Birdin'

Brown Pelican
Moorhen a.k.a. swamp chicken
Juvenile White Ibis
Tricolored Heron
Belcher's Gull or a Black-tailed Gull?

Brown Pelican - a group of pelicans has many collective nouns, including a brief, pod, pouch, scoop and squadron. They can hold about three gallons of water (and fish) in its pouch. The Brown Pelican incubates its eggs in an unusual manner, it covers them with its webbed feet. This practice was detrimental to the species when the pesticide DDT was in common use. This pesticide caused thinning of the eggshells resulting in so many broken eggs that the species became endangered.

gnip-gnop

I flew back to St. Louis Sunday for a charter school board meeting.  I returned last night.  It was a quick trip.   Yes, I am on a school board - I know that might strike fear in your hearts - fear for the children!  ;-0  Hah! I worry for them too.  What if I am catching?!

Seriously, I am proud of the work we have done and are doing.  Our school, CLA - Carondelet Leadership Academy, is doing very well and we are fortunate to have such a great crew on board.  Keep on rockin', folks!  After the meeting, one of the teachers (who was still in the building working at 8PM) made me get a little teary as he described why he became a teacher and how much he cares about the kids  We are lucky to have a team made up of people who work so hard and care so much.  Whatever you thought of Obama's SOTU, he got the part about teachers right. The are building our nation, for sure. We need to value both education and educators in order to keep moving forward sucessfully.

It was weird to go back to the cold St. Louis, though my visit did bring some sun.  I hope it stays, guys. You folks deserve a break from the winter. I got to see friends (yay!) but when I walked into my house (remember the place I missed so much?) it was...just a place.  No animals to greet me, no Ginger, no pull on my heart strings.  It didn't even smell like us!

Sure the bath I took minutes after walking in the door was lovely, but it wasn't as satisfying as I had imagined.  It was like walking into a hotel room that looked like my house. (Thanks, Kelli, for that description.  It is perfect and it is now mine).

Home seems to be evolving into where I am rather than the place itself.  That is kind of cool.  So now I am back in my happy warm space - with my animals, and my girl, and the craziness that living in a tiny box on wheels means.  Bliss.

Ginger sent me this to keep me company while I was gone.  Purle is weird.

Staying put...for a while

Yesterday was filled with wrong turns, missed turns, a small fender bender with half a day tied up with local government trying to fill out the right paperwork with the right agency and quibbles about jurisdiction.

Our travel day didn't go quite as planned, but what does? We got into the Easterlin Park a Broward County Park in Oakland Park, FL (a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale) after dark and started setting up home sweet home. We'll be here for at least a month.

Easterlin Park is a Designated Urban Wilderness Area, and has a mixed cypress forest. Cypress trees 250 years old and 100 feet tall are common in the park. Relatively undisturbed buffer areas of thick wild coffee, ferns, dahoon holly, cabbage palm, oak, and red maple shield the park from the outside world. The only downside is a nearby train track and some freeway noise. Flip-flops, shorts and a t-shirt make the occasional train noise a fair trade-off.

Ibird and the camera shy Osprey

There are two Ospreys nesting near our campsite and they refused to be captured on camera until...I launched my Ibird app on my Iphone and played the audio files of the Osprey calls and she walked out to the edge of the nest.

An adventure with the Brennan's

Our day kicked off with Rob and Michelle picking us up with their boat at the pier in our park. As we were heading out across Tampa Bay Rob spotted dolphins and they surfaced beside the boat and then tagged along in our wake. It was a lovely treat and we squealed with excitement.

We blew across Tampa Bay to downtown St. Petersburg and had lunch on the water in Straub Park. The girls joined us after school for the ride back across the bay.


One of the best days so far, 

Workation

A fun filled evening with Rob and Michelle

So quiet I can see myself think

It almost feels unfair to be waking up to this, but I'll take it. The sun feels nice and I love the smell of pine.

A Room with a View

We said goodbye to Bayou Segnette and New Orleans yesterday and set off for Florida. We plotted a course for DeFuniak Springs which was a solid five hour drive and had several campgrounds to choose from. We settled on a small campground and called them when we were about 60 miles out to see if they had a spot for us. "Oh yes dear, we'll put you on a lovely little spot".

We didn't get into Juniper Lake campground until well after dark so we weren't able to see our "lovely little spot" until this morning. A nice fellow met us at the entrance to guide us into our campsite and pointed his trucks headlights toward the lot to assist with hooking up the utilities.

It was evident that he is very proud of his little town and he began to share the history and his reviews on the local eateries. DeFuniak Springs (population 7,000) has one of two almost perfectly round lakes in the world (the other is in Switzerland). It's also home to the oldest library in Florida and thanks to the Florida Chautauqua Association (organized in 1884) was one of the cultural centers of the southeast until the late 1920s.

This was the view outside our window this morning. Juniper Lake right outside our door. Just lovely.

NOLA cloud cover

NOLA- City Park

It's been cold (not St. Louis cold - I'm feeling your pain folks) and gray here for the last few days but the sun popped out yesterday and we stopped working and set off for City Park. It's very similar to our Forest Park. It was good to see the live oak groves and get a little taste of some sunshine.





City Park - New Orleans

The first parcel of land was acquired in 1854, making it one of the country's oldest parks. Once the site of Allard Plantation facing Bayou St. John, City Park's 1,300 acres offer visitors a sample of the city's riches both in fine art and natural splendor. City Park is home of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the largest collection of mature live oaks in the world. Trees in the oldest grove are over 600 years old.

Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage to the park, with winds toppling an estimated 1,000 trees and damaging many more. The subsequent failure of multiple floodwalls brought about the inundation of much of the city, and almost the entire park was flooded with 1 foot to 10 feet of water that remained for two to four weeks, damaging all buildings, amusement rides, maintenance equipment, electrical systems and vehicles, and causing the death of more trees and landscaping - including nearly the entire plant collection in the New Orleans Botanical Garden.

coffee talk

I'm sitting in a CC's Community coffeehouse while Ginger goes to a meeting. It takes a bit of effort to sit in a coffeehouse when you are living in a state park. After being pretty much cooped up in the rain yesterday we decided to rent a car for our last few days in New Orleans so we could be more mobile.  Everyone has been super generous (seriously, thanks guys!) in lending us wheels, but it does feel good to be able to run errands on our own schedule. I am plugged in, hopped up (on some strong coffee) and musing. The strong coffee around here is for real, man.  It makes my mind whir! It feels good to be by myself though we have spent so much time together it is almost weird to be alone.  It is also chilly and rainy in New Orleans, but nothing like what it sounds like in St. Louis,  so I am reminding myself to be grateful for the 45 degrees.

Before we left I was a little worried about three+ months in an RV. I wondered about feeling claustrophobic, about how moving around all the time would feel and whether I would be able to work on the road. I closed some deals last week, so I am feeling a little better about work, though it still feels a little fragmented.  I bounce between feeling like I am on vacation (which I am most certainly not) and feeling like I am almost back in the vibe.  I have been very aware of how space and place play a huge part in my comfort.  Where I sit, the way I position my body, how my technology works - all of that was a big deal even back in St. Louis.but it is even more heightened now.

I am convinced that most salespeople, and an even higher percentage of recruiters, are pretty superstitious, and for me that plays out in how I position my workspace and situate my chair, my drives, chargers and electronic paraphernalia. Seems pretty funny when I consider that most of my working time is spent away from that space walking around with my phone on my ear.  But still I feel compelled to lay things out a certain way.  It helps me feel rooted, I suppose.

I think most people who know me might laugh (gently) at my concern about being able to work effectively on the road.  I realize to a lot of external observers I probably seem to have more of a problem carving non-working time out of my waking hours.  But I felt very unrooted in the beginning of our trip.  I woke up last week in a bit of a panic.  I do this every January - the holidays are a disruption to my rhythm and I always feel a bit off kilter until I regain my footing.  This trip is an even longer disruption.  One long disruption, if you think about it that way.  I am learning to find my own new rhythm without a pattern.  Maybe it is like living a jazz solo.  It is hard enough for me to not trip when I hear the beat, this is making me stretch a bit.  But I feel myself growing.

At night the RV seems smaller to me than any other time.  During the day the shades are open,  everything seems more expansive and I have the familiar ritual of morning coffee to start my day.  At night I miss my evening bath in our wonderful bathtub (a beloved constant) and the florescent lights seem cold and a little unfriendly.  Everything seems closer, smaller, and slightly foreign. My slight feeling of unease and discomfort (or is it a pang for my familiar, comfortable home) as the sun goes down is a reminder to embrace the reality that I can carry home with me in my head, along with an expansive space in which to relax even when I feel cramped physically. I remind myself to breathe.

We find the familiar where we can.  I have a favorite stall in the shower house.  Every time I go to the bathhouse to take a shower I choose the same stall and I have this odd feeling of artificial familiarity, like I need it so I forge it.  I have memorized the patterns worn on the wall by past campers, and the bits of rock in the drain - they almost cheer me.  It is like the feeling I get when I walk around my neighborhood in St. Louis.  Silly, I know.   But I am not the only one to crave the familiar.  When everything is new there is little opportunity for autopilot, which is a cool thing and very exciting, but also a little tiring.  I am having a grand time - but I just realized I have now been away from home longer than my longest vacation.

Maybe that is why I am feeling a just a tiny bit homesick, a little uncomfortable.  Good thing I have much of my home (Ginger, Clivebarker, Purle, Marvel and Itsy) with me.  If I could only have my bathtub.

At least I have my shower.

Where's the GUMBO?

When I first met Ginger I was eating frozen vegetables and rice for pretty much every meal (for mostly economic reasons) but some variation of beans, rice and veggies (maybe pasta) has been my go to comfort food forever.  I rarely ate anything fried, because I didn't like how it tasted and it didn't agree with me.

Ginger has changed a lot of that.  She is a Southerner, y'all  and she has helped me slowly appreciate the finer points of well fried things.  I will now happily make a run to Porter's Fried Chicken in St. Louis (where we get the catfish - it is good, folks) and when we are in The South I order the all you can eat catfish, or fried chicken and contentedly munch away.

She has also introduced me to the joys of gumbo when it is real and made with a rich, labor intensive, roux. Her gumbo makes me swoon, and has set the bar so high that most other folks labors will disappoint.  That was the case at Napoleon House.  During a sojourn into the French Quarter we stopped there split a Muffaletta and a bowl of gumbo.  The Muffaletta was great, and I immediately remembered why I love that sandwich (once again a food I would never have eaten without Ginger's influence).

Delightfully tangy, garlicky olive salad with garbanzos and green olives and bread to die for with a variety of really good meats and cheese. Happiness.  I remarked to Ginger that while this sandwich was amazing, I was really even more impressed at the Muffalettas we made ourselves a few years ago.  We talked about the good fortune of having such a great Italian community in St. Louis.  The bread, meats and fixin's are easily as good as anywhere else and that is why we can make a Muffaletta that rivals the delightful sandwich we were eating.

Thumbs up to the Muffaletta&Pimm's Cup, not the gumbo.

When we sampled the gumbo we were not as happy.  It was bland, the roux was not dark enough for our tastes and it simply lacked the complexity I expect.  Ginger said, "When I eat gumbo, I want to taste the dirt that the sassafras tree grew in." Because I live with a gumbo making southerner I know that the gumbo filet powder is made of sassafras leaves.  Without Ginger I wouldn't know that.  I told you she has a lot to teach me!  There was no dirt in this bowl of gumbo.  We didn't even finish it.

I do have to give great marks to the Pimm's Cup, however.  It was delicious and I did finish the beverage before leaving the restaurant.

Great food, great service, we'll be back.

We were given a recommendation for some good creole food at Dookie Chase, so we got there right as they were closing yesterday.  We asked at the door if we were underdressed and if ten before the hour was too late and we were graciously ushered inside.  "Y'all are here, so y'all get to eat!"

Eat we did.

Holy crow the food was good.  Ginger had red beans and rice,  with a side of fried chicken, I had crab stuffed shrimp with some greens and we split a cup of gumbo.

The greens were the best I have ever tasted, folks.  They accidently brought me two dishes and I polished them all off. The shrimp was beyond words, it was that good, and all of the food was fresh.   Even though they had stopped serving and there was a buffet of chicken sitting there they fried Ginger's chicken up fresh.  And the gumbo was dark, rich and as complicated as relationship gone south (but in a truly beautiful, very tasty way). We polished it off immediately, and wished for more.

There was dirt in that cup, folks.  We'll be back for a bowl.

Awnings make the home (on wheels)

I think these look so cute!

Swimming in a sea of red (Razorbacks and Buckeyes that is)

We set off for the French Quarter today via the Algiers Ferry. Many thanks to Don for loaning his car for our day trips. We buzzed around a couple of neighborhoods taking in the big sprawling oaks and admiring the Creole Cottages and the great fretwork. We stumbled upon Bobby D's Grocery hoping to grab a beverage but they were closed.

Sign outside of Bobby D's

We spent a few hours walking around the French Quarter today. We were amid a pool of Arkansas and Ohio State fans gearing up for the Sugar Bowl game tonight. People of all varieties were decked out in razorbacks and buckeye get ups. It was fun.

First stop was Napoleon's House for a good muffaletta and a disappointing bowl of gumbo. It was a great place to people watch and re-fuel.

We added a few other images to our NOLA set and you can check them out here. Tune in for more updates from the road.

it's small, y'all!

A view from the front

From the bedroom toward the front

We, six beings, are living in a space that is roughly smaller than our old kitchen.  Okay, our living space is roughly just over 200 square feet. Thats about 1/10 of the space in our house without wheels, which is arguably smaller than most United States homes. It feels like we have been on a journey to get smaller over the last decade and this might be as small as our brood can handle.

Truthfully it isn't bad at all.  The immediate effect for me is to be aware of space and how I use it because when one has so little space there is no choice.  If I get something out of a cabinet I have to put it back or there is nowhere to put anything else.

Clutter is a luxury born of space and resources.

 Dishes are washed immediately after use.  If dishes sit out washing them requires more water. Tidying up occurs naturally instead of us declaring a state of 52 card pickup like we had to do in the past.  I am vastly more aware of the water we use because we have a display that informs us of our water usage and when we need to deal with it. I think ever home should require such knowledge. It is not a bad thing for human beings to think about water usage and the ramifications of sewage.

Every home needs a resource monitor.

Initially we were concerned about the litter box. I mean, come on, three cats in  two litter boxes in a tiny space is madness. Only it isn't.  We scoop the poop regularly and also sign the praises of Feline Pine litter. We have as little litter box odor as we had at our house (which was almost none) and we only have to be mindful of their habits as we are of ours.

Use the space you have and have fun!

I guess that is the trick to all of this, and part of why this trip is a great exercise in awareness.  We don't really need as much space (or stuff) as our usual abundance tricks us into needing.  I am pretty pumped up to explore this some more, but so far (on day 9) we are having a lot of fun!

Tour of Blaine Kern's Studio - Mardi Gras World

Click this Eyeball to see the pictures from our tour and other New Orleans Pics!

Buddha has a seat at Mardi Gras

I like his toes.

We took a tour of Mardi Gras World, and it was pretty nifty to see how the amazing floats are built. Pretty impressive industry.

Lunchtime Lessons

After watching me cut my porkchop with my knife and fork, Ginger decided I needed a demonstration of how to properly consume a porkchop when in the South.

She has SO MUCH to teach me!

Joey K's on Magazine Street

I had the white beans and pork chop. I know, how unlike me! Tasty beans, though.

Ground Fault Interruption!!

As I sit here now, amidst the breeze coming through open windows on a 77 degree sunny day, it is hard to remember the days and weeks of preparation as we packed to leave St. Louis.  It was cold, I remember that.  There was snow, and wet, and stress.  I remember thinking about what to pack. I grabbed a bunch of shorts and it seemed like a faraway dream as I stood at the closet door in long pants and Under Armour® to protect me from the chill. At that moment I wondered who could imagine wearing shorts. (I am wearing them now).

I was worried about all the cats and Clivebarker making the trip. Would they get enough to drink? Would Clive eat? Would our animals forgive us for making them endure an adventure that was fun for us, scary for them? Would it be fun for us? Would they have enough room in the RV to play? Would I be able to work effectively? Will I be allergic to the animals in close quarters?

Who worries about these things?

Me.

I can worry about anything and my neurotic tendencies were in full swing.

I worked to calm my mind, but I was leaving my house, which was my safe place and my refuge, and venturing out where there were more unknowns than anything else.  We we both leaving comfortably safe habits and places and things behind. The rituals that shaped our days and nights all year long (and truthfully carried us through some of the challenging times of 2010) would be no more.  No baths in our tub of wonder.  No easily accessible laundry, no car to jump in when a whim struck.  Our people would be far away. New patterns, new adventures, new rituals.  You have to leave a lot behind when you are packing for a small space. It turns out a 30' RV is not that big.  We were facing a lot of unknowns.  I knew that all of these challenges and concerns would be a great way to test our mindfulness practice and our determination to walk gently through the things that scare frighten us.  What better way to face unpredictable life life than to jump right into the unknown?  One of the things I love about Ginger is that without her I would not have made many of the choices that helped create the best of me. Without her I also wouldn't be trying to decide what shoes to take and what I wouldn't need for three months. It is not an easy decision and right now I fear I should have brought another pair. Let it go, Lisa.

We were busy the weeks prior to our leaving.  In addition to  holiday preparations and getting the RV ready, we also decided I would need to move out of the little house. It was a lot.  We were stretched thin and exhausted.  A lot of the hard work fell on Ginger, but I tried to help as well. I was focused on the technology we'd need on the road and was hoping to get a chance to test the setup I had put together.  No dice, of course.  Everything moved so fast.

We got to know the breaker panel in the RV VERY well. Sadly.

We were planning on leaving the day before Christmas Eve so we could have a  visit with my parents and do a test run.  Sadly we encountered some electrical issues the day before we were scheduled to leave. We were mostly packed up and I was testing out the technology when things started going very wrong. One of the breakers in the  breaker kept tripping and we couldn't figure out why.  We worked on it late into the night and got up the next morning and started in again.  We were having no success and the tensions were rising when our friends Jill and Jason stopped by on their way to an early lunch to see the RV.  Jason jumped in and started helping Ginger troubleshoot.  Jason worked all morning and into the afternoon with Ginger and after hours of tinkering they found a bad outlet and repaired it.  Such kindness.  They went off for lunch and we started to finish packing.  We were so excited to be back on track only having lost a partial day! But when we plugged everything thing in we realized that somehow most of the outlets were now dead again.  Hopes dashed, we decided to shower and get a bite to eat.  As I stepped into the shower I heard Ginger talking to Jason on the phone and when she told him what had happened he insisted on coming back over.  I went and got take out while they worked.  Spending Christmas in St. Louis was beginning to be a real possibility.  I was bummed. Jason brought even more tools over and he and Ginger worked into the evening.

Seeing the icicles on the RV kind of made me sad for it.

This was what we were escaping. Nice we got a taste.

Once again they announced success and this time it looked like it was going to stick.  We'd leave in the morning, on Christmas Eve day, in time to spend a few days with my family before heading South.  Only that was the day St. Louis got hit with a pretty good snow.  I had gotten up early and started packing and was almost done when the snow hit. Once again our plans didn't materialize and we were disappointed, (and crabby) but we did eventually get to see my folks for a short trip before we left on our adventure. We were able to get on the road the day after Christmas, after a surprising amount of work that was left to do.  After being packed and ready three separate times one might think it would have been easier.

It gave me a lot to think about.  The best laid plans get kinked up, and we are going to have even more unexpected adventures happen as we motor down the road.  Navigating unexpected interruptions (or even catastrophes) with a sense of curiosity instead of disappointment is something I am working on.  I am sure there will be plenty of chances in the coming months.  The first night in the RV we discovered the guy who installed the macerator pump left some things unhooked.  Ginger heard things spraying where there should have been no water. Oops. I  thought it was supposed to sound like that. Everything is dry now, thank goodness, and we laughed awfully hard as we laid things out to dry. We lived, so did our stuff. I guess this is all part of the game.  It is our latest adventure, right?