The Butterfly Effect, Pt 2
Two recent things about growth and change and the Butterfly Effect.
Molly’s a senior this year. As if that wasn’t enough of a mind-blow by itself, we’re now to the task of looking at colleges. Over the summer she had her list narrowed down to half a dozen or so. Then one day we were walking through Costco and I casually asked her if she’d done any more thinking about what her number one choice was for schools. She angled over to one of the tables, grabbed a Purdue sweatshirt, and tossed it in the cart with a smile. So that was that. Needless to say, these Boilermaker parents were pretty thrilled. She said she realized that everywhere she looked she’d been comparing it to Purdue. So gold standard. Or…gold and black standard, so to speak.
So fast forward to this past week, and Molly and I went to Purdue for “Be a Teacher” day, sort of a day-on-campus for prospective School of Education students. Gorgeous fall day on campus, trees just ablaze in color, sky a rich cerulean blue. School of Ed took us to lunch, brought out the Boilermaker Special for rides and Purdue Pete for high-fives. Molly’s having an absolute blast of a day. It’s cold though. Maybe 40 out with a blustery wind under the Math building (if you know, you know). We’re all standing around the Special at the end of the day taking photos.
And wouldn’t you know it, a Monarch butterfly goes flitting directly between Molly and me, does a lap around her, and then cruises off out over the fountain. Molly and I looked at each other and we both just grinned. Hey, Dad.
Second thing…
As Kelly, Molly and I begin to take a much more active role in the day-to-day of Helios so that Mom can finally take a load off and relax, we knew we’d need a way to stay up at the farm for more than a few hours on a weekend day-trip. We want to build a new place up there eventually, but that’s down the road when we save up some money. We need to start being up there a few days a month now, so we’ve been brainstorming ideas. Eventually we circled around to a travel trailer.
And so began the research.
Holy shit there are a lot of options out there in the towable RV world.
Eventually, after countless Google tabs full of manufacturer websites and at least two spreadsheets cross-correlating Ragnarok’s towing capacity and tongue-weight against the dry weight of trailers and projected net weight with clothes and the dogs on board, we circled in on the Airstream Flying Cloud 23FB.
New they’re eye-wateringly expensive though. Thanks for that, Covid. Everybody wanted an RV to do socially-distanced vacations and the prices still haven’t come down. Used though… The hunt was on.
I came across an ad for one up near Rockford (hey, Fuel/Icehogs tie-in. That’s cool!) being sold through a brokerage and reached out. Did a Zoom walkaround with the owner and it was immaculate. The owners absolutely loved “Cassiopeia” but had no time to make good use of her. 2019 model that had less than 700 miles on it and had only been used twice.
Offer submitted that night, and a couple weeks worth of paperwork later, I loaded up Ragnarok with snacks and set out for Beloit, Wisconsin at 4am on a Thursday.
Longest single day of driving I’ve ever done. But Mike and Mary are absolute gems, and Cassiopeia is just perfect. We stood around talking and looking her over for a couple hours, then hooked up and I started the long haul home. ‘Haul’ because I’d actually never towed anything before. Queue up almost 7 hours of white knuckled driving getting sucked across the road by semis. Learned a lot in a very short amount of time, that’s for sure!
But a little after seven pm we pulled up alongside the house and Cassiopeia was home. We’ve been cleaning and loading her up, and I’ll take her up to Helios next weekend.
OH, yeah. The point of the post. The three of us were standing in the yard taking a break and just admiring that gleaming aluminum hull, and zoom…there goes a monarch buzzing through the yard. We had a trailer when I was a kid, and I think the only thing Dad loved more than farming was hitching up the trailer and going to see the country. Right before the butterfly came flitting through, Molly had just asked if we could take spring break and head up to Michigan for a week on the road this spring. Kelly and I are already planning on loading her up with a Starlink RV and working from the road for a few weeks sometime next year as well. We want to end up in Paso and set up at Rotta or Hollyhock but what I’m really discovering finally for myself—that my dad always knew—is that the journey is the thing.
Glad you like the trailer, Dad. And glad you approve of another Boilermaker in the family.
