Just one less thing…

 

 When brother Tom was retiring his Airline pilot job, he told the assembled well wishers that he hoped to live long enough to use up all the little bottles of shampoo that he had collected.  Well, a couple hundred days in the Airstream and Patty’s inherent frugality have diminished our supply to the vanishing point. Ever the backpacker, Patty can’t consider carrying excess quantities of anything.

Books –- cartons of heavy hardbacks -- seem to be excluded from this rule. (I don’t remember her ever backpacking books, but  a young mom had lots more to entertain her then.)

 

So it is, on this eve of our departure, that I am filling and labeling the precise amount of hair products, hand sanitizer and soap required for six weeks on the road AND NOT AN OUNCE MORE.  It really didn’t take too long to convince her that the General Delivery mail drops Appalachian Trail hikers use were wasteful; thankfully, we still had a five gallon bucket of those little 3oz squeeze bottles we used in our business (because to throw them away would have been “wasteful.” )  Perhaps Patty presaged the TSA regulations on tiny little carry-on bottles by a decade or so. I don’t know, but if you need a few little bottles, we have plenty.

  OTHER EXAMPLES OF HYPER ORGANIZATION

All other preparations are moving on apace, usually between sets of the Australian Open.  The big white beast (as yet unnamed) pulled Lottie home with a throaty rumble.  The convenient electronic display of current fuel economy plunged toward single digits, but the brakes and hitch adjustments  worked well.  The bikes load in precisely and , if you push their rear tires toward the center, the mid buckets are usable for additional passengers. Behind, there are caverns of unused space; the still fragrant generator box  rides between the bikes and over the rear axel adding “eau de petrochemical.”   We are working on a propane conversion for that.

I think we are just about ready…..