Archives for 2009

Aug 14 2009

Vintage Trailer Jam 2009

So what was it like at the Vintage Trailer Jam this week?

Yep, hot and humid. We moved the dates from July to August in the hope of escaping the sweaty weather we experienced last year, but it didn’t help. This has been the hottest week of the summer. But that hasn’t stopped everyone from having a really great time.

I wish I was one of the participants of this event, instead of a sponsor/organizer. It’s the participants who have the most fun. In contrast, the past two days have been a frenzied time for the organizers and volunteers. We seem to be constantly troubleshooting problems, and dealing with either setting up or tearing down for the events of the day. With parking, registration, seminars, electrical and water connections, troubleshooting, answering questions, giving away door prizes, and even making popcorn, there’s little time to enjoy the really cool collection of trailers we have on site.

And we do have some very interesting rigs here. I’ll post an online album later. We have some rare trailers, including a Winnebago, two Frolics, a KomPac boat camper, plus some more common (but still cool) campers like a fiberglass Trillium, a couple of Shastas, two Serro Scottys, and a bunch of other unusual “canned ham” trailers. That’s in addition to the many Airstreams, including three Airstream 345 motorhomes, and a GMC motorhome.

The seminars have been a big hit. I presented twice, on “Camping in National Parks,” and “Boondocking & Courtesy Parking.” Both drew some sizeable and appreciative crowds. Eleanor presented today on the subject of “Tools and Ingredients For Your Trailer Kitchen,” and she was marvelous. We also did a short joint seminar on “Backing Up Your Trailer Without Getting Divorced,” which was a lot of fun.

Colin has also been presenting seminars on restoration topics, while Brett contributed a seminar on vintage motorhomes and co-presented with Colin on the subject of riveting. Other friends have pitched in with seminars, too. Vic Smith gave a polishing demo this morning, and our friends Charon and Alex talked brilliantly about “Working and Living On The Road.” They’ve all been winners, so I’m really pleased with the quality of content we’ve been able to offer this year. We’ve also had fun alternatives, like the bike ride I led today past six of the park’s springs.

The big thing I like about the event is its diversity. Not only do we have a lot of different trailers, but we have a lot of different people. Every age from toddler to (nearly) geriatric is represented. We have 15 kids here this year, and they’ve been out playing soccer and riding bicycles all day. Some participants come from buttoned-down backgrounds, and others live a somewhat more casual lifestyle. Charon has even been able to do a little tattoo work here. The Trailer Jam is a melting pot of people and lifestyles brought together by a common love of vintage trailers.

Since the Jam is a day longer than last year, I have been careful to pace myself and not face the burnout that happened last year. The workload has been high but by planning carefully (and avoiding the temptation to stay up too late), I’ve been able to carve out an hour or so each day for work or private time with Eleanor. On Thursday morning we were even able to sneak in 90 minutes to go into downtown Saratoga Springs for a leisurely coffee/tea and pastry breakfast at Mrs. London’s. That won’t be happening again, but wow, did it feel nice to stretch out and relax for a little while, just the two of us.

The one big bug of the week has been that our refrigerator is acting glitchy. We have been operating it on electric power for over a month, and when we switched to propane during our first 36 hours here, it stopped cooling. We didn’t realize this until the wireless thermostat reported 55 degrees inside, and by then the freezer had defrosted. We’ve since switched it back to electric, and made an appointment for next Thursday at an RV service center. The good news is that since the fridge still cools, so the expensive part of it still works. The frustrating news is that this refrigerator is only 13 months old. I have not been impressed with the quality of RV refrigerators made in the past decade. I’m surrounded by trailers with refrigerators made 40 to 50 years ago, all of which work perfectly and yet very few modern ones seem to survive even eight years.

Tomorrow is the biggest day of all, with the vintage parts flea market, Open House, kids’ program (run by Eleanor), evening entertainment, barbecue dinner and the “big” door prizes. So we’ve got a lot to look forward to, before we strike the set on Sunday morning.

Aug 13 2009

Rally fun

It’s amazing the impact something like a wedding has on things, even after it is over. Eleanor spent a week recovering from her massive one-woman catering effort, I spent hours sorting photos and burning DVDs for people, and there were random days of cleanup and other tasks sprinkled in as well.

Steve and Carolyn took a very interesting trip down Lake Champlain in their little Boston Whaler, all the way through the locks and canals to Troy NY, and then back. This took four days and struck me as the kind of honeymoon I’d like, because unusual trips interest me. Then they came back to base and sorted through the wedding garbage, looking for recyclables. Somewhat anti-climactic, but typical of them: right back at the hard work, persistently motivated. It’s not every new married couple that starts off their new life with a hunt through maggot-covered trash.

Last Thursday Brett flew in from Florida and we retrieved his motorhome from Colin’s shop in Plattsburgh. Friday we visited the WBCCI Region 1 Rally up at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds in Essex Jct VT. I was the after-dinner entertainment, speaking about “Camping in National Parks,” which was well-received by a crowd of about 70 people. We ran a little contest as I talked and showed slides of some of the 130+ national parks we’ve visited. The people who could identify the most parks in the slides won prizes, like Airstream Life t-shirts.

I’ll be presenting the same talk this week at the Vintage Trailer Jam, in Saratoga Springs NY. We arrived here on Tuesday, and by then Brett, Colin, and a couple of others had already set up. Tuesday was “early bird” arrival day, with about 8 trailers ultimately showing up. Yesterday was the arrival day for the all other registrants, and we saw about 30 more trailers pull in. Today we are expecting another 25 or so, plus on-site registrations.

It looks like we are in for a great week. The weather has been humid and warm, but thankfully mostly sunny and mostly we’ve avoided the thunderstorms. The trailers and tow vehicles coming in are very cool to see. I would guess that about 60% of them are repeats from last year, and that means plenty of new people and trailers to check out. We’ve got really cool door prizes to give away every day, including items from Thetford, Worthington (aluminum propane tanks!), a Cyclo polisher, a complete set of Airstream Life back issues, and tons of other items.

This year Eleanor is joining the panel of invited speakers. She will be co-presenting a short seminar about “Backing up your trailer without getting divorced,” with me today. On Friday she will give a talk on how to set up your traveling kitchen to do anything you want, and on Saturday she’s giving a kids program about bats, where the kids will all get to make bat t-shirts. We’re expecting 15 kids this year, which is really great. Emma will come down on Friday with Steve and Carolyn to join us.

It’s go-go-go all day every day, so I’ve got to rush off this blog and head into town to drop off a FedEx package and make some photocopies. While we’re here at the rally I hope to post daily, so there will be more photos and details coming …

Aug 03 2009

Wedding by the lake

The past week has been entirely focused on the Big Event of the year: my oldest brother Steve, at the ripe age of 50, has finally gotten married. The shock notwithstanding, our energies have been directed to doing what we can to make sure the wedding came off as well as it possibly could.

This was a small, very personal, and low-budget event, so we all had a role to play. My job was as wedding photographer. My qualifications for this were ownership of two Nikon cameras and a willingness to take the blame if the pictures were awful. This was a bigger risk that you might think, since I’m accustomed to shooting Airstreams and having time to pose people inside them. A wedding is a dynamic and challenging event, and the lighting was difficult to say the least. We had a big bright lake in the background, harsh sun & sharp shadows, and the sun was setting right behind the ceremony site (backlighting the couple terribly). I compensated for my inexperience by shooting madly, taking about 100 photos of the preparations and 700 photos of the wedding day. I think about 200 are worth keeping.

Three different women told me that I wouldn’t get good photos of them because they weren’t photogenic. I’ve found that as a photographer, the best response to this comment is that “I make everyone look great — don’t worry.” Then they relax when you come by with the camera later. Of course, all three women turned up in shot after shot looking absolutely perfect.

Eleanor had the bigger job, however. She volunteered as caterer. For months she and Carolyn have been going over menu ideas, and as they did so, the guest list grew from 20 to 25 to 33 “plus leftovers.” She cooked for “40”, just to be safe, but you need to understand that Eleanor’s portioning usually allows for 2-3 times the actual guest count. Nobody goes hungry at one of her events. Thus, we had food for about 80 people. Two days later, we’re all still eating it, which is not a bad thing since it was all terrific.

I’d post the menu but it’s almost too long. One person could never even sample all the stuff on the buffet table, much less eat a full portion. There were sandwiches, cheese platters, hummus with pine nuts, skewers of marinated chicken and spiced shrimp, champagne grapes and raspberries, compound salads of wild rice and barley, and tons of other stuff. In the photo you can see her preparing fresh figs with a vinaigrette sauce and goat cheese — always a crowd-pleaser.

Because the bride requested a “fresh” menu, all cold dishes and predominantly vegetarian, Eleanor and I spent about 10 hours preparing vegetables and meats on Friday, and then Eleanor spent another four hours or so making sauces and handling details. She got up again at 7 a.m. on Saturday to spend another eight or nine hours at it before the guests arrived. I was on hand to wash dishes, carry things up and down to the basement refrigerator, chop things, and generally lend a hand where I could, but she did the really heavy work. It was an enormous job, and yet it was great for Eleanor to have the chance to flex her culinary muscles and make a lot of people happy.

Emma’s job was ring-bearer, and to deliver a short reading during the ceremony. She read a selection from A.A. Milne’s “Now We Are Six” about Winnie-the-Pooh, and did a great job. The book she practiced on was mine when I was her age. I wonder if, now that she’s been introduced to Milne’s poetry, she will read the rest of the book?

Of course, the Airstream had a role as well. We had volunteered to get it out of the driveway before the wedding, to free up parking space, but Carolyn wouldn’t hear of it. She arrived after having her hair done and used the Airstream as her dressing room. So the picture at right is the first moment when anyone saw her, ready to get married. Now our Airstream has a small piece in family history too.

I like small, personal weddings. There are more decisions to make when you act non-traditionally, but the result is very gratifying. Everything suited everyone there: the comfortable clothing, the music (as the bride walked across the lawn, we heard Iz’s version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow,”) the food, the ceremony, and the lakeside setting. There’s also a lot of risk in trying to hold an event on the shores of Lake Champlain because of the changeable weather, but as you can tell from the photos it was perfect for a memorable day.

The best part of a good party is when it doesn’t end. About half the guests pitched tents on the lawn and spent the night. It was sort of like having an Airstream rally. One of the friends fired up a grill and made egg & cheese muffins for everyone in the morning (flavored with maple syrup, of course, since this is Vermont), and then we sat around in the Adirondack chairs while a few gifts were opened. I don’t think anyone left before noon, even though it started to rain. You know you’ve done it right when people don’t want to leave.

Now the wedding is behind us, and the leftovers are nearly eaten, and I’ve culled down the 700 photos to fit on CD’s for people who couldn’t be here. We’ve got to start thinking about the next events coming up. The Addison County Fair and the WBCCI Region 1 Rally will both start this week. Next week is the Vintage Trailer Jam. We are going to all three events. August has started with a bang and it looks like it will continue in the same festive vein for quite a while.

Jul 26 2009

Tent camping in New Hampshire

Last summer when we were in Vermont I editorialized about the advantages of taking along a tent and associated gear in the Airstream. I recognize that many people bought their RVs specifically to avoid sleeping on the ground in a tent, but I still have fond memories of many backpacking trips in the northeast. So once in a while I do like to get out of the trailer and into a tent.

For me, tenting is a more realistic camping experience. Our Airstream has all the comforts of home, and we can live in it indefinitely. The tent has hardly any comforts beyond very basic shelter and a place to sleep. This is part of the attraction: it’s a way to really “get away from it all.” How can you get away from it all if you bring it all with you. A few days of deprivation makes a person more grateful for what they have.

It’s also a great way to force a change in perspective. The tent requires setup, and careful procedures to avoid a night of mosquitoes, condensation, or discomfort. The bathroom is a hike away, either in a primitive pit toilet or off in the woods somewhere. Meals are en plein air whether it is raining or not. You have to toss out all your assumptions about the benefits of modern life and figure out basic survival; This task occupies your thoughts so thoroughly that the trivialities of work and the fine points of personal hygiene become distant secondary concerns.

This description is probably horrifying to 99% of the people who are reading this. That’s OK. If you remember tent camping, perhaps as a Boy or Girl Scout, you probably have a few wonderful stories about things that happened to you. Maybe you’ve got a bear-in-the-campground story, or one about the leaky tent, or getting lost in the woods. As traumatic as those events may have been at the time, you probably also recognize that your life would not be as rich as it could be without them.

Adam and Susan instigated a tent camping trip for me last week. They (rather rashly) accepted an invitation from our mutual friend Bert Gildart to join him in hiking Alaska’s famous Chilkoot Trail. This is about 30 miles of historic trail from the Gold Rush period, which Bert intends to document for his future magazine articles. Adam and Susan, admitted tenderfoots, bought all the necessary gear for five days of backpacking in Alaska’s wilderness but haven’t had a chance to actually use it. Given that their adventure with Bert is looming, it seemed wise to at least tent camp a few days beforehand.

They invited me to help them along their learning curve. I chose the White Mountains region of New Hampshire for the trip. Up by Crawford Notch there are numerous little campgrounds in the White Mountains National Forest, all near great wilderness hikes in the green and dense boreal forest. Of course, the very moment I arrived and began to set up my tent, a light rain began and continued nearly uninterrupted for the next 24 hours. (Rain is virtually a given when tent camping in the northeast.)

We were planning to hike to several waterfalls in the area. There are dozens in the White Mountains, and many of them can be reached in a mile or two of trail. A little rain wasn’t going to stop us, but alas, I had made a serious mistake when packing, by forgetting my rain jacket. A black plastic trash bag was pressed into service. I cut three holes in it (for head and arms) and off we went, sloshing up the muddy trails and spotting a total of four waterfalls in our first half-day of hiking. The garbage bag look is not the most attractive or impressive, but when you’re in the middle of the forest in a rainstorm, it works just fine.

That evening the rain abated just long enough for us to fire up the camp stoves and make some dinner, and then resumed with more force for the rest of the night. The new tent was perfectly dry and I spent the evening in complete comfort, reading a novel by the light of my headlamp. I think that is my favorite moment of every tent camping trip: after a strenuous day of hiking, relaxing in the shelter with a warm sleeping bag, listening to the sounds of the outdoors (in this case, rain), reading or talking, with absolutely nowhere to go and no chance of being interrupted by a phone call.

Our next day was marked by more rain and steady temperatures in the mid-60s, but I had noticed a worthwhile compensation. There weren’t any mosquitoes. In July, to be hiking in the northern forest without any DEET on my skin, and not once hearing the skin-crawling whine of a hungry female mosquito about to bite, is simply unbelievable. I can’t recall a trip in the northeast I’ve ever taken when I wasn’t doused in bug spray, and yet on this trip conditions were absolutely mosquito-free. It was glorious.

We hiked from the Ripley Falls trailhead all the way to Arethusa Falls, and then took a side trip on the Frankenstein Cliff trail, and back, for a total of 7.6 miles. The trail was occasionally steep, narrow, and brushy, but our intent was really to just get a good hike done while Susan and Adam carried full packs — this was their practice run for 8-mile days on the Chilkoot. All went as you’d expect. We came out with pantlegs and boots coated in mud, and feeling a bit sweaty from the humid air.

Since we had accomplished our hiking goal for the day, and the rain had finally stopped, and it was still only about 1:30, we took the afternoon “off” and rolled around in the car to check out some of the White Mountain tourist attractions. Mount Washington was experiencing its 15th day in a row of 100-foot visibility at the peak, so we skipped the opportunity to drive to the top. North Conway was flooded with summertime tourists, so we headed down there to get a celebratory chai and sit on the sidewalk watching the people go by.

Now, you have to recall at this point that we had hiked about 12 miles in total over the previous day, and we all pretty much looked like it. There were no showers at the campground. In fact, the only running water available to us came out of a hand-actuated pump. Now here we were sitting in a sidewalk cafe on display to the browsing public. North Conway is one of those places where you can get away with the rumpled, muddy, “hiker look,” because it is an outpost in the midst of the White Mountains, which are dominated by hikers. (I did slip into a public bathroom with a travel-size bottle of shampoo and do a very quick hair wash. I have a certain amount of experience at this from days of yore, so I can complete the job in a sink in less than two minutes. I have many of the skills required to be homeless, should the situation arise.)

After the chai was gone and our downtown stroll was completed, we headed off to another scenic point a few miles away. Susan asked if I wanted to take my camera, and it was at that moment that I looked in the car and realized it was gone.

…. Yes, gone. Backpack, camera, lens, filter, everything.

It took only a minute for me to figure out what had happened. At the end of the hike, I put the bag down on the ground near the car, and then drove away without it. So it had been sitting on the ground at the Ripley Falls trailhead parking lot for five hours. And the trailhead was 30 miles from our present location.

Well, that was a long and quiet drive for the three of us, during which time I attempted to (a) remain calm, and (b) tally up the value of all the gear I’d just lost. It came to $1,800. But there was one comfort along the way, which was that we were in New Hampshire, and I had left the backpack at a trailhead. Hikers have a natural respect for other people, and other people’s property. I’ve never heard of anyone ever losing anything left in their tent. Trailhead break-ins are a plague at many other spots, but those are usually the work of non-hikers coming to plunder the vehicles of visitors.

Sure enough, we drove up to the dirt parking lot and someone had propped up my backpack by the trailhead post where everyone could see it. The backpack, containing a new Nikon D90 camera, a Nikkor 18-200mm lens, a polarizing filter, and my food and Camelbak, was absolutely unmolested after five hours of being left out in the open. Hikers are great people.

I slept well in my snug tent that night. Despite rain and potential financial disaster, everything worked out just fine. Tent camping gave me two days without the complexities of life, and reminded me of the things I take for granted back at home. Before we’d even broken camp, we were talking about the next time we’ll do this. There’s a chance we’ll get out again in the tents in late August, before the Airstream starts heading west. I certainly hope so.

Jul 18 2009

What we’ll do for summer “vacation”

Most people go off for summer vacation, but for me it’s the busiest time of the year. In the winter there’s not a lot of Airstream activity going on, except on the west coast and in Florida, and we usually have large periods of time during which neither business or social obligation intrudes. That’s when we stretch out and have time to ourselves, but in the summer it’s usually go-go-go with rallies and travel.

Not only that, but we have persisted in the habit of getting some of the routine annual jobs done here in Vermont. Our cars are registered here, since we aren’t actually legal residents of any other state yet, and so that means state inspections must be obtained every summer. Our dentist is here, a guy that is so likable and reasonable that we can’t seem to fathom the thought of finding someone in Arizona to replace him. Emma takes two weeks of swim classes here every summer. We still have a PO Box here, which still fills with mail despite two years of attempts to get people to stop using it. My table saw and some parts of our Caravel are here, so there are projects to be completed as well.

This all makes summer in Vermont a little less idyllic than it would seem. “We spend our summers in Vermont” suggests a scene from On Golden Pond (filmed in New Hampshire, but most people don’t know the difference) with a rustic camp and boathouse on a still water lake. We would rise at 6 a.m. to watch the fog burn off the shallow water and listen to the early morning birds, while cupping a hot chocolate or coffee and wearing camp clothes. Then we’d retrieve the water melon from its icy cold spot in the fresh water spring, pack a picnic basket, and tromp off into the woods to spot deer, or perhaps putter around the lake in our 1930s wood boat.

Reality is quite different. We are near a lake, yes, but parked in a 2005 Airstream in the gravel driveway. I do often rise early, but yesterday it was to get some work done before I went to the dentist to get an old crown replaced. My picnic for the day was a protein shake in the car on the way to do errands, carefully slurped to avoid drooling while the novocaine wore off. Our antique motor vehicle is not a romantic 1930s boat but rather the 1983 Honda Accord that we keep up here as our cheap runabout. My brother does have a Glastron GT150 painted in gold glitter, which qualifies as an antique boat, but somehow I can’t picture it puttering around anywhere without a vision of Roger Moore driving it (in Live and Let Die). I suppose “summer in Vermont” has changed in the 21st century.

The other reason I am not relaxing much is because we have the Vintage Trailer Jam coming up in just a few weeks. We were finally able to post the preliminary schedule online today, and it looks good, but many details remain to be nailed down. If you are considering coming, better book your spot soon. We’re almost out of electric spaces. In about a week we’ll need to estimate the final headcount for the caterer and registration will probably close by Aug 7 (after that you can come as a walk-in but you’ll get a non-electric site).

Perhaps later in August things will quiet down, but by then it will be time to start thinking about our departure. I am planning to head out in September. It remains to be seen if the rest of my crew is onboard with that plan. After a summer full of rallies, classes, appointments, errands, and county fairs, I hope they will be sated and ready for a change of scene. Maybe we’ll go somewhere where we have absolutely nothing to do. That sounds pretty good to me.