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)