A week has gone by now since the last entry and it looks like Mike’s estimate of us getting the set up on or around Valentine’s Day is going to be on target.  He went to the DMV today and got everything pretty much taken care of.  He found out that he has to get the truck weighted and obtain a certificate of weight in order to get the license plates for the truck.  Otherwise, he has that all done.  He went ahead and got the Alpha registered in our name, even though he still hasn’t received the money from Southeast Financial.  Like I mentioned earlier, they are being picky about the paperwork.  They want to see front and back of an American title (not Canadian).

What Mike did, is he went down and put it in our name on the registration with Southeast Financial as the lien holder.  We hope this will make them happy.  So, tomorrow, Mike is going to get the truck weighted and then he can go get the plates.  I sure hope we get the rig (Alpha) all situated so that we can get the whole set up this weekend.

Tom has really been getting in to reading on the RV-Dreams forums and now he’s starting to read the journal that Howard from RV-Dreams writes.  Howard started writing the journal in the beginning of their decision and planning process and that is what gave me the inspiration to start writing this one.

I told Tom to start at the very beginning.  I found it to be very interesting, informative, and amusing.  Howard is an entertaining writer.  The website, RV-Dreams.com is full of so much useful and helpful information.  Howard and his wife, Linda began their journey back in January 2005.  Well, they started making the decision a little before Jan ’05, but didn’t take too long to hit the road in August ’05.

Tom has given us a 12/24 month period before we head out.  I’m really hoping it’s not the “24”, but this will give us time to get rid of everything, get some money saved, some “on-the-road” jobs lined up, and get to know our set-up inside and out; top-to-bottom’ front-to-back; left-to-right, etc.

We plan to have it set up here in the yard with hook-ups so we can practice and learn about everything and kind of live in it on the weekends.

I really think that once we get started staying in it and Tom is comfortable driving it around, that the 12 month (or sooner) plan will be most realistic.  We’ve already been selling things on eBay.  I’ve been holding back a little on getting everything ready to sell until we have the keys and those babies are in our driveway!  Then it will be massive purge and downsizing time.  I already bought poster board for the yard sale signs and printed off some smaller fliers.  If the stars align and we get the set up in our yard this weekend, then I don’t see any reason we couldn’t start having yard sales in two weeks.  It will probably take that long to go through, sort, and price everything.  Of course, there will be new stuff put out every week.  It’s going to be a lot of work and sad at some points too, I’m sure, but it’ll be really worth it in the long run.