We were all set to hit the road this morning.   Eleanor even commented on the fact that we had everyone ready, and the trailer all packed up, an hour before we had expected to leave.   The plan was to tow the trailer up to Julian (elev. 4000) and then down to the town of Campo, right on the border with Mexico.   Our friends Daisy and Don are there, volunteering at the San Diego Railroad Museum.   They promised us a train ride and dinner tonight.   Eleanor was bringing a Julian apple pie for dessert.

All of those plans are in the past tense now, because we’ve had an equipment failure.   I hitched up the trailer, including connecting the 7-way trailer plug, and   about five minutes later, the disc brake actuator spontaneously went on.

Normally, the only way the actuator could go on without the truck brakes being activated first would be if the emergency breakaway switch was activated or shorted.   I cycled the breakaway several times (pulling the pin in and out), but it had no effect.   I pulled the 7-way plug out to ensure that the truck’s brake controller wasn’t sending a false signal — no result.   I quickly tossed everything out of my bedroom closet to check the wiring in the region of the brake actuator, and it all looked good.   I wiggled wires.   Nothing.

With the actuator running full on, we had three problems.   (1) The trailer would not go anywhere.   The disc brakes are locked full on, which means we’d have about as much chance of towing it as we would trying to tow a beached whale.   (2) The actuator pump would probably eventually overheat or burn out.   (3)   The power draw of the unit (about 20 amps DC) would quickly drain our batteries.   We solved the third problem by plugging the Airstream into the campsite power again.

Finally, with no other choices, I got out the wire cutters and began snipping wires.   It was like trying to defuse a bomb.   Cut the right wire, and the problem ends.   Cut the wrong wire and you’re just wasting time.     Eleanor stood by to assist.   “Headlamp!”   “Check!”   “Hand me the cutters!”   First I cut the breakaway controller wire to verify it wasn’t shorted out.   That had no result, so I went into the closet again and cut the blue wire running to the actuator. The blue wire carries the signal from the truck’s brake controller.   I figured we might have a bad 7-way plug, but snipping the blue wire also had no result.   Then I cut the 12-gauge black wire (12vDC +) and finally the actuator shut off.

So the immediate problem is solved, but of course we have no brakes.   Towing up the Banner Grade to Julian is clearly out of the question.   We are in Borrego Springs, CA, a town with no RV services and very little else.   The nearest real service is 50 miles away in Brawley, or 70 miles away in Coachella (Palm Springs area).

If we were really in a pinch I’d probably tow up to Coachella since the road is mostly flat and not particularly crowded.   But we have an ace in the hole, or rather, an ace mechanic.   We have “Super Terry,” who is working up in Corona, CA at Inland RV.   Super Terry (formerly just known as Terry, but I needed to differentiate him from Tucson Terry)   has — miracle of miracles — a brand new Kodiak disc brake actuator sitting on the shelf.

He is now and forever known as Super Terry because upon hearing of our plight, he immediately volunteered to drive   the 109 miles from Corona down to us with a truck loaded with tools and equipment, and replace the brake controller right here.   Now that’s a friend.

We are due to leave the state park today at noon.   We could ask for an extension, but part of the work will be to bleed the brakes, and I doubt the park rangers would find that an acceptable practice.   So we are going to tow the Airstream about five miles over to a boondocking site known as “Pegleg” and do the work there.

As with all of our on-the-road disasters, we will make the best of it.   So let’s count our blessings:   We’ll get another night in the lovely desert.   We’ll get to have our friend Terry over for lunch, and dinner, and breakfast (he’ll be staying the night for sure).   We are going to get a very convenient repair to what could have been a thorny problem.   And, out of sheer pity perhaps, Bill has given me a gift of Jake Shimabukuro’s album “Gently Weeps.”   So we’ve got new music to enjoy tonight while we boondock under the stars.

I’ll post an update after we get the work done.

Our little getaway in Anza-Borrego has turned into something more than we knew. There are eight Airstreams here, including ourselves.   We knew that Terry & Greg, Bill & Larry, David & Ari, and Bill & Beth would be here, but I was surprised to see (and finally meet in person) Dirk & Sue from Oregon, plus owners of two other Airstreams who I’d never met before.

People in the campground have noticed the confluence of aluminum and have asked if this is a rally.   We always reply emphatically that this is NOT a rally.   It’s a happy coincidence.   Mostly we are eager to disclaim a rally because all of us are trying to avoid the expectations that come with that style of gathering:   daily Happy Hour, group breakfasts, “kitty fees,” organized activities, etc.   We’re here to relax in the desert and do just whatever we feel like, and for many of the folks here that means holing up with a book or significant other all day.

If this were a rally, such behavior might be interpreted as being actively anti-social, but here it’s considered admirable.   Going to spend the entire day contemplating your toenails?   Go for it.   Not interested in getting out of bed until 10:30 (and then only to microwave some leftover dim sum for breakfast)?   Sounds nice.   Don’t want to talk to another human for at least five hours?   No problem, we won’t be knocking on your door.   This is a gathering for people who just want to be left to their own devices, while still having the option to see a friendly face if they feel like it.

Still, some of us have been getting together in the evenings for dinner, at the picnic tables at Bill & Larry’s place (because it is so extravagantly decorated with lights, patio mats, umbrellas, signs, etc.).   The participants vary from night to night.   Anyone who feels like it brings over a dish and we all work through whatever there is.   With Larry doing his marvelous Chinese specialties, and contributions by everyone else, dinner has been a gastronomic success.

The sun sets early even here, this time of year, and so by 5:30 it is pitch black except for the colorful lights that adorn many of the trailers.   There is no wind, but the temperature plummets into the 50s almost instantly. We’ve been eating dim sum and peanut noodles and pumpkin pie with warm hats and fleeces on.   Even if a little chilly, everyone seems very happy.

Yesterday we took David, Ari, and William out for a little backroad exploration.   You can’t really see most of Anza-Borrego without at least a high-clearance vehicle, and 4WD is preferable.   We’re the only ones of the Airstream group who have 4WD, so we popped up the 3rd row in the Armada and took off for a few favorite spots.   The narrow and winding Slot Canyon, about 30-40 feet deep in places, was a hit with everyone, especially the kids.   We also took them to Split Mountain and hiked the short trail to Wind Caves, another kid-friendly destination.

One of the benefits of being out on the road is that I often meet people who end up contributing to the magazine.   They might offer an idea, a contact, a photo, a destination, or just inspiration.  Today’s big score was that I met a couple who were the official photographers on the 1960 Airstream European Caravan.  It just so happens that in 2005 we documented Pete Turner’s experience as the official photographer of the 1959 Cape Town to Cairo Caravan.   In our upcoming Spring 2009 issue, we have an article about Fran Hall, the photographer for the 1962 Around The World Caravan.  Now we’ll be able to add yet another piece to the puzzle of historic caravans, and I expect it will become an article for the Summer or Fall 2009 issue.

We’ve been doing all the little things that we like to do while we are here.   Today we hunted for pineapple soda, a treat that Emma associates with Borrego Springs.   Emma made up elaborate games with William amongst the tumbleweed and creosote bush.   I played ukulele songs with Bill under the awning. We went to the visitor center to check out the schedule of ranger talks.   Tomorrow we’ll hike Palm Canyon to look for bighorn sheep.  There is nothing we need to do, and lots of things we can do anytime, so no rush at any time.

Our group is changing daily.  David, Ari, and Willie left today for San Diego, but they were quickly replaced by Bill & Beth. Since we all planned our travel dates separately, there’s no beginning and no end to our gathering.   It may go on all winter, with people coming and going randomly.   In fact, I hope it does.   I’d hate to think that this good mood might fade away when we leave on Saturday.   It’s nice to think that we’re just part of a big rolling party that will continue indefinitely.

I’m still wrestling with the strange feelings resulting from the start of this new trip.   Being back in the Airstream that we called home for so long is like going back to Mom & Dad’s house after having moved out.   It’s not the same.   It seems smaller.   It looks worn, as if someone else has been living in it since we stopped.   Everything is familiar but different somehow.   Perhaps it is true that you can’t go home again.

I never did aspire to live in a trailer, I aspired to travel, and the trailer was merely the means.   Now that the major travel is behind us, the trailer is more of an artifact or a memento of that trip, like a big scrapbook.   Re-entering it is like walking down the corridors of your old high school; still the same but not the place you remember.   It was so important back then, but now it is a piece of the past. I tell myself that we lived here for three years but I’m having trouble convincing myself.     Did all of those things really happen to us?

I suppose that sensation arises because the experience was built from a million individual moments, none of which can be reproduced (and even if they could be, it wouldn’t be the same).   It was never about the trailer.   It was always about the thrill of discovery.   We were always entering unknown territory, both geographically, intellectually, and as a family (watching Emma grow up). We can come back to the trailer, but we can’t come back to the experiences and the way I felt the first time. We can only move forward to something else.

Another difference now is that our current trip is more about the friends we want to see along the way, and the business we need to conduct.   No longer are we free-wheeling full-time travelers with no fixed address and no deadline to end our travel.   This trip has a schedule (a loose one, to be sure, but nonetheless a schedule), and a very specific set of tasks that I need to complete along the way.   We know we will be back in Tucson by a certain date.   We are not as free to roam as we once were.

On the other hand, I can try something I rarely got to do in the full-timing days.   Because I’ve always worked in the Airstream, and because the first couple of years of travel were coincident with a very tough developmental period for the magazine, I have generally worked seven days a week as long as we were aboard.   I rarely took a vacation for more than a day or two, and never was I far from my computer, my cell phone, and my obligations.

Now, since home base is in a house and Airstream travel has become an occasional thing, I can begin to treat the Airstream as other people do.   It can be a true “getaway.”   We can leave the office behind, pack up the toys, and zip off for a few days to decompress completely.   That may seems rather evident to most   people, but for us it is a novelty.

We are now in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, in southern California.   A few Airstream friends have joined us here, including Terry & Greg from Tucson, Bill & Larry (with whom we camped here a year ago), and David and Ariadna (who followed us from Picacho Peak).   Also here are two other Airstreams, one of which I recognize from its Big Red Numbers as a fan of the magazine, so I’ll go introduce myself tomorrow.

Monday brought a heap of tasks for me to deal with urgently, so I triaged them Monday night after our six-hour drive, and set aside Tuesday to spend in the office dealing with everything.   Eleanor and Emma spent the day out with our friends, leaving me alone to get it all done in quiet and warm desert sunshine. Having gotten most everything under control, I am going to switch to vacation mode for the rest of the week and test my theory about converting my mental picture of the Airstream into a getaway vehicle.

Anza-Borrego may be the ideal place to do that.   You cannot be uptight in this place.   It is too wild and open, too beautiful and too peaceful.   There are hundreds of square miles of trails and 4WD roads to explore.   Bighorn sheep lurk in the canyons just above us, and shaggy palms are rustling in the occasional breeze.   Tomorrow I will take anyone who wants to go out for a tour of the backcountry and spend the day with family, friends, a picnic lunch, and my camera.   It will be a starting point for the next phase of our traveling life.   Let’s see what happens.

Driving away from the house this morning we had a sense of leaving something behind, which we have rarely felt during our full-time years.   It was awkward, feeling as though the house was the center of our universe, and getting in the Airstream to travel was somehow a deficit.   We have always felt centered by being together, regardless of where we were, but suddenly it was different   today.   It felt like leaving home.   It felt strange.

I think much of this stems from the fact that for three years we regarded the Airstream as our primary home, and the house in Tucson was just one of many places we visited.   Now the house has become our home, and the new center of our universe, and in driving away from it we are abandoning that center for something else.   We left behind our unfinished projects, karate classes, neighbors and friends.   We dropped everything that was in process, locked the door and pulled away.   There’s a sense of not having full closure.   I can see why sometimes people have trouble leaving home, and why they made comments like, “Don’t you get homesick?”

The sun sets early this time of year, and even in the desert southwest the nights are long and cold.   The interior of the trailer shrinks at night (and the exterior gets longer, if you are still towing after dark).   We bumped into each other as we did back in 2005 when we were new to full-timing, and gradually re-adjusted to the practicalities of life inside 200 square feet. Making this adjustment in the middle of the winter is a bit more difficult, which is one reason why I recommend that people who are going to travel full-time start in spring or summer.

But in all other respects, it has been a typical day on the road.   We traveled a mere 70 miles, to this interesting state park near I-10 between Tucson and Phoenix, to meet our friends David, Ari, and William.   Those of you who have followed our   travels for a while may recognize them as the family we traveled with to Mexico last April, and who we visited about a year ago at their home in Ventura, CA.

Picacho   represents a convenient meeting point between Tucson and Phoenix (where our friends were visiting most recently), but it is also a spot we’ve been meaning to re-visit for some time.   The main feature of the park is a rather abrupt peak that, from a distance, appears unclimbable without ropes.   Once in the park, you’ll discover two routes to the top which merge at a point called “The Saddle.”

In early 2007 we climbed the steeper of the two routes and reached the Saddle, in somewhat intense heat.   The climb is, frankly, brutal and unrewarding in itself, but the view is good.   Going beyond the Saddle to the peak requires more time than we had, and gloves are useful for steep rocky sections and grasping steel cables.

Tomorrow morning we are going to hike at least part of the second trail with David, Ari, and William.   It is longer, at about 3.1 miles one-way, but shallower.     We are not likely to complete the trail, because not everyone in our group is ready for a hike of this nature, but we’ll at least get a good taste of it and we can use that to plan a future summit.

The cold continues today. Around Tucson it warmed into the mid-50s, but here at Picacho it felt cooler, with a breeze.   Still the campground has at least two dozen trailers parked in it (although not many signs of life from most of them).   In the dark the temperature has plummeted again, and we expect to be near-freezing again tonight. Since we chose a non-electric site in the campground, I’ve got the catalytic heater going and it looks like it will have to run all night.   It will be a chilly morning to go on a hike tomorrow, but we’ve got the clothing and gear for it.   Short of driving to Mazatlan or south Florida, we can’t escape the cold this time of year, so we will just have to embrace it.

It is cold this morning as we prepare the Airstream for departure.   Very cold, for Tucson.   Last night was one of the occasional freezes this town gets in the winter, and this morning everything outside is covered with frost. I hate preparing for a trip in the cold, because every job is harder and slower.

My fingers, required to be bare for some jobs that require nimbleness, are aching at the touch of cold metal on the hitch, cold tools, and frosty propane tank cover.   The air in the tires has shrunk from the cold, each one measuring only 48-52 psi when they should be at least 60 psi.   The interior reminds me of the movie 2010 when the crew re-enters the frozen Discovery space ship: initially dark, quiet, and with a slight odor of dust signaling abandonment. HAL 9000, are you there?

This morning’s task is to re-activate the ship.   I left the furnace set at 50 degrees last night so the trailer wouldn’t freeze, and this morning switched over to the catalytic heater.   Over a couple of hours, it will efficiently saturate the interior with heat, making Eleanor’s re-packing work inside more comfortable.   Meanwhile, I’ve been outside pumping up the tires, checking the propane level, and verifying critical items in the storage compartments.

For the most part the trailer   is ready to go, and it seems the majority of the departure checklist has to do with things inside the house.   Among many other tasks, today is “Pick the Grapefruit Day.”   The freezing night should have finalized the grapefruit (it is said that it makes the fruit a little sweeter), and in any case the tree is heavy with 90-odd softball-sized   yellow fruit.   We can’t possibly eat them all, and I doubt they will last until we get back, so my plan is to juice most of them today and have fresh grapefruit juice every day for the next couple of weeks.   I already squeezed a bag of ten or so and made a liter of juice.   Now the problem is to find enough empty containers for all the juice I’m making.

Being a fan of checklists, I have started a list of things we need to do before leaving for a long period.   It turns out that there is quite a bit more to it than I had imagined.   Someday, when I have the list complete, I may post it here.   There are lots of fiddly little tasks, like running a full backup of both computers, that are easily overlooked.   (We make a secondary backups of both computers in case there’s a trailer disaster that causes us to lose the computers and the primary backups that travel with us. The secondary backup stays in a locked, fireproof safe back at home base.)

I had spoken in an earlier blog about my goal to keep the Airstream ready to go in less than an hour.   It turns out that we have achieved that goal — for a weekend.   To just zip out the door and take a few days, no problem.   But to go for a month or more, we have to make considerable preparation.   It was so much easier when we had only one home (the Airstream), but now with two homes we have to think carefully about where things are.

But all of that is relatively minor.   So far the trip prep has contained only one major surprise: the car battery.   The cold snap this morning revealed that the Armada’s battery is a goner.   I jumped it from another car and now we’ve got a new battery.   Better now than while we are in Anza-Borrego.   Both of the rechargeable batteries for the cordless drill are dead too, but those are easily recharged. The cold and the lack of use are starting to show.

For the next few weeks, while we are on the road, I will be posting more regularly.