Kevin's Ramblings…

I am in the third week of living in my 5th wheel trailer and thus far, I am loving it. Getting a place for everything and everything in its place has taken a bit more time than I thought it would, but I am getting there. I also think that coming from a 2-bedroom home into a 30 foot trailer is a HUGE transition and I didn’t realize how much stuff I actually have. Turns out, I have (had?) a TON of stuff.

The house still isn’t empty, although it will be next weekend. I am heading back to the Pass on Friday evening and my house cleaner is meeting me on Saturday morning to do the move-out clean and help me load for a dump run and then whatever else I am bringing back to the trailer with me. It has to be done Friday/Saturday as the following week, I am heading to Idaho for a week, more on that, shortly.

I have been umpiring again for a few weeks and have enjoyed it. The quality of ball has not been the greatest, but it’s been fun. Sometimes, Fall Ball is really good and other times, it’s not so good. Well, this Fall season, it’s not so good. However, it’s still fun. Only a handful of games left until I am done for the Fall since I will miss 2 weekends due to my trip.

So, next Friday I head to Idaho for a week. I have decided that I am going to bring my small trailer with me, and the dogs as well. There was an incident where they were supposed to board and I am not comfortable leaving them there now. So, I will drag the trailer with me. My gas expenses will double but then I will save boarding fees and hotel fees, so it should be a wash, approximately. I am looking forward to the trip, I am hoping the weather will be great.

At the end of October, I am heading to Ontario for 6 days and am really looking forward to that. It will be a quick trip, but it will be nice to see friends and family and I will be able to meet a number of co-workers as well, we are going to the Mandarin for lunch – gotta love a Chinese food buffet. The whole trip revolves around food, big surprise.

The dogs will be boarding in a “new to me” facility near where I am living. It’s not cheap, $100 per day for 2 dogs, but the suites that the dogs are in look nice and they have a large private run for each suite. Hopefully the dogs will enjoy it as well.

Well, wish me luck on getting everything to the trailer and organized, I will need it. 🙂

I headed down to the Pass yesterday after some appointments. It’s amazing how much stuff one accumulates over the years. I’ve sold, or given away most of my large stuff. I’ve kept my mattress (it is super comfy and pretty new) and my desk and chair for working, my BBQ, a good size outdoor table, small kitchen appliances and my clothes. Everything else has been sold.

I wanted to downsize and minimalize, I’ve accomplished both. Not much of a choice when you move into a 30 foot long trailer.

I took a large load of stuff back from the Pass, it’s currently waiting to be unloaded from the truck. It was late when I got back, so already dark, so it say outside. I did check the forecast and there was no chance of rain overnight, and, for once, the forecast was accurate.

Task one for the day, unload the truck and organize and out away the stuff that I brought down. I hope I can find room for everything.

I have until about 3pm when I have to head out to umpire a 4pm game. Tonight, I may be going to RibFest, that’ll be fun.

Enjoy your weekend, it’ll be over before we know it.

I finally got my internet connected yesterday. I had to climb onto the roof of the trailer, relatively easy considering that there’s a ladder at the back. The hard part, for me anyway, was getting the receiver on the roof at the same time. I’m not a firefighter (good thing, as it turns out) as I don’t seem to be able to climb a ladder while carrying something. So, one of my neighbours was out walking her dog and I asked her if she’d pass me the receiver. Fifteen minutes later, I had a solid connection. I had been tethering to my phone this week, that worked well enough and will be a great backup, but my TV and Chromecast won’t connect to the phone when I share, so there’s that.

Just about everything is setup now, I still need to put away clothes and dispose of boxes, but it’s feeling like home. It’s nice being back in the Calgary area, but wow, you really forget how bad the drivers are in a big city.

I start umpiring this evening and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve umpired a game. I’m sure it’ll come back, like riding a bike. I don’t know my partner, it’s a name that I’m unfamiliar with. Babe Ruth Fall Ball is always pretty decent baseball, should be a great Fall season.

On Friday evening, I’m heading back to the Pass to pick up another load of kitchen stuff and clothes and take pictures for the landlord so he can rent the place out again. I’m umpiring this weekend so that’ll be good.

It’s definitely Fall, it’s currently 4C and the days are only getting into the upper teens. Winter in the trailer will be interesting, it’ll be an adventure, to be sure.

I picked up my trailer on Thursday night, the flooring was re-done. The previous owner had put in flooring and was either an idiot through no knowledge on his part, or was an idiot in how he tried to install it. It was simple peel and stick flooring – he didn’t peel, he just laid it down so it was essentially a floating floor. That was fixed, along with a few other minor issues.

On Friday morning, I woke up rather early, it was 2:30am. My house cleaner was coming over at 7am to assist me with organizing, packing and loading the trailer. We broke at 10am or so and went for breakfast at the Golf Club, great food, I will miss it for sure.

I got out a little later than I had planned, what a surprise there. I stopped again in Lundbreck and had my buddy properly attach my StarLink satellite receive stand to the roof of the trailer and he sealed it properly. The dogs and I headed North at about 2pm.

The drive was uneventful and we got settled by 5 or so. I levelled the trailer and began the process of hooking up to power, water, etc., when I noticed that I was too close to the power connection and would not be able to extend the slide-outs. D’Oh… So, reconnect the trailer and back it up and forward to move it over 5 feet or so. All good now.

Connect the power, realize that I have forgotten the water hose so I can’t connect water – I will get that on Saturday.

I wake up even earlier on Saturday morning, 2am. We headed out at 4am and arrived in the Pass around 6:30, great drive South. I had coffee with my neighbour and started more packing and organizing. I had to do a dump run on Saturday and a neighbour had lent me his flatbed trailer for it, that took about 3.5 hours in total. I headed back to the Pass around 2:30 or so with a truck full of stuff. I did not get everything I wanted/needed in this load.

I relaxed on Saturday night and had friends drop by for a drink. I went to bed and died – I was exhausted.

On Sunday morning, I discovered that the former owner of the trailer left BOTH the black and grey wastewater tanks FULL. Unbelievable. Now, normally, it would be a process of hooking up the trailer and moving it to the dump station, however, to save space in the back of the truck, I removed the 5th wheel hitch so no moving the trailer right now.

I will be back in the Pass on Friday evening and will return with the hitch and a bunch of other stuff. What a pain, indeed,

The dogs and I are settling in, Unpacking is going slowly, but it’s getting done. I think I am going to enjoy it here. I have my first umpiring on Wednesday night, I have missed that.

Welcome to trailer life I guess eh? 🙂

I had a moving sale this past Sunday. It wasn’t anywhere near as busy as I was hoping it would be. I advertised in the locals buy/sell groups on Facebook and had signs out on the highway, only had 20 or so people come by in total and I sold about $600 worth of stuff.

I’ll be giving a bunch of it away now. I have some decent clothes that I’ll donate to charity. Other stuff I’ll post on Facebook Marketplace and say it’s free and the vultures will come, I’m sure.

After the sale, I went out with a neighbour for dinner to the local Chinese restaurant and the food was absolutely delicious and even leftovers so we both had an extra large meal. I’ll miss that restaurant when I head north.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. I’ll go and pick up my trailer, it’s getting a few last minute fixes done. The floor in the trailer where the slide out is wasn’t installed properly, that’s getting fixed and some additional security chains are being in for the 5th wheel hitch. I also want to see if it’ll properly support a swing arm for the TV, I’m pretty sure it will.

I’ll bring it home Friday morning and will start loading it up, clothes and kitchen stuff. My housekeeper will be over to assist, then we’ll organize and get rid of a bunch of stuff in the house.

The dogs and I will head north around noon, I’m hoping, getting to Balzac by 230ish. I’ll setup and level the trailer, connect to power and then settle in. The dogs actually haven’t been in the trailer yet, they’ll get a preview on Friday morning. Friday night should be relaxing, I hope anyway. I’ll head back to the Pass first thing Saturday morning to make a couple of dump runs.

We’ll head back Saturday night and I plan on relaxing Sunday. I’m back to work on the holiday Monday and that’ll be my first day working from the trailer. I’ve been testing StarLink internet for the past week and it’s been solid. I have a new cell plan with Bell Mobility and that’ll serve as backup.

I’ll miss aspects of living in The Pass. I’ve made a couple of good friends and I’m going to miss the closeness of the mountains, the lakes, the peacefulness. I won’t miss the almost constant wind that you get here, that’s for sure, and I won’t miss all day trips into the city to buy everyday essentials.

I’m excited about this, I really am. The change will be a good one.

I have a Pixel 7 Pro from Google, the phone is absolutely amazing and I love it. I likely won’t be able to buy anything other than the flagship phone moving forward, but that’s ok. Google phones are so much better than anything that Samsung produces that it’s not even close. The Samsung hardware is good, no doubt about it, but what they do to the OS should be illegal. I’d actually prefer iPhone over a Samsung phone. I digress.

So, a feature that Pixel supports is a dual SIM. It supports a regular physical SIM card and also an eSIM. An eSIM is an electronic SIM, or a virtual SIM. I’m not sure, but from my recent experience, the carriers, or at least Rogers and Bell do not, I repeat, DO NOT know how eSIMs work or how to configure them.

For reasons sort of unknown to me, I decided to add another phone number to my phone. My intentions were good, I was going to use this new number for work. Anyway, I called Rogers and asked to have it setup. They did, or at least they tried.

For a bit, I had 2 numbers on my phone. My original Alberta number that I’ve had since April of 2017 and a new Ontario based number for work. Unsure why I went with an Ontario number, but I did. Now, on my Alberta number, I had unlimited calling and texting and US data, I wanted this moved over to my new number – this is where the problems started, I think.

I was getting data on the phone, but since data wasn’t on the second number, the phone was showing that it was partially out of service. Odd, to say the least. I played with it and couldn’t resolve and figured it might just be easier to remove the second line since I hadn’t started using it, so, I called into business support and had them remove the second number.

Something happened here that wasn’t expected. Since my data was moved to my second line to go along with my unlimited talk and text, when they removed the line, it removed the data and the agent didn’t notice this.

I called Rogers a number of times and spoke to a number (6, I believe) agents and none were able to fix them issue. At 6pm last evening, I got tired of my call with them, after 3+ hours and said that I had to go. She tried to keep me on the line, but I was done. She promised to call me back the next day and would figure this out. I, however, had pretty much decided that I was done with Rogers.

I went to Bell after work today and got a REAL SIM card and my phone was reactivated. I’m on a good plan and paying less than I was with Rogers.

I was with Bell back when I was in Ontario and never had an issue, well see how it goes now.

So, Rogers, you really need to work on the training both with your sales people and your tech people, they lost you a long time customer last night, although the last rep did at least try, was just unsuccessful.

Welcome back Bell, I hope we have a long and trouble free relationship.

It’s now just over a week until the dogs and I move to Balzac and into my trailer. I’ve been busy posting items for sale on Facebook Marketplace and made quite a few sales as well. My moving sale is this coming Sunday.

On Saturday, I’m going to zip over to Montana, to my PO Box in Eureka, a buddy in California has sent me a chest protector for umpiring. I’ve missed not umpiring for nearly 2 years. I’ll probably start umpiring the second weekend of September, I doubt they start Labour Day weekend, but who knows.

Lots to do between now and then. I have my house moving sale on Sunday. My cleaner is coming over at 7am to help me setup, and I’ll sell a BUNCH of my stuff. Almost like starting over, and it is, except that I’m not going to accumulate again.

I’m going to start loading clothes in the trailer as well. I’m going to cut down on clothes too, I have a bunch of stuff that I never wear that’s in really good condition. If I don’t sell it, I’ll give it away, there’s always people who need good stuff.

I’ve been testing out my StarLink internet this week and thus far, it’s great. I was doing a video conference, at the same time that I was downloading a large file and streaming a baseball game – no buffering at all. I hope it’s that stable when I’m using it regularly and if it goes out briefly, I’ll have my 5G connection on my mobile to use as a backup.

The plan is coming together, and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m accelerating my move to Balzac and life in my trailer. Instead of moving out of the house at the end of October, I’m vacating the house at the end of September and the dogs and I will start trailer life in just under 2 weeks on Friday, September 1.

I’m still going to Idaho for a week at the beginning of October and heading to Ontario for a week at the end of October, and since I won’t have a house then, my cleaning lady/dog person will be looking after the dogs in my trailer.

Now, there’s only one small issue there, the trailer will be in Balzac and she works in Crowsnest Pass. Well, my ex-neighbour saved the day and I can park the trailer on her property so SB will essentially be camping for those 2 weeks and I’ll be there, back in the Pass for the other 2 weeks. I’ll return to Balzac in early November, where I plan to stay for the winter.

Today, I had the wheel bearings checked and repaired, the grease was bad so it’s good that I had it checked. There are some minor issues with the floor to fix and I also got the powered landing gear working, a blown fuse that was 85¢ to replace.

I’m finally going to test the StarLink internet tomorrow, I should have done it weeks ago, but, I do have a Doctorate in Procrastination. I’m also selling all my big stuff on Facebook Marketplace and am planning a yard sale this coming weekend. I should then be able to move comfortably. My first day working from the trailer will be Labour Day, I’m working 6-3.

It’s all so close that I can taste it.

I guess I have accelerated my plans. I gave my landlord official notice that I am moving out last night and as opposed to the end of November, it will be the end of October or rather November 1 – the day that I return from my trip to Ontario.

My cleaning lady will be taking care of Hera and Twix in my house. You know, I have written Blondie as the “first” dog for so long, my fingers still do it – it was always Blondie, Hera and Twix – sorry, I digress, it’s my right. So, the dogs will be staying in the house and then CB (my cleaning lady) will bring them to the airport to pick me up and drop me off at my trailer in the late afternoon on November 1. I guess I won’t take any house keys with me, everything will be cleared out except for the last minute things – it will be a coordination effort, but since I am helping my landlord with pictures and posting the rental, he’s given me some leeway.

I am going to be staying in Balzac Alberta until at least the end of the year and I am guessing likely through winter at the very least since who really wants to pack stuff up and move during winter. I am really looking forward to it.

A number of people have asked me if I am serious. I guess they can’t wrap their heads around leaving a house and town that I’ve lived in and moving into a trailer that probably has 150 square feet to live in.

I lived at my Dad’s place until I finished university and I moved out when I was 24. Between 24 and 40, 16 years, I moved 17 times that I can remember. I think I have Gypsy blood in me, I was definitely nomadic. As I got older, I wanted to move less since moving is quite the pain in the ass. Once I arrived in Alberta, I moved slightly less. I’ve been here 11.5 years and have moved 6 times in total. I have been in this place for 4 years.

I do love the community that I live in, Coleman Alberta. It’s small, quiet and the people are generally friendly. There are many, many spots to take the dogs hiking and lakes galore to swim in, kayak in, walk around – we’ve had a lot of fun these last 5 years down here. I do love the area, and I love the 70s feel that this house provides, but I have an urge to move on. More than that, I have a stronger urge to “declutter” and live a minimalist type lifestyle. I don’t think I could accomplish that living here, because I would keep buying things.

So, I started selling all of my “big” stuff. I’ve gotten rid of the 65″ TV and stand that I had and a bunch of appliances that I won’t need. My loss is someone else’s gain. I still have more to sell and I may do a “yard sale” at some point in the next couple of weeks. Anything that doesn’t sell will be given away or thrown away, I am sure I will be making a couple of dump runs.

I am greatly looking forward to this new lifestyle I am choosing. People say “what if you don’t like it?” – well, I think I will and hey, I rented the worst possible place down here when I first arrived – I survived for a year there, I can survive anywhere. As long as my dogs are with me and I’ve got somewhere to work (to pay for it all), we are good to go.

Here’s to the adventure.

I started work on Tuesday morning at stupid o’clock, 3am in this instance, so, stupid o’clock. I worked 3-11 so that I could head up to Calgary to get a 5th wheel hitch installed.

The trip to Calgary was quick and uneventful. I dropped the trailer off at The Hitch Shop and a former coworker of mine picked me up and we headed for a late lunch at Red Lobster. Endless Shrimp was on the menu, excellent food. We then headed over to Chinook Center to kill some time, I bought a Houston Astros hat that I really didn’t need and a lightning connector for an iPod Touch that I did need. I returned to pick up the truck with the newly installed 5th wheel hitch and headed back towards the Pass.

I don’t have any experience with 5th wheels, so a friend of mine was good enough to help me out. We were in the process of raising the trailer so I could connect to my truck and the power lift for the landing gear died on me. Our best guess, and likely the correct guess is that the inline fuse blew. We figured there must be a hand crank somewhere to raise and lower the landing gear. Well, hell if we could find it. I tried contacting the former owner, didn’t get a response though, so we left, empty handed.

We returned yesterday afternoon after I finished work and I did a much more thorough search and did find the port to hand crank the landing gear. I had to get the trailer moved, and we did. My truck didn’t strain too much at all pulling it, which is good. It’s now parked outside my house in Coleman.

I’m now one step closer to becoming, as my cousin says, a digital nomad. The dogs and I will live in the trailer starting in just 3 weeks. I’m looking forward to the adventures to come and living back in the Calgary area will be great as well.

I plan on umpiring in Calgary this Fall, something I’ve really missed. I’ll be living between Calgary and Airdrie Alberta at an RV Park along the highway. I’ll definitely have to make some changes, and I’m good with that. One thing, for sure, I’ll have to start using a laundromat. I haven’t done that in a LONG time, but, it’ll allow me some time to read or watch a game, something along those lines. The last time I used a laundromat I didn’t have dogs, I’d say it was probably 2005, so 13 years ago now.

I’m going to slowly start to move stuff to the trailer, clothes I won’t need, kitchen stuff, office stuff. I also need to test out my new StarLink internet service, I’ve had it a week now and haven’t tested it yet. Well, I do have a Doctorate in Procrastination, so, I have to make use of that.

The adventure begins…