I’ve been getting some pushback from faithful readers of this blog, asking why I haven’t been posting frequently.  This is a tough question to answer, but I’ve felt obligated to think it through because writing this blog is part of my regular mental exercise routine.  As a writer, just as with many other things, you’ve got to use it or lose it.

Writing the Tour of America blog for three years, I averaged about 5.5 posts per week, with an average of 600 words per post, which is a lot by any measure.   Over half a million words.  With photos it would be about 1,200 printed pages as a book.   (I’m still wrestling with how to cull the thing down into something printable.)

That was good exercise for a writer, and I had plenty of material in our daily lives as travelers — more, in fact, than I could write about.  There were subtexts and intrigues going on in my business and personal life that extended far beyond the travel adventures, and I deliberately suppressed much of that, because (a) it was too much to write about; (b) we were already feeling exposed by the daily blog; and (c) if I wrote the full story of everything we saw and heard, I would have been tied to a stake and burned by now.

You want the truth?  You can’t handle the truth!

Well, perhaps it wasn’t that dramatic, but at times it felt that way …

And now here we are, living in a house that lacks wheels, where the scenery is more or less static (“Look, there’s snow in the mountains today!”), where we are more obliged than before to actively seek out novelty and entertainment because my personality doesn’t do well with the pleasant stay-at-home and quiet-Sunday-reading-the-newspaper mode of life.  In short, I am a travel junkie in rehab, and the rehab isn’t going too well.

I live for the relapses.  In the past couple of months I’ve managed to slip out a few times, on a massive road trip to Michigan and back (December), to Quartzsite for a weekend, a round-robin through southern California in January, and separate trips in February to Scottsdale for the annual car auctions, and Palm Springs for Modernism Week. Between these excursions we try to find interesting events in Tucson to experience, like the Tucson Rodeo, Day of the Dead, and the Gem Show.

Bloggers are often both journalists and subjects.  They interview themselves more often than they report on the world around, and lately I’ve been finding that my interviews have been rather dull.  Reluctant subjects are the worst kind, because they have interesting things to say but are too shy or intimidated to tell the good stuff.  But my journalist side can’t convince my subject side to let loose with a good story.  Without travel as a regular spur for my thoughts, not much seems to come out.  I am not sure if half my brain has suddenly gotten shy or if there’s really nothing interesting going on in there.

We have filled in the gaps between trips with a regular parade of visitors from the Airstream community.  Having a house and carport with courtesy parking potential means we can “pay forward” the many kind offers of courtesy parking (and dinner, and local tours, and repair assistance, etc.) that we received when we were traveling full-time.  But I have been hesitant to blog their arrivals and departures, because it seems that if they want to publicize where they are, they should probably do it through their own blogs.  And everyone has a blog these days.  So rather than talk about the folks who have appeared here recently, I’ll just link to their blogs and let them tell their own stories:  (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Things will soon pick up again, travel-wise.  It has been an unusually wet and cool winter in Tucson, thanks in part to the El Nino effect that has brought us many storms.  Everyone is expecting an absolutely explosive springtime bloom in the desert, worthy of some trips to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Sierra Vista, and up into our own Santa Catalina mountains.  Bert Gildart called today from his base at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (California) to report that already they are seeing a lot of flowers in the lower Colorado Desert. We should start spotting flowers on the prickly pears here soon, as well as gorgeous red flowers on ocotillo and many others besides.  Once the weather starts to warm up to beach temperatures, we plan to take the Caravel on a family weekend somewhere.

I’m also thinking of inviting the local Tin Can Tourists members to join us for a “vintage camping weekend” somewhere in southern Arizona. No big deal, just a little campout where those who have vintage trailers would be encouraged to bring them.  Of course, anyone who wants to come and have a nice weekend with any trailer would be welcome.  I’ll ping the 4CU members too, since a lot of them live in Arizona.  The dates under consideration are March 26-28, 2010, but we haven’t picked out the spot yet.  If you might want to come, let me know.

I guess I am addicted to the diversity and novelty that travel brings.  Tucson is a great town with lots to do, but getting out and experiencing life beyond is what drives my writing.  So if it get quiet here again, just remember that a slump in the blog means only that we are plotting the next adventure.

Our plan for the day was to go hike out in the desert somewhere, with Alex and Charon.  But along the way we spotted a dejected man walking along the road with his thumb out. He didn’t look like the typical hitchhiker, but rather like someone whose car had broken down along the road and was walking out for help. So we stopped to get the story.

Turned out he was a European living in San Diego, and he’d bought an old Subaru a few weeks before.  He’d decided to take it out into the desert to try driving on the sandy washes and 4WD roads, but he wasn’t very good at it.  He got a mile or two before crashing into a sandstone wall. According to him, the car was “stuck against a wall.”

Getting a tow truck out to this part of the desert and two miles down a 4WD road is not something you want to do.  Not only might it take a few days to get assistance, the cost of the tow could easily exceed the value of a 1998 Subaru.

  We took our car out to the accident site and found the car kissing the stone and sunk into deep sand.  It had a mangled front right fender but otherwise was in good condition. We easily freed the car from the deep sand and took a look at the damage. The engine air filter canister was crushed against the tire, making steering impossible.  The front of the car’s frame was bent, and the fender, bumper, and foglight were a total loss.

The nice thing about working on a wrecked car is that you don’t have to be particularly careful about how you remove parts.  Since my toolbag was back at the Airstream, our tools were a Leatherman and the car’s scissors jack.   It’s amazing what you can do with those two items.  Alex cut away big chunks of the plastic inner wheelwell and together we bent the bumper, fender, and air filter canister out of the way.

The tire was still rubbing at this point, so we swapped the wheel for the temporary “donut” spare, which takes less space in the wheelwell, and — ta-da! — the car was sort of drivable.  Our Dutchman backed the car down the wash a few hundred feet, stalling the engine five times and scraping the undamaged side of the car against sandstone as he went. He wasn’t a very good driver.  When we left, he was consulting his maps to figure out how to drive this wreck back to San Diego without exceeding 50 MPH or turning left.

Now, this episode gives me a chance to talk about desert survival.  By making a few simple mistakes, you can turn a simple problem into a life-threatening emergency.  We saw a lot of those mistakes today.  First off, the driver had a couple gallons of water in the car — smart move.  But when he went hiking two miles through the desert to seek help, he didn’t take the water.  He left it in the car!  Needless to say, it doesn’t do any good there.

Second, he wasn’t aware of his location.  When we found him, he was walking east.  In that direction, it was 25 miles to the first services of any kind.  He never would have made it.  If he had headed west, he would have encountered services in less than five miles, and a group of campers in about two miles.  He had maps with him, but he either didn’t consult them before he set out, or he didn’t understand them.  They were also left in the car.

Third, he disregarded a simple idea: stay with the car. The wash he was in was a popular route, on Sunday of a holiday weekend.  Someone was bound to come by in an hour or two.  In fact, while we were there, two other cars came through the spot.  Any of them could have given him a ride to assistance, which would have been a lot wiser than going for a walk in the wrong direction without water.  The car also would provide shelter from the sun if needed.

Fourth, he was inexperienced and driving alone on a 4WD road. Bad idea.

Fifth, he was off-roading in a Subaru Outback.  I’ve owned a couple of Subarus.  The 1998 Outback has a great All-Wheel Drive system, but only 7.3 inches of ground clearance.  That’s not enough for the kind of deep sand and ruts found on these washes.  The key on that sort of road is not just traction, but high clearance.  We go out with 10.9 inches of ground clearance and there are still a lot of sections I won’t attempt.

Saving this guy’s bacon put us an hour behind schedule, but we still had time to drive out on another 4WD road and enjoy lunch high up on a sandstone ledge. An easy mile-long hike followed, up to the Wind Caves that we like to explore.  I think we had a much better day than the soon-to-be-ex-Subaru owner.

Sadly, this is our last day of R&R.  We’ve got to get on the road Monday, but not heading home yet.  Our travels will continue for at least 4-5 more days.