Hello from Alaska!

This photo was taken on a perfect sunny day in Juneau, and right now we’re in Sitka, sitting in the adorable kitchen of our friends Scott and Cleo, watching the gentle SE Alaska rain and listening to the backyard chickens fuss about their breakfast. It’s been fantastic to be back “home” for awhile. But more about that in a minute …

I guess it’s been awhile since you’ve heard anything from us besides camper building stories. There’s other stuff going on, too! First of all, let me say that I *love* my new job. (The one at the search firm, not the bartending job. Although that was fun, too, but between summer travels and camper-building, we needed to leave the bartending gig behind.) I’m working a few hours a day, keeping track of lots of details and having conversations with lots of smart, interesting people. I’m really grateful to have connected with this place and been given the opportunity to join their team. It’s definitely a big part of my week, and it’s so great that I’m able to bring the work with me and stay on top of it, even while we’re in Alaska!

Back in July, I went to Michigan for a couple of weeks to be with my sister Iris for her second round of chemo. She’s doing OK – her body seems to be tolerating the treatments as well as possible. There’s a lot of fatigue and frustration about how this changes her normal routine, but I really admire her courage, strength, and hopefulness. And I’m so glad to have the flexibility and availability to be able to spend time with her through this journey. While there, I overlapped for a couple of days with niece Sophia and her fella Brett – always excellent to spend time with them, too!

OH! And two rather AMAZING coincidences happened: 1) my flight to Michigan got cancelled, but a gate agent worked some magic and re-routed me through Philadelphia. Within 10 minutes I was sitting on a plane, texting my brother who lives 1/2 hr from PHL, and – hooray! – the timing was perfect for him to come pick me up to join them for dinner and crash at their house for the night before I continued on to Michigan the next day. 2) My college roommate and dear-friend-to-this-day, Emily, who now lives in NORWAY, just *happened* to come to a family memorial service in Grand Rapids while I was there! Fortunately she’d been tracking me enough to remember that I was in Michigan and we were able to have lunch together!

Here’s a few photos from my time in Michigan:

  • Spontaneous dinner in Paoli PA with my brother and sis-in-law: Kevin & Kristi.
  • Gathering of Iris’ friends on the bluff of Lake Michigan, including beautiful music and Holden Evening Prayer to launch her into Round 2.
  • Iris and me with our niece, Sophia, enjoying a beautiful walk in the woods that opens up to the beach.
  • Sophia with Brett and the ever-adorable Olive.
  • Refreshments at Guardian Brewery after our hike.
  • Olive!
  • Trimming the flora to make room for the USPS.
  • Oh, how I love my Emily! We met 25 (!!) years ago as freshman roommates and we still manage to find each other at random points on the planet.
  • Beautiful day for a walk near the Grand River.
  • Iris has gotten so many cute hats!
  • Sunset at the lake are always a peaceful way to end the day.

On August 14, we put down the camper project for a bit and set off on a 3-week trip to Juneau & Sitka. We spent 6 days in Juneau visiting several good friends; fortunately the weather was gorgeous, so we also got out on the trails a bit. Now we’re halfway through 2 weeks in Sitka, where we’re also enjoying lots of time with friends, but also doing a little plumbing project under our houses here. I haven’t been as good about taking photos, but here’s a few:

  • We took the train to DC and spent a day there before flying out.
  • I love walking through all the monuments; the MLK Jr one is especially powerful.
  • Lincoln’s Waffle Shop – a total dive diner with excellent waffles, located across the street from Ford’s Theater. Highly recommended!
  • Juneau! Lots of people have been fooled into thinking photos of this sculpture downtown are a real whale. 🙂
  • Nice little walk back Perseverance Trail.
  • Live music at the recently-remodeled Viking Lounge (now called Crystal Saloon).
  • Dinner on the porch with Steve & Jamie.
  • Juneau is amazing on a sunny day, with its big mountains rising high above downtown.
  • Awesome friend Jamie, getting a gentle love squeeze around his fractured shoulder.
  • Cleo’s backyard chickens … as they roam around the yard …
  • … and getting called back to the coop for the night.

All the Pieces Fit

We took some big steps in the past five days! All the cabinets are built and installed, and the sides are now permanently attached. We are on a bit of a time crunch to get the outside road-ready (more on that in an upcoming blog post) so we are saving some of the interior finishing, cabinetry, and painting for later.

The next big steps are: getting the interior roof liner put into place, wiring, and then the exterior skins and paint! We are up for some big challenges figuring out how to bend the roof skins to the teardrop shape. Going to be a big learning curve.

The photos below are grouped by camper component, so some of the pictures are out of sequence from the actual build order, but it is easier to get the idea of what has happened so far.

  • Routing out where the countertop and cabinets will fit.
  • Glued in place.
  • Marking where the galley fits in the camper.
  • Gluing the base.
  • Sliding it in.
  • Perfect fit!
  • Dad working out the locking slide drawers.
  • This took a lot of figuring.
  • Water and cooler lock in under the counter top.
  • Drawers also lock when out.
  • Building the cabinets that make the headboard, and help form the forward curve of the camper.
  • Once the shelves were done, we built a face board. There were lots of holes to drill.
  • So many holes.
  • Then making the cut outs.
  • So much sanding.
  • Attaching the face board with glue and…
  • pocket screws!
  • Oh yes, we love the pocket screws.
  • The headboard cabinet dry-fit in the camper.
  • And from the pretty side. Notice all the clamps.
  • There is also a cabinet at our feet.
  • More holes and cutouts.
  • More pocket screws.
  • Eventually, we will build sliding panels for this cabinet, and some of the storage in the headboard cabinet.
  • Gluing where the side walls meet the camper floor.
  • Wood glue for the forward cabinet.
  • We use plastic playing cards to spread the glue.
  • Some clamps.
  • All the clamps.
  • Walls and cabinets locked in!

Postcards from the Camper Build

  • Building the floor. A plywood and styrofoam sandwich.
  • Coating the underside of the floor where it will be exposed to the elements.
  • Floor flipped and in place. There were some very specific measurements here. The wall edge will sit on this little plywood ledge.
  • Once the floor was in place we could dry-fit the walls. They won’t be permanent until we build the cabinets.
  • Inside view.
  • Here’s a side view of how all the wall and floor layers fit together.

The Build Is Going To Move a Bit Faster Now…

Some exciting things happened last week, on the same day! We got our trailer, and I got covid*!

*Well, I didn’t get tested. What I got was a five-day illness with flu-like symptoms consistent with the symptoms of the covid pandemic.

So, as agonizing as the wait has been for getting the metal part of the camper manufactured so that the rest can be built on it, I still had to wait until this week to be able-bodied enough to do anything about it. 

We took the trailer to a friend’s shop to get it painted, welded, and tired. I don’t think we could have knocked out the trailer to-do’s without him. So, please raise a glass to Ed Hammond at your next social gathering.

  • Putting the trailer on a trailer at Atlantic Metal Products. One nice surprise is that they primed it. That saved a lot of labor.
  • That’s Ed Hammond welding the torsion bar to the axle-less suspension.
  • Trailer in repose.
  • Ready to put some wood on that thing!

There were a few goofy things that happened during the trailer build. I’ll have another chapter of “Lessons Learned” regarding those pretty soon, but for now, I need to get out there and start building that camper!

Small Step, Big News

Today I applied poly resin to completely waterproof a section of the side wall that will go against the metal part of the trailer. Epoxy resin is in every hardware store around here because of all the boats. I was describing the steps for the camper build to a friend of mine who lives on a sailboat, and he said, “Oh, just like building a boat – got it.” I think some of the steps for putting this thing together may be confusing to folks who are used to putting together houses. No screws here – the constant vibrations of the road would jiggle them loose. Everything is built to glue together whenever possible, with the storage compartments designed to add structure to the whole. Every seam is sealed, every exterior surface coated in plastic. 

Not that I’ve ever built a boat before, either. With every step of the build, even at these early stages, I keep thinking, “The NEXT time I do this…” It is such a fun course in Applied Camper Building I’m taking!

And how about some more exciting news? My lead for welding the trailer paid off. I should be picking up the frame next week! I ask of you all to go to a social gathering and raise a glass and a cheer for Atlantic Metal Products of Topping Virginia. May their praises be heard across the land! This is a Grown-Up metal shop and I think welding this trailer is a way puny job for them, but through a barroom buddy connection the president of the company agreed to kick this out for Kayla and I. Expect the build to really kick into high gear next week!

Interior Skins Glued and Cut

The inside walls of the camper (we call them “skins” in the business) have been glued to the side walls. Then we used a flush-trimming router bit to cut the walls to the correct shape. This was a big chance to do some more CNC Goof correcting as well. 

  • Applying glue to the side walls. We used 1/8″ luan plywood for the interior skin.
  • Our genius system for putting weight evenly across the side wall. It didn’t really work.
  • Untrimmed skin on the sidewall, heading to the shop for trimming.
  • Using a flush router bit to trim the panels to the curves.
  • Gluing some extra wood to cover a CNC goof.
  • Meanwhile, Kayla cut the styrofoam panels that fill some of the spaces in the side walls.
  • The interior skin. Those white patches are where I had to sand the luan where it had buckled while being glued.
  • The outside view, showing the styrofoam. Eventually the outside skin will cover all these.
  • Closer detail of some of the routing. The wall/ceiling skin will follow this inside curve.

We are still awaiting word on when the welding of the trailer will even start. The guy I had lined up for the work has already pushed the date back from mid-July to “maybe late July or early August.” I’ve got a new contact for a company that might do me a favor and get this done earlier – I’m still pursuing that lead. The way the camper is designed to be built, it really needs to have a trailer under it before going much further. All the other walls (floor and ceiling) are built based on the trailer width, which you can pretty much expect to vary a bit from the design.

Doesn’t seem so hard, does it?

Still, I’ve got a few things to do and lear before we hit a dead end of needing the trailer to continue any work. I’ve got to learn some more about DC electronics, and how I’m going to route power from our solar battery to all the lights and whatnots on and in the camper. There’s also a wee bit more to do with the sides. I guess if worse comes to worse, we can build the camper body on a wooden frame and then, a) have to figure out how to lift it onto the metal trailer when it finally gets welded, and b) hope that the trailer fits!

Scenes from the bar, and 07/07/07

Happy anniversary to us!! Many of you were there with us FIFTEEN YEARS ago to witness and help us celebrate our partnership and commitment — wow, those were an amazing couple of weeks! As some of you know, we were hoping to use our 15th anniversary as an excuse to bring all our lovely friends together again, maybe for a camp-out music jam grillfest extravaganza … one or two of you might have even marked it on your calendars? Don’t worry, it’s not that your invitation got lost in the mail, we just couldn’t pull it together this year. But it sure would be fun! Maybe next year?

We had such a long weekend at the Deltaville Tap last weekend. Both of us worked about 40 hours in 4 days, from open to close every day. Man, did we open a lot of beers and pour a lot of rum punch! Definitely exhausting, but there were some fun moments. On Monday we seized control of the bar music and chose an “essential 80s hits” playlist. Turns out 80s music really works for everyone! Our 20-something coworkers were bobbing their heads to the beat as they shucked oysters and delivered burgers. Parents explained to their children that Nena is German and that’s why she sings 99 Luftballoons with an accent. We could audibly hear people across the restaurant singing “Livin on a Prayer.” And we happened to have a bar full of 40/50-somethings who knew every word to every song, so it was a big fun singalong.

There are a couple of new, very young servers who have joined the staff. They’re sweet as can be, but bless their hearts, they know nothing about drinking and not so much about eating either. Some examples:

Very Young Server #1, while staring at the top shelf liquor bottles: “She wants a corona with lime, I’m just trying to see what liquor that is so I can ring it in.”

Very Young Server #1, again while staring at the top shelf liquor bottles: “They want a caboway, or something like that.”
Kayla: “Was it Cabo Wabo?” (which is a tequila)
VYS1: “Yes, that sounds right. I see ‘cabernet’ in the system, is that what I should use?”

And my favorite:
Very Young Server #2: “Did you get my order for a shrimp cocktail?”
Kayla: “A shrimp cocktail isn’t actually a drinking cocktail. It’s an appetizer, so that ticket would have gone to the kitchen.”

Poor things. That’s a steep learning curve!

One afternoon we had a fun family of five come in: older couple and three folks in their early 50s. They sat at the bar and had a grand old time, and talked with us a lot. They especially like Matthew and his crazy hair. It was a pretty busy day, so both of us were running back and forth, making lots of drinks, taking orders at the window, etc. The family watched us and commented on how well we work together, what great bartenders we are, etc. When they were getting ready to leave and paying, they asked me whether we would split their tip or should they tip each of us. I said we’d split it, but that it all ends up in the same place anyway because … we’re married! And all together the five of them shouted “HOORAAYYY!” like that was the best surprise and best news of the day. Hahahaaaa cracks me up.

I wish you could all sit at the bar and listen to our general manager keep the line cooks in order. He usually plays the role of expeditor, standing at the window to the kitchen shouting back to the staff what orders are coming in, what they should be paying attention to, making sure they get all the special instructions, and then getting plates into hands of servers to run them out to tables. He uses some great diner language to do this: “You got some crab puppies that just walked in.” “Watch out for that crab cake sandwich wearing O-rings.” And one day, after the sound of breaking dishes from the kitchen: “Danny, if you see the word ‘china’ on your next paycheck, it’s nothing about any sort of trip we’re sending you on.”

One of the owners of the restaurant was sitting at the bar with a couple of his friends the other night. He’s pretty arrogant, and can be rude and demeaning. This was kind of a fun exchange:
Kayla: (uses a 6-syllable word)
OwnerMan: Wow, big word! You went to college, didn’t you.
Kayla: Yep, sure did.
OwnerMan: Where did you go to college?
Kayla: Which time?
OwnerMan: You have a MASTER’S DEGREE?!?!
Kayla: (smiles)
OwnerMan: You could be pulling in $200K with that! What are you doing!?! (with a tone of “are you stupid” in his voice)
Kayla: I’m doing whatever I want to!
OwnerMan: Matthew, what about you?
Matthew: Masters of Science in Applied Sociology.
OwnerMan: WHAT!?!?!

Ahhh … ha ha ha. It’s just not all about money for us. As we celebrate our anniversary today, I’m again full of gratitude and awe for how well Matthew and I live and work together, and how we share a vision for our life that prioritizes the people we love and an openness to new adventures, experiences, and perspectives. Although this past year hasn’t gone exactly to plan (notably: we thought for sure we’d have a camper built by now and we’d be off wandering around somewhere), I’m really glad for the significant time we’ve had in Michigan and here in Virginia, and appreciate all of this as part of the journey. Plus, I’m super grateful to have the flexibility and ability to spend time with family and friends when they need it most. So, cheers to you, Matthew. Let’s see what we can do with the next 15 years!

Lessons Learned – vol 1

We’ve been working on the glued panels a bit and boy have I learned a few things about what CNC routing can and can’t do. There’s been a lot of variance in thickness in the panels, particularly where two panels join. We’ve also run into some issues with some of the routes not being consistent in depth or placement. When we laid the panels on top of each other, one side was over 1/2 inch longer than the other! Yikes! It’s been a bit disappointing – a lot more work has gone into cutting, routing, and sanding than I had hoped (particularly given how expensive the CNC work was). One particular and persistent problem is where our CNC guy used a different type of plywood for one of the six side panel pieces. The plywood was warped, and of a different thickness, so it really caused some trouble. 

The good news is that we still have plenty of time to wrestle the sides into something closer to the design specs, as we are still waiting for the welding of the trailer to begin.

I still am grateful for the CNC routing for all the curvy bits. A big part of what makes a teardrop a teardrop are those beautiful compound curves that make the shape. Not only were the curves of the side panels cut by a robot, but all the curved supports that will bend the roof to their will. I’ve done some dry-fitting tests and it looks like those roof ribs are just the way I need them. Proof of whether that is true will come when it is time fit the roof skins on. 

If I were to do this thing again, I think I would try one of these options:

Option A: Just have one side CNC, and all those curvy roof bits, cut. So, instead of paying for six panels to be cut and shaped, just have three of them done this way. I wouldn’t have any of the routing done prior to joining the panels. We would take the time to hand-route the lap joints to make sure the panels are joined even. Once we have those three pieces glued to make one side, we have a template that we can use to form the other side. I would first join and glue the other side plywood as a large rectangle first, Then, lay the other finished side on it, screw the two together, and use a flush bit on a strong router to cut the shape. 

Option B: CNC cut a template, and take it from there. In this instance, we could use cheaper, thinner plywood to have the curves of the camper cut – maybe just from one 4×8 sheet. These template pieces could then be used as a router guide to cut one side of the trailer (using the glued rectangle technique described above). Then we have a completed side to use as a template for the other side. Make sense? This method would require hand routing all those roof curvy bits, but I’m not too intimidated by that. 

But, that’s for next time. I need to get back to the shop and keep plugging away! 

Re-routing a section that didn’t get done properly with the CNC robot.