Nov 22 2010

Transitions

We succumbed to a little bit of “get-there-itis” on Sunday and drove 350 miles west from Corpus Christi to Sonora, TX. As I think about things I need to do at home base, the list gets longer and the vast spaces of west Texas and southern New Mexico start to appear further. It is hard to do much in west Texas with only four days — the distances are so huge that you spend a lot of time just driving from point to point. We have found ourselves in an odd position: four days remaining on our timeline, but just not enough to really do what we’d like to do.

All of the interesting parts of west Texas (the national parks, state parks, historical sites, hiking, etc.) are about 500 miles from home base. New Mexico, of course, is even closer. This means all of those things are within a reasonable distance if we decide to come back during the winter or spring. We’ll probably have less time pressure later, so our decision was to not try to rush through any of the possible western stops, in favor of spending more time on the eastern stops. Austin and Corpus Christi were the limit of our definition of “eastern” for this purpose.

So now we are just heading west at high speed and waiting for inspiration to strike us along the road. At least by covering a lot of miles on Sunday and Monday we will have a little extra time if we do see something that catches our interest on Tuesday or Wednesday: those interesting roadside stops that you see sometimes, the local cafe, the random desert art, or a photo opportunity. I’ll feel better about pausing once we are within 500 miles of Tucson.

Right around this time of year I always have the same revelation. This time it hit me on Friday, as I was walking to Malaquite campground’s cold water showers, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. A camper nearby was playing music outside, some woman crooning “White Christmas.” I had to do a double-take because it seemed so incongruous amidst the sandy dunes, blue skies, and breezy ocean air. Then I realized: Ah, yes, this is late November and Thanksgiving is just a few days away.

The revelation is that I don’t feel depressed. Like a lot of people, I have suffered from seasonal depression, and November has historically been a very tough month for me. Living in the northeast most of my life, suffering the sudden darkness of the annual Daylight Savings Time change and the traditionally grim weather of November has been something that I formerly accepted as normal, along with the feelings of unease and gloom. The recommended solution was anti-depressant pills, which I have never tried because I have found that a big silver twinkie works just fine for me. In other words, before the weather gets cold and the sun disappears, I head south and stay there. That has been my prescription since 2004: Take one Airstream, once daily.

I would not say this will work for everyone, in fact I’m quite sure it won’t. But I enjoy the sensation of the annual revelation in November: Hey, it’s almost Thanksgiving! Why doesn’t it feel like Thanksgiving? Oh yeah — I feel fine — how’d that happen? If you hate winter and you’ve got the flexibility, try chasing 72 degrees down south. I realized a long time ago that I’d rather live in a trailer park in Florida and subsist on a fraction of my salary than live in a mansion in the northeast and feel depressed.

I’m glad I’m feeling strong enough to roll with the punches, because not everything in life goes as you plan. In my case, the new magazine venture I have been working on for over a year is now officially dead. It won’t launch. A combination of bad economic timing (advertisers won’t support it), illness of the appointed Editor (not me), and a distinct lack of manufacturer support sealed the coffin. This little venture has cost me a considerable amount of money and time, so I have reasons to be depressed about it, but I’m really not. I went through so much heartache and angst over the first three years of Airstream Life that I’ve learned not to let setbacks get to me. There were many useful lessons learned, some great new contacts, and a few doors of opportunity remain open even if the primary concept has, as they say about Rolls-Royces, “failed to proceed.”

There are still some other interesting projects on the table — too many, in fact. Alumapalooza 2011 is trucking right along. We have 67 trailers signed up as of today and we expect it to be larger and more exciting than the first one. Brett and I are working on another Alumapalooza-type event for 2011, but it’s too early to release details of that yet. I’ve got a book project about half done that I’m very excited about — it should release in early 2011 if I buckle down in the next month. And I’m busy re-inventing Airstream Life in response to reader comments. We’re adding more photos, more Airstreams, and more brief articles to give a better picture of the Airstream world every issue.

Eleanor and I have been asked a few times recently if we are excited to get back home. We both have mixed feelings about it, really. Home base has its advantages (more space, opportunity to pursue projects, Tucson-area activities, settled lifestyle, Eleanor’s kitchen, etc.), while being in the Airstream of course offers a constantly changing environment, the excitement of exploring new places, and the freedom of a lightweight lifestyle. Both are great. There is a transition period between the two that is always a little awkward, but it gets to be less of a factor each time.

I think we are particularly comfortable with the end of our long voyage because we know we’ll get out again — soon. We already have reservations for a New Year’s trip, and are talking about possible trips in the spring as the southwestern weather warms up. There’s no feeling of being trapped in the house when we can see our escape pod in the carport every day. So the drive we are doing now back to Tucson is not really an “ending” to be upset about, but simply another transition in our long voyage through The Maze.

Nov 19 2010

The big stories of Padre Island

Yesterday I promised a report on Texas brisket, so let me get that out of the way before I tell you some more about Padre Island. We had samples of beef brisket from Louie Mueller’s (Taylor TX), Rudy’s (Austin TX), and Chisholm Trail (Lockhart TX). If you’re not familiar with Texas brisket, it’s slow-cooked beef with heavy spices along the outside, presented in roughly 3/16” slices. The brisket is normally a tougher cut of meat but the barbecue process makes it tender.

For us, Louie Mueller’s won. The beef was evenly marbled, very tender, a little smoky, and the coating of spices was hearty and delicious. Rudy’s was a very close second, and they may have had an unfair disadvantage with us, because we liked their pork ribs so much that they overshadowed their brisket. Chisholm Trail’s brisket was fine too, but the meat was not as tender and we weren’t as in love with the spices.

All of which really proves nothing, because there is no “one” Texas barbecue. Everyone does it a little differently, and it’s all good. I recommend you come over and try it and decide for yourself, since that’s the fun part. We’re bringing home a few pounds of this and that for later enjoyment in Tucson.

We headed over to the Padre Island National Seashore visitor center and learned a little more about the park. Birding is big here, as is primitive camping on the beach, but the big stories seem to be sea turtles and trash. Around here the Kemp’s Ridley turtle is predominant, but endangered. The park releases thousands of hatchling turtles several times a year during the summer, which the public is invited to watch. There’s hope that the turtles can be brought back to the Texas beaches in greater numbers.

But the other big story of Padre Island interferes with that. Because of the shape of the Texas coastline and the currents of the Gulf of Mexico, Padre Island is the Dumpster Of The Gulf. An enormous amount of floating trash ends up on the beach here. It’s mammoth. You can’t walk for fifty feet without encountering a bunch of junk that blew off a boat, or was deliberately dumped at sea.

You’ll see everything: ropes, plastic bottles, plastic bags, shoes, toothbrushes, sealed jars, even 55-gallon drums. The park services gives out free bright yellow bags for anyone to use, and provides dumpsters at every beach access point.

The problem for sea turtles is that plastic bags and bottles look like their favored food source (jellyfish) and so the turtles are getting very sick or dying as a result of trying to eat all the misleading trash floating around. I wonder if the sea turtle numbers can ever fully recover as long as people continue to put their trash in the ocean.

Junior Rangers are required to pick up a bag of trash to complete their badge requirements, so we drove out on the section of beach that serves as road and picked a random spot about a mile down to pause and pick up trash.

We quickly began to appreciate the scope of the problem. Our single bag was filled in a few minutes, and we didn’t even manage to clean up a hundred-foot section of beach. We could easily have filled a half-dozen bags in an hour, if we had them, without even walking far from the car. The drivable beach section of Padre Island is 65 miles long.

Eleanor is now happier that we didn’t camp on the beach. The knowledge of all that trash would have obsessed her. We were all particularly disturbed by the diamond-shaped holes in many of the plastic bottles, which are the signature bite of a sea turtle, so we made a game out of it: whoever found trash that was especially dangerous to sea turtles got more “points.”

If we’d stayed on the beach, we would have spent most of our free time just combing the sand for trash. It’s just not our nature to ignore trash on public lands. But this gave me an idea for an unusual sort of do-good RV rally: why not get a bunch of RV’ers together to camp on Padre Island for a weekend and have a competition to see who can fill the most bags? We’d have some fun too, maybe with a Trash Queen competition? (Imagine the costumes.) I’d do it — and donate a cash prize to the winners as added incentive. We could have fun camping in a rare location while helping out one of our exceptional national parks.

Back in Malaquite campground, there seems to be little excitement about the trash problem. People become inured to it over time, I’m sure. The campground is filled mostly with senior snowbirds in large Class A motorhomes and fifth wheels, which make our 30-foot travel trailer look positively miniscule. They are all staying for as long as possible. There’s a 14-day limit, but you can get around that for departing for 48 hours and then coming back. Since the seniors get a bargain $4 per night camping rate with their Golden Age Pass (age 62+), they don’t have much incentive to move on.

However, I’m not complaining. One of the long-term residents, a surf fisherman, has accumulated a freezer full of fish and is holding one of his semi-annual Friday Fish Fries at 3 p.m. today. We’ve been invited. I’m told that there are 130 pieces of fish to be eaten and if everyone who is invited comes, it amounts to 5 pieces per person. We’ll probably be pushing our mercury limits for the year at this one. I’ll find out what fish it is (some species are safer than others) and see what Emma can have, since kids are more susceptible to mercury than adults.

Ah, mercury, trash, endangered turtles, oil rigs off the coast, and — oh yes — Portuguese Man O’Wars washing up on the shore. This blog is starting to sound like a real bummer. I hate to make Padre Island sound all bad, because it really is very nice. After our trash run we were treated to a flock of pelicans diving for fish at sunset. They put on a fabulous show while the clouds turned pink-purple and the dunes lit up gold. Then a nearly full moon came up with Jupiter (I think) just to the right, and the sky was filled with stars.

It’s nearly winter now, so the evenings are long. Even this far south, by 5:30 it’s pitch-black. We went for a walk around 8:30 to look at the stars, and noticed that some of the oil rigs blink at night. The surf continues to pound away and the breeze keeps blowing the sea air to us. It’s still a nice beach, even if people have messed it up, and with some effort it will be even better as those mistakes are corrected.

Solar report: Maintaining 100% battery in near-winter conditions is difficult. The low sun angle greatly reduces power generation at the panels (my panels don’t tilt). Also, the days are shorter, and that’s a double-whammy: less time to catch the sun; more time with the lights on. Still, we’re doing fine.

We started with 100% battery in Wednesday. Wednesday night we watched a movie on the laptop and had the usual lights and water pump usage. There was no need to heat, so zero furnace time. I left the portable inverter on overnight to charge my cell phone, which increased the parasitic drain overnight (the inverter uses power even after the phone is fully charged).

The net result was that we woke up Thursday morning down by 28.6 amp-hours. Not bad. With full winter sun all day we could have fully recharged but I used the laptop for three hours, and recharged a shaver and a cordless drill battery. So we netted out on Thursday afternoon at -6.9 amp-hours, which is nearly full.

Thursday evening we watched another movie, had the usual water pump and lights on, and at about 5 a.m. I ran the furnace for 20 minutes when the trailer temperature dipped to 58 degrees. That left us this morning (Friday) at -48.0 amp-hours, so we’ve got some catching up to do today. We should come close to being fully recharged, because I’m going to use the public library’s wifi again and so I won’t be requiring power from our batteries for the laptop computer.

Sep 15 2010

Public library drama

For the past couple of days I’ve been working a few hours at a local public library. My cellular Internet connection is rather slow in this town, despite good signal. When that happens I usually spend a few hours working in the Airstream and then go to some wi-fi hotspot for broadband. Public libraries are often good for that, and sometimes even have handy desks with power outlets. You can’t get a hot chai and a muffin like you can at Panera Bread, but on the other hand the library is usually quieter.

The local library here has a ring of wooden desks, five of which have computers, and one empty desk for people like me who bring their own computer. From my spot I have a view of all five other library patrons, and they have a view of me. It’s something like the old fashioned “wagon wheel” parking that they used to do at the Airstream rallies in the 1950s.

This means I have front-row seat for all of the little dramas that play out at the library’s computers. Many of the people who borrow the computers don’t have their own, which means they have painfully little experience and are often flustered. Some ask the library staff for help, which is competently and helpfully given. Other patrons are more demonstrative. A boy who was working at a computer with his father kept running into some sort of problem, and each time his (computer illiterate) father said, “What’s wrong?” the boy responded with statements such as: “This computer sucks,” and “This is crap.” Lovely boy. Although, I do have to admit some sympathy: he was working with Windows.

Shortly after, an amazingly curvaceous woman plopped herself down at a computer and began to act out the definition of “drama queen,” through a series of loud sighs and explosive monosyllables. From the very moment she touched the keyboard she was emoting her deep dissatisfaction with whatever the Internet was delivering, with “HUH??” “UHHHHH” “WOOOOF” “WHA??” and “SHEESH”. Each outburst was accompanied by a quick look around to see if she’d gotten anyone’s attention, and who amongst the other five diligent computer users would dare to look in her direction. At her first Emmy-worthy moment of self-expression, I made the mistake of looking and was rewarded with a look that said, “Come over and solve my life’s problems for me.” It’s the sort of look that guys fall for in bars, and come to regret soon after. I ducked back down to my laptop screen and wished that I was wearing a large wedding ring.

But she was nothing compared to the tweens. By mid-afternoon, the middle school let out, and suddenly every desk was occupied by a 12-year-old girl who desperately needed to view Justin Bieber videos. The one to my left was particularly enamored of Justin, literally grabbing the sleeve of anyone who walked by and exhorting them to watch. “Justin Bieber! He’s so cute. Look!” and then “Justin Bieber — he’s such a good actor.” A minute later, a new victim: “Justin Bieber — he’s going to be on CSI! He’s so cute.” And again to another innocent, “Justin Bieber, he’s such a good actor.” Over and over again she watched Justin’s video clips and repeated her mantra, “He’s so cute. He’s such a good actor,” her eyes misty with the sort of adolescent crush that is driven by hormones and exceptionally bad judgment.

With all these distractions it is very difficult to work. Once one’s concentration is broken, it’s easy to notice the other minor distractions: the “sniffer” who will never blow his nose but just keep snorking up a giant wad of snot over and over; the child who keeps whispering, “Mommy, when are we leaving?” while Mom desperately tries to finish her tasks at the computer; and of course, the cacophony of cell phones.

You see, even though we’re in the library, nobody wants to miss a call. So they leave their phones on. Then, when they get a call they can see the caller ID and … ignore it. So every fifteen minutes or so, another cell phone rings. Of course, this is the era of custom ringtones, so they don’t really ring. What we get is a random sampling of Americana as interpreted by Verizon. It’s interesting to see what people choose as their custom ringtones. I would never have guessed THAT woman as someone who would pick “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones as her ringtone. There are birds chirping, steel drum bands, and a wide assortment of 1980’s pop rock right here in the library, and you never know what tune is coming next.

So there we are, all sitting and diligently typing or clicking, when the latest random sound appears. Somebody in the wagon wheel desperately begins ransacking pockets and purses in an attempt to find the phone, locates the Mute button, and then glances at the Caller ID. “Ah, so it’s him trying to reach me,” they seem to think, and then put the phone away secure in the knowledge that they have screened the call. Their task was more important, so they’ve “won.”

But alas, victory is fleeting, because about half the time the caller knows they’ve been screened, and so … they call again. Not 30 seconds after the first blast of “YMCA” by The Village People, and the resulting guilty look*, it is back. Will the offender turn off the phone this time? Not a chance. Now it gets opened and the stage-whisper conversation begins:

“Hello? … Oh, it’s probably on the back porch … Uh, try the closet …. No, the one by the kitchen … Well, ask Bobby if he moved it … Don’t forget you need to be ready to go to the dentist at 4 … When will you be back? … OK …”

And then, the classic comment, once the conversation begins to wane: “I can’t talk. I’m at the library.”

* TIP: If you secretly love disco and don’t want anyone to know, don’t choose Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” as your ringtone.

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 02 2010

Full-timer: Homeless by another name

One of the fun parts about being Editor of a magazine is that I get to meet all kinds of interesting writers. One of the writers to recently join the Airstream Life team is Becky Blanton, a very interesting person. Becky is a middle-aged single woman and accomplished writer with several awards to her credit, who just happened to become homeless late in life. She has since turned circumstances around again, so that now she is able to live as she pleases, but she chooses to continue as a “homeless” person while she writes for Airstream Life and many other publications.

Becky recently raised the question in a provocative blog entry over at Change.org: When she travels and lives out of her rickety old van, is she “homeless” or is she a “full-timer”? She makes the point that homelessness is an attitude, not a condition, because it is not defined by “living in a van” but rather by choices and status.

This resonated with me because we spent two years “full-timing” in our Airstream with no home or apartment to come back to. The Airstream was our home. We often told people that we were “homeless by choice.” It was less expensive to live in the Airstream than the house we previously owned, but we didn’t move to the Airstream because it was cheap. We wanted to improve our lives. Along the way, we tried to help people understand that having or not having a house is irrelevant, and could even be a detrimental factor, to having a good life.

Homelessness is descriptor that defines nothing. You can be living in a trailer or van and having the dream adventure of your life, or you can be down-and-out and addicted, or anywhere in between. Quality of life is a factor that, barring mental or physical illness, is within our control. After selling our house in Vermont and going on the road in 2005, I realized that I regarded myself as more successful and happier than I had ever been before. Eleanor and I traded the trappings of success for freedom. My startup business, Airstream Life magazine, was not able to pay me a salary for years. Our living quarters encompassed a measly 240 square feet — for three people. So why was I so much happier? As we said many times along the way, “We are paid in lifestyle.”

Coming back to a house, it was obvious that we could easily get caught in any number of house ownership traps again, so we did what we could to avoid it. We bought a small, moderately priced house that could be left empty for months at a time, should we choose to go traveling again. We refused to get into the trap of buying furnishings and other stuff to make it into “house beautiful.” (Our living room is still so empty it looks like a zen garden.) We have fought hard against accumulating “stuff,” especially stuff that doesn’t fit into the Airstream, on the theory that if we can go six months without missing it, we don’t really need it.

Even now, it’s still unclear which is our primary home: the house or the Airstream? But it’s just academic. A stripped-down life on the road brought us back to the things that were really important to us, and now we have a better perspective on the choices that lie ahead. Homelessness — or at least the positive mental attitude about having more with less — can be a factor to improve one’s life, under the right circumstances. Whether you live in a Malibu beach home, or a van down by the river, the bottom line is, “Are you happy?”