Adjustments

I'm relearning the fine art of adapting to situations. Every little thing I once took for granted is coming back to haunt me. Things like showers, hot water from the tap, on demand power, and even mail delivery.

When I was out at sea in navy we had to deal with "water hours" and took "navy showers". Water hours meant that you could only take a shower from such and such time, to such and such time. Normally you would have about a 30 min window to try and grab your shower for the day, along with about 20 or so of your good shipmates. Once you got into the shower you could relax and enjoy your 2-3 min of running water. Navy showers consist of, wetting yourself down from head to toe, turning off the water and soaping up, and then quickly turning the water back on to rinse off. There you have it, a nice relaxing navy shower. After your window, the next group would politely (please note the sarcasm) ask you to go away so they could shower.

Out here in the wilds, I would almost kill for one of those nice relaxing navy showers, We have been heating water and "bathing" in a large tote bin. At first this was a MAJOR undertaking. We had two little coffee pots we would heat up our water in and use it to "sponge bath" ourselves. Once we got the turkey fryer and could heat gallons of water, this process became a lot easer. It's still not a nice relaxing shower by any means but all things are relative.

Working with limited power has been a big adjustment. Yes we have a generator, but gas isn't free. We are still having to run the generator all night so we can keep a critical piece of equipment running. We plug in everything that has a battery, like our laptops, and grab a charge at night, but batteries have this weird habit of draining down just before you are ready for them to. I am hopping to get our DC to AC inverter this week and that will make life a lot nicer, and save gas and ware on the generator.

The next time you see your postman, give him or her a hardy "thank you" and enjoy the luxury of your home mail delivery. No one up here on the mountain gets home delivery. We all have to go into "town" to get our mail, a good 20 to 30 min round trip. Don't even think about ordering anything from on-line, UPS couldn't find us with a GPS unit and live satellite feed. We worked out a deal with a local in town just so we could get any deliveries we needed.

So there you have it, a few of the adjustments we have made living out here in the wilds. Stick around for more fun and adventure with ....

The Mad Mountain Geek of Treehaven