Wandering Where We’ll Be

Earlier this week I received an email letting me know that two of my photos on my Flickr site have been short-listed for inclusion in the Schmap New York Guide, to be published in late March.  I wouldn’t receive royalties or anything like that, but my photos, if selected, would be credited to me.  Kind of cool, huh?

 The Schmap guides appear to be really cool.  One can download the various city guides at no charge, and they’re very interactive with tons of information.

Here are the two photos of mine that they selected.  The first is a shot of the Ed Sullivan Theater, current home of the Late Show with David Letterman, and the second is a shot taken while we were waiting to take the Staten Island Ferry over to — guess where — Staten Island!  Critiquing my own photos based on framing, lighting, interest, etc., these are not photos that I would have picked, but if they work for Schmap.com’s purposes, that would be fine with me!  (Although, I do kind of like how I caught the scrolling “welcome” message board at the terminal even if you can’t see all of the word, welcome.)

Generally, I’ll avoid a play-by-play of my day, but the things I’m doing today lend themselves to thoughts about other preparations we’ve made or are making for our upcoming traveling.

I woke up before Dan (I almost always do) and took Jake for a quick walk down the block in front of our place.  It’s a clear, cool day out – about 15 degrees F, but it doesn’t seem nearly as windy as it did last night as Dan and I walked home from the bus stop after seeing a movie (Transamerica) at the Lagoon Theater.  I’m not a big movie person – and definitely not a movie reviewer – so I’ll just say that we both thought it was a very good movie and would recommend it to others.  It’s good to see a movie that addresses transgender issues, which many people know so little about.  However, in addition to being educational for me, the movie was also both funny and touching.  OK, that’s enough; I promised I wouldn’t try to review it!

So, after the walk, I made pancakes using a recent favorite multigrain pancake recipe of mine.  Making the pancakes reminded me that I needed to email my pancake recipes to Shawn, a friend of ours.  So, I did that right after breakfast.  With just over a month before we leave, if something needs to get done, I figure I better do it right away, or it might not get done.

After Dan got up, had some breakfast and got ready for work, I drove him to work.  Over a year ago, Dan’s car got hit while it was parked on the street in front of our place overnight.  The insurance company deemed it a total loss, and we decided not to replace it.  We had talked about eventually getting rid of one of our vehicles before we begin our longer-term travels anyway.  I really only used my truck on the weekends to travel out to Shakopee (about 35 minutes southwest of Minneapolis) to play guitar and sing for mass with the St. Mary’s, 5:15 Saturday evening choir.  I ride my bike to work in downtown Minneapolis, which is about a 15 minute ride each way, and run as many other errands as I can using my bike.  We’re also close to several bus lines that we both use frequently.  So, we decided that we could get by with one vehicle, and – I must say – it has worked out just fine.

On my way home from dropping Dan off at work, I stopped at Cub to do some grocery shopping.  About a month ago, I took stock of what I had in my kitchen for food, and made a list of the items that I should use before we leave.  Then, based on this list, I came up with a list of food dishes that used these ingredients.  Pretty much everything in the freezer would need to be used up, as well as things like dried beans, which I won’t want to cook while on the road.  I think I’ll miss coming home from work (not necessarily the work part) to that smell of pinto or black beans cooking in the crock pot.  Also, any ingredient that is used primarily for baking would need to be used up, as well.  We’ll be making many of our own meals while camping, so any ingredient that can be used in a skillet dish or one-pot dish is fair game for being packed to go with us.

On my way home from the store, I dropped some percussion instruments off at Inez’ house (another percussionist in the band I’m in, the Minnesota Freedom Band).  Our band will be performing before the glitzy Oscar party at the State Theatre in Minneapolis on March 5th.  Inez will be playing mostly the various percussion accessories and wanted to get them organized for the upcoming concert.  This performance will be my last (for awhile – I’ll be on leave from the band) before we leave.  I will be playing primarily tympani for the performance.

Oh, yea – when I got home from the store, I took a couple pictures of the “Jake Platform” that I wrote about in a previous post.  Here they are, along with a picture I took of Jake last Sunday:

What are we doing to get ready for the first leg of our travels?  Lots of little things.  Two weekends ago, I built something I’ve come to call “The Jake Platform.”  It’s a wooden, elevated platform that fits in the extended-cab area behind the seats of my S10 truck.  Our dog, Jake, does best in the truck when he has a good view outside the truck, when he can stand/sit/lie on something that’s very stable, and when he can feel air from a vent or window on his face.  His favorite place to sit is on the passenger’s lap (or the driver’s!).  Needless to say, while Jake feels nice and comfortable and secure in this position, it’s not so comfortable having a twenty-pound dog lying, sitting or standing on your lap — especially when you’re wearing shorts, he sees another dog or, heaven forbid, a squirrel and snaps to attention, with his ears at full mast, keenly attuned to the situation at hand, his tail (or worse, his butt!) in your face, and claws digging into your legs to keep his balance!  We’ve had mixed results placing plastic totes with blankets/towels atop behind the seats for him to lie on.  So, I came up with a plan to build the above-mentioned platform, which uses 1″x2″ wood for the frame and legs, and 1/2″ plywood for the top.  The top is in two sections, and is attached to the frame with hinges, allowing the top to be lifted and any items stored below the platform to be easily accessed.  The other feature designed into the platform is a partial supporting frame under the section of the platform that is behind the passenger seat, allowing that section to be swung into the open position and the passenger seat to be reclined back for sleeping.  So, I built the platform and tried it for fit two weekends ago and, this past weekend, I took it out to again to spray it with a wood sealer.  Next, we’ll have to test it with Jake; that will be the real test!

Also, two weekends ago, I bought a two-burner stove, a bulk propane cylinder and a cylinder adapter from REI.  I have a couple of single-burner stoves that we’ve used for shorter camping trips and backpacking, but I decided that if we truly wanted to keep our costs down by doing most of our own cooking, it would be much more convenient to have a two-burner.  Never having researched two-burners, I only knew that there were two main styles available: 1) the old, liquid gas, pump-up type, and 2) the newer styles that run on the disposable, 16.4-ounce, propane cylinders.  The newer styles would be much more convenient — with some models even being matchless, using an automatic igniter — but I wasn’t fond of having to contribute lots of little empty propane cylinders to our never-ending landfills.  When Dan and I visited my brother, Joel, and his family in Grand Forks a few weekends ago, he thought I might be able to somehow connect one of the propane stoves to a bulk cylinder.  And, sure enough, REI had everything I needed to do just that.  The stove I got is the 4960 “Matchless” 2-Burner Propane Camping Stove made by Century Tool & Manufacturing Company, Inc.  Coleman has a similar model, but it wasn’t available at either of my local REI stores.  I also purchased an 11-pound bulk propane cylinder and an adapter that allows me to use the bulk cylinder instead of the disposables.  So, this past weekend I found a place that would fill my new cylinder, had it filled, and then tested the stove.  It looks like it’s going to work great!

I also talked to my brother about charging all things electronic while on the road.  While I had picked up a charger for our cell phone that could be plugged into the cigarette lighter, I didn’t have a way of using our AA-battery charger (for our digital camera) or charging our laptop while on the road.  A quick Google search and, then, trip to Target yielded the answer I needed: a DC-to-AC power inverter.  This also needs to be tested, yet.

In addition to preparing for a long camping trip, we’re also getting ready to move out of our apartment and store our stuff.  Actually, this started quite awhile ago, most significantly, when we had a big garage sale at my parent’s place to get rid of a lot of stuff we had accumulated over the years.  But, we continue to go through closets, storage area, etc. to see what can be thrown out, given away or boxed up for storage.  So, this weekend I went through our storage area, which doubled as a small workshop.  I tossed a lot of little junk, swept up a lot of sawdust and organized some wood (leftover from projects I’ve worked on) to give to my dad.

For those of you who we don’t know us, but stumble across this site, we are Tim and Dan, from Minneapolis, MN, United States of America.  For some portions of our trip, we will also be joined by our dog, Jake.

Tim currently works as a Research Database Administrator at Marshall Field’s department store.  Dan works as salesperson in the flooring department at Home Depot.  The plan to do some serious travel was hatched a few years ago after Tim paid off the last of his student loans and credit card debt and began saving the money that had been going to pay off his debts.  At about the same time, Dan switched from his longtime job where he had several weeks of vacation time to a new one with no vacation accrued.  We were finally getting to the point of having some money to travel, but Dan couldn’t get away from work.  So, we continued to save in earnest and planned for the day we could travel for longer than a week or two.

Where should we go?  We have done several one- to two-week camping trips in the U.S. and Canada, including: a circle tour around Lake Superior, trips to the NW United States, SW United States and SE United States.  So, we hadn’t traveled in the New England states; that should be on the agenda.  And, since we’ll now have the time, why not check out the Atlantic provinces of Canada, as well.  So, we’ll do that this spring.

In mid-July, we will be going to Chicago for a week and a half, where I will be participating as a percussionist (through the band that I’m in – the Minnesota Freedom Band) in the Gay Games VII Sports & Cultural Festival ( http://www.gaygameschicago.org/culture/culture.php?mgroup=Band).  Musicians from bands all over the world will perform together for the opening ceremony, closing ceremony, several different sporting events, as well as in our own concert in the new Frank Gehry-designed Millennium Park Music Pavilion and Band Shell.

Then, this fall we hope to take a trip through several countries in Europe.  The details of this trip are less firm, but we would like to visit Ireland, U.K., Netherlands, Germany, Austria, northern Italy and France.  Neither Dan nor I  been overseas before, so we’re especially looking forward to this trip.

After that, we’re not sure.  Although, we’d like to visit our friends, Fritz and Robert, in Oklahoma City, so we might make a swing south and west.  And, I’d love to travel to Alaska in the summer of 2007.  We’ll play it by ear, seeing how Jake does traveling for long stretches, how money holds out, etc.

I still occasionally ask myself that question — most recently, when I wrote the letter to our landlord to end our lease.  Here I was, writing a letter that told our landlord that we were moving out, but we have no place lined up to move into!

Well, we’re both leaving our jobs, and our lease ends at the end of March.  We’ll be staying with my parents for about two weeks.  Then, after Easter, we leave on the first leg of our travels, which will be a camping trip, taking us south and east from Minnesota to the Atlantic coast in North Carolina, up the coast into the Atlantic provinces of Canada, and returning home via Quebec and Ontario in late June or early July.  Our dog, Jake, will come with us on this leg.  We are intentionally leaving our itinerary open for much of the trip.  (I don’t even like to use that word — itinerary!)  We have the general route — described above — in mind and a list of things we’d like to see.  Beyond that, we’ll be moving when and where our collective mood takes us.  There are a couple of exceptions to this general rule.

First, we will be stopping in Rock Falls, IL to visit my grandma.  We have not seen her in several years and wanted to arrange a visit on our way south.

Second, assuming I can get tickets when they go on sale, we will be seeing Ben Folds in concert in Nashville on April 22.

Third, in late May and early June, we will be staying and working at two different organic farms, through the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) program.  The first is a farm near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and the other is on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.  We have arranged to work two weeks at each of these farms.  Through the WWOOF program, in exchange for working at these farms, we will be provided with lodging and food.  Here are brief descriptions of the farms we’ll be working at:

“Help us create a dream!!! We have 150 acres located in the rolling hills of central Prince Edward Island 20 km from Charlottetown. Our plan is to restore this neglected farm to its glory days. We need your help working a small garden (vegetables and herbs), fencing, clearing trails in the woods, light carpentry, the list goes on. We have a spare bedroom with two twin beds and a loft over the garage. A chance to make a real difference.”

“We are a middle-aged couple with a dog living on a 16-acre piece of paradise: a half-acre market garden and haven for urban refugees on South Harbour, between the entrance to Cape Breton Highlands National Park and a mile-long pristine beach. Kayaking, hiking. Work includes garden chores, composting, gathering firewood, house-painting, trail-making, landscaping. Accomodation is a small cabin with two bunks. Diet: omnivorous leaning toward vegetarian. Independent workers preferred. Own transportation required. Couples welcome.”

As we begin our various travels in mid-April, this site will allow family and friends to keep up with where we are and what we’re up to.  We hope to post here often, but the frequency of updates will depend on our access to internet connections.  I’m guessing that some posts may be very brief and factual — here’s where we are/what we’re up to, but I also hope to post our thoughts about the places we see, the people we meet, what it’s like to be on the road, and other random thoughts.