Then I remember...
RoadNoise began in 1998, in Boise, Idaho. I was working as a freelance writer in the high-tech marketplace and, following an 18-month adventure into the Land of Depression, including a difficult breakup and my beloved Alaskan Malamute dying, I suddenly leapt up, decided to sell my wonderful little 1912-built Ellis Avenue house and, saying good-bye to the Laura Ashley decorative features and custom window coverings I adored, I bought a used motorhome, built on a Ford 350 V8i engine by a small specialist company somewhere in the Midwest.
I was fifty. What else would I do? Two marriages and a long-term relationship done and gone, no Wookie-dog. I decided to see my world, the Western United States, alone.
The motorhome manufacturer called this one the "Honey." A Class C. Big, but not one of the really-bigs. The seller? An old gent, Don, who lived west of town. He was a tall, strong, retired US Marine Corps WWII vet who'd survived several years in a Japanese POW camp and had tales to tell. His Annie was a tiny little thing, baked wonderful cookies and gladly shared road-worthy recipes.
They took me under their mismatched wings and taught me how to drive the 27-foot-long beast, how to stow everything so it didn't fall out of cupboards and roll around (it still did), how to deploy the awning and use the Onan auxiliary generator, how to fill the water tanks, how to empty the 'grey water' and (this bit was important!) wearing big green oversized gloves, how to empty the 'black water' at the appropriate dumping stations. Ewwww.
The Honey boasted a cab-over queen-sized bed (with ladder), a double bed in the rear, a very well-equipped (very) little ‘galley’ -- with an under-counter mounted Mr. Coffee machine -- which sported a gas-powered fridge, stove and oven and a nice little sink and countertop. A dining table with two bench seats looked out a large wondow. The cozy little bathroom boasted, if not loudly, a toilet, a sink, and a shower over an amazingly small bathtub that was, nevertheless, wonderful on days that demanded a bath.
Internet access -- for working 'on the road' -- would be via modem and a phone cable in some RV parks, or via a floppy disk shipped via FedEx from the next town. I learned to love FedEx!
The Honey was Home. I loved it. Sold the house, sold my hot tub, most of the art (I still wish I had the Bev Doolittle!) and all sorts of everything else. Downsize or die, it seemed, so I did. Everything else I stored or shipped to my daughter in Texas with a Texas-sized house.
Eventually, I knew enough (I hoped) to survive and, thus, with my Compaq laptop, the first little portable HP printer, a Nikon DX40 and a mountain bike stowed in the cab-over bed, off I went. Every night, I sat somewhere, in a campground or beside a river or even once or six dozen times in a WalMart parking lot, and I wrote…first for my clients and then about my travels.
I emailed these often lengthy 'postcards', when the content was suitable to do so (not all days were good days, you know?) to friends and family. For those without email -- a grandmother, aunts and a few friends who hadn't caught up with technology yet, I printed copies and posted them from the next town.
I called this journal RoadNoise.
Twenty-six years later, I live in the woods in Sweden, with a wonderful man and a two-year-old Alaskan Malamute from the Netherlands. I've been to, worked in and lived and travelled to a bunch of other countries around the world along the way. I never stopped writing about it and I still think of it as RoadNoise, even though most of the travel hasn't been of the wheeled variety. Well, until I somehow ended up in Europe…
This is wonderful, Cynthia! I was so engrossed reading this! And now I want to see a photo of the Honey!
What a great adventure, Cynthia! I especially love that you started it at 50. I can't wait to read more!