Man In The Maze

by Rich Luhr, Editor of Airstream Life magazine

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The Silence of the Blog

I feel a certain sense of responsibility to post at least weekly when we aren’t traveling in the Airstream, and there’s a sort of editorial guilt that comes up when I realize I haven’t written anything in longer than that.  I hate the epidemic of bloggers all over the Internet who post a few entries saying things like, “I know I have posted in a while but I’ve been busy.  I’ll get up to date this week, so check back soon!”  And of course they never write again…

But hey, if I’m busy, that’s when the posting really happens.  It’s when things get routine or even dull that causes me to  lose my inspiration.

Such has been the case lately.  This has been a quiet season for TBM, something I regret.  The three weeks of bachelorhood have flown by but except for my archaeology tour all the days seem about the same.  I’ve gotten work things done.  The Fall magazine is now well into layout, Brett & I are working on plans for three different events next year (Alumapalooza, Modernism Week, and another event to be named), and various other projects are rolling along nicely, so I can hardly complain.  Still, work is not enough to round out a life, and that is where I’ve fallen down on the job as TBM.

An unexpected barrier this year has been the wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico.  The entire Coronado National Forest has been closed since June 9 due to exceptionally dry conditions.  That means no access to any of the sky islands in Arizona, including the Santa Catalinas (visible right out my back window), the Huachucas (near Sierra Vista), the Sahuaritas (location of last year’s hike up Mt Wrightson with Brett), and the Chiricahuas in southeastern Arizona.

Well, that totally blew a lot of my plans out.  Climbing these mountains is the only way to escape the heat of the desert floor.  I was planning to go hiking, tent camping, exploring, and sightseeing up in most of those mountain ranges this June, but the closure order is absolute: no travel at all, not even stopping at the roadside.  Fines up to $5000.  So I’ve been stuck here and we’ve had a spectacularly warm June, with several days above 110 degrees.  It’s not great weather for much of any outdoor activity.

Paradoxically, a lot of Arizonans don’t use their swimming pools this time of year. Reason?  The water is too hot.  So the preferred form of recreation this summer seems to be going shopping, especially to malls where you can walk around in air conditioning.

I do like the relative quiet of summer.  There’s always a noticeable drop in population when the snowbirds leave in March or April and then again when some of the students leave the University.  It’s a great time to get things done, because you rarely have to wait in line or get slowed by traffic.  On the other hand, there’s not much going on sometimes.  Outdoor fiestas, a great and common feature of Tucson in the winter, are virtually absent.  Who wants to listen to music, dance, eat, and shop crafts when it’s a blazing 108 degrees?

Even the Fourth of July is sort of a muted event. Most of the city appeared to be in hibernation, with hardly any cars on the major roads, and clerks drowsing in the quiet of empty stores. The traditional backyard barbecue with fireworks and s’mores and mosquitoes that we’ve come to expect up in the north is much less appealing here.  I didn’t smell a single grill on Monday.

Well, things are about to change with the arrival of TSP (Temporary Single Parent, aka Eleanor) tomorrow.  She’s flying into Phoenix and so begins our Second Annual Three-Week Childless Couple Event.  I plan to make the most of it.  You long-time readers know that we love to travel with Emma and have done so extensively for about eight years.  But for these three weeks, we get to do the things that adults like, especially things that would bore or gross out a child.  In fact, we’ll probably focus exclusively on things that we couldn’t or wouldn’t do with Emma.  I don’t know if that includes bungee jumping, eating caviar on toast, betting it all on red in Las Vegas, cooking in the nude, or just cruising aimlessly through the southwest, but we’ll certainly consider all those possibilities.

Sadly, if we do some of those things, I probably won’t blog them.  There does have to be a certain amount of discretion here.  I’ll post the PG-13 version, so you’ll hear about the milkshakes and the street hikes.  I can assure you that there will be at least one or two roadtrips, too.  You’ll just have to use your imagination for the rest.

TBM returns!

After a pleasant few days in Vermont, I hopped a plane and headed back to Tucson for some summer heat.  It was cool and rainy in Vermont most of the time, so cool that we had to run the furnace in the trailer during the day sometimes, and I realized that once again I had not packed enough warm clothes to survive a Vermont June. I had to borrow a sweat jacket from my mother just to survive the evenings.

The Airstream is parked in its summer holding pen, beneath the cedar trees on the gravel driveway next to the garage.  It will rest there for a couple of months before I fly back up and collect it, along with the members of my immediate family who are spending the summer in Vermont.  (You know who they are.)  I am hoping that the bits of white filiform corrosion that started along the edges and trim on the Airstream a few years ago won’t greatly accelerate in the damp environment up there.  Each year the tiny white spider-webs of corrosion seem to spread another 1/8″ of an inch or so.  Once returned to dry conditions, it stops spreading but the damage is irreversible.  Parking by the oceanside really kicks it into high gear too, but I’m not prepared to give up camping by the beach for anything.

I flew back to Arizona, which means I once again am stuck without a tow vehicle.  The Caravel, you might recall, was left in Texas a couple of months ago, after I attended the LBJ Grasslands Vintage Rally in Decatur.  Fellow Airstreamer Paul Mayeux has been holding it at his shop ever since.  He did a few repairs and tweaks for me in the meantime.  Now I’ve got to figure out how to get it back, because I’d like to use it sometime this summer, which means I’m going to have to find a tow vehicle.  All I have is a Honda Fit, which (despite being a very useful and versatile car) can only move itself.

But first, the urgent stuff.  Temporary Bachelor Man (TBM) is BACK!  Armed with his cunning, a credit card, and a freezer full of food left by Temporary Bachelorette Woman (TBW), he will somehow navigate urban Tucson in the blazing heat of summer and survive to tell the tale.  And you’ll be the witnesses.

First mission: re-boot the house.  Although preparing a house in Tucson for vacation is not very difficult, there were still a number of things to get back in shape once I arrived.  Light the water heater, turn the air conditioning on (it was 92 in the house and took seven hours to cool down thanks to massive thermal mass in the adobe blocks), sweep up the dead bugs (few), add water to all the dried-up drains, check on the plants, plug in the essential bachelor electronics, check the car tires, wash the dust off the car, and go to fetch the nutritional food pyramid of TBM (frozen desserts are at the top).

OK, that’s all done.  Now to fill the long quiet days of a man left to his own devices.  Without a definite plan of things to do outside the house, there’s too much risk that I’ll spend all day inside working, and that’s the kind of routine that turns TBM into Temporarily Psycho Man.  There are several good events calendars for Tucson online, plus favorite haunts like The Loft Cinema, Mt Lemmon, and Saguaro National Park that all have regular events.  (Mt Lemmon seems to be off-limits at the moment due to the danger of wildfires, but with the start of monsoon season approximately July 4, that ban should be lifted.  There are no fires up there and no smoke of any of the Arizona fires can be seen from Tucson at this point.)  Browsing the events calendars gives me a few ideas of TBM-worthy events to visit and possibly photograph.  Events featuring food usually rise to the top of the list.

I have three weeks in my present guise, and then TBW arrives and we change identities again, this time into the “Kid — What Kid?” couple.  We did this last year and it was amazing.  For three weeks in July we will be utterly childless, while Emma is engaged in summer camps and grandparent-spoiling up in Vermont.  We’ll go roam around Arizona with a very loose plan, and if I’m able to get it worked out, we’ll even have the Caravel to do some of it in.  So really I’ll be spending a fair bit of my TBM time planning for the next phase, but that’s OK.  I see adventure ahead, and that’s what really makes it work for me.  Let the first phase of summer begin!

 

 

What my stomach knows

It might have been the odd dinner we had last night that had me up this morning at 4 a.m., pacing the house in the predawn darkness. Eleanor was inspired by a few items she found at the grocery, and she was having a green vegetable panic, so dinner was a very delicious stir-fry with side dishes of roasted green beans, seaweed salad, and edamame, with spears of pineapple and leftover birthday cake for dessert.  A strange combination, but all things we love and so we all ate too much of it and went to bed feeling like we might have made a big mistake.

Certainly that’s how it felt at 4 a.m., when I reached the climax of a strange dream (I was being arrested at a checkpoint for a crime I did not commit, and telling the cops in the interrogation room, “If you hadn’t let the media get into a frenzy about capturing me, and you had simply called me, I would have come in to talk to you without all this drama,”) — and I awoke rather suddenly with a belly that felt full of clay.  I had the distinct message from my gastrointestinal tract that something wicked this way comes, and that I would be in for a very long and unpleasant day.  This is how I came to find myself pacing the house in the dark and making that prayer common to death-row inmates and those who have been food-poisoned, to be struck down cleanly and not made to suffer too long.

But in fact it was only a minor episode and within a few minutes I was able to get back in bed — just before the eastern sunrise would begin to flood our bedroom, at this time of year —  and begin a completely different and yet equally bizarre dream. So perhaps the cause of my unease is not the combination of Japanes and Hawaiian cuisine followed by extensive butter-cream frosting, but rather that I’ve finally gotten what I have been wishing for: lots of complications to upset my otherwise very mundane suburban life.

You see, this winter in Tucson was a sort of experiment.  I have mentioned recently that this is the longest stay we’ve had anywhere since early 2003.  We came back to Arizona last October planning to mostly stay put and taste the unfamiliar flavor of suburban life for at least five months. I thought this would be an interesting novelty, but in fact there’s only so much of the routine that I can stand, and even with the diversions available in a city this size, life outside the Airstream has become extraordinarily dull.

I confessed this to Eleanor last week — not that it was a huge revelation for her — and she added the fact that Emma has also been wishing to get back on the road, and jealous of the two trips I’ve taken without her (Palm Springs, and my recent Texas adventure).  Eleanor can operate under almost any circumstances, so she is not as cabin-fevered as the rest of us, but certainly would like to see more, do more, live more as the old Airstream slogan goes.

The complications I allude to are several. First, our plans are set for summer with a ridiculously complex program of flying and driving back-and-forth across the country, with stops all over the place and ambitious destinations in mind.  We will be everywhere, starting with our departure from Arizona about May 19, through our return sometime in September or October.  No simple linear plan for us — we have planned zig-zag destinations in something like 14 states and two or three countries.  It will be planes, trains, and automobiles all summer, or more accurately in our case, Airstreams, tents, houses and hotels.  Sometimes all three of us will be together, sometimes just Eleanor and I, and for a large part of the summer we will find ourselves in different places & operating independently.   It all seemed to make sense when we planned it.

The second complication is that I have been looking for an interesting project to focus on while I’m alone, and I’ve found several.  Each could easily consume the entire summer, so logically I should have picked just one.  But somehow I’ve managed to obligate myself to two highly demanding tasks, with little chance of escape or parole, plus the aforementioned ambitious travel plan, plus numerous smaller projects.  And I haven’t yet found enough editorial staff to completely relieve me of the Airstream Life magazine Editor’s job, so I still have that little task to complete as well.

Ah, but it’s all good, as my friend Adam will say.  I’m no longer bored with suburban life. Now I’m slightly terrorized by the prospect of going out in the Airstream for a month and trying to get all things done on a slowish cellular Internet connection while driving 2,000 miles to Alumapalooza, and then to Toronto, and then Vermont for a week, and then all the way back to Texas where I’ll pick up the Caravel, and proceed back to home base — and then to California.

Later in the summer, I’ll have to do the round trip to Vermont again.  I have no one to blame for this craziness but myself.  It’s my curse; I’d rather be dashing madly across the country than idling.  At least, as I go I will have the chance to look up dear friends all over the country, all of whom inspire me.  And when the idling moments happen, I will relish them.  They will be few and precious.  That’s the way I like them.

This is possibly the key to why we did so well in three years of full-time travel.  It’s much nicer to appreciate the time off when you’ve been busy and stimulated by changing scenery. This summer is another experiment in the making, to see if we can find the magic formula of work and play that makes it all balance in our minds … and in my stomach.

Lessons learned at the County Fair

Being former Vermonters, we are inclined to believe in perennial traditions such as late winter harvesting of maple sap, April snowfall, and the fall county fair.  Where in more urbane settings the county fair might be considered a hokey and archaic gathering of yokels and hooligans, Vermonters know that the county fair is one of those places where you can count on meeting your friends and seeing their children proudly displaying the heifers they raised from calves.  Rather than being an opportunity to eat fried Twinkies and shop for hot tubs, the Vermont county fair is an occasion for adults to exchange sociable greetings between the display of New Holland tractors and the 4-H tent.

For kids, the attractions are more basic.  Sugary sweets (cotton candy, funnel cakes, flavored ice) and rides that spin your head off are the reason to go.  We adults pretend to tolerate this because we want our children to grow up to appreciate the finer aspects of the county fair later, but in reality we still wish to recapture the simple thrill of the midway and its colored lights, barkers, and rigged games as remember them from our own childhoods.  By holding the hand of an excited child tugging our way to the Tilt-A-Whirl, we can at least touch the memory briefly.

So once in a while, we take Emma to the county fair.  Here in Arizona, the season is upside down in an attempt to beat the heat, with the Pima County Fair happening in April rather than the traditional northern schedule of August or early September.  This disconcerts us a bit, because we associate the fair with the coming of pick-your-own apple season, and the quickening of chill in the evenings.  The ground should be damp from the last of the summer thunderstorms, and hearts should be bittersweet with the knowledge that the preponderance of summer is gone but a last thrill awaits.

Dusty air and a sense of intense sun are the hallmarks of an Arizona county fair; after all, the heat of summer is just around the corner. In a month we will hit 100 degrees for the first time and, as they say locally, the ice will melt in the Santa Cruz River.  (That is definitely a tongue-in-cheek statement, since the Santa Cruz bears no surface water for much of its length and ice is only found in drinks around here.)  So here the County Fair represents the impending turn of seasons, as snowbirds flee and Arizonans call for their annual air conditioning checkups.

pima-cty-fair-1.jpg

County fairs come in all sizes and persuasions, from the tiny Stalwart County Fair (Michigan) that features agricultural exhibits and not much else, to the extra-large events in major urban areas that are primarily a mix of rock concert venue and carnival.  A nearly-universal attraction of modern fairs, however, are the rides: slides, coasters/flumes, spinners, and drops are the basic tools of the amusement park ride developer, and once in a while you can mix up a few elements to come up with something like the “Disk-O” (above).  There is little that can be called new, but then love is nothing new and yet people still practice it.

In the section of the park that is oriented to big kids and childish adults, the rides are almost always the same as I remember from my childhood but with louder music and stranger airbrushed graphics.  The spinning “Himalayan” that Emma loves is called the “Rave” here, and it features a giant King Neptune as disk jockey wearing sunglasses and an audio headset.  On a nearby ride I see airbrush art of clowns bearing machine guns. Nothing makes sense but it all somehow fits in an absurd, Alice-In-Wonderland sort of way.

pima-cty-fair-2.jpgThe aluminum handrails of the “Moscow Circus” are sticky with thousands of hands that have recently been handling greasy corn dogs, gooey nachos slathered in cheese, pizza slices, turkey legs, funnel cakes, and deep-fried Snickers bars.  I think about handwashing or applying Purell, Emma thinks, “Let’s go again!” — and the adult part of me fades away, the child wins out, and we go again, and then find another ride until the sun has long been behind us and the lights of the fair have come on to create a new world that bears exploring yet again. You can’t compete with that sort of magic, and pretending it isn’t there is a very “adult” thing to do, which in kid-speak means stupid.  Just let it wash over you, because escapism is something most of us don’t practice often enough.

I think the best aspect of the county fair is its transience.  It happens only a few days each year, and then it slinks away on trucks to find a home elsewhere.  You have to participate when it is ready, like eating a chocolate chip cookie hot out of the oven.  Wait a little while and the little chips aren’t melted anymore.  Wait a few days, and they’re gone.  This small window of opportunity forces you to rise up out whatever doldrum you may be feeling and taste the experience at its very peak, which is a good lesson for all of us.  Life doesn’t wait, any more than the county fair does.

Living vicariously

 I’m starting to appreciate the feelings of people who have read my blogs for years, living vicariously through us and thinking about the next time they will get to break away for a road trip — because now I’m one of those people. Except for our trip at New Year’s to Anza-Borrego, we haven’t moved the Airstream since October.

It’s not for lack of ideas.  This was a planned pause, specifically so we could take care of things that could best be done while we were parked, but it is mostly behind us now.  All of the routine medical exams are done, Emma’s orthodontics are on auto-pilot, Modernism Week 2011 is done, the Newbies book is done, Alumapalooza is about 90% set, and I can always work on the magazine from the road.  So at this point we are under very little obligation to stay put in Tucson.

It is springtime here, which means lots of days in the 70s and 80s, and believe it or not, plenty of pollen.  I notice it somewhat, but Eleanor is virtually incapacitated, which is a drag anytime but especially tragic in the stunningly beautiful weather we get this time of year. We can’t go hiking up in the mountains to take in the spectacular views and desert blooms. Naturally, the idea has struck us to escape to some part of the country where pollen is less of an issue, and that has led to temptation of the sort that causes us to spend hours browsing maps and weather reports, and reading blogs of fellow travelers who are currently exploring.

All kinds of places are suddenly appealing to me.  It was about this time three years ago that we went to Bahia Kino in Sonora, MX and lazed around on the beach for four days.  If things were a little quieter in Sonora right now I’d be inclined to revisit that trip, just for the chance to stroll a quiet sandy beach and listen to the waves at night.  Or perhaps we could dash off to the foggy Redwood National Park in northern California, where the humpback whales are passing by in their annual migration.

But really, we probably will stay put, with the exception of a quickie weekend here or there.  It is not as interesting as traveling but I feel like we are earning credit somehow.  There’s something to be said for maintaining continuity at least.  This is the longest period we’ve been out of the Airstream since 2004, and I suppose it indicates that we are gradually learning how to be “normal” people.  So far I’m not impressed with the perks of normalcy, but nonetheless we will stay and get our work done, save our pennies, and plan & dream.  When we do finally get back on the road, it will feel like we’ve earned it.

Once we do venture out, the trick will be making the planned trip — a long Interstate slog on roads we’ve seen several times before — into something more than just a 1,900 mile death march. Our primary purpose in May will be to get to Ohio for Alumapalooza 2011.  That’s something we can do in four days if we press hard, seven days if we travel half-days, and two weeks if we do it in our classic “stop and smell the roses” style.  I was initially not feeling very good about being on the road for a long period of time because I was concerned about work I needed to do, but that’s crazy.  Since when is work the most important thing?  I can clear the decks before we go and deal with the little things that pop up as needed, and maybe even take a few days off.  Let’s make it a two week trip and really enjoy it.  I might even use the “v-word” (vacation) but not too loudly because this is supposed to be a business trip.

Speaking of which, I’ve been having some conversations with Marty Shenkman, a tax lawyer who is also behind RV4theCause.org.  Marty uses his Airstream as a business tool, as I do, and both of us have some concerns about the correct way to deduct, document, and depreciate our travel trailers. We’re having a rather spirited debate, since he does it one way and I do it another way, and Marty’s CPA has joined in with his own thoughts on the subject.  The key, of course, is finding a way to bulletproof ourselves against audit challenges, since an Airstream can be viewed both as a home and a business vehicle, and each can be handled differently from a tax standpoint.

The outcome of this has been that Marty will be researching the subject further and presenting at Alumapalooza.  His topic is going to be something like, “Making Your Airstream A Deductible Business Asset,” which I bet will appeal to all the folks who would like to work from the road.  You can bet that I’ll be in the front row to hear what he has to say (and heckle him if needed).

But I’m not mentioning this to push Alumapalooza.  We’re basically sold out — just five spaces left as of today — and as far as I’m concerned, 195 trailers is plenty!  My only wish at this point is that we don’t have the usual Jackson Center summer weather pattern, which includes chilly fog, rain, sun, intense heat, humidity, thunderstorms, and a chance of tornadoes all in the same day.  Given the dramatic mood swings of the local weather, I suppose I should be impressed that 380 people are going to join us in that field next to the manufacturing plant.  Brave souls, every one.

So we are in the same boat as all the frozen northerners now.  We’re at home, waiting for the moment when we can hitch up and head out, and in the meantime we are dreaming of what’s to come. For those of you in the north, hang in there–spring is coming.  For those of you who are on the road right now, take a picture and update your blog for me.