We took a power walk up a nearby hill just before sunset, and the hills were alive with orange-pink hues as wispy clouds caressed the slopes and slow danced for us.
1165 Pink Dancing Fluffs
Felt good to get a bit of burn going in our legs and some vitality in our breath. Then we strolled back in the softening light as color drained from everything but our conversation.
We discovered some lingering emotions about our delayed MerriTimes trip, and mourned anew our release of that adventure for this Fall. We talked more back at home, with time between for Doing and Being focus. That included dinner, an amazingly delicious pudding invention of Anne’s, Newshour and the discussion that stimulated, and of course some side-by-side laptop time.
Some of our deeper dialog delved into the Answering Machine questions: “Who are you, and what do you want?” We didn’t realize the other had realized some things, like how good we feel despite some residual sadness like the stuff about MerriTimes Delayed. We talked about new strategies for flying, as we wait out the tax year with only a trip to TX as a major expense.
One thing we can do is futz with Tripp, with projects like our Acme Wind Deflector invention. That’s a plexiglass strip we’ll clip on the back edge of each window to reduce wind noise and buffeting in the back seat when we open the windows wide for viewing and photos. It will cost almost nothing, and add a lot to our comfort in flying (and even more to the comfort of passengers!).
Another low-cost item is working on our Tweaky Tandem bike to make it stronger, more comfortable, and hopefully fold-able. Maybe even add an electric hub, to boost us up hills and add regenerative braking. We can buy a light folding luggage cart with big wheels that we can use as a trailer on the bike to carry tent and gear. We’ll fix the tent so it doesn’t slowly collapse like it did at Terrace on our NxNW Adventure. We can refine our packing to minimize what we take for various side-trips from airports to tenting, staying with friends/family, or hotels.
I also have a list of minor fixes and spiffing up items for Tripp, and want to calibrate her performance against the factory numbers. For example, carefully calculate takeoff roll using actual load and conditions, then compare that against actual takeoffs to see how she does. This fits into another theme of flying more to feed our excitement about taking Adventures. Even short hops like the one yesterday contribute a lot to that. We can also talk more about the flying and radio calls so Anne has more to understand and enjoy on the Adventures.
We talked about how doing all this will help us rekindle our excitement about Big Adventures while we conserve our meager savings and increase our preparedness.
John & Anne Wiley 
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