We cleaned Henry today. Our fridge had been in the house at my mom and dad’s. Their fridge had stopped working so we had brought ours in to store as many items as could fit while waiting for the new refrigerator to be delivered. Megan and I also cleaned our fridge today. It’s the cleanest it has been since it came out of the box at the REI store in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We had started out with an Iceco brand fridge.
The spot we had to leave on lake Huron to drive to Grand Rapids.
We were having ourselves the best of times on a very private beach on Lake Huron when that fridge started to malfunction. It was a dual zone fridge, and the compressor wouldn’t shut off, froze everything and still was trying to get colder. I was irate. We had had the thing a total of two months, but a month or so of that time it had not been used. We were just preparing for our life nomadic. Iceco sucks ass as a company. We got a hold of them, and they said we could ship it back to them but it had to be in the same box in which it had shipped to us. Of course we’re a thousand miles from home and certainly don’t have the box. The owner sounded like a completely deranged paranoid human. The company said they had this policy to stop ‘malicious returns’. We started out nice and went around and round with them. They tried to forbid us from throwing it away because it ‘wasn’t junk to them’. Did I make a video of myself heaving it into a dumpster? Yes, yes, I did. Did we send them that video? Yes, yes, we did. Before I heaved it in the dumpster, I took it apart to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. All the wiring was taped up with masking tape, it was melted where it went into the compressor. Masking tape, I shit you not. Lucky it didn’t start Henry on fire. Anyway, it was a good chunk of money down the drain plus all the food that we couldn’t keep cold. I told them I would join every internet group for camping and overlanding and spread the word about their shitty product and horrible customer service. I am assuming someone else had returned that fridge and they sent it to me as a new one, not refurbished, and they fixed it with masking tape. Scumbags. Grand Rapids was the closest place we could find to replace our fridge. It was a six hour drive in total there and back. We got a Dometic CFX3. REI had it waiting for us at the service desk. I asked them if they minded keeping the box and packaging so I didn’t have to try to find somewhere to get rid of all that. The lovely young man who was working helped me unbox it, and a way we went with no trash and a fridge that works just great even to this day. We put our fridge back in its freshly cleaned spot and put everything else that lives in the back seat back in its place.
We bought a Springbar canvas tent so we had to find someplace for that to ride. The thing weighs 80 lbs or so and is bulky as hell, but, wow, is it cool and I think it will serve us well. We also bought some 10 inch lag bolts and an impact driver so we aren’t spending all our time pounding in stakes. I’ll tell you how it all works out when we’ve got some experience in. Springbar is a company out of Utah. Most of their line is American made, the cotton sourced from Georgia, the metal for the poles from Missouri. The stakes made with American steel in Salt Lake City. The tents are made in Utah. They do have two that are imported and significantly less expensive than the American made ones. They have a strident quality control at the factory, and any tent that has an oil stain or a little bit of messy sewing they put in their factory seconds category. They are discounted but still completely functional tents, most people can’t even find the defects in their tents. I did a lot of research. I measured out the space in my parents’ driveway. I measured out our sleep system and drew it in the dust just to see how much space we’d have. It’ll be nice for the rainy days and to get out of the wind. I was patient and watched the factory seconds for the model we wanted in the color we wanted. They go fast. So as soon as it came up, I emailed Springbar asking them for a better description of its defects. They replied promptly and sent me photos of the flaw. Satisfied, I placed my order, and our tent arrived in three days. I think we will really enjoy our time in it, but, of course, I’ll tell you about how we like it or don’t in a month or two. We are leaving our hobbit house tent with Nema.
Now that we have this tent, we needed to find out where to fit it in Henry. The hobbit house tent road on the roof in a bin. But I don’t want that much weight on the roof and would like it more accessible. We reconfigured Henry’s bed and so far everything seems like it’ll fit nicely. We also got rid of our shitty camp table that had seen much abuse. You’ll learn as you go that many things specifically built for camping and such, aren’t actually built to be in the elements. That’s some kind of bullshit, isn’t it? We replaced it with the same roll-top aluminum table we had when we first started out. That thing lasted for two years; some important small rivets rusted on it when we spent those two weeks on Padre Island...so I don’t hold that against the table.
Our fence in various stages of completion.
We finally finished our painting job. I think I might have nightmares about it in a couple months. The last side of the fence was under some trees. We were looking forward to working in the shade. As luck would have it, it’s been a bit wet here in New Hampshire. Then because the fence was under the trees sometimes it wouldn’t even dry out during the day even if it didn’t rain. We did a lot of waiting around for things to dry. The last day we worked on it, those hideous fuzzy white caterpillars that give some people a rash were just raining down out of the tree. So gross. I had a little tree branch that had come down in one of the storms that I carried around with me so I could fling caterpillars with it. Sometimes if you saw me behaving that way, you’d think I don’t live outside. But caterpillars just make my skin crawl. One side of the fence was on the property line. Up on a retaining wall with the neighbor’s driveway down below. I went and knocked on their door and asked if they minded if I used their driveway to access that side of the fence. This is how I made an 80 year old friend. I would never have guessed him to be so old. He told me to not be alarmed if I heard noises coming from one section of his house. He said his fridge had been leaking, unbeknownst to him. So he had to rip out some cabinets and replace the flooring that was rotting out under the fridge. He was also fixing a retaining wall in the back of his property. He said he couldn’t find anyone to help him so he was out there moving giant boulders and rocks with a chain and a come-along. He was a man about the neighborhood because he was aware of what kind of truck we drive even though we were parked on street his house was not on. He told us he used to go wandering the United States and Canada in his truck with a homemade slide-in camper on the back. He was very interested in how our rooftop tent works, hoping he could get one and go camping again. When I explained how it worked he said it wouldn’t do for him as he can’t do ladders so much anymore. He told me that if he fell in the driveway, I’d have to help him up. He had both his shoulders replaced and is recovering from pancreatic cancer. He brought out a stack of old photos, yellowing with age- pictures of his truck and the campers he had made, far out wild looking places in which he had camped. We pored over the photos in the hot sun as he told me traveling stories. His eyes sparkled with life as he told me about his trusty pickup truck; a 1990 Toyota. We admired it in the yard. He told me it’s a five-speed and all the ladies in the neighborhood love it. One day he brought out a small hand-carved wooden sailboat. He placed it carefully on the fence.
He carves them in his wood-shop. “This is for you.” He said and slipped away back into his house. We got to know all the people who walked by and their dogs. I tried to Tom Sawyer all of them into helping, but they had all read the book and knew what I was trying to do. But they were like our own little cheer leading squad, complimenting us on the job. The old lady across the street fretted about us working in the heat. She would holler from her front porch about how she worried for us on the hot days and to make sure we stayed hydrated. Our boss gave us a nice little bonus in our last pay, specifically for “being awesome.”
One Saturday, we went over to the Maine Coast. We walked the Marginal way in the blazing heat. It was beautiful, but grossly humid and hot. We walked down some steep stairs to a small hidden beach. The surf was pounding. The water about 55 degrees. I kicked off my shoes and walked into that pounding surf, belt and all. Nema held my hat and sunglasses as I rolled around in the waves. So refreshing. The water was jolting in its coldness. I came up gasping how you do when cold shocks your body.
Then you get used to it and Nema, P, and I let the waves carry us up and down as we floated in the clear, cold, salty waters while Megan and Charlotte watched from the rocks on the shore. Eventually, we gave up our cold water paradise and swam back to shore. We walked the rest of the Marginal way back the car.
Sometimes you have to be so loose and free that you charge into the ocean in your street clothes...and then be so radical that you go to a restaurant in your street clothes turned bathing suit now turned lunch-wear. I had a Maine lobster roll, and those are not for me.
I’m helping my dad fix the septic system at the house. We dug up the line from the house to the holding tank. It’s a cast iron pipe. My dad said he put in 50 years ago. Cast iron corrodes eventually. It’s not leaking but getting pitted on the inside, creating little snags for toilet paper to catch on and eventually build up and block the whole pipe. We are going to replace the cast iron pipe with PVC pipe. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it. I impress my dad with my shovel work. He brags to my mom and Megan, “She’s a machine. A machine, did you see how fast she dug that up?” He also thinks I can haul as much wood in my arms as a grapple loader. After all of the projects we’ve done together from roofing to wood to septic work, he told my mom that I am the perfect co-worker and he loves working with me. It’s amazing when you think about how old my dad is, still fixing roofs and septic lines. And think of old me, still learning all kinds of new skills. We’re an impressive pair: teacher and student, coworkers, story-teller and listener.
After this project is done, we can load the rest of our things into Henry and find a spot, maybe in some Green Mountains or down by a river in the Adirondacks.
I can't wait to put food in our newly cleaned fridge!