Leaving Today!

I’m writing this before we drive away, but most likely you’re reading it after liftoff. 

Airstream Name

We’ve decided to name the Airstream, “The Firefly,” after Josh Whedon’s TV show. Yep, I know Firefly is the name of the class of the spaceship, whereas the actual beloved ship is called Serenity, but Serenity happens to be an Airstream model name, so that’s one too many references. RV people tend to be old and easily confused. 🙂

The reason I’m mentioning this now is that I wanted to start this entry with lyrics from that show, although my whole poetic attempt is squandered with my preliminary explanation. In any case,

Take me out to the black,
Tell them I ain’t comin back.
Burn the land and boil the sea,
You can’t take the sky from me.

In the show, the crew is fleeing from a totalitarian set of worlds, headed for an uncertain but free life in the blackness of space.

For us, the black is the open country, away from the craziness that is D.C. right now, and the sky is our dream to travel even as the land and sea seem to be boiling around us. So, Firefly rings true in several ways for us. Shiny.

What We’ve Accomplished

So, yay, we survived the tumult of having to do so many errands related to moving in the midst of the virus panic and trying to maintain social distancing. A huge bottle of hand sanitizer in the truck has been our squirty shrine.

We survived:

• my last few days at my office when I should have been teleworking,
• selling my car when no one was out buying (my boss ended up buying it, making the above worthwhile),
• having to buy storage bins and bungees and implements of organization for inside the Airstream and the truck bed, and
• stocking up on essentials when we don’t know what those should be in this new life and didn’t think we could fit them in the Airstream anyway.

But we did it! By the time you’re reading this, the truck and trailer will be all packed; the house will have only scattered, ghostly remnants of our life in it; and we’ll be headed out to the storage unit to hook up and move out.

Next Virus Concerns

Now that we made it this far, our current covid-19 worries are that state parks are closing, which means state park campgrounds: our planned go-to stops for pretty much the next year.

My alternate plan is to research privately owned campgrounds we can head to when the state parks close. Yuck because they’re all going to be crowded and not the kind of place we enjoy, but they may stay open.

However, we’re seeing state welcome areas and rest stops closing, not just the facilities but the parking areas themselves. If this trend continues and private campgrounds close and we have nowhere to park, I’m gathering an emergency list of places for the Firefly (see, I’m working on that) away from cities, probably without any electricity, water, or sewer but at least parked safely.

Friends and family who have contacted me with land and/or large driveways, thank you!

To prep for that emergency-style parking, Tracy:

• bought an external, suitcase-style solar set-up that will augment the small amount of solar we have so far on the roof,
• filled an extra gas can for the generator,
• filled an extra, external water bin, and
• packed a “blueboy” external grey-water tank so we’ll have more waste storage, because we’ll fill our waste tanks and need to dump them before we run out of water or electricity.

And here we are with the truck mostly packed; we still have a few spots to fill, but at this point we need to get the final load of items to the Firefly (bedding and laundry from the final night, etc.) and swap out a few bins. Close, though!

That slide pulls out one more notch, by the way, so that we can access what’s in the very front of the bed (six bins stacked 2×3, not shown). This is just the detritus we need to repack once we have our heads on straight again.

I’ll post again when the Airstream has landed safely at our first destination.