Archive for Uncategorized
August 20, 2007 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This wakeboarding thing has really gotten my attention, along with Steve and Caroline. Since are sort of competing against each other (in a friendly way), we are all motivated to keep trying new things on the board.
Last week the conditions on Lake Champlain were tough. We had consistently wavy evenings and the wind just wouldn’t die down. I had to pull the awning in on Thursday, even though it was tied down with a “Hold Awn” system. It did indeed Hold Awn but the wind was getting a little past my comfort level.
The wind meant waves, but wakeboarders like calm water, especially for tricks. The glossy photos you see in the magazines of people doing stupendous tricks usually also show dead calm water. We don’t get calm water often up here, so we’ve decided to adapt the sport to local conditions. We’re developing a technique for rough-water boarding in waves up to three feet. It’s more like surfing, really.
These photos were taken on a pretty decent day, but last night was brutal. The waves were running in three-foot swells from the north, and once the boat was out of the bay, wakeboarding was mostly a matter of survival. Just getting up on the board was tough because I kept getting swamped by rogue waves, and I couldn’t even see the boat over the swells until I was up. Once underway, the ride was wild and unpredictable, bouncing over the white-capped tops and crashing down into spiky green valleys. That’s Lake Champlain boarding!
This will be my last chance to enjoy the lake for a while. We’re gearing up for the next few months of travel in addition to our relocation, and this week will be very busy. There’s the usual trip prep (checking all the running gear of the trailer, pumping up the tires, cleaning, etc), and also last-minute medical appointments, vehicle inspections, re-packing for the upcoming Fall/Winter season, and of course loading the moving truck.
Emma has a collection of tropical fish that live permanently in an aquarium in her grandparent’s house. The fish seem to die off one at a time rather consistently, and this week Hazy’s number was up. Emma and Eleanor demonstrated a little recycling by burying Hazy in the vegetable garden, and then we talked about how the Pilgrims learned to grow corn in poor soil from the Native Americans, who told them to bury an alewife with each hill of corn.
Finally, for no other reason than that it is a different sort of picture, here’s a fuzzy shot of a cardinal browsing the feeder. The picture was shot in low light and had to be pumped up, and the result was a sort of impressionist view of the bird feeder at sunset.
August 19, 2007 at 8:42 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Our standard joke is that summer in Vermont really ends on my birthday, in mid-August. Right on schedule, the weather has turned much cooler in the past week and we are starting to feel the fall air coming. It’s too early to call it “a nip in the air” but this morning the temperature is 49 degrees and the sky is scudded with fast-moving gray clouds. That’s a sure sign of the weather beginning to change.
Today is only a warning. Summer still has control, and today it will probably bounce back up to 70 degrees, the clouds will yield, and we will go to the lake. The water in Lake Champlain is still warm (by local standards, meaning 68-70 degrees). With a shorty wetsuit it will probably be a fine day on the water.
Friday evening the lake was churning with 2-3 feet waves and little whitecaps blown along the tops, under brilliant sunshine. It wasn’t great weather for the boat, snorkeling, or swimming, but it turned out to be great for the sea kayaks. I’ve never used the sea kayaks in anything but calm water, so this gave me a taste for what they can do. Although the lake was probably only as rough as one of the Great Lakes on a nice day, I was impressed by the ease with which they cut through the waves and stayed stable even when riding broadside against the crests. Steve and I paddled hard directly into the wind to a point of land north of our beach, and then spun around to surf the waves rapidly back.
Vermont still has some spectacular days coming in September and October, but we will miss them. In the previous two years we have gone to Maine’s coast for a couple of weeks in September, which is a superb time to go, but this year we have decided to head west. Our exact route is still unsettled, and I expect it will remain so, but generally our goal is the west coast by November 1. That will get us into a safe climate for November and December.
This may be the last hurrah for us, and so it is ironic that we will be (at least partially) retracing our first route in fall 2005. We still don’t know when we will cease full-timing, but right now we are anticipating the end by Christmas. That could change depending on personal factors, but we have decided to treat every moment as if it were our last and visit a few places we’ve always wanted to go. For Eleanor, the very top choice is Banff, in Alberta, Canada, and that is part of what drives us west.
But once that final tour is complete, what will we do? Settling into a wholly conventional life of hearth and home is not for me, and both Eleanor and Emma has said that they don’t want to stop traveling. It’s time to think about the post-full-timing life.
The only real obstacle to continuing to travel full-time is Emma’s school. Many people have written to me to suggest we keep homeschooling. Certainly this possibility has occurred to us, but upon weighing all the personal factors, we have decided we will probably cease full-time homeschooling in the next year. It has been a superb experience and we have not regretted it, but there are other things we want to explore.
I will state emphatically that this decision has nothing to do with the ridiculous “socialization” myth that we hear constantly. Without getting into too many specifics that would embarrass people we’ve met, let me just say that we have zero socialization issues and I think the theory should go the other way: we are constantly running into public-schooled children with disturbing socialization problems, while all of the homeschooled children we meet are very well-adjusted and have lots of friends. Homeschooling is great and I can highly recommend it to those who are willing to make the effort.
Courtesy of Jason Holm
But don’t get me started on that … I was talking about what to do when Emma is in school and trapped by her schedule. Suddenly we’ll be in the same boat as all other parents, and the prospects for taking a few weeks to go up to Banff will be very bleak indeed.
Still, there are weekends, and the occasional holiday, and of course summer vacation. None of the school holidays give us enough time to roam long distances, but that shouldn’t matter. No matter where you are in this country, there is always something interesting to do within a day’s drive. In Arizona, we are particularly blessed with year-round activities, from the Sonora Mexico to the national parks of northern Arizona and Utah.
One idea is to find a remote base where we can stash the Airstream for a month or two, and revisit on weekends. This will save gas money and time. Our friend Rich C has really sold us on the town of Prescott, with its funky granite dells and lively downtown, and we also like certain places near the Huachuca mountain range and west into California. Having the Airstream is like having a vacation cottage, except better because we can relocate the cottage as often as we like. That may be our mode of travel for a while.
But all of this is just me thinking out loud. We’ve got a few months yet to go, and many adventures still to have. No point in worrying about the end. We started this experience thinking we’d be on the road for six or seven months, and we will have gotten closer to two and a half years out of it. It has been a bonus any way we look at it.
August 16, 2007 at 3:18 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I got a call from Colin Hyde on Tuesday. He runs an Airstream restoration shop in Plattsburgh NY. He was running down to the Boston area to pick up his latest eBay purchase — a 1962 Tradewind in “project trailer” condition — and invited me to join him at Vintage Trailer Supply in Montpelier VT on his way back.
Steve Hingtgen is the owner of Vintage Trailer Supply, and he and Colin are both good friends. The three of us have worked together for years in various ways. We’re all customers of each other and suppliers to each other. Both Steve and Colin advertise in Airstream Life magazine, and I have bought vintage parts from Steve for our 1968 Airstream Caravel, and Colin has done the restoration work. Likewise, Steve has a trailer at Colin’s shop undergoing restoration, and Colin fabricates certain parts for the Vintage Trailer Supply catalog. So we interact quite a bit, but we only seem to get together as a group about once a year.
The shop is a fascinating place for vintage trailer nuts. Steve has been relentless in his search for obsolete parts, “New Old Stock” parts, and fabricators to make parts that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. He’s got an incredible assortment of goodies there — enough to make a vintage trailer nut salivate. I scored a couple of original-style hubcaps for the Caravel, and Colin came out with a pile of stuff for the trailers currently undergoing restoration in his shop.
Colin’s latest trailer is above (like he needs another project). This diamond-in-the-rough will sit on his lot in Plattsburgh until a customer comes through who wants a 1960s 24-foot trailer. It’s a good floorplan and will be a nice trailer after a total makeover, just like my 1953 Flying Cloud that’s still sitting up there. (Someday I might even get around to refurbishing that trailer, if somebody doesn’t buy it first.)
August 15, 2007 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A lot of people think it is peculiar that we don’t appear to have a “home”. Of course, the Airstream is home, and we have always had a “home base” of sorts in Vermont (where family members live), but it is hard for non-RV’ers to get their heads around the concept of a wheeled object being home.
For us, the Airstream became home pretty quickly. It was easy to adapt to the idea that this was where we lived, simply by the act of living. The harder part has been reconciling ownership of property that we would return to from time to time. Having more than one home is harder for me to accept than having just one that happens to be mobile.
Now, with a house waiting in the desert, we have a future home. Sitting in Vermont — our former home — I find the sensation a bit confusing. Where is home? The state we are in, the trailer I’m in, or the city we are moving to in a few months?
This confusion shows up on my computer. I have a pair of (Mac) Dashboard Widgets that instantly show me the weather for where I am, including forecasts, radar, and current weather patterns. But I find I am often interested in the weather “back home”, which can be one of the places I’m currently not, so I’ll reset them frequently to different areas of the country. “Home” can be be where I am, and where I’m not simultaneously. It’s fun to look at Vermont in January and chortle over the bitter cold from a safe distance, and likewise it’s fascinating to look at Arizona in July and marvel at the flash floods.
Santa Catalina Mountains from Univ of Arizona, Aug 15 2007
For a more granular look at “home base”, I can check the view anytime from the University of Arizona’s webcam. The sky and Santa Catalina mountains are so beautiful and ever-changing that I never get tired of seeing them. The view is updated every minute.
The changing view is a surprise to people who think the desert looks the same all the time. Check out this album of photos from the U of A webcam. That mountain view is very similar to the one we have from our house, so I like to see the diversity of it. It reminds me of … “home” … well, one of them.
Checking the local news once in a while can be interesting, although it always seems a million miles away when we are on the road. I check Arizona’s news when we’re in Vermont, and Vermont’s when we’re in Arizona. Mostly I’m interested in evolutionary changes to the landscape, environment, and culture, not so much the day-to-day politics and weather, so it’s fine to just check in once in a while. Local newspapers and TV stations are all online these days, so I keep my favorites from each state bookmarked & handy.
I’m also interested in learning more about our upcoming home base in Tucson, so I have quick links to things that teach me about the area and keep me updated on what’s going on. For example, there’s a Yahoo! Group called “Vanishing Tucson” that I joined just to learn about the past few decades of the town and how it is changing. From that list, I’ve gotten tips on great books to read about Tucson and the southwest, which fascinate me.
Oddly enough, I found a copy of Arizona Highways in the doctor’s waiting room yesterday. (I dropped off a copy of Airstream Life so they’d have something new in there.) It turned out to be a pretty decent magazine so I may subscribe once we get settled in the area.
This morning Eleanor and I both woke up thinking about our Arizona house. I had a dream in which we got back and found the new slate floor had been removed and replaced with patterned ceramic tile. She was thinking about furniture choices. It’s coming to the top of our minds because we are nearly done with our tasks here. Soon we’ll be completely moved out of Vermont (well, at least the physical stuff, but not the personal connections) and eventually we’ll have to get back to Arizona and start the task of making it into home.
But for the interim few months, I think the Airstream will remain our home and the other places will be just favorite stops. I’ll keep peeking in on them from time to time, but try to go no further. No need to get involved in local politics or fret about road construction or flooding. We’ve only got a little time left to enjoy full-timing, and I want to do it without undue worry about the future home base, so that we can enjoy the moments that are left.
August 14, 2007 at 12:12 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We have resolved our moving problems. A blog reader (who we met last year in Utah) suggested the moving company they used. Their company is a freight hauler that has a “household move” division. You load and unload the truck, they just haul it. Since our stuff is already fully packed, that’s a perfect solution for us and it saves us about $2000. We’re meeting the truck next week to load it up and we’ll hire people at the other end to unload it and put it in the empty house.
We’ve also decided to take the Honda Fit with us, at least as far as Ohio. We’ll leave it with friends there, and either fly back and drive it home another time, or have it shipped. Driving it to Ohio gets it about 700 miles closer to Tucson (thus reducing cost if we pay to ship it), and it’s easier to fly to Ohio cities from Tucson than to Vermont. We decided against taking the Fit all the way west with the Airstream since splitting up our team over two separate vehicles will be inconvenient for much of the travel we intend to do.
So when we leave Vermont, we won’t be leaving a lot of things behind to deal with later. I’m glad to have that finally resolved. But it seems we are not alone. I have heard from a lot of people about the plight of storing and moving stuff. They have come to the same conclusions: acquire less “stuff” and don’t let your possessions possess you. It’s a false economy to hold on to a lot of things that you might need someday, if you are likely to move or attempt to go RV’ing full-time in the future.
One blog reader put it well, writing:
“I have moved the same boxes out to Vegas, through several storage units, a condo, a house and now a second house. Add to that grandma’s and aunties gifts, the stuff our parents no longer want to store for us and you have a continued burden that we ‘promise we’ll go through and downsize someday, when we have the time’. HA!
Here’s the secret… READ IT AGAIN ALOUD, before making non-consumable purchases. Ask: do I really need this? Will it make my life better? Will the same money, invested in a 401k allow me the comfort cushion I need to retire earlier? I saw a neat billboard a while back from a retirement investment firm. It showed a Rolex watch. The caption simply read, ‘Cost: $6500, Cost at retirement: $28,500’. It all adds up.
It may not seem like it now, but you are richer for the experience and your burden lighter. I couldn’t believe what you were doing originally. I thought sure, sell it now only to buy it when you have another home. Ridiculous…but now I’ve put the numbers to it, you’re right.
My buddy in Vegas had an unimaginable way of upgrading his belongings. You see, for me, I can never throw out or even give away something that still has use. This must be the depression era parenting I’ve had. He on the other hand will buy a shirt and give one away. Buy a new set of golf clubs or artwork? Sell the ones they replace. He doesn’t have a basement or a storage unit. Never has. That’s what I have to do.
I looked up some of my ‘prized possessions’ on eBay. You know, the stuff I’ll never use but placed too much value on to part with? It’s all worth less than the cost of one move, say nothing of the three I’ve been through. It’s not worth the mental, physical and psychological burden it places on us. You should have seen me the past few week-ends, trudging up and down stairs in godawful heat, then wear and tear on a vehicle and missing the selling season for our home. That’s truly ridiculous.
And don’t get me started on furniture that is more valuable un-refinished but which looks so awful to me that I won’t have it smelling up my living space. Antiques road show can have all of it!”
———
Now the question is whether we will be able to resist the urge to fill up the new house with stuff. It is so easy, so tempting, so comforting to buy the things you see because “I’d like to have that,” or “Wouldn’t that look cool?” It is so insidious to accept gifts and keepsakes from relatives and friends because they are free and given with the good intentions. It is so hard to divest yourself from things that are perfectly good but unneeded.
Our “acquisition test” will have to be strict. We will have to remind ourselves that we got along just fine for two years in an Airstream without anything more than what we possess today. Plus, we have several thousand pounds of additional stuff left over from the last house, including tools, china, spare clothes, some furniture, and specialty things like a pasta maker. It’s already more than we need in most departments. If we are buying something for the house, we need to ask why.
It’s like going on a lifetime diet. In this society, as sated as we are with food and consumer products, it’s the exception to be thin or have an empty garage. You actually have to work at not having too much. But this is a nice problem to have. Living lean is less expensive, which means more money for freedom and perhaps even earlier retirement. Rather than being a painful experience of “doing without”, it is relief from a silent burden. I am looking forward to continuing the simplicity of full-time RV living even when we eventually move into a traditional house for 3/4 of the year.
August 13, 2007 at 10:24 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Being the only person in the family with a summer birthday, I tend to get an all-day celebration of sorts. It’s not so much that people want to spend the full day with me, but that the weather is usually nice and everyone appreciates an excuse to be outside and play by the lake.
The lake settled down to calm water and that made perfect conditions for wakeboarding. Steve downloaded a guide with various accomplishments for us and point scores. For example, simply riding the board for 5 seconds earns 20 points for a beginner. One-handed riding is another 20 points. Crossing the wake is 80 points, etc. Three of us tried it and eventually racked up between 775 and 1025 points each. We’ve managed to complete all of the Beginner tasks except for catching air off the wake, the “Bunny Hop”, and the “Surface 360”. I almost got the Surface 360 but need to work on my arm position a bit more.
We also went power snorkeling. This is something most people have never heard of, but it’s a blast. We use a device called a dive plane towed behind the boat. The snorkeler holds onto the dive plane after fifty feet behind the boat, and the boat trolls at about 2.8 MPH.
With this rig, a snorkeler can easily cover vast areas with little effort. There’s no need for fins or kicking. A twist of the dive plane will send you flying down to the bottom for a closer look anytime you want, and since you aren’t really working much, you can hold your breath for long times while exploring the bottom. A twist of the board upward, and you’ll pop right back up to the surface. It’s like flying underwater — the closest thing to being a penguin.
Snorkelers who attempt this need to be able to equalize their ears while holding their breath, know how to clear their snorkel without touching it, know how to clear their mask without surfacing, and should know how to swim. I wear a shorty wetsuit for comfort since you can easily get cold because you aren’t kicking.
Emma’s too inexperienced for power snorkeling, but Steve took her out for a little paddling around. She’s getting better all the time. We’re still working on her tendency to pop to the surface every 30 seconds to exclaim something, but that’s just part of being an excited kid. Every fish is cause for celebration.
Eleanor had started work on the special birthday cake on Saturday, loosely based on my suggestions. On Sunday she was still unable to do much outdoor stuff due to her broken toe, but she had plenty to do in the kitchen. The cake was made up of three layers of chocolate ganache and chocolate-hazelnut cake, with hazelnut buttercream frosting and coated on the sides with toasted crushed hazelnuts. Dinner was Shrimp and Grits, a Charleston specialty we picked up last year during our visit. It was well received by all, and made a wonderful final touch on a great birthday at the lake.
We’re doing so much on the water that it may seem monotonous, but to us it is simply a reflection of our travel philosophy to do what is available. Every region, every state, every little town has its own flavor and activity, and it makes sense to us to embrace those things as they are presented. Here, in summer, the best things to do are outdoors, so we’ve been hiking and enjoying the water, but we’ve also been visiting the small-town events that make Vermont special.
As a travel philosophy, you can view this two ways. You can go where your interests take you, or you can go everywhere and see what interests you locally. I think either approach is valid, and we try to do a little of both. It makes for a very fulfilling trip, because you can seek out new interests while simultaneously expanding your knowledge of your own interests.
August 11, 2007 at 8:48 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I took the little Honda Fit down to Bondville Vermont on Friday to drop in on the WBCCI Region 1 Rally. It’s about 100 miles from where we are parked. Since we are so settled and busy where we are, it made more sense for me to just drive down for one night with the economy car rather than towing down the trailer. I brought the tent again.
Bondville, the location of the rally, is one of 254 towns in Vermont. I lived in Vermont most of my life and had never heard of it. For the past two weeks I’ve had fun asking long-time Vermonters where Bondville is (near Stratton Mountain Ski Resort in southern Vermont). It’s a rare person who knows where it is.
We’re about 1800 feet elevation here, a fact I had overlooked when I packed. I only brought shorts, no pants. Fortunately I had a fleece. Already around here the cooler temperatures have arrived and yesterday was only about 70 degrees, with 40’s and plenty of dampness at night. Last night’s campfire was essential.
The theme at Happy Hour was something to do with hippies. At least, that’s what they told me. Maybe some of these people just dress like this all the time.
This Airstream Interstate B-van is driven by a happy new owner. He says he gets 22-23 MPG on diesel fuel and he just returned from an Airstream B-van rally organized in Ohio which was apparently a big success. These vans are small inside but really practical for fast, lightweight, and low-cost travel.
Tenting overnight was fun but I’ve been reminded of the condensation issue that plagues tenters. Last night the humidity was high and as soon as the sun went down the grass was soaked, the tent was beaded with shiny drops of water, and anything left on the ground inside the tent got damp. I still had fun tenting, but an Airstream is certainly easier.
Part of my reason to be here is to meet with friends who I otherwise wouldn’t see this year. A lot of them we last saw in October 2006 at a fall rally in Townsend VT, but I correspond with several via email. That’s one of the best things about this community. We can miss each other for a year or two, but when we do finally meet again it’s like the time lapse never happened. Everyone understands that we all travel and have busy lives, and they’re happy to see the faces again and recount events and travels and ideas whenever we do have a chance to get together.
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