Tag: Life Lessons

Mashley’s Adventures – Snowpocalypse and (Mis)Conceptions

Current Location: Fayetteville, NC

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
~ John Ruskin

~~~~~//~~~~~

Well, we survived the great predicted snowpocalypse of Jan 2017. The storm threat that magically cleared bread, milk, and eggs from store shelves. The hospital informed all staff (at least on the unit we have contact with) that they were required to make it for their scheduled shifts and that, if necessary, they could sleep on the floor of the conference room or use one of the broken, defective bedside chairs that were waiting to be repaired.

Fortunately, Ashley simply got a ride home from a coworker who lives nearby before the great storm broke. We waited and looked out our window to see… a heavy frost. -rolls eyes- (Our accumulation shown in the picture above).

There was a lot of hoopla and, at least in our area, nothing came of it. It rained, some of that froze, and then we’ve been simply waiting out the cold. I know it wasn’t like this everywhere, but it can be comical to observe the hysteria that can occur. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

In other news… we’ve noticed (once again, I believe) a trend in peoples’ views of living in an RV. We’re staying in a campground that is filled with long-term occupants. Some of our neighbors are retired and live full-time in their RVs and some are basically nomadic workers, following their jobs in a mobile abode. Whenever we first speak to them, it always seem that the workers make sure to mention that they have a home back… wherever. They ask where we live and I point to our motorhome, “right there.”

Even though they are living in an RV themselves, they seem to view it as a lesser lifestyle than living in a home. A couple have mentioned being “homeless”. Houseless – absolutely! Homeless? Not at all!

It’s just interesting to see others’ viewpoints. One person’s everyday-normal is another’s abstract-foreign. Different doesn’t mean wrong, and you can’t compare directly since everyone is coming from a completely unique viewpoint, their own.

Well, it looks like we’re having an above-freezing, delightfully sunny day. So we’re taking our coffees and going to enjoy a bit of time outdoors.

Adventuring away,

Matthew & Ashley

Taking Advantage of Planned Lazy Days

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I woke up to the sound of rain on my roof. Which was a delightful sound this particular morning. This was our break – a day to do nothing but laze around the RV. And we’ve been waiting for it to start raining for a few weeks now.

  

For at least the last couple of months it feels like my wife and I have been running full blast, with after burners on. Between planning our trip, remodeling the RV, gathering supplies, winding down jobs, narrowing down personal items to fit in the RV, and selling the extras – it’s been non-stop! I kept joking that I’d finally get a break about 3 days into our trip. Apparently I was wrong – it took 5.

  

Three states in, two National Forests, and two National Recreation Areas later, and it was finally scheduled to rain. We settled in to our campsite and looked forward to a day of rest.

  

But just doing nothing is hard! The rain let up in the mid-afternoon and both of us mentioned that we could get in today’s training bike ride, or run to the grocery store on the motorcycle, or maybe go for a hike. But we adamantly said no, we have been planning a sit-at-home day for some time now, and we are going to take full advantage of it.

  

So we have. After sleeping in we ate breakfast while watching most of our neighbors pack up and head out, back to their every-day lives (it was a rainy Sunday at a state campground). Then we enjoyed our coffee and tea and soaked in the scenes out our windows. Eventually we looked through some paperwork that we had been collecting during our travels and took care of a couple easy chores inside the RV.

  

As the sun peeked out we strolled down the trail and checked out a historic cabin and meandered down the shore of Lake Michigan briefly before heading back to our cozy home. Then it was time to put together some chili for supper, eat, and later have some popcorn as an early evening snack.

 

Throughout the day, we both had to remind the other that it was our day off. We have definitely gotten into the habit of always doing something. Fortunately we have been planning for a break for a few weeks now and helped each other stick to that plan.

  

We definitely needed a break. The Good Lord knew what he was doing when he appointed a day of rest each week. After our day of rest, we are both exited about tomorrow. Which is good, because we have a 30-mile bike ride, a 250′ dune to climb, and more!