Life on the Road

Well, it’s Mother’s Day.  And we’re not at church.  Jewel and I are both fighting colds, and we don’t have a church we know of to go here, anyway…

When we’re at our “base” in CA we have a church we go to.  When we’re in Mississippi at our hangout there, we have a church we go to. 

But what about the rest of the time?

This is the biggest part of RV life on the road that isn’t falling into place just yet. 

In theory, but down the road yet, we will find the stop-over places that we like along our usual travel routes.  these will be places with a good place to stay, good opportunities for our business, and a good church.

Also in theory, we can look in a phone book wherever we happen to be on a Sunday, and pick a church by denomination or something.  But you don’t necessarily find a church you like the first one you try, and furthermore it often takes a few visits to really know.

This is compounded by Jewel’s tender age.  When I take her to a strange place, with strange people, I’m not about to just leave her alone for an hour and a half.  She loves playing with the “church babies,” but needs the reassurance that Mama or Papa is still there.  So being at a different church every Sunday doesn’t lend itself to her ever getting comfortable anywhere.

So if I’m going to be sitting in the nursery with her, and she’s not going to be developing a relationship with these people anyway…  Why go?

Having a home church is so vital to our spiritual well-being, and we’re very thankful that we were led to our friends at East End Baptist Church in Columbus, MS.  But we’re only there erratically…  By the time we get back at the end of May we’ll have been gone about two months, and we’ll only be there for one Sunday this time!

How can we stay in fellowship the rest of the time?

We’re definately having mixed results with out latest tech endeavours.

The blog move went swimmingly.  Got the database configured, imported the posts from the free blog site, configured the display, and we’re off and running.

The other project we are (okay, Wolf is) working on is getting a network set up.  Right now, the Verizon wireless broadband card is plugged into the “old” laptop, and the “new” latop (which can’t take the card) is only able to get online if we’re at a WiFi “hot spot.”

Out technical advisor (and next-door campsite neighbor!) is Rich, who wrote The Digital RV.  (We also enjoy keeping up with his blog).

So we purchased a router, which takes the Verizon card and broadcasts a wireless signal - so both laptops could (theoretically) be happily online together.  But it’s not working well.  Everything seems to check out fine, but the laptops won’t stay connected to the wireless network.  Hmmmm…

I should know by now that everything is learned gradually. I guess I had hoped we would have most of the information we needed to hit the road in our RV. We read books and articles about storage needs and batteries and everything else under the heavens. In all things RV, I have much to learn.

We had decided early on that we would be “boondocking” at times. You know, parking in the middle of nowhere with no sewage, water, or electric hookups. We wanted to have a generator, two batteries, and solar charging. Now that I have more experience and knowledge about the whole thing, it could have been done better. But we’re getting there.

If you’re out in the middle of nowhere and want a semi-normal existance, you will need power. So the lights and water pump and some other things run on 12 vdc (like your car). We upgraded to two type 24 batteries. IT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER. We are now wondering if we should upgrade to two (or more) type 27 batteries.

Now, if you want to keep your power, you will need a way to replenish it. We figured out that solar panels would be a great thing to have. I must say in our defense that we didn’t exactly choose what we ended up with. The dealer we bought from sold us a cheesy 1 amp panel. Really not good for much of anything except maybe an extreme emergency. IT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER. Yea… We are now thinking that we need a system that will deliver around 10 amps.

Of course, there are devices that need more power, like a computer. Also there is the microwave, the A/C, and a hair dryer. A generator was added to our list of needed equipment. We looked at the best first … and gagged. $1200 for a 2000 watt gennerator. The same dealer that got us the solar also recommended buying a 4000 watt generator at Home Depot or someplace. That would only be $500 bucks. We looked and found a 5000 watt generator for $800. We bought it. And we took it back. It would keep you up nights. It was LOUD. We looked around at all the rest, and guess what … we went back to the best. We bought the $1200 Honda. But … IT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. We are finding that 2000 watts isn’t quite enough. Really, 2000 watts will do about everything except run the A/C. We had actually planned from the beginning to upgrade to two 2000 watt generators. Honda has a cool dual generator setup. 

And we just keep learning more.

All By God’s Grace