Pushing the Limits

In our new lifestyle, I have learned that Jonathan and I like to push the limits, each in our own ways. When Jonathan drives, his mindset is “I can do it!” When there is a muddy hill, he will get us off of it. When there is water on the road, he will get us through it. Of course, he isn’t doing it haphazardly or without evaluating the situation, thoroughly, but it does always make me a bit nervous: AAA doesn’t work in Mexico…

Some of his recent exploits:

A hill with a wind-block built for tent campers at Crystal Forest Gift Shop Campground at Petrified Forest National Park:
When we left, it was so muddy that my flip-flops collected 1” of mud on them. The trick was just not to stop. We left some nice tracks through the campground, I am sure they weren’t fond of us.



When driving to our next potential campsite at Ironwood Forest National Monument, we came across a flooded road. He took the first two with no problem or hesitation, despite the warning to not enter when flooded.

The last one stopped us though, it was probably 2 feet deep in the middle. I believe this was a result of irresponsible flood-irrigation farming. I had to find another route.



Now I on the other hand, will push the limits on my designs. Which is why I end up with drawer designs that look this:



I often have to sand off a quarter-inch or more to make it fit.

Or, I have to do things like this to make it fit:




Cutting corners off.

Cutting off already-glued-on sides to make the tray 1/8” smaller in width, then gluing them back on.

Fitting in as much as I can is my limit-pushing, which is also what leads me to put in as much as we can do in a day. Probably why we ended up driving through some crazy-strong winds only to drive 28 miles through Petrified Forest National Park to our campground. Jonathan may complain about the driving, but I definitely found it worth it to discover the wonders of the petrified trees.

Realizations, and the Need for Moar

The simplest things in life are not nearly as incontrovertible as they may seem.  I often find myself wondering about the series of actions, the cause and effect, that has led me to this very instant.  Of course, such thoughts often lead to the even more existential possibilities of how I, or my place in life, may be altered by changing past events and actions.  Of course, this train of thought is always immediately followed by the question of how alterations to the past could drive me to crazed heights of genius which would logically then result in the creation of an 115ft tall robot.  (Anime and Cartoon Network have ruined me for reality.)

The above was composed by my pre-frontal cortex as I desperately attempted to avoid scaring the bejesus  out of the perfectly normal drivers of non-obsolete cars that the lube jockey behind the parts counter can actually pronounce the names of.  While my basic reflexes and motion-detection brain bits are occupied keeping me alive, my higher-cognitive functions get bored and start screwing with me.  The more hairy the situation, the more ridiculous the shenanigans my brain will pull on me. This one time when I was trapped under a mower deck, my brain solved the incongruities of string theory, I swear.  I would in no way be surprised if Albert Einstein came up with his best ideas while juggling hand grenades, or Thomas Edison while playing five fingers with his favorite knife. 


It was a warm day, a red day, a fracking windy day.  No, seriously, it was crazy windy.  This is a serious matter to me.  To fully impart the impact of  high winds upon your psyche, it is important to understand Chuck.  Chuck has the aerodynamics of a brick.  Literally, he is a brick on wheels.  He also has manual steering combined with enormous steering wheel.

Errrr, emmm nice try Google images...

When the winds break 20mph, it is both-hands-on-the-wheel time.  There is no wrist at the 12:00 position, leaned-back, relaxed cruisin'.  It's a good thing I spent so many hours playing Sega GT as a teenager.  It taught me important things such as "a turbo and wider tires make everything faster" and "the E-brake is the easiest solution for hairpin turns."

This is a static photo, no motion, the winds had slowed to a relaxed  20mph at this point.

Today, the winds were constant at 35mph, with gusts to 60mph.  My knuckles were white, I was blinking one eye at a time to avoid the deadly Salsosa tragus, which the public call by such a harmless name as tumbleweed.  These were no normal weeds, at over 3 feet in diameter, these beasts can crush a grill at the speeds they were flying.  Add the 40mph of the weeds to my 45+mph and these beasties were already going faster than Chuck ever has. The dust was thick, drifting across the road, settling on Chucks windshield, and the lid of my water cup... I am still finding sand in my teeth.  Just so you don't think I am some kind of wind pansy, a 34 miles section of I-40 was closed due to drifting sand, and white-out (tan-out?) conditions.
Of course, through all of this Jen was doing what any faithful wife would, sleeping.  Not the dozing lightly kind.  Her head was lolling left and right with the wind gusts, her slack jaw oscillated with the crappy New Mexico roads.  Sometimes her subconscious (though not entirely undeserved) faith in my driving skills is somewhat disconcerting.

As I climb the hills, valleys, and mountains of I-40 westbound, it occurs to me, that this would be much better if I could go the speed limit.  Seriously, every time the wind shifted to head on, my speed would drop 10mph, add the requisite 10mph loss for grades over 2% and we were chugging along at 45-50mph.  Even the semis were getting annoyed with me (stupid turbo diesels...).  I have discovered that Chuck needs Moar HP.  Between the wind, altitude, and steep grades, 110HP was not enough.  At 7000ft that 110 is more like 100HP.  Of course, our funds are pretty limited at this point.  So it looks like I will just get used to staying in the slow lane.  If you happen to have a 1.8T, G60, or Subaru 2.2/2.5 engine laying about, feel free to donate it to the Underpowered Camper Vans of America Charity.  UCVAC may or may not consist solely of Chuck.

Vroom Vroom?

On a somewhat related note, I have discovered that not only does Jen love all plants living with an unholy passion, she also loves plants that are millions of years dead too.

Petrified wood, apparently just as cute as real wood.

Updating the Kitchen

It is jen again, finally… Forgive me for my long absence in posting. While stateside updating Chuck, I just have so much to do that I cannot take time to write a post. Or, I get so tired that I just crash and am incapable of doing anything coherent. The good part about my hiatus is that it got Jonathan to post a bit more, so you did get to hear his entertaining writing voice.

So, what have I been up to that I ignored the throngs wanting to read my posts? ;) Well, as you have probably read in Jonathan’s recent posts, we were updating Chuck. First, it was a fridge. But, since Jonathan had to pull out the whole galley to do that, I decided that I had to have pull-out shelving to replace the nasty, cramped shelving under the sink. That led to a full week of designing new shelves.

I designed them in Google SketchUp like the over-achieving engineer that I am.

With the new TF65 fridge that Jonathan put in, we had a whole 5” of empty space to play with, so I got to design a drawer there as well.

And then since I didn’t have any other original doors on the galley, I thought I might as well update that drawer to the shape that the later vans use. The original drawer ended about 6” deep where the sink drain came down. However, newer vans are a U shape that utilizes the space around the drain. That is what I did. Not only did I design this drawer, but I fabricated it all by myself as well, which is a first. Despite several years of shop in middle and high school and several years of engineering labs, I was never allowed to do something all on my own without someone else taking over to “help” me. So, I am rather proud of myself. Turns out that I am good with cutting wood. Unfortunately, all the things you actually see like the drilling holes for the handle and connecting the face plate to the drawer, I am not very good at.


 

And, well, since we were adding a fridge that could keep a more consistent temperature and hold more things, I might as well as add an oven too, right? Especially with all this storage space we were adding. I actually was inspired by a blog about living full-time in an RV and there was a section for solar-oven cooking. I was thrilled by the idea. Looking into them though, they took up a decent amount of space that I didn’t really have, and they took a while to cook food, not to mention the fact that they were costly if you didn’t make it yourself. I was getting disappointed and then I came across the Coleman camp oven, a 12”x12”x12” foldable oven that was meant to be used on a Coleman gas stove. I figured that would work well on my gas stove.



After it was delivered, I was ecstatic. It opened up to a 12” cube and folded down to one square foot about 3” tall, so it would fit perfectly in the new under-fridge drawer. I wanted to test it out the oven capabilities, so I decided to make Alton Brown’s pocket pies as its maiden dish. Upon finishing the prep work, I took a plate out to the van to bake them. I was terribly disappointed to find that the galley lid lip pushed the oven just enough to make it unstable, which just wouldn’t be smart in a 60-sq-ft living space. I was deflated for days.

From there, I went on a roller coaster of emotions between hope and disappointment. Jonathan tried his best to come up with ideas and to comfort me but with no success. Based on his suggestions, I thought maybe we could get a portable camp stove to hook up to the van’s propane supply, but I couldn’t get enough info on the stoves or the only thing they would take is high-pressure propane, and it would be difficult to get that from Chuck. I didn’t want to compromise the safety of the propane system. So, another no-go. Then, I thought we might be able to make our own stove using disposable cake pans clipped together with holes in the top and bottom and a rack in between them. On that test, it slowly started smoking, I looked in the “oven” but didn’t see a cause. I called Jonathan out to investigate. But when he arrived, I checked again and discovered that a large hole had been burned in the bottom pan: smoking cause revealed. Jonathan suggested that as long as we didn’t let the flame touch the pan anymore that it would work, but I didn’t want to risk such a flimsy device. At this point, I decided that I would just have to make the Coleman camp oven work by tying a strap to it and putting a heat-resistant pad between lid and the oven.

Of course, now with a working oven and fridge, perhaps I should expand my cooking utensils to fully utilize the capabilities? So, per Jonathan’s suggestion, I started looking into silicone bakeware. Unfortunately, no store has them in stock, but Amazon Prime allows me to get them shipped to me in 2 days or less for free or cheap. Seriously, free 2-day shipping and $3.99/item 1-day shipping is really amazing and addicting. I highly recommend Amazon Prime, plus you get access to hundreds of movies and books for free or cheap. So these little guys made it into my possession. What do I like about them? They easily release the food (just like non-stick when you spray them with oil), you can fold or roll them for storage, and they don’t make any noises in our van as we traverse bumpy roads. All these fit in my under-fridge drawer.

People often complain about these changing the cooking times of the item. I wouldn’t really know, as I have started using internal temperature as my guideline for determining if food is done. This little guy is invaluable in that endeavor. For example, I just cooked some cupcakes to internal temperature of 205°F with great success. I was starving for something sweet at my parents’ lake house with nothing to eat. So, I cooked these up using the above-mentioned utensils. Also, since there was not a hand blender at the lake and I didn’t want to pull out the stand mixer, I also tested out this handheld beater, provided by my mother-in-law as belated-Jonathan-birthday-and-Christmas-and-early-Jen-birthday present.

Adding blueberries made it extremely delicious, and Jonathan gives props for the chocolate chips.

Oooh, I almost forgot! We also updated our kitchen knives. Up until this, we had been using some old steak knives obtained from my grandparents and some cheap ever-sharp knives. They were so bad that I couldn’t get Jonathan to help me with cooking at all. So I thought I would remedy this while in the States this time. While in Branson, I picked up a set of four different Chicago Cutlery knives. Man, let me tell you, if you have never had a really good set of knives, you are missing out. These knives are AMAZING. Cutting through a tomato is like cutting through butter. They are literally sharp enough to take off my fingerprint when running your thumb across the edge. I don’t know about you, but I watch anime and Food Network’s Good Eats (God bless Alton Brown for teaching Jonathan to cook), and I was always jealous of the people who could easily and rapidly chop vegetables in even slices. Let me let you in on a secret: this is possible because they have amazing, sharp knives. So, go out and do it! Buy a nice knife! I highly recommend the Chicago Cutlery Chef knife.

Last addition was a set of nesting pots by GSI. They are durable non-stick and come with lids with built-in strainers. We had been using stainless steel previously. They worked well, I just had issues with storing them. And, little did I know how much time it was taking to clean them until I had to clean the new set. It literally took 5 minutes to clean the stainless steel pots after making a Knorr pasta packet. These new pots take 30 seconds. Love it!

In summation, my new cooking experience in the van is going to be much improved. I am excited to test it out. Now I just need some recipes… So if you know of any good recipes that can be made with ingredients obtainable in Central America, be sure to inform me of them.