Tour d’ Awesome Prep!
**this post has been rated F for the use of some spicy language**
The countdown to the start of Tour d’ Awesome has begun! I am scheduled to set sail, er…pop into gear…August 15th. That is in T minus 9 freaking days!!!! 9!!!!!!!!! And I’m totally not ready. I prefere to have trips like this laid out like a nice tight script for a carefully produced movie. Instead, this Tour d’ Awesome is fixing up to be a train wreck of reality TV show proportions. I have a starting point and an ending point for each day’s travel…but no idea what’s going to happen in the in between. I haven’t been able to research, or carefully plan…not to mention even think about packing.
When I get in the Jeep, I will quite literally be stripped down to a lost lady in cowboys boots with a dog at her side, a camera around her neck, and a suitcase (vintage and cute!) in the trunk. It’s crossed my mind that I should cancel the trip until I am more ready and prepared for it. But I was talking to a friend the other day who happens to be scared of heights. He said, “When I was jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to go skydiving, the last thing I said as I lept out was “fuck it!” Sometimes you just have to say “fuck it!”. This reminded me of this awesome video and my resolve earlier this year to do just that. Following the Fuck It Way hasn’t let me down so far!
The fact is, no one is ever 100% ready for anything. Nothing is ever perfectly timed or perfectly planned or perfectly executed. So, I can use that as an excuse to back out of a kinda scary experience that I’m not sure I’m ready for (and I don’t just mean logistically…I mean…ready to head out on the big open road with just myself for 12 days…the meditation retreat was hard enough, but at least I stayed in one place and had food and shelter!). Or. I can say “Fuck it! It’s so ON!” and take a leap. I think awesome is taking leaps like that. I’m inspired when I see other people doing it, so why can’t I?
Just
Do
It
A huge huge huge HUGE thank you to everyone who has sent donations my way. I now have enough gas money to get to Carthage, Mo.! That’s 1/3 of the way! I also have a place to rest my head for most of the stops, like those in Missouri, Chicago, Iowa, and Denver (and hi guys! I’ll email you my actual plans soon! So I don’t just, like, show up at your door!). My heart feels like it’s going to burst from all that awesome. BURST, people!
I don’t know how this is all going to play out…seeing as how unscripted it’s turning out to be. I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’ll do, or who I’ll meet, or what I’ll see.
But I do know one thing.
It’s
Going
To
Be
Fucking
Awesome!
Donations are still being accepted! Click through the ‘donate’ link on the right of the page! I don’t want to be stuck in Carthage. I’m sure it’s a nice place and all…but….no. I want to get to Chicago, at least! Here are some sweet things I can give you in return for a little cash. And, for everyone who donates, I’ll graffiti your name in a Rt. 66 roadside bathroom! Yes!
spread the word, spend some cash, think supportive thoughts…help a girl out!
And…I know you already are, but just in case you forgot, be awesome!
read moreUnschooling Advice::Get Off The Highway!
When the kids and I planned our trip up to the Pacific Northwest, we had some choices to make. The most important was who would have the food and snacks by their seat. The second most important was what route we’d take. We could go right up the 5, and get to Seattle in 16 hours. Or, we could get off the highway and take the back roads…this would add another 10 hours onto our trip. 10 hours in a small minivan and stinky kids who don’t have a huge love of long road trips (so ironic, since we go on them so often!). So, we went back and forth discussing the pros and cons of taking the highway vs. side roads.
The highway was appealing in a lot of ways. It would be quicker, for one thing. We’d get to our destination faster. It would be easier to keep track of things like time, speed, distance, and ETA, since we’d be on one highway going one speed most of the time. It would also be convenient…we’d have food, gas, and lodging the whole way up. What town doesn’t have a McDonalds, Chevron, and Holiday Inn?! In fact, that’s about all there is on the side of a highway. Same restaurants, same places to stay, same strip malls, same everything. It would be safe. Reliable. It would be….totally boring. Uninspiring. Monotonous. Routine. Impersonal. Soulless!
So we took the road less travelled. We got off the highway…we even got off the side road…and blazed our own trail!
It took us a lot longer, yes. We gave up the idea of knowing how long we’d be in any one place or when we’d actually get in to Seattle. We didn’t see a McDonalds for 3 days! We lingered when we found something beautiful and inspiring, and drove quicker in places we didn’t care to be. Anytime anyone yelled out “Oh! I want to see THAT!” we stopped on the side of the road.
We ate pancakes as big as our heads and met pastry baking pirates!
We saw big giant rocks floating up from the ocean and sunsets melting into the sea.
We saw groves of trees give way to building sized sand dunes. We marveled at every new turn. It was exciting. Inspiring! Full of personal connection and meaning!
It was a trip that is unique to us, at that time. We could go back and try to recreate it, retrace our steps, and we still wouldn’t be able to. We sacrificed time, efficiency, and traveling down a highway that everyone else was on. We traded in sameness and routine for other things like experience and individualization.
The parallels between these two different traveling modes and unschooling are uncanny. Whoever said that there is no more new frontier has never met an unschooler. We see new frontier all the time. It’s in the world around us, reflected in ourselves, and we see it with our own eyes. The current method of overstandardization and curriculum frenzy forgets this important part of the learning cycle. Exploration! Passion! Time! Interest! Excitement! An unblazed trail! The current system values efficiency at the expense of these things. Sure, it may get kids from point A to point B in a speedy, planned out manner, but they end up at point B sometimes wondering how they got there at all. Wondering if maybe point C wouldn’t have been better. Wishing they could have traded in some of the boredom for some of the fun.
This is where my patience comes from when people ask me things like if I’m worried that my daughter isn’t reading even though everyone else in 1st grade is. Or if I panic when my kids spend their days drawing or playing instead of working on worksheets or sitting in class. I’m not worried or panicked. I know that our journey is taking us places and down roads that are curvy and windy. I know that we’re not on a highway with only one destination. I know that we will eventually get there, but we’re having a lot of fun and seeing a lot of other things along the way!
Learning and standardization should never go hand in hand. Learning is, in fact, one of the most exciting journeys we go on in life. So why spend it on a highway, eating at McDonalds and seeing the same strip malls out the window when there’s so much more out there?
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this is part 4 in a series I like to call “Advice for a wannabe unschooler”. Parts 1 through 3 can be found here!
Where My Vegetables At?!
I know, I know, weird title for someone who hasn’t written anything in over a week. It’ll all make sense by the end. Or, as much sense as I usually make…which is debatable!
When I left, my goal was to blog a little something every night. I like having that kind of documentary to look back on when our trip is over, and I knew we’d have free wifi everywhere we stayed (Golfer has an uncanny way of guessing hotel wifi passcodes everywhere we go! Score!). But every night I’d drag myself into the room and think….tomorrow I won’t be so tired. Tomorrow is a much better day to write everything down!
But in the way roadtrips have, I actually became MORE tired by the next day…and the next…until now I’m basically comatose. It’s like I have walking pneumonia, only it’s more like walking unconsciousness. I’ve stopped wearing makeup altogether, because a side effect of walking unconsciousness is a hard eye rub, like what 2 year olds do when they get tired, and this was leaving my mascara halfway down my face. I was too unconscious to care, and then realized if I really didn’t care all that much, why was I even putting it on in the first place?!
I discovered something on our first travel day that has been both my biggest joy and my worst nightmare. It goes by the name of “Iced Caramel Mocha” from (gulp) McDonalds. I’ve so rarely set foot in there that Sassy had no idea they gave toys out with their meals until I got her a Happy Meal the same time I got my liquid crack in a cup. We were both hooked. From then on out, anytime she’d see the golden arches she’d request a happy meal and I’d start craving an Iced Caramel Mocha (ICM for short). Needless to say, we had three toys and 3 empty cups within the first 5 hours.
My roadtrip diet went downhill from there. I’d packed goat cheese and fruit in a cooler, but forgot to add ice to it at the first gas station so replaced all that stuff with non-perishables like chips, bean dip, and hostess products. And Starbucks Mocha Lattes in a can. Nothing could stop my Mocha train once I hopped on board!
I’m not going to lie, I started feeling a little sluggish and bloated. I chose to blame that on early PMS and continued eating my way through every pastry shop on the Oregon coast.
I had a brief respite at my friend’s house in Seattle. She made us home cooked meals complete with vegetables. I squandered this opportunity by filling up instead on a Starbucks drink she shared with me for the first time…a little something called a Caramel Macchiato. My somewhat bloated tummy started to bump into things like cabinets and my purse, and even I had to admit that rather than being just bloated, I was well on my way to making a Mocha Latte baby.
Tonight I took the kids out to a restaurant and ordered a large side plate of broccoli for my meal. I’ve never tasted anything better…except….maybe….the ICM.
Heaven help me, I’ve got to start making veggies an important part of my day or I’m going to melt into a puddle of divinely tasty and sugary mocha drink. Or my mocha latte baby belly is going to continue to expand until I can’t fit out the doorframes anymore. I don’t know which will come first…they both seem imminently possible.
I don’t know how my blogging will keep up the next few days of the Life is Good conference…it’s totally nuts over there, y’all! Chaos and havoc and so. much. fun!!!! But I do update more often on my facebook page if you want to see what kind of shenanigans 700 unschoolers get up to when they’re put into close contact!
Share TweetAdventuring!
So here we go!
I got my game face on, a requirement for any long distance travel with kids! My game face means I’m militantly optimistic. I keep my perspective macro instead of micro…meaning, as long as everyone is enjoying themselves, then I’m not going to get bent out of shape if we are or are not following our intended schedule. I’m flexible to all suggestions, whether that means stopping three times in succession for potty/snack breaks or not. It’s their trip as well as mine, so I keep an ear out for their needs too.
I have snacks and toys within easy reach. I have our ipad stocked up on game apps and the Hunger Games
The kids estimated (using mileage and car speed) that it would take about 18 hours to get to Seattle, so they decided that 3 days of driving 6 hours per day would be the right amount to get to Seattle. Then we realized getting off the 5 and onto the 101 up the Oregon Coast would be a better, but longer route. So then Naturalist said, “Let’s just get the heck out of California on the first day!” So that’s what we’re doing! It’ll take 10 hours today, but we’re going to go for it!
Stopping at Redding will give us great views of Shasta and the Cascade mountains on tomorrows drive. I know this because that area was one of my favorites on the train going to the meditation retreat. I can’t wait to show it to the kids! I’ll be updating sporadically through our roadtrip on twitter and via the freeplaylife facebook page. I’m anticipating an update about vomit in the car since that always happens at some point on our roadtrips. It’s like our special tradition.
So…anyway….
here…
we….
go!!!!!
Happy Easter!
We’ve emerged from 6 days of camping/no Internet just in time to wish everyone a happy Easter!
We’re halfway across Utah after wishing Arches and Moab a cold, rainy, and frosty goodbye this afternoon.
For the first time in freeplaylife history, our Easter didn’t involve coloring eggs, Easter baskets, extended family, fancy clothes, huge dinner, or my trademarked Easter themed cake. Instead we broke camp, ate a cold and half cooked meal, found some petroglyphs, started driving back along I-15, and ate an early dinner at Burger King.
It’s been different, but still a lot of fun in it’s own way.
Happy Easter everyone!
Hello! Aaaand…goodbye again!
If ever there was a place you could literally die from having an amazingly awesomely fun time, then Coachella would be it. I mean, I was worried about heatstroke, or dehydration, or getting smooshed to death in a rowdy crowd…so I was surprised that in the middle of one particularly fulfilling day of music/people I thought my heart was going to burst open with happy and kill me on the spot.
That might have been the margarita talking, but regardless…it was that much fun! But really, anything is fun when my younger sister is around.
With so many amazing bands playing, it was hard to choose who to see. We managed to do a pretty good job seeing everyone, and getting close to the stage when we wanted, or staying on the fringe and just listening while laying down recuperating from dancing for hours and hours in the heat.
I’ve never been to a huge music festival before, so it was overwhelming to be completely surrounded by music/art/people/performances/heat.
We’d get there at 11 am and then stay until around 2:30 am. Go home, sleep, wake up, shower, drink water, and start all over again!
I haven’t even downloaded any pictures of the days there, but when I do I’ll dish all about our favorite bands and experiences.
There’s no rest for the weary, though. I got back Monday and am leaving today with the kids to go tour the National Parks in Utah. Hello Zion, Bryce, and Arches! I’m going with my best long distance friend in the world, Ash and her kids. We did a little of this trip a few years ago….remember this?!
If I didn’t love Ash, her kids, and traveling so much, I might sit and cry for a little bit due to the back to back nature of these trips. My entire body is one big hurt muscle and I’d love to sleep in for a few days. But! Adventure calls! And it wouldn’t be very freeplaylife not to answer!
Share TweetTrain!
I’m having to use the notoriously finicky WordPress app on my iPhone to upload an update from life aboard the train, which is pretty fanfreakingtastic!
We just left Oakland, and I’m getting ready to go eat lunch. They sit you with other travelers, so you never know who you’re going to meet each meal.
I’m going on faith that this app will actually attach two little videos I took, but it’s stubborn and has a mind of it’s own and likes to rewrite and often totally delete what I write, so who knows what will end up being posted!
I can’t wait to get back and share everything about the retreat!
(this post is officially lame, since wordrpess app, aka ‘pain in the ass’, isn’t even posting the pics. Whatever, WP app!)
Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting…
You know what I love about blogging? Sometimes I sit down to type out a quick little blurb about our day or something equally as fascinating, and what ends up coming out is this huge long post about something totally unrelated. But it becomes so long and so beside the point of what I started typing about that I end up saving the post for another time so I have time to properly finish whatever it was that I didn’t know I wanted to write about. Which is what just happened right now. I sat down to talk about Chinatown, and ended up with 8 paragraphs about mono, kids, being a team, rowboats, compromising, and a walrus. And I’m not even jacked up on Nyquil anymore!
In any case, 2:30 am is too early to be trying to find closure for a blog about Mono and walruses, so I saved that one and will replace it with this original idea about Chinatown and Los Angeles. Because we recently went to Chinatown! Even though the kids hate riding the metro! And I’m all, “How can you not like riding the metro! It’s like a Disneyland ride! But without waiting in line!” And they’re all, “We don’t like it! It’s boring!” And I’m all, “There’s no such thing as a boring metro, just boring people riding the metro!” And they’re all, “Whatever mom!” And I’m all, “Whatever, kids! You’re raining on my parade! Who doesn’t like metro rides!!!” And they’re all, “WE DON’T!”
So sometimes a compromise is in order. I explain that I don’t ride the metro as much as I’d like, and today I’m really itching to take the red line down to LA. They agree to it as long as I stop the pitiful whining and give them some pocket change for souvenirs. We’ve learned to make as much of our day win/win as possible…which is where the mono and rowboat came into play but I’ll have to explain that later.
Anyhoo, we took the red line to Union Station then got on the gold line to Chinatown. Because near Chinatown there is a restaurant that claims to have served the first french dip sandwich…Phillippes Original. Sandwiches were good (the mustard is so spicy it’s like atomic mustard!) but the macaroni salad and brownies were to die for. We all loved it. Except Sassy, who had other ideas about what rolls should look and taste like.
Then we walked to the actual Chinatown even though the weather was getting cold, windy, and unpleasant. I really wanted to take pictures when the red lanterns strung across the streets turned on! Luckily, there are tons of cheap souvenir shops so we scored on getting some cheap tacky crap. But you know, it’s always the cheap tacky crap that you learn the most from. Sassy got a samurai sword but kept calling it a ninja sword which led into a huge discussion about ninjas and samurai and the difference between the two. It carried over into the next day, where we googled lots more info about samurai/ninjas. We also got a crazy mask, one of those moustache/nose/glasses/bushy eyebrow combos, and a wolf figurine.
The red lanterns never did turn on, so after some great pastries we got back on the metro and rode home.
I used the fancy video option on my new camera to take some videos, and then edited them in imovie. And so now I can share with you the highlights of our trip, and you can see all the cheap tacky crap in all their glory! Also, a big 20 foot long macaroni! You can also witness the Sassy attitude and her new favorite indication of displeasure…the “thumbs down” gesture through half closed eyes.
A Day at Chinatown from freeplaylife on Vimeo.
Share TweetLooking for Fall.
The kids and I are on a mission to find Fall in Los Angeles. We’re wistfully remembering this time last year when fuzzy sweaters, hot chocolate, hearty soups, warm blankets, and crisp cool days signaled a colorful changing of the leaves. I miss the smell of autumn.
Today we set out on Mulholland Drive to try and find it. It’s my favorite drive, winding up through the Hollywood Hills and across the mountains until it drops you off at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
We brought Frito and a picnic basket along with us. I wore a sweater…and even though it’s got short sleeves I still thought it was a nice sentiment. The weather was a balmy 70-something while the sun was still out. Everywhere we looked…green trees.
We parked at a great hiking spot in Coldwater Canyon, claimed our picnic spot, and devoured our typical picnicy food: fruit, hummus, naan, yogurt, a selection of goat cheeses, the fixin’s to make the best sandwich in the world, some drinks, and some pudding Sassy tossed into the grocery basket at the last minute. Once we were stuffed to the point of wanting to nap, we headed out to hike around and find a sign that it is, in fact, Fall and not Summer.
It was hard prying Naturalist away from her book. I never thought I’d type that sentence, since she didn’t hardly want to pick up a book until she was about 12…now I can’t get her to put one down! Sassy reassured us that she was giving us some cover with her hand guns in case she had to snipe any evil dudes while we searched. Incidentally, this reminded me of the spectacular homeschooling poster that has the tagline: “Come the zombie apocalypse, the kids in public schools will wish someone had taught them melee weapons fighting and small unit tactics.” It’s only funny because it’s true!
After wandering over hill and dale, we spotted something. Little specks of yellow and red. Fall! Autumn leaves and berries! Yes!
Convinced that we’d found it, and getting chilled because the sun had gone down (by 5pm! This makes me sleepy by 6pm and wanting everyone to go to bed by 7pm!) we headed home and made some chocolate chip cookies.
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that make a day feel full of awesome.
Share TweetHappy Janssens, Part 2!
Way back a lifetime ago, or maybe just 8 short months ago, I met up with the Happy Janssens: Sara, Matt, Bella and Lucy, and made a video about it. They are full time RV’ers and have a fantastic blog that talks all about it.
Friendship is so funny…everyone we meet and know fills such a different space in our lives. Some friends I go to when I need to have some deep talks. Others I seek out when I need advice or a good food recipe. Others I call when I need a girls night out. Some I see often, but most live in different states…the byproduct of moving around quite a bit in the last two decades. Sara is the type of friend that makes me giggle. It’s just something in how we mesh…our humor, our life views, our obsession with our iphone photo apps (hello, Hipstamatic!), our even deeper obsession with our canon DSLR’s, and our spastic attention spans…we giggle together like little girls. It’s refreshing, and makes me wish there was a cool RV park right in my backyard so they could pull up and I could see her every day. But first, I guess I need a backyard.
In any case, I was able to see them this weekend in Vegas. They were passing through, we were passing through, and some travel kismet happened that we were passing through the same weekend. Let the giggling begin!
She told me about this weird kind of drink called “Bobba Tea” which she swears everyone has heard of but me. And I’m thinking…I would remember someone talking about a drink that you have to drink with a special straw in order to suck up chewy balls at the bottom of your cup. She bought me some for my birthday, and it was all good until 5 or 6 of those suckers would zoom up my straw and I’d have a mouthful of rubbery tapioca balls to chew through before I could take another drink.
I introduced her to H&M and the concept of all the free babysitting she has to look forward to as we left the younger girls in Naturalist’s capable care while we ducked inside to check out the cute and affordable clothes.
Then Matt bought me a few chocolate chip cookies, and with about 340598304598 grams of sugar now in my system I sat down with Sara to do another interview. This time we talked about how to create a community even when you don’t know anyone around you, Soup Sundays, life on the road, and yes…boba tea. There may be some giggling involved, we just can’t help it!
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