The Best Way to Make Coffee in an RV, Part 2

December 15, 2017 by Galia in reviews

Since the original coffee post is the one post people have had the strongest opinions on, I thought you all deserved a follow-up now that we're actually on the road.

First off, the AeroPress is still awesome. I do have to admit, though, that pressing it down every single morning does get a little old. But all in all, I still think it's the best option, with the best coffee, for our journey. But we've since gotten some things that make it even better:

1. A reusable metal filter

It looks like this:

Environmentally friendly because you're not wasting paper filters every day. Good for me because easier to travel with (don't have to store the paper ones, or worry about ordering more when I run out). And a lot of people think they make better coffee, because it retains more of the oils that would get filtered out with paper.

The one challenge I had with it is that the water leaks through a bit instead of sitting in the tube waiting to be pushed out. This inspired me to finally try the "inverted method" of brewing, which I was intimidated about. The first attempt ended in weak coffee and a mess all over the counter. The second one was followed by actually looking up how to do it online, and was good from there. :)

This is the one I have, but there are a lot to choose from on Amazon.

2. A portable milk frother

This one was a gift from Mike for my birthday. They look like this:

You just heat up some milk and stick the frother in, and suddenly, a latte!

There are a bunch of different ones online, many of them are super cheap. This is one of the highest rated ones. Really fun addition to the coffee collection, to mix things up a little bit and get fancy.

3. An ember smart mug

Smart mug? Seriously? Yes, seriously.

This one was a Hanukkah gift -- something I wanted, but wouldn't have justified buying otherwise! But I'm really excited to have it.

It pairs with your phone, via the ember app, where you can choose the exact temperature you want your drink to stay.

Today is my first day using it. There was a little bit of trouble trying to sign in to the app for the first time, but once I got past that, it was all easy. I learned that the coffee that comes out of the Keurig starts at 165 degrees. Ember presets to 130 degrees, but it'll tell you the exact temperature of the liquid in your mug and you can change it to match your preferences. Turns out, for me, 130 is actually on the nose.

If you're using the mug without the base (which acts as the charger), it'll heat your coffee for about two hours. If you dock it on the base, it'll heat indefinitely. It takes about an hour to charge, and there's an LED on the mug itself that indicates when the battery is low, charged, or charging, and tells you when your coffee has reached your perfect temperature.

The mug itself is cute, and seems hearty enough to survive living in an RV. Handwash only, and you can't put it in the microwave (there's metal in it), but that shouldn't be a problem. They also sell a travel mug, but that one's more expensive and I just couldn't justify it!

All in all, it's definitely a bit of a splurge, and a lot of a luxury. But now that I have it, I'll have a hard time drinking coffee any other way!

*Note, at the time of writing, the Amazon link is showing the price as way higher than elsewhere! Try the ember website or your local Starbucks to see if it's cheaper.

Happy caffeinating!

San Diego, part 2 (and a side trip to Phoenix)

December 13, 2017 by Galia in san diego

Our time in San Diego remains wonderful.

The main theme continues to be our confusion about why we're so dang busy all the time. I think we expected time to relax, work, hang out with my parents. But instead, every moment we're not working, we've got plans or errands or projects or activities. It's possible that this is because I have so many friends and family members already here -- there are so many people to see, and we want to maximize time with them. But I suspect the real reason is that we're just busy people. We both have so many projects we want to do, things we're interested in, stuff we want to try, and people we want to spend time with. I think our lives might just always be this way! I like it a lot. But we could probably both benefit from scheduling in more down time on occasion. Feels frustrating to schedule in down time when we have so little time here, though.

Another factor here is that it's hard to juggle all of our priorities. The purpose of the trip is to spend quality time with people, so on the one hand, we want to maximize the time we're doing things with others. This would imply that we should be scheduling our travel days to fly through non-people places as much as possible, and to spend most of our in-town time scheduling things to do. But that brings us to priority two -- we'd actually like to sight see along the way, so blowing through towns is a bummer, and we need to schedule in at least some time to stop and slow down and see the sights. Which takes time from hanging out with people. And finally, there's adulting to do! We both have work, I'm trying to continue to grow my business, there are meetings and errands. If this stuff was always the top priority, we wouldn't have time to have any fun! But it's the stuff that's also least forgiving if you ignore it, and it's got to get done. The entire trip so far has been a struggle between the three -- especially when we're choosing travel days and how many days to stay in each place. I think we're doing a good job balancing so far, but I think there will always be part of us that feels like we should be spending more time doing all three.

My favorite sliver from San Diego so far is that my parents are now obsessed with Mike's Oculus (virtual reality headset) and want to do it every single night. It brings me joy to watch them. I've also been going to belly dance class every week, and Mike and I went swing dancing. We did an escape room, and Mike took a photography class. And we've been able to spend lots of wonderful meals with lots of wonderful people.

The time is already flying by. It still feels good to be able to be around and be present for our family here. We've been staying in the guest room, so so far it still mostly feels like a normal trip to visit my parents instead of an Epic Vanlife Adventure. We've finally gotten around to organizing the RV some, though, so that definitely helped.

Two Fridays ago, we drove the RV to Scottsdale, AZ. We spent the weekend visiting Mike's college friend, Erik, and Erik's family. We pulled up at night and the guys somehow managed to fit the RV into a driveway that appeared long enough for only one car. We were looking forward to sleeping in the RV for the weekend, because being in the RV makes it feel more like we're on our trip again. And it's still interesting and weird how much being in the RV feels like you're home, and that the outside could be anywhere. Definitely doesn't feel like we're sleeping in our friend's driveway in the suburbs.

Mike made sure to fill up our propane tank before we left. We had been wary to use it because, due to a combination of a fluctuating tank level indicator and an unfamiliar smell and I'm sure a hefty dose of user error, we weren't confident that the tank was working correctly and were afraid of blowing ourselves up. Then we decided that the tank is fine, so we decided to use it the first night of the Scottsdale trip (especially the heater because I'm a wuss and the stove to make coffee). We slept all night the first night and it was comfy and warm, and I got up in the morning to make my coffee. The stove wouldn't light. I look at the control panel, and the propane switch hadn't been turned on! So I turned it on. It still wouldn't light. Mike remembered that the switch on the OUTSIDE hadn't been turned on. So apparently we had never turned the propane on, after all, and had slept all night without the heat. The user error goes deep with this one.

The following night, we used the propane and didn't blow up. But the third day, we turned it back on and got a really strong whiff of propane smell. Mike went outside to investigate, and I could smell it coming all the way from the other side of the RV through the front door inside to me. We decided that that's not normal, so to play it safe, we turned off the propane for the rest of the trip. Sigh! We'll bring it in for maintenance when we get back to San Diego.

Our drive back from Arizona landed on Mike's birthday, so even though we were driving, we tried to make it special. We stopped for lunch at Little Cesar's (on Mike's request -- it's one of his childhood nostalgia spots), got date shakes at Shield's, and stopped at the dinosaurs in Cabozon. All in all, an awesome trip!

It's become our nightly entertainment

Dad was flying over Israel in Google Earth

Mom's favorite is Coco

About 2/3 of the junk we decided to get rid of our first time reorganizing the RV

Arizona

This is seriously how happy Mike gets when he eats Little Cesar's

Date shakes in Indio

Dinosaurs!! Cabazon, CA

Cabazon, CA

Mike's getting really good at parking this thing!

Musings from the Early Days

November 29, 2017 by Galia in san diego, lessons

It's been about a week, and so far there haven't been any overarching themes or ground-shaking revelations. Just some percolations. But in an effort to give a real representation of the trip as we go, here's a few of the bigger ones:

It's really nice to live near family.

I've only ever lived near family when I was living with my parents as a kid, and then the occasional bits here or there when visiting from school. I've never really had the experience of just being able to go over to my aunt's house for dinner, or get breakfast with my cousin, or visit someone at work. Now, we can do that, and it's really meaningful to be able to have those moments. Those real-life moments, instead of just the annual holiday party where you talk for seven minutes and ask "so how have you been?" Being able to sit around the Thanksgiving table and share what we're grateful for... that was a moment that I was grateful for.

The whole point of this trip was to be closer to family, but it's already becoming clear that living near family would be something that would mean a lot to both of us.

It's really nice to be able to be helpful.

In the same vein, it feels so rewarding to be able to BE there for our families. It's one thing to be there over the phone, but it feels so much nicer to be able to dog sit for someone, or run an errand, or cook a dinner so they can take the night off. This makes me especially look forward to visiting our siblings with kids, so we can help as much as we can. When you're in person, there are just more ways to show love, and that part makes us happy.

It's probably going to be hard for me to carve out personal time.

I'm used to working at home alone all day long, and for most of the next year, it'll probably be a rare occurrence to be home alone. Those who don't yet know me well won't know that I'm actually a pretty extreme introvert -- I love being around people, but I also need a lot of time alone and a lot of recuperation time post-socializing. This will mostly be on me to communicate with people that a) I need some alone time (and then actually take it), and b) that if I'm ever off by myself, that doesn't mean I don't want to socialize or aren't happy, it just means I need to decompress a little. I, historically, have never been good at either of those things, and end up just being around people until I am completely depleted and can't function. I'll need to make a conscious effort not only to communicate well about this, but also to specifically carve out time for myself, even if it's just running errands on my own or going to bed a little earlier so I can read in my room.

Quantity of Time is not the same thing as Quality Time

While having more quantity of time together is really nice, it's very easy not to make actual Quality Time a priority. I could easily see Mike and I spending days solid together without actually doing much bonding, like talking or playing or going for walks or doing activities together. Same goes for the people we'll be staying with. Actual quality time requires an active choice and a prioritization of time, and we will make sure to stay aware of this so we don't just fall into the habit of quantity over quality.

Not knowing where anything is is frustrating.

Cooking in someone else's kitchen. Shopping in an unfamiliar grocery store. Things you usually can do without thinking about now take much longer and require lots of searching. This will be a good practice in patience, because for the next year, I won't know where anything is.

There's still not enough time.

The ironic lesson of them all. We're traveling for a year, and always feel like we don't have enough time. We'll be working on the itinerary, and we'll end up in a situation where we just have to rush through the in-between places instead of being able to savor and explore them. And even as we're here in Oceanside, our entire calendar is already full with weekend trips and birthday stuff and family visits and everything else, and it feels like we have very little time here that's just to hang out and live life. We tried to change the itinerary a bit to give us a little bit of extra time here, but circle back to the first problem of rushing through the in-between places, and we could only add three days. (Additional side lesson: the United States is really big and it takes a long time to drive across it.) There are so many places we'd like to go, things we'd like to do, and people we'd like to see. And meanwhile, it'd also be nice to just do nothing sometimes, too! I suspect that no matter what we do, a part of us will wish we could have done even more. Maybe this is just life, amplified.