The Edge [of all] Journeys

I keep trying to imagine how the pioneers must have felt crossing the expansive untamed regions of our country back in the days when all forward motion was biologically powered. What did they do for repairs? If a wagon wheel broke did they stop, cut down a tree, and make a new one right there on the spot (if and once they were out of spares of course)? There were no grocery stores back then or Wal-Mart parking lots to park in overnight either. Food must have been what they could carry or kill, and supplies would come down to what they could find or make. But the things they would have seen! Oh with those first eyes on places never before discovered. And before you say, “well, surely the natives would have already seen those places,” I’m sure there were pockets even they didn’t know about that settlers came across on their travels. What would it have been like at night with no artificial lights? What would it have been like without vast webs of electricity, sterilized water, and concrete running like veins above, across, and beneath the countryside?

And here we’ve just covered in 3 days what would have amounted to a months-long journey for them. And we’re cozy in a campground site next to a heated pool nestled among water and theme parks and other audacious attractions in Wisconsin Dells, WI. We can run the AC if we need to. And when I’m done typing this I’m going to send it into space and back to earth after it hops through a series of towers at the command of a little box not much bigger than a deck of cards. Did the pioneers have and play cards back then?

If you’re not in the know, Sammy is the family name for our ’98 GMC 6.5L turbo diesel suburban. It has dutifully lugged us and all our belongings across roughly 60,000 miles over 4 years which is no small miracle considering where all we’ve been and how much it has pulled there. Oh, it’s had its share of fits and tantrums and somewhere along the way (not too long ago) we officially crossed the threshold of having put more into total repairs than we had originally spent on the vehicle itself. But Sammy has been taking this trip in stride, running smoothly, and strongly and enjoying the last second maintenance and repairs (leaky power steering line swap) that we got done before leaving Pennsylvania.

Leaving Pennsylvania.

Wow.

It’s truly like leaving a home especially in the way when you feel like part of yourself is still attached to a particular geography because of the relationships anchored there. We are grateful for every experience we had there since last September. Departures are (or at least should be) every bit as much a part of life as miracles, and there’s nothing like traveling again to combine both in such a concentrated and potent dosage as to be reminded all over again why we set out to do this in the first place. For us, the Road compresses nearly the whole dynamic spectrum of life into such rapid bursting moments along a highly accelerated timeline: good-byes and sadness, open possibilities and elation, soundtracks, storms and trials, tests of faith, tests on wisdom, unexpected unique decisions, problem solving, strategizing, thinking ahead, coping with failures, basking in successes, memories, discoveries, and on and on.

But by far the best part is the miracles. The things that many people might write off as coincidence or mere “positive perspective” when confronted with trying to explain 2 or 3 of them. But when they happen by the dozens like they do for us on the Road, by the grace and provision of our Heavenly Father, I don’t care how you try to explain it – life is miraculous.

I was trying to find a good analogy for it. I love the mind-opening affect of the Road. As the driver I have lots of time for mind-wandering exploration – something in which I almost never indulge because I almost constantly have my brain focused on some particular issue or problem or situation with family or work. Even with a substantial amount of concentration on gauges, and sway correction required by the blast of passing trucks, and the GPS, and road signs, and the current pulse of passengers, there are open stretches where I can mentally wander into scarcely trodden paths.

And, so, I came up with the back yard analogy. Life for those who walk in a pure and practical daily trust in their Creator is very much like the life of a child sent out into the back yard to play. The child basks in the freedom of the whole yard, of getting to decide the games and activities, to feel like the master of his own destiny, oblivious to the parent’s watchful eye behind the window, of the carefully crafted fence around the yard, of the deliberate selection in the objects filling the yard. There are certainly dangers: toys can be abused, a child can employ foolishness to great effect, and even tragedy can happen in the relatively safe environment. But their parent is always there, and the permutations of things that could go wrong are almost all within the realm of something the child can handle. But for those other situations the parent is always ready to intervene directly. Even when it’s not a matter of safety or crisis, the parent still delights to intervene in response to the conditions: to supply a sprinkler on a hot day, snacks and drinks at intervals, and encouraging word when the child does something particularly creative or clever, and so on.

And that is very nearly exactly how I feel traveling. So much can go wrong, but YHWH knows we can handle it and we know that He will intervene for things completely beyond us (because He already has time and time again). But even more miraculous are all the little things He puts together for us to discover along the way… almost a reverse breadcrumb trail for us to follow – even when our waypoints are not predetermined in our own minds. Now I’m sure you can think of countless real-life scenarios that seem to break the parameters of this analogy, but it’s completely consistent with my personal experience so far. So here’s a list of Miracles and Memories that we’ve collected so far on this trip:

1. After departing our friends’ farm in PA I felt like I should stop one last time a few miles down the road before getting on the interstate to connect the anti-sway bar and check a few final things. As a result I discovered that we had developed a pretty bad fuel leak, which explained the slight fuel smell we noticed since picking the truck up from the shop and the fluid leak evidence Joe noticed as we were pulling away. With all the other vehicle issues we’ve had I thought we might not be leaving PA for a while after all. My heart sank. But looking at it there in the parking lot, tracing it backwards, I figured out that the fuel filter had vibrated loose and I was able to tighten it down all the way again which fixed it completely so that we could keep on rolling down the road. That could have been major serious if we hadn’t stopped and caught it, not to mention expensively drooling fuel all along the interstate. Joe had prayed right before we left that we’d discover any issues before we got too far.
2. Dad and mom recently sent a CD that became an instant soundtrack. Everyone had a favorite – Zach was the first to start asking to play that one particular song on continuous repeat – and the beauty of it is that even in the children though they might not consciously understand it, the song resonates so deeply with the entire context of this trip itself, where we are going, why were are heading there, and the trajectory of our entire lives. I can’t listen to it without tearing up from the expectation. It blows my mind and heart to know we’re alive in these days and our King is letting us play in His back yard even while He prepares to renovate and re-landscape it completely. The song is “Prepare the Way” (Spotify) from Paul Wilbur’s album “Your Great Name” (iTunes).
3. One of our rear / side trailer light covers has been missing for month. It got smashed when I parked a little too closely and Bennah opened the door into it. On a whim, I looked in Wal-Mart. Lo and behold I found an entire light module that included a cover the exact right size and color. It fit like a glove and even included a rubber seal. This unexpectedly completed a bunch of little external trailer repairs that I had been slowly working on.
4. The first night we stopped I had a perfect place to walk across the street and catch up on a few hours worth of emails. Maybe doesn’t seem miraculous given the scourge of 24-hour McDonalds covering the land now, but the fact that there was an outlet to plug into and other minute details which rarely all come together keeps it on teh ledger of Provision in my book.
5. Our second and a very long day of driving landed us in an epic Storm. I’m talking about “Master! We are perishing” epic. Traffic on the 70 MPH speed limit interstate was none existent or going 30 MPH. There was nowhere to pull off and weather it out. Trees were bowing and branches were flying along horizontal trajectories. Visibility was 10-20 feet with wipers full blast. Father provided an escort. A car just in front of us was traveling slowly with blinkers flashing and I could just keep those flashers in visibility and follow.  The road lines themselves were scarcely visible, and the wind kept trying to push us into the other lane, but our Shepherd kept us safe and brought us through the storm.
6. At the 2nd night’s Wal-Mart stop-over south of Chicago Renee went in to pick up a few things. The cashier turned out to be from Manitoba – just south of Winnipeg (Renee’s home city) in fact – and warned us that it was a very unsafe area (the store next door had just been robbed a few nights before) and advised us not to stay overnight. We were all settled in and the kids were asleep and it had been an 8 hour + stops driving day: a fear-based reaction wasn’t an option. I was talking to my business partner and brother in Messiah Kenn when Renee came back with the report and we put our phones on speaker so that our wives could join the conversation and we all prayed together in agreement for safety. The night passed in restful non-adventure.
7. Right across from that Wal-Mart was a Home Depot and we were able to easily swing by there on the way out the next day. I had been looking for one. I needed new 18V batteries for my drill that I use to help speed up the stabilizing process of trailer setup and Home Depot is the only one that carries the brand I need. Just in time for the setup I would have to do that night.
8. I had really wanted to take the kids into one of the walk-way bridges at the oasis stops along the Chicago area tollways so they could stand over the crazy traffic passing beneath. I stopped at one because we needed fuel but the signage was ambiguous and I ended up on the wrong side for diesel. There was no way back. I figured it wasn’t a big deal cause we could just stop at the next one 13 miles up. But before we got there we had to exit onto a different route. I was so sad, because it looked like that was the last chance and we had missed it. But unexpectedly there was another one – the last one furthest from Chicago, several miles down the other route. It was such a fun blessing.

These are just a fraction of the little provisions and adventures that fill our days on the Road. Our King is such and awesome Brother and Father and what a joy it is to play in His back yard. Well, we got free passes to an insane water park down the road from our campground so we’re off to play on some slides and pools.

Shabbat Shalom!

Apparently, we need more stretching / training in this area. And/or Father just wants us to spend longer in Kentucky than the quick overnight we had originally planned. And/or maybe these are just mandatory practice runs – like fire drills – of trailer evac with our grab-and-go gear. It’s so funny how the mission (in this case getting to Pennsylvania) can be so quickly reduced (or complicated) into other really important side-quests.

So here we were yesterday, broken down yet again (over something that is probably very trivial as I explain below) at mile marker 83 along I-64 in Indiana:

Again, YHWH had prepared everything ahead of time and we were miraculously provided for and well taken care of, despite the “inconveniences” and emotional battles to guard our peace and trust. In fact, we are feeling extremely blessed right now, even if our truck and trailer are still 70 miles away in another state at the moment with an uncertain resurrection timeline. Our dear friends who also have 7 children (and hence a 12 passenger van) came out and picked us up an hour and 20 minutes away from their home south of Louisville, KY. Even though our roadside assistance wasn’t able to find a provider to come tow us (it was the middle of nowhere) I found a shop – Small Brothers Truck and Auto – 10 miles away in Leavenworth, IN that was able to come out and pick up the trailer and the truck (what would we do without internet and maps on our phones?).

Wesley (the shop owner) was amazing. He came out at the end of a hectic day with one of his guys and pulled our trailer back to the shop while the other drove the flatbed with our suburban on it. He was also gracious enough to let us plug in at the shop to keep our fridge running so that we didn’t have to worry about that (at least for a couple days). Near the end of our trip back to the shop we instantly connected spiritually when I said, “really appreciate everything – you’re a life saver,” and he humbly responded, “well I don’t know about all that,” so I probed further by saying, “well, I believe everything happens for a purpose,” and he responded with something close to: “absolutely, the Good Lord has His reasons for everything.” In the exact same way that all these events are challenging us to maintain peace in the middle of turmoil, it sounds like he’s going through the exact same challenges with his shop business. Please remember Wesley in your prayers as well – that YHWH will give him strength to guard his peace and find favor with and bless him!

So, how did we go from the top of the world with 4 new tires and a fresh alignment (the previous evening and morning adventures) cruising toward our destination with reasonable hope to still see our friends near Louisville and Cincinnati AND still make a Friday landfall in PA; to winding up once again completely dependent on our Creator’s provision and the generous assistance of others? Well, as I try to reconstruct a fraction of the purposes together in my mind so that it makes some kind of coherent picture I’ve stumbled across a few connections whose strands are worth following – at least with some speculative deduction.

But first a quick digression on the new tires adventure. Feeling like I still had plenty of time on our front passenger side tire, although it was wearing badly from being out of alignment for a while now without any rotations, I thought it would suck worse than the expense of new tires to have a blowout and be stranded again or worse. So, we pulled into a Wal-Mart a couple of evenings ago in time to get a new set of 4 right there (the rear ones were close to done anyways too, at least as far as tread goes). I was planning to just put it on our emergency credit card and sort it out with everything else later, but the over-aggressive fraud monitoring blocked the transaction and I would have been totally stuck if it hadn’t been for the generous gifts from some of our friends sitting in our paypal account that I was able to access with our paypal credit/debit card. That’s how the tires got taken care of. Then of course I wanted to get an alignment done right away so as not to chew up the new tires prematurely and found a place across the street that got me in nice and early and on the road in good time yesterday. Back to the reconstruction:

Perhaps part of the purpose for the original breakdown in Seibert, CO was to set the timing for the second breakdown. In my humble opinion, it should have waited another 70 miles, but that certainly would not have been as interesting. Following the trail of fallen dominoes backwards: the new injection pump installed in Colorado came with the PMD (pump mounted driver – basically an electronic circuit box) mounted directly on the pump itself which sits on top of the engine in probably the hottest place possible. This is an idiotic design and one of the reasons the duramax 6.5L earned a questionable reputation. What happens is that the normal heat from engine operation under loads like towing through mountains – even with all gauges in safe ranges, which I am anal about – fries the electronics which control fuel injection and without fuel the truck dies and of course steering and breaks die with it. Super dangerous, and when I felt it starting to die, I slowed way down and prayed for a safe place to pull over because I didn’t see anywhere immediately available. It lasted long enough to cool down a bit, and then I lost brakes and steering at a place that worked out be be safe enough to stop.

The solution to this whole bad engineering induced mess is remarkably easy – replace the PMD with an FSD (Fuel Solenoid Driver) relocated outside the center of the heat and attach it to an adequate heatsink. In fact, this was our exact configuration before the original pump died. Even so, the original pump had nearly 225,000 miles on it which is pretty good (a typical lifespan for those pumps under normal average-to-heavy conditions is 100,000 miles). However, when the first shop put in the new pump, they left our pump-protecting FSD disconnected and just wired in the attached PMD in it’s factory failure prone location for warranty reasons. The new pump supposedly has a 3 year / 36,000 mile warranty. Of course the ironic thing is that because of the design it failed in under 1000 miles of conservative towing.

The maddening thing is that I have the solution sitting right there under my hood – the FSD which should still be OK, since the first shop tested with another FSD connected to the bad pump to eliminate my FSD as the cause of the original issue. To add additional frustration: the wiring connections and the pump itself are buried under the turbo plenum and the intake manifold, on top of which I don’t know for sure whether or not the FSD harness to connect it is still down there since they just used the standard PMD. Well, sitting there on the side of I-64 I got about half-way into the project of pulling it all apart to look for the harness – battery cables disconnected, connectors detached from the turbo plenum, plenum off, upper coolant hose off and a couple liters of coolant dropped, and a couple bolts out of the intake manifold before I came to the following conclusions: 1) there was the possibility that the harness I needed for the FSD wasn’t even still down there ; 2) even if I was successful reconnecting the FSD it wasn’t a 100% fix (although very likely) and regardless would mean sending my family on ahead with our friends and sacrificing that time with them together plus pushing past dark on the side of the interstate with the re-assembly effort.

Matching that against my experience with the time I spent on the failed attempt to fix the last problem with the crankshaft sensor replacement, and admitting to myself that although I could definitely tackle this in my own garage without a deadline, I am not yet the kind of ninja mechanic that could pull it off within the constraints of that scenario, I resigned to get everything put back together, try to start it again, and if that didn’t get us anywhere, call in the support. As you know, the support became the solution. And I’m confident that the priority time staying together with my family and our friends was the right decision whatever the dollar costs end up being.

It’s fascinating to me… basically 3 years of problem-free towing for 50,000 miles and it seems like everything decides to go all at once – of course at the most inopportune time 🙂 Is there a message there? Or are we simply hitting the attrition caps on some of our equipment at the same time? Or is Father weaving a grander story through it all? Definitely that with probably substantial portions of the other reasons mixed in as well.

So, our current condition: massively grateful that we’re with our dear friends who have graciously opened their home wide to us. The kids have a whole new set of buddies, and aside from some enthusiastic (i.e. loud) play going on, they are otherwise the very absolute opposite of bored and I might not even see much of them while we’re here, which is perfect for catching up with Matt and Sara and making progress on some work. To a small family unit, 13 children in 1 house for more than an hour or two at a time might sound like insanity, never mind consecutive sleepovers. But all things considered the chaos is actually quite minimal. In fact, it is extremely peaceful here. And consistent with the entire moral to this part of our story unfolding: True Peace does not depend on external circumstances but internal, unshakable trust in our Deliverer and Redeemer – Yahushua the Son of God. Only He can provide the Peace that surpasses all understanding.

I should have known we were in for an awesome and eventful trip when it took us 2 hours to dig and push and back our truck and trailer out of the mud hole that had formed over the several rainy days that led up to our departure. We were finally able to back out through a meticulous method that involved rotating 4 large scrap pieces of plywood, mulch, and 4 lo.

We had an amazing few weeks parked at friends southeast of Fresno, CA. Thanks again for everything! It was an incredible blessing to get to know you and participate in the fellowship there. We so enjoyed the area and the kids were right at home with enough country to receive their energy.

There was a beautiful break in the weather on the day we had decided to leave. It was warm and sunny despite days of rain before and days of rain forecasted for after. Even so it was 6pm by the time we finally pulled away, and it looked like we’d be driving for days in the rain. It was mostly cloudy for the next few days, and we did drive through some rain, but for the most part everywhere we went it had either  stopped raining or waited to start until we were settled for the night. Roads were clear and traffic was mild.

This was a really busy business week with lots of work and phone conferences and such, but it worked out perfectly every time. One morning we found a mall for Renee and the kids to stay occupied while I hopped on the internet at Starbucks in Barnes & Noble to do my calls and emails. Another morning there happened to be a Starbucks across the street from the Wal-Mart we parked at for the night, which let me get on some other scheduled calls. The children were amazing through it all. In fact, I think this was by far the best 4-day stretch of travelling where all of us stayed more or less in the Shalom Zone. Maybe it helped that all the kids were at various stages of being sick which blunted their normal energy levels.

We had been praying that the rig would make it without too much trouble through the mountains of northern California on I-5. We didn’t know how bad the climbs would be, but have had issues with the turbo in the past so it was an unknown. Everything mechanical functioned beautifully.

I had checked roads and chain restrictions a couple days before and everything looked clear, but the night before we got there a major storm blew in just north of Redding and dropped a bunch of snow and triggered not only a chain requirement but check point as well. And there was another storm system blowing in that night that was going to drop more ice and snow in the mountains we had to cross. We had a narrow window.

But we didn’t have chains. Seeing the signs we stopped in Redding and started looking. I had called around a few weeks earlier looking for some before because we might have needed them to go see the sequoias (we didn’t) but no one had our size. So, it was a small miracle when we found a Wal-Mart near by in Redding that had some even though they had been selling them all day. Thus acquired, we went along our merry way only to run into a 6-mile long line waiting to go through the check-point.

There was a sign that said cars left lane trucks and trailers right lane. So, we sweated it out a bit with the commercial trucks while other cars flew past us on the left. After an hour went by and we had only covered 2 miles it was closing in on 5pm and we had several hours of crossing mountains and it was going to get dark and dangerous. I decided that trucks and trailers meant commercial vehicles and broke out of the mold onto the left lane. We cruised on past the 3-4 mile long, unbroken line of semis with their cargo, and got to the check-point where everything was down to 1 lane anyway. It was really an inefficient and poorly and handled operation.

With that we were on our way and into some interesting driving. We hit some rain, but the roads were ok. We got over the worst of the I-5 CA mountains and tucked in for the night at about 3000 ft. I pulled almost an all-nighter working, and when I went to bed at 5am it had started snowing massive beautiful flakes in torrents. Interesting.

We got going about noon, and it was still snowing even though it had warmed up to the high 30s. Roads were slushy. We knew this was a big travel day. We had over 300 miles to go including the steepest and highest parts of I-5 and most of Oregon to drive across. It was a pretty intense day but YHWH protected us as we cautiously tackled the mountains through southern OR at times in heavy snow (though the roads were staying fairly clear). When we crossed the highest point along I-5 which runs the whole length of the west coast from Seattle to San Diego we were elated. Downhill was tougher in a lot ways, so I kept it slow.

We even found a Chipotle – a family favorite that we miss in areas which don’t have them – as we got close to Portland. We pulled into our reserved site about 9pm… tired, but extremely thankful. We’re having a lo-key weekend, catching up on rest and, now that Sabbath has ended, a bit of chores and work. We’re looking forward to spending some time with family in Portland and are glad we could be here to attend my Granny’s memorial service on Friday as we head further north shortly after that.

Having written all this it feels like I’ve just captured the emotionless details of our travels somewhat like an historian might have written about the ancient Greeks. But I wish I could convey to you the sublime experience of living through so many little miracles every day – all the things we need along the road whether we’ve planned for them or not – Father YHWH provides in perfect timing. It was painfully hard to get moving again after being at our friends for 6 weeks, and while I’m thankful to be parked again for a short bit, nothing compares to the wilderness of the journey.

July escaped completely undocumented, even though we had a great big Garlic Adventure to Ohio and back to PA. Tonight I am typing this on battery power while we sleep several degrees off kilter in this welcome center / rest stop parking lot in NE Penn just shy of NY state. I don’t think we’re suppose to be here overnight, but when I went inside to find someone to ask, the only one around was a nice janitor lady and she said no one will bother us. I told her the story about how Joy dropped my phone in a cup of water and now the screen doesn’t work. She had asked what that little thing around my wrist was. I explained that it was a little LED flashlight that I use to read my phone’s screen whenever I need to. We wouldn’t have even stopped here but the Wal-Mart in town has been overtaken by township ordinances that state in scary big signs “no overnight camping.” I almost wanted to challenge that by setting up anyway and if anyone came I would have debated the semantics of overnight camping versus just parking… camping involves so much more it seems to me and it’s not like we would have tried to have a fire and roast marshmellows or anything. And, while the lady at customer service was apologetic and emphatic that it was not them (Wal-Mart) but the township and suggested that they were open 24 hours and hey we just might be shopping all night long, we figured we better not risk it and check out the welcome center instead since she also thought it might permit overnight. By the time we got here (just down the road) and everyone went to the bathroom and I called ahead to the next Wal-Mart an hour down the interstate to make sure they weren’t in local ordinance party-pooper land too, it was going to be quite late by the time we got there and sprawled out. So, we made a family decision split along pretty even lines to do the adventurous thing and subject ourselves to some guerrilla-style sleeping arrangements since I wanted to at least keep a low profile which means no slide-out and no leveling and Bennah had to climb over the bikes to get in bed, the other two boys are sleeping on the dinette (which turns into a bed of course… well of sorts anyway) and the girls are sharing the fold-down couch. And only the two little guys can squeeze through the bathroom door so everyone else has to use the porta-john that we normally keep in the truck so that we don’t have to stop at facilities every 15 minutes.

We’re on our way north and east.

I have many good excuses as to why things have died down quite a bit on the site here… and I want to publish this more boldly and dedicate an entire post to it – and I will likely write a lot more on the subject some other time (if I can make the time for it) – but:

The end of our world as we’ve known it
is closer than we think.

Let that sink in for a minute.

What does it mean? My world? Your world? Everyone’s world? You’ve probably felt the general vibe out there that not everything is as it should be. Sure there are lots of things going on in the news that seem like they’re all somehow connected, but surely everything will go on as it always has. Everything will be alright… right?

If you – right now – wherever you are, whatever you are doing that is getting interrupted by reading this is – pause for a moment; ponder the possibility that this fall – October, maybe later – could be a cataclysmic fulcrum point in America’s history that changes her (and the world) forever; let this possibility sink into your mind and then prepare; prepare by praying; prepare by thinking – what would you do if EVERYTHING changed? if you could not work? if you could not get to your family? if you could not use your cell phone? if there was no electricity? where would you go? what would you do? how? why? start weighing your options, but realize the only option is to trust your Creator whom you might not know as well as you’d like… if you pause for a moment and contemplate what I am saying… you will be more prepared to handle what will be coming in due time than the vast majority who will be caught completely by surprise.

Is this doomsday talk / conspiracy theory / doom and gloom? Depends on your perspective. Heavenly judgment on wickedness and oppression is justice and deliverance to the humble and righteous. Analytically speaking, America’s economic survival is impossible. Spiritually speaking, men of God have been having dreams and visions of America’s destruction for decades. And I’m not talking about televangelist type “men of God” – I’m talking about the kind of men (and women) who suffer persecution for their faith in Messiah in other countries, the kind who come to America as missionaries because of how lost our nation has become, the kind would (and do) walk for months on foot just to acquire a single copy of the Bible.

Could I be wrong about this fall? Certainly. But whether it unravels this fall or later, I am presently convinced that 2 of the next most massive world events are going to be: the collapse of America and war in the Middle East with Israel in the center.

Do I have any inside knowledge? No.

But I will share with you a dream my 7 year old daughter had a few days ago. My jaw dropped when she began telling me about it. She was at the pool with a couple friends. The water started to slowly drain out of the pool, but it was happening fast enough that she noticed it. She said it was very weird. Her friends noticed it too, but what was so bizarre was that no one else seemed to even notice or care. They just kept right on playing, even as they sank deeper and deeper with the level of the water. She and her friends got out as quickly as they could and kept watching. Soon, all the water was gone and everyone else was stuck at the bottom of the pool. She had the impression of very grave danger in the dream. As she was telling me about it, she had no idea how significant it was.

But the first thing I thought of was: “…as it was in the days of Noah…”

Don’t let anything I tell you – or anything that anyone else tells you – become the basis for what you do. Ask your heavenly Father what you should do. And if you don’t know Him very well, well, that’s probably a great place to start. If you don’t know Him at all you need His Son.

I have to tell you about the last place we stayed at. I booked it for a couple nights because it was near Orlando and it had great rates (two things I thought might be mutually exclusive when I first started looking around). I booked it over the phone, site unseen, from a little picnic area where we had stopped for a break on Key Largo as we worked our way back to the mainland. When we pulled into this place the next day I was reminded that, well, you never really know what you’re going to get I guess.

It was the kind of place that makes you want to grab your video camera and start shooting a documentary because there are a million insane stories among the inhabitants along with dramatically mundane and rundown visuals, and it’s all ripe for the picking… while at the same time your brain is screaming “you shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be here at all, you especially shouldn’t be here with your five children and pregnant wife.”

It wasn’t really anything obvious or overt. And it wasn’t the poverty factor alone. We found ourselves landing behind a tiny 8-room motel in a little campground run by the same folks where most of the sites had turned in to the permanent residences of people getting by in 20-30 year old campers. And it wasn’t really the people either… sort of… they were extremely nice actually. But they were almost too nice. Something was off, but I was resisting that gut impulse, because I kept feeling compassion for their condition and couldn’t help but wonder how I and my family must appear to them. I was also too aware of my own subconscious prejudices and unintentional elitism. And after all, maybe we were there for a purpose. The last thing I wanted to think was that we were too good to stay there… but…

At the beginning I sincerely did not feel like it was even a safe place for our children to play, but Renee was totally comfortable with everything. By the end of our stay those impressions had reversed between the two of us somewhat, but there was never any fear or worry – just an internal struggle between prudence and empathy; wisdom and charity.

It didn’t help that our sewer connection was a horizontal length of 3″ pvc running along the surface of the ground, connecting all the sites in our row – each site with its own tap in – and most of those quasi-permanent. I knew exactly what was going to happen when I opened the cover on the tap at our site to tie my own hose in, but I had no choice – one of the reasons we were there was to dump our tanks and get in a shower or two and I wasn’t going to leave with 500 lbs of waste water in my tanks. I gritted my teeth, unscrewed the cap, and watched helplessly as a couple quarts of liquefied (and quite fresh) sewage backed up and spilled on the ground under our trailer. I won’t enhance your nightmares with additional details of the procedure, but I am convinced that I was experiencing something that was quite illegal.

There was an inventor living there who had made some crazy things from old junk that would never get him anywhere, but were naturally fascinating to children – like a wagon that had been rigged with 2 sizes of bicycle wheels dragster-style with a large office chair bolted on for a seat. There was a guy working on a van next to us with an air compressor and an armada of good tools. There was a lady growing cantaloupe beside her trailer, and – even though it just looked like a bunch of weeds – she was very touchy about kids getting near it. She said she was also growing pineapple. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen pineapple grow before, but it looked like she had just buried one in the ground so that the cluster of leaves were just sticking up out of the dirt. Across the way, there was a camper that looked like it would fall down if you shut the door a little too hard, but it had a direct tv dish bolted to the side. Our other neighbor had 5-6 cats that he fed by pouring a long line of dry cat food out along the cracked concrete pad of the site between us that had some sort of burned out, crumbling brick and re-bar chimney behind it. Oh, and he showed the kids his giant python that he brought out from his completely camo-painted trailer.

I could not make this stuff up. See what I mean? Instant documentary. Camp for a week and get more stories and footage than you could ever cram into a 3 hour feature.

Unfortunately, that is not why we were there. We were really on our way to Georgia and normally would have just Wal-Mart hopped until our final destination. But we had stopped near Orlando to accomplish three major things, the first of which required electricity, running water, and sewer (to buy some time).

1. Knock out a major milestone in one of my work projects
2. Get some laundry done
3. Make an important business connection

#1 turned out to be impossible, but #2 and #3 were smashing successes.

I can’t explain why we were so eager and relieved to leave in any tangible, physical, evidence-based manner. The people were extremely friendly. The inventor gave Reayah a bike (which we had to end up leaving because… well, we were extremely appreciative, but it needed  way more fixing than riding). The pineapple lady gave Reayah a bunch of bracelets and necklaces (we didn’t end up keeping those either because they felt extremely weird spiritually… hard to explain unless you already know what I mean). And they all gave free advice: use duct tape on the sewer tap, keep trying the different washers / dryers until you find ones that work, check out the wildlife refuge down the road.

Despite the weirdness that I was writing off as merely a challenge to my own environmental conditioning, I was seriously considering checking on what their monthly rate would have been like. My logic at the time was that it would be warmer there overall than trying to go further north (even Georgia is still colder than it’s supposed to be right now), basic utilities were covered, it would cost more to keep travelling and then stopping for a month, the campground we had in mind in Georgia was turning out to be a bit more expensive than we initially thought or planned, I had a new business buddy in the area (Orlando) and some stuff could happen there, etc. As I hacked away on some code into the wee hours of the morning I had hopes and prayers in my head that we’d get some clear direction.

At 2am Renee woke up and started talking about the vivid dream she was just having. In her dream she was having a conversation with YHWH – asking Him whether we should stay or go, and He was telling her that we had to get out of their right away because He was going to wipe that place out with a tornado. We got up early and never had a more efficient and orderly time of breaking camp and getting the trailer ready to travel again. We weren’t taking Renee’s dream literally, but we were taking it as our answer, and there was already enough motivation once we had a clear plan.

I never asked about the monthly rates. I didn’t even ever open the valve on our black (sewer) tank, because I knew what would happen. As badly as I wanted to get on the road without that extra weight, it wasn’t worth the consequences under the likelihood that there wasn’t anywhere for the tank’s contents to go. Sure enough, there was a lot of gray (dish and sink) water backed up and stuck in our hose as it was, and that ended up having to go somewhere.

As we were pulling out, the truck started making a bad sound. Here we were, checking out an hour early (which never happens – we’re usually out just in time) and then I had to start wondering if the truck is going to fail me and strand us there. Got the trailer out of the site and started slowly down the road, but the truck was still protesting. It wasn’t the extra weight – we’ve pulled extra before – something sounded wrong. Pulled over behind an industrial building and started hitting diesel forums and trying to figure out what and how bad it might be. I was looking at all the info and starting to make a plan in my head about how to go about checking some things, but I got the distinct impression in my heart that we should just leave and trust. Renee reminded me that we should pray about it and so we did. Putting my analytical side on the shelf, we drove away and it was completely fine – the sound was totally gone!

Several hours later we pulled into paradise. Not by appearance. Not by amenities. Not by a stretch of the imagination – but by the standards of weary travelers who have been on the road for a month and a half, through 8 states, over 3200 miles, a dozen Wal-Marts, a handful of campgrounds, not longer than a few nights in any one place (except for the 2 weeks with our friends), trying to move major work projects forward through all of that, and more than ready to have a fraction of stability.

We are parked. We have a lake view. Actually, we’re only 50 feet from the lake and can fish for free without a license since it’s private. I even set up the slide-out jacks and our out-door carpet. We have electric, water, AND sewer (with a proper pipe and everything). We have free WiFi (which is a big deal because with all the work we have we were otherwise going to bust the 5GB limit on our mobile provider this month). There is laundry 50 feet away. Bennah was catching lizards again today. There is a rec house with puzzles and games for bad weather. Jaiden and Zach made a volcano with some water and a giant climbable dirt pile. The “neighbors” are mostly older, but very sweet. Reayah has a new best friend – the campground owner’s daughter. Necessity shopping is 30 minutes away. It is beautiful (though still a little chilly) here. Joy is taking it all in stride. Business is really looking up. Spring is close. And we have dropped anchor for at least a month.

How many of you can say that you had the chance later on in life to meet the doctor who delivered you when you were born? Maybe there are more of you than I’d guess, but I certainly can’t. Well, today in a cool turn of events it worked out for Bennah (who just turned 8 a week ago) to meet the doctor that delivered him.

We got a good start departing Winnipeg this morning and got into Minot, ND with plenty of time to swing by the hospital where Bennah was born. We were just going to show the kids the building, but on a whim, I thought – what if Dr. A. F. is still working there? So, I went inside, picked up the phone labeled “Information” and asked the nice lady at the other end. Sure enough! And she forwarded me to OB to check on his availability. So, after 8 years and 4 more children, we got a chance to say hi to the kind gentlemen who helped us with our firstborn. Crazy. And of course, he remembered us too… well, our situation was rather unique afterall – Renee on bed rest for 5 months of the pregnancy, and our request for an 8th-day circumcision, and several other unique things about our story, but I’ll leave it at that.

Then, we went past our old apartment (the second floor of an old house and probably the most favorite place we ever lived… tied with the last house in Alexandria, VA maybe… of course, current “home” notwithstanding, which doesn’t count because it’s way too awesome to even be compared)… anyway, it’s still there and it looks exactly like it did the day we left. Same colors – everything. After 8 years.

Of course, the Wal-Mart in town has moved and been upgraded to a Super Center; picked up some necessary road supplies… but the Sammy’s is still here and pretty much all our original favorite places are intact. Both thrift stores. The coffee shop / used book store. The photolab Renee worked at for a while. Etc. Talk about memory lane. It was so much fun to share this all with our kids, even though they probably just wanted to get out and run around and squirt each other with the new water guns from Wal-Mart…

And as for Bennah – I’m sure he just wanted to try out his new bike seat. He just learned how to ride a bike. On literally his second try. And some friends blessed us with an awesome bike for him (they had extras) but it needed a new seat. Up until today he’s been riding it around the campground with a shoe over the post to act as a seat. After he took a few spins around the Roughrider Campground where we’re parked now in Minot, he said he actually likes the shoe better. But he never actually sat on it I don’t think. His bony bum isn’t very comfortable on the new seat that he can actually sit on… but he’ll get used to it.

Long day of driving tomorrow and I should have been in bed a while ago. But this had to get captured. It was another great day.

Although I have to say that I haven’t always been completely comfortable in supporting a huge corporation that takes advantage of third world countries and seems unsympathetic sometimes to it’s employees, I am sure thankful that they allow overnight RV parking in their parking lots. I know it is selfish on their part: we’ll probably buy from them if we’re parked right there for night. It’s been nice not to have to pay for a camp site or reserve a spot for the night while we’re traveling. I must say, it’s very weird sleeping in Walmart. I’m at home in my warm cozy bed. I wake up and look out my window and lo and behold, I live right next door to a Walmart! It’s not the most restful sleep. The parking lot is bright and noisy with all the traffic. Tonight I walked out my door and walked right into a Walmart supercenter to pick up some organic apples Wisconsin cheese curds and some other items for our meals tomorrow. Weird but sortof fun.

We are surviving our first bout of hard-core travel and campgrounding, but it hasn’t been without … um … “events” shall we say? I think I have previously lamented the fact that there are not enough nanoseconds in the day to do these tales justice with the flowing, detailed narrative they deserve. But let me recap the last few days of adventure in bullet form lest current events overtake the record and press it with their own need to be captured.

Day 25 (Wed, 5/6/09):

• Intended day of departure from PA… slow going with all the final preparations even though we had done most of it the day before…
• 3:00pm, still planning to leave and make some progress, final checks on the truck… needed oil change badly… likely not going to get on the road after all…
• 3:30pm, Jaiden (age 2) falls in the creek and gashes the back of his head open, Reayah (age 5) was right with him when it happened, watching him like we’d asked her too; she got Bennah (age 7) right away because he was close by; Bennah pulls Jaiden out of the creek and stays with him (he’s soaked head to toe, his head is bleeding, and he’s screaming from the shock; knowing Bennah is with him, then Reayah runs to the the trailer (just a few hundred feet away) to get us; I run down there, scoop up my little brave soaking wet explorer and hustle him back to the trailer; Renee cleans him up, and we get ice on his head; he shows initial symptoms of a mild concussion; we pray for him, battle our fear, and the symptoms clear… at that point we were obviously not going anywhere that day… wanted to watch him closely and make sure he would be alright.
• Jaiden was quiet for a bit but was his old giggly self before too long and the delay worked out to let us go visit some other dear friends about an hour away who we hadn’t seen in a long time.

Day 26 (Thurs, 5/7/09):

• On the way to get some errands done in the morning (one of which was getting the oil changed) I got stuck behind some SLOW traffic with no passing lane. There were alternate routes I could have taken into town, but I was keenly aware of YHWH saying that the situation was an example to me: He is slowing us down, every part of our lives… our previous life was lived in such servitude to schedules and TIME… always trying to get things done in a rush or having to be somewhere quickly… we are learning to slow down and become more aware of the NOW.
• Of course, that approach leads to things like 2pm departures. But we were finally on our way.
• And our first real mountain driving across I-80… what another example of slowing down… pulling 17,000 lbs total up some climbs brought us down to 30 mph in a couple spots to keep all the gauges in the mostly happy zones. Average maybe 45-50 mph. 60 mph on the downhill. Slowing down like that was HARD (for me because I much prefer the speed limit +5 rule of thumb). But I learned how to ride my gears on the auto tranny based on the precise position of the pedal and the current RPMs, speed, and incline of the road.
• How do I know we were pulling 17,000 lbs? Because we finally found a scale that worked. For $5 I found out that:
  • my front axle was carrying 3140 lbs (GAWR 4250)
  • my rear axle was carrying 5380 lbs (GAWR 6000)
  • my trailer axles were carrying 8760 lbs (GAWR > 8800)
• What a relief – we were under ALL our limits, which up until then was actually quite doubtful. We are pulling more than the overall recommended weight for the stock make / model / year, but we’re not driving a stock vehicle… and we can always sacrifice speed to make sure we don’t overwork the engine.
• We rolled into a Wal-mart in Ohio at 10:30pm only to discover we had NO power from the trailer battery. I knew I needed to replace it, but it had never been totally drained before. This meant no tongue jack (to relieve some weight off the truck for the night and stabilize a bit) and no slide-out (which means the kids room is barely accessible and the bathroom is inaccessible – except to Jaiden and Zach who can squeeze through). Then, after getting the kids to bed doubled up on the pull-out couch and fold-down dinette, some initial checks on the wiring suggested that the trailer outlet on the truck wasn’t wired right and maybe hadn’t been charging the trailer battery during travel. It was a project for the morning, but it was going to mean a LATE departure.

Day 27 (Fri, 5/8/09):

• Renee entertained the kids in Wal-Mart the next morning while I discovered that positive cable connector had completely snapped off the terminal (hence, no juice). Battery also needed replacement. Not satisfied that the trailer plug on the bumper was resolved, but it could wait; new battery and cable rewired, we pulled out around 1:30pm, gassed up and hit the interstate once more.
• We entered Sabbath with an Indiana sunset and a spectacular visual reminder of what we love so much about traveling.
• For whatever reason, I was determined to get to Chicago that night, and be done with it. But wondering if we shouldn’t heed the lessons of slowing down I tried to stop at a Flying J around 10:oopm but it seemed to be rigged only for trucks (or cars) but there didn’t seem to be anywhere for RVs to park… which was very strange… but we pressed on…
• YIKES. 90/94 W through Chicago at 10:30pm on a Friday night… talk about some serious prayerful towing driving… that is an experience I’d rather not have to repeat… ever…
• 11:01pm pull into Wal-mart on the other side of Chicago and join the ranks of a couple trucks and a couple motorhomes.
• Stabilized on the tongue jack but still not using the slide-out after confirming that the new battery did not charge during the day of travel.
• Settled in for a crazy night of some of the most insane wind we’ve half-slept through ever. The Windy City’s way of greeting us I suppose. The trailer rocked and shook like a dingy tossed around at sea, and that next morning Wal-Mart’s array of plants outside the Garden Center in the parking lot had suffered the damages of a tornado through a trailer park on a botanical scale.

Day 28 (Sabbath, 5/9/09):

• 9:00am on the way to our final intended resting spot for the area – Illinois Beach State Park – another hour north.
• 10:00am pulled in, found a site, set-up, registered, Jonathan (my brother who lives in the Chicago area) arrived, and we thought to ourselves – smooth sailing from here!!!!
• or not
• Discovered that the fridge wasn’t on and wouldn’t turn on.
• Zach (age 4) found a small bead the exact size of a 4-year-old ear canal and he had not been previously, properly trained about what things (i.e. everything) should NOT be inserted an inch or so into one’s ear.
• Between Zach lying on his side on the couch, ear hanging over and down, Jonathan holding his head level, me underneath looking up from the floor with a headlamp shining like some sort of mechanic pulling his ear down and forward while squirting water into it with a syringe while Renee consulted her mom (a nurse) on the phone regarding the correct angle to pull a child’s ear when it has become the container for a foreign object… and MUCH prayer… we finally got the crazy thing out. I’m not kidding, initially you couldn’t even see the bead without pulling the ear back first and shining some light.
• I finally found the access panel (on the OUTSIDE of the trailer) to check if the fridge was even plugged in… which it was not (shaken unplugged in our travels) and that was working again so we could finally explore the campground a bit.
• Came back and headed to Jonathan’s (an hour a way) for an awesome home-cooked meal (thank you Jonathan!)
• Back to the trailer after that only to discover NO power – AGAIN! Even though we were plugged into the campground 30 amp service. No matter what I did, every time I plugged in, I tripped the 30 amp GFCI breaker….

[historical background digression]: there is a story here. When we first got the trailer, I discovered that the ground pin on the main 30 amp shoreline cable was broken. Now I suspect that this was done by the previous owners intentionally after having some frustrating electrical issues with GFCI circuits at campgrounds, but at the time I was thinking… this is not right, it needs to be fixed. So, I cut off the old broken plug and wired in a spiffy new 3-prong 30 amp plug… and I immediately started tripping the breaker in the garage that I had previously been plugged into without any problems. Safety = Pain in the Bum. Just like in the programming world. (Security = Pain in the Bum). In fact, the overkill in both arenas of Safety and Security largely result from the moronic behavior of a few individuals who make life much more complicated for the rest of the human race. My solution a few months ago – plug into a different outlet in the garage that was not GFCI protected, and forget about the whole thing.

• Ah… the GFCI incident came back to haunt me didn’t it, here months later, in the up-until-2-am-with-a-multimeter-and-internet-forums kind of way. Current theory: electrical systems in RVs can be a Pain in the Bum. Solution so that we could have heat, keep the battery charged, and I could go to bed: break the ground prong off of an extra 30 > 15 amp adapter and plug into the 15 amp service (also GFCI) for now. [THIS IS NOT SAFE. DON’T DO THIS. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED…. but if it comes down to survival… ;)]

Day 29 (Sun, 5/10/09):

• Renee and the kids out for a walk while I narrowed down the electrical issue at least to a specific circuit in the trailer… the one that has most of the receptacles (outlets) and the converter (which converts the AC to DC for charging the battery and running the DC appliances). Now if I can just dig up a little more electrical know-how than I currently possess I might not have to pay someone to fix the whole mess for me. I get the feeling that it could get involved. Especially if most or all of the outlets on that circuit were wired with the ground and neutral bonded. Ugh.
• Met Jonathan for a tasty lunch, because life must go on.
• Got some grocery shopping done and other errands.
• Including a couple outlet testers from Home Depot that ended up telling me nothing I didn’t already know (they say all the outlets check out just fine, so the mystery continues).
• Took the kids to an amazing playground. There will be photos of it posted somewhere eventually.
• Brought them home, fed them, got them to bed.
• And here I am typing this.

Congratulations, you have passed the very useful course: Reading Andrew’s Long Winded Posts (Even When They’re Written in Bullet Format) 301.

For further entertainment:
– Updated Trip data
– Updated Map

I also have a bunch of photos queued for upload (and more that I have to sort and queue) but I have to wait for a decent hard connection to get the upload done.