Nov 22 2009

The pecan harvest

One things leads to another in a most interesting way, if you care to think of things that way.

Follow me on this, if you can. It all started a week ago, when I fixed up my old beater bicycle so that I could go for rides around Tucson. Yesterday I hopped on that bike and took my first substantial bike ride in many years. Tucson has a very nice multi-use paved trail along the Rillito River, 11 miles in each direction, which I happily rode to the very end.

The trail ends abruptly at railroad tracks. I stopped to rest and drink water, while watching the long freight trains scream by. An older man was walking along the tracks with his dog, and we started talking. He’s retired, but volunteers extensively and writes Christian novels. I heard about the time his dog was bitten by a rattlesnake (a distinctive fang scar still on his snout), and the places they walked together.

He pointed out a grove of pecan trees across the tracks, on the east side of Interstate 10, in which he often walked. The pecan grove is owned by a local gravel company, but as long as he stayed clear of the gravel pits and helped keep the orchard clean of trash, they let him walk his dog there. “The pecans are ripe now,” he told me. “You may as well go pick them before they all rot.”

So this morning Emma and I drove over and found the trees. We had never been in a pecan grove before, so it was mostly for the novelty of picking pecans that we went. With Emma on my shoulders, it was easy to pick a partial bag of pecans in fat green husks. We took just enough to have a small batch to eat, since at the time we weren’t sure of the proper procedure for cleaning or roasting them.

Pecan husks split nicely along a natural segmentation into quarters. We proudly took our bag home and demonstrated for Eleanor how to husk them. And then we realized something: pecan husks stain your fingers dark brown. Permanently.

I have probably the worst-looking fingers in the family because I shucked more pecans than anyone, but all of us have degrees of stained fingers now. Nothing removes the stain because it penetrates the skin, like a henna tattoo.

Normally I would find this amusing and nothing more, but it just happens that next week I am scheduled to attend a major RV industry conference. I’m going to shake hands with our current and future clients — or at least, I would if they would want to touch me. I may have to walk around with my hands behind my back, like Prince Charles, although body language experts say this is viewed as untrustworthy. Well, is it better to look like I haven’t washed my hands since I mucked out the stalls?

I suppose I could have a t-shirt imprinted that says, “Pecan Farmer.” Or I could look on the bright side of this: now I’m less likely to catch a cold while I’m up in the frozen north on the business trip. Or I could wear gloves and pretend I’m afraid of germs — or just unfathomably fashionable.

Apparently abrasive cleaners can have some effect, eventually. So, having fixed up my bicycle last week means that I’ll be scrubbing the skin off my fingers every day this week. And that’s how one thing led to another.

Oct 21 2009

Home life didn’t last long …

We’ve been in the house for nearly a week. Time to hit the road!

I’m serious. We haven’t even unpacked the Airstream from our four month odyssey this summer, and we’ve already found a reason to take off again. On Sunday I was doing what suburbanites do all over the USA: reading the Sunday paper. (In my case, it was mostly for the novelty of it, since I haven’t read a Sunday paper in about a year.) And there it was — an ad for the Copperstate Fly-In,the fourth-largest fly-in event in the USA.

To appreciate how that hit me, you need to know that I was for several years a card-carrying member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and the Experimental Aircraft Association. In those heady days B.K. (Before Kid) when we had disposable income from two well-paying jobs, we owned an airplane which we flew all over the east coast. My mother, father, and one older brother all have pilot’s licenses.

In the era B.K. my brother and I flew to major aviation events including EAA’s Oshkosh, the world’s biggest fly-in, and camped next to the airplane in a tent along with 13,000 other aircraft. My brother and I also flew to the 2nd largest fly-in event, Sun-n-Fun, in central Florida, and camped there too.

The third largest fly-in is the Arlington Fly-In, held up in the northwest. I haven’t made it to that one yet. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the fourth largest fly-in is held only about 80 miles from our home, right here in southern Arizona, this week!

It seems like the perfect diversion from sedentary suburban life. The weather in southern Arizona is ideal right now, and it’s a shame to spend the time cooped up in the office. I think Eleanor is not in a hurry to settle into housewife mode either. All I had to do was mention the existence of Copperstate, and she was immediately on board.

Hey, what’s not to like? Dry RV camping for ten bucks a night, right by the action. Aerial demonstrations, rides, exhibits, and all kinds of aircraft. We’ll see warbirds, ultralights, historic aircraft, plenty of home-built aircraft, helicopters, and who know what else. When the action slows down, I can return to the Airstream to do some work, take a nap, have lunch — or we can drive a short distance to Tempe and Scottsdale for some retail action. (We’ve got a few things on our list at REI, IKEA, and other places up there.)

One of the really great parts about camping at a fly-in is that you can always hear the sound of engines coming and going, all kinds of different engines. Old rotaries radials on the antique fabric bi-planes, pistons on the modern single-engine craft, turbines on the big boys, little 2-strokes on the ultralights, and lots of variants. Pilots love aircraft noise. It is part of the fun of being on the field. I remember one damp morning, very early, at Oshkosh when we were overflown by a low-altitude diamond formation of WW II bombers. I’ll never forget it. The sound was so thunderous and menacing that we all were shaken from a sound sleep and rolled out of our tents thinking (in our half-awake state) that we were going to die. It was great.

So I hope for a few exciting moments like that, this week. Feeling the ground shake as 50-year-old warbirds fly over gives you a tiny taste of the fear of war. In that moment when the bombers passed by, I suddenly knew the terror and helplessness that people must have felt in Europe when the machines of World War II visited them. I think that’s an experience that would be good for anyone, to have perspective on what it means to go to war.

And during the rest of the time, I hope Copperstate causes us to meet some local aviation folks, and maybe a few RV’ers. I’d like to explore the possibility of getting back into aviation in the next few years. It would be fun to do a little flying again, perhaps in an ultralight like we used to do in Vermont.

So now we are re-packing the Airstream. Since we took very little out of it, our re-packing efforts are more about removing things than loading up. Eleanor has unloaded some heavy items like Emma’s schoolbooks and her sewing machine, and we’ve taken out the things that we were transporting from Vermont. We’ve filled the fresh water tank and defrosted the refrigerator. Tomorrow I’ll toss my office bag back in there and hitch up. That should do it.

Still, I’m keeping a lot of stuff in the trailer that, strictly speaking, we don’t need for a three day trip. I can justify this because it’s more trouble that it’s worth to remove those things, but the real reason is that I want to leave the option open to extend the trip. What if we suddenly get the brainstorm to keep wandering, say, up to Roosevelt Lake for a few days? It would be a drag if we couldn’t only because we left some piece of equipment behind. So we are packed as if we are going out indefinitely. I doubt we will stay out more than three days, but anything could happen …

Oct 18 2009

Unwanted guests

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled program of home life in Tucson, AZ. We are back at winter home base, 12,000 miles and four months after departing Tucson at the beginning of summer.

The Airstream is tucked into its bay and connected to water, sewer, and electric. We’ll be clearing out half of the stuff in it, partly to clear space for future guests who will stay there, partly because we need those things in the house (like my office equipment, Emma’s books, and Eleanor’s sewing machine). A summer full of gifts, treasures, and miscellany needs to come out, be sorted, and dealt with, and we’ll do that over the next couple of weeks.

As we planned, the house was ready for us when we returned. Everything we needed was still in place, so our first night back was a matter of moving some food and the computers. I needed only to turn on the air conditioning (it was well into the 90s when we arrived), light the water heater, and plug in the Internet modem — ta-da! — instant home. Clean sheets on the beds, fridge already cooled down thanks to our wonderful neighbor, and …. uh … what are these tiny black pellets in the kitchen drawer? And hey, look, they’re in here too.

In fact, they were all over the house, concentrated in the kitchen and bathrooms. Rodent droppings. Looks like we had a visitor or two while we were gone. That meant a serious program of cleaning for two days. Hantavirus is a possibility in Arizona, and we don’t want it. Good thing we left very little food in the house (and it was all sealed tightly). The critters ate part of some scented soap in Emma’s bathroom, chewed holes in a bag of soup mix, and not much else. I doubt they were here for long, since there was no water available.

But finding unwanted guests was the worst thing about coming back. We were greeted enthusiastically by all of our great neighbors within minutes of showing up, and that made a huge difference. You can pull in after a long trip feeling tired, hungry, grumpy, and stressed about all the unpacking work that has to be done, but with a few people who are happy to see you waiting by, it all feels much better. Carol swept the dust off our front doorstep, Mike had some of our recent mail, Tom received a book for us that came last week via UPS, and Kevin was keeping an eye on everything with his trusty peacekeeper in reserve. Frank and Joanie swung by within an hour to say “welcome.” You can’t beat neighbors like we’ve got.

Oh, sure, there are a few weeds in the backyard, but I’ll deal with those once the heat ends. No rush. Right now we need to give ourselves time to make the adjustment again, from 200 highly mobile square feet to 2,000 completely stationary square feet. It’s harder than you might think. Everything changes, from daily habits to traffic patterns. What you do each day changes. The places you go, the things you think about, what you buy at the store, the clothes you wear …It’s a shock to the human system, like switching from a life as a suit-bound Wall Street executive to a Red Cross workers in Ethiopia. We’re all adjustable but still, big life changes take time to absorb.

Speaking of rodents, we have a few others in the back yard. Pocket gophers have apparently been a long-time feature of this particular property, at least according to one neighbor. Over the past two years, as I have carried on my campaign to eradicate the invasive grass, they have flourished under my neglect. Now the backyard is riddled with mounds and holes. They even pop their little furry brown heads up during the daytime and toss dirt into the air.

I have a destination in mind for those gophers and it’s not Disneyland. I had thought that there was no need to remove them until we got more serious about making our backyard something other than the wasteland it is at present, but now I’m re-considering. In the meantime, they are providing a useful service. They have burrowed under our composting bin (it has no bottom) and tunneled through our rotting vegetables. This introduces air and soil into the compost mix, which speeds decay. I looked in the bin and found that everything we left in there last winter had decomposed, except for a few late items that simply dessicated before they could break down. It’s “gopher-assisted composting,” a new concept that may be more palatable than vermiculture. I’ll re-start the pile with some water and fresh greens.

Useful or not, a supply of traps seems to be in order. Anyone who potentially carries hantavirus is not welcome to inhabit our house or our silver guest house in the carport. We would prefer that visitors coming to Tucson this winter be capable of walking on two legs and using the bathroom rather than our kitchen drawers for their ablutions. It’s not a lot to ask, is it?

Aug 03 2009

Wedding by the lake

The past week has been entirely focused on the Big Event of the year: my oldest brother Steve, at the ripe age of 50, has finally gotten married. The shock notwithstanding, our energies have been directed to doing what we can to make sure the wedding came off as well as it possibly could.

This was a small, very personal, and low-budget event, so we all had a role to play. My job was as wedding photographer. My qualifications for this were ownership of two Nikon cameras and a willingness to take the blame if the pictures were awful. This was a bigger risk that you might think, since I’m accustomed to shooting Airstreams and having time to pose people inside them. A wedding is a dynamic and challenging event, and the lighting was difficult to say the least. We had a big bright lake in the background, harsh sun & sharp shadows, and the sun was setting right behind the ceremony site (backlighting the couple terribly). I compensated for my inexperience by shooting madly, taking about 100 photos of the preparations and 700 photos of the wedding day. I think about 200 are worth keeping.

Three different women told me that I wouldn’t get good photos of them because they weren’t photogenic. I’ve found that as a photographer, the best response to this comment is that “I make everyone look great — don’t worry.” Then they relax when you come by with the camera later. Of course, all three women turned up in shot after shot looking absolutely perfect.

Eleanor had the bigger job, however. She volunteered as caterer. For months she and Carolyn have been going over menu ideas, and as they did so, the guest list grew from 20 to 25 to 33 “plus leftovers.” She cooked for “40”, just to be safe, but you need to understand that Eleanor’s portioning usually allows for 2-3 times the actual guest count. Nobody goes hungry at one of her events. Thus, we had food for about 80 people. Two days later, we’re all still eating it, which is not a bad thing since it was all terrific.

I’d post the menu but it’s almost too long. One person could never even sample all the stuff on the buffet table, much less eat a full portion. There were sandwiches, cheese platters, hummus with pine nuts, skewers of marinated chicken and spiced shrimp, champagne grapes and raspberries, compound salads of wild rice and barley, and tons of other stuff. In the photo you can see her preparing fresh figs with a vinaigrette sauce and goat cheese — always a crowd-pleaser.

Because the bride requested a “fresh” menu, all cold dishes and predominantly vegetarian, Eleanor and I spent about 10 hours preparing vegetables and meats on Friday, and then Eleanor spent another four hours or so making sauces and handling details. She got up again at 7 a.m. on Saturday to spend another eight or nine hours at it before the guests arrived. I was on hand to wash dishes, carry things up and down to the basement refrigerator, chop things, and generally lend a hand where I could, but she did the really heavy work. It was an enormous job, and yet it was great for Eleanor to have the chance to flex her culinary muscles and make a lot of people happy.

Emma’s job was ring-bearer, and to deliver a short reading during the ceremony. She read a selection from A.A. Milne’s “Now We Are Six” about Winnie-the-Pooh, and did a great job. The book she practiced on was mine when I was her age. I wonder if, now that she’s been introduced to Milne’s poetry, she will read the rest of the book?

Of course, the Airstream had a role as well. We had volunteered to get it out of the driveway before the wedding, to free up parking space, but Carolyn wouldn’t hear of it. She arrived after having her hair done and used the Airstream as her dressing room. So the picture at right is the first moment when anyone saw her, ready to get married. Now our Airstream has a small piece in family history too.

I like small, personal weddings. There are more decisions to make when you act non-traditionally, but the result is very gratifying. Everything suited everyone there: the comfortable clothing, the music (as the bride walked across the lawn, we heard Iz’s version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow,”) the food, the ceremony, and the lakeside setting. There’s also a lot of risk in trying to hold an event on the shores of Lake Champlain because of the changeable weather, but as you can tell from the photos it was perfect for a memorable day.

The best part of a good party is when it doesn’t end. About half the guests pitched tents on the lawn and spent the night. It was sort of like having an Airstream rally. One of the friends fired up a grill and made egg & cheese muffins for everyone in the morning (flavored with maple syrup, of course, since this is Vermont), and then we sat around in the Adirondack chairs while a few gifts were opened. I don’t think anyone left before noon, even though it started to rain. You know you’ve done it right when people don’t want to leave.

Now the wedding is behind us, and the leftovers are nearly eaten, and I’ve culled down the 700 photos to fit on CD’s for people who couldn’t be here. We’ve got to start thinking about the next events coming up. The Addison County Fair and the WBCCI Region 1 Rally will both start this week. Next week is the Vintage Trailer Jam. We are going to all three events. August has started with a bang and it looks like it will continue in the same festive vein for quite a while.

May 08 2009

Hot and dry

We are here in Tucson, far beyond the normal window of snowbird activity, because I wanted to stay and get a taste of Tucson’s heat after a cool winter. Our Airstream travels will not resume until June. In the weeks between now and departure, there lie at least 15 days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.

All the other snowbirds flew the coop in April. The RV parks are decimated, and the service centers are quiet. Nobody wants to be here when “the ice breaks up in the Santa Cruz River,” which is local slang for the first day of 100+ degrees. That event usually occurs in May. (The idea of ice in the Santa Cruz River is particularly ironic, since for most of its length through Tucson the river appears to be a dry wash, containing no visible water at all.)

But I did want to be here for the heat. Unlike most people, I like it, at least when it’s the famous dry heat of the southwest. We started reaching the upper 90s about a week ago and for the past three days we have flirted with 100 every day — reaching 99.5 in the shade of our back patio this afternoon at 4 p.m. But although the weather service has claimed an official temperature of 100 today, I won’t say the ice of the Santa Cruz has broken yet, at least not according to the Luhr Standard Temperature Gauge.

It’s not nearly as unbearable as it sounds. The mornings are gorgeous, running in the mid-60s. We get up at 6 a.m. or so (even a shade doesn’t fully stop the sun from screaming in our eastern bedroom window), and open all the windows wide to catch the cool morning air and the sounds of the birds. By 8 a.m. it has reached 72-75 degrees and we shut the windows again, and await the mid-day when the central air conditioner kicks on to keep the house at 79. By then, the outside temperatures are well into the upper 80s, and the searing heat of the afternoon lies in wait.

We have learned self-defense techniques, of course. Anything to be done outside, such as planting or bicycling, gets done in the early morning. We never go out without a bottle of water, sunglasses and a very breathable broad sun hat. I am wearing super-cool white shirts most days. The black seats of the car are never scorching since the car sleeps in the shade of the carport, and there is nowhere it can go in the afternoon that isn’t air conditioned. Beating the heat, it turns out, is much easier than beating the cold of a New England winter — and we don’t have to shovel the sunshine out of the way before leaving the house.

Heat, of course, is energy. We are gradually finding that the energy is useful in ways that most people ignore. I’d like to have solar electric panels on the roof of the house, as we do on the Airstream, but that project will have to wait until 2010. In the meantime, the house came with an old-fashioned clothesline, and Eleanor has discovered that it does an impressive job of drying towels, which saves the energy the dryer would consume. The trick is to get them off the line before too long. She put a set of towels out there today and they came back not only dry, but rather crispy. The combination of dry air, sunshine, and heat puts the gas dryer to shame.

Tonight we are grilling salmon on the little Weber. The salmon was frozen solid, but Eleanor simply tossed it out on the weeds of our back yard (still sealed tightly in the original plastic package) and in about 30 minutes Emma flipped it. Less than an hour later, the fish was perfectly defrosted. I brushed the weed debris off the package and put it in the refrigerator. Much longer and it would probably have started to cook. Who needs a microwave when you’ve got Arizona sunshine?

The other aspect of our current climate is that this is the dry season. I mean d-r-y, like Easterners have never experienced. As I write this, the relative humidity is 6%, which is not unusual at all. Hydration of humans and plants is the key to survival, so we (and most people who live here) keep a water bottle within reach at all times. Eleanor has discovered that tomatoes left on the counter in a breathable package here will not go rotten, but they will slowly dehydrate. While they were gone I found a pack of tiny “grape” tomatoes that had been here for who-knows-how-long, and they were still perfectly edible. A bit wrinkled, but tasty — almost like sun-dried tomatoes. Apparently, we live in a food dehyrator.

Of course, the amusement of extraordinary heat would be lost if not for the miracle of central air conditioning. We’ve never used our air for more than a few weeks, since we are not normally here for much of the warm season. A setback thermostat and judicious use of natural air for morning cooling will help, but I’m still not looking forward to May’s electric bill. If we were here in the summer I’m sure we would encounter sticker shock, but we’re just summer poseurs — we won’t be here for the long slog.

In fact, we might soon encounter the opposite conditions. Last June in Vermont we had several days that were cold enough to require furnace during the daytime, with cruel humidity. So Eleanor has gotten to work on protecting our catalytic heater, with a custom cover. Catalytic heaters can be killed by dust, and we travel to dusty places all the time. Today she sewed up this neat cover, which is secured to the heater with little magnetic strips. It comes off in a second and goes back on just as easily, with the magnets holding it tight during travel. Perfect! (click the photos for larger views)

Perhaps in a month I’ll be eager to escape the heat, but probably not. I am sure I will be pining for the dry air later this summer. There is something about life in the desert that appeals to me. The heat isn’t just an obstacle, it’s an interesting aspect of being here. It is the reason that we have lizards in the bougainvillea, and all sorts of other fascinating life. We’ll absorb the heat while we can, in case we encounter a cool and rainy summer again in the northeast.