25 October, 1999
We got more gear from Coleman (including
the sling-back chairs that Beebee so cherished)today and are really excited. We also had the walk-through on our house today. It went well enough that we are closing as anticipated on Thursday. We are officially on the road in three days!
Beebee has her last day at work tomorrow, with a party in the am, a long lunch with her friends and packing her stuff -- rough day.
Sandy should be painted by Wed. -- we're looking so forward to seeing her all shiny and new!
27 October, 1999
Hmm. Just realized that we may have never really acknowledged
the wonderful tow-rope that we got from Master-Pull. On top of the nice-feeling rope (haven't used it yet, but we are looking forward to it… as long as we are yanking someone else out!) we also got 4 shackles and a good looking bag in which to store it all.
In other news, we found out that escrow isn't actually closing until Friday. That comes as a major windfall for us as the new paint job isn't quite done on Sandy- which is a bit of an inconvenience seeing as how we need to load literally everything we own into the truck tomorrow. Well, good thing we don't have to be out tomorrow after all!
Other than that, not a whole lot to say. Beebee is still going nuts with getting us ready to go and Steve is still going nuts trying to finish things up at work. Both of us are really, really looking forward to some good old camping next week. Somehow sleeping on the floor in our room and cooking with camping gear in the kitchen just isn't the same as sleeping under the stars.
P.S. We spotted a Sandy-twin tonight in the parking lot of Trader Joe's in La Jolla. Same paint (same as the old paint, anyway") same interior, same sheep-skin seat covers (OK, their's were a little nicer) same everything! It was really fun. We left a note and hope the owner checks out our site and drops us an email…
29 October, 1999
THE HOUSE IS SOLD! Whoo-hoo! Found out at 2:40 pm that we are now the happy ex-owners of a Townhouse in La Jolla. Boy is that a load off of our shoulders.
I guess that means we are officially "on the road". Ok, Not really. But at least we are all packed up, out of the house, and ready to be on the road.
Spent all morning (and all of yesterday afternoon) packing up Sandy, she is awfully full and sagging pretty hard in the back- the rear is heavy enough that the springs are actually just slightly inverted past flat., but everything seems to be fitting so far. Can't wait to get the new suspension! But for now we'll just further thrash the old stock springs.
You can go to the Ride page to see a few more pictures of Sandy with her new paint (and her saggy bottom!). Big THANKS to Joel at Euro-Tek for all of his help. Steve was pretty nervous about how the color/two-tone was going to look, but now that it is on he loves it. A bit more silver than expected, but really great looking.
Kudos to Beebee for her extraordinary packing efforts yesterday (she is still running about dropping stuff at Goodwill as we type).
Tonight we'll store Sandy at a friends house and go for a bonfire on the beach as a sort of farewell to San Diego. Tomorrow… we'll have to wait till tomorrow.
31 October, 1999
We stayed with Cris and Sonja on Friday night, our first night of being transient. It was great to relax with good friends.
Saturday brought lots of errand running and then a huge 
Halloween bash that night, hosted by Jen, Damon, Doug and Maura. You can follow this link
to some pictures (it will open a new window).
They threw a crazy-fun party. Beebee probably should have stopped at the first Jagermeister shot, but went on to enjoy many more. Steve was a little more reserved in his imbibing, but not much!
Today we slept in, enjoyed the 85 degree weather by Jen and Damon's pool and with a huge thanks to Mike, dropped off some of our gear so we don't have to take it all to Vegas -- okay, so we can MAKE it to Vegas. Heck, we can even see out of the back window now. What an improvement.
1 November, 1999
Drove up to Hemet to drop off Sandy at All Pro, rented a car, drove back to San Diego and whiled away the afternoon inside an arctic Kinkos designing our business cards. Being unemployed isn't exactly the beach-filled world Beebee was imagining -- not yet at least. Steve spent the evening wrapping up a project at the office, while Beebee went off and played with a friend.
We cooked on our Coleman stove in the office and spent the night on the office futon -- why didn't we try this no-rent thing before?
3 November, 1999
Steve finally got things wrapped up (mostly) at the office after a 24 hour work-a-thon, so we are off to Vegas and the SEMA show. We are fortunate enough to have a very generous friend who is stuck in Barstow for work and had an open bed available in her hotel room (Thanks Christine!). We didn't manage to get in until about midnight. Long day. Sleeping in a real bed sure is gonna feel good!
4 November, 1999
Woke up in a real bed…
Packed up quickly, grabbed free breakfast (gotta love the Holiday Inn Express) and got back behind the wheel for a few hours of driving through the desert.
Of course we stopped in Baker to see the World's Largest Thermometer.
Got to the SEMA show at about 11 am. We had a little bit of trouble getting in at first as we didn't want to drop $40 each for registration, but hadn't coordinated well enough with our sponsors to have badges waiting for us. We ended up sneaking past a distracted guard to get in to the hall, where we met up with George and Tamara Carousos of Extreme Outback who were kind enough to let us assume their identities for the rest of the day.
The show was great! Huge! We met up with as many of our sponsors as we could find and had a great time talking with them. Many pictures are on the way soon.
We wrapped up the day by jumping back in Sandy and going to Barstow again (Thanks again, Christine!), where we actually enjoyed one of the better meals we've had in the last month or two at the Idle Spurs Steakhouse.