Restoring the Love Boat, Shipwrecked in the Sacramento Delta | WYL Ep. 159 - we played here July 4, 2018!!

 Well, there is hope. 

This is the end of 2020. We have not had such a long period without playing for audiences, ever. All musicians are worried about the future. Some have even sold their instruments, and bought Bitcoins. 

I did so too, when Ilene; and I had to move to the US ASAP in 2009, I had to sell my beloved oldtimers, and get tickets. I sold guitars, effect pedals, amps and a drum kit, so that we could buy a 30 foot 1987 RV with a V8 so big we hardly could afford to move it. But we had a roof, without having to pay rent in our time (we think actually in our time rent and mortgage are WAAAAAY OVER PRICED!!!). 

As life still cost us money, and the crisis didn't give us any option to make money, I had put my hope in a new development, electronic money, or: the Bitcoin. This was hot news around 2011, and I thought that buying them would help me make some profit. Via a company that at that time, magazines and experts said was the most reliable in the field, BTCNext, I bought the electronic coins and put them in an electronic wallet, which I saved on my harddisk. This was on a laptop that I had gotten from my aunt, since I helped her to use and understand it, shortly before her passing away. 

Unfortunately, this laptop crashed. The usual blue screen shit, it appeared that the motherboard had a bad memory chip or something; there was No Chance that I could get my wallet back. There also was a 'pass phrase' going with it and I was so stupid to actually completely forget about it. So ByeBye Bitcoinmoney.

We, at that time, were putting all our efforts in SURVIVING; which means, finding a place better than the walmart parking, to have our RV, finding places where we could perform and make some income, finding a way to fly to Europe to attend my parent's birthdays, keep our paperwork current etc etc. 

We also had a little 3 legged dog, Otis, to take care of. We had also planned to live in Spain; there we have a camper and a car. Both always need lots of TLC. Meanwhile, we love ecologic gardening, walking in nature, visiting hippie communes and eco villages and so on. Eventually, we discovered an ecological camping in Vinyols, near Salou, where we could perform twice a week and live in our old mercedes camper called 'Elvis'. Then, Ilene's son married his longtime friend, and we decided to move back to the US since Spain still is in a crisis (up to this day). We realized that for countries like Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, the construction of the EU has to be changed a lot. Northern EU countries have used all kinds of tricks to attract (foreign) money, investors. For example, the Netherlands and Luxemburg are known as tax heavens. The book 'Moneyland' finally opened up about how easy it is to start anonymous companies. A year later, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (www.ICIJ.org) published their 'Panama Papers', an enormous amount of research data that pointed out how companies and rich people (including royals and heads of state) used these kinds of constructions to avoid paying tax.

Of course, as soon as the world's population, which has suffered hard after the financial-economic crisis of 2007-2013, saw how the top 1% richest people in the world has abused this situation, they wanted governments to take action. 

Meanwhile, this 1% had organized with the Trump organization AKA republican party and their think tanks, to avoid being taxed. They had first arranged to win the 2016 elections by making the Democrat party choose the rather unpopular Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate, and paid Eastern Europe and Russian troll farms to influence the elections. Then, they devised a plan that made sure Trump would win the next, 2020 elections, and in the years between 2020 and 2024 he would have been able to use the media to tell the people democracy wasn't in their best interest, and thus, there wouldn't be any in 2024, establishing an American dictatorship, the first since the US was founded. 

Now this plan has failed, all Trumps crooked friends are buying Bitcoins with their exuberant amounts of money. At this point there's more money to be made by investing in Bitcoins; my best advice is, to put your digital wallet on a USB stick you put in a safe, including the pass phrase. Make sure you can cash in, anytime. 

Happy Christmas and a successful 2021!

Restoring A VINTAGE Cruise Ship, Living At Sea on the Aurora. We played July 4th, 2018 here during the Hilton fireworks!!

People who sail across oceans say time seems to go faster in those weeks that you only see water. I hear them tell me that it's almost like watching a camp fire, ultimately relaxing, while you still have to keep an eye on the wind, currents, and route. To know exactly where you are, you need to have GPS, or be able to calculate your position via the time+sun (height and exact location).

Luckily, we don't have any of those troubles, as we stay in our marina, happy with our old ship that is relying on a fuel source that's overpriced from about 30 cents per gallon (when it was being built) to the current 4 dollars per gallon (boat fuel), making it simply not economical to move, with our 2 V8 big blocks of almost 8 liter each. The nature here is great, as are the views, sunsets, etc. There is work, at least when there are no viruses going around. We are lucky to have nice friends here, and Ilene's son Jeremy lives in Sacramento so she can visit him regularly, like today, when she brought both dogs to give them a good bath (in this time of year we have to do that, as flea eggs are hatching).

With the camper it's no use going out as all campings are closed. We've finished painting the interior (from ultra ugly wallpaper to simple, plain white).
All we can do now, is to stay home and wait. Enjoying our freedom, our extra vacation time. There always is so much to do in house and garden, on boat and bike, outboard et cetera. Here are some pics of Lucille.
https://www.pinterest.com/ilenecello/toyota-rv-travette-remodl/

Now we're all forced to stay home, there is time to work on our beloved little motorhome. Other projects interfere, there's 2 outboard motors that need to be running, so we can see more of the Delta. There is a stack of stuff we want to sell since we're not using it.
And we have started to create home concerts that we stream live. Keep following *via your LIKE* our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/freewheelerscelloband

There we will announce when we go live. We'll follow who's online and can read your comments in real time so that we can respond and react. You may for example ask us to play a certain song. But: we will not promise that we know it!

It is Tuesday, February 4 already, January went by in a teaspoon. Meanwhile our lovely little camper has past Smog, and we're working on getting her ready for little tours. Unfortunately, the last time I drove her (to Discovery Bay, about 20mi from here) on the way back, the stick shift linkage to the gearbox failed, so I had to drive home going no faster then 20mph. Luckily, I was in 2nd gear, so I could stop and drive off, which was necessary a couple of times. Back home, I discovered there was a loose bolt, but before tightening it, I got those blocking sims to prevent this from happening again! It really isn't very hard, but you need handy, experienced fingers to get to the bolt positions, find the thread on feel since there is no way you can see what you're doing. Eventually, we'll need a new linkage, as it is made of the dreaded Plastic. In all my experience with oldtimers, it's always the plastic and rubber components that need to be replaced.

Anyway. I also installed the roof window, and after taking off all of the old fiberglass from the roof, painted it with a layer of special roof paint, which has rubber in it. After a couple of layers, it was done, and the rain couldn't get through. One of the roof windows over our bed had a bit of a leak, so I took that out, cleaned it, cleaned the window seat, and sealed it again with special glue.

The Band currently is non active. We've participated in various contests and apparently, other players are doing better in serving the audience what they want to hear. It's pretty hard always being a pioneer. Especially when you're kind of poor, unable to hire a studio or promo firm. Being nice is all we can do, and practice, compose, record, improve. We hope to fly to Europe this year, as my father will be 85 year old, and his health is deteriorating. With a bit of luck, we'll be able to live in Spain, on our own land, in a home we've repaired, growing organic vegetables fruit and herbs in our own garden. A revival of the Red House Parties will happen then!

Meanwhile, Bas published a book he worked on a few years ago, about how to build your own webshop using free Zen Card software. It's in Dutch, on Amazon, check it out if you understand Dutch!

Winterizing the camper

Using the last dry weeks in the year, I painted the roof of the camper, using an elastic type of roof paint that worked pretty well but rendered the brushes I've used to a useless punky hairstyle. Now we hope the winter rains won't leak through anymore, like they'd been able to do in the back and shower before.
The broken shower roof window is replaced, also are the two vent caps. They're pretty cheap online and easy to screw in. I've helped many people with their campers to their comfort. This way, I know how to do this job, with which materials, and how much time each little part of the job will cost.

Inside, the back of the camper was pretty much rotten wood. I took all the rot out, and replaced it with new wood that I first protected against rot, to not have the same problem again. I took out the old battery and checked the electric wiring, which still is functional.

Ilene painted the interior white, so we don't have to look at plastic 'woodprint' and ugly blue kitchen 'tiles'. White makes it look a bit bigger.
Since Ilene's Toyota Natoma had to go to the garage, where the check engine light was checked with all codes, and many new parts had to be installed, we didn't have much money left for the Travette. So she's still waiting for her smog check, and we already know there is an Evap problem. Please wish us luck on that, since we don't have much financial reserves.

At least, we can be sure now that we'll stay dry during our sleeps in our beloved camper!