Feb 19 2010

Ace Hotel, Palm Springs

The wind was blowing strongly from the west last night, enough to occasionally rock the trailer as I slept at Pegleg in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. A little rocking is nice when you’re snug and secure in a tight little aluminum cocoon, but unfortunately I discovered that the angle of the wind caused a heretofore unknown flap in the stove vent to make a random tinny banging noise.

The noise was enough to wake me from a sound sleep, and after several interruptions to interesting dreams I finally got out of bed to see what could be done about it. Thus I can report that it was still fairly warm at 1 a.m. last night in Borrego Springs, even when standing out in the breeze in pajamas. (In fact, I didn’t need heat all night.)

A wad of paper towel stuffed in the vent blocked the wind enough to stop the flap from banging. I think I will devise a better block, made of foam, for future trips. Eleanor and Emma really owe me for debugging this sort of thing before they go camping in the trailer. Add this to the spontaneously shattering window glass phenomenon that I discovered in the early morning last December, and you can see that the job of Quality Assurance Inspector is not easy.

In the morning Bert tapped on the door and invited me out to breakfast at one of the cafes in downtown Borrego Springs. Since he was buying, I couldn’t say no … or to be more accurate, I simply wouldn’t say no. Anyone who cares to buy me a tall stack of blueberry pancakes will find “No” has suddenly disappeared from my vocabulary.

Of course we got to talking, and by the time I was back at the trailer I was already late to get to the ACE Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs. All of the vintage trailer owners were told that it was very important we arrive in the specific 30-minute parking windows that had been assigned to us, and of course none of us did. I was 25 minutes late, while others were either hours early or late. But we all got parked well enough, in an pedestrian alleyway that divides sections of this former motel, and even before we were disconnected and set up, there was a steady stream of appreciative onlookers checking out the trailers.

The Caravel is plugged in just twenty paces from the door of my ground-floor hotel room, so in effect I have sleeping and housekeeping space for about eight people (four in the Caravel, four in the double beds of the room). The refrigerator and cupboard of the trailer are fully stocked with food, so I’ve been going back and forth between hotel and Caravel for meals, which I prepare in the trailer and consume in the hotel room. I didn’t even have to bring much into the room with me, since my entire wardrobe and anything else I might need is already in the trailer.

The hotel is quite interesting. Formerly a Westward Ho motel, then a Howard Johnson’s, it was recently done over to the tune (so I’m told) of $35 million. It shows. The rooms are bohemian/modernist/funky, while the grounds and building are cleverly landscaped and very inviting. Tonight in “The Commune” (a gathering place at the hotel) we will be treated to a slide show by “classic and kitsch pop-culture humorist” Charles Phoenix, which I’m told is a must-see.

Parked nearby me is Kristiana Spaulding, who many of you may know for her wonderful silver Airstream-themed jewelry. She advertises her work in Airstream Life, which is a good enough reason for me to love her, but in addition she and her husband Greg are great people who I’ve enjoyed meeting for the first time today. Kristiana is showing her 1962 Bambi, one of many Airstreams she owns. I thought I was a big road-tripper, but apparently from the stories I’m hearing today, I’m not even in Kristiana’s league. She’s based in Lotus CA but makes regular trips to New York.

Officially tours start on Saturday. Participants pay $10 per person to get to view the interiors of the trailers and talk to the owners. There will be tours at 10, 12, and 2. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Eleanor and I have dressed up the Caravel for the event, and yes, I will get some pictures of that for you. But in advance of the tours there have been many people coming by to admire. They try to peek in the windows, and they are taking a lot of pictures. You’d think they’d never seen a vintage Airstream before. I guess I forget how rare — to the general public — they seem to be. And it’s also easy to forget how dramatically people are transfixed by the sight of one of the old aluminum shells. Seeing their reaction to the interior tomorrow should be great fun.

Feb 16 2010

Mod Squad in the New Caravel

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been prepping to go to Palm Springs for Modernism Week. We, along with a few other vintage trailer owners, will be on exhibit at the Ace Hotel on Saturday February 20. There’s not much that we need to do except clean up the trailer and pack for a few nights, but the opportunity to get into the modernism spirit has gradually overtaken us. That means “accessories” circa 1968, so we have a prop box going to collect the things that will help set the mood of 1968 as people tour the trailer.

At this point we have some Melmac dishware, a couple of Life magazines (Jane Fonda as Barbarella on the cover of one), a transistor radio (non-working), an old plaid Thermos, some James Bond paperbacks, Jiffy-Pop, and various other things. The problem is that accessorizing can be addictive, so it wasn’t long before Eleanor was making 60’s-looking pillow shams, and hunting up giant peace-sign earrings for herself at the resale shops. Then I spent an evening collecting three hours worth of 1968 music for the iPod, which will play from a hidden location inside the trailer.

Now Eleanor has an entire costume for herself, and she’s begun to dress me as well. Of course, anything I wear from the 1960s is destined to look immensely nerdy. Since I currently have close-cropped hair, I’m going to run with the nerd look and perhaps don a clip-on tie or find some dorky pants. That shouldn’t be hard. Eleanor, on the other hand, will be looking more like a flower child. Emma will probably just be hiding from embarrassment the entire time, so she won’t need a costume.

When we first bought the Caravel, we had no thoughts of vintage style. The trailer was simply an inexpensive way to get into Airstream ownership. But like a lot of vintage owners, we fell in love with the trailer and it became part of our lifestyle. (That little trailer is exactly the reason Airstream Life magazine exists.)

We eventually kept upgrading the Caravel until it was no longer inexpensive. Worse, somehow along the way the trailer became the star, and we became its agents. I’ve camped in it exactly four nights in the past five years, and all of those nights have been in service of the trailer itself, not for my own recreation. Now it has become so exotic that to take it out we need to dress it up first. It is a sort of trophy trailer.

Well, that won’t last. We don’t own things just for the sake of having them. Everything has to have a purpose, or it soon finds another home. This little voyage may be just the thing we need to “break in” the trailer, and make it our own again.

That may seem an odd statement, but in the process of refurbishing the trailer, we managed to make it nearly unrecognizable to ourselves. The interior is nearly all new and smells like wood finish and sawdust. The cushion fabric is red rather than green. The cabinetry is smooth light blonde, rather than honey covered with water stains and burn marks. The big dents on the roof are gone, as are most of the scratches along the curb side. We replaced nearly everything that was broken or worn-out, and now the trailer is better, but it is also so different that we wonder if we chased out its soul. We look at it and think, “Is this still our trailer?”

Probably the passage of time has done as much to separate us from the Caravel as the refurbishing. On our last trip in the trailer, Emma was a four-year-old toddler and her parents were still novices at trailer travel. Our formative memories were riddled with minor disasters coupled with wonderful irreplaceable memories. The trailer got dusty every time we towed (from the floor rot), the black tank oozed out the top and smelled terrible when it got full, the bed foam was painfully uncomfortable, the windows leaked, and the spare tire didn’t fit. It was dented, and festooned with all sorts of ridiculous non-period things, like a giant white air conditioner that sat on the roof like a goofy cap.

Yet we loved the trailer and the adventures it led us to, enough to invest five times the purchase price in refurbishing it over the next several years. This was a leap of faith. We were trusting that it would lead us to more adventures and bonding once we had it back. Now we shall find out.

I expect that we’ll come to know and love the “new” Caravel very quickly. Just spending a few nights in it at Quartzsite I came to remember how fun it is, how neat & compact, how I get the exciting sensation of camping when I sleep in it, how much it is a joy it is just to look at the rounded silvery proportions of it. Even though Emma is no longer the tiny toddler that we remember tucking in on the dinette, there are good memories ahead to be made with the nearly ten-year-old kid we have today.

But if things don’t work out, there won’t be any trouble finding a new owner for the trailer. We are allowed to solicit buyers at the Modernism Show if we wish, and I’ll surprised if there aren’t a few folks in Palm Springs next weekend prowling the show for a nice restored trailer.

We’ll be on the road Wednesday night, and as always, I’ll blog from the road frequently until we get back to winter home base.

Dec 27 2009

They’re blowing up the bridge

Since 1929, when New York Governor Franklin D Roosevelt inaugurated it, the Champlain Bridge has been the preferred way to get across the southern portion of Lake Champlain — and tomorrow (Monday, December 27, 2009), they’re going to blow it up.

Lake Champlain runs about 140 miles north-south, dividing New York and Vermont. It’s the sixth-largest freshwater lake in the US (right after the five Great Lakes), and quite deep at up to 400 feet, but most people have never heard of it. I grew up on the shoreline of this lake and it’s not too much to say that it has been a defining element of my life. In addition to being recreation, scenery, and weather-maker for lakeside residents, Lake Champlain is a barrier between the Adirondack region of upstate New York and most of Vermont.

I remember as a child looking at the broad lake, which was three miles wide where we lived. To me it was an ocean, crossable only by a grand voyage in a ship. Beyond lay the uncharted land of New York, which I had rarely seen on foot. One day I heard there was a “bridge over Lake Champlain,” and for months I had dreams of a mythical bridge that somehow crossed miles of open water.

There are a few ways to cross the lake. There’s a boring causeway bridge over the shallower part of the lake up by Rouses Point NY, near the Canadian border. Several ferries cross the lake at various points, and a very short bridge crosses the extreme southern end where the lake peters out to a mere canal. But in the middle, where the the lake is wider, the Champlain Bridge has been the well-worn path for decades, joining the rural town of Chimney Point, VT with Crown Point, NY.

It was an amusing surprise when I first found it during a random exploration at age 18 with my VW. After all those years of knowing that there was a bridge over Lake Champlain, but not knowing where it was, I felt like I’d found a secret passage. The bridge was nothing like I expected. Rather than being long and flat, it was dramatically arched and crossed the lake at a narrow spot (1/2 mile). But that made it even more fun. I was happy to pay the $0.50 toll and for the first time, drive my little 1967 VW Bug over the lake to New York state. (The one-way toll was discontinued in 1987.)

Every time I’ve crossed the Champlain Bridge since, I’ve been struck by its uniqueness and beauty. It rises steeply up, hundreds of feet above the water, far higher than necessary since no tall ships can navigate this shallow part of the lake. For some, the sharp rise brings a touch of vertigo, which is exacerbated by the narrowness of the bridge. Just two 1930’s-era lanes cross the bridge, so that as you are carefully studying the painted lines, you are also intimately acquainted with fellow bridge travelers heading the other way.

From the top, the view is always spectacular, like riding to the top of a Ferris wheel. The lake tends to be calmer at this shallow channel, with gently rippling and brilliant blue water lined by pine trees and backdropped by the Adirondacks. When you land (heading west), you find yourself in the midst of the ruins of a historic Revolutionary-era fort at Crown Point and a pleasant little campground.

I have never crossed the bridge without wanting to stop and take in the view. Alas, that is impossible. The bridge has no pedestrian lane, no place to stop, and during the summer it is always busy. I once rode my bicycle over it on a summer day, and hoped to be able to pull off to the side, but there were too many cars. I had to pedal furiously to keep up with the traffic (speed limit 25 MPH) while throwing glances to each side in an attempt to memorize the view.

Perhaps that was actually a good thing. For the past several years, it has been obvious that the bridge was deteriorating. Maintenance was never able to keep up with the rusted steel and crumbling concrete. Towing the Airstream across the bridge (as we did at least twice a year), I couldn’t help but think of our 14,000 pounds flexing the elderly span, and filling every inch of the narrow lane between steel abutment and oncoming traffic. With a closer look at the bridge, I might have lost my interest in driving over it.

The bridge is a mess. Road salt, freezing/thawing lake ice, and generally tough weather conditions have destroyed the bridge’s structural elements to the point that it is practically unfixable. The state sent divers down in to the murky lake water to look at the piers and they came back with some disturbing video. After a bunch of public hearings and Vermont-style debate, the conclusion was to blow it up and start over. We’ll all be able to watch the kaboom live on the Internet tomorrow here, which beats the heck out of standing around in the cold to see it in person.

Eighty years since the bridge was completed, designs have changed. New York State has floated a few design concepts, none of which look quite as exciting as the old arched steel span, but I expect that at least they will feel and be safer as we tow the Airstream over them again in years to come. In summer 2010, when we return to Vermont, the new bridge will likely still be under construction, so we’ll use one of the ferries or the southern route instead. I will definitely look forward to the new bridge, even though the bridge that I remember so well as the one that first opened up my traveling ways will gone.

Bridge photos courtesy of NYSDOT

Dec 23 2009

Vintage Airstreams and Modernism

Hey, west coast vintage Airstream owners: there’s a Modernism show happening in February 2010 in Palm Springs, and they want YOU to show up!

Modernism Week is an annual event in Palm Springs, CA, filled with exhibits, presentations, and house tours. The Ace Hotel is planning to show vintage Airstreams along a promenade that winds through the hotel property, and sell tickets to tour the trailers at $10 per person. If you’ve got a restored vintage Airstream up to 26 feet in length, they want to hear from you.

Other than open houses at rallies, it’s not that often that vintage Airstream owners get to show off their trailers. Classic car shows are a dime a dozen, but classic trailer shows are a lot more scarce.

Of course, coming to events like this can be expensive for the owner. Fuel alone for me to tow our 1968 Caravel to Palm Springs would run about $200 round-trip. The hotel is offering to share 1/3 of the receipts from tours with the trailer owners to help defray the cost. No telling how many participants there will be on the tours, but they do plan to offer four tours on Saturday, February 20, at 10:00, 11:00, 1:00, and 2:00. I wouldn’t count on this to cover my fuel, but it’s better than nothing — which is what you usually get for displaying your Airstream.

The hotel has reserved a room for each vintage trailer, so participants won’t be actually camping. You can stay in the hotel instead, at no cost. From the website, the Ace Hotel looks like an interesting and fun sort of place.

Participating owners are asked to bring a “fact sheet” to hand out to people on the tour, and are encouraged to make a poster board display with information about the trailer and its restoration. Also, if you’ve got a vintage trailer to sell, you can make it known during the event, which would probably yield some offers.

If you are interested in participating, email Christy Eugenis for an application. You’ll need to give some info about your trailer and include interior and exterior pictures. Deadline is January 15, 2010.

Dec 18 2009

17 Feet o’ Fun

Wednesday was National Chocolate Covered Anything Day, which is a major holiday among women who recently discovered it, like the two who inhabit my house. This led to chocolate fondue Thursday, a day late but when you’re dealing with a serious topic like chocolate, some leeway is apparently allowed. And hey, if you’re doing fondue, might as well have cheese fondue for dinner,too! That balances things, nutritionally.

We don’t normally eat like this. Yesterday’s dinner was the sort of dietary faux pas that will turn us into manatees if we keep it up. So now we are waddling around the house in a post-cheese & chocolate trance and wondering exactly what sort of conspiracy comes up with ideas like “National Chocolate Covered Anything Day.” I suspect Fairy Godmother involvement: “Get me something deep fried and smothered in chocolate.”

I have been spending the past three days rushing around, trying to simultaneously prep the Caravel for travel while completing major work on the Spring 2010 issue of Airstream Life. The magazine is now 90% in the hands of the Art Department, which means that unlike the past two weeks, if I drop out of sight for 24 hours the world will not come to an end. Lately I have felt like one of those guys spinning plates on tall poles — it all looks great as long as you’re there to keep the plates spinning, but step away for a second …

I would not be rushing to prep the Caravel except that I have an opportunity to go to Quartzsite this weekend and visit some friends who are boondocking out in one of the BLM’s desert Long Term Visitor Areas. It’s the last such chance I’ll have for at least six weeks, and I really want to do it. So I ran down the list of the most urgent things to make the trailer fully functional: plug it in for charging, fill the water tank, lubricate the stubborn locks, test all the systems, vacuum out the sawdust inside and the broken glass outside, etc. Of course that also included loading up with food, utensils, dishes, clothes, tools, and all the other accessories of fine trailer living.

In the process I discovered a few more things for the “bug list.” The fresh tank water drain leaked at the shutoff valve. Over the years somebody replaced the water drain line but kept the original 40-year-old shutoff valve. I don’t quite get the logic of that. 40-year-old valves leak, and a complete replacement costs just a few dollars. Eleanor and I rebuilt that little bit of plumbing this morning, with new water line, brass fittings, hose clamps, and a little Rescue Tape for extra insurance. (Silicone tape is a new thing to me, but it’s turning out to be extremely useful, so now it’s a permanent item in my traveling toolbox.)

While testing the water heater I discovered an old paper wasp nest attached to the exhaust vent. This was easily removed, and provided a nice bonus: a little homeschool lesson for Emma about insect homes and honeycomb construction. But I also found that the bathroom faucet seems to be clogged or defective (no water comes out), and a switch to the Fantastic Vent seems intermittent. Plus I need a new 12v reading light, clips for the Magic Chef stove grates, some replacement clips for the 1968-style windows, etc. I’ve already placed a hefty order at Vintage Trailer Supply this week and I can see another order needed in January for the vintage stoneguard and a few other pricey goodies. Having an Airstream and a “Sparestream” means double your pleasure, double your cost.

I got a new Reese drawbar for the Caravel, eliminating the need for the heavy equalizing hitch head I was using. It also raises the ball two inches, so now the Caravel rides level.

I’m afraid to test the air conditioner — it is too expensive to have to deal with if (after five years of sitting) it no longer works. Frankly, if it needs expensive repair I might be inclined to remove it altogether and put in a skylight instead. Our Caravel was a “base” model when it was ordered, having none of the factory options then available, and certainly not air conditioning. Over the years it has gained modern accessories like a TV antenna, air conditioner, patio light, and spare tire, but given the way we intend to use it, we would never miss the TV antenna or AC, and they ruin the vintage lines of the roof.

Now with some of our stuff back in it, the trailer is starting to feel like “ours” again. During its five year absence it was like an old memory. But our house was filled with children yesterday afternoon, so I took the laptop into the Caravel and made it my office, and bonded with the trailer. I like the feel of the new dinette table. The edges have soft radiuses, easy on the forearms when I type. The Marmoleum top is neither cold nor warm, and yields slightly, making it nicer to the touch than hard Formica. The trailer has good light and the foam of the new cushions is just perfect.

I love old magazine ads, and the brochure (pictured above) for the 1968 Caravel is a treasured addition to my collection. I particularly like the fact that Airstream claimed the Caravel had “luxurious accommodations for six.” Six what? Elves? Trust me, with three people inside and both beds set up, it’s plenty tight in there, with no room to stand. Sleeping six would require two people in each “double” bed, plus one in each of two optional bunks. We’d be like snakes in a woodpile. Heaven help you if someone needed to go to the bathroom. That probably explains why I’ve never seen a Caravel with the optional bunk beds.

Today I will head over to “Q” and field-test everything for two days and nights. I have yet to use the shower, or dump the holding tanks, or just be in the trailer in an actual camping situation. You don’t really know how things work in a camper until you really go camping. That’s when you discover where things need to be stored, where a hook is needed, where your hat goes, how long the battery lasts, etc. As always, I’ll blog daily while I’m traveling, with thoughts about the roadtrip, Quartzsite, and life in 17 feet.