jonesberries » Maggie the Motorhome

New Tank and happenings in Aourir

Debbie — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:00:02 +0000

Projected Lawrence of Arabia on the cement wall next to the truck on Friday night. Karim made a fire for us to cook our pizzas on a stick. Most of the people here at the garage came over to enjoy the movie with us. We all watched the movie until the power cut almost at the end of the movie. Wonder if we caused the power cut with our projector? Naw, can one projector cause a power cut for a whole village?

Some great neighbours from France with a great truck – all wood inside. Reminds me of a log cabin. Owners of the dog with the funny smile.

Other french neighbours. They have only had their truck for 8 months and look what they have done! It is like a small apartment. They have a full-size cooker (btw if you travel with a full-size cooker travel with an old one – they last better – I have heard), a bedroom with a real door, a RECORDING STUDIO!

And the back opens to a garage and a back patio. We are SOOO impressed!

Andrew is softening on the dog front. Figures a dog might be good for security. We have been talking to some other travelers and they said it is no problem to bring back a stray dog from Morocco. We just need to get a rabies vaccine, a computer chip and a doggie passport. Ireland and Switzerland have a blood test required as well to show the vaccine is working. So, Alana and Abi found a stray at the Souk that they appropriately named “Soukie” that they thought would be a candidate. Andrew went out to meet the dog and thought he was a possibility. “Just bring her in to the yard and we’ll see how she gets on”. Sounds easy huh.

Maybe some fish heads would bring him in.

After what seemed like FOREVER of coaxing the girls returned to the truck exhausted and with no dog. Maybe Soukie isn’t the dog for us afterall.

TJ has been collecting animal bones. Hannah thinks they are gross and scary so TJ only brings them out to show to whoever she can whenever Hannah isn’t around. After looking at each bone thoroughly and discussing where it could come from Hassan put together this face with the bones. A true innovative mechanic putting things together in unexpected and bizarre ways. He must have been an interesting child to have around when he was a boy.

One of the men working on our truck is a very nice young man who has a serious crush on Abi. In the photo he is the barefoot one on the right. Alana says it is just like the movies. She and Abi were walking past him and he swooned. You know a lingering look, a smile and a full body sigh. This happens every time he sees her. Just like the movies.

We had a whole lot of men working on the truck yesterday. The diesel tank is here. The 2 tanks are side by side in the photo. We have more than quadrupled our diesel capacity.

Andrew was trying to describe 3 point torsion-free mounting so they wouldnt put the tank in too high. You see, where the cab and the cabin of our truck meet they move independently as they are only connected at one point in the front. They sort of pivot on each other. So the cab and the chassis (underneath the cabin) tilt one way and the cabin stays straight. It makes it so we don’t stress the box on rough roads. Took me a while to understand. To try to get his point across to a bunch of unbelieving mechanics Andrew jacked up the right front tire of the truck to show how much smaller the space gets above the petrol tank. They got it and put the tank in the lowest position.

So, Andrew is a very happy man. After a full day he finished off the day painting his new tank with orange primer. I went out to see him laying under the propped up tank slowly and affectionately finishing off the painting as the sunset behind him. You see, men do get emotional – just about completely different things than us. At the end of the day Andrew crashed. Happy, tired man.

Truck parts at Ait Melloul

Andrew — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:57:38 +0000

Andrew here. I spent yesterday scouring the truck yards at Ait Melloul, not far from the Agadir airport in Morocco. Its an amazing place. I didn’t buy anything but I might return for a bigger diesel tank.

Its really worth a visit, even if you dont need any parts for your car or truck.

Problems with solar panels

Andrew — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:06:49 +0000

Solar problem in the Sahara?. Our brand new Tenesol TE2000 solar panels were underperforming, giving only 27.4 open circuit volts instead of 33, which wasn’t enough to charge up our system. Even in the Sahara where sun is never a scarce commodity. And solar is important to us because we keep Abigail’s insulin in our fridge to control her diabetes and no fridge means no insulin which means no more Sahara. Time to go north anyway. We had a technician contact Tenesol but they have not been able to help us yet.

Quick fix? I wired the panels in series rather than parallel (technicians suggestion). That doubles our voltage which I hope our system will handle, and it gives us the load amps of a single panel. If anyone out there thinks this is a crazy solution, please let me know.

Solar and Angel Wings

Debbie — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:39:21 +0000

So, here we are. Still in Morocco, actually still at Hassan’s. Not the Aourir Hassan but the south of Gouilmim Hassan (sorry the spelling keeps changing but this is a multi-spelling town that I cant be bothered to have a consistency of influences for my spelling – by the way thank you for reading my spelling disclaimer).

It is hard to leave a place when the hospitality is so full and rich. With a great big smile Hassan will say time and time again, “It is your home. You are at home here”. You just gotta love the Moroccan hospitality!

Really enjoying having a dongle, by the way, having this handy, dandy little maroc telecom appendage that enables internet access and me to keep blogging, even in the most isolated corners of our journey in the south of Morocco – who knows why it took us so long to pay the money to get one. The only problem we can see with it is that it is selective on what it will talk to on the internet. The only major inconvenience is it istruggling with google, gmail, youtube, and totally BLOCKING blogspot which is annoying to say the least. Sorry Kerstin and Barbara (with blogspot blogs) and other friends. I have been trying to take a look at what you are up to but have been unable. Also, Barbara, if you are reading this some friends might be coming your direction as we have been telling them wonderful things about you. Another note on dongles. You have to show your passport to buy your own personal tracking device, ooops internet dongle. DUDE!

Hassan has gone into town with me and Sergio for the last couple of days looking at cloth. Bless him, I think we are exhausting him. Hassan is great. He seems to know half of the men in Gouilmim. As we walk down the street we keep hearing his name yelled from shops, moving cars and passers by. Of course these are met with kisses and handshakes and a few words. I love seeing this. I love seeing the affection between men here as well. It is not unusual to see 2 men embracing, kissing cheeks, arms around each other or holding hands as 2 good friends.

Poor Sergio with his list of 20 things to get done today. Nothing seems to bother him. He just keeps opening up his little folder, looking at his list, no ticks yet, smiles, shrugs his shoulders and gives me a hug while we hear another “Hassan” from another friend of his from down the street. Now, back to the cloth. If you know me you know I am in heaven. I want to make stuff to give away and perhaps, if I can get my act together enough I might even make some extra stuff . I have been having images of making colourful angel wings and frilly skirts/tutus, halos. To me the best treasure chest would be one filled with colourful cloth and beads and wool just waiting to be transformed by a small group of men and women into strange and wonderful expressions of individuality. Oh the strange things that dance through my head.

The fabrics that the women wear draped around them, that btw miraculously stay in place through the gales, is an unusual mix of tie dye and a little old ladies apron. Heck I can’t even get my neck scarf to withstand gravity without declaring mutiny every 5 minutes much less an entire body covering in the Saharan winds. I tell you, if I were to decide to wear one of those body wrap fabric things it would not help me appear more modest but would make me into a flasher. We will go in again today to finish our buying before Sergio and Pavla head off for the raw-food rainbow somewhere in Spain.

Andrew, in the meantime, is not having as much fun as me as he is working on the solar with Melchior. Roadtesting our 2 Tenesol T2000 solar panels. We kinda expected having 2 impressively huge solar panels on our roof would have given us enough power to run our little fridge or maybe even charge up a couple of laptops in the Saharan sun. Dang maybe we should have bought the Sharpe ones. Maybe these German solar panels that we bought in Morocco weren’t such a great deal after all. We’ll see, we are in touch with the manufacturer. We’ll keep you posted. Hope we can work it all out. Well, as we always say, it helps to have a friend who is really smart and just happens to be a dutch geek with way too much higher education to help with your solar energy when you get into trouble.

Installing a pop-up roof on Maggie

Andrew — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:40:06 +0000

We have been waiting until we got to Africa to open up our roof so that we can sleep on top. Its been a little cramped with 9 people living in this truck and the roof top area will greatly increase the square footage by about two thirds. And not having air conditioning means that any ventilation we can find will make life much more comfortable in hot climates.

And the fully collapsible roof space will give us plenty more space for everyone to sleep. We are putting some rails on the roof so people dont fall off. We can also tie some spare wheels and stuff on the roof if we need to..

We are also getting some rust removed from the truck and some things that fell off are getting wielded back on. While the work is being done, the mechanic is letting us stay in this little shanty, along with some other travellers and young hippies who are camping out with us. It doesn’t leak very much at all – just in a few places but nothing that some strategically positioned saucepans dont take care of. The place is buzzing with people. New travellers turn up each day. Yesterday a group of Lithuanians walking across Africa turned up and we all ate together. Very cool.

Happy 2010! Here’s to a bog free year and olive oil

Debbie — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:41:36 +0000

Had a great New Years eve celebration at Paulo and Edna’s house. We have taken our minds off the difficulties of the last week. We had no vehicle for days as Serge’s car broke, days later Paulo and Edna’s van broke, days later we arrived in our truck and after picking up Petr from the Airport got our dear Maggie stuck. Yes, I know, our overlander truck. Yes, our 4×4 truck. Add to this the fact that our truck is leaking and Paulo and Edna’s house is leaking. As a matter of fact we were thinking we would celebrate New Years by candlelight because the water is leaking into the walls and making it unwise to use electricity in parts of the house.

On the last day of the year Paulo and Edna’s van got fixed! They rushed off to the grocery store.

We had spent several days doing various “teambuilding exercises” that some people would pay dear money for.

We dug trenches, with our small foldable shovel, and made small roads for each wheel with buckets and buckets of stones we collected from around the land. We all carefully watched the wheels while andrew figured out the “locking differential” system. The sun had come out briefly and we were feeling determined to not go into the new year with a bogged truck. Slowly she climbed out of the mirey clay.

Just a half an hour later we took “Maggie” out to take Sam and Donald to the train station so they could go to a party in Lagos with Eddie and Rubin (from Conscious Earth). We also used this opportunity to go grocery shopping. Get the idea there wasnt much food in the house.

We had a great New Years eve and were collectively relaxed enough to miss the New Years countdown for Moscow (9:00), Turkey (10:00) and Germany (11:00) despite the presence of a funcional german in our midst. We were able to make up our own countdown for Portugal, only 4 minutes late, and most of us were able to take an ice plunge into the pool. I know what you are thinking, “Ice plunge? You are in the Algarve.” Well I gotta tell you it was cold.

Before, notice the ripples in the water from checking the water temperature.

And in. The sensible German guy, Petr, in the red shorts was the smart one. He calculated the dive needed to propel him to the quickest exit.

And seconds later almost everyone is out of the pool. Edna, being a great combination of extreme and relaxed is still in the pool – doing laps? Dang.

Anyhow, here’s to a bog free year full of taking lots of icy plunge opportunities, lots of friends, lots of sharing life and (at the risk of sounding too hippy) lots of love. What do you say. Lets hang together and be nice and loving and look out for each other. We want to try to be more selfless and look out for more opportunities to see the best and bring out the best in each other. We want us to be mother and father and sister and brother to others. You know, we think there is just too much fighting in our world and the God we believe in seems to think Unity is a pretty cool thing. We coined our own little saying this year, while we were picking olives, “Make olive oil not war”.

One of the many great honours this year was finally hanging out with Al and Tina. They would say “we just wanna love on people”. Hey, lets all do some of that, O.K.

A little family motorhome history

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:10:05 +0000

Reminiscing this morning. Here is a little of our bizarre family motorhome history. Sorry no old pictures to give you, only the ones you will create in your mind.

1 – 1985 – Me and Andrew met on a ship going around Central and South America. We were 2 people among 130 from 30+ countries.

(1991 – Put all our earthly belongings in a few backpacks and trunks and moved to Australia with one 6 month old child, Sam.)

(1994 – We put all our earthly belongings in the same backpacks, without the trunks, and moved back to USA with 2 kids. Lizzy was a year old.)

2 – 1994 – We lived in a small 1969 ford motorhome, with snoopy flying on his doghouse painted on the side, for a year in Pasadena, California. This was for cheap accomodation while Andrew went to graduate school. We had 2 small children, Sam and Lizzy. We looked for a suitable parking lot, asked permission to park and worked for them as payment for parking. Our most momentous adventure was to drive to the rose parade a couple of days early and enjoy front row seats on top of our home.

3 – 1998 – We put all our earthly belongings into a cargo van and a tent with 4 children for 6 months. Hannah was only 6 weeks old at the time.

4 – 1998 – We were given a 10 year old, 33 foot, Winnebago Motorhome. It had dusty pink carpet, need we say more. We did 25000 miles in 2 years crisscrossing america several times. We killed this vehicle. Why? We now think that “normal” motorhomes are typically not built to haul a family around full-time. Too much weight and too many miles. A van engine and van brakes and van shocks with too big of a box on the back.

(2000 – We put all our earthly belongings in a few suitcases and moved to Scotland with 4 kids.)

(2002 – We put all our earthly belongings in an old volvo sedan and moved to Prague with 4 kids.)

5 – 2003 – We took off in a 20 year old Avia motorhome from Prague. This vehicle was built by a czech airplane company as a cargo truck, converted into a motorhome by an employee after the “Prague Spring” to take his wife and 2 sons over the newly opened border and explore the continent. We did not bring all our earthly belongings with us this time as we were only gone for a few months. We had 5 kids at the time (TJ was born in Prague) and an adopted family member (Jessica). The engine of our little Avia motorhome blew up on the motorway in Italy and had to be left for dead. We were rescued by a series of friends, another story.

(2006 – We put all our earthly belongings in a van and moved back to U.K. with 5 kids.)

6 – 2009 – We bought our overlander, Maggie, for GBP 3500 and made her into a motorhome from November on. We took her on the road just a few months later on March 11 even though we continue to work on her on the road. We chose Maggie because she is strong. She can handle the weight. She has air brakes. She has a non computerized system so we might be able to fix her ourselves or she can be repaired in poorer countries. She is air-cooled (no radiator). We think she is beautiful.

getting ready for Morocco

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:53:55 +0000

So, here we are, still in the Algarve and still loving it. In the space around getting ready for Rock on Christmas we are getting ready for Morocco. We will leave days after Rock on Christmas. So, we started thinking. It seems like it is possible that the roads could be a little worse in Africa. At least the fun roads might be not quite smooth. What if there is an opportunity to go thru a river. Are we ready? What if Andrew starts getting inspired by “Lawrence of Arabia” and starts driving Maggie over sand dunes into some far off destination over the horizon. I mean we must be prepared. SO, we have determined that these things are necessary. 1. Plug up any gaps to let less sand in. 2. stop things from flying off shelves. 3. Make sure breakdown stuff is accessible and working and, well, actually, there in the first place. 4. Make space for extra food and drinking water. 5. Figure out the water situation. I mean, can we get drinking water at all. To what extent do we need to purify the water. I mean I know we need to fear ice cubes or anything from a tap but can we purify water we get there. Also, are we going to need to soak our fruit and veg in chlorine or something. So, what is great is there are people who have been there so we are doing alot of working and listening.

I hear you, you are probably saying, ” Uh, hello, you have been on the road for quite a while now. Shouldn’t you have done this stuff already?” Well yeah, but after being on the road we need to take time out every once and a while. Also, We havent really gone to many totally new countries yet. We have been in Western and Central Europe for a while and well, we have never been to Africa yet (Andrew flew into South Africa once for a week and hung out in a conference center, not sure if that counts). We are facing the unknown here so, well, I want to try to be prepared. I am not worried, really, we are all really excited but we dont want to take unnecessary chances and all.

So, anyway, about things flying off shelves. Well, you try one thing and then another but off-roading is completely different than freeway with an occasional curb. We did some real, uhh…. how do you say… not quite off-roading but very bad roads in rural northern Portugal and …. well…. dang… there wasnt much left on the shelves. And poor Liz, anything that falls off a shelf seems to fall on her. I dont care if she is on the other side of the truck, it finds her. I was afraid she was going to start being afraid of books or something. So, we have gone to work. Andrew went to work on gaps and insulation in the deep storage and did some painting.

Sam and Donald went to work on the stove cabinet.

Me, Liz and Abi went to work on keeping things from flying off shelves as we are not wanting to spend alot of money, and we enjoy the challenge of using found objects, and… well… to be honest… we are a bit broke… hmmmm.

So, we used found old wood from an outdoor screen and covered it with newspaper and branches and are actually feeling quite pleased with the result. I have to say, I Like the look. So anyways, back to work tomorrow. Maggie is sure enjoying being pampered like this. Next the guys will do some checks with the safety equipment. Abi is working on an inventory for the emergency food and water supply and Liz will head up the “orderly…??” re-entry of our treasures into our home.

Preparing for Rock on Christmas

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:49:20 +0000

We arrived in south Portugal and are preparing for a rock festival to be held here in a month’ s time .It will be called Rock on Christmas and it will rock. I will be the VJ. Unfortunately, we don’t have a location just yet but Denny Hurst, the festival organizer, is working hard on it.

This is me this morning, standing in front of Maggie, our 4×4 truck that is home to our family of 7 and sometimes others who join us. We will be turning this land into a makeshift campsite for festival goers over the next month. Lots of work but it should be fun.

Beautiful Homes and Gardens

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:24:26 +0000

I found myself at an english magazine stand. A rare opportunity in my life. I had the urge to pour myself into a bit of brain dead entertainment. I went from section to section with no satisfaction. I found myself in the home improvement section. I used to like this bit but now they have no attraction.

Why? I still like pretty things. Finding that unloved chair and making it into something beautiful. I used to love this stuff. How have I changed. I think the change started years ago when I got fed up with the talk about decorating according to a theme. Being of a rebellious nature I decided to simply strive to fill our family space with things that we loved and wanted to look at. A series of photos of good friends and times stuck to the wall with blutac, a mural of angels, an astroturf wall, a giant blow up bumblebee, you get the idea. So, now we live in a truck, not as much room. We still have a flying chicken clock, a sparkly “chandelier”, a 1940s kitchenette and old “gypsy” wallpaper. Why? because it makes us happy – not because it is cool.

Lately, I have been going even deeper into my weirdness. We have been in many, many homes. I have seen some perfect homes that are really nice to look at but leave me dry. I have seen other homes that are absolutely beautiful and make my heart dance. Right now we are in the beautiful home of Edna and Paulo in Portugal. Their home is stunning. Why? some of my favourite things would have to be the long table made of plastic patio tables, the pile of mattresses in the corner of the living room, The overflowing bowl of soaking beans in the kitchen and eager generosity with every movement. It has nothing to do with money or perfection. It has everything to do with love and humanity. I think about other homes I have been in that would fall into my category of “beautiful homes”, being with the Simsons in Germany, the Carters in U.K., The Hursts in Lisbon last week. I think the main reason is not because we are recipients of such selfless hospitality but because we are witnesses to their overflowing hearts. Homes should be extensions of ourselves, be it a house, a flat, a yurt, a truck or a tent. People should be able to see our hearts. We shouldnt be trying to make them perfect but true as an expression of our hearts, our passions, our lives. Lets stop hiding behind bricks and mortar, canvas or fibreglass. A beautiful home is one that lets us see truth in each others lives. To bear witness to lives, the dancing and the crying. Thank you to all who have allowed us to be in your beautiful homes and lives.