Decluttering

I’ve started making progress on dealing with my stuff from storage. Ally loaned me her pop-up tent, which I’ve set up next to the trailer. I moved my camp tables under it, and now I have a place to work on going through my stuff out of the rain. Naturally, it hasn’t rained since I set it up.

I seem to have collected a great deal of motorcycle luggage over the years. I’ve had this tank bag since soon after I started riding many moons ago. I don’t need it because the V-Strom came with a better tank bag for my current needs. I found a tool bag that bolts to the front of a KLR650. It came with mine, which I don’t own anymore. And, of course, the hard cases that Kate gave me that I’ve been wanting to test fit on my V-Strom are still there. Luggage takes up a lot of space, so I took a bunch of pictures so I can post them online for low prices to make them go away. While I’d been planning to use the hard cases on my V-Strom, I’m concerned that they’re too wide for me to get around them when the bike is inside the trailer. I don’t really need hard cases for the casual riding I’m doing, rather than the serious motorcycle touring that these are made for. I think I’ll pick up some simple soft luggage instead for those small grocery runs into town.

I found a few things Trisha left behind. I was well within my rights to trash them, since she told me there was nothing left in there that she needed. But I got in touch with her anyway to see what she wanted to do about them. This was partly just to do the right thing, and partly to go directly against what I believe was her concern that I was going to trash her stuff in the storage unit. Neither of us was thinking clearly in the aftermath of the breakup, but even then, I’d never do that. She moved her stuff out anyway — or, at least, most of it. She arranged for a local mutual friend to hang onto her things until she comes back to New Hampshire. I delivered them to him in Greenville (the town I lived in before hitting the road full-time) yesterday, and now nothing belonging to her is my responsibility. I’d forgotten that Lee is a mutual friend of ours. I met him over ham radio, while she met him at a restaurant she worked at long before she and I met. We geeked out on radio stuff for a while before I moved on.

I remembered that the gas station/convenience store up the road had cheap gas, as well as a great beer selection. I needed gas and ended up picking up some Shed Mountain Ale, a favorite local brew from when I lived here. While inside, I ran into Alan, my former local mechanic and fellow KLR rider. Naturally, he razzed me about giving up the KLR. We caught up a bit. I haven’t had that small-town feeling of randomly running into someone I know at the store since Quartzsite. I only lived in Greenville for two years, much of it during the pandemic when we were all hiding inside, but clearly, I made a lot of connections in the local community.

As a huge Doctor Who fan for most of my life (before it was cool), I couldn’t resist a short side trip for this photo opportunity — my TARDIS along with the “real” thing. Both are boxes that my companion and I have adventures in through time and space. I only wish that mine was bigger on the inside than the outside. With the Doctor and his adventures such a big influence on me at an early stage of my life, is it any wonder I eventually followed his example? Fortunately, I haven’t had to fight off any Daleks or Cybermen.

The task of getting rid of my old stuff continues. This morning, I put two-and-two together, messaged my old mechanic/KLR friend, and offered him the tool bag, since it’s made specifically to fit an early KLR like ours. He said he’d take it. I’ll bring it down to the shop sometime — on my V-Strom.

I’m also starting to figure out some travel around New England, with the full rig (van, trailer, and bike), for the second half of June. That gives me more than a week to continue the work that pays the bills along with working on sorting and getting rid of or finding uses for my stuff. I’ll be delivering one large table later today.