I know that a few of you are wondering if we made it off on schedule, given the little glitches that often pop up after a long stay parked in one location.   We did.   Our departure from Vermont was about an hour later than I would have liked, but considering all the last-minute packing and sad goodbyes, it wasn’t too bad.

The only mechanical glitch I found was that one of the Airstream tires was about 7 psi underinflated, which is suspicious since I checked and inflated all the tires only a month ago.   I’ll be watching that one, or at least my tire monitor will.   The replacement hitch has been flawless, so no complaints there.   We had fabulous weather all day across the Adirondack region of New York, and then zipping along I-90 west, and everyone was feeling comfortable in the car, so we pulled the Airstream about 350 miles and ended up parked near Buffalo.

The back of the Airstream, where it was backed in close to a stand of big cedar trees, is still covered in spider webs and tree debris.   The whole trailer badly needs a wash, but I’m not sure when we’ll get to that.   Our travel schedule is developing and it looks potentially hectic for a while.   I’m working on a new project which requires me to meet with a lot of new people.   As a result, we’ll be heading to Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, Denver, and Colorado Springs at the least.   Since we have to connect Grand Rapids to Minneapolis, we are thinking of taking the extra 200 miles to go north around Lake Michigan instead of south, and having a much more pleasant trip.   (I had thought we’d be in South Dakota in two weeks, but now that plan is looking iffy.)

The ability to travel like this for business is a huge benefit of owning the Airstream, at least for me.   I know most people have them strictly for recreation, but there is a significant percentage of owners who use them for business purposes.   Why not?   When you’ve got a lot of people to see, it’s a great way to travel.   To replicate all these visits via air, I’d end up flying a dozen flight segments back and forth from home base, packing and unpacking my bags every few days, eating road food constantly, and wrestling with airline schedules.

Plus, traveling the “normal” way by air, with hotels, restaurants, tips, taxis, rental cars, etc., it would cost a whole lot more.   We can afford to take an extra week to meander through the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin and still spend less than a typical three-day business trip.     And as plans change — which they are doing on a daily basis right now — we can adapt without getting into cancellations and reservations hassles.   I really would not be able to run this business if I could not travel cheaply.   That seems to be perfectly appropriate: traveling in the Airstream enables the business that celebrates Airstream travel.

But the real payoff is the quality of life.   As I type this in my rolling home, and the sun rises, I can see my daughter sleeping peacefully in her bed, and I can see Eleanor snuggled into the comforter at the other end of the Airstream.   Soon Eleanor will be making coffee and we’ll all have breakfast together.   I can’t put a price on how great it is to be able to spend every day with these two people, while I travel for business.   That’s a perk that no five-star hotel can replace.

Now that our “usual pre-trip delay” hurdle has been passed, we are entering the other pre-trip phase, where everything happens at once.

Today the replacement Hensley hitch arrived, 99 lbs. of steel in a big box.   The poor UPS guy is expected to be able to move around boxes up to 150 lbs, but I took pity on him and together we carried it over to the Airstream.   Removal of the old hitch and installation of the new one took me about 30 minutes, working solo.   It’s pretty easy when you know how — and after several years of ownership and on-the-road repairs, I’ve become rather well acquainted with the workings of the thing.   My trick for easy installation was to use a hydraulic floor jack to raise the hitch into place.   The job required just two wrenches (for adjusting and tightening the grease zerks), some paper towels, a few shots from the grease gun, and a couple of plastic bags to contain the greasy parts.

So now we are once again toting a classic “Hensley orange” blob on the front of the Airstream.   That won’t last.   The paint never does on these things.   It fades and gets dinged by road debris.   Once we get to Tucson I’ll sand it down bare and give it a really good paint job.   But at least at this point we should be completely functional again, towing-wise.

Eleanor has been out most of the day doing her final grocery shopping, which always starts a comedy routine between us.   She approaches a departure as if we were a submarine going out on patrol under the Atlantic, and fills every conceivable space with food.   “We’re going to be on the road for two months,” she says.   Then I comment that we can easily go for a few weeks on the food stored in this trailer, and there’s no need.   We’re in America.   There are grocery stores everywhere.   Eleanor’s rejoinder will be that in some places she can’t get the stuff she wants, or that it will be more expensive in many of the podunk locations we frequent, and I have to admit that this is true.   If we lived on Twinkies and soda, or if we ate out every meal like many travelers do, we’d be all set, but Eleanor cooks our meals and I can’t complain about that.   So inevitably she wins the debate and I spend a few days tip-toeing around bags of miscellaneous groceries that don’t quite fit into the storage spaces.   My “revenge,” if you can call it that, is asking for whatever I want to eat for dinner and having a very high expectation of getting it.

At the same time Eleanor is acquiring a trunk-load of food, she is also trying to get rid of certain things.   Right now we all have frosty cold virgin pina coladas to sip because she wanted to use up the last of the Coco Lopez.   One never knows exactly what will be on the dinner table the night before one of our departures, but if you guessed “leftovers” you’d probably be right 90% of the time.

My routine before departure is to check all my “to-do” lists, all the corners where tasks have piled up, and try to resolve as many things as possible.   This is a nuisance but easier than dealing with some things when we’re trying to move fast.   The next two days will be mostly driving, as we head to Ohio, and I will not be in the mood to break out my battery-powered printer, stamps, and envelopes in the evening.   It’s amazing what I can find in here when I start looking for half-finished projects.   Today for example, I paid an overdue parking ticket from Madison WI, renewed a car registration, shipped back license plates for the Honda Accord and 1952 Airstream Cruiser we sold (now property of a famous movie star), arranged UPS pickup of the old Hensley hitch, mailed off a check deposit, scanned a whole heap of paper, and dealt with a dozen other odds and ends.

Now the slate is pretty clean.   I still have work to do but at least I can drive down I-90 with a peaceful head, not worrying about 1,001 details.   We still have plenty of re-packing and cleaning to do, and that will get completed first thing tomorrow morning.   The finishing touch on the interior will be when I haul a powerful vacuum cleaner in here and follow up with a good hands-and-knees floor mopping.   We won’t get another chance to clean that well for at least a month.

Tonight we are having a small “farewell” dinner, although to be honest it won’t be much different from an ordinary evening.   Eleanor is making cannolis for dessert, and we’ve got a birthday card for my mother, whose actual birthday we will miss by a few days.   The real dynamic in this evening will be our guests, who are arriving after dinner with their three small children. The first and only time we ever met Chuck H and his family was at Jamaica State Park about five years ago.   At that point they were two adults and one baby in an Avion, but today they are a family of five in a popup.   They have made the trip all the way up from Long Island today specifically to catch us before we leave.   A family that size needs an Airstream Safari 30 bunkhouse, like we have, and they want to take a look at ours.

It’s too far to drive just to see an Airstream, so they’ll spend a few days in northern Vermont exploring what we have.   Eleanor and I will point them to a few good things to do with kids and hopefully they will have a wonderful time in the fine late-summer weather here by Lake Champlain.     It certainly is fabulous weather — the sort of dry, lightly breezy, sunny, and pleasant day that is normally the hallmark of late August and September here.   I’ve been waiting for this to come for two months, but we’ve been cursed with lots of rain and abominable amounts of humidity, until very recently.   With friends coming to town and this excellent climate, it is tempting to stay a few more days.

That, however, cannot happen.   We have made a promise to good friends in Ohio that will be there for the Labor Day weekend, and we intend to keep that promise.   Also, we’ve been here seven weeks, and we are reaching the end of our shelf-life.   A famous saying claims that houseguests are like fish, in that they begin to stink after three days.   When the houseguest comes in their own Airstream, the shelf-life is longer, but there’s still a point at which you should voluntarily go.   Seven or eight weeks is enough for us to have a really good visit, engage in all the annual rituals, and see everyone at least three times, and yet depart before people begin to wish we would.   That way they’ll look forward to us coming back next summer.

If all goes well — and you know how fatal that saying can be — we shall be moving down the road by about 10 a.m. Thursday.   Where we end up Thursday night is a matter to be resolved on the fly.   And that’s the way I like it.   Adventure lies ahead.   See you on the road.

As I mentioned in the last post, we are anticipating leaving Vermont soon.   A cold front swept through on Wednesday and with that swift stroke, summer has ended.   We are now wearing sweatshirts and long pants, and running the furnace in the Airstream at night when the temperature drops into the 40s.   A few early red leaves have dropped into the gravel driveway around us, and the Champlain Valley Fair starts this weekend.   All the signs are there for the coming of Fall.

With the various problems we’ve encountered over the years while traveling, I’ve learned to do a pre-trip equipment inspection well in advance of departure.   Checking the gear the day you plan to leave just means that any problems you find will automatically delay your trip. So last night I did a sweep of the Airstream exterior, and sure enough, I found this on the Hensley hitch.

That’s a crack in the lower part of the main hitch assembly, where the weight transfer bar (“spring bar”) enters the hitch head.   There’s a crack clean through the base plate and then extending about 1/4 around the weld.   The crack goes all the way through to the bottom.

This is a high-stress area of the hitch.   The load imposed by the weight transfer bar puts a lot of stress at this point.   The Hensley is extremely sturdy, but nothing made of metal is unbreakable.   This hitch has about 70,000 miles on it, and I haven’t babied it.

The good news is that I spotted it several days before we had planned to leave.   The other good news is that it can be repaired locally by a welder, or through a free exchange under Hensley’s lifetime original owner warranty.   I called Hensley today and we agreed that even though a local repair would be quicker, I might as well get a refurbished hitch head under the warranty.   I will pay the shipping costs both ways, which will cost about $165.

The replacement hitch will arrive on Wednesday.   This will delay our departure by a couple of days, but not seriously impact our plans.   The lesson here is that it pays to inspect everything a week or so before you plan to take off.   It could have been anything on the Airstream or the tow vehicle.   When I think of all the things that have gone wrong on us in the past (tires, wheel studs, hitch, brakes, electrical ground, receiver, battery, etc.) I can see how a good safety inspection is required before each and every trip.

You’ll see a bit of emphasis on safety issues in upcoming issues of Airstream Life magazine.   I am working with three different authors at present, to develop well-researched articles on towing issues, hitch inspection, and checklists. Airstream reports that nearly 1/3 of new Airstream trailers are being bought by people who have never owned any type of RV before.   That means there a lot of people out there thirsting for reliable information on what they should do.   A tremendous amount of misinformation is floating around on the Internet, so I feel it’s an obligation of publications in the industry to do some “myth-busting” and help prepare newbie owners to travel safely.   As this episode demonstrates, one of the most effective tools that anyone can use is a pair of open eyes.

Our summer has reversed itself lately.   We arrived in Vermont with a full agenda of events and responsibilities, and now that they are done, we are in a lazy phase.   The weather has reversed too, from the cool and rainy days of July to an uncharacteristically hot August, and warm nights full of damp air, so that the dominant sound has changed from chirping birds and waves on the beach to the droning of fans stirring sluggish air. This is exactly backwards.   Normally July is hot and humid and August is a gradual slide into dry cool fall weather, but this year Mother Nature has decided to do things a little differently, which has confused everyone.

Emma is in bed late this morning, propped up on pillows with a thick book.   She doesn’t seem inclined to get up and enter the world, probably because there is little to look forward to today.   We are expecting a Sunday of little activity, and morning is damp and warm again, presaging a cloudy and sultry day.   Yesterday I coaxed her out of bed by making waffles, which probably set a bad precedent for future mornings.   But she is on summer vacation, visiting her grandparents, and we tend to cut her a lot of slack during the summer so she can be a kid.   When there aren’t other kids visiting us here at the lake, she spends her days painting watercolors, reading books about dragons and talking cats, playing on her Nintendo DS, splashing in the lake, and taking in the occasional SpongeBob episode.   I think this looks like a waste of youth to many older people, but I remember summers spent in similar unproductive activities, too.   I suppose it can’t all be hikes, homeschooling, and karate lessons.   We’ll be back to that stuff soon enough anyway.

Alex and Charon came back the Vintage Trailer Jam with us, and together we spent a couple of quiet days recuperating from the intensity of the Jam.   They were content to simply rest on the deck with a book, or snooze on the couch, which helped Eleanor and I force ourselves to relax as well.   I’m in between issues of the magazine, so I have a couple of weeks of lighter workload before I have to kick editorial work on the Winter 2009 issue into high gear.   When we were full-timing we’d take this opportunity to disappear into a national park for a few days (where cell phones and Internet usually didn’t exist), but since we are here in Vermont we’ve just been reading and hanging out with local friends.
Charon is back to work in Virginia now, and Alex has since departed for Michigan with a load of miscellaneous parts for our 1968 Airstream Caravel.   (If you read this blog last summer you know that I’ve been working on completing that trailer during our visits here.   We got a break over the winter, when our friend Ken said he’d finish the job in his workshop.)   In June, Brett delivered the Caravel there, but a few critical parts were left behind because they were stored in my parents’ basement.   We loaded Alex up with those parts and this weekend he delivered them to Michigan too.   I am lucky to have such friends.   As they say, “Friends help you move.   Real friends help you move trailers.”

So now entire Caravel is in Michigan, and I have hope that it will be completed by mid-winter.   It really doesn’t need much, other than re-building of the overhead cabinets, drawers, and installation of the interior furniture that I built last summer.   Ken, being a perennially hard worker and a strong believer in shiny aluminum trailers, has spent the last several Saturdays polishing the exterior — a bonus I hadn’t asked for.   If the trailer is complete and roadworthy by mid-winter, I may go up to Grand Rapids and fetch it back to Arizona.

Our main Airstream has been getting shuffled around a little too.   We discovered in Saratoga Springs that the refrigerator was not cooling properly when it was running on gas (but worked fine on electric).   This is very strange because these adsorption-type refrigerators use a single cooling unit.   The unit relies on about 200 watts of heat to function, which can be provided by a small electric heater or a gas flame. We suspected a blockage due to spiders but Alex and I disassembled the unit and found nothing suspicious.   We blew the chimney clean with compressed air but this didn’t help (although a bit of something charred, like a fried ant, did fall out).

With home solutions not helping, we were forced to hitch up and tow it into South Burlington to see the local competent RV repair shop.   They could not find an overt problem either, but the flame seemed a little low to their appliance expert.   A tech disassembled the burner elements and cleaned them.   Like us, he found only a tiny bit of soot or burnt material.   Still, this seemed to solve the problem.   We ran the fridge on gas for several hours and it now appears to be functioning normally.

I’ve backed the Airstream into its tricky spot in the driveway for the third time, and now we seem to be done with tasks and obligations.   All of the local friends have visited, and we’ve had dinner on the deck a dozen times.   We’ve ridden in the Glastron, sailed the Buccaneer, skiied behind the Whaler, and burned huge piles of driftwood on the beach.   Last night was another party on the beach Tiki Bar with half a dozen of the regulars who always come, and it was fun, but it also felt like possibly the last Tiki party of the summer.   This late summer weather can’t last, not up here near the Canadian border. In a couple of weeks days in the 80s will be a memory and the first cool breezes and early sunsets will start to warn of an approaching fall.   Soon the leaves will start to show color, but by then the boats will be put away and no one will be thinking of wakeboarding or waterskiing.

This means it’s time for us to start planning our trip back to Arizona.   Even though we have weeks of decent weather yet to come in Vermont, I’d like to get rolling soon.   We have a very loose plan in mind that brings us through about a dozen National Park sites, and Google Maps suggests that our route will be 3,841 miles, not including side trips.   This will take two months for sure.   Of course, the plan is highly subject to change depending on weather, fuel prices, and interesting things we find along the way.   We’re going to use the usual method: pick a couple of “must-do” stops and have a rough timeline in mind, and a few short-term destinations, then let the rest of the trip develop as we go.

We also have vague plans for Arizona.   I’d like to get back in that wonderful period between low desert air-conditioning and the end of high-altitude camping.   That means mid-October.   But if we are having fun on the road, we can forgo the option to tent-camping at 6,000 feet in the Chiricahua or the Santa Catalina mountains.   There’s also the likelihood that business obligations will force us to shorten the trip back, so that I can concentrate on new projects in the fall and winter without the pleasant distraction of full-time travel.

With all these considerations in mind, we can only take indirect aim at our travel plan.   The only thing that is certain is that summer is ending, and we must start our annual migration once again.