I mentioned earlier that we are transitioning from our PO Box in Ferrisburg VT to a mail-forwarding service in Florida.   It’s something that we should have done a long time ago, but our local postmaster has been so accommodating about sending our mail to us that we never bothered.

Last week I talked to a budding full-time traveler who was doing the same sort of thing as us, and many others: having someone back home sort through and send the mail.   It always seems like a good idea at first, but then problems tend to crop up.   My advice to part-time or full-time travelers is to just bite the bullet and find a mail forwarding service early on.

The cost is not bad, generally $10-20 per month, but be sure to read the fine print and make sure your magazines will get forwarded too.   The real challenge is getting all your accounts, family, and friends to adopt the new address.   That’s the process we are in now.

For us the problem is worse because we have a house in Arizona now.   Some businesses will insist on sending us mail there, even though we ask them not to.   So to catch those bits of mail, we put in a temporary forwarding order from the Arizona address back to our PO box in Vermont.

Unfortunately, our postmaster in Vermont accidentally sent something to the Arizona address a week after we left.   It was a license plate for an old used car that we recently bought to drive while we are in Vermont.   The plate went from the Vermont DMV to our PO Box, then was forwarded to Arizona, and is now being forwarded again back to the PO Box in Vermont.   Since the car is currently in Florida, we will ask for it to be forwarded again, where it will get installed on the car and driven back to Vermont.   Got all that?

The license plate is like those gnomes that people mail around the world.   It will be well traveled before it ever goes on a vehicle.

I’m not so worried about the plate but unfortunately a pile of mail also got sent from the PO Box to Arizona.   It will eventually be sent to our mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs FL, and then probably to Tampa, where we expect to be in about 10 days.   Somewhere in this mail are several important checks that I’d like to have sooner.   I wish I could get certain vendors to make electronic payments to the magazine rather than mailing paper, but not everyone is ready for that yet.

Life in Austin has been great.   Every day we get a bike ride.   Today Adam and I rode around the town paths, which are numerous and excellent.   It makes an ideal break during long days at the computer.   Tonight we are expecting guests for dinner again, and in the meantime a constant parade of interesting people come and go around Pecan Grove RV Park.   I’m almost caught up on work, and the weather is fine. Can’t complain.

But we’re out of the west now.   Even though Austin is considered the southwest by some, to us it feels noticeably different.   There is some humidity, and grassy lawns.   Very little cactus.   Austin is well shaded by trees.   All the signs are present, telling us we are about to enter the humid Gulf states.   We’re a little sad about that because we all like the dry open spaces and the clear skies of the west, but there are many compensations where we are going, too.

For one thing, we’ll start to see beaches again — some of the best beaches in the world.   And we’ll be chowing down on some seriously good Cajun food.   Jill Smith-Mott, who is coming over for dinner tonight, wrote an article for the upcoming Summer 2008 issue of Airstream Life magazine which describes a great Cajun culinary tour.   She has inspired us to spend a couple of days in the New Orleans area and chase down some of those edibles, and we’ll do that this weekend.

Speaking of the magazine, we’ll also have an article about Airstreams used for business, and one of the featured businesses is “Hey Cupcake!” which happens to be parked just about a mile from where we are right now, on South Congress Street.   We saw the trailer last night and tried the cupcakes, which were — as expected — really excellent.   The owners say they are going to launch more Airstream locations around town soon.   Give ’em a try if you are in town.