Luckily we were just beginning our Trial Run when we got the call that Shar’s father took a turn for the worse and were able to quickly get to Canby.
Even with the sadness of her father's condition we managed to practice a few aspects of our upcoming trip and were able to overcome a couple of potential difficulties.
First, was the packing of the car. It appears as if there will be sufficient room to accommodate all of the stuff we plan on bringing, perhaps even enough room to add a small folding table. I did find a folding table at the beach, but its pretty bulky and I’ll be looking for something else that is both lighter and takes up less space.
Saturday morning, Shar and I tried out the JetBoil to make our morning coffee. It was a learning experience. It took less than 1:45 to bring 2 cups of water to a roiling boil, which is amazing. Some of the difficulties were that the French press adaptor works, but coffee grounds did manage to infiltrate the coffee. Clean-up was labor intensive as well. Next time I will remember to remove the cozy before cleaning out the grounds. On a good note the coffee was awesome.
As for blogging on the go… I’m using Pages to do the typing of the blog and will look at linking my phone to upload vs waiting for a wifi hotspot. That will be dependent on how much data a page with pictures ends up using. Well, I did a test run and found out it consumed an incredible amount of data to upload a blog page. I'll do the typing on Pages, hit a wifi spot, and then add pictures. I tried imbedding them into page, but so far they haven't transferred over using a copy and paste.
The trial run for sleeping in Shar's Scion is set up for the night. We pulled "Alfie" into her parent's driveway and spent about twenty five minutes setting things up, a process that will get quicker with practice and time.
Shar got a windshield screen, then worked with her mom to create curtains for each side to very effectively cover both sets of windows on the driver and passenger side. A huge step up from my idea of a few roll down sun shields you might put up when you have a baby in the back seat. We added a piece of fabric held up with bungie cords over the hatchback window, and the result is a snug little nest that on the first test was pretty comfortable. Everything except the two camp chairs fit in the space after the front seats have been pushed all the way up or the nook where back seat passengers feet would be sitting. We stashed the chairs under the car, but I'm already reconsidering that due to forgetting them and driving away. The red ice chest with one of the extra blankets on top, and The Kitchen with the other extra blanket on top are act as air mattress support, keeping our heads from leaning down. The other bulky item, the grey foam pieces, are spread out under the mattress for additional comfort. Overall, We're very impressed with our ingenuity and are hopeful for a good night's sleep. Well, circumstances deemed that a good night's sleep wasn't in the cards, so we tested our new car "camper" with a two hour nap on Sunday. Not only was it comfy, but it was less than 20 minutes going from "sleep mode" to "driving mode". We've already brainstormed ways of cutting off some time for that conversion. When we want a change of pace we can pitch the tent, but I don't feel the worry that we might have to because of comfort.
...And on a side note, Solo was a good movie even after a long day work and a 10:20 film start.
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