Visit our blog as we travel here, there any everywhere in our shiny home with wheels. Without a set schedule, with no reliable income, no expectations, and without proper medical insurance we are bound to run into failure, fun, trouble, opportunity and many new (senior citizen) friends. Co-piloting this adventure are our side kicks; Lois The Pie Queen, the saucy siamese vixen, and John Bunnay Ramsey, AKA, Senior Biscuit.
We are a happy couple of three years that met while traveling in Germany. We relocated from Los Angeles to New York City, and recently purchased a vintage 72' Airstream Tradewind, 25' trailer to live out of while we explore all points connected by land. We hope to achieve minimal cost of living and in exchange have extra free time to spend together and work on our our creative projects. The end result.. 1. We will have lived in many parts of the world we wouldn't normally have visited, 2. We will have opened our doors for various experiences that normally wouldn't cross our paths, stories to tell 3. We will have developed our own companies which we plan to continue after we decide to leave full time trailer life. We hope to do good things with our extra time too.
One night these two kids 12, and 13 came over. I've never tripped out so hard on two young boys before. It's the southern accent. These kids were so awesome. It was sort of like having Gummo in the living room with me. They weren't to thrilled with me shooting video of them, so this is the best I got.
Getting out of the door took two tries. The first time we left we didn't use the weight distribution bars given to us by Uncle John. Uncle John is Bill's Uncle that spends his spare time Rving around New England with Bills Nanna (Nanner if you are from their part of the country). Like idiots we got about 40 minutes away and we decided to turn around and hook up the confusing rusty piece of junk that we had no idea what to do with it. Turns out we needed it. We totally would of died without once on the road. It was like the scariest thing ever. We had towed it empty, no problem. But then you load it up with 5,000 lbs of junk, it's like a fish out of water back there. Thanks Uncle John.
Leaving Merrimack, NH
It took us about 13 hours driving time (16 hours total) to get to the half way point of Pittsburgh. There we got to catch up with my Grandma, Steve and Ivy and of course eat some Hot Primanti's Sammiches. It was a quick in and out trip to da burgh, but never a bad time. I love Pittsburgh. Go Stillers.
Me and Bill up on Mount Worshington. Downtown Pittsburgh it's so pretty.
Here I am with Grandma Anne Celeste. She's my #1.
Grandma is very proud of her Christmas Hallway Decorating skills
Here I am with Jon Huha and his lady Veronica at the Squirrel Cage
Here I am with Steve Novick right before we departed from my Uncle Sonny's (Thanks Steve and Ivy for a great time in Pittsburgh)
Day 2 of our trip was from Pittsburgh to Nashville. That also took about 13 hours of driving time. We pulled over in a Wallmart Parking lot in Kentucky for a night. (Sam Walton was big into RVing so he encourages travel trailers to park nightly in their lots) Here is a photo of our rig in the Wallmart lot. It was cold that night. We just slept in the Suburban though that night, we were in transit and the Airstream wasn't quite ready for us. Shit really gets tossed around when in tow.
We only planned on sleeping for 3-4 hours and somehow we managed to sleep like 9 hours in the cold truck. We must of needed it.
The following morning we got started around 10:00 am and head south for Nashville. We were only about 4 hours away at this point. Things were looking bright! Almost to our new home!
Here are a few Roadside monuments we saw in Kentucky
Pulling into Tennessee was not that monumental. Ashland City is Northwest of Downtown, and we were driving in from the North so we didn't get like the grand hello from the downtown skyline or anything, and then all of a sudden, all went to hell. "ssssssssss" was the noise from the engine, and then came the steam. Thankfully we were on level ground an over on the right hand lane already. The Suburban shut itself down, and we pulled over onto the dirt. We got over quick, and we called our helpful roadside assistance people, Good Sam. They told me that a tow truck should arrive in about an hour. Within 5 minutes somebody pulled over. Of course my first instinct is to "quick, lock the doors, roll up the window" I was just living in Brooklyn. Nobody pulls over to help a dying puppy dog there. And who gets out of his car but Garth Brooks! Just kidding, but the guy sure did look like him. In Boots, overalls and a cowboy hat this southern gent gets out of his Dodge mini caravan and took a few minute out of his day to see if we were Ok!
And then about 15 minutes after he left the second guy came. I was too afraid of snatching a photo without him noticing, and he just wasn't the type of dude I felt I could ask either, but he ended up giving us his cell phone # and told us to please call if we ran into any trouble at all...waaaah?? Where the hell are we?? I did manage to sneak a pic of his car. Notice his bumper sticker: "Horn Broken, Watch for Finger"
And then WTF!!! a third dude pulled over checking on us. I couldn't believe this this. Where are we that three nice people would offer us help. This guy offered us more than help, he offered to go down the road and "git us sum cold drinks" he was persistent too. We had to convince him that we were fine and people we on their way shortly for us. I mean, what an introduction to the south huh? Here is a photo of our dude who wanted to bring us cold beverages.
Thanks to Good Sam our $400 dollar tow was covered by our $65 dollar annual fee that we paid before we did our first tow with the Airstream. It covers both the truck and the trailer. We are so lucky we broke down when we did and not in the Pocono Mountains or in rural Kentucky. We happened to break down only about 15 miles from the house in Ashland City. This meant the tow truck could tow us right to the address, which was a total life saver. Two tow trucks came and towed our road real estate one at a time. I went with the guy towing the truck and Bill hung out with the guy towing the Airstream. While I was talking about fried chicken and Alan Jackson's residence (which is a half mile from our the place we are staying at) Bill was rapping with his dude about how his dude has never left Nashville and can't wait to get the hell out. In the end we learned that we somehow lost the A/c belt on our travels which caused this whole chain reaction of error under the hood. Two rods when shooting through the oil pan, and we blew the main gasket. We are looking at an $1,800 repair. Ugh.
This is the gimpy 3 legged dog from next door that stole my heart, Sue Baby
Grocery shopping here is so much fun. It's like being in another country! Stuff is so cheap! They love their biscuits down there, that's for sure. They manage to display biscuits in 4-5 grocery aisles.
