Getting there

I was hoping to get on the road today, but ran into a few snags. I must get 100 deliveries a year and they all show up as expected. Wouldn’t you know that the satellite phone (essential for where I go) was sent out right on time, but the FedEx delivery guy made no effort to deliver it to me when he had four ways to get into my condo’s front door.  It is now supposed to be here today.  However, I may now have to wait till Sunday to leave since that camps are all full on weekends. That might kill my Lamar Valley plan, the only target I set for the trip so far, but I will manage.

 

My condo is beginning to look like a tornado hit it with 18 packing stations set up around it and stuff all strewn nearby.  The only consolation is that when all is packed and loaded onto the Defender, my condo will be empty. 

 

As you might imagine, packing 18 containers, bags, etc.  can be hectic, especially in one day.  On my path from one station to another I pass a half dozen more, and feel compelled to do something with something I see amiss, so I do. This is the packers equivalent of “flight of ideas,” which requires an extraordinary talent of retracing your steps to where you started from.  But I need to make sure I do not put, say, Donner’s canned food in my food box.  Perhaps if I do I will understand why he always hesitates these days before he digs into his dinner.

 

Speaking of Donner’s food, he is on a special diet because of his gastro issue.  As it turns out, the two 26-pound bags of special dry food, 48 cans of special canned for, and six bags of special treats take up two containers, not the one my dogs have been allocated in the past. So, I had to transform my supply container into his second food container and figure out some way to assign those supplies somewhere else, or make so without. There is no room in or on the Defender for another container. Fortunately, I don’t have to take my spare alternator of or the Defender this time since I had it installed two weeks ago when it went out as Dean (my mechanic) was working on the cooling system. (There was no room in the garage container for an alternator, that’s why it was in the supplies container to begin with.)

 

There is one factor I did not consider in trying to pack in a day or two instead of over two weeks.  Donner recognizes all the camping stuff coming out and knows something is up and will not let men out of his sight. He follows me everywhere thinking I might leave him.  If he only knew.

 

Got to get packing.

 

ED and Donner