Man In The Maze

by Rich Luhr, Editor of Airstream Life magazine

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Dinner in the dark

Although we are in the desert southwest and have a mild winter that allows camping, it’s still winter.  That means the nice low-70s sunny day quickly becomes a frigid black night after the sun falls, and if you are camping with a mountain range to the west, the sun stops warming you around 4 p.m.  The effect can be startling to people who aren’t used to the climate.  It’s typical for the temperature to fall 30 degrees in three or four hours because the dry air doesn’t hold warmth and we have no large bodies of water nearby to moderate the swing.

But the desert offers some intangibles that make it worth a little chilliness.  The winter days can be startlingly clear, with fantastic views through clear blue sky for a hundred miles.  Daytime hiking is superb, and there’s always lots of room to find your own campsite.

The past few years we have spent New Year’s Eve in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, about 70 miles south of Palm Springs.  We like it for the peacefulness (we don’t go to have a blowout party). Every New Year’s Eve the primary sound we hear is coyotes howling, and occasionally a breeze blowing through the long fronds of the palm trees.

The early sunset means that dinner is always in the dark.  Typically it’s in the 40s as I’m outside grilling something on the Weber, wearing a ski hat and gloves.  It reminds me of days in Vermont when we’d grill in the winter, except in the desert I don’t have to spend the first 30 minutes shoveling snow out of the way. (Although last year we had a brief moment of sleet.)

Last year we were joined by Alex & Charon, who travel with a substantial collection of cast iron cookware.  Alex gave me my first instruction on Dutch Oven cooking, a subject I’ve been interested in since we ran an article on the subject in the Fall 2010 issue of Airstream Life.  Alex piled some hot charcoal atop and beneath his Dutch Oven and baked us a nice dessert.

The combination of glowing charcoal, and a nearby campfire with a roast on an iron spike, reminded me of reading about the exploration by Lewis & Clark.  They cooked in much the same way, over a century ago as they walked and canoed across the new American wilderness.  It transformed the cold dark night into a great camping experience, full of delicious scents and great karmic rewards.

So it was with pleasure that I received a late Christmas gift: a #10, Lodge four-quart Dutch Oven, a gift from my mother.  It comes with a booklet entitled, “Dutch Oven Cooking 101,” to get you started.  I’ve been studying it and planning out a few basic recipes.  Today I am going to get some charcoal and some welder’s gloves, and piece together a complete set of tools and ingredients so that I can try some Dutch Oven cooking of my own next week.  What better time and place to learn this new skill, than out in the desert at night, with no distractions and plenty of time?

Of course, there’s a small fear of committing some heinous Dutch Oven error and producing a charred or inedible dish.  I’m not generally known as a cook, although I do a lot of grilling.  For this reason the Weber Baby Q will also come with us.  It’s my safety net.  I’ll just stick to “optional” items with the DO, so if my experiments turn into charcoal briquettes themselves, nobody will starve.

Tomorrow we are going to seriously start prepping for the trip.  Already we’ve been buying groceries and making lists of things to bring.  The Airstream itself is kept mechanically ready to go at all times (empty holding tanks, cold refrigerator, cleaned, fresh bedding, etc.), so our efforts will be focused on packing our personal stuff. Since we only anticipate being out for 10 days or so, it should be a straightforward job compared to the usual challenge of packing for several months.

We’re not just staying in the desert this time.  Our route will take us all the way west to the Pacific Ocean.  Depending on circumstances, we may make a second stop in Anza-Borrego on the way home, or make a longer trip out of it up the Pacific Coast Highway in which case we’ll be out a little longer.  Friends have popped up all along our route, which is always superb.  We’ll see Bert & Janie, Leigh & Brian, John & Helena, David & Ariadna — Airstreamers all — and perhaps a few other people.  So it’s shaping up to be a great trip.  We’ll hit the road on Saturday and I’ll blog regularly as we travel.

OK, that’s all the musing. One random note: We still have a few spots available at Modernism Week 2012 (Vintage Trailer Show), Feb 25-26.  The Mod Week people have sweetened the deal for trailer owners.  Now for your $95 entry fee you get one free night of hotel (a $100 value right there), two receptions, a chance to win one of three Airstream Life awards, an electrical hookup if you want to stay in your trailer, and a pump-out at the end of the event.  It’s a great way to meet a lot of really cool people, and we always have a wonderful time. All you need to participate is a very nice vintage trailer of any make.  It’s a great reason to visit Palm Springs and check out some of Modernism Week.  If that sounds like fun to you (and it really is), ping info@alumapalooza.com for an application form & details.

 

Holidays in the Airstream

It’s a few days before Christmas, but instead of sugar plums in my dreams, I am looking forward to our next Airstream trip.   Don’t get me wrong—this holiday week has already been great, and we’re looking forward to a nice quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  Emma and Eleanor are decorating the tree as I write, and some fabulous holiday meals are pending.  Seasonal tunes are playing in the background, and tonight we’ll light a fire in the fireplace.  It’s a great time.  We even have a 10% chance of snow tomorrow, which is pretty awesome for Tucson.

But the big highlight of this time of year has lately been our annual trip around New Year’s Eve.  Typically we pack up the Airstream and get lost in the southern California desert for a week or so.  This year we’ll do that, and a bit more. The trip plan has been stretched to include a jaunt up to Santa Barbara (CA). I am not sure how long we will stay out, but it will be at least ten days … and you know how susceptible we have been in the past to ad-hoc trip extensions.  Once we’re on the California coast, it may be hard to convince ourselves to head back home.

The holidays are great times to be Airstreaming.  We’ve spent many Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Years Eves in our Airstream—every one memorable for the great places it has taken us.  All of the holidays we have spent at home have melded into one blob in my memory, but I remember clearly the Christmas in San Diego, the Thanksgiving turkey Eleanor cooked in the redwoods, picking out seven fishes for a Christmas eve meal at St George Island (FL), and all of the great New Years we have spent in Borrego Springs.

Holidays seem special when we spend them in the Airstream.  The small space encourages us to get outside and absorb whatever holiday vibe the local area has to offer.  The Airstream is always peaceful in a campground on a holiday.  It feels like the world has gone away for a day, and left us alone to enjoy each other’s company.  And it never feels like the sort of horrible travel experience people normally associate with holidays.  We move at our pace, free from airport crowds and TSA body searches, not rushing on a snowy highway to get to a relative’s house, not pressed to be anywhere, far from home and yet still at home.

We spent so many holidays in the Airstream that when we finally bought a house it was a huge novelty to spend Christmas eve in it.  The house was uninhabitable because of all the renovation going on, but we cleared a space in the living room, made a fire, and slept on the floor in sleeping bags just so we could wake up by the tree.  I like having the choice of home or Airstream every year, although we typically select the house for Christmas and the Airstream for New Year’s Eve.

Of course, in most of the country it’s hard to get out this time of year.  Most people have winterized their Airstreams for the season, and would be facing drives of 1,000 miles or longer just to get somewhere that the weather is reliably above freezing during the day.  But even if you can’t tow, you can play.  Does your Airstream live in the driveway?  If so, can you get a power cord to it?  That’s all you need to “camp out” for a few days.  Seems silly, but I know lots of people who do it all the time.  It’s just the change of scene that makes it fun.  It’s an adult version of sleeping out in the backyard in a tent.

Decorating the Airstream is easy, too.  It doesn’t take much to make it festive inside: a string of lights or two, a little rosemary bush trimmed to look like a miniature pine tree, a few small presents, and maybe a pie or some cookies.  Perhaps a little Christmas music on the iPod?  Add in your favorite beverages and some fuzzy slippers, and you’re in business.  Curl up on the bed or couch and watch a Christmas movie with someone you love.

And while you’re doing it, think about places you want to go.  Call up the Ghost of Christmas Future and ask him to show you where you’ll be spending the holiday some other year.  The world is wide open, and if you already own the Airstream, all you need is a little time.  Don’t wait for “someday.”  Happy holidays—this year and next!

News from RVIA 2011

I know I said I’d blog from RVIA, the annual industry trade show, but things didn’t work out exactly as I’d hoped. There was the predictable constant pouring rain of course, and the show was useful from a business perspective, but I was thrown off course by two surprises. First, I discovered that our favorite pizza place was closed for renovations “until 2012,” which threw off one of the things I really look forward to each year. Second, somebody zapped me with a virus.

The virus wasn’t completely unexpected. I count every year that I manage this trip without getting sick as a bonus, since the schedule requires me to fly on the Sunday or Monday after Thanksgiving weekend when the airports and airliners are packed with sneezing people. The air terminal was almost standing-room-only and the flight to Louisville was full. Also, it’s hard to get a full night of sleep when you are jumping two time zones and running around for 17 hours a day. Monday and Tuesday night, when I would normally try to blog the events of the day, I was collapsing into bed. Then it all caught up with me. I slept for ten hours and awoke Wednesday with a sore throat, just in time to head to the airport for Tampa. So no blog from Louisville.

Now I’m established at Brett’s place in Tampa, still dealing with the virus but basically functional. At this point RVIA seems a distant memory but I’ll share a bit of what I remember. The big news from Airstream was the trailer pictured above, which is a concept by Airstream and Chris C Deam in the International CCD series, called “Sterling.” Chris happened to be inside later in the day so I asked him about it and he told me that his primary goal was “authenticity,” which is reflected in the aluminum finish on the cabinetry. It’s real (thin) aluminum atop a substrate, not a fake laminate.

The couch is white ultraleather, and the floor is a a unique weave that has a distinct texture and resiliency. If the concept gets traction with the dealers at the show, it will go into production. The floorplan shown was the usual 25 Front Bedroom layout, a popular starting point.

At long last Airstream is introducing an approved bike rack. They haven’t had one since the 1970s. Various people have for years been spreading the misinformation that Airstreams cannot carry any weight on the rear bumper without risking frame separation. This may have been true at one time, especially in the dark days of the Beatrice era, but all modern Airstreams in good condition (no floor rot) have a certain loading capacity at the rear. Airstream hasn’t been active in discounting the myth because if they do they’ll run into the “idiot factor,” meaning someone who overloads the bumper and then wants warranty repairs on it.

But now they’ve got a bike rack that is truly factory approved up to 77 pounds, which is more than enough for two bicycles. Only Airstream will be able to sell it initially. It is aluminum, of course. The retail price wasn’t yet available, but I’d guess it will go for $200-300.

The rack requires permanently mounting four brackets to the bumper and body (drilling required). The rack will be easily removable, although the four mounting points will stay. Even with the rack installed, you’ll still have access to the bumper compartment and any rear body compartments on the trailer. We played with it a bit and it seems very sturdy. I may get one next year for evaluation purposes.

Zip-Dee was showing a prototype electric awning with a remote control. We may be seeing that on Airstreams starting next year. It should eliminate a lot of questions that newbies have about deploying the awning, and you can put the awning out exactly the distance you want. The remote is a key chain unit much like a car keyfob. Zip-Dee is even considering a 12v outlet on the awning for your LED lights.

There wasn’t a ton of exciting new tech out there, but I see that MVP (another RV manufacturer) was showing an electric Class C motorhome. It was strictly a prototype, with only a 100 mile range. They are aiming to expand that to 200 miles soon. No word on whether it will really go into production.

The guys from EFOY were back (read my blog from last year’s RVIA to get their story) with their electric fuel cell generators, but they still aren’t ready to expand in to the US yet. I’m going to stay in touch with them in the hopes that they’ll start delivering units and the ultra-pure methanol fuel required sometime in 2012.

Now our job is to follow up with a couple dozen people, and Brett and I will be doing that for the next few weeks. Between those calls and emails, I am working on the Spring 2012 magazine and putting the finishing touches on a new book that will be released soon: The Collected Adventures of Tin Hut (Volume I). It will come out in print and as an electronic book for Kindle and iPad, hopefully in time for Christmas. Just editing the final copy makes me smile and forget that I’ve got a virus, so I think a lot of people will enjoying reading or re-reading the fantastic adventures of my favorite Airstreaming couple. By the way, after five years of secrecy, the actual author of the Tin Hut series will finally be revealed in the book.

The duck

The blog has been quiet lately because we are in that rather dull period between trips, commonly referred to as “daily life.”  It’s something I do my best to avoid but occasionally it does happen. It’s really true as they say that life is what happens while you’re making other plans.

This has been a period mostly for me to simply take care of business.  The Winter 2011 of Airstream Life magazine has been printed and was mailed this week, and meanwhile Spring 2012 is well underway with a lot of great articles in development.  I’m also working on a busy program of 2012 events, including Alumapalooza (June 2012), Modernism Week (February 2012), and an exciting new event to be held out west next summer.  We expect to have an announcement about that in January.

Of course, the Airstreams have not been neglected.  Before parking the Caravel in a secure off-site location, Eleanor and I replaced two more of the leaky water hoses and fixed another water leak at the tank fill.  It should be ready to go when we are.  The Safari remains in the carport, fully hooked up, cleaned up, and stocked with goodies for future “hotel” guests.

The most recent visitors, however, brought their own: Tiffani and Deke of the traveling blog “Weaselmouth.”  They were passing through last week, heading for California, and spent a night parked in front of the house.  Eleanor and I had met them at Alumapalooza last June, and I saw them again in Texas when I was picking up the Caravel, but they had never met Emma.  I’m not sure if my offer of free parking was really what enticed them here, since Tiffani did mention several times that she really wanted to meet Emma…  In any case, it was a superb visit and far too short.  We may cross paths with them again next year if we get up to Washington state, as I’ve been hoping to do.

Part of being home is a process of recovery.  We’ve proved we can live in the Airstream indefinitely but when circumstances place us back in the stationary house, we try to take full advantage of that by catching up on projects, relaxing, and saving up money.  The latter goal never works out as well as I’d like.  Living in a house is far more expensive than living “on the road” in an RV when you really factor everything in.  Being back at the house means activation of expensive projects, repairs, and tempting upgrades.

This time was no different: the house demanded a few things, and the local Tax Collector demanded the real estate taxes, and — whoosh — we were thousands of dollars poorer in an extraordinarily brief amount of time.  Worse, there was nothing tangible to show for it.  This always seems to be the pattern of home life, so after a few months we usually give up on the idea of “financial recovery” and move back into the Airstream for a reminder taste of the inexpensive alternative lifestyle it affords. Eleanor has often commented that if we hadn’t bought a house in 2007, and had simply remained in the Airstream full-timing, we’d be financially far better off, but you can’t re-make history.  And the house is something we all enjoy … in moderation.

In the interest of saving money we have resisted the call of Tucson’s many interesting restaurants, favoring meals at home.  This is no particular hardship, as anyone who has eaten Eleanor’s food can attest, and it often results in intriguing culinary experiences resulting from home experiments.  For example, last Saturday we really wanted to go out for Dim Sum, but we stayed home, collected the various ingredients we had in the house, and Eleanor whipped up “Dim Something.”  It was not what you’d call authentic but it was darned good.

This brings me to the subject of today’s essay.  You were probably wondering about the title, “The duck.” Thanksgiving is coming up soon but due to minor obligations on the calendar, we are going to celebrate it this weekend instead.  Bored with traditional turkey, after some discussion we opted to try cooking duck instead.  Or to be completely accurate, Eleanor will try preparing duck, and I will stand by as Advisor, Dishwasher, and Errand Boy as needed.

Normally I would expect this to be a minor footnote in our lives, but even today, days before the actual cooking event, it has become obvious that The Duck is going to be a formative experience.  It turns out that the culinary challenge is significant, even momentous, if you want to get it right.  There are tricky carnivorous issues of fat distribution and moisture content to confront.  Eleanor has pulled out an arsenal of references from her bookshelf and is sweating the details to the point that you’d think she was expecting the Queen of England to join us.  (I’m pretty sure that Thanksgiving is pretty low on the Queen’s list, along with Independence Day, so no danger there.)

Since things are quiet, I’m going to document The Story of The Duck this week, as it happens.  The first entry will go up tomorrow.  This is risky because we have no idea if the duck will be delicious or Daffy.  The gauntlet has been tossed down, and now she (and her two bumbling assistants) are committed to this meal.  Will we find sweet success or smoking disaster?  You’ll see.

 

Rich’s Moving Castle

Thanks to Eleanor and Bill for putting an appropriate literary theme on my few days in the Caravel.  Like Howl’s Moving Castle, the Caravel never paused for long in this recent chapter of its four-decade adventures.

The saga left off on Friday, when I was making a coffee last for three hours so I could recharge my stuff and get some work done.  It was a beautiful sunny day and things were going well.  After the work was done, an electronic trail of crumbs (a waypoint stored in the GPS) led me back to the campground, otherwise I might never have found it again.  I spent all of 10 minutes installing the new braided-stainless hoses in the Caravel’s bathroom and — ta-da! — no more leaks.   Or so I thought.

That afternoon the bulk of the rally participants showed up and things got lively.  Among many other people, I ran into Tiffani and Deke of “Weaselmouth,” who I’d last seen at Alumapalooza in May, and we got into an evening-long conversation during the potluck dinner.  I went back to the Caravel that night pleased that the rally was turning out well, but a little sorry as well because it would be time to get going homeward soon.  The rest of the people were just getting started with their Halloween decorations and friendly yakking.  For me, the Moving Castle (aka Caravel) was destined to depart in the morning.

I lingered on Saturday until about 10 a.m. while the gang was cooking up a huge breakfast outside at the pavilion.  People kept asking me how far I had to drive to get home, and when I said, “Oh, about 1,000 miles” the second or third time it really hit me: I’ve got to get going. There were about 16-17 hours of driving ahead of me, plus stops, and very little of it would be interesting driving.

Like the little Bubble I pulled from Santa Fe, the Caravel is a joy to tow.  There’s no fuss, no bad behavior, no complicated hitching equipment.  I try to keep the fresh water tank at least half full to give the trailer better stability, but otherwise I just drop it on the ball and away we go.  I don’t trust it as much as I do the big Safari with the Hensley hitch, because I know the Safari absolutely cannot sway with that setup, but the Caravel is marvelously stable at any speed I care to drive.  Of course, it is equipped pretty close to the original factory configuration.  Often I’ll see small vintage trailers that tow horribly, and inevitably it’s the result of owner modifications (air conditioners, rear-mounted spare tires, altered floorplans or heavy household-style cabinetry) that corrupt the delicate center of gravity.  The original designs took care to ensure that when the trailers were loaded with water, food, personal items, etc., the trailer would remain stable.

I made a few stops along the way for errands.  The day before the GL320 gave me a warning that it wanted a top-up of “AdBlue” fluid, which is also commonly known as Diesel Exhaust Fluid.  These days you can find the stuff in any auto parts store, truck stop, and even some Wal-Marts, and it’s cheap at about $12.99 for 2.5 gallons.  I put five gallons in the special tank that holds the AdBlue, which should be good for another 7,000 miles or so.  I’ll top it off this week for a full 15,000 mile range.  I mention this only because a lot of people are still scared about the stuff, thinking it’s expensive, or complicated, or frequent, and it’s really no much more hassle than filling the window washer fluid.  Three-tenths of a cent per mile is a small price to pay for clean diesel emissions, in my opinion.

I’ve wanted to spend a night at Monahans Sandhills State Park (just off I-20 a little west of Odessa TX), but the timing has never worked out before. This time I hit Monahans about a half hour before sunset, which made it a great stopover point.  The park has only 26 spaces, which made me think I might get skunked on a spot since it was Saturday night, but it turned out to be only about half full.  About half of the spaces are short back-ins that were perfect for the Caravel but wouldn’t have worked for the 30-foot Safari.

I have to take this opportunity to gripe about a small thing.  Many state parks use an honor system for late arrivals.  You fill out a little envelope and put your nightly camping fee in it.  This envelope gets deposited into an “iron ranger” (a metal box) and picked up by the staff daily.  You have to indicate your campsite on the envelope, but you haven’t gotten a campsite yet, which means you have to go to the campground, find a site, then come back to the iron ranger.

At Monahans the iron ranger is at the entrance gate, but the campground is about 1.3 miles away.  By the time I was parked in the site, it was nearly dark.  Being an overnight stop I would have preferred not to unhitch but I also wasn’t psyched to walk 2.6 miles roundtrip in the dark along a narrow, winding, shoulder-less road in the cold.  I wanted to make dinner and fire up Calcifer, and I also needed to refill the water tank.  To get it all done quickly, the easiest thing was to unhitch and drive back to the entrance gate to deposit my envelope.  Other state parks set up two iron rangers, one at the gate and one at the campground for the convenience of their visitors, so there’s my suggestion to the powers-that-be.

This minor quibble aside, I liked the park, which is billed as the “Sahara of the Southwest.”  It’s not perfect by any means, but it is very scenic for a place that’s just off a major Interstate.  The downsides stem from the fact that this is oil country.  I caught an occasional whiff of petroleum in the air, and through the night I could hear the sound of an oil well being drilled somewhere off to the northwest:  WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP-whumpwhumpwhump…

The morning found me with 555 miles to go.  I debated whether to plow ahead or to stop along the way.  There were places I would have liked to stop, and friends to visit, but there was also a place I wanted to be more, namely home with E&E. Back in Tucson they were decorating the house for Halloween, and Eleanor was cooking things.  On the other hand, in the Caravel I’d discovered yet another leak, this time under the kitchen faucet.  I took this as a sign that I needed to get back to home base and have a long chat with the Caravel (wrench in hand) about its incontinence problem.

To be fair, the trailer is doing spectacularly well, especially considering its age.  (The leaks are all from the same type of flexible plastic faucet hose, at the compression fittings.  I don’t know if they are failing from age, heat, bad design, or over-tightening, but they are all getting replaced this week.)  Other than that, the Caravel has performed admirably.  We covered 1,000 miles at highway speeds, and encountered some pretty awful back roads too.  Not a rivet was disturbed on its tight little structure.

More important, I was entirely comfortable through the entire trip, with my little aluminum soap bubble to house me at night and Calcifer to keep me warm.  No matter how much I had to drive, at the end of every day I knew I would be back in my home, with my familiar things and favorite foods waiting.  An Airstream really is a moving castle, where you have everything you need with you no matter where in the world you go.  This is the magic of trailer travel.  Even though I just finished unpacking from this trip, I’m looking forward to the next one already.  Most likely it will be in mid-December.