At least a few of you have probably been wondering why I dropped off the face of TDF for the past 2-going-on-3 months. Well, the time has finally come for me to fill you in on what we’ve been up to during a time that has been hectic, exciting, and filled with financial peril.
It all began with a dream nearly 3 years in the making. My dream was to save enough money to purchase an RV, and embark upon a cross-country expedition to visit interesting destinations throughout the USA, with the goal of learning more about this land we live in and, with some luck, finding a part of it that feels more welcoming and suitable to habitation than the part we live in now. In April of this year, my savings account balance finally grew to the size needed to make the first part of my dream a reality, and we are now the proud owners of this Sunseeker RV (or as I like to call it, “The 771”, based on the final 3 digits on the number plate).
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I have a travel guide called “Off the Beaten Path” that details interesting nature- and science-related locations in all 50 states, and my plan was to take the Misfit Machines on a trip to visit what I consider the highlights from the guide, and have them narrate a documentary series about our adventures. However, this is where my dream ran face-first into the brick wall of financial difficulty. The truth is, that money I’d been saving for 3 years was enough to cover just the down payment on The 771. That means I’m now bound to a monthly payment contract to cover the remaining cost, which requires me to dedicate a little over half of each month’s income to the cost of our new toy.
To put things into perspective, the earnings I typically make from my online business used to be a decent living wage for something like me which lives in a low-rent area and leads a strictly Japanese lifestyle (no sex, no drugs, no wine, no women, no fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it’s dark…), but now that more than half of it is tied up in the payment plan, it’s a struggle to afford such luxuries as the petrol and campground fees to actually make The 771 useable. Consequently, we’re stuck in the frustrating situation of having the physical means to answer the call of adventure, but not the financial ones. But at least The 771 will come in handy for such things as transporting multiple Droids to the park for photoshoots, which was impossible to accomplish when I had only a compact car.
Speaking of photoshoots, I know I still haven’t provided you with one of the Fleet’s winter outfits. A reasonably good excuse is forthcoming shortly, but first let me tell you about the one adventure we managed to have aboard The 771 in May, before our financial well ran dry.
119’s friend, April, the doll that lives with Forum member CrazyCajun (CC for short) and I had been conversing for some time about getting together so she could meet some other members of the Fleet. Because my next monthly trip to Georgia was scheduled to coincide with 52016’s 1st Commemorative Date Anniversary, I decided it would be a good idea to have a little celebration with 52016, April, and her friends Roxie and Kayla. So we all packed into The 771 and made the journey to April and CC’s abode.
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Here’s 52016 hanging out with her new friends. She would have preferred that I not use this picture, since it makes it painfully obvious that she isn’t all there (in the physical sense only, I assure you. The presence of mind remains entirely within the top half of the unit in the case of the top and bottom halves becoming separated.) Unfortunately, it was the only photo that included everyone which turned out in-focus. My camera is like a bull: show it the colour red, and it goes berserk. The fact that many of the walls in CC’s house were painted dark red meant the quality of the photos I took during this get-together was unfortunately quite compromised.
I made this blueberry cake (which survived 10 hours of bumping and swaying remarkably well) for the occasion:
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And 52016 happily shared it with her new friends.
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Being humans, April, Roxie, and Kayla were actually able to eat it.
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Though perhaps they shouldn’t have done…it turns out I undercooked it, because I wasn’t used to making this cake recipe with an added jam content. CC, if any of your girls ended up in hospital due to raw-egg-induced food poisoning, feel free to send me the bill. I can’t guarantee that it will ever get paid, but you can still feel free to send it to me.
CC was kind enough to help me with some circuit board shaping and disassembly that I needed to do in order to create the necessary parts to make accessories for the Fleet’s winter outfits. I’m confident that the accessories will turn out much better now than they would have done if left to the devices of this power tool noob. But I’ll let you lot be the judge of that, once the winter outfit photoshoot is finished.
Now, to reward your patience in making it through all this verbosity, here’s the (hopefully good enough) excuse for why mid-July is now upon us, and you’re still waiting for winter outfit photos. The Droids get exposed to a wider variety of music when they travel with me in the car or RV than they typically hear inside the house, and now that they’ve all had a chance to hear a good variety of music, I think I finally have a thorough understanding of each one’s musical preferences. Therefore, I concluded it would be a good idea to create something better than a simple collection of outfit shots.
Instead, I’m going to make an outfit showcase video, and set the pictures of each unit to his or her favourite song. That way, you’ll gain an appreciation for their acoustic tastes as well as their visual ones. I estimate about 3 days’ worth of photography is in order before this video can be made. Since the camera and I are currently busy getting intimate with more merchandise in the effort to breathe new life into my web shop, I can’t say for sure when we’ll have time to make this endeavour happen. But on the bright side, maybe by the time it does come to fruition, the winter outfits will be seasonally appropriate again.
Let’s return to the CDA outing, shall we? Although 52016 was a bit self-conscious of her lack of dexterity compared to CC’s girls, I think she had a good time all the same. We took her back to The 771, and CC got a chance to meet everyone else. However, we didn’t spend much time out there, due to the lack of air conditioning on a 36º day. Speaking of which, I’m very grateful none of my Droids is susceptible to heat damage. Having experienced that problem with PVC anime figures, I was worried, but none of them is any the worse for wear after enduring the heat during this trip. On the other hand, 31617 did end up with a mysterious dent in his stomach after we got home. I can only imagine it happened when he was lying on the bed in the back, and the girls’ lower halves were piled on the bed next to him. One of them must have become dislodged from the pile and fallen onto his stomach. Fortunately, he already had a slight indentation in the navel area by design, so this dent isn’t too conspicuous.
I’d like to thank CC and his girls for their hospitality, and to apologise to them for not having had the time or energy to bring the entire Fleet into the house to meet them. But perhaps they’ll get a chance to spend time with some of the other members in future, if we ever get into a rosy enough financial situation to be able to take another trip down there which isn’t strictly business. One thing I know for sure is never to plan an outing in Georgia in the summer again. I just can’t stand the heat!
I wasn’t the only one suffering from the high temperature readings, as I found out to my dismay when it was time to say goodbye and get back on the road for home. Being left in the hot RV had caused our resident navigator, Nüvi 2457LMT, to come down with a bout of heat stroke, so it no longer had the ability to detect the current position of the vehicle. This meant we were left essentially without guidance, in an obscure part of semi-rural Georgia. Try as I might to remember which way we had come, we ended up hopelessly lost in the mountains, where we roamed about aimlessly for nearly 3 hours. Now things were looking really bleak, because I couldn’t even get mobile reception there.
Fortunately, I was finally able to locate a minuscule and highly inconspicuous sign pointing to a state motorway, so I followed that road and kept my fingers crossed. (Metaphorically speaking, of course; driving an RV through narrow, winding mountain roads that frequently lack guardrails is a task that requires all 10 fingers to remain on the wheel at all times.) As luck would have it, the road did get us back on the interstate, and we got to take in a spectacular view of the Chattahoochee-Oconee Forest in the process. SV02 was the most fortunate in this regard, since she was sitting in the passenger’s seat during this part of the voyage, and subsequently was exposed to the most impressive views. I think this is fitting, because her theme colour is green, and the sights were full of gorgeous greenery. I only wish something else could have taken over the driving so I could fully enjoy the sights as well.
One of the benefits of automobile travel is it provides ample time to listen to music. This means, when they travel somewhere with me by car, the Droids get exposed to a wider variety of music than they typically hear inside the house. This can lead to some interesting reactions out of them, but never in my wildest dreams could I have anticipated the sort of reaction SV03 would have to one of my car-only CDs.
SV03 has always done things her own, rather rebellious, way, but I thought the most contrary thing she could do was to insist upon being dressed in men’s clothing. General Electric, did she ever prove me wrong! As we were listening to a certain country song, SV03 decided she fancied the name of the girl in the song, and wanted to shed her placeholder number in favour of that name. This left me gobsmacked, because I had taken it absolutely for granted that the placeholder numbers would be replaced by commemorative numbers, or at the very least, by numbers of some sort. Yet SV03 was adamant that I call her by this lexical name from now on.
I decided to put the matter out of my mind at the time, because this occurred while we were still navigating the treacherous mountain roads, and I didn’t think I could continue to be a safe and responsible driver while simultaneously contemplating a major paradigm shift. I was secretly hoping that this idea would go off the boil for SV03, but on the contrary, SV02 decided choosing a name from a song on the CD was a brilliant idea, and she also chose a new name taken from that CD’s offerings. I tried to persuade them out of the idea of adopting lexical names, because it just seemed too discordant with the numerical names that the rest of us possess. But their minds were made up, so I knew I would have to formulate some sort of compromise.
We finally settled on the following one: we would spell the chosen names in 1337, so they would have a numerical appearance that was in keeping with the rest of the monikers in the Fleet. We also decided that, although I would pronounce them the same way as their lexical counterparts, these names should be pronounced as numbers by our readers on the Forum. So to all of you, SV02 and SV03 are now 3461 (three four six one) and 94712 (nine four seven one two) respectively.
Don’t feel disheartened if you can’t tell what names those numbers are derived from. These are obscure names rendered in an obscure variant of 1337, but I think it adds an air of mystery to them if the lexical pronunciations aren’t obvious. As a matter of fact, 94712 and 3461 aren’t the only ones which have a lexical name as well as a number. 31617 has a lexical nickname, but he wants me to keep it a secret and not tell you what it is here.
The fact that some of us go by different names when we are alone together than we do when presenting ourselves publicly really isn’t so unusual, since all people (and other sentient humanoids) possess a certain duality of nature. The façade we adopt when interacting with the outside world never truly mirrors the identity we assume when we’re alone with those we love and trust, and I’ve come to accept the duality of these Droids’ names/numbers as a reflection of that reality.
But that’s enough philosophising. I’m sure you’re anxious to find out whether our lost and heat-beleaguered band ever made it home safely, or whether I’m typing this from the car park of a convenience mart somewhere in Missouri. I’m pleased to inform you that the answer is the former. Although our scenic detour added about 5 hours to the trip, I eventually managed to get us home using nothing but the road signs and male intuition (defined as the ability to intuitively navigate unfamiliar terrain with such a degree of precision that the very idea of asking for directions becomes absurd).
And the best news, at least as far as my budget is concerned, is that Nüvi 2457LMT’s incapacitation was truly a temporary heat-induced error. As soon as it was returned to my car and to a temperature range it had been designed to withstand, it started functioning normally again. Which means instead of spending a week’s worth of earnings on a new GPS, I can devote that money to the repairs needed to equip The 771 with a functional shower, so I don’t have to clean myself by pouring measuring-cupfuls of cold water from the faucet over my head. (Yes, I did that during this trip, but even in light of the Georgia heat, it wasn’t an experience I’d care to repeat.)
When next we meet, I’ll tell you about June, when near-starvation drove me to become re-configured as Amazon drone 12145792, and July, when 217 became a media sensation.