Man In The Maze

by Rich Luhr, Editor of Airstream Life magazine

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Oh, The Thinks You Can Think!

(Apologies to the good Doctor Seuss for ripping off his title)

The good part of things being quiet lately is having time to think.  So I strapped on my cap and fired up the thinker, and one of the things I thought about last week was that my office is a disaster area.

I don’t mean where I work at home.  I have a space rental office in town that is primarily a warehouse for old magazines and our store items.  It is a windowless box in an office building that I hardly ever visit.  My capable associates, David and Hannah, drop in a few times each week to fulfill store orders (mostly Newbies books these days) and mail out back issues, and other than that the place is empty.  I go there once a week to pick up checks and mail. The mail is usually a note from a subscriber (enclosed with their renewal check) that tells me how much they love Airstreaming or Airstream Life magazine.

So when I’m feeling a little down from working too much or a rough day, I can drive a few miles to the office and get a little morale boost in the form of something to deposit in the bank and an “atta boy” or two from a fellow Airstreamer.  There have been days that my entire perspective has been changed by just a single $24 check with a nice handwritten note paper-clipped to it.  I do love my subscribers, they’re such positive and fun people.

But lately the office itself has been looking a little shabby.  Since we are all just dropping in for a few minutes, nobody really takes ownership of it.  We handle a lot of paper in there, which means little scraps get all over the carpet, dust accumulates quickly, and flattened cardboard boxes nearly fill the place every few months.  I scheduled Hannah last week for a couple of hours to join me in what will likely be our annual cleaning event.  I brought the vacuum cleaner and cold drinks, Hannah brought the moral fortitude that comes with being in her 20s.

The big problem in the office is that we had an abundance of certain old issues of Airstream Life magazine.  Back in the early days I was required to buy 5,000 copies from the printer as a minimum.  Of course back then I didn’t have anywhere near 5,000 subscribers, and it was a massive financial strain to pay for those copies and then figure out how to sell them.  I donated a lot of copies to rallies to get the word out, distributed them for free to Airstream dealers, and worked hard to sell them as back issues.   For the most part this was successful.  In later years, when we finally exceeded 5,000 subscribers, I was able to order more precisely and so these days we have very few leftovers.

Part of the office cleanup job was to inventory what’s left.  We have no copies of issues published before #6 (Fall 2005), and no more than 200 copies of any other issue (far fewer in most cases).  Out of 29 issues published to date, 20 of them are still available in very limited quantities.

I’ve decided I want to clear out the back issues.  The IKEA “Expedit” storage unit I use in the office is full and it’s time to make space.  So here’s a bit of self-promotion. Airstream Life back issues are going on sale for the first time ever.  Single copies are still $8 apiece.  But if you want every back issue of Airstream Life we have in stock, they are now 40% off when purchased as a set.  In other words, all 20 remaining back issues — the equivalent of five years of Airstream Life — are just $96 plus shipping.  And when they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

I can’t take credit for this idea, because the thinking was really done by David.  I invited him to join me last night for a pizza and he rewarded me with a little brainstorm of ideas, of which this was only one.  (I think that makes dinner tax-deductible, too. I should have paid with the company credit card.) It’s a small thing but I’ve learned that the small things matter in a small business.  Do enough small things right and pretty soon it adds up.  Cleaning the office led to a pizza-fueled discussion, which led to a good idea.  I made things neater, got fed, had a nice chat and now we can sell the last of the back issues.  If every day went that way, I’d be a pretty lucky guy.

Darn you, Puritans!

Eleanor and I managed one more roadtrip, a short one up to the Phoenix area for a little “this and that”: browsing, a little shopping, a late night cruise in Scottsdale, dinner out and a night in a resort.  But that’s it.  She’s got to head back to Vermont so that our child will remember that she has actual parents.

No, I’m just kidding about that last part.  Eleanor will head back, but Emma is becoming as independent as an 11-year-old should.  We have stayed in touch via video chat and phone calls, and it’s obvious she gets along just fine without us.  Her grandparents have done a great job of keeping up with her schedule of play dates, sailing, and summer art classes.  When I called yesterday I was told that Emma was down at the beach making s’mores and was therefore unavailable to speak to her father.

That’s quite a change from the days when we were living in the Airstream, roaming around the continent but rarely far from each other.  People speculated that she would grow up “needy” or improperly “socialized” as a result of our extreme togetherness, which is of course utter nonsense.  Why do people think that being close to your children or parents is a bad thing?  (Little wonder that as a society we treat the elderly with disdain.)

I speculate that it is an old outgrowth of Puritanical beliefs, right along with the idea that we should be ashamed of our bodies.  In any case, the result speaks for itself: the kid is comfortable in her skin, and while she misses Mom & Dad, she’s pretty happy with the other loving members of her family.

Not so easy for me, however.  When I’m alone for weeks at a time I don’t have the support system of the family around me, and it’s a big adjustment.  It’s far too easy to spend the day inside the house, in front of the computer, and not seeing another living soul all day.  That’s a trap.  Pretty soon you can turn into a Howard Hughes-like caricature, savings toenail clippings in a jar and growing a long beard.

I was watching a National Geographic program about Solitary Confinement (in prison) and the inmates were describing what happens to them after too much time alone.  They talked about the need for human contact, and the paranoid thoughts that start to overcome them.  Psychiatrists chimed in: solitary makes you start to feel aggressive toward your jailers, even if you weren’t violent before.  That must explain why I forgot to water the citrus before Eleanor arrived; I was lashing out at the greenery.

I now pity the telephone company guy who is scheduled to come here to look at my DSL line.  If I don’t get out to the mall to walk around and see some humans (OK, mostly teenagers, but that’s as close to humans as I can find in a mall environment), the telephone guy’s life could be in danger.  And he’s a nice guy, “Tom,” who has visited here often because every summer my DSL starts getting wonky.  (I’m on my third replacement DSL modem and I have all the Qwest service guys mobile phone numbers now.)

Of course, my jail cell is not enforced by the penal system, it’s self-imposed.  It’s another darned Puritanical leftover, the moral imperative to do work.  Once in a while I break free of that social boundary and play hooky around town, but it’s difficult for me.  No kidding.  I’ve been self-employed for 18 years and wound so tight about getting the job done that it’s hard to let go even when there’s really not much work to be done.  Today is a good example: the Fall issue is in the hands of the printer.  This post-production period is a classic “quiet time” for the magazine, or rather a “calm before the storm,” because until the issue hits the mail the phone will hardly ring, my email Inbox will be oddly empty, and I won’t be under major pressure to work on the next issue for a few weeks.  So by all rights I should be having fun.

I learned this lesson a long time ago.  I used to be a “consultant,” which meant nobody was looking over my shoulder and I didn’t get a regular paycheck.  So  I worked really hard when there was work to be done, and when there wasn’t I was usually trying to play rainmaker so that there would be work again soon.  On those occasions when I felt like I had done all I could do for a while, I blew off to do something, anything, absolutely guilt-free because I’d earned it.

When I was publishing the magazine and working (2005-2008) the Airstream made it easy.  We’d park it in a place where Internet and phone worked well, until the work was done, then relocate to some nearby National Park and go hiking for a few days in a cellular “cone of silence.”  Usually that meant a short drive, and there we’d be, all together with our home and ready to go exploring.

It’s a bit harder now, with the Airstream up in Vermont, me in Arizona, my other Airstream stranded in Texas, and no tow vehicle handy.  I am quite tempted to pack up the tent this weekend and go somewhere in the cool mountains where the forest hasn’t been scorched in this summer’s fires.  What I’d really like to do is get some Airstream friends to drop in for a few days, but nobody wants to come to the desert in the summertime.  (Wimps.)  Hey, I’ve got 30-amp power in the carport to run air conditioners, so what’s there to be afraid of?

Now you know why I was so desperate to find a backup tow vehicle earlier this summer.  The idea was to launch out to Texas and recover the Caravel, and make a big trip out of it, complete with the comfort of air conditioning.  Alas, now I’m short on time.  I did finally find the car I wanted — it’s the car I sold, the Mercedes 300D.  I should have kept it and put a hitch on it.  Another one in even better condition has popped up locally and I could buy it, but I’d really like to get that Miata sold first.  Any 1980s-era Mercedes, no matter how nice, is going to suck up a bit of money before it’s fully sorted out and ready for long trips.

So I’m sitting tight for now, and looking at the tent… and my laptop.  Sooner or later either the Puritans will win out, or the Airstream-inspired wanderlust will.

 

 

Fall 2011 cover tests

Every quarter one of the hardest jobs I face is choosing the cover of the next magazine.  But I’m not complaining, because it’s also one of the most fun jobs.  For the past few years I have usually had several contenders competing for the cover, and that’s a lot better than the early days of the magazine when finding a cover usually meant a last-minute scramble to find something — anything — that would fit.

It works better now because I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating relationships with artists and photographers who have interesting pictures, and also because the magazine is better known today.  Often a painter or illustrator will come out of the woodwork with a really cool image and suggest it for Airstream Life.  In the past few years the magazine has been honored to feature artists Bob Brugger, Steve Gray, Taralee Guild, Eli Clark, Brad Cornelius, Michael Depraida, and Michael Lambert, plus photographer Alison Turner.  And who can forget the wonderful “Tiki Airstream” painted by Doug Horne on our Summer 2008 issue?

The flip side of having a lot of possible images is that the decision process can be excruciating.  Again, don’t feel sorry for me, feel sorry for the people who really wanted to be on the cover but didn’t make the cut.  I hate having to give people bad news about their photo or picture.  Usually the reason we pass on an image has nothing to do with the quality of the image, but rather that it just didn’t work in the context of the cover.

The current issue provided an excellent example of that conundrum.  I wanted to feature photography this time, because we’ve got a piece in the magazine with some of Alison Turner’s photos from Alumapalooza.  She did a nice job capturing people (and often, their dogs) in the field with their Airstreams.  The article in the magazine will show eight of the “characters” she photographed, with captions.

I saw three or four images (out of over 200 submitted) that I thought might be cover-worthy, and eventually narrowed the choices down to two.  An Airstream Life cover has to be bold and visually interesting at a minimum.  We almost always have Airstreams in the image (a successful exception was our Spring 2005 cover, if you remember that one).  An ideal cover is evocative, or implies a story, although I’m certainly happy with images that just excite you.

Sometimes the excitement comes from seeing a beautiful image of an Airstream in a fantastic setting, like Michael Lambert’s painting of his polished trailer at the Blue Swallow Motel sign (along Rt 66), which was featured on our Fall 2009 issue.  Sometimes it is pure fantasy like the tiki Airstream above, or Brad Cornelius’ great “butterfly” logo for Alumapalooza (Spring 2010).

This time I wanted to go for realism, since this issue is dedicated to the people of the Airstream community.  Alison’s photos provided a great opportunity.  The two photos that I ultimately chose were of Kirk MacKellar, and of Rhonda Coleman.  Kirk is a good friend to Alumapalooza, who has supported us by making signs and other useful items.  He has a 1967 Caravel that he has outfitted to become a “NASA Airstream” complete with decals, a stand-up cardboard spaceman, an “APOLLO” license plate, and other fun stuff.  Rhonda is a blogger and occasional contributor to Airstream Life.

Alison captured Kirk standing on the bumper of his trailer looking skyward (to the moon, one presumes).  I thought this would be an awesome shot for the cover, and so did Lisa my Art Director, and Alison.  But because we’ve been down this road before, just to be safe, I submitted Rhonda’s picture as a backup.

The image above shows Kirk’s cover test.   You can see why it didn’t work; Kirk’s head is scraping the logo and the whole line of his body looks awkward in the cover space.  Lisa cropped the bottom edge of the image in an attempt to make it work, but that just caused the image to lose some of its impact — now you can’t see that he’s standing on the bumper.  Shrinking it would be problematic, because we’d have to clone in the edges of the Airstream (fakery) or run some sort of cheezy border around the edge, which I won’t do.  So, reluctantly, we passed on this image.

In the past we have cloned in bits of sky or foreground to make a landscape (wide) image into a portrait (tall) one.  But when we do that we always get the permission of the artist first, and they get to approve the final result.  We did this for Summer 2008, Fall 2010, and one or two others. I don’t like to do it but sometimes it’s the difference between having an awesome cover or not. In the case of the current issue, we had the backup image, and it tested very well.  So Rhonda gets the cover, and Alison wins either way since she took both photos.

Kirk, by the way, took the loss with good humor, commenting it wasn’t his “first brush with sexism.”  I do have to admit Rhonda looks pretty good on the cover, and I hope that when it comes out in August, you’ll agree.

Changes and rationalizations

It’s a good thing I wasn’t born earlier in the Industrial Age.  I might have ended up as a factory worker, and I’m not good at doing the same thing repeatedly.  My tendency is to take on a challenge, master it as best I can (which may or may not be very well), then move on to something new.  It’s that same aspect of personality that makes traveling and exploring new places a necessary part of my mental diet.

Occasionally this personality trait becomes a problem.  Case in point: I have been producing Airstream Life magazine for nearly eight years.  Prior to this, my longest employment at anything was about five years.  I definitely have a sort of seven year itch that means it’s time to move on to new challenges.  In the past year or so, the itch of self doubt has crept up my sleeve like a little spider, telling me that it is becoming time to find someone to take over as Editor.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the spider is reaching my neck and it is becoming less ignorable.  Today I found myself wrestling to focus on the laptop yet again to finalize articles and make editorial decisions I should have made weeks ago.  My email Inbox, normally kept lean as a result of compulsive housekeeping and fast response time, is filled with unevaluated writer queries and article drafts for future issues. For me, failing to deal with the routine tasks is a sign of burnout.

Well, there was no chance of finding someone to do my work today, so I put my head down and got serious about dealing with the unresolved questions and unedited articles for the Fall 2011 issue.  Of course, there were no really insurmountable issues, just a series of tough decisions and thoughtful editing processes that had to be done, and once I got into it the work began to fly by as it always does when I’m in the groove.  By 1 p.m., after about six hours of fairly intense work, the Inbox was halfway cleared out and I had three more articles uploaded to the FTP site and ready for layout.  Suddenly things weren’t so bad, and I found myself thinking that I don’t really need an Editor — just a little less procrastination.

At that point I had to bail out of the office, because it was time to get into another long-dreaded task: the eye exam.  I don’t normally mind eye exams, but this one was special because I knew I would be prescribed progressive lenses for the first time.  I suppose I am lucky to have held out to my current age (my AARP card is only a couple of years away, despite the common misconception that I am much younger – it must be the juvenile behavior).  But that doesn’t make it any easier to suffer the indignities of day-long dilated pupils, and having to learn how to compensate for lost peripheral vision by turning my head as if I am an owl.  Now with the new lenses I can see the wrinkles on the backs of my hands, and I can’t see the cars in the sideview mirrors.  Yes, now I can read the menu in a dim restaurant again, but somehow it doesn’t seem like a great leap forward.

In comments on my prior blog entry, I was asked why I’m not planning to tow the Caravel with the old Mercedes 300D.  I suppose it is time to confess: I sold it.  I know I said I would keep it “forever,” but then a guy from Connecticut showed up desperately seeking a rust-free 300D, and he made an offer I couldn’t refuse.  The car and I didn’t have a pre-nup, and I had already stored it for the hot summer, so I took the cash on the rationalization that (a) I wouldn’t miss the car for several months; and (b) if I kept it much longer I’d probably dump another $2k into perfecting it.  Selling it was a way to save me from myself.

But now of course, I’m wondering if that was the brightest move, since I’m here in Arizona, the Caravel is in Texas, and I have no way to get it back.  So I’m on the hunt for a new part-time tow vehicle. I want something fun to drive, since the vast majority of the time the car will be unhitched.  (Please don’t suggest any form of truck, SUV, or full-size car — I don’t regard those as “fun to drive.) The final choice will undoubtedly be something most people would never choose, require custom engineering, and be entirely safe for towing the Caravel despite appearances.  It might be vintage or modern.  It will likely be a convertible (but not the Miata) or two-door sports coupe.  I’m having fun with it.

I thought I had no theme when I started writing tonight, but now I see I do.  It’s all about change.  Some of it is forced on me (eyeglasses) but most of it is my own doing.  There are some core elements of life you never want to change because they are the basis for one’s security and self-confidence, but the rest is all small stuff.  It’s just a car.  It’s just a job.  I don’t ever want the fear of change to be ruling factor in my life.  You can’t avoid it anyway.  I’ll take the good and the bad and trust that somehow it will all work out more to the good, in the end.

 

Delta Lake State Park, Rome NY

Every time we make this trip there’s a moment when we arrive in a heavily shaded forest of deciduous trees, replete with buzzing mosquitoes and the smell of green things growing, and I think, “Well, we’re really back now.”  All the time up to that moment I’ve been able to disregard the gradual encroachment of the little cues that we are entering the northern forests, but inevitably there’s a day when the Airstream is camped amidst the leaves and grass and suddenly it hits me.  Dorothy, we’re not in Arizona any more.

It’s not a bad thing.  It’s sort of a novelty after living in the desert for a while, so I like listening to the birds of the boreal forest and watching the dragonflies dance over the ponds.  But like the first snow, or the first crocus of spring, it’s a symbol of big change.

This moment happened today, when we pulled into Delta Lake State Park near Rome, in central New York.  Our campsite is in a wooded area next to a calm blue lake.  It’s so shady here that we needed to turn on lights in the trailer several hours before sunset.  (Reminds me a bit of those days camped in the redwoods back in 2006.)  We are on the edge of the large Adirondack Park that overlays most of northeast New York state, which means we are within a few hours drive of our destination.

We seem to be a long way from where we started today, in downtown Toronto, battling against commuter traffic.  We zipped past Niagara Falls, grabbed the Airstream from Darien Lake, and have trundled down the New York State Thruway to end up here.  We could have easily made Vermont this evening, but there was no rush and so we have taken the opportunity to have one last night on the road. We’ll take a few hours to pause here and there as we pass through the Adirondack Park tomorrow, and then the Airstream will be parked for the next three months.

But fear not:  parked the Airstream may be, but adventures await nonetheless.  I have to get back down south next week, and there are many interesting things on the agenda.  Among them is the task of recovering the Caravel from north Texas, a logistical challenge that has yet to be resolved since my tow vehicle will be in Vermont.  (And of course, long-time blog readers will remember Temporary Bachelor Man — he’s coming back shortly.  Things will likely get gritty.)  There are other travels planned, too.  The change that I feel today marks the transition to an interesting summer.