I continue to implement my complete wintertime routine to stay warm in New Hampshire in June. Add to that one more problem that I don’t typically have in the desert: rain. While my weather apps insist there is a 0% chance of rain, my view out the window and the sound of raindrops on my roof tell me otherwise.
While my stuff from the storage unit is packed into the trailer, I can’t use that space to unpack and sort it. I need to spread things out a bit in order to go through them and decide what to keep and what to toss. I don’t have room in the van for this, either. I’d planned to spread out a bit and set up my tables outside to sort things on, but I can’t do that if it’s raining on and off. I was complaining to my friend Carolyn about this (in New Hampshire, not the same Carolyn who I ride motorcycles with in Los Angeles). She invited me to come over and hang out instead. I really wanted to get some sorting done, but when the sky opened up while I was literally walking from my van to my trailer, I took nature’s hint, gave up, and went over to her place. We hung out until much later than I’d planned, having great conversations and catching up on the past several years since we’d seen each other.
Today, the weather is more of the same, though toasty warm in the 50s right now. That was sarcasm. I’m still running my propane heater in the van to get it up to a reasonable temperature. The 0% chance of rain combined with actual rain continues. The forecast calls for marginally warmer temperatures and rain for the rest of the week, which is when I’d intended to be dealing with stuff from storage. I remembered that we’d set up a pop-up over the cookout last week, so I’m going to borrow that to give myself some covered dry space to sort through things. Then I can at least get through my stuff and figure out what to do with it.
If it wasn’t for my need to deal with stuff from storage, I’d be packing up and heading someplace warm, just like we did two years ago when we bailed out of rainy, cold New England instead of dealing with stuff in storage for exactly the same reason. It figures that the temperature went from 90 to 45 like it just saw a state trooper as soon as I loaded up the trailer and committed to dealing with this now. I’ll just have to tough it out. At least this has confirmed that my new van is as ready for an Arizona winter as the old one was, and that my propane heater will be an effective backup while parked if the new diesel heater conks out. It arrives tomorrow, though I question whether I’ll even be able to install it with the forecasted rain all week. I won’t be able to build my electrical system enclosure until the rain lets up, either.
Smokey Da Van 