should say that as past tense, because part of my spiritual growth has been finding serenity even when change frightens me. when they did select timbering along the swamp, i was upset at the loss of trees. but the understory took off, and the berry bushes flourished, providing food for us and the wildlife. so i will be a little slower to judge, now, without hearing and seeing first. a good lesson.

i look out over the fields now, and see diversity and growth and

beautiful flowers :-)

the state of the rondyvan

i dropped the rondyvan off at cathy and garry's this morning for an inspection and an oil change. everything was a-ok. i had been having this scraping noise anytime i went over any bump or dip in the road. it seemed to originate from the right front end, and only happened when i had a passenger. it has done it ever since i hit the deer last year, and the guy at the body shop who did the repairs thought i was probably hearing things. anyhow, i hadn't heard it in awhile, since it's been a couple months since i had a passenger, but i told garry to check it out. he found a piece of fender or something that was scraping the tire, and pulled it out of the way for me. just in time for me to have made a commitment to "just say no to passengers", allowing me to turn my passenger seat around backwards again.....











i bought a set of lap belts last year when i first reversed the seat, so passengers can be belted. they are easy to install during reversal. i know nm brian recently reversed his seat, and from the smile on his face i think he feels the same way i do about it :-)

i LOVE how much more space i have when the seat is reversed. with the new twin bed mattress, i gave up a little bit more floor space, and had no place for the canoe chair. (you can see it folded up on top of the storage drawers on the left in the pic). so i still don't have a place for the canoe chair, but i have a place to sit. i will have to make a decision on the canoe chair sometime before i leave.

which brings me back to the state of the rondyvan. the only things i need to have done before heading out again is to flush the radiator and to have a tune-up, which is cool because about $300 will have us roadworthy and milking every last MPG i can. which should keep me in my budget and with a projected leave date of end of september, beginning of october.

as usual, i have several directions i want to go all at the same time. i got an invite to come to wisconsin to see a long-time friend who i've never met face-to-face, and of course i gotta head south to find david h. and rile up the Wizard a bit, if i can track him down. vanmom's moving to colorado and i gotta go see her before she changes her mind, and heaven only knows where i'll find NM Brian, mar and bernie, tom, or swankie......ron, well, i know where he lives :-) and heidi and mike have a piece of driveway saved for me......i can't list all the folks i want to meet, or to see again.

so many friends to love, and so little time! have i mentioned that i love my life?

postscript: i had to laugh. when they got done with the rondyvan today, i got an email that said "your home is finished"!!!!

re-inventing the rondyvan

i have been really busy the last few weeks getting ready for the sale at the farm, meant to get rid of stuff before my next trip out. my goal is to leave my half of the farmhouse (which belongs to my brother) with the most basic of furnishings....a bed, a table, a trunk for my clothes, and enough dishes and stuff for when i visit, or when the boys want to come to the farm. think "summer cottage". sparse, simple, and peaceful.

this has been in the planning stages for awhile. what really set me off was reading one of jack's posts (of Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity) with a photo of all he had left in the world. i wanted something like that, or at least close. as a vandweller, you strive for it by virtue of the limited space you have to live in. but after 2 cross country trips in the last year, i was woefuly shy of reaching my goal....at the farm, or in the van. (if you click on the title above, it will take you to jack's blog, and you can see for yourself what he was left with when his process was done).

on saturday, the sale was completed. i sold alot at the sale, gave a ton of stuff to goodwill, and helped fill a giant dumpster my brothers had rented..... yet i am still nowhere near where i want to be. because i look at the van, and it seems overwhelmingly full of stuff. i can't stand it one more minute, because the van is my real home, and i have not been feeling very peaceful in it lately.....just crowded and out of sorts. i need to pull my shelf/ bunk unit out to shorten the legs of the bed, and decide at 5 o'clock on saturday, sunburnt and exhausted, to do just that. and broke it.

now, it can be fixed, but not by me, and not by nightfall. mamma ain't happy if the van ain't right. so i think back to vandweller Vickie's serene and simple modular set-up in her van. then i go back to vandwellers and look at Pan's recent pics of a modular set-up in an astro using crates and air mattresses.

i got a decent redo of the interior in a couple of hours at the cost of less than $20. i spent $11 on a sheet of 1/4 inch hardboard at lowe's (thank-you david hair for the on-site coaching...it was perfect!) i also spent about $8 for 2 more sterilite white crates at the dollar store. it turns out that the sterilite storage drawers i had in the van, the crates, and my 3 gallon porta-potty are all exactly the same height, making the perfect platform for the bed.

this is a photo of the saw that michael gave me in california. we were gonna use it to lower the bed in the van, but we were too busy kayaking and eating hoagies at Johnny D's that we never got it done. so after much trial and error, i figured out how to (very carefully!) run it, and was able to cut the hardboard to size all by myself :-) i love tools!

at left you see the initial arrangement of crates and drawers ready for the hardwood platform.

and this is the platform in place.

the platform is very light, so i can raise it easily to access the crates in the back.

here is the twin mattress that sweet mike's mom bought me in brawley earlier this year when sweet mike was in the hospital, and we had an encampment in the hospital parking lot, right by the helicopter landing pad. i had been pretty much sleeping on plywood. his dad bought me a 12V inflator, too :-) thanks, both of you!!

rear view.

here it is after some rearranging. i am lost without the shelving unit that Bob Wells built me at the slabs, though. when they are repaired they will go right where the canoe chair is now.

but after 2 nights sleeping in a twin bed and having enough room for mutt and i both to move around with out killing each other, i think i will replace the shelving unit , but keep the bed the way it is. it is absolutely luxurious after sleeping on a bunk 26" wide. and i still have plenty of room to move around.

another advantage is that i will buy another sheet of hardboard and cut it to the same size as the first. my yoga mat will layer between them to keep them from sliding. when i need to, i can rearrange the drawers/ bedside table to one level, slide the second piece of hardboard over them, and inflate my full size mattress to fit there. all this versatility and comfort just blows my mind!

but back to simplicity and downsizing and meeting my goals, which, i should add, are rather vague still. when i had every single thing out of the van, i started putting back things with a newly critical eye.....what could i do without? what hadn't i used on the last 2 cross-country trips? what was merely for "just in case"? a great deal of stuff is in the corner of the kitchen now. some really critical things are not yet returned to the van....like my cooler, my water jug, and my guitar. over the next couple days, weather permitting, i'm going to pull all the gear out, photograph it, and prioritize it. see if i can get it all in without compromising the uncluttered serenity. and maybe you all will have suggestions or ideas for me.....

showering on the road

okay, messiest blog ever. don't ask me how this jumble happened, but it took alot of work to create this fiasco, and i'm not gonna redo it. bear with me!

pictured (haphazardly) are the things i use for staying fresh and sweet on the road. above is my Equinox ultralight toiletry bag. silnylon and mesh! when you are packing light, it is annoying to have a bag that's bulkier than what you are carrying. found on a clearance table in a health food store.

the tupperware container is my washbowl when i'm doing a quick wash-up in a parking lot somewhere. i can seal the lid to contain the water til i can get to someplace to dump it, like a public restroom.

i carry a small rubber door mat(below) for standing on where it's rocky or muddy. the green folding table was $9 and has a dozen uses. i use a 3 gallon paint can from lowe's for my potty. it doubles as a shower seat.

this is my outback porta-privy. i got it from cabela's a few years ago for $49. it pops open when taken from the carrying case, and folds down flat like those car sunshades.

it's a great changing room too. it stakes down. or has pockets at the bottom for rocks or sand to help keep it in place. staking is highly recommended when it's breezy!

above is one of those elizabethan dog collars/ cone things that mutt got after surgery once, to keep him from pawing the stitches.

((((that is a dreadful thing for an obedience trained dog to wear. mutt automatically heels to my left whether i tell him to or not. when he wore this, he'd drop into position at my left heel, whack the back of my knee with the cone, and drop me like a rock! entering a doorway was traumatic. it was a long 2 weeks!!!)))

anyhow, folded up, the collar makes a nice extension funnel for a folding bucket for washing hair! neat, eh? also makes a good pee bottle for those of us whohave trouble hitting the nalgene bottle in the dark :-)

magnet hook for holding the hose

this was my outdoor shower in the desert using the MSR dromlite bag. you can buy the shower nozzle for them from campmor. no shower shelter necessary if you can get the boys to point their solar panels away from you :-)

Sprouting

i had to repost my sprout blog, cause i am still essentially computer illiterate, and deleted the last one. i mean deleted, as in had to reshoot the photos and all. these are sent from my phone, and i have no control over the order in which they publish, so if this post seems all mixed up, consider the source!

above is the finished product after 2 days of sprouting.

these are the items i carry in the van that i used:

a hemp sprout bag, a collapsible tupperware bowl, my copper cook pot, an old mini strainer, water, and seeds.

the hemp sprout bag is 10" x 7" of a heavy hemp fabric that absorbs lots of water to prevent drying out to fast, yet still allows good air circulation necessary for sprouting. the cd is for size reference. cd compliments of my musical mastermind, micheal... he provided me with 3,000 miles of great music :-)

the seeds are an organic stir-fry mix that i picked up in port angeles last summer at sweet mike's. they are crunchy and just a bit spicy! i ate them right out of the hemp bag....after sprouting, of course.

the tupperware collapsible bowls are perfect for me in the van. they pack flat and can be opened just to the size you need. multipurpose at it's finest....mixing bowls, soup bowls, storage, wash basins.....

and seed soaking bowls! these seeds were soaked overnight, then placed into the hemp bag, which was thoroughly soaked with water.

at home i would have hung the bag over the sink. in the van, i used a mini strainer i found in my mom's stuff, which just happened to fit perfectly into my copper pot, as a place to allow the initial drainage of water from the bag.

see how perfect it fit?

here it sits on my dashboard, the bag hung from the rearview mirror. after all the dripping is done, i can hang it from a cuphook on my cupboard where it will get good air circulation. when the bag begins to dry out, rinse and repeat. your climate (humidity, temps, breezes, etc. will affect how often you need to rinse the bag. just make sure the seeds stay moist.

http://sproutpeople.com/grow/sprouting.html click here for basic sprouting info

http://sproutpeople.com/grow/travel.html click here for travel sprouting info

"my barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon" masahide

Http://twokniveskatie.blogspot.com

kayak rack part 2

last week, I posted a picture of a sprinter van with an unusual kayak rack that I parked next to in a truckstop in texas. I only got 1 photo that night, and was disappointed when the van drove off early in the morning before I could get more photos.

a couple days ago, I returned to the slabs from a trip to town, and there smack dab in the middle of camp was the sprinter van with the green kayak attached. you'd think I would cease to be surprised at the funky happenings in my life. but I was pretty blown away. the guy remembered me by the "hilltopmusicstore.com" sticker on the side of my van. oh, and yeah, the orange kayak, too!

turns out, he and bob had met at a gathering in tuscon last year, and when he bicycled into camp here at the slabs, bob invited him to join us. he has a really cool rig, and spent a lot of time showing us the modifications he made. bob will be doing an article about it at his
website cheaprvliving.com

I think we convinced reed to join vandwellers, and hope we'll be hooking up with him down the road.

the new van interior!

while here at the slabs, i was fortunate to benefit from the skills and knowledge of bob wells, fellow vandweller and owner of cheaperRVliving.com. If you click on the title of this post, it will take you there. bob has posted a more indepth article about how he did the build.
this is the frame of the bed, which he sized to fit my drawers stacked 2 high. this automatically doubles my storage space.
this is the frame before he added the shelving behind the drivers seat.
this is the completed shelving unit. i finally have a space for my 2 gal. igloo water jug, so i don't have to haul it out from under the cot and hold it in the air while i fill my nalgene. the jug holds 1 bag of ice and 1 gallon of water and keeps it cold for days.
this is the pull-out shelf for my butane stove. this alone has revolutionized vandwelling for me. with easy access to stove and water, making soup or ramen or tea is effortless. see the 2 spray bottles hanging on the bungee? one is water and one is 50/50 water and dr. bronners peppermint soap. i use these for easy clean-up of dishes, or face and hands, using paper towels.
another view of the underbed storage drawers. the small action-packer is a great little table, footstool or extra seat. i store extra food in there.
another rear shot, showing a little curtain on a rod that hides the portapottie.
home sweet home! thank-you, Bob, from the bottom of my heart. life is so much easier in my new set-up. you have my undying devotion!

Kayak rack

saw this on a sprinter van in texas. Looks like it would be an option for mounting on my roadtrek. Could load similarly as I do with my hitch haul platform.....get one end in it and "walk" it into position.....just not have to slide it on the roof.....
what do you think, charlene?
Http://twokniveskatie.blogspot.com

van pics

here are the pics of my current set-up, as requested by some of you. if there are any specific questions or requests, lety me know!!!!

van pics

someone requested some pics of the van. these will have to do until i get some better ones. i am in the process of "remodeling", which is tara's fault. she got me started by reversing her passenger seat. but then, our mobile dwellings are always a work in progress....