Dec 07 2010

Shifting gears

With the mental shifting of gears that accompanies our transition from Airstream to house, I am once again able to tackle the projects that I began this summer while I was alone in Tucson. Working in the Airstream is very feasible and I did it successfully for three years straight, but in those times when we are paused in the house, I find I am able to tackle projects that otherwise would have lain in a heap on the side of my desk.

It’s the long-term projects that suffer when we travel, because there’s a certain workload involved just in the routine of hitching up and towing, researching the next place to go, meeting people, taking photos, and getting to know each new area. That’s all part of the fun, of course, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it does tend to infringe on the paying work, and I need to keep an eye on that. After all, I’ve got a kid who is getting braces on her teeth next month.

Besides, being at home means I no longer have to work out of a backpack. I’ve now got my own desk with room for printer, scanner, laptop, project stacks, and a cold beverage all at the same time. Instead of an occasionally dodgy cellular Internet connection, I have high-speed DSL. I can reliably expect my mail to arrive at my door, without having to notify my mail service of a new address every week. For someone who has spent most of the past five years roaming, these things represent real luxury.

The Spring 2011 issue of Airstream Life is at the top of my list, of course. I am particularly excited about this one, because we are in a transition to becoming a much more photo-rich publication. I’ve always been proud of Airstream Life but it has also always irritated me that I have consistently struggled to get decent photography. Finally I’ve been able to establish relationships with photographers and writers that are bringing in more & better images. We’re going to showcase them starting with Spring 2011, by running more full-page photos, and even double-page spreads (kind of like the current “From The Archives” feature).

About 90% of the editorial for the Spring issue is complete, so as it moves into the layout phase, my personal workload will lighten, and that means other projects can get some attention. The hiatus from traveling also is giving me time to think about the personal projects, and various “nesting” activities that we’ve never done before. Being stationary means a new perspective on everything.

In particular, the house is still a half-wreck after three years of ownership because we’ve never been motivated to finish the renovations, while the Airstream has had every possible attention lavished on it. Houses are much too expensive for what you get. When you add in the real cost of maintenance, repairs, utilities, taxes, furnishings, interest, etc., the total gets rather depressing, and that’s when I start thinking about our next trip in the Airstream. But it’s time for the Airstream to sit a little (even though we still have a few things on the “upgrade/fix” list) while the house gets its fair share. Whether the house actually will get any money or effort thrown at it remains to be seen, but at least we have some good intentions …

The Mercedes GL320 will sit, too. It’s a great car for our style of travel, but I find the maintenance costs too expensive to justify using it when we are parked at home. With 38,000 miles on it after only 19 months of ownership, it deserves a rest too. At this rate it will be at 200,000 miles less than seven years from now. So I am making a small investment in the old 1984 Mercedes 300D to make it into a completely reliable backup car. It is in the shop today for front end work and hopefully a tweak to the vacuum system to make it shift a little smoother. There are a few other small things I’d like to fix on it later, as well.

As elderly as the 300D is, with 166,000 miles on the odometer (and many more undocumented miles since the odometer only turns on cold days), it is now my favorite car to drive. I love the way it has that diesel rattle at idle, the serene ride at cruise, and the relative simplicity of a 1980s car. This is one of the last computer-free cars. Everything in it can be seen and felt, like mechanical objects should be, instead of being controlled by mysterious computers that randomly go bad for no fathomable reason. In a world where my printer, television and the other car have to boot up before they are fully functional, it’s nice to have a car in which the pedals are attached to linkages instead of sensors, where the “nav” feature is a coil-bound map book that always works, and there is no “Check Engine” light.

This shift of gears (and gear) will persist for quite a while, but we do have travel planned here and there. In the meantime, rather than mooning on about my home projects, I’ll try to take the next few weeks to muse and comment on Airstreaming from a stationary perspective.

Nov 28 2010

Adjusting to stationary life

Adjusting from long-term travel to stationary home life is actually more jarring than you might think. In the first few years of owning our house, we underestimated the impact of the switch. The obvious changes are easy. You can see them coming. You’ll have to unpack the RV, clean up the dust in the house, turn on the utilities, etc. It’s the little changes that will catch you by surprise.

On the road, we had necessarily established a working relationship between the three of us. There were certain unwritten rules and expectations, governing things like making room for each other, daily duties, and trip-planning. If you’ve ever seen a submarine movie, you’ve probably noticed how the crew steps aside to make way for the officers during an emergency. A 30-foot travel trailer with three people is similar. You’ve got to make way for the other crew when they need space, and there can’t be arguments among the crew when things go wrong. If the deck is on fire, you want everyone to grab a fire extinguisher and get to work.

The compensation for adhering to this arrangement is a smooth running ship, and an adventure. “The world is our living room,” we used to say. As long as the Airstream moved regularly, we were happy. There was always something new to see, someone new to meet, something interesting to taste or photograph. So an expectation sets in: I’m giving up personal space and the ability to do certain things, in exchange for the fruits of travel.

Coming back to the house, there’s an immediate change. No longer does the scenery change every few days. Gone is the invigoration of the unexpected and novel. Fixed schedules tend to return, responsibilities change, and the enjoyment living small & light is replaced by the burden of a larger home to clean and maintain. And the “unwritten rules” are different. There’s a definite mental gear-shift that has to occur before you can fully settle in.

More subtly, you will usually find that the problems and worries you left behind are still there waiting for you. If the house was too big or too expensive when you left, it still will be when you get back. If your job was unfulfilling, or you didn’t get along with your neighbor, or you were struggling with debt, you’ll find those things waiting for you. This can be a crushing end to a wonderful travel experience, and one which often throws people into a depression.

For this reason, I always counsel would-be full-timers to clean up their lives (finances, relationships, obligations, battles, and other choices) before they launch. If they can’t do that, they should at least use the new perspectives offered by their travel experience as motivation to clean up the lingering issues as they travel, because while they are feeling independent and strong they can often make the tough decisions that need to be made.

I have seen friends use their RVs as escape vehicles to deal with divorce, terminal illness, social problems, death of a spouse, collapse of a business, and financial problems. It’s not fun, but for some people the freedom of travel is a mental boost that helps them deal with the tougher things.

We did not leave many problems on the table when we departed in May, but there’s always something unfinished no matter how together you may think your life is. This time we knew to expect the little shocks of “oh yeah I forgot about that” when we returned, and that made it a little easier. It’s also easier now that we are comfortable with the house. Before, when we spent a tiny fraction of our time here, it was disconcerting to move in and that always put us on edge; a bit like living in an unfamiliar hotel. Now it’s more like home, and it gets more homelike every day. But still, there’s an adjustment period.

One reason that we came back a few days earlier than originally planned was so that we could get through that adjustment period before I had to zoom out again. Today I fly to Louisville KY for the annual RVIA show. All of the RV manufacturers show their new product there, and it’s an important event for Airstream Life. It’s our opportunity to shake hands with our advertisers (past, present, and hopefully future) and look for new business. I don’t like going to Louisville this time of year because the weather is invariably gloomy and chilly with frequent rain. The timing of the show is always right after Thanksgiving too, which means I get to fly crowded planes with coughing people. But it’s a quick sting like getting a vaccination. Once a year, and then I’m free again. You should see my smile as I get back home to the sunshine.

I’ll report from the show this week when I get a chance. Airstream will be introducing their new Eddie Bauer trailer with rear “sport hatch” and probably some other things. I’ve reported every year from RVIA, so if you are wondering what it looks like, check the blog archives for December 2009, 2008, and the Tour of America archives for prior years.

Nov 24 2010

Landed

We’ve landed in Tucson, and thus the Airstream has returned to home base after seven months of travel. It is now tucked away in its carport, getting a well deserved rest after a total voyage of nearly 9,000 towing miles. Likewise, the Mercedes is chillin’, with 14,800 new miles added to its odometer since we left in May.

There are a lot of ways I could measure this trip, but the photo at right shows my favorite. Emma has grown an inch and a quarter, as marked on the door jamb of our Airstream bedroom. By any measure, it has been a good period of growth for all of us.

The last phase of our trip was unremarkable by design. We basically bolted 350 miles from Padre Island to central Texas, where we camped overnight at the Caverns of Sonora’s little campground (W/E, $15). If you are driving through central Texas on I-10, there are few options for overnight stays, and many of them are of the down-and-out variety. So Caverns of Sonora provides a very welcome oasis just about five miles off the highway. The big attraction is of course the exceptionally well-decorated caverns, but Emma thought the peacocks that roam the campground were pretty worthy too.

Our next day was another 350 miles, this time through west Texas and over to Las Cruces. It was a stunningly beautiful fall day in west Texas, with azure blue skies and temperatures of around 78-80 degrees, but with one unfortunate aspect for towing: a strong headwind. Many times I am asked, “Does that Mercedes really pull that big trailer OK?” and the followup question is often “Well, how about in the mountains?” or “Yeah, but wait until you cross the Rockies!” When people say such things I know that they aren’t really experienced at towing, because if they were they’d know that the true challenge of a tow vehicle is not the occasional mountain pass, but the long day spent bucking a 25-knot headwind. That’s when you find out who has the chops.

See, you can almost always get up a hill one way or another. You might have to go slower, or stop to let the engine cool off, but it’s very rare to find a hill so steep that you can’t climb it with any decent tow vehicle. (We have never had an overheating problem with the Mercedes, but we did with the Nissan Armada. The Mercedes does high-elevation climbs much better, mostly because of the torquey turbodiesel, which isn’t affected by the thinner air at altitude.) And hills are generally short. In Colorado you can find a few 6-8% grades that run for eight miles, and in Wyoming there’s the Teton Pass at 10%, but that’s about as bad as it gets.

In contrast, imagine trying to pull a trailer through a strong headwind for 350 miles. That’s a whole different ballgame. If your tow vehicle struggles from lack of power, or your trailer is being tossed around by gusty winds, or if you’re not hitched up properly, you’ll feel that misery for six hours. That makes a 20 minute hill climb in the Rockies look like a happy memory.

You’ll run into that a lot when heading west through the central states. I-90 through South Dakota, I-80 through Nebraska, I-70 through Kansas, I-40 through Oklahoma and Texas, or I-10/20 through Texas. We’ve hit it in all of those locations. The car can do it, and our ride is safe & comfortable, but fuel economy suffers horribly. Sometimes we just stop for the night and try again the next day.

Our headwind on I-10 was pretty stiff. I know because our fuel economy plummeted, from 13.5 MPG the previous day to a dismal 10.3 MPG. Keep in mind that your speed relative to the air (airspeed) is what matters to your fuel economy, not the weight or length of the trailer. If you normally tow at 65 MPH in calm wind conditions, a 25-knot headwind results in drag equivalent to towing at 90 MPH. Because air resistance (drag) increases in proportion to the square of your airspeed, a headwind like that has a massive impact.

In our case, the wind-induced penalty was about 30% of our fuel economy. At one point we were getting just 9.7 MPG, the absolute worst I have ever seen from this vehicle. But in west Texas, the options for stopping overnight are somewhat limited, and it didn’t look like the wind was going to abate much in the coming day. So we plowed on. By the time we reached the brutish traffic of El Paso, the wind had died down and it was relatively smooth sailing up to Las Cruces.

[By the way, the center display in the photo above deserves some explanation. The display shows the distance and travel time since our last fuel stop (87 miles, 1 hour, 25 minutes), our average speed (61 MPH), our fuel economy average since last fuel stop (9.7, ugh), the outside air temp and the cruise control setting (65 MPH). I normally tow a little slower but the speed limit was 80 MPH and I didn’t want to leave a huge differential between us and the rest of the NASCAR traffic. The car tows very nicely in 7th gear at about 2200 RPM at that speed.]

After this expensive day of driving, we decided to cheap out and try parking at the Cracker Barrel again. Actually, we stayed there in the hopes that this one would not catch on fire, thus proving that our experience in Louisiana was a fluke. It didn’t, so we’re in the clear, jinx-wise.

Our final stop before parking the Airstream was the truck wash in Tucson. I was amazed at how much salt and gunk was still on the trailer after our rinse-down in Corpus Christi. Add to that the accumulated bug guts of an 1,100 mile high-speed tow, and you can imagine how the Airstream looked. It deserved a good bath before we put it away, and now it looks shiny and ready for another adventure.

Aug 25 2010

Becalmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aug 21 2010

The birthday card

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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