For the last few years, Cindy and I have been trying to buy fewer things, but better things. This idea was a reaction to finding ourselves moving into increasingly smaller accommodations about every 3-4 years. Each time we moved, we just wouldn’t have room for everything we owned. Actually, we don’t have room for everything we have now. We’ve been renting a small storage unit for the past year. It’s the smallest one they have, and it will hold a shit-ton of your stuff. This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

We went through some of it last month, sorting out what to keep, what to trash, and what to donate. Shedding some of our processions, whittling it all down, felt good. It meant fewer things we had to physically and mentally keep track of. In another month or two, we’ll move about 20% of what’s there now into a friend’s attic, and stop renting the storage unit, which costs us $45.00 a month.

But physical clutter wasn’t our only problem. Last month, the big TV in the living room blew up, and that gave us the perfect excuse to ditch cable. We still watch TV (the small one in the office), but only about 10% of what we used to. We don’t channel surf looking for something to watch any more. And we don’t miss it that much.

For us, we just thought cutting back on some material processions and services like cable would save us some money (and it does). But it has had a nice side effect: we find ourselves saying yes to more experiences, more travel. Sure, it’s just small trips now, but we’re not spending hours each day watching other people on TV do stuff. We’re doing stuff. Before, we might have planned a trip as an exercise in wishful thinking. Now, when we talk about a trip, we see it as a real possibility. This isn’t a big deal for a lot of people, but it is for us. Normally, I would have blown off the possibility of going to Star Wars Celebration V because it’s not being held anywhere near where I live, and it would only be for one day anyway. This year, however, I said yes after thinking about it for about 5 minutes, because that one day could be awesome, right? I have a place to stay, tickets were easy to get, and I have months to buy a plane ticket. Why would I talk myself out of that?

Looking at our piles of stuff, and asking ourselves, “Okay, what do we really want? What do we really need? What is essential?” has definitely spilled over into travel. Instead of thinking about all the things we need (or think we need) for a trip or getaway, we consider all the things we don’t need to make it happen.

Sounds simple enough, right? But how many of us overpack for most of our trips, lugging around suitcases full of stuff we thought we might need, but didn’t? We pack all that stuff into suitcases for the same reason we rent storage units: it gives us peace of mind, security. It turns out that being able to justify keeping a storage unit full of seldom-used items is no different than being able to justify packing everything but the kitchen sink when we travel (although Cindy and I have never been quite that bad). It’s what you want to take versus what you need in order to go. It’s the different between packing like the Griswolds and Bruce Banner. We plan for the exception, as many just-in-case moments as we can think of, instead of planning for the rule. And all we wind up doing is weighing ourselves down with stuff.

We all have attachments to stuff, or ideas or attitudes that serve no real purpose other than to make us feel safe and secure. The question I have to ask myself is, How many of these attachments are keeping me from doing so many things I’d probably enjoy, if I could just let go of them?

And, the funny thing is, for the last couple of weeks, we’ve been on the hunt for a good carry-on bag for Cindy’s trip to New York this August. She doesn’t want to lug the big red suitcase around, or spent 30-45 minutes waiting in baggage claim; she just wants to grab her stuff and go. It couldn’t have hit us in a more obvious way that the kind of experience we want to have in life depends largely on our willingness to get moving, and the amount of baggage we’re carrying.

So, over the next few months, I’m going to

• Continue to shed more things than I accumulate
• Plan a trip for next year that requires me to use my passport, dammit
• Commit to traveling with one carry-on, and one backpack

Where would you go?

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I re-kindled my love of camping in 1993. I was in the Oklahoma Army National Guard, and we were doing our annual two-week training/summer camp. That year, instead of setting up the usual big-ass tent that could house my entire platoon with our cots and all of our gear, we bivouacked, which is basically forced camping. One evening, I was sitting on the ground outside of my pup tent and reading a book, and thought that some coffee would be good. I looked through some MRE packets and found packets of instant coffee, sugar, and cocoa mix. Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) packets are widely despised except by me and 3 other people in the world. When some of my army friends walked by my tent, and asked what the hell I was doing, I would tell them. They were all skeptical of the idea of an MRE mocha, but after one sip, they were hooked. By the time the sun had gone down, there were 4 or 5 people sitting around my canteen stove, drinking coffee and talking about whatever. It was great.

A couple of friends and I liked it so much, we went camping a few weeks later, and that was it. No army uniforms, roomier tents, and a huge crackling fire. No phones, no work, no noise. (To this day, whenever I claim a campsite for the weekend, I feel like a big weight has been taken off my shoulders. Cindy feels it, too.)

Anyway, we would go on small hikes during these camping weekends, and we started thinking about doing longer ones. When you start thinking about stuff like that, sooner or later you hear about the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200-mile footpath from Georgia to Maine. The AT is like Route 66 for hikers. It would take lots of time and money to hike the AT, and if I ever had plenty of one, I had none of the other. So, I put it off.

It’s been 15 years since I first started talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail. I still haven’t done it, but I still talk about it a dozen times a year. A few years ago, I read A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson, and I really wanted to hit the AT…which is crazy because, if you’ve read the book, any sane person would have the exactly opposite notion.

Case in point: A couple of months ago, Cindy and I were sitting on the couch, and she was reading Bryson’s book, and after reading a section about bear attacks and missing hikers, she looked up and said, “And you want to do this?!” and proceeds to read aloud the section about bear attacks and missing hikers. “Are you crazy?”

“Well, I don’t want to do that part,” I said.

I still don’t have the time or money to thru-hike the AT, but that’s okay. I don’t really have the body for it anymore for it either. I think I would be satisfied with just spending 4 to 7 days on the trail, a section of it that’s not too harsh. I want to enjoy the experience, after all.

It’s on the list for 2010.

So, I have already taken steps toward making that a reality this year. I’ll keep you updated when everything starts coming together. I can’t say much right now because I have two friends that are going and it all requires some co-ordination.

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I took the idea of the grape soda Ellie Badge (if you’ve seen Up, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen Up, go see it…take tissue) and changed it to better suit me and Cindy. I think Moxie is more fitting for us. Not only is it one of our favorite drinks of all-time, but it’s a quality we strive to bolster within ourselves.

And we’re going to need a lot of it to get us through the next couple of years :)

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My dad is now off many of the machines and tubes. The ICU staff had tilted the bed more upright and turned it toward the TV because he’s been awake for most of today. He’d nod off for a few minutes every 30 minutes or so, but it’s leaps and bounds ahead of where he was yesterday. The doctor’s are talking about moving him to long-term care soon. And while I’m not thrilled about the idea of him having to stay in the hospital in “long-term” care, I know this means that they feel he’s stable. His color is good, and I hate to say this, but he hasn’t looked this healthy in a long time.

Things are going well enough that my mom told me yesterday that Cindy and I should still go to Seattle…and she meant it, so we’ll be off to the Pacific Northwest one week from today.

Pete, you better have a drink ready for me. A big one. I’m going to need it.

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You know how a baby just babbles away at nothing, but then when you call someone up and tell the baby to “talk to so-and-so” it clams up, only to become an instant motor mouth the second you hang up?

Or when people who think you’re funny tell other people how funny you are, so when they introduce you to this new person, they say something like “This is the guy I was telling you about. He’s reeeeaallly funny! Say something funny.” And then you just stand there not saying anything because you don’t think “You are such a fucking moron” is as funny as it is true.

I bring this up because I’ll be doing a fairly long drive from Tulsa to Rawlins, Wyoming, later today. These drives can get tiresome, especially when there isn’t a CD player in the truck, or when 9 out of 10 radio stations are God stations (I’m looking at you, Kansas) and the other one is hate radio. With nothing to do but drive, my mind wanders a bit and sometimes I come up with good ideas that I later forget because I can’t write them down while driving.

So, for this trip I got a digital voice recorder to capture those ideas (and to keep me entertained) on the long drive.

What I fear is that now that I have the recorder, my brain will freeze up, and the only thing that I’ll record is me saying something like “Uhh…er, umm….crap!”

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Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

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Garage Sale – By the time Cindy and I got to Tulsa Thursday afternoon, things had slowed down quite a bit. Cindy’s mom had been selling stuff since Wednesday, and all the things that people were going to buy had already been bought. So, there wasn’t much for us to do. (But Cindy might tell you a story.)

Dealer Drive to Longview, TX - As we were driving into Tulsa, Cindy’s dad called and asked if I’d be interested in driving one of two trucks Friday morning from a Sapulpa dealership to a customer in Longview, a good 300-plus miles away (5 hours). It was easy money, so why not? The downside was that the trucks had to be there at 9 AM, which meant we had to leave Tulsa at 4 AM.

Tulsa State Fair – I got in a couple of short naps on the ride from Longview back to Tulsa, so I was okay when we headed out to the fair at 7 PM. We had only been there an hour when it started raining and lightning, shutting down many of the rides. To avoid getting wet, we took shelter in the expo building, which was a bit silly because a couple of hours later, I rode the log ride twice and got mostly soaked.

Best question of the night had to have been from one of our nephews who asked “Is it just me or did I fart?”

Saturday morning, Cindy and I went back to the fair to look at all the exhibits that we didn’t get a chance to see the night before.

Serenity – If you’re a fan of the too-quickly-cancelled show Firefly, you won’t be disappointed with Serenity. We caught a matinee Saturday afternoon, and it was everything the Star Trek movies haven’t been since First Contact. Like Josh Marshall said “It ran about two hours but felt like about twenty minutes.” Good fun.

One more thing: if you are a fan of the show, take kleenex.

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