Author: Steve

Wednesday. It’s a good return to work. A quiet day yesterday. I had decided to leave
at four to get an early start on racquetball. Just before four, the phone
calls started, and didn’t let up until five. No problem. Just lots of
things that needed to be talked about. Today, I did a review for a new client, so I got to go work at their office
all day. Environmental Learning for Kids. They take inner-city kids out
camping and fishing, and teach them some wilderness ethics. The ground is warming. I can tell. I can tell from the ceramic faucets in
the bathroom. They’re the old style, four lobed faucets. It’s easy to
recognize exact positions for water temperature. All winter long, I have
been setting them in one particular configuration. Now, on our return from
a month and a half away, that setting results in a scalding hot shower. The
temperature of the water coming out of the hot water heater hasn’t changed.
The cold water mixing with it has to be warmer. The instant ice water from
our cold water faucet is warming. We like the layout of the motorhome. With one sliding door in the middle,
it’s clearly divided between front and back. We can hang around in the
front in the evening without having to close it all up. When we start
settling down for the night, taking showers and such, we can close the
middle door for privacy and to keep the shower heat back there. We slide
the door back open, last thing, and when we wake up in the morning, we have
a nice bright room out there waiting for us.

Tuesday. It’s all a matter of perspective. This is the first day I’ve driven the
Accord. I moved up to a bigger car from the RX-7, to a nice substantial
Honda sedan. After driving only the motorhome and the Jeep for all this
time, the Honda feels silly. It’s just a little roller skate. It feels
like we let it down off its air suspension and we need to lift it back up
again, except it doesn’t have air suspension. We could use better internet access on our trips. Sometimes the cellphone
hookup worked, but there were a lot of areas that didn’t have cellphone
coverage. The Alpen Rose Park had WiFi. A local wireless internet access.
It was fast when it worked, but it was unreliable. It went out of service a
lot. Clients would let me hook up to their landline phones, but that didn’t
work well either. If their phones had multiple lines coming in, I couldn’t
get past that barrier. We talked to other motorhomers with giant internet
dishes pointed at the sky. They had reliable access, but they were also
planted in one spot. Those dishes didn’t look portable. I expect internet
access to get easier and faster every year. We still need it to be a little
of each. If anyone knows something we should be doing to get better internet service
on the road, we’d appreciate any help.

Monday. We see this stopover in Louisville as just that: a stopover. The trip goes
on. We did settle back into the house a little bit, though. We even spent the
night in it last night. We didn’t have anything at home that needed immediate attention on our
return. Our neighbor Bob did such a good job with the house and yard; we
could come home and just relax. And open the dining room windows. They
haven’t opened in thirty years. No telling how long they had been painted
shut before that. I didn’t get what I expected on this trip. Judy didn’t get what she
expected. She expected more leisure time, more days to fill. It turned out
to be a very busy trip for her. I thought we would have some breaks between
jobs, a more leisurely schedule, more time for contemplation, but it turned
out we needed every day for the jobs we scheduled. It was a busy trip for
me as well. I’ll hope for a little more scheduling cushion next trip.
Actually, I think if we schedule the same, the fact that they’re repeat jobs
will help a lot. It surprised me that we had to restate prior auditors work as much as we
did. Normally, even if you would have done something differently, you can
use the prior auditor’s work as a starting point and just move forward. I
like it better that way.

Sunday. We’re home. To the Louisville house. It’s nice to be home, but not
necessary. It didn’t take long this trip, before we were referring to the
motorhome as “home”, and confusing each other if one of us really meant the
front-range home instead of the motorhome. The motorhome as home is just
fine with us. Our timing was perfect. All that rain and snow we drove through on the way
home turned to snow all over the high country. We drove through a little
slush, but nothing serious. The Chain law went into effect on both passes
since then. I don’t think we want to chain up the Bounder. We’d have been
there a while longer. The mobile office was well received everywhere we went. These jobs weren’t
always easy: for us or for our clients. There were some significant
transitions to make from old accounting ways to more current concepts.
Happily, though, every client still had some semblance of humor left by the
time we left. We don’t appear to have irritated anyone so much that they
won’t invite us back again next year. In fact, several people seemed
downright glad we had come. Each job was in a different city. One job per city. But as a result of
this trip, we know nonprofit organizations in Glenwood Springs, Durango, and
Silverton that we expect to be new clients next time around. Maybe next
year we can do two clients per city.

Saturday. We didn’t need the air conditioner. We didn’t need the heater. We got open
windows and river noise all night. The morning dawned warm and overcast. We hooked up the Jeep and left. The
weather deteriorated. By Delta we were driving in some serious wind and
rain. We had to slow down to fifty for a while, but overall, the Bounder
took the wind well. At Grand Junction, the weather improved to steady rain
without much wind for the rest of the trip. Steady rain, except when it
turned to snow on mountain passes. Big fat flakes covering the windshield.
That highlights how big that windshield really is, when you can just look
out through the wiper blade paths. We missed the steam train. There was no steam train this morning. North. North to Montrose. North to Delta and just glancing off Grand
Junction. Then East. Interstate 70, east to Rifle, Glenwood Springs,
Eagle, Vail, Vail Pass, Copper Mountain, Officer’s Gulch, Frisco,
Silverthorne, Dillon, The Eisenhower Tunnel, Idaho Springs, glanced off
Denver, and home to Louisville. Louisville. The biggest town we’ve been in
lately. As we were driving through the driving rain outside Grand Junction, I got to
wondering about hydroplaning. Cars hydroplane in conditions like this. Do
motorhomes? We weigh thousands and thousands of pounds. Are we immune from
hydroplaning because we’re so heavy it can’t lift us? I decided not to test
the theory. I drove carefully. At the Evergreen exit, just outside Denver, the clouds turned dark, and the
rain turned to hail. Serious lightning. The sun came out just as we left
the mountains. As we approached Louisville, the sky got bright dark. Dark
heavy clouds. Rain. Too dark to wear sunglasses, so we had to take them
off. But the sun was shining through under the clouds from the west so we
had to put the sunglasses back on to cut down the glare. Glaring dark. A three hundred fifty mile day. A little racquetball therapy. It’s not like we’re going to be here for very long. We’re off to Ft. Lupton
next Friday.