Feather Brained Plans!

Tonight I am sitting in a camper with a space heater and lights, recently showered and only kind of freezing.  This is a vast improvement over the earlier portions of the week.

The Plan:  *Work Saturday night, finish about 5 and head 100 miles to Austin.
*Get some sleep.  Pack the car.
*Sunday evening, leave for Plano to pick up the camper.
*Start driving.  Sleep as needed.  *Drop the camper at a friend's in NC on Tuesday.
*Arrive in NJ for Wednesday.
*Be there for Mom during her surgery on Thursday.  Stay until after Christmas.
*Head to FL whenever the customers start showing.  Pick up the camper along the way.

The reality:  *Help another braider Saturday night and not get done until 11 am.  Drive 100 miles home.  *Sleep 2 hours.  Get up, mainline coffee, throw stuff in car.
*Hit weather on the way to Plano.  Finally arrive at 1 am.
*Learn to hook up camper ad sway bars in pouring rain at 40 degrees and strong wind.
*Learn to drive camper in same conditions.
*Lock up brakes trying to stop.  Notice that brake controller was never installed!
*Stop at a gas station and sleep in car because it is raining too hard to get to camper (which has sprung a leak so the interior is soaked).
*Stop in Bossier City, La and have brake controller installed.
*Travel 50 miles.  Hear engine go BOOM! followed by BoomBoomBoomBoom.
*Call AAA.
*Sit on side of road for hours waiting for a tow truck before they call back to say no one is coming.
*Get rescued by state police.
*Spend night in dark, wet camper in wrecker yard.  Tow truck driver has pity and buys breakfast to be nice.
*Get car repaired.  Empty out bank account.
*Get back on road.  Travel 4 hours until sun starts to go down.
*Notice that the dashboard lights are not working.  Stop at rest area to investigate.  Discover that the entire rig (truck and trailer) is dark.
*Realize thanks to iPhone maps and Google that you are 50 miles from the nearest gas station.  Confirm suspicion with nearby trucker.
*Settle in for a night in the wet camper with no heat (furnace is broken and replaced with space heaters) and no power.  Note that the weather is predicting temps in the 20s.
*In morning, try to figure out where fuse box might be.  Consult owners manual.  Ask for help deciphering owners manual.  Give up.  Call RV place.
*Spend too much money to have a fuse upgraded.
*Continue driving into night.
*Stop for coffee two hours from planned stopping point.  Find out that just ahead there is a weather system.  Note truckers comment "the mountain is WHITE!"
*Do GPS search for nearest KOA.  Follow directions.
*Discover directions are wrong.  Back slowly down the country road to a parking lot big enough to allow a turn around.
*Get back on highway.  See sign for KOA at next exit.  Follow signs.
*Spend an hour trying to figure out why the camper won't get power.  Think of breaker.  Discover it tripped.  Flip breaker.  Get power.
*Blog
*Wonder how the next 800 miles of the trip will go.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Duck, duck..and AWAY!!

So I am barreling down to my very, very long trip this winter.  I will go to NJ for the holidays and then to FL for the winter shows.  I have decided to skip coming back in between as the week at home doesn't really justify the extra 3500 miles of travel.  I also spoke to DW and once I get to NJ and get settled we are going to add the running back into the program.  In other words, after Sunday my life will be totally unrecognizable.

In a weird way, my travel schedule for the next year creates it's own plan for development.  I will do roughly a month of indoor training in NJ then head south.  There I will spend three months training in flat, windy conditions.  Then I will return to Texas and train on the rolling hills (mountains, I tell you, mountains) here during the spring.  After that, I will travel to Michigan which situates me close enough to ski country to up the ante a little more, then head to the Rocky mountains (real mountains... *whimper*) for the remainder of the summer.  Then I will return home for the fall.  Presumably fit.

This schedule, by itself, should lay the ground work for athletic development.  I'll admit it feels a bit like I am getting ready to leave for boot camp, or college, or rehab, or something.  It will be the duck, living in a 35 year old airstream with the dogs, traveling like a vagabond, working and training... and little else for ten months.

Along the way, I will no doubt do a lot of hiking, maybe some camping.  I will train in a variety of beautiful places.  Perhaps I will get over my mental block regarding picture taking.  I suspect I will find out how many ways an old camper can break.  No doubt, there will be plenty of interesting things to post to this page.  If I allow it, these months should be powerful, transformative, and cool.

DW feels that in 8 months or a year, the duck will be a whole different bird.

All I can say is that if I can stay the course, I don't doubt that I will see massive change.  I just hope that the change does not include becoming a certain yellow skinned cartoon character who has lost the power of speech and resorts to throwing cats.