Mar 01 2011

More than just trailers

Things at Modernism Week 2011 got moving so quickly that I lost my usual rhythm of blogging daily from the road. On the surface everything went smoothly, but it was the “behind the scenes” action that kept me (and Brett) running around.

Sunday was clear and cool, as forecast, and that meant a good steady crowd of visitors all day. No longer did the mountains look like Hawaii, but the storm from Saturday was clearly visible above us as snow, which made for a fantastic backdrop on our vintage trailer scene. In this photo everyone is still setting up, and the awnings and vintage decorations were not yet on display.

Since everyone was well-prepared for the show, we didn’t have much to do as organizers, so we were free to browse and talk to the owners and other participants. They are a fascinating and accomplished group of people. For example, David Winick was in attendance, signing his new book entitled “Winick Airstreams,” which is about his amazing trailer customizations. Uwe Salwender of Area 63 Productions was showing his latest trailer, a 1960s Caravel. The guys from Funky Junk Farms (John, Steven, and Edward) were showing three different rigs, all very unusual, including a custom-made “housecar” on an old International Harvester truck chassis.

And there were many others, including Kristiana Spaulding of Silver Trailer and her husband Greg, Kate Heber and John Byfield of the Ecodiscovery Tour, John Long with his amazing 1935 Bowlus trailer … the list goes on. Everyone involved was interesting and fun to talk to. So it wasn’t just about the trailers.

Most people left after the show on Sunday afternoon, but a few of us hung around for an extra night. David Winick’s daughter, Rebecca Gohl, happened to be attending Modernism Week herself, doing styling work for some “Braniff Stewardesses” who were part of the show. Like her father, Rebecca has some serious artistic talent. She’s also a funny and interesting person who became the epicenter of Sunday night’s social circle.

We spent an hour at the suite of Rebecca and her friends, and then a group of eight of us drove downtown to Las Consuelas for Mexican dinner. The Stuttgart Taxi was in its element when it was puttering down Palm Canyon Drive with two lovely ladies in the back seat.

The next morning it was back to work for Brett and me. Although everyone else is free to bask in the memories of this fun weekend, we needed to do some scouting for Modernism Week 2012. We’d like to have a much larger venue so that we can stage more trailers, and have an area where non-vintage trailer owners can come camp and enjoy the event as well. We’ve been looking for months, using Google satellite images and local contacts to research possible spots, so we had narrowed it down to three possible locations to check out on Monday.

It’s too early to confirm anything, but after a few hours of site visits and a good meeting at two locations, I can say that we are off to a solid start. I hope to be able to announce a location and details for next year’s show, sometime this summer.

We had the option of staying one more night, but with business concluded, Brett and I decided to bail out for the long roadtrip home. The weather was fine, the desert road was wide open, and the old Merc was raring to go. We threw our bags in the trunk and pointed the car east on I-10. By 9:30 we were back in Tucson.

It was a great trip in every respect, but next year I have to make one change. The rest of Modernism Week is too interesting to miss, so I’m going to try to get there earlier. The architectural tours, exhibits, and talks all sound great. Several people who were in our show arrived a week early and said they’d had a great time visiting the other exhibits of Modernism Week. But camping in Palm Springs is somewhat limited, especially for people under age 55 who have a vintage trailer. If possible, we’ll work up an option that gives trailer owners an “inside track” on the week. Stay tuned for details on that, later this year.

Nov 24 2010

Landed

We’ve landed in Tucson, and thus the Airstream has returned to home base after seven months of travel. It is now tucked away in its carport, getting a well deserved rest after a total voyage of nearly 9,000 towing miles. Likewise, the Mercedes is chillin’, with 14,800 new miles added to its odometer since we left in May.

There are a lot of ways I could measure this trip, but the photo at right shows my favorite. Emma has grown an inch and a quarter, as marked on the door jamb of our Airstream bedroom. By any measure, it has been a good period of growth for all of us.

The last phase of our trip was unremarkable by design. We basically bolted 350 miles from Padre Island to central Texas, where we camped overnight at the Caverns of Sonora’s little campground (W/E, $15). If you are driving through central Texas on I-10, there are few options for overnight stays, and many of them are of the down-and-out variety. So Caverns of Sonora provides a very welcome oasis just about five miles off the highway. The big attraction is of course the exceptionally well-decorated caverns, but Emma thought the peacocks that roam the campground were pretty worthy too.

Our next day was another 350 miles, this time through west Texas and over to Las Cruces. It was a stunningly beautiful fall day in west Texas, with azure blue skies and temperatures of around 78-80 degrees, but with one unfortunate aspect for towing: a strong headwind. Many times I am asked, “Does that Mercedes really pull that big trailer OK?” and the followup question is often “Well, how about in the mountains?” or “Yeah, but wait until you cross the Rockies!” When people say such things I know that they aren’t really experienced at towing, because if they were they’d know that the true challenge of a tow vehicle is not the occasional mountain pass, but the long day spent bucking a 25-knot headwind. That’s when you find out who has the chops.

See, you can almost always get up a hill one way or another. You might have to go slower, or stop to let the engine cool off, but it’s very rare to find a hill so steep that you can’t climb it with any decent tow vehicle. (We have never had an overheating problem with the Mercedes, but we did with the Nissan Armada. The Mercedes does high-elevation climbs much better, mostly because of the torquey turbodiesel, which isn’t affected by the thinner air at altitude.) And hills are generally short. In Colorado you can find a few 6-8% grades that run for eight miles, and in Wyoming there’s the Teton Pass at 10%, but that’s about as bad as it gets.

In contrast, imagine trying to pull a trailer through a strong headwind for 350 miles. That’s a whole different ballgame. If your tow vehicle struggles from lack of power, or your trailer is being tossed around by gusty winds, or if you’re not hitched up properly, you’ll feel that misery for six hours. That makes a 20 minute hill climb in the Rockies look like a happy memory.

You’ll run into that a lot when heading west through the central states. I-90 through South Dakota, I-80 through Nebraska, I-70 through Kansas, I-40 through Oklahoma and Texas, or I-10/20 through Texas. We’ve hit it in all of those locations. The car can do it, and our ride is safe & comfortable, but fuel economy suffers horribly. Sometimes we just stop for the night and try again the next day.

Our headwind on I-10 was pretty stiff. I know because our fuel economy plummeted, from 13.5 MPG the previous day to a dismal 10.3 MPG. Keep in mind that your speed relative to the air (airspeed) is what matters to your fuel economy, not the weight or length of the trailer. If you normally tow at 65 MPH in calm wind conditions, a 25-knot headwind results in drag equivalent to towing at 90 MPH. Because air resistance (drag) increases in proportion to the square of your airspeed, a headwind like that has a massive impact.

In our case, the wind-induced penalty was about 30% of our fuel economy. At one point we were getting just 9.7 MPG, the absolute worst I have ever seen from this vehicle. But in west Texas, the options for stopping overnight are somewhat limited, and it didn’t look like the wind was going to abate much in the coming day. So we plowed on. By the time we reached the brutish traffic of El Paso, the wind had died down and it was relatively smooth sailing up to Las Cruces.

[By the way, the center display in the photo above deserves some explanation. The display shows the distance and travel time since our last fuel stop (87 miles, 1 hour, 25 minutes), our average speed (61 MPH), our fuel economy average since last fuel stop (9.7, ugh), the outside air temp and the cruise control setting (65 MPH). I normally tow a little slower but the speed limit was 80 MPH and I didn’t want to leave a huge differential between us and the rest of the NASCAR traffic. The car tows very nicely in 7th gear at about 2200 RPM at that speed.]

After this expensive day of driving, we decided to cheap out and try parking at the Cracker Barrel again. Actually, we stayed there in the hopes that this one would not catch on fire, thus proving that our experience in Louisiana was a fluke. It didn’t, so we’re in the clear, jinx-wise.

Our final stop before parking the Airstream was the truck wash in Tucson. I was amazed at how much salt and gunk was still on the trailer after our rinse-down in Corpus Christi. Add to that the accumulated bug guts of an 1,100 mile high-speed tow, and you can imagine how the Airstream looked. It deserved a good bath before we put it away, and now it looks shiny and ready for another adventure.

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 15 2010

Various items, dateline AUSTIN

In our rush to go from Florida to Texas, we covered about 750 miles over two days, finally ending up in Austin TX. Our plan is vague: hang out here for a few days while waiting for the weather to clear. Then we’ll head down to Corpus Christi and camp on the beach. Meanwhile, we are doing a few favorite things …

Item: Along Rt 290 on the way Austin, in the town of Brenham, you can tour the Blue Bell Ice Cream factory. We were delighted to find that they have a special lot just for RVs, but our luck stopped there: no factory tours on the weekends. Still, there was a “virtual tour” (a movie) and of course an ice cream bar that we couldn’t resist.

Item: Whole Foods has a mega store in downtown Austin less than a mile away from our campground. Eleanor cannot resist the place, with its massive, exotic, and sexy (to a foodie) inventory. We spent two hours and came away with a smorgasbord of delights, heavy on the desserts and cheeses this time. Last night’s dinner was bluefish with a homemade mustard sauce, followed by an assortment of little desserts.

Item: Zilker Botanical Park is also very near, is free, and has a wonderful Japanese garden that was really inspirational to us. Next year we’ll be converting our blank backyard into something attractive and usable, and with ideas gathered at Zilker our plans are starting to gell.

Item: The state capitol of Texas is worth seeing. It’s huge, thanks to a massive underground expansion on the north side. There’s also a good state capitol visitor center nearby. All free. Photographic opportunities are limitless, but regrettably I didn’t bring my camera.

Item: Texas barbecue remains our favorite in the country, hands-down. Today we drove out to the small city of Taylor for a late lunch at Louie Mueller’s with our friend John. It’s about an hour’s drive from Austin, so to make the trip even more worthwhile we took home two pounds of beef brisket from Mueller’s, and two pounds of turkey sausage from Vencil Mares’ Taylor Cafe.

On the way back from Taylor, along Rt 79 in Round Rock, we spotted yet another Airstream-turned-food-stand. Rock-A-Billy’s is a relatively new one, established 2009. Too bad it was closed when we went by; a little shaved ice would have been just the ticket after barbecue.

We’ve got two days left in Austin, which is hardly anything for a town as interesting as this one. Extending our stay is not feasible if we are going to make the side trip to Corpus Christi, so we’ll just have to make do with the time we have. At this point we have towed the Airstream 6,500 miles since we left Tucson in May, and we have approximately 1,200 miles left to go, and just 10 days before our hard stop date in Tucson. I can feel the time pressure and that’s a drag.

In the Maintenance Department, I am pleased to note that our experiment with tires has been a glorious success so far. We have towed the Airstream about 8,000 miles on the new Michelins that I bought in January, and have suffered not one puncture or tread separation. On the Goodyear/Carlisle/Green Ball/Trailer King/Power King/etc. ST (Special Trailer) designated tires that we used formerly used, we would have had at least one or two failures in this amount of mileage. The Michelin LTX LT tires even hold air pressure better. I haven’t had to adjust the air in months. Better still, I can’t see any wear in the deep tread of the Michelins. I’ll measure them precisely when we get back to Tucson.

Last item. I got a new battery for my MacBook Pro because the two year-old battery in died an early death. This was much harder than it needed to be, because Apple has designated my laptop battery as obsolete. (By that measure, my shoes are obsolete as well. I’m lucky I can still get shoelaces for them.) Thus the battery can’t be purchased in Apple stores. I found it in Apple’s online store at $129 and through various third parties at about half that price. I bought mine through a Buy.com re-seller for $65, and it came with this helpful warning (click the image for a larger view). I have refrained from nailing the battery to a wall because I was warned, and instead I put it in my laptop where it is working perfectly.

Nov 06 2010

Sword swallowers’ wedding

We’re heading west. From here on, the Airstream’s nose will be pointed into the wind, heading for the sunset, and home base.

Our Disney World vacation complete, we zipped up to Green Cove Springs and got our business done there, spent a night, and moved onward to Thomasville GA (about 30 miles north of Tallahassee) for the event of the season: The Sword Swallowers’ Wedding.

After many years together, our friends Alex and Charon have finally tied the knot in a very lovely ceremony of their own design. At least, that’s what I was told. Since we had to drive about 180 miles to get to the wedding site, we didn’t actually make it there in time to see it ourselves. We arrived about three hours after the actual event, just in time to see a few toasts and help eat the leftovers. (I’m sure it was very nice, but I have to admit it’s more my speed to just show up for the food. I’m sort of heathen that way.)

Still, it was worth the detour from I-10 to drop in and see our friends on their very happy day. We won’t see them again until we meet up in California after Christmas. Being both trailerites and sideshow folk, Alex and Charon have a very interesting circle of friends. I always feel very ordinary when surrounded by their other, more colorful, artistic and talented associates. This event was no different. When we arrived they were all arranged in the living room clothed in fantastic garb, a mix of Victorian and Renaissance with little touches and symbols ranging from Oddfellows to motorcycle clubs. As always, everyone was friendly, talkative, and fun, and they quickly made us feel at home.

We have a copy of the “wedding invitation,” an old fashioned letterpress poster, which will be framed and added to our treasured collection of road memorabilia. It’s not every day you get invited to a wedding like this. No swords were swallowed (Alex commented to Charon, “You’re not working today”) but it was still wonderfully unusual.

The hosts of the wedding were kind enough to offer courtesy parking on the street in front of their house, complete with an electrical cord. We’ll spend the night here and then mosey back down to the panhandle of Florida. I need to get back to work (making up for taking vacation last week) and so I’d like to find a comfortable spot to settle in for a few days. There are several great beachfront state parks between Port St Joe and Pensacola, and we’ll be arriving on a Sunday afternoon in the off-season, so our chances of scoring a spot are excellent.

The climate has turned cool rather suddenly. We were experiencing humid days in the mid-80s last week, until a cold front came through on Friday morning and turned northern Florida into something more like North Carolina. Now it’s dipping into the upper 30s at night, and days are barely breaking 60. We’ll be running the catalytic heater all night tonight and probably for the next several nights. Tomorrow I will have to find some place to pick up a tank of propane. I still don’t know where we are headed exactly, but Fall has finally caught up with us, and that may be the biggest factor in our trip planning from here on.