Together 24:7: The Hours in Bessie’s Front Seat!

Okay, as promised, we are sharing more about our Together 24/7 lifestyle! This is Installment Two!

First of all, our truck’s name is Bessie. (Learn more about Bessie’s name: https://www.12mph.com/2018/06/we-have-names/) She’s a 2011 Ford F-250 Super Duty with a 6.7l Powerstroke, Turbo-Diesel engine. A towing beast! And, a little bit stiff in the joints making some rides pretty bumpy. The 17,000+ miles that we’ve racked up since last July have been driven and ridden with the two of us in the front seat together. We share the driving and co-piloting, which helps switch things up a bit. When we were shopping for a used truck last year, we wanted leather seats with bun warmers and coolers. Since we anticipated many hours in the front seat, it needed to be comfortable on certain parts AND also have a picture window windshield view!

The question that has been posed to us: How does one pass all of those miles and the hours together staring out the windshield?

  • We listen to podcasts. One of our favorites has been Grammar Girl. Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) takes us on grammatical adventures with punctuation, words, phrases, and more.
  • We tried Sirius radio, but there were more times when the GPS wouldn’t locate it, so we’ve canceled our subscription. We are news junkies and especially enjoy the NPR One app and with bluetooth it can be connected to the truck’s media system.
  • Fortunately, I didn’t part with all of our music CDs, so the ones we still have are gradually being downloaded onto the truck’s jukebox feature. And, I still have my Classic iPod with hundreds of songs. Woohoo! I can stream it with my old-school AM/FM cable.
  • We have taken turns reading a book aloud. The challenge is that too often than not, the truck jostles us across the miles, making it hard to read for any length of time. We each have a Kindle, although Steve seems to handle reading while a passenger than I do.
  • We talk. Someone eavesdropping would say that I talk more. Go figure! 😊
  • We are silent with deep thoughts or shallow ponderings.
  • We reminisce and express gratitude for life, our marriage, and the many loved ones in our life.
  • We comment about the beauty and changing landscape that we witness over the miles and terrain. We express wonder and pose questions provoked by curiosity.
  • The co-pilot often has our paper atlas or an Official State map open to partner with our Garmin GPS for RVs. Of course, Google maps is a good back-up to Garmin when the Garmin takes us on an unexpected adventure.
  • The co-pilot tends to weather watching. The Windy app is great, especially in Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas with sustained or gusty winds stirring up dust or challenging our high profile vehicle! Our other mainstay is the Weather Channel’s app.
  • We take day trips without the trailer. Sometimes it feels quite liberating to not be towing.
  • We eat! Yep! The decades old little red and white cooler is tucked into the backseat almost every travel day with a fairly standard lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples, and yogurt. We typically pause somewhere to take a lunch break and avoid the distraction of eating while driving.
  • We drink coffee! Yep! This is our primary addiction, which has us stopping at independent coffee shops, Starbucks, and yes, truck stops.

What other questions do you have about our Together 24/7 lifestyle? We’d love to hear from you.

~ Trekking across the miles together as Life at the Speed of Sanity!

Diane (& Steve)

 

Together 24/7: Morning Routines Changed!

Recently we went out for a lovely breakfast with our friends Mary and Ron in Denver. As we were conversing over breakfast, the topic came up of what it is like for Steve and me to be together nearly 24/7? They encouraged us to share something about our close proximity since launching our full-time RV lifestyle on July 29, 2018. We will share our thoughts over several posts. This will be Installment One!

We met just over 45 years ago and we’ll observe our 43rd wedding anniversary this spring. So…thankfully, we sort of like each other! There have been very few experiences of living in a 24/7 situation. One that we recall is the summer of 2010. We had just moved our household from Illinois to Colorado. It was placed in a storage unit in Colorado for the bulk of the summer. Then, Steve and I traveled from early June through mid-August before settling into life in Denver. We were together a good chunk of that time. Admittedly, it didn’t involve living in a “tiny-home on wheels” as we’re doing now. We were travelers and tourists at that point.

Let’s see what we can share with everyone on what it is like to be living the full-time RV lifestyle in roughly 200 square feet of living space.

You Betcha…Our Morning Routines Changed

We used to begin the day fairly independent of one another. We each had a routine that included sipping on morning coffee, checking news apps or watching a morning news show while getting the day started, showering, and opportunities to be in separate rooms checking emails or social media.

Now in such a small space, we tend to overlap one another in various ways. Something that I have embraced for years is a morning meditation of sorts that includes prayer. I used to sit quietly on our comfy sofa or loveseat with a cup of coffee and the morning sun coming through the window. Nowadays, I stay in bed while Steve ventures into the living space of our trailer. I remain prone without coffee to quietly have my prayer time.

Our former routine included us grinding coffee the night before and setting the 12-cup Cuisinart coffee maker to automatically begin perking the next morning. Fast forward to our tiny space and we find Steve manually grinding the coffee on most days, getting the tea kettle of water on a burner, and making French press coffee while I’m having my prayer time.

I used to have what I considered a small space in the bedroom of our last rental home where I’d do my morning stretches and strengthening exercises with my iPod classic playing my favorite quiet music. In the trailer, the small space has shrunk from the former “ample” area. Instead I squeeze my yoga mat between the shower stall, commode door, foot of our bed, and next to the little vanity….with the door open into the living space. It feels quite confining and not relaxing. In reality, it cramps my style and is perhaps one of my excuses for the lax attitude about my morning stretches and strengthening exercises. Recently Steve added a stretching routine, so we have created two separate “workout” spaces.

Together 24/7 His & Her Workout Spaces: Foreground is Steve’s and Background in the bedroom/bathroom area is Diane’s
Diane’s Workout Space in the Bedroom/Shower/Sink Area

What aspects of your morning routine do you treasure?

~ Diane