Packing

I would like to take a moment to contrast our different packing styles.  I'll use the electronics packing as an example:

In this image , Cindy has packed her USB power adapters and USB cables.  As we know, these power adapters and cables are completely interchangeable.  Any of the plugs will work with any of the cables.  Despite this, Cindy has meticulously labeled each "pair"  and is very adamant about keeping those "pairs" together.  The Altoids tin neatly holds her iPod and earbuds.  Now some would say she is very organized and some might say she is a bit obsessive.   (Not me though, let me make that clear.  No way, not even a bit, uh uh.  I would never say such a thing.  Never.  Never. Ever. )

Please contrast this with my style.  I will admit it takes me a half hour to untangle my cables when I want to use them but does it really matter if the time spent is on the front end or the back end?  Actually what I usually do is use Cindy's cables and when I'm done I innocently switch the labels.

I haven't started packing anything yet.  I don't have that many clothes, and if I pack too soon I'll have nothing to wear all week.  I'll run a load of clothes on Monday afternoon and be ready to pack on Monday night.

Planning

The idea that Cindy came up with is that she plans the first half of the trip and I plan the second.  This is not entirely true.  Cindy has meticulously planned from July 1 through July 16, and then the 23rd through the 27th.  That, according to my count, is 21 days.  That leaves me with planning how to get from Olympia, Washington to Crested Butte Colorado in a week and then heading back to Tucson over a few days to be back by the end of the month.

So what are we going to do for that week and where are we going to stay?  I have no idea, none. Being totally unprepared is very much worth it to see how Cindy reacts to such lack of planning.  She insists that she will, as she says "Go with the flow"  but she is genetically incapable of that.  Last week she asked me  if I wanted her to start looking for places to stay in Boise  and Salt Lake City.  I said no thanks.  Two days later she asked me the same thing and added "this will be the last time I say anything about this."  So far, she has only asked twice more.  As those days draw nearer, I think she'll crack.

As I've said, I have packed some camping and cooking gear.  (Cindy's comment after reading that blog post: "I don't really know what a Pocket Rocket is, but it sounds like it might be a lot of fun.")

Some might say she prepares well, some might say she's a bit obsessive.  (Not me though, let me make that clear.  No way, not even a bit, uh uh.  I would never say such a thing.  Never.  Never.) Don't get me wrong, I am usually very thrilled about this.  I don't have to think about a thing and it's all taken care of.  But sometimes it's nice just to not be on a schedule, not to have to be somewhere at sometime.  To be completely flexible and NOT know what's going to happen next.  

The pitfalls to this method are many.  Frantically searching for a hotel room after driving all day and finding nothing available except some fleabag hovel, or at the other end of the spectrum the presidential suite at the Ritz Carlton,  is always  in the back of my mind.  The idea of Cindy sitting on the passenger side with her arms folded and with that "I told you so" look on her face.  "I told you this was going to happen.  If you only let me make reservations when I wanted to, we wouldn't be in this predicament right now."

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I need to take a couple of pictures first, but in my next post I will contrast our actual packing style differences.

Approaching Take-Off! (Cindy)

It's getting close and I'm more and more ready for out 5:00 am departure on Tuesday, July 1, 2014. 

Here's what I've done today:

Cleaned out the refrigerator.  I love this phase.  It means that I have rendered our kitchen empty enough that I am no longer under any obligation to cook  I am diligently working to ensure that our house is ready for a smooth departure.  (I am fighting the urge to feel self-righteous about this.) 

Washed, ironed and packet my clothes (o.k.- well almost all of that).   I still have to pull out the d*** iron.  I won't be doing a very good job of ironing my clothes because I'm pretty sure that by the time I pull them out of the suitcase they'll look like thrice-used tissue paper.  Hummm... perhaps I should rethink the whole idea of ironing anything?  O.K., talked myself into no ironing.  Checked that sucker off the list. 

Matched, labeled, and packed plugs and cords.  Now this may not seem like big job, but I manage to make it a huge undertaking it is a lot of work!  Every electrical device that I own came with its "birth- mother plug and cord".   I like to keep things that way.  I do not like "foster parent" cords and plugs with any of my devices.  So here's my system... each plug is labeled with the name of the device it belongs to.  Next to the name of the device is a very creative symbol (square, circle, etc.).  That symbol is then marked on the "correct" cord.  It's a perfect system until... Cheech starts borrowing plugs and cords and mixing and matching them.  At this point I go nuts patiently explain my system. Cheech then goes nuts patiently explains that plugs and cords are universal and are designed to be mixed and matched.   This conversation has been happening every vacation for about 10 years now.  We have learned to stop the conversation when one or both of us starts foaming at the mouth gracefully accept each others differences.  And there is a great example of successfully managing a first-world problem. 

Prep Continues: Cindy's Perspective

The only prep I've done in the last 24 hours was to obsess about Tony's emergency appendectomy.   Was he in good hands?  Yes  Was Jordyn there every step of the way? Yes.  Did she do an excellent job of supporting him and communicating with us? Yes  Was I still a nut case concerned? Yes.  I attribute this to the microchip that is implanted in all women when they become mothers.  You know the one I'm talking about.  It's the one programmed to fill us with guilt and neurosis (in equal parts) from the time we give birth to our first child and that will continue to operate flawlessly until the day we die.

Crisis over - thank God!

Now I'm ready to start thinking about what to pack.  So far I've come up with the following list of critical items (in order of importance):

• Two cases of beer
• 5 liters of wine
• Beer opener
• Cork screw (in the event we go up scale from the old twist top bottles)
• Valium
• Snacks (enough said about this in the last post about this)
• Paper and pencil for drawing and doodling
• Ipad
• Iphone
• Ipod (clearly Apple will play a prominent role in this vacation)
• Kindle
• Multiple "charging" devices
• My "trip plan" data sheet

Non-critical (but nice to have) items:

• Clothes
• Toothbrush and toothpaste
• Various shoes
• Wedding gifts

I'm clearly nailing this part of the prep.

Prep continues

Good news from Tony.  The operation was a success and he will be heading home today.

Started pulling down camping equipment.  Haven't done any car camping in quite a while.  I will use my backpacking stuff so that's no problem.  We need to find Cindy a sleeping bag and I need to get our tent from Tom.  Camping will be basic.  Just bringing my Pocket Rocket and coffee hardware for the morning.  Nothing to cook.  Hopefully, coffee and a hot shower and we'll be on our way.

Not Even Gone Yet: Cindy's Perspective

The preparation stage is very telling of the trip to come.  Cheech and I couldn't have a more different approach to life!  I need to prepare for ANYTHING months in advance. I was that obnoxious conscientious student who always turned in my assignments early.  Cheech needs to plan hours days in advance.  This can be challenging for even the strongest of couples, hence my our brilliant idea:  I plan the first half of the trip, Cheech plans the second half of the trip. 

Here is what it looks like so far.  I have created a spreadsheet of the first 15 days of our trip.  It lives online, in each of our emailed in boxes, and as a printed hard copy reference page.  The spreadsheet contains each date, where we will sleep, the address and phone number of the person/place where we are staying, how many miles we will travel that day, how long it should take for us to get to our destination, and interesting sites along the way.

Now I realize that this makes me look highly neurotic organized.  Let me just say in my defense, as a former Girl Scout, I was trained to be prepared.  I was a quick study... need I say more?  O.K. I will, FEMA should come to me for training.

As per our agreement, I am pretending to throwing caution to the wind throwing caution to the wind and accepting that the second half of the trip will be an exercise in improvisation.   How am I doing with this, you ask?  I have secretly looked a possible routes, places to stay, places of interest, AirBandB possibilities, etc.  I am faithfully honoring the parameters of this grand experiment!  I will face the second (totally unplanned) half of the trip fearfully fearlessly.

We are but a few days away from leaving.  My mind is racing with a myriad of "to do's".  I sweetly ask Cheech, "Should I go shopping for some food/snacks to take along?"  Cheech responds, "Nope, no need."  (He 's very wordy as you can see.)  My response, "O.K".  (I am learning new communication styles from him every year that we are married.)

My second response to this lengthy conversation is to go to Trader Joe's and pick up not one but two bags of snacks for the trip.  In my defense let me just say that I consider consequences.   What if we get stranded in a snow storm along the way?  That has been known to happen in Southern California in July, hasn't it?   What if it takes longer than we expected to get from one isolated place to another?  I would hate to think that the California highway patrol will find our emaciated corpses somewhere in downtown Santa Barbara.  Now all I have to do is sneak load the bags into a convenient place in our car and we will be off on our excellent adventure.  

Not even gone yet

Just got a call that Tony went in for an emergency appendectomy about an hour ago.  He's OK and in the recovery room.  When it rains.....
On the plus side our house sitter came by and we showed him all the ins and out of staying at our house while we're away.  He needed a place to stay during the one month between his college graduation and going into the army so it worked out great for all of us.  Feed the cat, fish, tortoises and keep the spa and pool chemicals up.  That's pretty much all there is to it.  He's a very responsible kid, the son of two of our good friends.  Hopefully he won't discover my stash of beer.  Otherwise we told him that our house was his and just enjoy.

Welcome

Have you read the book "You say Tomato, I say Shut Up"? In it, a married couple each give their unique perspective on the situations that come up in their lives, a "he said, she said" perspective. We're going to try to do the same. Who knows, we may come up with a best seller or then again this may be the first and only post. We've downloaded the phone app and hope to be blogging throughout our trip through California, Oregon, Washington and down into Colorado. Here we go!