Jun 03 2014

Maybe the best Palooza yet

This might have been the best Alumapalooza ever.

Going into it, I was thinking maybe it would be a little quiet because we had a smaller crowd this year (about 120 trailers on the field). But we’d done a ton of work putting together a bigger and better event program than ever before, and that paid off. We added off-site tours, more vendors, more new Airstreams on display, a kettle corn stand, and new seminars to the old favorites, and Mother Nature cooperated by bringing us nearly flawless weather all week. I realized we had a winner when people started coming to me on the second day and saying, “We’re having a great time! Thanks for putting this on.” Usually it takes a couple of days before the compliments flow.

It was also less stressful than other events we’ve done, because we had an awesome crew of people. There has been some change every year, but most of them have been working Alumapalooza for years and they really know their jobs. This year we added two new volunteers (Loren & Mike, on parking) and our jazz diva Laura was summarily promoted to “Trash Wench”. (Her job was to collect the trash in the mornings. Before anyone objects, let me say that she picked her own title.)

There was a nice breeze every day, so we flew the Airstream Life flag for the first time in several years. It was nice to see lots of other flags flapping in the wind all week as well. Felt festive.

The events of the week were so complex that I can’t really do justice to them here. You can download the schedule from the Alumapalooza 5 website if you are interested. Basically we stayed busy from about 8:00 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. every day. Big hits included Open Mic night, the Aluminum Gong Show, Happy Hour, Josh Rogan, Eric Henning’s magic, and most of the seminars.

Early in the week, someone spotted a killdeer nest just about ten feet from the vendor tent. This was staked off immediately and dubbed the “Jackson Center Temporary Killdeer Preserve.” Momma Killdeer sat on four eggs all week, and on Saturday they hatched—which got a big round of applause when we announced it at Happy Hour. That was the first birth we’ve ever had at an event.

The photo above shows only about 1/3 of the field. Since the field was dry, we could spread out and give everyone as much privacy as they wanted. Most clustered close to the main tent.

Airstream always offers some cheap deals on parts during Alumapalooza, but this year they went nuts and filled a service bay with scratched and used items that were mostly taken off other trailers or returned under warranty. The bargains were incredible. We scored a convection microwave, barely used, for $100 (retail about $500), which Eleanor will use to develop a convection microwave cooking seminar for future events, and an 18-foot curbside awning for $150 (retail about $900). Why so cheap? The awning has one tiny hole in it, made by someone with a 5/16″ drill bit. We’ll patch that easily.

I also got a water heater cover for the Caravel for $5, and a bunch of other $5 items. Brett landed a nice pure-sine inverter, unbelievably cheap. (Wish I’d seen that first!) Super Terry filled his trailer with parts and still couldn’t fit everything he bought. The bargains alone would be worth the price of a trip to Jackson Center.

Since I now had an 18-foot tube in my possession that I couldn’t fit in the car, I needed to get it installed right away. Fortunately, Jim Webb, the president of Zip-Dee Awnings, and Greg Blue (a Z-D rep) were on site. They were busy all week with service calls, so they didn’t get to my installation until about 8 p.m. on Friday. The sun set while they were working, so they ended up finishing the job by flashlight with a crowd of onlookers. A few people couldn’t believe that the president of the company would be doing this … but that’s the kind of company Zip-Dee is, and the kind of guys Jim & Greg are. They finally wrapped up at about 10:30 pm, just in time for Jim to drive five hours back to Chicago.

(By the way, guys — I love the new curbside awning.)

It was a long week, but also the time flew by. It ended the way they always do, with lots of people smiling and wishing they didn’t have to go home, a big dinner, a concert, and a slightly sleep-deprived staff. On Sunday morning we watched all the trailers depart, cleaned up the field, and put away our stuff.

That afternoon E&E and I wandered down to the local one-screen cinema, The Elder Theater, to see Maleficent. Airstream Life had made a donation to help the theater switch to digital projection, and this was my first chance to see the plaque the theater had mounted on a seat in thanks. If you go, look for the Airstream Life seat in the center section, about 2/3 down, one seat in from the left aisle. I was pleased to sit there and enjoy the digital picture, knowing that this old gem of a theater was still able to operate thanks to the financial donations of dozens of people.

That night the Terra Port filled up with people who were waiting for service appointments in the following week, so we just stayed parked in the field alone that night. Why move? It was peaceful, and we still had power and water. So while Eleanor and Emma had one last visit with people in the Terra Port, I was able to chill out with a “guy movie” and a Klondike bar all by myself in the green grass, while the sun set beautifully in the west one more time.

And now we are in our usual decompression spot, the driveway of our friends Lou & Larry, near Cleveland. We’ve got one day here, and then we’ll be trundling east on the final legs to Vermont, to start the next adventures. Coming up: motorcycling through Quebec and New Brunswick.

May 26 2014

Pre-Palooza activities

The Airstream is happy. It traveled about 2,000 miles from Tucson to Jackson Center OH without incident. Being a bit rushed, the trip didn’t encompass a lot of great overnight spots, but we did manage to take in two state parks (Twin Bridges in OK, and Onondaga Cave in MO) … and two Cracker Barrels and a Wal-Mart. So overall, it was successful.

We landed in Jackson Center a day earlier than planned, Friday, and most of the key staff also were in early, so pre-event work has been reasonably light. Just the usual stuff: marking & flagging the field, pre-inspection of the water and electric, organizing, etc. In between actual work, the Terra Port has been busy with maintenance and socializing. Most people are socializing and enjoying the spectacularly nice weather. People are trying out Jackson Center’s new restaurant (replacing the Verandah, which closed a while back), or buying baked goods from the Amish couple across the street. E&E and I walked downtown for ice cream one night, and I see Matt & Beth scooting around on their folding bikes, Emma and Kathryn are zooming around doing young teenager things, there’s a lot of chit-chat under the awnings, etc. But Brett and I have also been spending time ticking off items on our accumulated “bug lists,” with the assistance of Super Terry.

Our Airstream’s list included replacing the leaking toilet bowl seal, fixing a couple of latches, cleaning and adjusting the water heater, and inspecting the disc brakes. Nothing too major, but the toilet bowl seal isn’t really an appetizing job and of course we had to work around loss of the bathroom and hot water while those things were being serviced. As always, I learned a few things watching, er, “assisting” Super Terry on those jobs. Doing the water heater in particular was useful because I afterward I was able to finally finalize that section of my Maintenance Guide with first-hand knowledge.

Upon inspection we found the disc brakes to be in perfect condition, and the Michelin LTX tires are also looking good. The tires don’t show much wear compared to last year’s inspection about 10,500 miles ago, but they should probably be replaced later this year just on the basis of age.

Brett’s motorhome needed some new radiator hoses (and because they run all the way to the water heater in the back, there’s a LOT of hose), and a few other tweaks, so he was underneath it for the better part of a day, and then with Super Terry he replaced the main awning fabric too.

There are two things you can be sure of when Airstream maintenance is happening at a rally: (1) There will be a lot of tool-swapping, as people borrow what they need from neighbors; (2) A crowd will gather for any interesting mechanical procedure. At this point we are all used to it, so it’s completely expected and fine when people show up and make themselves at home on a chair to watch you work. At least six people got a good look at my toilet once it was out on the bench for the seal replacement. (It’s amazing what we find interesting.) It’s actually very nice because at any point if you need a tool or supply, someone in the group will get it from their truck for you. Saves trips to the hardware store. But I did think that we are some sort of weird people who want to spend Memorial Day weekend working on our trailers in a parking lot.

Now it’s Monday, Memorial Day, and the pre-Alumapalooza vibe is gelling. As this writing the Terra Port is full with event staff and Airstream service customers, and there are another seven Airstreams with attendees boondocking in the Service Center parking lot. Another 15-20 will show up later today, and we’re going to have a cookout (courtesy of Airstream) on the grass this evening. Tomorrow at 9 a.m., we’ll open the main field for parking, weather permitting.

Right now conditions are excellent. We’ve had temperatures in the low 80s daily, nice light breezes, cool evenings, and hardly even a cloud much less rain. This means the field is dry and ready to hold 100+ Airstreams on Tuesday, even if we do a get some rain during the day tomorrow. This is a far cry from a couple of years ago when it rained for weeks prior to the event and the ground was so wet we had to park trailers on asphalt while we were waiting for the mud to settle, and for days afterward some spots were still flooded.

So our luck is holding. All the signs are in place for a very successful Alumapalooza 5. Check Twitter for @alumaevents or #APZ5 for updates and photos, and also the Alumapalooza Facebook page. We should have regular postings all week there.

May 22 2014

All the same, but different

Every voyage is different. Even though we are once again in the Airstream that has been our second home for six years (and our first home for three years before that), and we are once again traveling to the Airstream factory in Jackson Center OH, there is a mental aspect of each trip that is unique.

I used to think that this was by design, a result of my effort to find new things to see and do along routes we had previously traveled, but during preparation for this trip my adventure-planning stalled out and we were left with nothing but the same old route that we had done before. Neither Eleanor nor I were particularly excited about the 2,000 mile drive that faced us, and we delayed our departure a couple of days. We spent the extra time finalizing things at home and enjoying the last few gorgeous dry warm days in Tucson before the summer heat attacked.

Delaying, of course, put more time pressure on us to get to Ohio, and it seemed we were faced with nothing but a tedious slog along the Interstates, lacking time even for a few small detours on the “blue highways” where America keeps its most interesting diversions.

And that has turned out to be true for the most part, but yet something odd has occurred: the trip is unique. There’s a mental aspect I hadn’t anticipated. We are all a year older than the last time we drove this route (and in Emma’s teenage world a year is a huge difference), we have new ideas and views of our travel, different concerns, changing attitudes. The Airstream is the same, the road is the same, but we are just a little bit different—and that changes the flavor of the trip. The Airstream once again shows us that it is a vehicle in more ways that one.

All this is part of the inner view we each carry; often unspoken, but which colors our attitude toward what we experience and how we interact. Practically speaking, we drove from Tucson to a point just west of Albuquerque on Sunday, a total of 480 miles, and on Monday covered about 525 miles Oklahoma City, and then Tuesday a shorter drive of about 200 miles to a quiet state park in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma.

This puts us 1,200 miles closer to Jackson Center, so with 60% of the traveling done, we can slow down and explore a little. Last night in Twin Bridges State Park was an antidote to endless concrete roadways and truck traffic: peaceful, green, shady, and it smells like summer here. We opened all the windows on the Airstream and let the fans blow the warm summer air around. I took a nap and tried to recover a little. Eleanor and Emma took an exploratory walk, and then Eleanor made dinner (with extra for a future night when we might not have a full hookup), and we ate ice cream and generally got comfortable. No high-concept entertainment here, just a little of the relaxation that you can’t often find at home.

I say “you can’t find at home” because we are conveniently cut off from modern distractions. Our location in the state park is shadowed somewhat from radio waves, so we can’t place calls and Internet access is nearly impossible. My phone will send and receive text messages (very slowly, sometimes taking a few hours to send a single message) but that’s enough to keep in touch with the rest of the Alumapalooza team as they work on final details before the event. Otherwise I’ve got no communications with the outside world, and that’s fine after three days of juggling steering wheel and cell phone while dodging trucks. We will be back in the connected world all too soon anyway.

I know someone will ask, so here’s a report: The Airstream is behaving very well. A couple of things are on our bug list, but nothing substantial. The toilet bowl seal has been slowly leaking for the past few months (causing the water in the bowl to drip into the tank), and so we are going to replace it at Airstream. It’s an unpleasant job and the seals are moderately expensive, so I had put it off until a convenient moment. With Super Terry on site, it should be much quicker and easier than if I had attempted it myself at home.

I also have a replacement bath vent fan to install. The handle broke on that part last year, and I’ve been carrying around the replacement since October but in the carport at home there’s no room to get on the roof for a job like that, so it’s actually easier to do while on the road.

Other than that, we just have a single cabinet latch that broke. I’m going to replace it with a magnetic latch because this particular location has always been a problem. That’s easily done with just a shopping trip to a good hardware store—and the tool kit that we always carry.

What’s remarkable is how many things haven’t gone wrong. I did a rough calculation yesterday during my copious hours of freeway driving and it seems that the Airstream has traveled over 120,000 miles at this point. It’s a well-traveled 9-year-old. Of course, we’ve replaced or upgraded almost everything except the body itself at this point.

Likewise, the Mercedes GL320 is purring along. It is about to pass 90,000 miles on the odometer. When I bought it my plan was to accumulate at least 250,000 miles before getting a replacement tow vehicle and now I’m thinking I might bump that up to 300,000.

Today’s trip plan calls for another short drive, into Missouri. After that, well, we’ll see how the experience unfolds and decide as we go.

May 05 2014

Socrates wasn’t infallible

Introspection is good, in moderation. “The greatest good for a man is to discuss virtue every day,” said Socrates, adding the famous statement that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” These days blogging is the common man’s method of self-examination, revealing quite a bit about the bloggers to the world even if the bloggers themselves aren’t aware of it.

But there’s only so far you should follow the advice of a guy who has been dead for 2,400 years. (Socrates himself made a point of the fact that he didn’t know everything, which he viewed as a slight advantage over people who think they know everything.) So after about ten years of nearly constant blogging (first in the Vintage Thunder blog, then Tour of America, and now Man In The Maze), I finally got to a point where it felt better to be quiet for a while, and just enjoy life. And that is the short explanation for the long absence of this blog.

Now it’s time to get back to it, because the Airstream is about to move and our plans have been laid for the next six months. We have much to do, and many places to go.

First, we need to get up to Ohio for Alumapalooza. This is the fifth year we’ve made this exact trip, and while Alumapalooza is always fun, we’re all getting a bit bored with the drive. We have tried just about every route between Tucson AZ and Jackson Center OH, running anywhere from 1,900 miles to 2,400 miles one way. Last year we were so desperate to have a change of scene that we went all the way east to the Great Smokies before heading north. It was a good trip, but now our options for seeing new landscape will have to bring us up to North Dakota, and that’s just too far out of the way.

So I’ll find some things to see and do along the way that we have missed before. Not sure what yet. We may end up going off on weird little side trips, like our quest for “Forbidden Amish Donuts” a couple of years ago. I’m open to suggestions. (No giant balls of twine, please.)

After that, we will set up the Airstream in Vermont, and then I’ve got a two-week “adventure motorcycling” trip scheduled in June. Three guys on BMW F650 bikes (3 of the 4 members of the former Black Flies gang) will wander up into Quebec, around the Gaspé Peninsula, through New Brunswick and northern Maine, basically seeing what there is to see. I hope to spot a few puffins and get some nice photos of the scenery, but those are optional. My only real desires are to stay dry (it’s rainy up there) and avoid incidents. With luck, my cell phone won’t work most of the time.

Late June gets really interesting. Airstream is lending me a new Interstate motorhome for a couple of weeks. This is a real privilege, because (a) the thing costs $140,000; (b) it’s super-cool. My plan is to take it from Los Angeles up the coast to the SF Bay area, then back south through the desert, then via Palm Springs to I-8 and back to Tucson. During the trip I want to meet as many Airstream Interstate owners as possible, so if you have one please let me know if you can cross paths between June 28 and July 7.

In July I’ll pay the price for all this fun by parking my butt in Tucson and working like a dog at the computer, and in August we’ll haul the Airstream back west—and right now I have no clue what route we’ll take for that.

In early September, Brett & I will be running Alumafandango in Canyonville OR. That was great fun last year and I expect it will be even better this year. We’ll have all-new seminars, more off-site tours, bicycling, all-new entertainment, and of course an Airstream display indoors. Since we moved this event to September instead of August, the weather should be even better, too! I’m told that early September is a spectacular time to be in southern Oregon.

And finally, in October we’ve got another trip on the drawing board, which (if it comes off) I’ll talk about later.

All of this moving around comes at a price, and I don’t mean dollars. There’s a lot of prep. We’ve been getting ready for months, arranging dates and flights, twiddling with the Airstream, scheduling appointments months in advance, collecting destination information, cleaning, re-stocking, upgrading, etc. The motorcycle trip, for example, kept me engaged for a couple of weeks just figuring out what gear I would need and how to pack it all. But really, this is good. During the off season, travel planning is a great way to build anticipation and pass the time on dark winter nights. When I think of it that way, it doesn’t seem like a “price” at all.

In the Airstream, Eleanor has made a special effort this year to pull out a lot of stuff that had been accumulating, and culling down to the things she really needs. So I’ve done the same, and it’s amazing how many things I don’t need anymore. I would say that the Airstream is going to be a few hundred pounds lighter, but it looks like all the ballast we’ve ditched is going to be made up with new stuff. Partially this is because our interests and situations have changed. The Airstream is no longer young, and so I’m carrying a few more tools and spare parts than I used to. We’re eating differently than we did just a few years ago. Emma is a teenager, and I probably don’t have to tell you what a massive change that has been. We’re no longer carrying snorkel gear—instead Eleanor packs equipment for cooking demos in some of that space. It’s all good because it’s a reminder that the Airstream reflects who we are, rather than defining us. That’s why they’re shiny.

I had lots of plans for upgrades to the Airstream but in keeping with the decision to pause blogging, I decided not to take on any huge projects in March or April (when the weather here is usually ideal for outdoor work). Instead, I took care of a few small things and otherwise left the Airstream alone. No worries, it’s ready to go, thanks to all the updates and repairs I made last year (backup camera, new storage unit, 4G mobile Internet update, flooring and plumbing, window gears). The only significant task this year was to finally get rid of the factory-installed Parallax Magnatek 7355 power converter, which I’ve never liked because of its lame charging capabilities, and install a Progressive Dynamics Intellipower 9260 in its place.

This was a a little out of my comfort zone but worked out well. High voltage isn’t my thing, so I Googled a bunch of reports from other people who had made similar conversions, and eventually realized that there’s no single “best” way to do it, and that the job isn’t really that hard either. Over-simplified, it came down to disconnecting four wires (two AC wires and two DC wires) and connecting five (I added a ground wire on the AC side). One trip to the hardware store for an outlet box and some wire, and the job was done in about two hours.

The only way you can visually detect the change is by the little “Charge Wizard” stuck to the wall (this gizmo allows you to overrride the automatic function of the charger), but the Intellipower documentation (and my voltmeter) tell me that we should now have far superior charging. That means the batteries should recharge faster, be automatically “equalized” (essential for their long-term health) and I no longer have to worry as much about overcharging while in long term storage.

The real joy of this, if I’m totally honest, is that I did it and nothing blew up.

Well, perhaps that’s the joy of everything we try outside of our comfort zones. I think I would be OK with an epitaph that read something like, “He did many things … and nothing blew up.”

In fact, that’s pretty much the goal for the next six months. I’ll keep you posted.

Mar 11 2014

Taking stock

I remember back in our full-timing days that we used to tell people we had chosen lifestyle over money. In other words, our apparently footloose life was a compromise balanced against career advancement, possessions, community, and the sense of security that a stationary house provides. But this was just a convenient explanation for people who couldn’t understand why we’d sell our house and most of our stuff to go “out on the road.”

In reality, we didn’t give up much at all. I was able to grow Airstream Life slowly while we were traveling, and we had all the possessions we needed (and gained a new understanding of what’s really important), we discovered an entirely new traveling community, and we felt just as as secure in our Airstream as in any home we’ve ever owned. Few people who hadn’t tried the lifestyle would believe that.

However, there was one painful truth. When the business got to a certain point, it became less convenient for me to be traveling around full-time, and I found much greater productivity when I was able to stay home and sit at a desk with reliable high-speed Internet. I’m not saying that I couldn’t continue to travel, but once placed at home, things sort of blossomed, work-wise.

Now, five and a half years after we stopped full-timing, I find that I’ve managed to fill in all those hours that I formerly spent towing the Airstream and exploring national parks, and suddenly the work has taken over. It all came to a head on this trip, as I was trying to tow the Airstream east from Tucson to Sarasota, then run a week-long event, and then tow back to Tucson. There just wasn’t enough time in each day to take care of everything and it was getting frustrating to try.

So after Alumaflamingo, we stopped to take stock of everything. We dropped out of sight for a days, Internet- and phone-free, and spent some time in the driveway of our friends Bill & Wendimere. Think of it as a sort of personal retreat. Time to contemplate toes and get a fresh perspective.

The outcome is that, given all considerations, we should lean back a little toward lifestyle over money. For one thing, that means bringing on more staff to do things that I (and Brett) have been doing for both Airstream Life and R&B Events. It also means looking at everything else we do as a business and as a family, to decide what needs to be pared down so that we can start traveling with less pressure and more spontaneity.

These choices aren’t easy. It’s very much like moving out of a large house and into an Airstream: you have to be decisive and committed to the path or you’ll fail. In the case of downsizing one’s possessions (which we’ve done once before), success is indicated by the amount of “stuff” you stick in storage. If you put a lot of stuff in storage, you haven’t really pared down, you’ve just postponed the decision till later. It’s the same with lifestyle choices. If I offload work but continue to micromanage, I’ll be reminded of the folly of that strategy next year when a lengthy trip is interrupted and made stressful by numerous problems from the office.

It will all work out in the long run, but I also know that none of this can take effect soon enough to help me on the drive home. It’s over 2,000 miles back to home and my “to do” list is embarrassingly lengthy. My goal is to be closer to the footloose mode of travel by next year, albeit perhaps a little bit poorer financially. It’s worth it.

For the return run to Tucson there wasn’t much to do but to put on a smile and drive like a lunatic. The longer we take to get home, the more work piles up. The quicker I get home, the sooner I can start training people to do jobs that lighten my load. So while we aren’t going to get home quite as fast as we left for “Aluma-Zooma” we are going to be back no later than March 16.

Let’s see … what have we done so far? Wednesday March 5, we left the driveway near Kissimmee and headed toward the panhandle. After an uninteresting roadside stop overnight, we pulled into Henderson Beach State Park in Destin, FL and had a couple of days at the beach. We watched the seabirds and walked the white sandy beach. This visit set a pace that I liked: two days of zoom, two days of chill.

So we headed to Austin, TX next. Despite the fact that South by Southwest is going this week, we managed to snag two nights at Pecan Grove (near the epicenter of SXSW). I had a meeting downtown on Sunday night, which turned out to be an adventure in itself thanks to the colorful array of humanity attending SXSW, and another meeting on Monday at a barbecue place. To me, that’s a double-dip because Texas barbecue is pretty good stuff.

We logged a lot more miles on this trip than I had anticipated, so I also spent half of Monday at the local Benz dealership getting routine service done. Good thing the dealers all have fast wifi—it was just as productive a morning as I would have gotten at home, with the added benefit of free pastries and a comfy couch. The GL320, by the way, has 87,000 miles on it now.

Today, Tuesday, we started the trek across west Texas. There isn’t much to be said for the run along I-10 after Fredericksburg, so we made a point of stopping for lunch in Fredericksburg at one of the German restaurants, as a sort of last hurrah before plunging into the nothingness. Fredericksburg was a mob scene, as all the state parks are, because this week is also Spring Break in Texas. We had plans to hit a bunch of state parks on the way home, but that plan got quashed when we tried to camp at South Lllano River tonight and were told “all full”. Ah well, sometimes the footloose life isn’t easy. May we live in interesting times.