Alaska or bust. I hope we don't bust.

I took Lucien to see Les Miserables his first week of summer vacation. It was my 10th time seeing the show. I'd see it again tomorrow if I could. I will never stop.

I remember my parents returning home after they first saw it in the 1980s. They raved about it, and brought home a souvenir, a Les Miz documentary called "Stage by Stage." I didn't go with them that first time but I watched the first few moments of that video and I was hooked. I was obsessed. I remember a warm feeling coursing through my body and a sense of "I now know what love feels like." Don't you dare tell me a musical can't love me back because I know it does.

I was very happy to share my favorite story with my son date.

The Loosh asked about twenty minutes before we left for the theatre, "Mom, what's the story about?" and I said, "Oh! It's a super short story written by Victor Hugo about love, redemption, compassion, rebellion, you can read it quickly before we leave!" He nodded enthusiastically and I threw my dogeared copy of the nearly 1,500-page novel at him. He looked so shocked.

READ, LUCIEN, READ LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ BEFORE.

This was my least favorite production I've seen of Les Miz. It's become something of a soap opera up there, with most actors throwing themselves all over the place in melodramatic fashion. They were being VERY SERIOUS actors but honestly, the story speaks for itself, you don't gotta sell it so hard.

The staging has changed, too. The sets used to be minimal and understated, which added to the charm of the thing. There was a revolving stage, so when people walked somewhere "far," they really walked in the same place as the stage rotated and props passed them by. Now there is no more rotation. When Jean Valjean gets Cosette at the well and takes her off for a better life, they just kind of wander all over the stage in lazy S shapes. What the hell are you guys doing up there?

One of the most effective scenes in the musical used to utilize the rotating stage to perfection. When Enjolras is killed at the barricade and falls off the front, the barricade later turns to show him laying upside down on top of the giant red rebel flag as music swells. That scene is gone without the revolving part; now they just kind of wheel a dead Enjolras across the stage in a cart. He's still with his big red flag but... what? Where's my big crying moment? It's gone, as gone as Enjolras.

I'm not done complaining yet! Another point of contention: Marius sings "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" while limping around in the darkness instead of sitting at the bar with all the chairs and tables he's singing about. How can you sing about empty chairs at empty tables when there are zero dang chairs and zero dang tables? Sit down in the damn bar and mourn your dead friends properly, Marius.

Don't even get me started on how audiences have changed. I swear half the audience was late so had to be seated at the first scene break, about fifteen minutes after the show began. Then there were just streams of people walking in carrying wine cups, and chatting, and blocking our view entirely for the next ten minutes of the show. Lucien didn't even get to see Fantine become a prostitute properly.

I'll distract myself from my crabby old lady Les Miz mutterings by showing before and nearly-after pictures of our master bathroom project. It's still not 100% finished but I sure like looking at it. It brings a little circa-1900 character to the space at last, and is even better than I'd envisioned.

Before:

we had no bathroom.

Almost After:

we very nearly have a gorgeous bathroom.

So gorgeous, we have decided to do all our entertaining from now on

in our bathroom. 

With the bathroom project nearly finished, our six years of Banister Abbey renovations are almost kinda complete. There is still a long list of small things to do but this, aside from the landscaping, which we hope to get to someday, is our last major undertaking in bringing this pretty old dame of a house back to life. Banister Abbey has been a labor of love. There is so much love. But as is involved in most labors, there has also been a shit ton of pain.

Summer is going well. There have been many water gun fights and buckets of water dumped on each other on the hot days --

And lemonade stands --

brilliant idea to offer the lemonade for free

but "except" donations.

They made a killing.

And kids running wild in the streets of Seattle --

And my beautiful sister, who is showcasing her art in her very first solo show in West Seattle. Her talent is astounding and I'm so happy she's getting the recognition she deserves.

That's Coco in front of "her" painting with Cecil the lion.

And finally, a fun event at the grocery store. Coco came with me to load up on the essentials for our big road trip. In the checkout lane, Coco loudly announced to the checker, "My mom and dad have a drinking problem." And I froze, and the checker froze, and we looked at each other, then both looked down at the items I was buying. There wasn't even any alcohol. So.... what's happening right now.

I said, "Umm, what?" and Coco said, throwing her arms into the air in exasperation, "You guys drink, like, twelve bubbly waters A DAY." True enough, I had five cases of La Croix on the belt and they're not likely to last a week. I've never loved a beverage so much in my life. It has actually replaced coffee as my morning drink of choice, it's that serious of a relationship.

Then the checker laughed and I laughed and the checker said, "Oooh boy, it got real awkward there for a second." Yes, yes it did. Coco can't come to the grocery store with me anymore.

I gotta go, it's crunch time, we're leaving for Alaska in t-minus not many hours. We'll be gone a long time, just shy of a month. Imagine the insanely long posts I'm going to write when I return! I'm really gonna write this trip into the ground, I can feel it.

Our journey to the Great North involves a stop in Watson Lake, in the Yukon. Watson Lake is known for its "Sign Post Forest," a labyrinth of almost 80,000 signs brought from the hometowns of people making the trek up the Alaska Highway. We have our sign ready. We will leave our mark at Watson Lake, as nearly 80,000 people have apparently done before us.

I hope it's the best road trip of our lives,
and I hope they put Les Miz back the way it used to be.
MJ

The Parks have personalities -- Part Two

In the National Parks-are-a-family metaphor I'm cheerfully beating to death, Capitol Reef National Park in Utah is the happy, lovable, affable youngest child. (I am in no way influenced by the fact I'm a youngest child when deciding which traits youngest children embody.)

Actually, maybe Capitol Reef is more like your favorite cheerful stoner uncle, the one who dropped out of college to travel the world, surf, play in a band, and now lives in a self-built tiny home in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  Everyone in the family chuckles with deep affection when Capitol Reef arrives wearing flip flops in winter, guitar slung over his back, and announces he's late because he was handing out free hugs in front of the 7-Eleven down the street.

Capitol Reef (as a park, I'm now ditching the uncle bit) is laid back, casual, not crowded at all.  It's not just about gorgeous scenery and interesting geology, it's all about the people, man.  Native Americans hammered petroglyphs high into the red cliffs and then, much much later, the first permanent settlers wandered into the area and decided to set up camp.

They were certain they'd found a slice of heaven. I agree with them on that, so much so I've developed a new life aspiration -- I want to be a settler.

I manhandled the Winnie B all over the Western United States
so I could certainly drive that

There were only about ten families who lived in the area at any given time, though granted they were Mormon so those were probably really big families. I wonder if living in such a small community made dating easier?  Since there were only about a dozen or so young people from whom to choose a partner, it seems it would take a lot of bellyaching out of the thing.  It would be less, "I don't feel he truly understands my inner being" and more, "Well, I guess I'll take Ephraim over there, he doesn't look too bad and he plays a nice fiddle."

Some of the pioneer homes still exist, the one-room school house still stands and a charming old barn still houses horses -- the two there now are named Mud and Egg and they help the rangers with backcountry rescue, which we thankfully did not need.  The many orchards the settlers planted are still bearing fruit over one hundred years later. You can pick all you want for a buck per pound.

the schoolhouse

The orchard next to the campsite was heavy with apricots.  Fallen apricots littered the ground so your feet made a squish squish sound as you walked through.  Red-orange juice squirted all over your ankles and up your legs.  By the time you finished, it looked like you had trampled many small animals to death.  Small, round, delicious, fruity animals.

Just beyond the orchard was Gifford House, one of the settler homes that has been turned into a shop that sells bread, pies, and cinnamon rolls the way the pioneers used to make them.  I may have sent the kids over there with a fistful of dollars a few times so hello, extra body weight, welcome to me.

It's OK, I'll need the extra weight to weather the harsh winters as a future settler, and will no doubt work it off come harvest time.  Until then, I await Ephraim's return from the North.  Dude's been gone for two months, he better return with chocolate.

Hearts were heavy as we left Capitol Reef.  It was a slice of heaven indeed.  Hey, we were wondering, can you live in a national park?  We may try.  We'll be the ones rustling in the bushes next to the cinnamon roll place.

Coco now smells like apricots all the time. It was an unexpected souvenir. She is a living breathing Strawberry Shortcake doll thanks to the apricot guts permanently encrusted between the textured ridges of her sandal soles.

The next park was Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado.  Black Canyon needs to chill the hell out.  Black Canyon is that person at the party in the corner wearing all black, talking about meaningless life and occasionally whispering Marilyn Manson lyrics to themselves while staring at a spot somewhere just over your head.

This thing exists only to scare people.  Black Canyon is a slit in the earth, a hole so deep with sheer charcoal gray cliff walls, you cannot see the bottom at many of the viewpoints. The silence is eerie though every once in awhile you catch the sound of the river rushing through the bottom of it, the river that continues to shape it today.  We do not need a deeper scarier Black Canyon so knock it off, river.

I went to Black Canyon as a younger person with my family and don't remember feeling afraid.  I thought it was cool.  But this time, my heart stopped a half dozen times, usually when I saw Coco climb on the first rung of the bolted steel railing around the viewpoint to "get a better look."  I may have yelled at her a bit too harshly because Alex claims my eyes bugged out of my head.

Alex wasn't much help, either.  The darkness and sheerness of the canyon rattled him as much as it mesmerized him.  He's not a phobia kind of guy but as we perched on one seemingly fragile overlook, Alex began half-yelling, "OH my God, is this thing shaking?  Is it shaking?  I think I feel it shaking" so we grabbed the kids by the backs of their shirts and hauled them back to safety as they said, "Guys? What are you doing?"

What are we doing?  We're saving your lives, suckers!

We used to be fearless.  Now we're parents.  

I guess we were all a little on edge at Black Canyon.  When we first entered the park, the ranger gave us a flyer warning of aggressive deer near our campsite.  Many baby deer had recently been born so the mamas were, much like us, startling easy and not keeping their cool.  We hear you, deer mamas, Black Canyon is a tough place to have kids.

Lucien took the deer warning to heart.  Probably too much.  We explained to him it just meant not to approach deer, to give them a ton of space because they were feeling a little defensive.  But each time Lucien glimpsed one (and there were many in the area) he yelled, "You guys, run, RUN, get inside, it's a deer, it's a deer!" in such a panic you'd think he'd spotted a hungry grizzly bear barreling towards the Winnie B.  

We did see some bighorn sheep on the side of the canyon walls, which was pretty cool, but overall Black Canyon is not a park I care to revisit anytime soon.  Black Canyon is intense. That park has got to chill.  Someone spark that park a doobie or slip it a Valium.  It's too dark, brooding, silent and it has killer deer.

The drive from Black Canyon to our next destination -- my mom and dad's house, I'm comin' home, mama -- was through many hills.  Hills are hard on an RV.  Hills are also hard on any cars stuck behind an RV.

I grit my teeth as cars pile up behind me. This is why RV owners wave at each other on the road.  We are each others people, must stick together and support each other as we piss off cars by going 30mph on a 55mph road.  We'd go faster if we could, I swear.

Alex and I have taken to quacking at RVs coming the opposite direction because RVs often resemble a mama duck with a string of impatient ducklings trailing along behind her.

I've got a third and final installation of the neverending road trip tale. I hope I write it someday because it involves my extended family throwing water balloons at each other.  But for now, we're off on another vacation, this one to a country where I don't speak the language and will be often alone with our kids because Alex is going for work and we're tagging along.  I'm sure everything will be fine and if it's not "fine," I hope it's at least funny.

We're going to end this with Coco being awesome

in a place I'm hellbent on settling even though it's already settled.

Don't ever give up on your dreams.

Quack quack,
MJ

It's the most wonderful time of the year

We're off.  We are leaving our menagerie to our good friends and trusty pet/housesitters (good luck with Natani, guys, and sorry) and hitting the road.

she is up to no good
and has recently decided carpet is the same thing as grass
so an appropriate place to pee.
We have agreed to disagree on that one.

Alex is coming along on the Mother/Children Road Trip this year. I think he feels the need to keep an eye on me, make sure I don't bring home another dog.  I wonder if he's going to cramp my style.  He better not demand I find a Starbucks in the middle of the Tetons like he did a few years ago.  If he pulls that crap, I am making that man walk home. I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR.

The trip is long and winding through the Western U.S. as always, only this time I will have a co-pilot who is going to make progress challenging with his requests to stop every twenty minutes to "just have a look around." He is the king of turning a 12-hour drive into a 24-hour drive.

Forgive my Alex anxiety.  Alex is my life partner, my companion on the journey, and I love him.  But since I've usually done this trip with just the kids, and we have a well established system and agreed upon ways of doing things (such as taking puppies out of deserts) I'm a bit wary.  I keep saying things like, "You understand we wake up every morning before sunrise because our favorite rides happen at sunrise, yeah?" and he responds, "OK, just as long as we can sleep in!" I don't think he's hearing me.

The road trip is my baby and, sadly, Alex is not its daddy.

In other news, the school year finally ended.  Welcome to the End of School Year Paper Explosion --

I don't like the day the teachers tell the kids to clean out their desks and take it all home to mom. Trust it, mom doesn't want it.  That recycle bin is looking awfully lonely in that classroom corner, though.

There's a giant Dora doll in the picture.  Lucien's class had pajama day during the last week of school and were told they could bring in their favorite stuffie to complete the look.  Lucien doesn't have a favorite stuffie anymore so instead dug through Coco's toys to find "something funny."  He chose giant Dora and carried her under his arm all day at school.  He got the laughs he was looking for.

In scary news, Dora had an accident later that day when she apparently fell down the stairs while home alone.  I found her like this.  She's going to be OK, thankfully I got there in the nick of time.

So we'll be gone for awhile.  Maybe I'll update this blog along the way.  I hope so.  Road Trips are always such interesting things -- and now I'll have the added excitement of fighting with Alex over the radio knobs.

Apologies for this brief post.  I wish I had more time to spend on it but that RV isn't going to clean and pack itself.  I would have paid a bazillion more dollars for one that did.

Good luck with all our crazy animals, friends.
MJ

Guessing Game

I'm back at the Paris book.  I have a developmental editor working with me now and she's been huge. We're dismantling all my ideas from back in November and developing new ideas.  Who knew there were so many ideas?  It's exciting but my head's swimming.  

While my head is in the bookwriting clouds, here's a fun game.  Guess which of these French quotes hanging on our kitchen wall Natani can reach?

yep....that one

That was too easy.  How about this:  Guess what terrifying object Natani is growling at and fiercely protecting us from?

That's right!  It's her own toy!  She forgot it on the back porch and it then blew into a strange, unrecognizable and frightening shape.  I like to believe she felt foolish when I let her outside and she circled growling at it until she worked up the courage to approach and sniff, but I'm not sure dogs are that self aware.

Here's another fun guessing question:  What's wrong with the schnauzer?  Did the schnauzer die?

Nope, no worries, he's alive.  We just took him on a hike. He was happy for half of it and then he was most decidedly not happy at all.  He just kind of flopped on the ground and said, "no."  So we carried him back.

I'm too old for this sh*t

Seattle is a boomtown. Our population is exploding, our home prices increasing to ludicrous new highs. It will soon become common to hear "I bought this ramshackle 1957 bungalow for 7.5 kajillion dollars."

Our neighborhood is changing rapidly; old homes are being torn down on every block and clusters of skinny townhomes soon built in their places.  I hate these new ugly buildings and my kids know it. When we drive past yet another old home being tickled to death by a bulldozer, Lucien or Coco will mutter,"Dammit.  There goes another Victorian with turn-of-the-century charm -- the architectural details along the roofline were to die for -- being torn down to make room for an ugly modern box lacking in character and quality."

Hearing your words coming out of someone else's tiny little mouth is both eerie and heart-swelling.

Thanks to all this urban progress, streets are regularly closed in our neighborhood for big construction machines and utility crews.  Driving the kids to school has become a frustrating task because there are always new and unexpected "ROAD CLOSED" signs popping up in front of the car.  I then must improvise, zig zag around, find a new unimpeded path.  Then the next week there are more signs -- the new route's closed now, too.

I'm convinced someday there will be no possible route to school so we'll go back home and watch movies and eat Nacho Cheese Doritos.  The excuse I will call into the school will be "there are no more streets left."  I guarantee the office staff will understand.  They will probably be taking the call from their own living rooms, having found no viable route to school themselves.

oh god.  no.  just stop it.

Alex and I attended the elementary school fundraising auction over the weekend.  Alex bid on a restaurant gift certificate because he's been wanting to treat his hardworking team at work to a nice dinner.  He missed a few crucial details before he bid and won, though -- namely that the certificate was for $200 worth of bagels. That's going to be one weird team dinner.

I took Coco and Lucien to the Seattle Bouldering Project while Alex was in Mexico for work last week.  I love bouldering, especially at this point in time.  When I'm hanging high on a wall by only my fingernails, all I can think about is how to keep hanging on.  I can't think about the words I'm using for the Paris book, and how most of the words I'm using are stupid words and I need to find good words. Bouldering is a reprieve from crippling self-doubt.

I may love the singular focus that comes with bouldering but my kids were less enthused. Within an hour they could not feel their arms nor legs so laid in whimpering little kid puddles on the mats and begged to go home.  Seattle climbers are a very supportive lot; they high-fived me and said, "Nicely done, Mom, you got 'em!"

We're going back whenever the kids get uppity.  You giving me lip?  GET ON THE WALL.

We took another trip in the RV before Al left for Mexico.  Taking off in an RV is more work than it sounds because you have to empty the RV when you're not using it and refill it when you're ready to take off again. You can't leave food in there to rot, can't leave linens in there to get damp in our wet Seattle winter weather.  It's like packing a tiny home each and every time so something is always inevitably forgotten. Last time it was ketchup and eggs.  This time it was butter and a pillow.

We also forgot to buy firewood.  Other campers' fires dotted the campground as we attempted to make our fire with a roll of toilet paper, small sticks and some damp leaves.  It was brief, brilliant, and smoky.

There are three types of RVers we've encountered so far.  The most common type is the retired couple.  Then there are young families like ours.  The third is more difficult to categorize in a definitive way -- they're the kind that shuffle around the campsite in dirty bathrobes and slippers and don't make eye contact. I'm not sure of their age or family situation.  It's anyone's guess what they're all about yet they are definitely my favorite.

and old man schnauzer went on a hike

Lucien recently told me about a girl he has a crush on at school.  He was invited to go to a movie with her family and while we waited for her dad to come pick him up, Lucien said, "I really hope I impress her."  I worried about what "impressing her" might entail (probably farting on cue) so I asked cautiously, "Hey Loosh....how do you think you should communicate with a girl in order to "impress" her?"  He thought a minute, pointed at me, winked and said, "I'm gonna speak to her in German."

It's worth a shot, I guess.  Better than farting.  If it doesn't impress her it will at least befuddle her and that's worth some laughs.  So go on, baby, sprechen sie deutsch.  And good luck.

Coco just ran into the kitchen and announced, "Donald Trump just bit me."  Frankly, I wouldn't put it past him.

Anyone want a bagel?
MJ

a lemon or merely lemon scented?

Lucien loves Star Wars.  He recently began coloring a picture of R2D2 but left the room briefly to discuss important matters with his mother. He returned to find his sister had turned R2D2 into a pretty princess at a tea party thanks to her pink marker and bottomless princess sticker collection.

There was a bit of yelling but then, thank God, my son realized the exquisite humor in the situation and laughed until he cried.  As did I.

R2D2 has never been so fancy.
The tiara. It kills me.

In other news, we briefly regretted our Winnebago purchase over the long weekend when a panel blew off the side while flying down the highway.  Sometimes one experiences buyer's remorse when one's vehicle starts blowing to bits at 70 mph.

It's possible this is going to become an RV blog.  Or an RV blog with a touch of  "our desert dog, seven months later, continues to destroy all of our stuff" blog.*  When we first moved into Banister Abbey, I thought this would be a home renovation blog.  And it was, briefly, but I have since gotten away from posting pictures of our home improvement.  My point is, I'm no longer sure what my point is.

(*Speaking of Natani, she knocked Coco's favorite game off the counter this week and started chewing it up.  I hate this game.  Alex hates this game.  My mother hates this game and my mother hates nothing in this world except stupid, stupid Mermaid Island.

I debated whether or not to let Mermaid Island die "a natural death" at the jaws of our destroyer, Natani the Navajo dog.  But in the end, I couldn't do it and rescued the ridiculous thing.  My mother can't forgive me.)

nom nom nom i love you nom nom

So the directionless blog wanderings continue this week with more tales of skiing (could be a skiing blog now) and RVs and bestiality.

I might as well take care of that last item now since it's all anyone will think about until I address it. We went out for Seattle Mom's birthday Saturday night and her husband, Seattle Dad, told us the story of the infamous "Enumclaw horse sex case" which happened in 2005 outside Seattle.  Some guy died from internal injuries (perforated colon, I believe) after being on the receiving end of sex with a stallion.  By "stallion" I mean a real stallion, not a euphemism for a virile male.  Truly, a horse.

Our beautiful friends out with us in Ballard.

Right after he told us the terrible horse story.
Why did he do that to me.

I haven't been able to shake that horse story since I heard it.  In addition to being repulsed by some sections of humanity, I just have so many questions about how it happened.  I mean what......how....

anyway, the takeaway from that is the human race is doomed.

We may all be headed for hot livin' in hell but in the meantime, the family and I continue to enjoy the Winnie B and more time on the slopes during mid-winter school break.

I look happy. The Loosh does not look happy.  

HE IS HAPPY

(Nope, he really wasn't, so mad at me right here)

The family headed for Hoodoo, a ski resort in Central Oregon, over the long Presidents Day weekend.  Hoodoo allows RV camping in the parking lot, provides an electrical hookup but nothing else.  It was our first attempt at rationing water, which we did incorrectly so ran out of fresh water from our tank on the second day.  We're learning, we're learning.

I remain the sole driver of the RV.  Alex prefers to put his feet up and avoid driving something big and scary and I have fairly debilitating control issues, particularly when it comes to my family's locomotion.  In that sense, Alex and I are perfectly paired.

I cannot overstate how excited Alex and I were at the prospect of camping at the base of a chairlift. We were near giddy on the drive to Hoodoo, imagining the extreme convenience of being able to wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, throw on our gear and walk twenty feet to the lift.  We were like kids being told they were camping at the base of a candy mountain, and when they awoke in the morning they could shovel mouthfuls of the sweet stuff into their gaping jaws immediately.

Excitement aside, the challenges began immediately upon arriving at Hoodoo and pulling into our reserved space in the resort parking lot.  An RV has to be level in order to avoid damage to both the refrigeration and slide-out wall mechanisms.  If you're parked in a non-level spot, you must put levelers under the lower wheels to even things out.  We've leveled Winnie before with our cheery bright yellow plastic levelers with zero trouble.  But that was then.

When you place RV levelers on top of wet pavement, slush, and a thin layer of ice at a ski resort, then try to drive your RV on top of them, those goddamn cheery yellow levelers shoot away from your vehicle with impressive agility.  You're not getting on top of those things; they're spooked gazelles sprinting into the forest.

When something isn't working, Alex pulls inward, goes silent with a steely and impressive determination.  When he goes quiet like that, I back off, disappear, don't bother him.  Trust it, he wants to be alone with his thoughts.  I instead watched and prayed silently from the inside as he tried shovels, ice scrapers, portable heaters, even put the levelers on top of our anti-slip table placemats.  The placemats were quickly shredded by the tires.  Now I need new placemats but that's neither here nor there.

It took Alex so long to get the RV up on those levelers, I had begun making dinner in the back by the time it happened.  The kids and I grew accustomed to grabbing onto whatever piece of furniture was nearby when Alex revved the engine and lurched Winnie forward to give it another go.  When he finally succeeded, our RV neighbors next door pounded on their windows and cheered.

Alex had been so immersed in getting the deed done, he hadn't realized he'd drawn an audience of fellow RVers and people waiting in nearby passenger cars.  He was like, "People were watching me?  Should I be embarrassed?" but I said, "Nah, hold your head high, man, you are the new face of determination in Central Oregon."

Alex has got serious grit.

We're barely on 'em, but we're on 'em.

we love skiing blah blah blah

Hoodoo is closed Tuesdays.  We camped Monday night and awoke Tuesday morning to find we were absolutely alone in this world --

Winnebago feels lonely and insignificant

I loved the solitude, loved having the entire place to ourselves like a giant snowy playground.  But me being me, I looked over my shoulder every five minutes and thought, "Gosh, we're really alone up here, a murderer could drive into this parking lot and kill us at any time and no one would ever know."  My thoughts are pretty dark but I take comfort in the fact Enumclaw guy's "I should have sex with that horse" is still way way worse.  

Coco and I climbed the beginner slope and went sledding.  While up there, a truck pulled into the parking lot and several men jumped out.  My heart stopped.  It was my nightmare coming true, I was sure of it.  I knew what I had to do;  I had to rush them, confront them, let them know I wasn't going to go quietly.  I was in such a hurry to confront those men about their murderous intent, Coco fell out of the sled in my hustle down the embankment back to the parking lot.

Sorry, baby

but Mama's protecting you

It became apparent, after I ran at their faces, the men in the truck were a father and his three teenage sons who didn't realize Hoodoo was closed Tuesdays.  They were dejected to say the least; the dad had taken off work for the day and the three sons had taken a day off from school.  They only had one snowboard and one pair of boots between them; the rest had planned to rent from the very closed rental shop.

Super nice non-murderous guys. We watched them and yelled our enthusiastic support as father and sons climbed the steepest runs.  They took turns using the one pair of boots and one snowboard.  They cheered for whomever's turn it was then yelled encouragement at the poor sucker as he climbed the equipment back up to them.  They made the best of a disappointing situation.

Sorry I thought you were criminals, guys.  You're inspiring in your can-do attitudes and it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

and it was fun to camp in a parking lot

Now back to beginning -- the Winnie B shedding her parts on the drive home to Seattle.  I looked in the sideview mirror after we'd cleared Portland to see what appeared to be a large piece of metal flying alongside our vehicle.  I yelled back to Alex, who was locked in the bathroom at the time with his computer in an attempt to combat motion sickness while answering emails (that was a mouthful and a confusing one at that, long story) I yelled something along the lines of, "WE GOT A PROBLEM, MAN."

Alex came rushing back to the cockpit and confirmed something had gone awry with his panicked, "Pull over!  Now!  The side of the car's about to blow off!" but I was surrounded by people on a major freeway with a shoulder not wide enough to accommodate the Winnie B.

I slowed down, put on my emergency flasher lights, prayed for an exit ramp, told Alex he was going to have to run into the highway to grab the piece if we lost it before I could stop.  (Alex has grit, remember.  I don't.  He was the obvious best candidate for the job.)

It was then I realized what people had been trying to tell me.  Not two minutes earlier, a couple had pulled up alongside me and honked their horn.  Then the man made some emphatic gestures.  He pointed at his own eyeballs with two fingers then pointed at the Winnie B.  It was the ole "I'm lookin' at you" gesture and it struck me as very rude.  I wasn't doing anything wrong, wasn't speeding, was well between the lines, hadn't cut anyone off.  How dare he.

I began making the same gesture back at him.  Two fingers pointed at my eyeballs then pointed at his eyeballs. "Oh yeah?  You're lookin' at me, buddy?  Well I'M LOOKIN' AT YOU, TOO.  I can look at things, too, and I'm lookin' at YOU.  What you gonna say about it?"  He eventually floored it and took off in front of me with a shake of his head.  What a jerk.

Except as I pulled off to the side of the road with part of my RV detached, of course, it became evident he wasn't a jerk at all and was instead trying to give me an important message, that it was time to take a good hard look at my vehicle.

I should perhaps evaluate my suspicions regarding the motives of strangers.  I am an island!

I finally eased to the side of the road on a desolate off-ramp.  Alex jumped out the side door -- straight into a pile of dog poop.  What are the chances?  What are the chances of pulling onto a rural exit ramp and jumping into a pile of dog poop?  That's just how life happens for us.  We embrace the unpredictability but not the mess.

Alex hopped around a bit, some expletives, decided he never wanted to see that pair of shoes again and took them off  right there on the side of the road.  He wrapped them in a plastic bag for later disposal and asked the children to retrieve his slippers.

It didn't take much effort to pull the panel off; it had been dangling by a mere thread.

there used to be a piece there...

...but it is now in here

Al hopped back in and we pulled back onto the highway, slightly rattled but relieved.  Not five seconds later, the battery warning light illuminated before me, a glaring red light that seemed sent from the devil himself.  I hesitated before delivering the bad news to Alex, who was happily wearing his slippers and chatting about our near disaster on the highway.  "Err...Al....?"

One exit later, we were back on a rural off-ramp reading our owners manual.  The manual said if the battery warning light came on, we needed to stop the RV immediately, pop the hood, and inspect the somethin'-somethin' belt for a tear.  Okee dokee.

We didn't know what a somethin' somethin' belt was.  A few Google searches later, we popped the hood and stuck our heads way down inside the bowels of the mechanics of the Winnie B.  The somethin' somethin' belt looked awesome, in fact looked brand new, because it is.

When we took off again from our second emergency stop of the hour, the battery warning light turned off and stayed off.  But still, we were jittery and spent the rest of the uneventful ride home Googling things such as "Is my new RV a lemon or merely lemon-scented?"

We've since learned it's fairly common for everything to go wrong in the first six-ish months of RV ownership.  The thing's never been used before and there are a zillion things that can go wrong with such a complex piece of machinery -- so a lot of them do, brace yourself.  So far, in our four initial trips, we've had a broken slideout wall (now fixed) a dead house battery (fixed) a dead GFCI outlet (fixed --user error, oops), a panel blown off the side (not fixed) and a battery warning light (what the hell was that about).

Yep, this could turn into an RV blog. Or skiing. Our dog is still crazy, too.
MJ