theboondork's RV blog

What's not to love

12/17/2017

I got out of the Arctic Fox at 7:30 this morning to take this picture and was proud of myself for getting up that early, but it didn't take me long to realize that everyone else was up and gone already.

When I woke up this morning it was very cloudy but in a couple of hours it burned off and is clear and sunny now. Looks like most of the rest of the week is going to be high 60s and sunny.

Last night I was looking at videos on YouTube and accidentally stumbled into a couple of videos made by full-time RVers that were listing the bad things about living the full-time RV lifestyle. I only watched them because I didn't believe anyone could come up with enough bad things about living in an RV to make an entire video, but apparently they can.

Now I know, and I've always said that living in an RV is not for everyone. It's a very different way to live than most people are used to and luckily it doesn't appeal to most people because if it did there would be less camping places for me. But the problems these people were having with their RV lifestyle was amazing to me in that their complaints were the equivalent of someone moving onto a boat full time and complaining about being seasick.

What in the world would you say to victim number one who admitted that they studied the full-time lifestyle on the Internet before they bought an RV and then after a year or so of fulltiming is complaining about the lifestyle because they have to MOVE every once in a while. For crying out loud, I thought that was the whole point of living in an RV! How did they miss that little tidbit of information on the Internet. I don't know what their other problems were because after hearing that I turned off their video.

Another video I started watching but couldn't finish was a young fulltimer guy living in a fifth wheel who was saying the worst thing about the full-time lifestyle was... Get this, am not lying, all of the stress. THE STRESS !

Apparently this guy bought an older bottom dollar fifth wheel and had no concept of how any of the systems worked and no idea how to fix anything if the least little thing went wrong. if a light wouldn't turn on and the bulb was good he takes it to a dealer. And according to him not knowing if things in the RV will work tomorrow is the major cause of his stress... Him I felt sorry for.

Even though I felt a modicum of compassion for this late 20s looking guy I don't know how you become an adult without finding out that if you buy an old raggedy car, an old raggedy house, an old raggedy boat, or an old raggedy RV you're going to have to fix a lot of problems.

I've said it before in my blog and I'll repeat it here. You'll be far happier living in an RV if you can at least do some of the maintenance and repairs yourself, and the more you can do, the happier you will be. Things are going to break in an RV, things break in your house why should an RV be any different? And if you pulled your house down bumpy roads at 60 miles an hour it would break even more, so it is for an RV.

Back in the old primordial days before I became computer literate I carried repair books to be able to fix the things that would go wrong with my RV. I had a general repair book that would tell me a little bit about everything. And I had repair books for each individual system, like the plumbing, AC and DC, heating and air conditioning, and refrigeration. These books and a fairly comprehensive toolbox kept me out of the clutches of evil dealers for long periods of time. And it still works today except Google has replaced the books.

As for the couple who bought an RV and don't like to move, For their edification I would like to suggest that they not buy a boat if they don't like the water, don't buy a house if they don't like property tax, and don't buy an airplane if their afraid of heights. I hope these suggestions will be of help to them in the future.

But for more normal folks that are considering the RV lifestyle.... And you know who you are.... I would say how often you move is based on the RV lifestyle that you choose. If you like to go to new places fairly often then boondocking is a fun and inexpensive way to enjoy that. Whereas if you like a more sedentary lifestyle and want to travel very little if at all, stay in RV parks, it will be boring but it will be safe and you will get used to it.

theboondork... As stress-free as a man can be.

Living in a land of Giants

6 Comments

Vall & Mo link

12/18/2017 02:58:31 am

Hi Tom,

Don't get stressed out with people's stupidity -- one of Vall's favorite proverbs says that God must love idiots, or else He wouldn't have made so many of them :-)

Actually we feel these folks are doing us a service -- the more they badmouth the RVing lifestyle, the more free, open spaces it leaves for us who have learned to love it. Perhaps (conspiracy mode on) they really love it themselves, but are making these videos in order to keep as much other people out as possible? Hummmmrmm... :-)

Anyway, thanks for the great early morning pictures, your photos are always nice but these two are even better than usual -- the lighting and the colors are stunningly beautiful. When we're camping in the desert, Vall loves to go out at these hours for quick solitaire hikes and always takes a camera, but has never seen -- much less photographed -- anything like those! Not trying to pry into the magician's secrets, but we do think you must have done something with them at the computer, at least combining a couple of them with HDR... Anyhow, the result is very pleasing and we think it greatly reflects the desert's serenity at these hours.

Cheers,
--
Vall & Mo.

theboondork

12/18/2017 10:39:39 am

Me stressed out! If I was any more laid-back I would have to carry a sign around my neck saying "please don't bury me I'm not actually dead".

I have no problems at all telling people about my hobbies, and there's no secrets involved because if there were I wouldn't know them.

I do simple things for simple reasons. You seldom see that kind of Lighting in my pictures because I usually don't get up early enough to take them. I sleep late because that gives the sun a chance to warm up the Arctic Fox a little bit which saves some propane.

Always keep in mind I'm basically lazy, unambitious, and lack motivation so everything I do in life revolves around those three character flaws. I tried doing HDR but it was a lot of work and often requires a tripod, and caring a tripod around is a lot of work. And even though you can do it without a tripod that meant doing more work on the computer so my pictures have to be far more simple than that.

Taking a picture when the light is right is the key to everything and early mornings and evenings are usually the best light, and my laziness explains why you see so many sunsets and very few sunrises.

Clouds make all the difference in the world and unfortunately for hobby picture takers like me southern Arizona doesn't have very many of them. Notice I didn't say photographers, they can take good pictures anytime of day. The way the clouds and the sun interact can make a good picture great but since the clouds are usually moving it's a matter of timing and luck getting it just right.

yes I do work on them in the computer, and I use Adobe lightroom because its simple. I have to do this because I take all my pictures in camera raw and my settings are manual so my Canon 7D Mark two doesn't make any adjustments to the image so everything has to be adjusted in light room.

When my raw images come out of the camera there way too dark, because I under expose everything and bring them back to normal in lightroom. I do this because a computer can easily make images that are too dark light again but when there overexposed like you would get with the sun in the picture digital information in the light areas are gone forever and can't be brought back.

The picture will be somewhat soft because the anti aliasing filter over the cameras sensor softens the image so it needs to be sharpened in light room.

So the only tip I can give you that might've been considered a secret is this. If you have an adjustable camera and you want to see the light rays radiating away from the sun like you see in some of my pictures set your f-stop to a large number like F 22 or F 24 which will make your aperture have a very small opening and that will magically make the sunrays visible in your picture.

Tom

12/18/2017 11:32:06 pm

Thanks for the photo tips, Tom. Vall has had a look at LightRoom in the past and dismissed it as too complicated... But the kind of results you get is plenty of justification for getting back to it. How did you learn it? Any book or tutorial or course in particular?

Also good info on using longer focal lengths. Vall has learned to use them for large field depths (ie to have both a close foreground and a far background in focus at the same time) and to try and avoid some artifacts at the image borders with lenses that are not very good (this comes from his experience with telescopes), but that they could also be used for emphasizing sun rays was entirely new to him.

Lots of things to try the next time we've some leisure time and a beautiful view, which should be soon (the hellish downsizing-and-getting-ready-to-travel threadmill we've going through the last few months is scheduled to end in exactly 1 week, one way or the other).

Cheers,
--
Vall.

12/19/2017 10:36:07 am

I've tried other photo editing software's including Photoshop but I always end up coming back to lightroom. I know it looks a little intimidating at first, as does Photoshop but the difference is Photoshop gets more and more intimidating the deeper you dig into it, and lightroom gets easier.

Everything I know about lightroom I got from videos on YouTube, and there are bunches of them. Some of them general overviews, and some of them about a specific part, like how to sharpen, or how to color enhance. I would download and save these videos and refer to them when I needed to do something I didn't know how to do.

One of the things I like about light room is how smooth and linear all of the adjustments are, you can adjust everything in tiny increments so your image doesn't go from too dark to to light with the slightest little movement of the slider. And it hasn't been overcomplicated with image adjustments that you will never use like Photoshop is, light room pretty much does basic things that most pictures will need.

That's right I had forgotten that you told me Christmas was when you were leaving.

I remember when I was one week away from the house closing and what a hectic time it was. Sometimes I would look around and it looked like I had more stuff than I did when I started getting rid of it all. There was a song I used to listen to then by Delbert McClinton called "Too Much Stuff" and it kind of became the theme song of that period of my life.

It's a tough time to deal with both physically and emotionally but to me the payoff was worth every minute of it because the more I got rid of the better I felt. And to this day I'm still getting rid of stuff.

It takes some time on the road to find out what you really need and what you really don't. And it will take some time in your new life to break the emotional attachments you have with the things that you can't let go of at the moment. Sometimes I think of the stuff I have back in my storage room in Colorado that I couldn't bear to let go of two years ago and now I don't think there's anything in that room that I wouldn't be willing to sell or give to a friend or relative. The more you come to realize that material things stand in the way of freedom and happiness the easier it will become to let go of your possessions..... Except my camera I gotta have a camera.... And a motorcycle motorcycles important... I couldn't live without a gun or two laying around.... And then there's....

Tom

12/19/2017 11:28:04 pm

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the info on LightRoom vs Photoshop. I actually have some experience with Photoshop for astrophotography use... I prefer the open-sourced GIMP, but some plugins etc are only available for Photoshop so I have a free edition install laying around for that. I don't like videos very much, and really prefer the written word (plus pictures if need be) but if the LightRoom info is on videos, there's where I'm gonna get them.

Regarding the downsizing thing, it's wonderful blogs like yours that give us hope that there's indeed light at the end of this dreadful tunnel, and that it's not an oncoming train rushing to crush us but rather the entrance to that land of sweet-milk-and-honey called fulltime RV living.

We're trying to have no storage (that's specially important in our situation), so we've been separating our stuff into 3 piles: will travel with us (and therefore will have to fit into the three suitcases and a backpack we're each allowed), will be sold, or will be given/donated/recycled/throw away (in those orders). We've also found a few following mental tricks really help with the emotional part:

a) if it's something that evokes great memories but has to go, just remember that those memories are in your head and not in the thing, and can be evoked later by just a photo of it, so snap a pic with your cellphone and send it on to its pile; then move ahead to the next thing and rinse and repeat, and do *not* stop.

b) it it's something that won't fit in your bags but you think you simply can't live without it, just remember that a person needs only 5 things to live (air, water, food, shelter and love) and that the first 4 will be provided by your RV, and the last (but not by any means least) is why God has put each of us in the other's way. "Stuff" is just that, "stuff": you don't really need it, and if it gets in your way to the kind of living you want, it's really just a ball-and-chain holding you prisoner to where you don't want to be (ie, your current lifestyle) so yank it out and throw it away, with gusto!

c) when putting up stuff for sale, don't look for anything like "fair price" or whatever you think the thing is worth: remember you're just trying to get rid of the damn stuff, and whatever you get for it (which will probably be pennies on the dollar) is more than enough because (1) you just need to get it out of the way, and (2) it is being passed on to someone which will probably will have a good use for it (they are paying for it after all, even if just a little) so your stuff is going to make someone else happy, and what are a few dollars more compared to that?(plus the added happiness of your being able to move into the lifestyle you really want, of course). So what we do is to look for the lowest price for similar stuff in whatever site we're putting it up for sale, and price it a little lower than the lowest price there: this really helps to move the stuff along fast. Believe it or not, we've sold even an old but working fax machine (!) that way.

d) if the thing has no sale value and no one you know will take it as a gift (and *please* stop trying to embarrass your friends and kids into taking it), then try and find a recycling center that will accept it, stuff it into your car and get it there. Just think that this thing that once held value for you is now only an impediment (see ball-and-chains comment above) and it is much better off being remade into raw materials that will then have a chance of becoming something useful to someone or that someone will love, and it will be much better that way than the impediment it now is, or filling up some landfill. And the fact that the raw material that it will become will then not have to be taken out of our abused Mother Nature is an added bonus to everyone (we've recycled lots of stuff -- including a full-blown Britannica-like paper encyclopedia that Vall's parents spent a small fortune buying when he was a kid for him to study on -- yeah it hurts, but think of the above and move on, don't stop).

e) if it can't be carried with you nor given away nor sold nor recycled, well then throw the damn thing away and be done with it (See ball-and-chains comment above). And again don't stop, move on to the next thing because there's still a damn lot of it for you to go through.

f) if it's a book, try to find it as an ebook; remember you can carry an almost infinite amount of ebooks on your computer, and that they can be read much more conveniently with a good ebook reader running on any tablet or (if it doesn't have a lot of pictures/tables/diagrams and the like) even on your smartphone; please stop with that "but I just love the feeling of a paper book in my hands" nonsense (see ball-and-chains comment above).
The few dollars you'd have to spend to get it in digital form are more than worth it in terms of convenience later and of getting rid of the damn thing now (again, see ball-and-chains comment above), and remember that once a book

12/20/2017 09:45:31 am

It looks like were opposites when it comes to learning something like photo editing software, I've tried picking it up through the written word but for me it was hopeless, I've got to see a video for it to make any sense to me.

It looks like my blog provider, which by the way is Weebly, cut you off in mid sentence, I guess they have some kind of limit on the amount of letters that can be in a comment.

But despite that I got the picture that you are way ahead of most folks including myself on the ability to divest yourself of a lifetime accumulation of stuff.

You described what it takes to sort out a lifetime of possessions in order to go full time far better and in far greater detail than I ever could. You're also far more ruthless than I was when it comes to the endless decisions of what goes and what stays. A lot of the time when you see someone with a storage room, like me for instance, it simply means they've wimped out and put off making a decision until later. But since I'm a procrastinator that was to be expected.

Three suitcases and a backpack? That's really harsh, my tools wouldn't fit into three suitcases and a backpack but that's probably why after two years I'm still giving and throwing stuff away.

It looks like there's no advice I can give you on getting rid of your stuff as you've got it handled far better than I did, so I will leave you with this...

Yes there is a light at the end of the dark and dismal tunnel that you're in at the moment and that light is the bright desert sun shining in a clear blue sky on a 70 degree winter day that awaits you when you emerge from the place and situation you're in now.

But don't be surprised to find out that after all that you've gone through you're more than a little sad when you pull out of the driveway for the last time. It simply means that your previous life was pretty good and it will be missed for a while until you learn what freedom feels like.

Tom

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

What's not to love

Leave a Reply.

Archives

CONTACT THEBOONDORK