A Moment of Repose
Not so much for us, but for Penelope is this post titled, although we have had a moment here and there. Our Penelope rests in the drive, her load being lightened significantly each day. What amazes us is the amount of stuff we managed to jam in there, and how much it must have weighed! Penelope certainly did accomplish a lot when considering this. Pulling a fully-loaded Toyota 4×4 up endless steep grades, it is no wonder we had overheating issues! We were asking an awful lot of that engine, and it will be VERY interesting to see how she performs without tons of cargo. I think that as a bus, which she never was, but IF she was a bus, she would be asked to carry 29 passengers and driver, so let’s say 30 people, say an average of 150 lbs. each, for a total of 4500 lbs, plus their luggage, which I can only guess at…let’s say 1000 lbs, which brings us up to 5500, then the weight of the seats themselves, add another 1000 lbs, since I am guessing still, although we can take that away, as it is weight otherwise now used by the interior appointments, so disregard that… and for grins let’s add another 500, since there are always other things to consider, and we end up with 6000 pounds. This is my rough guess at the payload of this coach, but I think we may have exceeded it.
We will never know, however, because she is mostly unloaded, we were not interested enough to weigh and log each time we exited the bus with a load, and I was too chicken to stop at a weigh station because I feared they might find that we were overweight, and force us to offload part of our cargo onto a Uhaul or some such. Oh well. Suffice it to say that it was a huge amount of work that Penelope performed for us, and she has our thanks, although the cost was high. Very high.
About the stuff. It was not our intent to end up here with so much of it, and we are surprised that it made the many “cuts” we made throughout the year as we culled our possessions. When we first arrived, we were, and had been, existing on very little, and were happier for it. The simplicity made life easier, and more rich somehow. As the boxes and tubs and bags get unpacked, and as the many nooks and crannies of Penelope’s cabinetry are unloaded, we feel ourselves weighted down in an emotional and psychic sense, and all we can say now is “It’s gonna be one humdinger of a yard sale!”
It is about one year ago that we first decided to make this move. The earliest mention of it as far as I can see looking in our old emails was a real estate link I sent to Michele. It was dated June 22nd, 2009. We got the idea that we wanted an Alaskan experience from watching Survivorman and his episode in the fjords near Seward, and within a day or two, we were perusing real estate ads. So this project…the move, that is…took us one year. Not bad! Now…how long will it take us to recover from it, both financially, psychically, and with regard to time? We both have seemingly endless projects lined up, and those are just the obvious! Several of mine, I can see, will take until the end of the summer at least!
This is part of the reason I now write this short post … it is hard to sit down long enough to write posts! During brief moments of rest, it is much nicer to stare out across the hills to the active volcano (Mt. Redoubt) that is in our view to the northwest. Especially during the looooong evenings, with the clouds and sun creating intense textures on the tapestry of the sky, an expansive view we are as yet unused to, having lived so long in canyons and under trees, it is intriguing to watch the cloud of steam fluctuate above the peak.
Our DSL will not be working until Monday, and until then, it is next to impossible to ask anything of the Internet….the wireless service we now have is way too dang slow. I mean really. . . really. . . slow. So, if you are anxiously awaiting those picture galleries, videos, and updates I promised, you may have to exercise more patience! Combined with our workload creating a new life for ourselves and the difficulty getting things done online, it will be a little bit.
Also, it is important to make the distinction between our new life and “Travels of Penelope”. It is most likely that we will start a new blog with which to keep account of our doings and adventures here in Homer, and another blog to express the ideas and work that will be done to Penelope. This latter will probably be called “Penelope’s Progress” titled after an old book we’ve yet to read. The links to these forthcoming blogs will be posted here, or you can make a request for them by email. Furthermore, if you would like notification of updates to this blog, which will be ongoing, albeit sporadically, email would be the best way to go.
The email address is mizamook at gee mail dot com. You have to make that into computer speak. I don’t like spam!
Anyway, that’s about it for now. I will go look for another moose walking through the yard, look for eagles and bear, and get back to work!
Gene
