First video showing Zach starting down a run.

Second video showing the second half of Zach skiing down the run.

We are hoping to go again this weekend.

Sitting on the back patio smoking a cigar.

Sunset over the olympics.

As for the old home…most things accept for a few car loads and my garden stuff are moved. Steph spent time today cleaning and vacuuming so it should be ready to show.

Did I mention the view from our deck? Sitting outside now at 9:10pm enjoying dusk with a beer – it doesn’t get any better.

We closed on our new house on July 7th.  I moved 30 boxes of stuff over on July 8th.  We flew to Kauai for our big summer vacation on July 9th.  Flew back on July 16th.  Moved stuff all day today.  Packing and moving small stuff after work this week.  Going to the Seattle/ManU game on Wednesday night and our big moving day is Friday.  Oh, and we still haven’t sold our current home, thus our stress levels are tad high.  The Kauai vacation helped that a lot.

First, our new house…very excited to finally have the keys.  Good thing it has a roomy basements cuz we are filling it.  Fortunately, we are probably 2/3s done with moving all non-furniture stuff – so we’ve made really good progress.  We need to box and move things all week so the movers can quickly get our furniture over there.  Since the house closed, the last owners obviously didn’t do much work in the yard so I’ll have plenty of weeding and clean-up to do once we move…just realized I’ll have to do this at two homes…guess I’ll be walking our lawn mower back and forth.

Now for the Kauai trip…one of the most relaxing vacations I’ve ever had.  Now that the boys are older it is easier to hang with them as they are pretty self sufficient when they play.  Our routine was get up, some mornings I went for a run, walk down to Poipu Beach, swim in the water and snorkel, get back by lunchtime, eat, the boys would take naps, then we’d go to the pool for a few hours, then have dinner, and the boys would generally go to sleep early.  On two days we did excursions – one day to the north side of the island where we spent a couple of hours at Tunnels Reef/Beach.  I got to snorkel with sea turtles – one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.  We had a good lunch in Hanalei Bay.  Another day we took a drive up Waimea Canyon and to a viewpoint on the Napali Coast (think Jurassic Park).

We stayed at the Villas at Poipu Kai - awesome place.  We had a 4 bedroom 3.5 bath penthouse poolside villa with it’s own elevator.  Very luxurious – probably the nicest placed I’ve stayed in.  The pool was a good size (not resort huge which was good) – roomy enough to play around but easy enough to keep an eye on the boys.  Nate and Zach are getting better at swimming.  Zach depends on the floaties but he isn’t afraid to jump in the water or go under water.  Nate didn’t like the floaties – he preferred the inflatable tube and he didn’t like going under water.

On the beach the boys loved sitting in the shallow water and letting the little waves run them over – they thought that was the coolest thing ever.  They also enjoyed riding the boogie board on the little waves.  For me, the coolest thing was the snorkeling – I couldn’t get enough of it.  Next time we are bringing more than one snorkel set so we can go out in pairs.

For the photos – all of them are located here.  Below are some of my favorites.

Nice shot of Steph, Jan, and their mom.

Tunnels Reef/Beach where the snorkeling was awesome.

The boys acting out Lord of the Flies.  Nate used cheetos to paint his face!

Looking south from Princeville.

Our cool pool area.

I have lots of these photos…the beach and pool seriously tired them out…it was awesome.

Poipu Beach – this is where we played most of the time (and ran into my parents neighbor’s daughter and family)

In the Grand Hyatt grounds near where we stayed.

Cool clouds south of Waimea Canyon

Nice shot of Jan and Mike.

My beach girl.

Vivid colors of the Napali Coast

View from the starting line.

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/3539-SW-Webster-St-98126/home/470028

We will stay in West Seattle – only moving one block.

A few are shown below if you don’t have time to look at the rest.

View from the master.

Looking at it from the backyard.

The kitchen.

The entrance.

View from the deck.

Steph not so happy about the rain but loving our awning.

Great picture of Steph and the kids.

The boys playing with the surf. First time they’ve experience any form of a wave.

Non-camping photo…Nate crashing one afternoon – he fell asleep sitting at the computer desk.

Our next trip is the American Heritage Campground south of Olympia for two nights over Memorial Day weekend.
 

Saturday morning we had an 8am appt to pickup the RPod at Sutton RV in Eugene (highly recommend them). We finished off our paperwork and then headed across the street to the service department where they had already installed the brake controller and weight distributing hitch.

Next began our walk through of all systems. Since Steph and I have absolutely no towing experience, we were definitely taking our time. Steph was taking notes while I attempted to absorb everything. Mainly I focused on the key things that would get in trouble. There is nothing complicated, but there are probably 30 things you need to do upon arrival or departure so it’s pretty easy (I would think) to forget something. Most things would just result in a draining the battery or something irritating but not harmful. After getting a full review of external and internal switches/levers/buttons, we focused on hitching up. Nothing terribly complex, but you don’t want to forget any particular step here – that could be disastrous.

We drove around Eugene over to a large empty parking lot where we practiced backing up. We used the method where you put your hand at the bottom of the steering wheel and turn in the direction you want the trailer to go. This was tougher than I thought…the key thing I learned during practice is to make very subtle changes to the steering – don’t crank it. And go slow. Once I did that, the trailer seemed to behave better. The ultimate test will come when I have to back it in our driveway – that could be a disaster.

Driving home today was pretty easy. I noticed more tugging/pushing on city streets where the roads are bumpy and less level. Once on the highway, things smoothed out, except when passing semis…I noticed a little wobble/sway at these points, but in the end I got used to it. I kept my speed in the 60 to 65 mph range (I hit 70 once or twice) and we got around 10.5 MPG.

Showing off our new pod.

Back-up practice in an empty parking lot.

Parking at lunch…a little large for a normal spot.

The main reason for picking the 172 – xtra large bunks – about 50% wider than a normal twin.

Storage under the bottom bunk.  Not deep but sizable otherwise.

Kitchen and dinette area.

Wet bath…shower and toilet in one.

Over sink storage and the tv/dvd mounted underneath.

More storage.

It’s home when not travelling.

Now for the most important piece – the name of the R-Pod.

Pod-a-saurus

Now we need to put some dino decals on it.

Before getting into the trip, here is a video of the boys playing at home yesterday.

A quick game of air hockey.

The trip started with my flight through Atlanta to Dublin. Pretty uneventful. Dublin had nice weather – even went running in short sleeves one evening in Phoenix Park. We had some nice dinners at The Pig’s Ear and L’Gueuleton.

A foggy morning view from the hotel in Dublin.

After Dublin I flew over to Paris for a short weekend layover.  I met up with coworkers who were visiting one of our offices in Germany.  I’ve never been to Paris but thoroughly enjoyed the architecture, natural beauty along the river, and historical sites.  I even got an 8 mile run along the Champ Elysees, Seine River, around Notre Dame and back.

Notre Dame is beautiful…doesn’t hurt that it was a great mid-70 degree day.

And at night…

The Arc de Triumph at night.

Eiffel Tower at night across the River Seine

One token picture of me.

Then we flew to Bangalore for the second week.  Here are some stories about visiting India…

You’ll often see 3 to 4 people on a single motorcycle, and I did see a family of 5 on one motorcycle.  2 kids seated in front, then dad who was driving, and the mom on the back holding an infant on her hip…no helmets and all on a small honda motorcycle.  Yes, the infant could have just fallen to the pavement.

Outside of the city, many people have cows as pets.  They line the streets tied to trees, and you see people walking them around town.  Sometimes the cows are just meandering on their own.  Photos below.

There are speedbumps everywhere…on highways and on roads that don’t really need them.  And not just one speed bump but 6 to 8 bumps in a row.  Plus there are police checkpoint barricades up all over the place – some are manned by police, but others are just there apparently to slow people down.

Crossing the streets were interesting…between buses, cars, tuck-tucks, and motorcyles – it is pretty dangerous.  One night while carrying a 12 pack of beer across the street I got caught in the middle for a solid minute with all types of vehicles zooming around me at 25mph…all within inches and some heading right for me but swerving around at the last minute.  Probably my most frightening moment.

People honk and flash their high beams as the approach other cars.  There is no “minding of the lanes” in India either…just drive and go around people and try not to hit pedestrians.

As for food, I only ate at 5 star hotels – including where we stayed at the Taj West End.  This hotel was built in 1887 and people like Winston Churchill had stayed there.  Very old colonial feel – very elegant with beautiful grounds.

I was staying in a room on the second floor of this building.

Excellent Indian food dinner on first night.  And yes, I ate it all with my fingers.

Dinner with coworkers in India.

Cows.  Pets or food?

This cow was either shopping or heading to temple.

Mysore Palace – about 3 hours south of Bangalore.  There are many palaces throughout India.

Glad that wasn’t my ride around town.  Look closely, there are people in the truck behind the ropes.

The grounds in front of the summer palace for Tipu Sultan.

At these palaces I was often asked where I was from.  People wanted to shake my hand and say “Welcome to India”.  They didn’t want anything except to meet the foreigner.  One dad actually shoved his 8 month old daughter into my arms so he could take a picture of me holding his daughter.  He was excited to show his parents and relatives a photo of his daughter with a foreigner.  This was a little freaky but according to our driver it is very normal.

Bunny toilet?  Nope, it’s a trash can.

Monkey thief.  This little guy was opening the bag on the bike looking for food.

Cute, but I wouldn’t get near them.

Coconuts are sold all over in shacks like these.  They hack off the top and you drink the juice through a straw.  I didn’t try it – fear of getting sick.

Check out the traffic in Mysore.

Forest River R-Pod Site

We ordered it this weekend at Sutton RV in Eugene. Mark Henrich helped us and he was awesome – highly recommend this dealer and saleperson if you are in the area. You can see images of our specific model at

R-Pod 172 HRE.

Steph chose the model – mainly due to the large bunk beds – they are almost double beds. So each adult can easily sleep with a kid. This will allow us to leave the dinette alone at night (ie, don’t convert it into a bed). We also got the R-dome awning so we got a large, covered outdoor room attached the r-pod.

I’ve been looking at travel trailers for 5 years and I’ve been very close to picking one but the R-pod is the first to come as close to my likes as anything before. Ok, I’ll admit – I really wanted the Airstream but at 3 times the cost I couldn’t justify it.

The R-pod has an amazing online community at

rpod-owners
and
rpod nation

We’ll be picking it up in 2 months – I’m guessing the first or second weekend in May.