After a lackluster winter at Amazon’s Fernley facility, Jenn and I decided we’d be better off looking for a job we enjoyed than one that promised big bucks and may or may not deliver. As one of our interests is caving, we decided to try and get jobs at a cave for the summer, even if it meant working the gift shop and cleaning restrooms. It turns out that we lucked into one of the most amazing jobs we could hope for.

Our first choice of positions came through and we got workcamping positions at Caverns of Sonora. For those of you that have never heard of it, Caverns of Sonora is one of the most decorated caves on the planet. While there hasn’t been a study that I’m aware of, I believe it could very well be the most decorated cave in the world based on formations per square inch. We are lucky enough to be spending a fair portion of every day guiding tours in this cave.

The tour is a very up close and personal experience. We are literally inches away from formations throughout much of the tour. On top of that, we are working for some of the best people you could hope to be around. The cave is owned by a family that has owned the land surrounding it for five generations and the general manager has been a true caver for forty-six years. I can’t imagine a better work experience.

Words cannot begin to describe this beautiful cave. But to give you a general idea, we spent a week training with two to three tours a day that are close to two hours long and on our first day off, we took two tours through the cave just to enjoy it and take photos. I snapped five hundred and forty some odd pictures in three and a half hours. Almost eighty have been uploaded to the gallery. The pictures do not do the experience justice, but they are far better than words could ever be. I only wish I had half the photographic skill of the professionals who have done the off-trail photos.

The pictures for this post are chosen more or less at random as I would be very hard pressed to pick favorites from the photos we’ve taken so far. At twenty bucks a person, the tour pushes the limits of our budget, but it really makes me stop and think what beautiful things we may have missed over the past two years by being thrifty. I hope none of them were nearly as beautiful as this, but I will definitely think twice the next time we pass a ‘tourist trap’ by because we don’t want to throw our money away. Some of those traps are probably every bit as worthwhile as this one. Please take a look at the gallery. I’ve yet to see someone come out of a tour disappointed; in fact, the most frequent comment is ‘this is the prettiest cave I’ve ever seen.’

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Not to be outdone, Jenn has been working on freecampsites.net quite a bit. I’ve tried to help some, but my PHP is very rusty and the codebase is quite large. I think she may have gotten a small taste of my frustration last night. Since she has expressed at least a passing interest in my game, I talked her through adding a couple of features to the codebase while we were driving to Quartzsite!

I was impressed. As a C neophyte, she was still able to extend my existing functions as well as find and patch a bug while listening to my disconnected ramblings of where the problem was most likely to be. All of that, and my program still compiles and runs this morning! I’m only sorry that I couldn’t talk her into finding a bug in the display code I spent a few hours trying to find yesterday. But, that code is probably overly complex and due for some cleanup. Hell, I get annoyed looking at it and I wrote it within the last week!

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Image from www.toothpastefordinner.com

Integrity treats their people like crap and the only way I would work for them again is if I was COMPLETELY desperate or they were the only means to a job I really, really wanted. One example of their total disregard for people: Last night they let 100s of people come in and then laid them off before they even got 5 minutes on the clock. Most of those people had just driven 30-40miles to come in. It sucks being laid off when you want the job. It really sucks when you waste hours and dollars only to be told you no longer needed.

Integrity played so many unnecessary head games. They would write people up for things that were completely out of their control. Almost everyone who started the night I did got wrote up for not making their week four numbers (270) during week one. In orientation, they handed out a piece of paper that said what our expected UPH (Units Per Hour) was. In your first week, you were supposed to make 120 (I don’t have the sheet with me so that’s from memory). Each week it would ramp up. I think it was 180  in week 2 and 230 in week three. At the end of week 4, you are required to be at the same as the full time employees 270.

By the time my week 4 rolled around, there were too many people on the floor for anyone to get the UPH. Still, they kept writing people up for not getting their numbers. They didn’t write everyone up either. Just the majority. It was painful watching friends who really needed/wanted the job get picked on.

But, I will not miss the Integrity head games. Amazon seems like a decent company to work for. After what I experienced tonight, they do take good care of their employees and most of them are happy with their jobs. It was a completely different environment tonight after the temps had cleared out. Everyone was joking around and having a good time. And, even though there wasn’t any work, they found ways to keep us busy and paid. It didn’t seem like such a bad place after all.

This will probably be my last post about Amazon.com.

We discovered a pipe in our camper that had busted due to ice tonight. It is still frozen. I guess I know what we are going to be doing tomorrow .

We hope everyone is enjoying their holidays.

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A light snowfall. I know. Its not a big deal. There isn’t much snow out there at all. Its about as much snow as I expect when there is snow forecast and usually its gone by the next afternoon. However, this was no ordinary snow day for us.

An hour or so later, the snow had really started accumulating. The ground was completely covered. I was pretty grateful that the diesel had come equipped with a block heater which appeared to be working well.  In the next picture, you can see the “glacier” that had formed on the hood calving thanks to the block heater.

I worry about the diesel in cold weather, and I was pretty happy that it was plugged in. Thankfully, we have only had one cold weather related problem with it. That’s when we discovered the block heater and after a half hour of trying to locate the plug (that was in an hole too small for even my hands), we plugged it in and were good to go in a few minutes.

Because of our good fortune, I figured that the couple minutes of excitement we got watching the snow fall off the hood was going to be it for the day. I was wrong.

We went about our normal “morning” routine. When we headed of to work, we had some difficulties going up the steep slope we always use. No problem. We just took the other route. At that moment, we decided it might be best to put the truck in 4×4 and also avoid the interstate.

Other than watching a few vehicles lose traction, the rest of the trip to work was uneventful.

Work was work. 6pm-5:30am. The only difference is that we were recovering from a bug we picked up and were feeling mildly sick. There were also rumors that the interstate was shut down because of the weather. They seemed to be true. We can see the interstate from the job site and there wasn’t any traffic on it.

The real fun began after work. Johnny had offered some guys a ride home. He was going to wait inside for them, and I was going to go get the truck warmed up. Too bad the truck had other plans.

The truck didn’t want to start. It sounded like the batteries, but I figured that the diesel had gelled. I initiated the glow plugs a couple of times to warm it up. Johnny showed up at the truck a few minutes later, by himself. The guys were staying to get in more overtime and had found another ride. I bet they don’t know how lucky they were.

So again, my first thoughts were that the engine just needed to be warmed up but the glow plugs weren’t doing the job. No problem. We had the generator with us. We would just push aside the 5″ deep snow to make a spot on the ground and plug the truck into it. Unfortunately, we neglected to put a drop cord in the truck. Duh!

Johnny was convinced it was the battery, and I was convinced that the block needed to be warmed. Either way we needed supplies. Johnny being the super awesome guy that he is, trampled through the snow and ice (in a sweater, sneakers, and light nylon pant cargo pants) to Walmart where he picked up a quick charger and a drop cord. I waited in the truck like the “cold shy” person that I am.

Johnny returned with the cord and the charger. He freed the hood that had frozen shut, hooked everything up, started the generator, and we hunkered down (a phrase we normally reserve for hurricanes) in the truck anticipating another successful self rescue.

After a while, we started getting impatient. Johnny kept looking at the charger’s digital readout to see how much the batteries had charged. They hadn’t. He then walked over to our job site to see if someone would give us a jump. The only traffic that we had seen were compact cars that couldn’t possibly jump the F350. Johnny came back with a battery pack that the security desk gave him. It didn’t help in the slightest.

While Johnny was returning the battery pack, I decided to give my insurance provided roadside assistance a call. We had neglected to call them previously because we assumed it would be hours before they got to us since there were snow related car accidents everywhere. We were wrong. While I was on the phone, Johnny had returned with a truck that was willing to give us a jump. They tried for about 5 minutes and then Johnny sent them on because roadside was on the way, and he didn’t want to hold the nice people up.

My insurance company told me that they would have someone there in 40 minutes. It seemed like a good time to abandon the truck. We went into work for some warmth and coffee. Did I mention the temperature outside was probably in the single digits?

A few minutes later, I get a call from the tow truck driver. He said that he had been waiting on us for 5 minutes. Johnny headed straight there. The guy told Johnny that he had been hooked up to our battery for 10 minutes (I think the guy had some real concept of time issues). Anyway, the truck didn’t start and he said he was giving up on us. Johnny hinted at how nice it would be to get a ride to Walmart so we could purchase two new batteries. The driver offered to tow us the 1/4 mile to walmart for $150 and then left. I can’t say that I blame him, really. There was real money to be made elsewhere with a tow truck that day.

The clock was now rounding 10:00am, and we decided to do what we should have done all along: bite the bullet and replace the batteries that were in the truck when I got it with some new ones. So we hiked over to Walmart and purchased two new batteries (my big ass truck requires two). After a sandwich (mmmm.. I had forgot how much I like pastrami) and a warming up period, we snagged a cart to ferry the batteries and proceed back to the truck. I can tell you that pushing a shopping cart a 1/4 mile through 5″+ deep snow isn’t the most fun we have had so far, but we thought that it had to be a lot better than slipping on some ice and falling down while carrying two heavy duty truck batteries.

We made it back to the truck and installed the batteries. The truck cranked right up. Johnny tossed the old batteries and the shopping cart into the back of the truck. We went to Walmart to get our money for the battery cores and (of course) return the shopping cart.

On the ride home, we watched some more people who had forgotten how to drive in the snow slide all over the road. Perhaps they never knew.

We made it home safe, albeit late. Too late do to anything but sleep.  After the night we had, all we wanted to do was sit back, relax and have a drink. Unfortunately, the reclining chair was already occupied… with a lot of snow!

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This poor guy got all beat up by the machinery and had to be replaced before I could send it off to its loving new home. I threw the mangled one in to the “damaged tote” in the center of an aisle I share with 8 or so others. It was pretty amusing watching people notice it there, pick it up, and either cringe or crack up. The Avenging Narwhal Playset (with 4 magical horns and 3 adorable animals to impale)

The Avenging Narwahal wasn’t packed alone. He had the following to keep him company and give him tasty treats:

I really should have been in bed two hours ago, so I will only include one more. Another action figure by the same company: The Marie Antoinette Action Figure (with removable head, wig and gown)

Apparently these are part of a much larger set that include Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure (comes with 6 cats!), the Deluxe Librarian Action Figure (with realistic “shushing action”), and many more. Collect them all!

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Back then, we were in soul sucking, yet somewhat prestigious jobs and running the middle class treadmill. Well, I guess that by then we were only walking on it. We had already purchased the truck and camper. We had gotten rid of most everything we owned. We had had the camper for a couple of days and were moving what little of our stuff that remained into it. We were still working but only because we wanted to earn some additional money. At the very least, I wanted to make sure that I made the difference between what my Xterra sold for and what my truck cost back before we left.

The place we used to work. Our desks and the building.

We also wanted to see if we could actually spend every waking hour together in a confined space. We had already been working together, in the same department, for years. Of course that means that we rode into work together, too. But, there was always that reprise of a big* house. While we would naturally come home and sit a few feet apart from each other in one of the computer rooms, there were lots of rooms and doors, and we could go get some solitude if/when needed. In the camper, there are only two rooms and two doors. One of those doors lead to the 3×3 bathroom, the other exits the camper. Spending those 4 months working our old jobs and living out of our camper was a million times easier than I had expected. The only problem that I think I had was the fact that I couldn’t really spend a lot of time doing my hair anymore as there just wasn’t enough space in the bathroom for all the stuff that is involved. Oh and the fact that black dress suits and two cats in a confined space = spending a lot of time with a roll of tape trying to remove tons of fur.

Our rig in 2007 and now in 2009

So, here we are two years later and happier than two peas in a pod. Seriously. Has it all been marshmallows and rainbows? No. But, its been real close. So far we have been very lucky. Part of that might be that my outlook has really changed. In times of adversity, I find pleasure. And, while we haven’t worked a lot on the road, the jobs that we have had have been pretty strenuous. So far, I have really enjoyed challenge and diversity of the work we have done.

I hope that the year ahead is as enjoyable as the previous two have been. I hope to work more during it. After we leave Amazon we are going to head south and then make our way back east. I will probably try to get a short term gig as we make our way through Quartzsite. It would be great to land one in Carlsbad, New Mexico too, but I don’t think that is going to happen. When we are not working, we will be attending a plethora of caving conventions. We missed almost all of them this year as the majority are on the east coast.

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Wow!

Anyway, the title is in regards to fact that we both think we are getting sick. Which completely sucks as we are starting to see overtime at work. Well, I am anyway. Johnny’s group was sent home early today. We haven’t been flu/cold sick since before we hit the road. Grrr… I have been so diligent at work! OK, I am not that girl downstairs that wears a mask everyday, nor am I the lady I saw in the lunch room with the latex this evening, but I am really careful. I wipe down my equipment before using it everyday. I wear my work gloves before touching objects that lots of people do like door knobs, sign in pens, etc. It may seem a little overboard, but I didn’t want to get sick! I want to work, and its not overboard if it didn’t work.

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I can’t say too much about Amazon yet, as we signed an NDA stating that it was all hush, hush.

Our days are pretty much coffee, breakfast, work, dinner, and then sleep. We haven’t seen any of the local sights. Well, other than one smokey casino lounge where we enjoyed a couple of nice breakfast (for us) beers and after dinner (for them) drinks with Jim and Rene of liveworkdream.com. It was great to finally meet them after a year+ of cyber stalking. I hope to hang out with them again while we are still in the same area.

Currently, our days off consist of laundry, baking bread, cooking big meals that we can eat for dinner during the work week, and sleeping. Fun, fun, fun.

We aren’t sure if we would do Amazon again, yet. We will have to wait and see what the final compensation is before we can decide.

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So, after going through many of the sites on our work camping page, writing countless cover letters, and making numerous phone calls, we have decided what we want to be for Halloween. Amazonians. We are going to follow suit and join the other work campers who work for amazon.com over the holidays.

So, be careful of what you order this year.. we just might see it!

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For your participation, you will receive free camping during the event, an official T-shirt, a guided cave tour, new friends, and a fuzzy warm feeling that comes from making a difference.

Work will include the following:

• Formation Repair and Cleaning

• Visual Work to Camouflage Man-Made Features

• Vandalism / Graffiti Work

• Clean-Up of Trails and Commercial Areas

• and Much Much More!

More information can be found on the website. Please ignore the 2008 date. It is a typo.

You can also contact them @ 606-286-4411.

The event will be held at:

Johnny and I had a great time in this park. It is where we worked on the bat gate. There is a ton of wildlife in the area. We saw deer every day for most of the day. We also saw a fox and a number of skunks. Its a very nice park with a lot of caves in it.

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We left South Carolina in a hurry and made a beeline for the Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve in Mt. Vernon Kentucky again. We were hoping to get some caving in and see some friends once more before it gets too cold to be in Kentucky and we head out west for the winter.

We got to GSP on a Friday evening and were disappointed to find there weren’t many folks around for the weekend. By the end of the weekend, we hadn’t managed to go caving, but we did meet the head of the GSP committee, who had not heard of our ‘pseudo-real temporary membership in lieu of an actual real membership and almost real camping pass’ which had been issued by the former membership chair of the Greater Cincinnati Grotto. However, Bob, was polite and let us stick around while we straightened things out.

Halfway through our first week there, we met Shane, who had come up to do some trail maintenance and caving. We ended up doing a night trip with Shane to John Griffin cave. We later heard conflicting information regarding the closed state of this cave due to bat hibernation season. As of this moment, I am unable to find it listed on the cave closure list. I wish we’d had this list handy during our time at GSP. There is a 1600′ stream passage that has acted as an obstacle to finding the other entrance to this cave system. During our trip, this passage was nearly dry and it would’ve been an excellent time to try and find the other end without risking hypothermia as previous expeditions have.

Friday night, Shane’s wife and daughter came down and we hooked up with another couple to do an evening trip to Sinks of the Roundstone. Jenn and I had been in the cave during Karst-O-Rama, but we barely scratched the surface of the cave. During this trip, we saw several new areas. Now, it seems like an even nicer cave because I’ve seen that there is quite a bit of cave there that we haven’t seen and experienced some of the more interesting passages that we passed up during our previous trip.

Saturday night was the Halloween party. Jenn got suckered into sewing tarps to act as a wind break for the party. I made a couple of chocolate pies, decanted a bottle of whiskey and finished making the bottle of limoncello that Jenn had begun work on during the week. I can safely say that none of this was left over except the ‘lemon hooch’ that I had to wrestle free after a drunken hayride so Jenn could have a drink or two.

Sunday, we got together with Shane’s family and went to Climax cave. Climax is a really fun cave. It has several different maze areas where you can get quickly turned around if you’re not careful. Jenn and I have been on trips to this cave twice now and I’m still not sure we’ve seen much more than half of it. This is one of the caves that makes people really appreciate the reflective markers I’ve made up. In fact, the next time we ran into Shane and family, they’d made their own set of flags similar to my own.

The first half of the following week passed quietly until people began arriving to setup for the Rockcastle county elementary school field trips. Once again, Jenn got suckered into sewing tarps as the previous tarps were not dark enough to block the sun so that we could show movies to the children. Thursday and Friday, we got to remember what it’s like to get up early… we were helping with the cave tours of the Great Saltpetre cave for 2nd and 4th grade students. We had a lot of fun and made sure to follow as ‘tail gunners’ for a different guide every trip. Each guide had a little bit different lecture to give as we were walking through the cave, so we got to hear quite a bit of the history of the cave.

By Friday evening, we finally got our GCG membership straightened out and were no longer ‘the squatters down on the point’. Dave rolled in Friday evening and we spent the weekend hanging out and looking for caves. The sad thing is that we were looking for known caves, but with poor directions. We spent Saturday afternoon climbing all over a ridgeside and found a few holes, one of which was human-passable, but only about 40′ one direction and 15′ the other. The upside to this was hearing Dave scream like a girl upon seeing ’some sort of giant rat-like monster’ and then hearing him shout ‘OOGEDY BOOGEDY!’ in order to frighten off the critter before sending Jenn and I in for further exploration.

Sunday was almost as bad, except we drove Dave’s truck through some 4WD trails rather than actually walking. We found one potential cave, but the entrance was awfully tight and downhill around a corner; none of us was really comfortable with trying to get out of that belly-crawl once we got in. Jenn made it in the farthest, going headfirst while I held her feet. She was able to see around the corner and it was more of the same, so we gave up on that particular hole as being a lousy way to experience a first hand cave rescue.

Monday, Shane and his family came back down and he took us over to Wells Cave which is about and hour drive from GSP. The entrance to the cave acts as an excellent nerd filter. It took about ten minutes to negotiate a crawl through four to six inches of mud that has the consistency of peanut butter. Behind this, there is over eleven miles of cave. We’ve barely explored this cave; it would take much longer than the time we had available to see anything approaching the entire length of such a system.

And today, we’re back on the road!

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After we spent a couple of weekends at the Great Saltpetre Preserve caving with some great people from the area, we headed towards Boone, NC to start our next stint as carnies. However, we got sidetracked leaving Kentucky as Jenn noticed Carter Caves State Park was just a few miles out of the way. As this is where Crawl-a-thon is held in January, we decided it would be worth a quick stop over and looksee.

We got up bright and early and explored Laurel and Horn Hollow caves. Both are rather short trips, that have been ‘prepared’ for tourists, but they are still unlit, self-led trips. Horn Hollow has a beautiful entrance, but is otherwise not much to look at from inside. Laurel was quite a pretty little cave and we were able to get off-trail and explore the upper passage as well as climb a small waterfall that most non-cavers would have never seen.

Once we got to the camper, covered in cave mud, and I got stripped down to my high performance underwear, a couple of guys walked up, and rather than running away, they wanted to chat, which marked them as cavers and not afraid of dirty, half-dressed hippies in a parking lot. This was our introduction to Roy and Jerry. They were in the area building a bat gate, which is designed to let bats in, but keep people out during bat hibernation season. Since we were the only muddy folks around with a bat sticker on our vehicle, they assumed we’d be good suckers, err… candidates, to volunteer to help out.

Well, they were right and we decided to come out with them the following day and see just what it takes to build a bat gate. It turns out, that it requires a lot of sweat and a fair helping of calluses, bruises, burns and muscle. Just a friendly note: if anyone ever asks if you’d like to ‘pack in steel’, run away screaming. Steel gets packed in increments of roughly 400 lbs, in this case by five guys along a ridge, both uphill and downhill. After a few hours of this, I was more than happy to be put in charge of the acetylene torch. While I spent a lot of time bending and kneeling, it beat the heck out of packing steel. Luckily, the forestry service and wildlife management services were contributing a lot of manpower to the project or we’d still be trying to get the steel in today.

Roy and Jerry were super nice folks to work with. They took us out to eat a few times and related lots of caving stories. By the end of the first day, Roy had promised to pay for our campsite as long as we hung around. By the end of the second day, we were on the payroll for the duration as well. By the end of the week, we’d been promised a spot to camp in Texas or Virginia and a cave trip into Mexico if we manage to get out west this winter.

This was Roy’s 310th gate and he says he’s quitting… after just one more gate. We had a great time working with Roy and Jerry as well as all the forestry and wildlife folks. You can’t beat doing something new and intriguing, getting paid for it and having a free campsite while meeting interesting people!

View more images from Carter Caves State park, including building the bat gate, Horn Hollow Cave, and Kevin’s Kave in our gallery.

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Claire @ http://escapethe9to5.blogspot.com

Hi Jen

How long do you think your trip will last?

Is it a trip or a change of lifestyle? If it is a trip how do you plan to make the transition back to the 9-5 grind if ever? Do you worry about the future? Do you worry about being homless

How do you manage for money? Do you live off savings or do you work along the way?

I am really intersted in your blog and your plans for the future. I am having another life crisis and I need to do something to change my life.

Cheers

Claire

As for how long the trip will last: forever, I hope. It is definitely a change of lifestyle. From the shedding of all of our accumulated baggage and absurd “needs” to opening up to new people and opportunities, we have changed. Even if the trip was tragically cut short, I have learned new values that I will always keep with me.

At this time, I do not foresee myself returning to the 9-5. I find it very stifling. My career, while profitable, was a drain on my physical and mental health. I cannot imagine returning to a cubicle, ever. I cannot imagine sitting in an office working at least 9hrs a day, sometimes 16, for someone else’s dream. Life is way too short to live that way.

Do I worry? Of course I do. It would be silly not to. That said, I am not going to let fear dictate my life and keep me corralled into a “normal life” where money is all that matters. I remember how miserable the people I know who were trying to keep up with the Jones by working at a job they hated were. It was a stark contrast to the people that we have met on this adventure who are happy, generous, and grateful for today.

Some people are lucky enough to find out exactly what makes them happy at a young age. Sometimes it’s a corporate job, a career in medicine, or driving a dump truck. I chose an enjoyable (for 10yrs) path that had high income potential. But, the money wasn’t enough to placate me for the rest of my life.

I am grateful for the opportunity that our careers have given us. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to make this trip. It has allowed us to do it debt free and with cash reserves. Its much easier to search for yourself and your future when you don’t have to worry about money as much.

I don’t really worry about being homeless. While I am still young, I could always return to the 8-5 if I had to. Currently, my previous profession is in demand. That could always change like it did in the dot bomb, but I would have to deal with that either way. I have also learned that I can live in a much smaller space with less stuff, so less costs. If I find somewhere that I never want to leave, I plan on buying property there. Then I wont be homeless when I am older.

Do I have all of the answers? Nope. Do I know exactly what the future holds? Nope. Does anyone? Nope. Will it all work out? I have no idea. Am I making the right decisions? Only time will tell. Will I live to celebrate my 100th b-day like my Grandmother will do next March? Not a clue. All that I know is that I am happy. Very happy. Finally. I also know that all of the retired people we speak with in the campgrounds say that we are smart for enjoying ourselves while we still can.

We live of investments and income. When we moved into the camper and quite our jobs we were debt free. Both of us had savings and investments. We have been trying to stick to a budget which can be hard when you find new hobbies. We don’t eat out. We try to pay very little, if anything, for our campsites. We try to make more than we spend. We have worked a couple of jobs along the way which will help us stay on the road longer. We are going to work more short term jobs in the future. I would like to work at a whitewater rafting place next. We were offered jobs fighting wildfires last week, but we had a previous position lined up and couldn’t do it.

Speaking of which, I just arrived at our current job site (sorry, I wont have time to proof read this for errors). We are carnies at the moment and there’s lots to do before the fair opens. In closing I will say, if you are unhappy in your current situation, do something to change it. It doesn’t have to be as drastic as selling everything you own and moving into a van down by the river. Start with small changes. Remember, you are the only one responsible for yourself and your own well being. Best of luck to you in your decisions and please let us know how you are.

This is in response to a previous comment. Johnny said that 10 paragraphs constitute a blog post, not a comment. He’s right, so I posted it here.

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I don’t think a full blown food stand is the way to go, at least not without spending enough time and money to make it seem like work. There are a lot of concession stands that are easier to run than the one we worked in, but they are one trick ponies. If the people at the event don’t want say, pizza, you can’t sell them anything. Additionally, they are a lot harder to get into a first class event as they tend to be selling very popular, cheap products such as cotton candy, popcorn, etc. Food in general means you are hauling around a concession stand and a stock truck at the very least. If we are to do event vending, I’d like it to be something that could fit in a small trailer and be pulled behind the camper.

But enough of my rambling. I know my audience well enough to know you’re all just waiting for the pictures of half-naked beer girls and motorcycles. Sorry to disappoint, but my photographer didn’t take too many shots of beer girls in body paint and pasties and I wasn’t brave enough to take my own pictures. I hope this picture of a life-size pornographic Barbie Doll will suffice.

We also spotted this interesting bike. He liked to park in front of the Strip Club Choppers booth, but I don’t think there was any affiliation. Yep, thats a stripper pole on a bike trailer. I never saw any girls on it. In fact, after the first two or three days, the girl that was dancing in front of the Strip Club Choppers booth quit. Can’t say I blame her; tips were pretty lousy for everyone the entire event.

Finally, we voted this guy as ‘Man with the Best Hat 2008′.

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We’re taking lots of interesting pictures, but for now, here’s a few shots of my favorite bike. Yes, you need to see it from this many angles, and yes, it plays ice cream truck music.

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I quit my job! Jenn is still working a bit longer to try and meet some of her own financial goals, but I am now a lazy, unemployed slob. And not a moment too soon; the new company has become more stifling every day… which became increasingly hard to deal with knowing we already had everything we needed to hit the road.

We went to the Renaissance Festival over in Tampa during opening weekend. It was kind of rainy, but not enough to really worry about. We stayed in the camper for the first few hours when the rain was coming down, then headed into the festival… which was pretty empty due to the weather. We had a pretty good time watching the shows and hitting all of the beer tents.

We camped in a Wal-Mart parking lot the night before the Renaissance Festival, then when we saw that they had annexed a fairly large corporate parking lot across the street, we camped there Saturday night. The only other RV on the lot left, but a couple of vans stayed overnight, so I think we weren’t the only folks sleeping on-site. Thankfully, we could leave the slide out which we couldn’t at Wal-Mart. That makes life in the camper so much more bearable.

On Sunday, we ran over to Plant City. For those of you not familiar with Plant City, there is nothing at all there except agriculture and the Strawberry Festival. We were planning to work at the Strawberry Festival the following week, so we needed to find a campground that wasn’t full. Additionally, we met with my parents and got our uniform t-shirts and exhibitor tickets for free admission.

The following weekend (well, Thursday evening), we ended up back in Plant City at the Sundial RV Park. If you are looking for a great destination campground, I’m afraid I can’t recommend them. The lots are small, you’re likely to only have water and electric, with a tractor coming around periodically to pump out your tanks. In fact, if you’re only staying a day or two, the owners would prefer to stick you in a field with no facilities whatsoever. Trains run past the campground pretty much all night long and they’re not shy about letting you know when they’re going by. As for amenities, there is a bathhouse, three washers and one dryer.

All that being said, we were pretty happy with the place as the manager was about as easy to get along with as possible. We didn’t have electricity the first night and there was some difficulty with the water and sewer hookups. We just left everything laying out and when we got in from the fair the following day, everything was setup. I still can’t recommend them for vacationers, but if you’re going to be working in the area, then they have fairly reasonable rates, even if we did feel they were overcharging a bit considering the trains and lack of amenities.

The Strawberry Festival was, well, work. If you’ve seen one fair (repeatedly, day in, day out, for 20 years or so), then you’ve seen them all. I grew up working at a State fair every year with my Dad. The past couple of years, he has retired from his most recent career and bought a concession stand to travel around and work various fairs. He and my Mom seem to enjoy the work, although they are getting up in years and I am always glad when we can help them out during an event. As we will soon both be unemployed, we are planning to work with my parents during some of their larger events. It will help us keep traveling from the income as well as let me spend a bit more time with my folks than I have in recent years.

We worked the Strawberry Festival from Friday until the following Sunday. Upon leaving, we headed back to Orlando and checked into a campground down the street from where we’ve been staying. It doesn’t have as many amenities and the campers aren’t as nice as the ones in the last park, but the cost is 75%. I can’t remember the exact cost of the last place, but there was lot rent, electricity and hospitality taxes to deal with. Currently, we only have a single price and it is about 10% less than just the lot rent at the last place.

The ambiance is a bit nicer… there are more empty spots and there is more space between RV’s. We also have lots of wildlife… well, pseudo-wildlife. Apparently everyone around here likes cats. I’ve spotted about a dozen distinct juvenile to adult cats that roam around the park. I’ve seen quite a few folks feeding them. The little beggars are convinced they own the place and I actually had to sit outside and watch the grill last night because they seemed to think that I was cooking steak for them. I don’t really mind the cats, but it is definitely a different experience to have a dozen or so tame cats strutting around your campsite.

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