Wow..it's been a while....

Hi all, I have been caught up in being at our home in NM and enjoying my friends here. I get so much from our conversations, playing with machinery, eating good food and enjoying fellowship.

The holidays are nearly past now and I get to see my wife for a week very soon. I am missing her a lot. This lifestyle is working out pretty well but is hard to get used to.

I have the Chinooky prepared for another trip with a rack on the back for my Honda trail bike and the bike is prepared for some good desert time. I have made some adjustments on the interior of the van, eliminated a few things and added a few things for experimenting. I recently made a small, portable fire pan so I can have a campfire when otherwise it would be illegal. I will see if I use it enough to carry it.

I like my 12Volt Burton stove and will have that along to make dinner while driving! Kit bought me a USB connected GPS so I won't get lost like I did in Pennsylvania last summer. I must say it is a lot harder to get lost out west where you can see for miles instead of being enclosed by trees. Some of my VanDweller and VanTramp friends are using GPS waypoints or whatever they are called to let each other know where they are camped so it should prove good for finding them when needed.

My friend Jon B. and I will head west around the middle of January for some desert riding, camping and hopefully meeting up with some of my internet friends. Jon has a Dodge Caravan conversion van and a Honda trail bike on the back of that as well.

I hope to head north in march or April in the Chinooky to see Kit again and spend a bit of time in Missoula with her. Then perhaps a summer of sidecaring, spending time with my sons and grandkids and catching a few Washington state and British Columbia sidecar rallies, also a real estate hunt for a campsite in WA.

Kit and I do plan to be at the AA International Convention in San Antonio the first week in July as well. This will be our fifth.

Other than that, I am feeling good, am in good general health and am in the monitoring mode on existing health problems. "I am in pretty good shape for the shape I am in"

I am ending the present year and starting the new one with a great deal of gratitude for my very blessed life. I love having you all in my life and send prayers and thoughts for your well-being and abundance as you celebrate each moment of your lives.
ManyWheels

Ahhhh...TorC....and your hot, healing waters....

So, the journey transforms now to a more grounded routine with friends and chores and my favorite little backwater town in the world.

My drive-around was a total of 13,000 miles and about three or four months of vandwelling.

I was able to see my step-mom in the care-home and say my goodbye as she is 93 and slowly slipping away. I spent time with my sons and their families, I saw a number of old friends and stayed for a while in their camps and homes. Spent a couple of days with one of my brothers and his family. Met face to face and camped with some VanDweller internet friends. I also saw some very beautiful parts of this huge country and spent some time in mourning what we have done to it in the name of progress.

I do not have anything profound to say about what I learned. I do think that as usual, I find that when I travel and talk to folks , anywhere in the world that I have been, most people are pretty amazing and kind. It always gives me hope.

Mostly what I learned was about me and my walking on this earth. Isn't that what it is always about, no matter what we say about others? I feel like I am enormously gifted with blessings. I am so grateful to have begun to awaken, to learn that what I give is returned ten-fold, that love is never exhausted and that I have enough senses left to enjoy this amazing spaceship we live on. The awesomeness of being here, now sometimes overwhelms me.


Blessings,
ManyWheels

Along the Natchez Trace...

So now after a very nice week visit with some of my old friends from my Oregon time who have returned to their roots in the North Carolina "mountains" (?) I am officially back on the road...
They have a pretty place to do their lives in and they treat it well. Both artists in their own right and it is always a pleasure to see what they have wrought from natural and salvaged materials...
This time they played a couple of songs and harmonized a bit and it was sweet....

The Trace is an old track 444 miles long, stretching from Natches, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee that is more than 200 years old...mostly a sunken mossy ditch now it is an excuse for a beautiful parkway maintained and cared for by the National Park Service. There is ever so much history all along the trace and I don't have the time to do it justice at all....I am starting to itch to be with my friends at home in NM and my garage is calling me....

Unfortunately there have been some bruised and battered egos on my favorite forum online and it has resulted in a few of my favorite personalities leaving the group...I am stepping back for a while as I don't want to add fuel to the fire and will miss those folks...I will catch back up when I arrive in TorC and have a better connection and more time for that...if there is anyone from there reading this...take it easy and know that you are loved and missed...maybe not take it too seriously...

That's about it...I am in a free NPS campground tonight along the Trace....and camping early....
Peace,
ManyWheels

well along the way...

Gosh, it has been ages since I have had good enough internet access to do a catch up post to my blog. I have been slowly moving down the Shenandoah Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway from Virginia to North Carolina and am currently in Asheville, NC

I had a great but short visit with one of my Vandweller sisters, TwoKnivesKate at a campground near the huge Primitive Campout she was going to attend in Lancaster County, the land of the Amish people. Other than my visit with Kate, the high point for me was to go to the big supermarket nearby and see the Amish buggies parked in a row with the horses tethered to hitching posts outside. I think they are so cool. The religion may be a bit harsh on women...but who's converting...I say....Whatever you can say about them, they hold fast to their beliefs.

I am just amazed at how beautiful the Blue Ridge is...maybe some of the best scenery in Virginia and North Carolina...just awesome and I can see the huge attraction to motorcyclists. The speed limit is 35 on the Skyline Drive and 45 on the Parkway so you are forced to just look and enjoy. If you do as I do and listen to some favorite spiritual music....it is very easy to be in the present and see the work of the Creator.

Be well,
ManyWheels

Locust lake State Park, PA

A short catch up....I spent a night and some hours with our friends Joven and Sally who live near Montpelier, VT. A very nice quiet visit and dinner and a chance to see Joven's latest house renovation on a house they bought in Montpelier...they will sell it when done. They actually make their living as landlords of a few buildings there and in Mexico.

Then off down Vermont Rt.100, a local two lane that runs through my old town of Weston. I spent the day reminiscing and sort of bumming on the effects of "progress" and getting very philosophical about the demise of culture brought about by widening and building roads. I ended up in East Dorset, VT at the Wilson House, a now-restored hotel once lived in by Bill Wilson (one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous) as a child. It is now a not for profit foundation and run as a bed and breakfast with groups bringing AA meetings there every day. What a joy to attend AA and Alanon meetings there that night and meet a fella that was a couple of years behind me at Burr and Burton Seminary in Manchester Center.

I camped out at the Emerald Lake State campground and the next day drove around Manchester and visited my old high school. I went in and looked through the class of '62 yearbook and thought some about old schoolmates...I did not graduate there and only attended for half my sophomore and my junior years so did not have a long history with it. It is huge now with several large stone buildings built since I went there. It is also Bill Wilson's alma mater. Apparently a very highly ranked semi-private school with 84%+ graduates attending college. I was not one of their golden boys...that's for sure...

I then drove down the Hudson River in NY for a while, marveling at all the closed and abandoned mills and factories. Pretty much a marathon drive from there on as camping has gotten way out of hand price-wise...$23 + for state parks and as high as $33 for a space in a private campground. For me that takes away any thoughts of camping for a few days in one spot and enjoying the woods...I am actually very much missing the west at this point and am having a hard time staying in the present and enjoying where I am....No wonder there are so few campgrounds out here...who can support those costs? I can say for sure that I have no plans for any more camping trips out east.

Soon to be visiting a sidecar shop in Middlebury and then a visit with twokniveskate at the Muddy Run Rondy she goes to and then south again...

Until later,
Many Wheels