ODO: 324,010
Now that we’ve gotten all the administration and paperwork handled we get to rest until container day. Which is only two days away. And really we still need to clean and organize the truck and the camper, and pack for ten days of travel that will include southern Oregon, the Bay Area and Cartagena. We have no idea what to expect in Cartagena, so we pack a little bit of everything. The Eco Reserve is very quiet, not many people visit, which is perfect for us. We make good use of their covered cooking area, and feed lots of scraps to their dogs.
Berne gets to celebrate his first on the road birthday! As a present, the universe sends him a tweaked back. Not what we need while we try to finish up the last odds and ends before tomorrow:
- Clean out the fridge. We’re never sure if people are excited or not when we give away all of our unopened food and condiments. Any fancy mustard fan would be, we always have fancy mustards.
- Hide, I mean secure the fire extinguisher. We got a lot of mixed information about if we could keep our fire extinguisher, so we decided securing it out of sight was the way to go.
- Pack. We’re getting pretty good at packing for several climates out of two carry-on bags. KoKo likes her duffle bag, Berne prefers his backpack if he doesn’t need a lot of bulky layers.
After a couple hours of rest, stretching, and back rubs, Berne is back! We cook the last of our perishable food, and start packing. The rain drives us into hiding just as we finish our packing. There has been some rain on this trip, but Panama rain feels like a faucet has been turned on full blast. During the rain, and this is our fault, the dogs rip our trash to pieces and spread it all over the yard. It’s a quick clean up, but I’m sure their tummies don’t feel great.
Container day. CONTAINER DAY!!!!! So much has been building to this day. And what a day it is! Traffic starts early over here, being on the road by 6:30am does not get us a break. We manage to only be a couple of minutes late thankfully. We caravan with the liaison and our container buddy to the loading site, a gravel and mud lot. Our buddy loads his car first, a black Mercedes. While he gets lined up and loaded, we start prepping the truck. We need to disconnect both batteries and strap down the rear suspension.
There was some miscommunication earlier, and we were only told to forward a picture of our lithium battery (the house battery), and not also the truck battery. The truck battery lives in the backseat, underneath a special cover that is strapped and bolted into the truck. AKA not easy or quick to get at. Well, we need to get at it so the loading people can confirm it is not a lithium battery. Thankfully they are patient with us, and KoKo gets the battery uncovered while Berne straps down the suspension. Why are we strapping down the suspension? The truck has so much wheel travel in the rear, and is so tall, that if the boat “hits a bump” the truck could potentially stand all the way up and smash into the roof of the container, destroying all the things on the roof of the truck. The weird things you need to think of when you turn a desert truck into your house.
Battery signed off, and suspension contained, it’s time to drive onto the loading truck. They back us up to the opening of the container, and Berne slowly backs our house in. It does not look like it will fit, but somehow manages to squeak in. Berne has to wrestle his way out, while another worker hammers blocks around our tires and straps the truck down to the container. We did it. We got the truck into the container. Now we need to entertain ourselves for ten days until we meet again in Cartagena. It’s almost 8am now, and we are both hot and sweaty and dirty, and now we have to get into the liaisons car so she can take us back to Panama City. It’s a few hours until we fly back to the USA, so we use that time to both get very overdue haircuts.
Our first flight is to Houston. It’s very cold, and very uneventful, and we sleep most of the way. The next morning we fly to SFO before boarding our final flight to Medford for family weekend. We spend it at the cabin doing cabin things: riding side by sides, drinking some beers, attending a Halloween party, and fully enjoying our family.
In the blink of an eye, we’re back at the airport heading back to SFO. We have an early dinner of one of the things it’s been hard to find along the way, pho. A good bowl of pho will fix just about anything. Especially a hangover.
In the morning we hit the ground running. We only have a week, and so many things we want to try and get though. It’s time to pretend we live a normal life, and head into the office for the rest of the week. Wish us luck.
