theboondork's RV blog

A decision has been made !

9/6/2021

Clicking the pics will make the birds look bigger.

That's Pike's Peak on the left. Most pictures of Pike's Peak you see are taken from Colorado Springs showing the East side of the peak, I took this picture from the town I used to live in, which shows the north side of Pike's Peak.

It appears the day of my big decision is finally here. So after much consideration, deliberation, consultation, speculation, confabulation, and yes, even meditation, I have decided to live in the little Bronco this winter.... Or at least as long as I can stand it.

This decision wasn't easy because, just like the difficulty of moving from my three-story house into the Arctic Fox, this will be like moving from the Arctic Fox into a phone booth. [for those of you less than 50 years old, a phone booth is a tall skinny box on the street corner you stand in that had a phone attached to the wall so you could make a phone call .... If you had a quarter].

There are so many things I need to do I don't even know where to start, which is why I might not start till the last minute. But I will do some easy things, especially things that will make my life more simple. And the first simple thing I can do is to stop calling the little Bronco the little Bronco.

There's no need for the little Bronco to have two names; putting little in front of Bronco is just more for me to write, and that's not simple. Also, my dictation software doesn't want to automatically capitalize Bronco, so I have to stop dictating and capitalize the word bronco every time I write it. I've tried to train my dictation software to capitalize it, but so far, it refuses. And since using the word bronco is going to be a lot more common now, the simplest thing to do is to leave it uncapitalized. So from now on, the little Bronco will officially be known as "the bronco"..... my life feels simpler already.

I'm going to make a list of things I need to take out of the Arctic Fox and put into the bronco as soon as I get around to it; I don't know if that will help me put everything into the bronco before I leave because it seems like it's just as easy to forget to put something on the list as it is to put something into the bronco. And I usually discover that I forgot to put something important on the list about the same time I find out I forgot to put something important into the bronco.

So that's the big news, and now that I've made that decision, I have a goal and can start getting things ready. I was really having trouble making the final decision about what to do. What pushed me towards taking the bronco is knowing that I don't "actually" have to stay in the bronco all winter. If living in the bronco gets too miserable for whatever reason, I can always return to Denver after a couple of months living in the bronco and then spend Christmas with the grandkids before picking up the Arctic Fox and heading back south.

I know that sounds like a cowardly cop-out... And it is. But even if I can live in the bronco for a few months, I believe I will learn enough about full-timing in something this small to be able to decide whether or not I can deal with something similar on a permanent basis.

But keep in mind this decision, just like all of my decisions, is written in pudding, so it doesn't take much to change it. But the deeper I get into changing the bronco into something resembling a full-time RV, the less chance I will change my mind.... but don't count on that either.

Theboondork

A Raven, perched on the top of a rather tall tree, a couple hundred feet from me. He was raising quite a ruckus, probably warning everyone I was around.

Neighborhood Ravens like this one depend on the neighbors trash cans as a food source, and judging by the way I look, they probably consider me competition for the food.

I took this picture out at my property of a bird I've always called a Shrike, but I looked on the Internet at the 33 different kinds of Shrikes and everyone has a black or brown bar over their eyes, similar to this Internet picture below. And I couldn't find a single picture of a shrike with a gray-head and a white-face like this one.

All of this birds characteristics point to a shrike, which is also called a thorn bird, or a butcher bird. It's call, it's coloration, everything except the black bar over the eyes. So it has me confused.

This is a picture I got off the Internet of a real shrike. The bars over the eyes is a major characteristic of a shrike.

10 Comments

OFM

9/6/2021 04:30:59 pm

hmmm coming back for Christmas might be nice every year.

Tom

9/6/2021 06:09:53 pm

Right you are Barney, but there's this teeny-weeny problem with snow that makes getting there, and leaving again somewhat iffy.

But if I do end up living in something like a truck camper, and with the grandkids getting old enough to know what Christmas is all about. There's a much better chance that I could spend Christmas in Denver every once in a while, since it would be much safer if I wasn't pulling a 30 foot trailer around on snowy roads.

Tom

Mike

9/6/2021 07:07:50 pm

Looks like a Clark's nutcracker.........

9/6/2021 07:33:24 pm

You da man Mike, you really know your birds. I took a couple more pictures of that bird that didn't turn out extremely well but still good enough to see what it looks like, and the first picture I saw on the Internet was that bird exactly, a Clark's Nutcracker.

Oh well, I was hoping it was a Shrike they sound a lot more glamorous than a Clark's Nutcracker. But at least I don't have to worry anymore about that bird impaling me on a barbed wire fence when I'm asleep.

Thanks for that identification Mike.

Tom

Judith

9/6/2021 08:48:11 pm

Good for MIke! Many many years ago I saw one of those at the top of Wolf Creek Pass and it took a British birder who had just hopped off a tour bus to tell me what it was! I was thumbing frantically through my bird book.
Glad you've made the decision, and rather than calling the return to the driveway a "cowardly cop out", what about just calling it common sense!

9/6/2021 09:15:20 pm

Yeah it's a good thing Mike straightened me out or I would've gone around calling that bird a rare mask-less Shrike, because it sure looked like a shrike to me.

You're doing pretty good watching birds at the top of Wolf Creek pass, at almost 12,000 feet a lot of folks can hardly breathe up there.

It could be called common sense not to spend the whole winter in the bronco, but I've seen full-timers living in their cars, in tents, pickup trucks with toppers on the back, and in the back of SUVs. And these aren't bums or folks that are destitute, there just people that can't afford exorbitant rents or the outrageous price of houses. They don't have enough money for a real RV, or maybe the ability to handle one, so they sometimes turn the transportation they have into the only RV they can afford.

So I figure if they can live in those semi-comfortable conditions, which make my bronco look downright palatial, I should feel lucky to have a place to live as nice as the bronco, and be able to spend an entire winter in the warm desert sunshine which is so much better than a lot of folks have to deal with. I've always felt lucky for what I have, and have always lived with the motto.... There but for the grace of God go I.

Tom

Larry Worsham

9/7/2021 04:42:12 am

There is nothing wrong with having options and the ability to adapt and improvise. At this point in life all of our plans are made in Jello as things never work out as planned. There our always some outside influence that crops up to alter them. We just work through it. I think you will know before Christmas if things are working out in the Bronco. We are still in flux about what to do about changing our RV mode but have decided to stay with what has brought us for a while longer.

9/7/2021 08:59:59 am

I think one of the benefits of aging is having more patience , which is strange because we have less time available to us, and yet we tend to be able to wait for things easier than when we had all the time in the world.

So I don't mind waiting to find out if the bronco will work out for me, and y'all don't mind waiting to see if you need to make a change in your situation or not.

But in general this certainly isn't a very good time to go looking around for new RVs. Prices are high, waits are long, and build quality is suspect.

You're right, I'm pretty sure I will know if an RV the size of the bronco is something I can live in or not after a couple of months of trying it. I already know I can vacation in something that size, I just don't know if living in it can be done comfortably.

And just like for extended boondocking, comfort is the key. I don't want to have to endure it, or put up with it, or prove that I can do it. I have to be comfortable or to me its not worth doing.

Thanks for your encouragement Larry.

Tom

Linda

9/7/2021 11:43:58 am

We are too old to do something not comfortable when we have a choice to do something more comfortable. Sometimes, though, deciding which is more comfortable is a challenge since they are comfortable in different ways.

9/7/2021 12:30:51 pm

Just like you Linda, I feel comfort is key to enjoying my life. It might even come before freedom, because what good is freedom if you're miserable?

When I hear others talking about why they don't like boondocking mostly what I hear them saying is... There uncomfortable, for one reason or another, or they WANT to be around a bunch of people.

In this day and age it seems like there's very few reasons why an RVer should be uncomfortable while boondocking. If you're too hot or too cold... Fix it, or Move. If you're uncomfortable with the crowds... Move. If you're uncomfortable living in your RV, either fix it with a new mattress, or a better solar system and battery bank, or buy another one that makes you more comfortable. Whatever it is it seems like a little common sense and/or technology can fix it.

Some people just don't like being "somewhat" alone. And that's a legitimate reason for not enjoying boondocking. There's safety in numbers, and were basically herd creatures. So not wanting to live away from the herd make perfect sense. But not being comfortable seems like something that can be fixed, if someone actually wants to escape the crowds.

Tom

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