Mar 16 2011

Delta man

When you ask, “How are things?” some people respond after measuring how much stability they’ve had in their lives lately. If things have been predictable, safe, and settled, they say, “Not bad” or something to that effect.

Another group of people disregard the predictable and measure the “delta” — in other words, how much things have changed in their lives lately. They say, “Not bad” if life has been interesting, challenging, or if they have some sort of new & different project going on. My friends tend to be mostly this type. It’s not because of any conscious choice, it’s just that I like things to change and there is often a mutual attraction between people who like to mix it up a little from time to time.

When things are happening, I’ve got stuff to blog about, and when things are not happening I start thinking about going somewhere to find something new. The recent dry spell in this blog tells you that either (a) not much is happening in my life, or (b) things are happening that I just can’t talk about. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not (a). Life continues to be interesting, but in a sort of home-bound soap opera way instead of fun travel stories that make readable public blog fodder. I have often thought that I should offer a “subscription” blog with the really juicy stuff, but upon reflection I’ve decided you probably don’t want to read it. Whatever you are imagining right now is probably about as interesting as the reality anyway.

What’s left after the X-, R-, and even PG-13 stuff is removed is fairly safe, so you can continue to read this blog without concern for your innocent children.

The biggest news is that as of today my new book, “The Newbies Guide to Airstreaming” is officially complete and off to the printer. Wow, that was a lot of work. It should be ready for distribution sometime in April, but if you have a Kindle you should be able to download and read it by Monday, March 21. I’m also working on an edition for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch and hope to have that ready in a week or two, if Apple cooperates.

The folks at Airstream have read preview copies and they seem to like it. They tell me they will include a copy with every new Airstream, which I hope helps smooth the way into our community for lots of people. Getting feedback from reader for a revised second edition should be interesting, but I’m looking forward more to the chance to start work on the next book, which will be completely different. I don’t know for sure what I’m going to say, but I do have a general idea of the theme, and I’ll talk about that more in a future blog. Getting going on that project is something I’m looking forward to doing this summer.

Lately I find myself in the role of Airstream advisor to many people. I don’t know how I got this job, but I’m a sucker for it. I never seem to be able to say No, even when things are fantastically busy. It’s probably because I meet the most interesting people this way. In the past few weeks I have been approached by a well-known author, and a semi-famous soap opera actor, both of whom have found themselves needing an Airstream for very specific purposes. There have been several other folks as well. I wish I had a fleet of Airstream to sell and/or lend out, but I don’t have the time or space, so instead I’ve been just offering advice and directing them to people who can help. Finding “just the right one” is a time-consuming process, like finding the ideal mate. Ye gods, I’ve become a matchmaker. Call me Shadchen.

The other major activity in life has been to finalize Alumapalooza. There’s another labor of love. I am truly glad that we are approaching our limit of 200 trailers (we have just 8 spaces left as of today). It has been a fun process to try to make APZ 2011 better than the original, but also a bit exhausting. At this point I’m not even trying to sell the last few spaces — I’m sure they will sell themselves soon enough. The entertainment is arranged, the speakers are about 80% set, we’ve got the tents, catering, signs, t-shirts, A/V setup, tiki torches, door prizes, mud boots (whoops, forget I mentioned that last one) … you name it, we’ve got it. There are only about two dozen things left to do before I can comfortably say that the job is done … and by then I’m sure it will be time to head off to Ohio.

A lot of people have asked me what we plan to do to deal with higher fuel prices this summer. I tend to just shrug. We can’t make our rig significantly more fuel efficient than already is, and we already tow at a fairly moderate 62 MPH (except in west Texas). If I need to spend less on fuel, we delete miles — simple as that. Two years ago, when we were facing $5/gallon gasoline in remote parts of Utah, we simply spent more time at each stop and towed no more than 70 miles per travel day. This year we have to go to Vermont and I can’t make Vermont come any closer, so the only fix is to optimize the routing as best we can.

If things work out well, we’ll be traveling with or meeting friends at various points of the trip, and that will probably make the fuel prices seem less painful, as the bigger significance of having fun and adventures becomes apparent. As I’ve said many times, it’s not about the towing — it’s about the stopping. A trip to the northeast will cost about $700-800 in fuel each way, but it’s still a bargain. We’ll be out for nearly a month, visiting at least ten states. I’m not going to complain about the extra $300 or so it costs for an experience like that. It’s “delta-making” stuff; the stuff I thrive on, and the reason we own that big shiny thing in the carport. They’ll have to raise the price quite a lot before I decide to stay home.

Mar 01 2011

More than just trailers

Things at Modernism Week 2011 got moving so quickly that I lost my usual rhythm of blogging daily from the road. On the surface everything went smoothly, but it was the “behind the scenes” action that kept me (and Brett) running around.

Sunday was clear and cool, as forecast, and that meant a good steady crowd of visitors all day. No longer did the mountains look like Hawaii, but the storm from Saturday was clearly visible above us as snow, which made for a fantastic backdrop on our vintage trailer scene. In this photo everyone is still setting up, and the awnings and vintage decorations were not yet on display.

Since everyone was well-prepared for the show, we didn’t have much to do as organizers, so we were free to browse and talk to the owners and other participants. They are a fascinating and accomplished group of people. For example, David Winick was in attendance, signing his new book entitled “Winick Airstreams,” which is about his amazing trailer customizations. Uwe Salwender of Area 63 Productions was showing his latest trailer, a 1960s Caravel. The guys from Funky Junk Farms (John, Steven, and Edward) were showing three different rigs, all very unusual, including a custom-made “housecar” on an old International Harvester truck chassis.

And there were many others, including Kristiana Spaulding of Silver Trailer and her husband Greg, Kate Heber and John Byfield of the Ecodiscovery Tour, John Long with his amazing 1935 Bowlus trailer … the list goes on. Everyone involved was interesting and fun to talk to. So it wasn’t just about the trailers.

Most people left after the show on Sunday afternoon, but a few of us hung around for an extra night. David Winick’s daughter, Rebecca Gohl, happened to be attending Modernism Week herself, doing styling work for some “Braniff Stewardesses” who were part of the show. Like her father, Rebecca has some serious artistic talent. She’s also a funny and interesting person who became the epicenter of Sunday night’s social circle.

We spent an hour at the suite of Rebecca and her friends, and then a group of eight of us drove downtown to Las Consuelas for Mexican dinner. The Stuttgart Taxi was in its element when it was puttering down Palm Canyon Drive with two lovely ladies in the back seat.

The next morning it was back to work for Brett and me. Although everyone else is free to bask in the memories of this fun weekend, we needed to do some scouting for Modernism Week 2012. We’d like to have a much larger venue so that we can stage more trailers, and have an area where non-vintage trailer owners can come camp and enjoy the event as well. We’ve been looking for months, using Google satellite images and local contacts to research possible spots, so we had narrowed it down to three possible locations to check out on Monday.

It’s too early to confirm anything, but after a few hours of site visits and a good meeting at two locations, I can say that we are off to a solid start. I hope to be able to announce a location and details for next year’s show, sometime this summer.

We had the option of staying one more night, but with business concluded, Brett and I decided to bail out for the long roadtrip home. The weather was fine, the desert road was wide open, and the old Merc was raring to go. We threw our bags in the trunk and pointed the car east on I-10. By 9:30 we were back in Tucson.

It was a great trip in every respect, but next year I have to make one change. The rest of Modernism Week is too interesting to miss, so I’m going to try to get there earlier. The architectural tours, exhibits, and talks all sound great. Several people who were in our show arrived a week early and said they’d had a great time visiting the other exhibits of Modernism Week. But camping in Palm Springs is somewhat limited, especially for people under age 55 who have a vintage trailer. If possible, we’ll work up an option that gives trailer owners an “inside track” on the week. Stay tuned for details on that, later this year.

Feb 25 2011

Cars, planes, and trailers

Finally my long-awaited trip to Palm Springs for Modernism Week 2011 has begun. I was sort of chafing the last few days, eager to get on the road, and filling my time by triple-checking lists and over-preparing the car for every possible contingency. Yesterday morning I was up at 5:30 a.m. even though I didn’t need to leave until 9. After a few hours of trying to pace myself as I completed the final pre-departure tasks, I gave in, stuffed the last few things in the car, and set off up I-10 toward Phoenix.

Now, one of my few concerns about this trip was whether the old car would make it. There was really no reason to think it wouldn’t, given that it has been well-prepared and recently serviced, and I will cut to the chase by telling you that it did just fine for the 380 miles to Palm Springs. The real issue turned out to be the airlines.

The plan was for me to meet Brett at Phoenix Sky Harbor International airport around noon, and head out from there together to Palm Springs. I got into Phoenix early of course, so I had plenty of time to swing by one of the local biodiesel producers and pick up 5.5 gallons of B99 to top off the tank. Brett landed only about 10 minutes late, so all things looked good until we went looking for his luggage, which of course … (do I have to even tell the rest of this story)?

Well, I’ll spare you the ugly view we got of the workings of an airline’s baggage handling system. In short, we went on to Palm Springs because the bags were in Houston and not likely to arrive soon enough for us to keep our schedule for the day. We were told that the bags, which contain a few vital items for the Vintage Trailer Show, would be forwarded on to Palm Springs by transferring them to another airline.

When we arrived in Palm Springs we found John Long and his stunning 1935 Bowlus already set up on the grass display area behind the hotel, a day early. He worked out special permission to set up early, unbeknownst to us. (I believe that is the first time I have ever written the word “unbeknownst” in a blog entry, and I think after looking at it in this context, it will be the last.) John surprised me by looking admiringly at the old Mercedes, which was idly clattering away behind us as we greeted John. I think he appreciated it as a piece of industrial design much like he appreciates his own Bowlus travel trailer.

Brett had by this time received two phone calls from his airline with various explanations and plans related to the retrieval of his baggage. The ultimate solution — so we thought — was to drive over to Palm Spring International Airport and pick up the bags from the 7:15 flight of the “other” airline. But when we got there, we discovered the flight had been canceled. So, back to the hotel, and another round of phone calls.

At 9:15 we were back at the airport. I sat in the car curbside for a few minutes (thinking this would be a quick errand), but when the police chased me away a few minutes later I realized that things were not going well inside the terminal for Brett. I sat in the Cell Phone Lot until 10:30 while Brett went through these stages: (1) Looking for bags on the carousel; (2) Realizing the bags were again lost; (3) Dealing with an unhelpful “other Airlines” representative who told him he knew nothing about the situation and could not track the bag without a claim number; (4) Calling his first airline multiple times only to be told, “The other airline has the bag now, in Phoenix, and we don’t have a tracking nunber for it”; and finally (5) Conceding defeat at 10:30 pm, and heading off to the grocery store to buy a toothbrush.

At dawn he was at it again, and the latest word is that the baggage will arrive sometime today on some flight to Palm Springs, and it will either be delivered by courier to the hotel or Brett will have to take the Stuttgart Taxi to go fetch it. In other words, we know nothing except that in theory the bags still exist on some existential plane of the universe.

But hey, I won’t tell anyone Brett is wearing all the same clothes from yesterday. All we’re doing is parking trailers and greeting people today, so he doesn’t need to look sharp until tonight when we have a private reception for the trailer owners. By then, the baggage might be here, and we can concentrate on the thing we are here to do, which is to put on an awesome vintage trailer show this weekend.

Feb 23 2011

When yellow labs attack …

There’s always something to be learned from even the most unfortunate circumstances. Last night, cruising in the car near sunset, my black Mercedes 300D was whacked by a dog. No, I didn’t hit him — he hit me.

The dog, a yellow labrador, was off leash and ran out onto Broadway, which is a busy five-lane thoroughfare in Tucson. He crossed the centerline and actually rammed my car on the driver’s side front fender. I saw only a brief glimpse of him and then — WHAM! — and my first thought was, “Oh no, I’ve just killed a dog.”

But he wasn’t killed. He bounced off the car, and ran back across the roadway. I stopped, but again I only got a glimpse of the dog as he high-tailed it back to the side of the road. I grabbed a piece of door trim that had been ripped off the car and then made the first possible U-turn back to the scene.

There I found a lady who was holding the dog by the collar and petting him reassuringly, while talking on her cell phone to the owner (the dog had good tags). He appeared not only completely uninjured, but quite happy about his circumstances, doing all the usual yellow lab things like grinning foolishly and panting and inviting me to pet him too. There was some concern that the dog might have a concussion, especially after we got a good look at the large dent his head put in the steel fender of my tank-like Mercedes, so when the owner arrived we encouraged him to take the dog to a vet for a good check.

But really, he’s a yellow lab. Does he even have a brain to bruise? (I’m going to get grief from my friend Al B for that remark. He trains yellow lab puppies for Canine Companions for Independence. But those dogs are carefully bred and selected for ability.)

Well, I hope he’s OK. He seemed like a nice dog, even if not too savvy about traffic. And I suspect his owner has learned a lesson too.

But wouldn’t you know, the damage estimate came in at $785, which will not be covered by insurance since I carry only liability on that car. So now I have a good reason to have a chat with the dog’s owner. At the time of the incident I got only a phone number, because (stupidly enough) I didn’t have a working pen in the car. We were in a hurry to see the dog off to a vet, so I didn’t press further.

Thanks to the scary miracle of the Internet, that was sufficient. With a few minutes of careful Internet searches, I was able to turn up not only the owner’s name and address, but also:

personal and office email addresses
religious associations
mailing address
colleges and degrees, including GPA from undergrad and his current program of study
photographs
names of some friends
where he had lunch last week

Yes, it doesn’t take much to leave a big footprint on the Internet. (I’m sure mine is far larger than I want it to be.) But with Facebook, Twitter, mySpace, etc., some folks are especially discoverable. The relevant info will go to my insurance company and they’ll see about getting some compensation for the damage.

In the meantime, I have decided to take the 300D to Palm Springs tomorrow as planned. I was able to reattach the door trim with new clips from the local dealer, and with that in place the rest of the damage isn’t terribly embarrassing. The paint is mostly OK, and this is the desert anyway, so rust won’t be a big issue. I’ll get it fixed in a couple of weeks. If you are coming to Modernism Week to see the Vintage Trailer Show, please avert your eyes from the driver’s side front fender and help me pretend that my car didn’t just get rammed by a hard-headed labrador.

Feb 10 2011

Insane

OK, I’ll keep this short and sweet. All of the time I run into people who are full-timing in an RV, and who don’t have health insurance.

Sure, you may be young and healthy. Sure, it’s expensive. But you have to keep something in mind: our health system is insane.

We were lucky during our three years on the road. Our medical issues were few. But nothing lasts forever. I went to see the local doc for a routine checkup in December. No procedures were done. I had a 15-minute exam and some blood tests and urinalysis, all routine stuff.

The physician’s office billed my insurance company $1,046.09 for that.

No typo.

We are still in the deductible of our “high deductible health plan,” so theoretically we’re on the hook for the whole thing. But there’s a trick. Simply having health insurance, even if it isn’t covering your bill, is what’s really important. See, the insurance company has negotiated rates with the medical providers (meaning in this case, the doctor’s office). Their pre-negotiated rate knocked the bill down to $238.00. That’s what we’ll actually pay.

So what happens to the $808.09 that the doctor’s office forgave? No worries — it will get passed on to some poor sap who doesn’t have medical insurance. Sooner or later they’ll find someone who doesn’t have a negotiated rate, and if necessary they’ll garnish his wages to get it.

That’s why people who don’t have health insurance in this country are screwed. A huge percentage of bankruptcies in this country result from being what is termed, “medically indigent,” meaning sucked dry by medical bills. No health insurance? You’ll go down fast. At the rate of $1,000 per simple office visit, it won’t take long. Imagine what happens when you get hit by a car, or have a heart attack. You’ve never paid as much for an Tylenol as you will when you buy one from a hospital bed.

Don’t kid yourselves. Get health insurance and join the club of people who pay 80% less. This has nothing to do with “socialized medicine,” or Obama — it has been the system for decades. The health care system in this country is rigged, and the only way you can survive the cost is to join the game. Or, you can move to France.