Dec 22 2011

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!

Nov 22 2011

The skills of our past

Since Emma was born in 2000, it’s obvious that she is a child of the 21st century while her parents are relics of the previous century. We are the old timers who remember when music came on vinyl records, soda cans had dangerous pull-tabs and saccharine sweetener, pay phones were on every corner, smoking was sexy, and — most shocking of all — there was no Google. We have fun from time to time, as I suppose every parent does, telling her tales of the “old days” and exaggerating the realities of life in the 1970s and 1980s.

I think most people tend to concentrate on the thundering advance of new technology and social rules because they can be overwhelming and the pace of change seems to accelerate all the time. But let’s not forget the things we’ve left behind, whether they are a loss or not. Sure, nobody really wants the 1976 Ford Pinto to come back, and there’s very little to recommend a manual typewriter in our increasingly paperless society, but they are still intangible and permanent influences on our view of the world ahead. Our child of the 21st century doesn’t have such baggage. This is her advantage, for the most part. She doesn’t have the benefit of history (yet) but she has the “clean sheet of paper” mind that us more experienced people sometimes must strain to achieve.

One of Emma’s homeschooling books recently reminded me of this. She was supposed to learn something about abbreviations and concepts of written information. As an exercise, the book gave her a “classified ad” to decode, as follows:

NEED EXEC SECY — typ 70 wpm, shthnd, fil. Local ofc of nat’l co. Paid hosp ins, 2 wk vac, top hrly pay. 40 hr wk. Apply 8-5, M-F.

This was of course a simple exercise for Eleanor and I. But keep in mind that our student grew up in the age of the Internet. She was completely baffled. First off, she’s never heard of a “classified ad.” We had to explain that in the old days, people used to pay to have tiny ads inserted in the printed newspaper. This inspired a series of follow-up questions, such as “Why would you pay for that when you can just use Craigslist?”

Once we got past the concept of no Internet and having to pay high rates for three lines of print, we moved on to the ad itself. This proved no better. How could she be expected to decode “EXEC SECY” when the concept of corporate “executives” is rapidly becoming obsolete, and the term “secretary” is so anti-P.C. that it is one step from being a pejorative?

“Typ 70 wpm,” was easier, since typing is the new version of writing, for modern kids. In fact, educational pundits are now decrying the loss of cursive writing skills from our school curriculum. But again, the idea of being tested for typing speed struck Emma as odd. After all, typing is no longer a specialized skill — these days, we’re all supposed to be able to do it. So when would the “executives” need someone else to do it for them? How do they do their own texting and update their Facebook pages if they can’t type? Not being able to type these days is kind of like not being able to dial your own phone numbers. (Oh wait, that “skill” may go away soon too, since we can now just talk to our phones and tell them who we want them to call. How many of you have your spouse’s phone number memorized?)

“shthnd”: I just laughed at that one. I know only two women who can take shorthand: my mother and a lady about her age in Denver named Rhoda. They both are amazing to watch as they effortlessly write beautiful squiggles on paper that mean nothing to me, and yet have a nearly perfect transcription of whatever is being said. It’s nearly a lost skill. I wish I’d learned it because I still take notes in my job, but who teaches it anymore? Even when I went to journalism school in the 1980’s it was no longer taught. Of course Emma had never heard of it.

“fil.”: Filing? What’s that? These days a job ad would be far more likely to ask for someone with database skills. Emma knows what a database is, since we were practicing building rudimentary ones two weeks ago, but I would like to see her face if she were confronted with a room full of file cabinets. I can hear the question now: “Why don’t they scan this into a database and make it searchable on Google?”

“Paid hosp ins.”: Another obsolete concept, but not because we Americans don’t need health insurance — a lot of us just can’t afford it. Hardly any non-governmental or blue chip corporates still offer 100% employer-paid health insurance. I am setting Emma’s expectations appropriately: don’t expect any corporation to take care of your retirement, healthcare, or other personal needs. Take care of yourself.

“2 wk vac, top hrly pay. 40 hr wk. Apply 8-5, M-F”: I have to admit that these are our fault. Emma has never known a time when either of her parents worked outside the home or for any company, and thus the concepts of paid vacation, hourly pay, and strict working hours are foreign to her. Hopefully this will be a plus for her. I believe that 21st century kids will have to be creative, flexible, and entrepreneurial to be successful in America, as many of the recent economic victims of our recession have had to be. Us relics from the previous century were the last of the era of factory workers, taught to show up on time, toe the line, and do the job until the clock says 5. That’s not going to cut it anymore.

The home school curriculum we buy is pretty good, but once in a while it comes up with a real clinker like this classified ad. Fortunately, one of the advantages of home schooling is that we can modify the program as we see fit. It’s also a reminder to me that we need to stay atop the social and technological changes that are bombarding us, for her sake, and think about how they’ll change expectations in the future. We can’t prepare her using only the skills of our past.

Nov 16 2011

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.

Sep 26 2011

Nothing to do … isn’t that great?

I deliberately booked four nights here at Ft Pickens State Park so that we’d have time on our hands to do nothing. A two or three-night visit is always busy; setting up, seeing the local sites, running an errand, making dinner, etc., until the final tear down, which always comes too soon. With four nights I knew we’d have time to visit the downtown, spread out, see most of the state park, and visit the beach … and then have another day with “nothing special” planned. That’s today.

It would be better if today weren’t Monday — the day my phone is most likely to ring and the day I receive the most emails — but the people who really might need to reach me all know better than to expect an immediate response. My motto has always been that there are few true emergencies in a quarterly magazine schedule. Whatever it is, it can wait until Tuesday, when I’ll have lots of time in the car as we tow the Airstream westward along I-10.

Sunday was our day to visit Fort Pickens, which is only a mile from the campground and technically part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore rather than the state park. I think I was last here in 1983, as a senior in college. Pensacola was one of my favorite hangouts, four hours drive from Baton Rouge in my heavy old hand-me-down 1977 Camaro. I loved coming down here and seeing the dazzling white sands and the long empty stretches of dune covered with sea oats, along Santa Rosa Island.

The island has of course changed with the tropical storms and hurricanes that stretch and replenish the island, but Fort Pickens is still the same as I remember. It was fun to show it to Emma and Eleanor, with the ghostly dark passages and dramatic brick arches.

The interpretive museum adjacent to Fort Pickens is currently empty, having been devastated by Hurricane Ike, and so all we saw there was a 25-minute video and the historical buildings that now house the park staff. Nearby on the bay side is a small fishing pier, and further along toward the west end of the island is apparently a popular diving spot. We saw families surf fishing, people zipped past on jetskis and in larger boats, aircraft practicing approaches from the Naval Air Station across the bay, and schools of fish jumping all at once. Yes, it was hot (86 degrees) and humid (don’t ask), but I can see why many people pay the $8 entry free to the National Seashore — there’s so much to do, and the park is beautiful.

More than once we were asked by someone where we came from. To keep things simple, we usually just say “Arizona,” rather than try to explain the complexities of our current tour. Then they say, “Oh, well you’re used to this heat!” or “So this is nothing to you!” I guess they think that Arizonans don’t feel the heat. We do; It’s just that we don’t stand around in the direct sun for long when it’s 108 degrees, even if it is only 6% humidity. Since we were out walking in the sun most of the day, we had broken out the same gear (clothing & sunscreen) that we’d wear in Tucson in June. When it came time for our picnic lunch, we chose a fine spot in the shade of a grove of Live Oak trees.

Afternoons like this were made for the beach, or perhaps the quartz-white sand of Florida’s panhandle were made for hot days. The sand never gets too hot for bare feet, and it squeaks as you walk on it. The water was crystal clear and bathtub-warm. The water’s edge at first seems sterile, with few shells to collect, but when Emma and I waded out we made some little fish friends, who circled us curiously and seemed to be wondering if we might be carrying a bit of seaweed that they could nibble off. Tiny schools of fish wandered by, and there were occasionally clear jellies with pinkish edges floating by (all dead for reasons unknown to us) many of which were hosting cute little scavenger fish taking their lunch from the tentacles. We were three of perhaps 20 people spread out over a half-mile of beach. There was nothing to do but make sand castles and play in the water …

Having learned from prior nights, we wrapped up at the beach an hour before sunset so that we never saw a mosquito. That left plenty of time to rinse off in the campground showers and enjoy a moment of coolness. We were lucky last night; our neighbors’ charcoal fire was carried off in a different direction by the wind, so we finally got that blissful evening of fresh breezes in the trailer while Eleanor made a fine dinner for all.

That brings us to today, the Monday that we will pretend is Sunday, part 2. We have no plans. We may go somewhere, we may not. Looking ahead on the travel schedule I see many long days of driving and absolutely no beach time, so this is our last chance to soak up la dolce far niente and we will make the most of it, or perhaps more accurately, the least of it.

Sep 04 2011

Last tasks in Vermont

We’re getting serious about gearing up for travel now. The Airstream has been stored all summer in the most unfavorable conditions: exposed to sun, rain, falling tree branches and leaves, in a humid environment, and used essentially as a giant storage locker. It is our joint mission to turn it back into a habitable travel trailer in the next 48 hours.

It’s always best to work from the top down, so I started with the roof disaster. The debris was so thick that the first step was to get on the roof with a broom and sweep away most of the accumulated branches and leaves. It was pretty nasty up there with older leaves that have composted and filled every possible corner and crevice — worse than I remember from the previous year. I think an extra layer of tree bits landed in the past week thanks to Irene.

Then I got into the detail work, using only water and a soft brush. I never use soap on the roof because there’s too much chance of slipping off. Working outward from the centerline is most efficient, as things tend to wash down to the sides.

It took quite a while to clean up the detail spots, like beneath the TV antenna, under the solar panels, the upper gutter of the awning, and around the refrigerator vent. The work would go faster if I wasn’t working on a wet sloped roof with numerous delicate obstacles (like plastic roof vents) and hardly any open space to stand. I recommend extreme caution if you ever do this.

The rear solar panel was so obscured by tannin from decaying leaves (far more gunk than you can see in the top picture) that I had to spend several minutes scrubbing it. A small amount of brown stain on the glass can have a large impact on electrical generation capacity.

Once the roof was done, I gave the rest of the trailer a conventional wash. I got the bulk of it with a telescoping brush and Eleanor followed up with a plastic scrubber, cleaning up the details. Even after our efforts, the trailer will win no prizes in a Concours d’Elegance but at least it is no longer embarrassing. If I have time today, I’ll also wax the front dome, as that seems to make it easier to clean off squashed bugs later.

Getting ready to go is obviously important. (I spotted a tree turning color yesterday — a warning sign from Mother Nature that the cold weather is coming.) But we’ve got other important things we must do before we leave, including eating birthday cake.

We missed the normal time to celebrate my birthday (in mid-August), because I was in Tucson. Being of a certain age, I am not really all that hung up on birthdays, but for some reason my birthday is a well-attended event every year. I am pretty sure that the entire family takes an interest in my birthday primarily because Eleanor always makes a special cake with butter-cream frosting, and each year the cake is different. Usually a few weeks or months prior, I dream up a rough idea and then Eleanor figures out the details.

The cake this year stems from the fact that I am an admitted and unrepentant maple fiend. There is no ten-step program for people like me and if there were, I wouldn’t follow it. The Addison County Fair (held in August) is my annual maple pig-out, but again, I was in Tucson and missed it this year. You have no idea what a serious loss that was to me. The Fair has an entire building dedicated to all things maple. Maple frosted donuts, maple milk, maple creemees (“soft serve” to the rest of you), maple milkshakes, maple bread, maple candies, and this year they added some sort of baked confection that had walnuts on top. Having been entirely deprived of all these goodies in maple-free Tucson, I requested a maple-walnut cake for my late birthday celebration.

So Eleanor did some research and has developed her own recipe, which starts from scratch. Some of it is roughly based on an Italian cream cake recipe that we got from (believe it or not) our insurance company USAA some years ago, but at this point Eleanor has modified it so much that it is truly her own. The cake contains about $30 of ingredients, as real maple sugar and such things are rather expensive, but as I often point out to anyone who will listen, I’m worth it.

The cake, which you can see here during construction, is not only maple-flavored batter with fine-chopped walnuts, but between layers contains a whipped chocolate ganache with maple flavor. (If you’ve never tried maple and chocolate together, you need to. I can recommend the maple crunch chocolates from Lake Champlain Chocolates as a source for aspiring addicts.)

The final layer is a maple butter-cream frosting that literally melts in your mouth, leaving a buttery coating and a strong desire for more. So we’re looking at triple maple cake with walnuts and chocolate ganache. Talk about decadence … there will be no leftovers.

There are a few other rituals that we must complete before departing. Last night, for example, the humidity and temperature rose and so I was finally motivated to go jump in the lake. Lake Champlain is running a bit cooler than normal, due to all the rain and storminess (which stirs up cold bottom water). It’s a “refreshing” lake at the best of times, usually peaking around 68 degrees, and I think yesterday it was a few degrees cooler than that. But this is what I grew up on, and I’m used to it. On a sticky afternoon it’s just right — a thrillingly icy splash as you dunk under for the first time, and then in just a few minutes your body core is cooled down and it feels like no amount of heat and humidity will ever bother you again. Emma and I got in and played a few splashing games.

With that, another summer tradition has been accomplished. Only a few things left to do. It looks like we’ll be ready to hit the road by Tuesday.

Birthday menu:

lobster ravioli with an orange saffron cream sauce
mushroom ravioli with browned butter & sage sauce
grilled asparagus with lemon & parmesan shavings
endive, mushroom, & artichoke salad with mustard & white wine vinaigrette
maple walnut cream cake

Orange Saffron Cream Sauce for Seafood Pasta

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 thinly sliced strips of unsmoked bacon, most fat removed, cut into 1/4″ dice
1 small shallot, minced
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
zest and juice of 1 orange (preferably Minneola Tangelo or Blood Orange)
saffron threads (about 6, crumbled)
12 ounces light cream
freshly ground black pepper
kosher salt

Preparation:

add saffron to cream & set aside.

heat oil in saute pan.

add bacon, cook until crisp & brown. remove bacon from pan.

add minced shallot to same pan. stir until coated with grease from pan.

add butter & stir until foaming subsides.

add about two thirds of the orange zest & cook until shallot is soft & translucent.

deglaze pan with orange juice; reduce to a thin layer.

whisk in saffron cream in two separate additions, allowing all ingredients in pan to be completely incorporated after each.

simmer – do not boil – and reduce until lightly thickened, whisking constantly.

add pepper, whisk & taste. add salt if needed.

*pour over cooked, hot, lobster ravioli. sprinkle cooked bacon and remaining zest over top and serve.