Packing Up

April is now here, and we'll be leaving very soon. We have one final repair to be made - to our auto-leveling system - and that should be done by the end of this week or the beginning of next.

In the meantime, we've been doing our final packing. Although we have a number of duplicate items we've bought for the Ciaowagen over the past year (e.g., another set of dishes, cutting knives, pillows, etc.), we still need to bring on our clothes, bulk food, electronics, and so forth.

We returned from our 3-1/2 week trip to Southeast Asia on March 23, and have been staging stuff in our family room and garage. We got the RV out of storage on March 28, and parked it in front of the house.

On Saturday, the 30th, we began moving things in earnest. As you can see in the video below, we had many offers of help from the neighborhood kids, who Jeannette organized into a bucket brigade.

To thank them for their efforts, we treated them to an outdoor movie from the side of the RV.

On Sunday, March 31, after an early morning visit to see the Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin, we headed out to Bull Run Regional Park for three days of "sea trials," where we could double-check that all systems were working, and get all our possessions stashed.

While we were out at Bull Run, we discovered the issue with the auto-leveling system, called our RV repair shop, and arranged for the hydraulic pump to be replaced sometime this week.

We're getting close!