Category: #VanLife

T-Minus 30 Days

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost

I leave Middletown a month from today (Aug. 19). Just writing that makes this whole adventure seem almost impossibly real.

I plan to take Robert Frost’s advice to heart and take the road less traveled — but not until after I get to Boulder (to have my electrical system installed) and Portland (to spend time with my West Coast family).

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Braving the Storms

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
― Hunter S. Thompson

I spent my first two-and-a-half decades sailing, safely, piloting small craft around harbors and coves and creeks and occasionally venturing out onto the usually docile Long Island Sound in my family’s 26-foot sloop, Weepecket, and various 35-footers.

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On the Road to Find Out

I said the road is my redeemer
I never know just what on earth I’ll find
in the face of a stranger
From the song “Jesus In New Orleans” by Over the Rhine

When I share that I plan to travel the country in a camper van, some people tell me it sounds exciting or that they’ve always dreamed of making such a trip.

Others ask: “Why on earth would you do that?”

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A Good Night’s Sleep

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest 

My bedroom is done.

Well, “bedroom” is probably an exaggeration.

But the bed platform in my van is built and with a few minor adjustments will soon accommodate a twin-size futon so I can stretch out and rest my weary bones after long days of nomading. (Yes, that’s a thing.)

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Parked on Pearl

By the time this year’s cicadas have vanished from the Connecticut landscape, I could be halfway to Oregon, where my middle daughter lives in a floating home with her wife and their two dogs — a shepherd the size of a wolf and a tiny Chihuahua — and a colorful beta fish named Sailor.

Or I could be halfway back to Connecticut. 

That’s how fluid and casual things will be in my newly nomadic #vanlife.

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