Jul 26 2009

Tent camping in New Hampshire

Last summer when we were in Vermont I editorialized about the advantages of taking along a tent and associated gear in the Airstream. I recognize that many people bought their RVs specifically to avoid sleeping on the ground in a tent, but I still have fond memories of many backpacking trips in the northeast. So once in a while I do like to get out of the trailer and into a tent.

For me, tenting is a more realistic camping experience. Our Airstream has all the comforts of home, and we can live in it indefinitely. The tent has hardly any comforts beyond very basic shelter and a place to sleep. This is part of the attraction: it’s a way to really “get away from it all.” How can you get away from it all if you bring it all with you. A few days of deprivation makes a person more grateful for what they have.

It’s also a great way to force a change in perspective. The tent requires setup, and careful procedures to avoid a night of mosquitoes, condensation, or discomfort. The bathroom is a hike away, either in a primitive pit toilet or off in the woods somewhere. Meals are en plein air whether it is raining or not. You have to toss out all your assumptions about the benefits of modern life and figure out basic survival; This task occupies your thoughts so thoroughly that the trivialities of work and the fine points of personal hygiene become distant secondary concerns.

This description is probably horrifying to 99% of the people who are reading this. That’s OK. If you remember tent camping, perhaps as a Boy or Girl Scout, you probably have a few wonderful stories about things that happened to you. Maybe you’ve got a bear-in-the-campground story, or one about the leaky tent, or getting lost in the woods. As traumatic as those events may have been at the time, you probably also recognize that your life would not be as rich as it could be without them.

Adam and Susan instigated a tent camping trip for me last week. They (rather rashly) accepted an invitation from our mutual friend Bert Gildart to join him in hiking Alaska’s famous Chilkoot Trail. This is about 30 miles of historic trail from the Gold Rush period, which Bert intends to document for his future magazine articles. Adam and Susan, admitted tenderfoots, bought all the necessary gear for five days of backpacking in Alaska’s wilderness but haven’t had a chance to actually use it. Given that their adventure with Bert is looming, it seemed wise to at least tent camp a few days beforehand.

They invited me to help them along their learning curve. I chose the White Mountains region of New Hampshire for the trip. Up by Crawford Notch there are numerous little campgrounds in the White Mountains National Forest, all near great wilderness hikes in the green and dense boreal forest. Of course, the very moment I arrived and began to set up my tent, a light rain began and continued nearly uninterrupted for the next 24 hours. (Rain is virtually a given when tent camping in the northeast.)

We were planning to hike to several waterfalls in the area. There are dozens in the White Mountains, and many of them can be reached in a mile or two of trail. A little rain wasn’t going to stop us, but alas, I had made a serious mistake when packing, by forgetting my rain jacket. A black plastic trash bag was pressed into service. I cut three holes in it (for head and arms) and off we went, sloshing up the muddy trails and spotting a total of four waterfalls in our first half-day of hiking. The garbage bag look is not the most attractive or impressive, but when you’re in the middle of the forest in a rainstorm, it works just fine.

That evening the rain abated just long enough for us to fire up the camp stoves and make some dinner, and then resumed with more force for the rest of the night. The new tent was perfectly dry and I spent the evening in complete comfort, reading a novel by the light of my headlamp. I think that is my favorite moment of every tent camping trip: after a strenuous day of hiking, relaxing in the shelter with a warm sleeping bag, listening to the sounds of the outdoors (in this case, rain), reading or talking, with absolutely nowhere to go and no chance of being interrupted by a phone call.

Our next day was marked by more rain and steady temperatures in the mid-60s, but I had noticed a worthwhile compensation. There weren’t any mosquitoes. In July, to be hiking in the northern forest without any DEET on my skin, and not once hearing the skin-crawling whine of a hungry female mosquito about to bite, is simply unbelievable. I can’t recall a trip in the northeast I’ve ever taken when I wasn’t doused in bug spray, and yet on this trip conditions were absolutely mosquito-free. It was glorious.

We hiked from the Ripley Falls trailhead all the way to Arethusa Falls, and then took a side trip on the Frankenstein Cliff trail, and back, for a total of 7.6 miles. The trail was occasionally steep, narrow, and brushy, but our intent was really to just get a good hike done while Susan and Adam carried full packs — this was their practice run for 8-mile days on the Chilkoot. All went as you’d expect. We came out with pantlegs and boots coated in mud, and feeling a bit sweaty from the humid air.

Since we had accomplished our hiking goal for the day, and the rain had finally stopped, and it was still only about 1:30, we took the afternoon “off” and rolled around in the car to check out some of the White Mountain tourist attractions. Mount Washington was experiencing its 15th day in a row of 100-foot visibility at the peak, so we skipped the opportunity to drive to the top. North Conway was flooded with summertime tourists, so we headed down there to get a celebratory chai and sit on the sidewalk watching the people go by.

Now, you have to recall at this point that we had hiked about 12 miles in total over the previous day, and we all pretty much looked like it. There were no showers at the campground. In fact, the only running water available to us came out of a hand-actuated pump. Now here we were sitting in a sidewalk cafe on display to the browsing public. North Conway is one of those places where you can get away with the rumpled, muddy, “hiker look,” because it is an outpost in the midst of the White Mountains, which are dominated by hikers. (I did slip into a public bathroom with a travel-size bottle of shampoo and do a very quick hair wash. I have a certain amount of experience at this from days of yore, so I can complete the job in a sink in less than two minutes. I have many of the skills required to be homeless, should the situation arise.)

After the chai was gone and our downtown stroll was completed, we headed off to another scenic point a few miles away. Susan asked if I wanted to take my camera, and it was at that moment that I looked in the car and realized it was gone.

…. Yes, gone. Backpack, camera, lens, filter, everything.

It took only a minute for me to figure out what had happened. At the end of the hike, I put the bag down on the ground near the car, and then drove away without it. So it had been sitting on the ground at the Ripley Falls trailhead parking lot for five hours. And the trailhead was 30 miles from our present location.

Well, that was a long and quiet drive for the three of us, during which time I attempted to (a) remain calm, and (b) tally up the value of all the gear I’d just lost. It came to $1,800. But there was one comfort along the way, which was that we were in New Hampshire, and I had left the backpack at a trailhead. Hikers have a natural respect for other people, and other people’s property. I’ve never heard of anyone ever losing anything left in their tent. Trailhead break-ins are a plague at many other spots, but those are usually the work of non-hikers coming to plunder the vehicles of visitors.

Sure enough, we drove up to the dirt parking lot and someone had propped up my backpack by the trailhead post where everyone could see it. The backpack, containing a new Nikon D90 camera, a Nikkor 18-200mm lens, a polarizing filter, and my food and Camelbak, was absolutely unmolested after five hours of being left out in the open. Hikers are great people.

I slept well in my snug tent that night. Despite rain and potential financial disaster, everything worked out just fine. Tent camping gave me two days without the complexities of life, and reminded me of the things I take for granted back at home. Before we’d even broken camp, we were talking about the next time we’ll do this. There’s a chance we’ll get out again in the tents in late August, before the Airstream starts heading west. I certainly hope so.

Jul 18 2009

What we’ll do for summer “vacation”

Most people go off for summer vacation, but for me it’s the busiest time of the year. In the winter there’s not a lot of Airstream activity going on, except on the west coast and in Florida, and we usually have large periods of time during which neither business or social obligation intrudes. That’s when we stretch out and have time to ourselves, but in the summer it’s usually go-go-go with rallies and travel.

Not only that, but we have persisted in the habit of getting some of the routine annual jobs done here in Vermont. Our cars are registered here, since we aren’t actually legal residents of any other state yet, and so that means state inspections must be obtained every summer. Our dentist is here, a guy that is so likable and reasonable that we can’t seem to fathom the thought of finding someone in Arizona to replace him. Emma takes two weeks of swim classes here every summer. We still have a PO Box here, which still fills with mail despite two years of attempts to get people to stop using it. My table saw and some parts of our Caravel are here, so there are projects to be completed as well.

This all makes summer in Vermont a little less idyllic than it would seem. “We spend our summers in Vermont” suggests a scene from On Golden Pond (filmed in New Hampshire, but most people don’t know the difference) with a rustic camp and boathouse on a still water lake. We would rise at 6 a.m. to watch the fog burn off the shallow water and listen to the early morning birds, while cupping a hot chocolate or coffee and wearing camp clothes. Then we’d retrieve the water melon from its icy cold spot in the fresh water spring, pack a picnic basket, and tromp off into the woods to spot deer, or perhaps putter around the lake in our 1930s wood boat.

Reality is quite different. We are near a lake, yes, but parked in a 2005 Airstream in the gravel driveway. I do often rise early, but yesterday it was to get some work done before I went to the dentist to get an old crown replaced. My picnic for the day was a protein shake in the car on the way to do errands, carefully slurped to avoid drooling while the novocaine wore off. Our antique motor vehicle is not a romantic 1930s boat but rather the 1983 Honda Accord that we keep up here as our cheap runabout. My brother does have a Glastron GT150 painted in gold glitter, which qualifies as an antique boat, but somehow I can’t picture it puttering around anywhere without a vision of Roger Moore driving it (in Live and Let Die). I suppose “summer in Vermont” has changed in the 21st century.

The other reason I am not relaxing much is because we have the Vintage Trailer Jam coming up in just a few weeks. We were finally able to post the preliminary schedule online today, and it looks good, but many details remain to be nailed down. If you are considering coming, better book your spot soon. We’re almost out of electric spaces. In about a week we’ll need to estimate the final headcount for the caterer and registration will probably close by Aug 7 (after that you can come as a walk-in but you’ll get a non-electric site).

Perhaps later in August things will quiet down, but by then it will be time to start thinking about our departure. I am planning to head out in September. It remains to be seen if the rest of my crew is onboard with that plan. After a summer full of rallies, classes, appointments, errands, and county fairs, I hope they will be sated and ready for a change of scene. Maybe we’ll go somewhere where we have absolutely nothing to do. That sounds pretty good to me.

Jul 01 2009

Getting what I need from Milwaukee

As I implied yesterday, it was with a certain reluctance that I parked the Airstream here at the Fairgrounds. In an ideal world I’d be parked in some spectacular beauty spot — with the benefits of Internet and telephone connectivity. But travel is fraught with variables, and you can’t always get what you want. (But if you try sometimes you get what you need.)

In this case what I need is a solid two or three days of wholly uninterrupted work time, plus rock-solid Internet access. It’s crunch time for me because I managed to confuse June 1 with July 1. July 1 is when I thought I was supposed to get all of the articles and photos over to Lisa “The Blonde” Art Director. Well, guess who was The Blonde this time? June 1 was the true deadline, and I didn’t realize my mistake until June 15 when Lisa pinged me about the delay.

I should probably be mad at the guy who set the deadline in the first place, but that’s me. (The problem with not having employees is that you’ve got nobody to blame for screwups.) Of course, by June 15 I was already on the road and traveling too fast to really get intense work done, especially the type of work that finalizing a magazine issue requires. I need days of complete freedom from distractions, plus it helps to have lots of working space, food & drink readily at hand, and a blatant disregard for personal hygiene.

Fortunately, we’ve been through this before during our full-timing days, and Eleanor knows what to do, namely get out of the way. I gave her the advance warning over the weekend, and she was able to plan some days out with Emma and Brett so that I could spread out and concentrate. Tuesday they went to all kinds of interesting places around Milwaukee, including the mandatory custard shop, while I sat at the dinette in my pajamas and banged out emails, edited articles, researched fine points, chased down photos, paid bills, scanned documents, and generally caught up on business. At 5 p.m. they came back and found that in the course of the day I hadn’t moved much. Brett’s greeting to me was, “You’re still in your pajamas?”

Well, nobody said making a magazine was pretty. It’s probably right up there with law and sausage in terms of “processes you don’t really want to watch.” But it’s also very gratifying when it finally comes together. We’ve got some great articles, a beautiful cover, a couple of new authors, and even some new ads. It’s not done yet, but with a few more days of focused effort I should be over the worst of it.

In that respect, being in a moderately ugly campsite is not so bad. Yes, the view out my window is gray skies, damp asphalt, RVs, a highway, and poles of every possible type, but the inspiration I need to get this job done comes from within anyway. This is like final exam time. There’s nothing for it but to get in and wade through the information until the job is done.

For those of you who are sticklers for detail, I will acknowledge that today is in fact July 1, and so by rights I should have had this job done today in any case. There’s the advantage of not having any employees. There’s nobody to complain about it except Lisa, who is a contractor and knows I’ll fire her if she bugs me. (Not really, but I let her think that.) Deadlines in the magazine world are rather frangible, at least internally. We try to hold advertisers and contributors to deadlines because otherwise there’s anarchy, but it has been known to happen that an internal deadline slips a few days, especially around International Rally time.

While I’m doing this work, it’s interesting to note how far the weather has changed since last week. We were suffering intense heat and humidity with brilliant sunshine, and now we have temperatures in the mid-60s and dank gray skies. Eleanor and I had to go digging under the bed for the cool-weather clothes that we packed to wear in the Pacific Northwest this fall. Where are my full-length socks? Where are the long-sleeved shirts? We are packed for virtually any form of weather that can occur in three seasons, but some of that apparel is well-buried beneath layers, like fossils under sedimentary rock. It was a 20-minute exercise to locate a pair of pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and socks that rise above the ankle.

I take this turn in the weather as a good sign. It’s telling me to keep at the job, because there’s no temptation to go outside. My virtual world is far more comfortable today than the real world of Milwaukee. But we are here, and there are things I want to see, so once the workload settles down I will join the rest of the crew outside and explore some of what Milwaukee has to offer. Perhaps if I try, I can get what I want and what I need.

May 02 2009

Travel by motorcar

Today Eleanor and Emma return home. For me, this is spectacular news, since they’ve been gone 11 days and I’ve missed them. Of course, it would have been even better if they had returned yesterday, when they were scheduled to fly back. But airlines and airports and thunderstorms in Newark collaborated in that way they do, so that instead of flying back, they spent four hours in the Burlington, VT airport idling. After several changes of departure time because of traffic control delays in Newark, the final straw came when it was announced that the Dehavilland Dash-8 turboprop had a flat tire.

As Dad always says, “Time to spare, go by air!” Jet travel is convenient, but there are times when I’d rather hitchhike across the USA than go to the airport. Fortunately, I have an Airstream, and that’s waaaaay better than hitchhiking.

For us, travel by Airstream has been a relatively recent discovery. We only started in 2003 (and I was so inspired by it that five months later I quit my job and started Airstream Life magazine). The joy of slower travel in our own rolling home was a revelation, which literally changed our lives. But the principles underlying why it is so much better are nothing new. Travelers have roamed Europe for hundreds of years in rolling caravans, of which the horse-drawn gypsy vardo is but one example.

Within a short time after the arrival of motorcars, people discovered that they also provided a great travel experience. What was more logical than to take a motorcar and a vardo, and put the two together? Everyone who travels by RV (whether motorhome, travel trailer, or pop-up) is participating in a great tradition that goes back hundreds of years. And believe it or not, the excitement you feel and the convenience you enjoy in your modern RV today have been identically enjoyed by many generations before you.

Want proof? Check these quotes from the book “Motoring Abroad,” by Frank Presbrey, published in 1908. (Google books excerpt here.

“There is a great advantage in traveling by motor car abroad. One is not a slave to exacting time tables. There is no dyspepsia-breeding nervousness over this or that annoyance of travel by railway; there are no hurried meals, no hustling porters. The car-window views which you have of the country when riding in a train are exchanged for a wide view on all sides.

“One of the particular delights of touring in an automobile is that one may indulge to the fullest extent in what might be termed haphazard decisions. Sudden whims to change the route or to visit this place or that may be indulged without the annoyance of exchanging or redeeming railway tickets. If you happen to be passing through some little village that strikes your fancy, or chance to come across an inn which looks particularly inviting, you do not have to ask the conductor for a stop-over check, nor hurry to the luggage van to get your luggage out. You may stop at will and start at will.

“If there is anything which robs a trip of much of its pleasure it is a slavery to an itinerary and a time table. To go and come at one’s own sweet will is productive of far more pleasure, rest and enjoyment than to follow some one’s else [sic] itinerary, whether it is the ‘man from Cook’s,’ the man who makes the railway time tables, or the man who drives a stage coach.

“We made our entire trip, from start to finish, without definite plans for more than a day or two in advance, and even these we frequently changed on the impulse of the moment.”

Well, that sounds just like most of my reports from the old Tour of America blog. We spent three years looking out the window and traveling with very few definite plans. I think Mr. Presbrey would like traveling by RV if he were around today.

Of course, he might have different expectations in some departments. On p. 276-6, he makes this observation:

“Unless the owner intends to drive the car himself it is best to take over with him his own chauffeur. He can be sent over in the second cabin on the same steamer with the car.”

OK, so perhaps the experience today isn’t exactly the same …

Mar 13 2009

Geeked out

I’ve been silent this past week (at least on the blog) because I’ve been immersed in a new computer. As you might guess, in my line of work I spend a lot of time punching the keys of my laptop. It’s the most important business tool I have, and every four or five years — just after I’ve gotten the current computer completely tweaked the way I want it — I buy a new one.

The latest new computer has been overdue. I have been running Airstream Life on a Mac Powerbook that I bought in 2004, and although it has been a durable and trusty machine, lately I’ve been feeling the pinch of obsolescence in little ways. Like my daughter’s clothes as she grows, the sleeves of the old Powerbook were beginning to look a little short

The new MacBook Pro that I bought to replace it will ease a few technological stresses. For example, my collection of photos (now over 100 gigabytes) had long ago outgrown the computer’s hard drive and was spread out over three external drives. The new computer can easily handle the entire catalog on its internal drive. iPhoto, the Apple “consumer” software I had been using to manage the catalog, is now replaced by the much more capable professional software called Aperture. Now I can manage my entire photo collection and get it organized the way I always wanted it to be.

The keyboard on the old Powerbook has been replaced once already, as my constant typing seems to erode the key caps to unreadability. I am hoping the new computer’s keys are more durable, but I’m not very optimistic. The last three computers I have owned have gone to their graves with worn-out keys. Someday perhaps computer designers will come up with a more durable plastic.

The old Powerbook has a dent near the power connector (a souvenir of a drop in Tampa’s airport) that makes the connection a little flakey. It is missing one of its four feet, so it wobbles a little in use. Two or three of the case’s screws have worked out and disappeared forever. The computer shows all the signs of a machine that has been in full-time service for years, but it still ticks along just fine, so I’ve dragged my feet on replacing it until last weekend.

The new MacBook Pro is a beautiful thing, if you’re the sort that gets misty over computer hardware. I must admit that I am. I’d rather have a slick new laptop than a shiny new car. I spend a lot more time with my laptop than I spend in the car. Actually, I spend more time with my laptop than I do my wife. She’s gone to bed, but me and my digital mistress are still up spending quality time together. So having a computer I can respect in the morning is really important to me, and perhaps that explains why — once every four or five years — I’ll spring for the big bucks required to buy a top-of-the-line Apple Mac.

One of the justifications for the upgrade is security. I’ve always been very aware that the loss of my computer could be devastating, so I have long had a program of backups, and secondary backups, in case that should happen. I keep an external hard drive with me when we travel in the Airstream and back up the critical data at least weekly. A secondary backup sits in a fireproof safe in an off-site location. But my old computer was so maxed out on disk space that it was a real challenge keeping all my sensitive data together, and secure. And with the airline travel I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been reminded that there are many ways that I could have a data security problem.

Let’s run through a typical scenario, and you’ll see what I mean. I take the laptop on a business trip, and while waiting for my flight, use the free wifi network provided at Tucson International Airport. Anyone can join that wireless network, and with easily obtained software, they can “sniff” the signals my computer is sending across the network. By doing so, they can steal my secret passwords, account numbers, and other information. A hacker can also observe the email messages I send and receive while I’m on that network.

Did you know that if you enter the US with a laptop or any other electronic device, the Customs and Border Patrol folks can take it without any justification, examine it, copy the data, and keep it indefinitely? It doesn’t happen often, but I can’t imagine anyone who would be happy about it.

Another common situation: What if my computer is lost or stolen while I’m traveling? It is loaded with all kinds of information that I really don’t want other people to have: customer data, financial data, passwords, medical records, personal bills, business plans, etc., plus that wonderful 100-gigabyte photo database.

So I’ve been thinking about data security, and reading articles online. It turns out that securing your data is much more complex than it looks. You’ve got to find ways to lock down the data when you’re away from the computer, and when you are transmitting data via the Internet, while keeping the computer usable. There are dozens of ways your data can be compromised, and most people aren’t aware of even the most rudimentary means to protect it.

What can be done, and the myriad solutions, could fill a book. I won’t try to explain it all here, but I will mention a few steps I’ve taken (some of these are Mac-specific).

First, I’ve encrypted my hard drive. On the Mac, a program called FileVault does the job. If my computer is lost, the data is unreadable without the encryption password. That’s probably the single most important change I’ve been able to make as a result of getting the new computer.

Second, I’ve started to use encrypted email services. This is available through Google’s Gmail, Apple’s Mobile Me, and various other services. Encrypted email is protected between my laptop and the mail server, so if anyone is sniffing a wireless network while I’m sending or receiving mail, they won’t be able to make sense of it.

But encrypted email services don’t protect mail once it is sent through the Internet, so I’ve also taken the extra-geeky step of obtaining a “personal security certificate” (free through Thawte and others). This allows me to encrypt my email so that only the recipient can decrypt it. The catch here is that I can only send encrypted email to people who also have personal security certificates. I only know one other person in that category, my longtime business associate Brett, but in the future I’m going to require that all employees and contractors who handle sensitive business data, obtain and use a security certificate.

Fourth, I’ve fixed my computer so that a login password is always required, even to wake the computer from “sleep” or “screen saver” state. If I walk away from the computer for a few minutes (say, to get a second muffin at Panera Bread), I can easily lock things up and unlock them when I get back, without restarting the computer. I don’t want to have to worry when I’m fetching a cranberry muffin.

Fifth, I’ve made my backups more robust. Instead of just copying critical files, I’m using Silverkeeper to make complete “clones” of the computer’s internal hard drive, on external drives. Those clones are complete copies of the hard drive, down to the last bit. If my computer is lost, I can plug the clone drive into any other Macintosh and boot it up just like my original. I’m back in business in seconds.

Sixth, I’ve begun using IMAP instead of POP3 for my email. This probably doesn’t mean much to most people, but suffice to say that using IMAP means I can access my email from various devices, send, and trash messages, from almost any device or computer in the world, and when I get back to my laptop everything I’ve done will be perfectly synchronized. This helps if I lose my computer. Before I can get my backup drive hooked up, I can continue to manage messages without dropping a byte.

After tweaking everything for a week, I’ve got the computer set up and locked down. It’s not perfect, but it’s light-years ahead of where I was a week ago. I’d still be devastated if the MacBook Pro were stolen or lost, but at least now I won’t be up all night wondering who is looking at my data. I’ll just be wondering what I’m going to do for a new digital mistress.