I am going way out on a limb, but I have a feeling that most people like to have their lives tied up in neat little packages. You get up about the same time each morning. You have a little breakfast, probably from a narrow list of favorites. You go off to some kind of work, solve many of the same problems, fight the same rush hour traffic and park in exactly the same place each evening. You hound the kids about homework, get hounded about the honey-do list, watch a little TV and go to bed about the same time each night. Oh sure there are the special days, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, but most of the time our lives are tied up in neat little packages.
(Oh brother, where is he going with this?)
Well, sometimes in our “Fulltimers” life, things can get a little unpredictable. Certainly the scenery around our home is different just about every morning when we open the curtains. Most of the time we only have a vague idea where we will be a week from now. Occasionally even we take a vacation from the routine as we did the past ten days. We were in the San Juan Islands with our sailboat, Regal Jug, and we were able to experience some wonderful days of sailing. Even then we visited many of the same harbors, bays and gunkholes that we have before around Puget Sound and Vancouver Island.
Actually I am thinking about the chaos that has ruled our lives for the past two days. Sunday was moving day, we were headed back to Oregon from Anacortes, Washington with our sailboat in tow. We intentionally picked Sunday morning for the return trip to allow us to sneak through Seattle with the least traffic. We were doing right well too. Right on schedule to reach the southern end of the metropolitan area just south of Olympia about noon. Little did we know that Murphy was riding shotgun for us. Right about Southcenter Mall near SeaTac airport we bounced over a dipsy-doodle in the ribbon of concrete they call I-5 and we heard a sudden grinding noise from somewhere in the coach. Within seconds we realized that something was dragging. I checked my mirrors and eased the coach off the road onto perhaps the widest chunk of shoulder for a couple miles. We were able to get all tires off the traveled lane plus a couple feet to spare. A quick check behind the coach confirmed my fears. Something was indeed dragging, it was the tongue of the boat trailer, broken in the middle and the jack was smoking hot and ground to a nubbin.
Fortunately we are prepared for such emergencies. Our towing service was efficient and within about an hour we had a tow truck on the scene. While we waited, we kicked back, sipped on a tall cool one, and searched the internet-yellow pages for welding shops and looked through our camping directories for a place to park. After-all our motto is “Home is where you park it.” Just then home was I-5 southbound and we were rocking and rolling as each truck rolled by at sixty miles and hour.
The next morning, Monday, was not as tidy. It took a couple hours to locate a welding shop that could work us into their schedule sometime this month. Then it took another five hours to get our boat and trailer out of the towing company’s impound lot and delivered to the welder. (grrrr) By this time we had made and cancelled several alternate plans for what to do next and where to stay the night. As it worked out we needed a new piece of steel to fabricate the new tongue out of so we ordered the steel and headed down I-5 to Fife to pick it up. Yep, Murphy was directing traffic on I-5, and we arrived about ten minutes after closing. By now I think we are up to plan “J” and we stopped in at the Camping World in Fife to pick out a new tongue jack for the trailer. We are staying overnight in their parking lot. The steel supplier is about ten blocks away and will be open at 8:00 am. Our piece of steel will be waiting in will-call and we will get to see what the morning rush looks like going back north. Meanwhile “Home is where you park it.” Tonight we are hanging out with a half dozen other campers at Camping World.
Visiting Fife is a bit of a homecoming for us. We lived here for nine months back in 1990 while our new home was being built in Tacoma. It is incredible how little the area has changed in our absence.
Check out the photo below for a look at the broken tongue.
Good bye now and we send our love to all. Gary and Judy from Fife Washington.
