One more time

 It is 5 AM and the house is quiet.  In a little more than 24 hours, we will be shutting the door and saying goodbye to our home for a year.  This morning every action has both a certain weight and a special lightness.  Choosing a favorite coffee cup (where is that one Jack brought me from Idaho?).  Feeling the familiar comfort of place and routine. What will the morning routine be like in the van in 3 months?  Will there be a choice of coffee cups?  Will we find anything but Nescafe in Chile?

What are we doing?  Our goal is to drive as far south in South America as we can – Tierra del Fuego in Chile or Ushuaia in Argentina from our home in Vermont.  Then we’ll turn around and come home in time for the 2015 school year. We are driving a camper van and a motorcycle.  We have a RoadTrek 20 foot camper (including the wheel on the back) that Luc found in Massachusetts on Craig’s list, and a BMW 1200 GS motorcycle that he found on eBay and drove home from Louisiana in 4 days of terrible weather last fall while I spent the weekend at the DMV learning to ride a motorcycle.  Luc spent most of the spring adding lights and switches and shields to the bike.  I spent a good part of mine making lists of books about South America (Road Fever, 8 Feet in the Andes) and loading up old favorites (Ted Simon, more Dumas) on my Kindle.  We also bought a cool trailer that can eventually be taken apart or put back together or in 15 minutes (though I don't think we'll reach that speed for while).

In 12 days we load our vehicles onto a RoRo (roll on, roll off) ship in Fort Lauderdale and fly to Cartagena, Colombia where we will practice our Spanish alphabet by talking to insurance agents about SOAT and customs agents about VINS until the vehicles arrive on August 31.  Then we’ll follow summer down the coast to spend Christmas in Chile.  Maybe I’ll find a sweet little motorcycle to ride once we get there.  Hopefully some of our family and friends will come down to join us for a bit.

For now, we have 24 hours to finish packing, to say good bye to our friends and savor these last sweet drops of home.