I’ve been negligent about updating the adventure log lately. Now that we are two weeks into 2020 I thought it would make sense to look back at the adventures of 2019.

Thanks to the Automatic adapter in my truck, I have detailed information about every trip last year.

When I set off on the drive I didn’t have an exact plan or trajectory and decided to just figure things out as I went. The adventures began with discovering that an F-150 is definitely not a truck you want to tow with all day everyday. Upgrading to the F-250 was a night and day experience and the added safety and convenience features made the drive better.

Original setup with F-150 and 22’ Trailer

I made some big mistakes from the start: buying a new trailer (instead of used) and something far too small for living in everyday.

Things worked out though, and I found this awesome rig in North Carolina. But getting a new-to-me trailer came with some drawbacks too. I had to backtrack to Texas to register it. This ate a chunk of time and changed my route trajectory.

F-250 and 34’ Trailer

The journey then brought me back to New Mexico, I learned about contract work and OttrCo, LLC into life.

Then I found myself right back to Florida to help finish a project that I spent a number of years dedicated to at work. I don’t regret taking either of these detours but suddenly the summer was coming to an end.

I might have still been able to make the northern journey until I lost a tire during the escape from Hurricane Dorian (which ended up not being anything of consequence). Unfortunately, the repair process for trailer sucks. Added with the incompetence of the repair shop, it took more than 2 months to get back on the road.

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The Good

• Made new friends in a variety of places

• Establishing my own consulting company

• Seeing Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge come to life with some great folks

The Not So Good

• Tire explosion and resulting months long repair

• “Death-Wobble” with my new truck

• Selling a relatively new trailer for a big loss because it was too small for daily living

• Missing half the country

Now to figure out what’s next.

Georgia and I settled back in Houston!

But it took another week and a half to get the trailer fixed up.

And more bad news about the trailer. They weren’t completely honest about the timeline to get the part. The ‘correct’ timeline is 5 to 7 days to make the part then 2 days to ship the part then 1 day to install the part. That means another week in Houston.

Thanks to parental assistance with United Fly the “Friendly” Skies miles I did sneak up to New York. I miss the city in some ways and the perfect weather likely contributed to that feeling.

Back in Texas, the trailer was expected to be ready. However, the repair shop didn’t actually diagnose the problem with the slide until the day I was supposed to pick it up. And they didn’t have the replacement guide wheel.

Georgia was happy to see me if not a bit standoffish. A trip down to my parents and ball time on the beach helped her feel better.

The part, about the size of a grapefruit, takes 5 days to be shipped. And now I can’t drive to New York as planned for the ITP 40 event.

I made a short pitstop in San Francisco.

Omar and I finished out moving out. And I had an opportunity to see my Los Angeles family.

I’m back in LA for the next couple weeks to clear out everything. It’s been pretty weird being back because the house looks like a time capsule of my own life. Georgia’s stuff and my stuff is in exactly the same place it was when we left in March.

I also seem to have done a poor job taking care of the cold that started around August 30th and have spent the last couple days in bed with a fever. Today I was able to get antibiotics and hopefully will start to feel better soon.

The hills and greenery of Tennessee are really enjoyable. I think I want to be somewhere with green again.

The drive back to Texas was uneventful. The trailer is in for service and Georgia is having a farm vacation at my brother and his wife’s home.

I left Florida a couple days early because of the potential for impending doom.

It’s one of those things… if I left nothing would hit Orlando and if I stayed it would have been as bad as forecast.

I spent the weekend at a campsite in Alabama.

The next adventure is to return to California to clear everything out. But the flight isn’t until September 11th. So I thought I would go and check out Tennessee again. Apparently that angered the tire gods.

I also experienced the stupidity of roadside assistance from USAA and Progressive. They both outsource to another company who ‘lost’ my ticket for nearly 5 hours. Thankfully when someone did arrive he was able to get things fixed up enough that we could get off the highway.

The tire blowout ripped up the electric brake cables, the aluminum side panel and messed the slide gearing up too.

Georgia and I found a hotel and upon tapping the door key we discovered that they had sent us to an occupied room. We left that place and went across the street to another hotel. Georgia didn’t want to get ou of bed in the morning.

The folks at a local RV repair shop were able to replace the tires and do a fix on the slide to at least allow us to limp along. There’s more work that has to be done but that can wait until we get back to Texas.

It’s been a bit quiet on here for a number of reasons. The primary one is that I’ve been working overnights to help finish something I started working on back in 2015.

It’s been a weird mix of delight, frustration and accomplishment to see everything alive and working. All together, I’m glad that to have had the chance to see it and to work with the same awesome folks again.

Today I’m back at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It looks like I’ll be sticking around Orlando for a few weeks to help get some stuff done.

Today 5,000 miles of travel got scrubbed off the trailer.

And the evening included some ‘Ohana

Georgia and me are currently staying at The Campsites at Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort. I haven’t stayed here before and it’s actually quite larger than you would expect.

The campsites are on the right below the lake.

I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to stay for a couple more weeks in the area. The last place I parked at was pretty remote. This is remote in a different way, you’re deep the bowels of Disney magic.

What’s been awesome though is we’ve had a chance to see a number of friends already.

Security-Bones

While walking Georgia a Disney security Cast Member gave Georgia a bunch of bones.

Not a fan.

It’s been a great adventure here in Santa Fe. I did my first consulting job (what do you do with all the time you’re not in meetings?), I enjoyed the gay rodeo and pride. I saw friends and took Georgia on new adventures.

Next stop, Orlando?

But that’s all I can say.

Today I prepared so that my content wouldn’t by an error.

For whatever reason I didn’t mention this on the 19th. I made a new company OttrCo, LLC in about 24 hours.

I have always been a company man and haven’t worked as an independent contractor before. It ends up it’s a bit more complicated than I thought. After reading the contract I saw that I needed insurance. I called my insurance company and they were like…

Now presenting OttrCo, LLC a Close Limited Liability Company of Wyoming. The Squarespace logo generator made me this via automatic generation:

So now I have an LLC, insurance and soon a bank account. In the end it probably cost me more than the job. But it’s a good experience to understand how it works when you aren’t a multinational conglomerate.

Today I explored Currents New Media which featured the art of some of the people in my NYU ITP class. It was a nice surprise in Santa Fe.