JTreeLife

by Skittles

Our adventure started on Thursday, December 17th around 2:00. All three of us were so excited to finally be on the road after an intense two weeks of scrambling to pack up our house, consolidate our belonging and unpack/organize into our new home on wheels, The Hurricane. I had my first experience driving The Beast once we got into Indiana in a high speed seat change with David @ 60mph! You could say that driving The Hurricane is just a little different from motoring in the Mini CooperS. My top cruising speed: 57 mph. High speed corning? Nope. Exhilarating acceleration? Nope. Feel like a race car driver? Nope. The Hurricane does, however, take serious precision driving to just stay on the road when being passed by the semi-trucks! Our first time on the road has been filled with lots to learn about running our new home. We had to change our radiator thermostat so that it would kick out more heat in the cabin, replace our house batteries that we realized were shot after cooking dinner, buy an O-ring for our propane filling adapter and empty our holding tanks at an Indiana State Park for $5. Nothing too major, but it all payed off to have a tastee bowl of pasta and a warm cozy bed all our own - even if we were still only in Indiana at the end of the day!

By J-Tree Dave
So what does one do the week before departing on a year long road trip? Spend some quality time with dad of course …and take full advantage of his cheap labor, and wood working prowess! With the help of Nate, Brad, and Laurel, we assembled and finished 41 display racks in a couple long evenings working in Dad’s garage with a propane heater to keep us almost-warm.
Our assembly line was setup in the basement, where things are a bit warmer. Putting them together went pretty smoothly as we now have the three main pieces laser cut to eliminate alignment issues. That really helped speed things up. The trickiest part is firing the tiny finishing nails through the shelf face, and into the end of the shelf divider, with out missing. I was by far the best shot with the nail gun for this step
Our biggest mishap happened late on the last night when Laurel and I managed to glue in the lip balm props on the wrong side of each shelf divider. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch the mistake for the first 236 pieces, and until after a dozen of the racks had already gone back up to the garage to get sprayed with urethane by Nate and Dad! I thought Laurel was about to loose it when we figured this out… she can get pretty cranky when she’s hungry or tired! She kept her cool this time, and we laughed it off, and everything came out good in the end!
Hopefully these will last the year so we don’t have to fly home to make more. Actually, I retract that hope, and instead hope to place all of these in new shops ASAP!

by Laurel

After 8 years at Ford Motor Company, December 15th was my last day (well, at least for another 12 months!). I’ve always wanted to take some time off from work to experience the nomadic lifestyle of life on the road and to follow two personal passions of mine - rock climbing and mountain biking. With Joshua Tree Products going on a national tour, and things stabilizing in my life, the stars were aligning to allow me to make a “now or never” decision to embark on this adventure. The magnitude of this life change has not hit me yet and it just feels like I have been packing and planning for another one of our longer climbing trips. I haven’t forgotten about the office entirely yet though - I have thought about the folks on my project occasionally over the past couple of days wondering how everything is progressing. One thing is for sure, I really do not miss my hour long commute into the office (even though I really miss my Mini!). For now, I’m quite happy with my decision to take a year long sabbatical from FoMoCo!