Sep 06 2010

New Bedford, MA

The high and rough seas continued on Sunday at Horseneck Beach. Swimming was impossible, as waves crested well over six feet and the winds were fierce. We tried to go for a walk along a short causeway near the campground, but the wind out there was even more ferocious and we eventually turned back. It is lucky that there is little sand on the beach here, or it would be a stinging experience indeed to be near the water. We haven’t seen wind at the beach like this since we were waiting for the ferry to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Still, it has been nice here. The view is still spectacular, the nearby town of Westport Point is beautiful, and we don’t often get to park the Airstream right by the seashore — waves or not. The sound of the wind and waves masks the purr of generators at adjacent sites, and blows their campfire smoke inland and away from us. (I can’t figure out how anyone can keep a fire going in this wind, but a few people have managed it.)

Given that this wasn’t the best beach day, we decided to explore the surrounding area. Inland, the wind is barely noticeable. After a very leisurely morning in the Airstream, we wandered into the village on the assumption that every good beachfront area in Massachusetts has a place that sells fried clams. We were pleasantly rewarded with the discovery of the Handi Hill Creamery, which sells both fried clams and an incredible range of ice cream flavors. That stop and the resulting picnic at the outdoor tables took up a good chunk of our day, and it was well worth it.

A long time ago, I used to lead bicycle tours around Massachusetts, and one of our signature trips was up to the North Shore where we’d stop in at a clam shack and pig out. I assured all tour participants that they could eat a fried lunch, because they were going to cycle 40 miles that day and burn it all off. (This theory worked well except for those who failed to recognize that eating a lot of grease before completing the final 20 miles of a bike ride can be hard on the stomach. You do need to show some moderation.) Puttering up in a car and doing the same thing yesterday gave me some small unease, as I felt I hadn’t “earned” the meal, but I got over it pretty quickly.

Not far from Westport Point is the former “whaling capital of the world,” New Bedford. Although whaling is now regarded as an international crime, New Bedford has not shied away from its history, and in fact hosts a national park site and a very good Whaling Museum in the center of the historic cobblestone/gas lamp district of town.

I can recommend the museum if you’ve got 1-2 hours to explore it. The collection goes far beyond whale bones and harpoons — there’s some great ship models, modern science about whale research, and ancillary collections about life aboard ship and life back at home during the era.

From the museum you can walk a self-guided tour through New Bedford’s working waterfront and the downtown. Eleanor and I were surprised to see how much architecture of the 18th and 19th century has survived in downtown New Bedford. This makes exploring the city an extremely photogenic experience, for those who appreciate urban landscapes and historic buildings.

Sunset seems to be coming very early now. It’s a reminder that we are still fairly far north and fall is coming. From our spot on the beach it’s hard to believe that in three weeks the leaves will be turning and 80-degree days will be just a fond memory. But not for us. If all goes well, we will follow summer all the way down the east coast to Florida.

Solar report: with full sun, the battery was recharged to 99% by 2 p.m. That means we have plenty of excess capacity, so last night we were considerably more generous with laptops and lights. At 8:30 a.m. this morning, the battery was at -28.9 amp-hours again and with full sun in the forecast today we expect the battery to be fully charged this afternoon.

Sep 05 2010

Horseneck Beach State Reservation, MA

The Airstream is rolling again!

Our tour this fall will bring us down the cluttered East Coast, with stops in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida (at least). The full itinerary isn’t yet worked out because we like to leave in flexibility, so I expect a few other stops will pop up as we slide south. The plan calls for us to get to Florida by early October. We’ll hang around there for a few weeks, then start the western leg back to Arizona in November.

Of course, with the Airstream sitting in a driveway under trees for the past three months, we’ve had some prep work to do this week. Mostly it was a matter of having to evict the spiders, who have been busy covering the Airstream in webs, and cleaning the roof. Normally I don’t sweat the dirt on the roof, but in this case we knew we’d be camping without power hookups and so I had to get up on the roof and at least clean the solar panels. Once I saw the condition of things up there, it was obvious everything had to be scrubbed with a brush. I have never seen a roof so incredibly filthy. We had leaf mulch, bird droppings, rotting twigs, some sort of mildew or mold, spider webs, and heaps of leaves. (The discolored water you see coming off the roof contains no soap — that’s just the gunk I’ve scrubbed loose.)

The junk on the roof was blocking the proper drain channels for rainwater, and it made examination of the caulk impossible, in addition to disabling the solar panels. So it’s a good idea to get up there once in a while to clean and inspect, but you do need to be exceptionally careful on a wet Airstream roof. I didn’t use soap because I didn’t want to slip off.

The other pre-departure tasks including washing the entire trailer, vacuuming all the window screens and cleaning the windows, cleaning off the last of the adhesive from our former “Tour of America” sticker, greasing the hitch, adding air to the tires, dusting the window sills (it’s amazing how much dust they gather), cleaning the roof vent screens, and cleaning the interior. After a few weeks in Vermont we always notice that the interior gets a sort of funky wet-dog smell. Laundering all of the soft goods (blankets, sheets, towels, rug) and wiping down all the interior surfaces with orange cleaner eliminated that.

Eleanor spent a few days sorting through Emma’s things, because every time we move, she has grown taller and half her clothes no longer fit. Likewise, she reads about 15 books a month, so those had to be sorted too. 23 pounds of her books were shipped to home base in Arizona, and another 10 pounds or so were given away. It’s not the weight so much as the volume of these books — there’s just no space to store a kid’s library in our 240 square foot home!

Hurricane Earl came up the east coast on Thursday and gave us an unexpected extra day in Vermont. The state of Massachusetts closed all the seaside campgrounds, which included Horseneck Beach State Reservation, our planned destination for Labor Day weekend. The closing was precautionary, and fortunately Earl left no significant damage at Horseneck. But that left us in Vermont on Friday, with good sailing conditions, so Emma got to go ride the trapeze on Uncle Steve’s Hobie Cat again. She’s become (mostly) fearless about this sort of sailing, since they’ve been teaching her the ropes all summer long.

Carolyn took her own Hobie out, and Eleanor and I followed in the chase boat (Boston Whaler) to snap pictures. If Earl hadn’t come up the coast we would have missed this. If the Massachusetts Dept of Conservation hadn’t closed the campgrounds, we would have been camping in the rain and wind instead. So in a lot of ways, it was a good last night in Vermont on Lake Champlain.

Saturday we arrived at Horseneck Beach. It’s one of those exciting east coast campgrounds that runs right alongside the ocean front, with constant wind and (thanks to Earl) high surf. The moment we stopped the car and opened the door, we were buffeted by a fresh breeze with that unmistakable smell of salt and seaweed that always make me think of lobster. It felt great.

The wind is very strong. We won’t be putting out the awning. In fact, our campsite runs parallel to the rocky beach and the Airstream is being hit by the breeze broadside. I put the stabilizers down rather firmly to keep the trailer from rocking too much. We can’t leave anything outside, lest it blow away.

Within minutes of being parked, the side of the Airstream was coated with a fine spray of salt. Even opening a window on the windward side results in salt-laden air blowing in. The waves are about 150 feet away, and we can hear them pounding on the shore all day and all night. I think the last time we heard that wonderful thunderous sound, we were sleeping in a parking lot on St George Island (FL), nearly four years ago.

The beach here is composed entirely of round rocks about 4-8″ in diameter. They roll and clatter into the undertow with every wave with the sound of a thousand crabs all clacking their claws at once. Between our site and the beach is a barrier of saltgrass and wild beach roses, with a narrow path through it. Emma has discovered ripe rose hips growing plentifully.

Our arrival was not completely ideal. The park ranger was off doing patrol when we arrived, so we followed the instructions and parked ourselves in our reserved spot. This was a little tricky due to the narrow pavement areas in the sites, and we needed two leveling blocks on the sea side of the trailer to make it level. With the wind making communication difficult, it took a little more effort than usual, but in about 15 minutes we were set up, unhitched, and ready to settle in. Then I went back to the ranger station to check in, and discovered that we were in the wrong site.

After driving 300 miles, I was a bit tired and it was already five o’clock. But there was nothing to do about except break camp, hitch up again, and push the Airstream backward about fifty feet to the correct site, then repeat the entire performance of setting up again. It was about six by the time we had it all done.

Well, these things happen. I can’t pretend I was happy about it, but I knew that once the job was done we could settle in and do basically nothing for the next two days. We have a few ideas of what we might do today and tomorrow, but it is Labor Day and everyone knows that Americans celebrate Labor by doing nothing laborious. So I don’t plan to do any work this weekend, other than a little blogging. But if I did, could I ask for a better office window view?

Solar power report. There are no hookups in this park, so we are using only solar power. We started yesterday with full batteries, of course, and at 8:00 a.m. this morning our Tri-Metric battery monitor reports -28.3 amp-hours. That’s about average for us for one night, with no furnace use and minimal laptop use. Today we expect full sun all day.

Aug 31 2010

Separation

There are a lot of types of separation, and as I’ve discovered, parting is “sweet sorrow” only sometimes. We are gearing up to depart Vermont, where the Airstream and our daughter have been parked all summer long. That means the usual five-day process of catching up on everything before we head out.

It’s not that re-packing the Airstream is all that hard. In fact, it’s quite easy. What makes the job hard is re-organizing, cleaning, culling, and making decisions. Imagine that every six months you took everything out of your house, decided what to donate or toss, and then put it all back. Don’t forget every scrap of clothing you have, and add in a growing 10-year-old with a wardrobe, and you’ll start to get the picture. We’ve got t-shirts and plastic forks left over from Alumapalooza, dust from Ohio, spider webs from Vermont, and receipts from the NY State Thruway. You can ignore this gradual accumulation of junk in your house because it’s so much bigger, but in 240 square feet any bad habits of housekeeping quickly catch up with you.

Then there’s the detritus of three months of courtesy parking. Emma’s stuff is spread all over an acre of property. The solar panels are covered in tree mulch and bird droppings. There are the unfinished projects to sort out, shopping to do, tires to re-inflate, things that need lubrication and things that need cleaning. And while we are doing this, there are the friends who want “one last visit” before we go, who we sometimes (regretfully) have to say “Sorry” to because we need every spare moment to get all of our projects done.

One project in particular that is vexing me (I’ve never spoken of myself as being vexed before but that’s how it feels) is removal of the old Tour of America decals. Officially the Tour of America ended in October 2008 when we ceased full-time travel, but we left the decals in place (a) because we like them; (b) it looked like a difficult and uncertain job to remove them. Indeed it has been.

I decided to start with the most obviously out-of-date decal, the big purple Tour of America sign on the curbside. There were several questions: How do you get it off? Will it leave behind a shadow from differential sun fading? Will it damage the clearcoat? I did some online research but couldn’t find anyone who had removed decals from an Airstream before, so I took my best shot at it.

It turns out that the vinyl peels up rather slowly and with considerable effort, if you use hair dryer to heat it up as you go. There was no damage to the clearcoat, and no fading or shadowing. But the decal left behind a nice sticky layer of adhesive that resisted most chemical attacks. I had to be careful when experimenting, as some chemicals might also remove the clearcoat. Goo-Gone was anemic, as was mineral spirits. The chemical M.E.K. did a pretty good job but the fumes were amazingly horrible. Goof-Off worked just as well and was less difficult to be around. Even the best treatments took 4-5 passes to completely remove the adhesive with a plastic scraper.

At this point about 80% of the adhesive is removed. I’ve been at it for about an hour or two each day for three days — about as long as I can stand the fumes. Separating adhesive from clearcoated aluminum is a job I can live without. When time comes to remove the other decals, I may take it to a automotive vinyl graphics shop and pay to have professionals with respirators and bunny suits do it. But now that I’ve started this one, I have to finish it before we head out. Otherwise, our trailer side will effectively be a 4×5 foot piece of flypaper.

We don’t plan for the trailer to go naked, however. What will go on the trailer instead? That’s a difficult question to answer. Right now Brad, Eleanor, and I are kicking around various designs and ideas. Here’s one that I really like, but which we won’t be using (mostly because I need to promote magazines, not this blog).

No matter what we ultimately choose, I think you will still be able to easily identify us as we roll by. But it will be a few weeks before the final decision is made. We will have to live with whatever we choose, for quite a while. And I don’t want to have to remove decals again for a long time. It’s one form of separation that has no sweetness associated with it at all.

Aug 25 2010

Becalmed

Good news for those who are only interested in Airstream travels … we will resume our Airstream explorations sometime next week, with a three month voyage down the east coast and then westward back toward Arizona.

I have re-settled in Vermont, joining Eleanor and Emma in the Airstream, currently parked in my parents’ driveway along the shores of Lake Champlain. The Airstream seems to have survived its very wet summer fairly well, with only a dozen or so major spider webs strung along the wheels, hitch, and roof vents. It rarely sits in one place so long. I am sure there will be some maintenance items before we can head out again, but hopefully nothing worse than greasing the hitch and adding air to the tires.

Likewise, the Mercedes has survived. You might think that was a no-brainer, but I was receiving regular reports that made me a little nervous. The car’s parking space is drastically humid, with daily bird overflights that result in frequent acidic attacks on the paint. But Eleanor has tried to clean up the messes promptly, and I will forgive her for letting Emma eat Cheez-Its in the back seat. The car had its 30,000 mile service last week, which shows how much we’ve been using it. It is only 16 months old. We’ll need a new set of tires, and possibly brakes, before we get back to home base in November.

Coming from Arizona, where hot “summer” weather will continue well into October, to Vermont where summer is already winding down, is quite an adjustment. Everyone is grabbing the last moments of beautiful weather and outdoor activity here. Last night a gang of friends showed up to race the Hobie Cats on the lake, but the wind was light and it turned into more of a leisurely sail.

Eleanor and I invited our friends Guy & Katie to come over as well, and we watched the Hobies depart while we had grilled dinner on the deck. Due to their slow speeds, there was plenty of time to eat dinner and hop in the Boston Whaler to intercept them as they came back across the broad section of Lake Champlain (about 3 miles). There wasn’t a lot of white-water action, but it was a good night to enjoy the blue-green view of Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains as the sun set.

In the picture above, you can see Steve and Carolyn puttering along with the distinctive shape of Camel’s Hump in the background. Camel’s Hump is a regular summer climb most years, about 4,000 feet in elevation. There’s some wreckage from a WW II era plane crash near the summit, and spectacular views. I may see if I can recruit someone to do that hike this weekend.

I hustled at work last week so that this week would be relatively easy. This is just past the peak of summer in Vermont, and in some ways it is the very best time of year. The bugs are signing out for the season, the humidity is gone, temperatures are in the 70s most days, thunderstorms are less frequent, the lake is perfect for any activity, and the sunset is still late enough for a quick boat ride after dinner. This is the season of county fairs and chicken suppers. There’s still fresh corn on the cob to be had, the gardens are still producing, and ripe apples are just around the corner.

In late August, the frantic rush-rush of summer is over. Vermonters have done their bike rides, scenic walks, farmer’s markets, historic house tours, swimming, boating, fishing, and dinners out on the patio. Late summer comes with a feeling of satisfaction, if you’ve played it right. Anything after this point is bonus time. You can get becalmed on the lake at sunset, and it doesn’t seem like any big deal to have to paddle the last few hundred yards back to port.

This is probably the last really quiet week we’ll have for a while. The travel plan calls for numerous stops in September and October. We’ll be on the move every few days. I can see half a dozen visits just between Cape Cod and New Jersey, and we’ve got about ten stops planned in Florida during October. This next week will be about getting mentally re-charged and prepared for an extended trip, and it looks like I’ve timed my return perfectly, because it looks like the perfect week to do it.

Aug 21 2010

The birthday card

While paused in Tucson as Temporary Bachelor Man, I recently had a birthday come and go with minimal associated excitement. This was the plan; we’d have a small party when I got back to Vermont with Temporary Bachelorette Woman and her trusty sidekick. So I didn’t think much about my birthday until today, when I received the most incredible hand-made birthday card in the mail.

Our friend Lou W (a sweet lady who, along with her husband Larry have hosted us several times at their home in Ohio) makes cards for every occasion. She has an incredible home office which is stuffed with every sort of rubber stamp, paper, ribbon, glue, lace, stencil, and paper punch that you can imagine. All of this is neatly organized for efficient card-making whenever the occasion should arise. Emma, being a “crafty” sort of kid, likes to go down into the basement office and make things under Lou’s direction.

Lou’s card for my birthday was so special I felt it deserved public recognition, so here it is:

ABOVE: As received. Note the ribbon at the bottom. Pull this, and the top illustration flips backward to reveal …

“Keep on rolling”. Pull again on the ribbon and it becomes …

… a hand drawn illustration of a little trailer parked in the sun. Pull again on the ribbon, and you find …

… encouragement? Recognition? Perhaps both! And the arrow directs you to continue the Road Trip by opening the card at last.

Inside, signatures of Lou & Larry, their daughter Loren and soon-to-be son-in-law Mike, and some surprise bonuses! I had directed our friends Bert & Janie Gildart to Lou & Larry’s home for the finest courtesy parking in Ohio, and they arrived to find “Artist@Large” Michael Depraida courtesy parking as well. You can see their signatures as well. All are wonderful friends we made while traveling in our Airstream.

We’ll see you all soon. I know we’re going to intersect with the Gildarts in late September, in Virginia, and we’ll see Michael at the next Alumapalooza if we don’t run into him earlier while out west this winter.

Finally, on the very back, Lou’s personal stamp and a bit of advice. Lou, you didn’t have to tell me! This one’s a keeper. Thanks to you, and everyone else, for a really special birthday card. Now it feels like my birthday.