Archive for Uncategorized
June 7, 2007 at 4:11 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We met up with our Airstreamer/poker playing friend Brian this afternoon for lunch at Caesar’s Palace and a tour of the World Series of Poker, going on this week at the Rio.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a lot more than just a tournament. It’s about sixty tournaments, all going on under one roof. The big games are televised and can cost $10,000 to buy into, and on the other hand there are a lot of games that cost as little as $1,000 to enter. Pretty much any variation of poker you care to play can be found.
Tim “The Poker Shrink” and Brian at WSOP
Of course like any sport, poker has its share of superstars. There are plenty of pros, a few dozen sponsored players (from online gaming sites), and a handful of “legends”. The nice thing is that the tournaments are fairly open and it’s easy to meet the superstars up close and even talk with them. That makes it great for the fans.
The challenges of a tournament like this are many. To win, you’ve got to be a consistent player with endurance. They play for up to 12 hours each day, for several days. The pros have to put up with a lot of amateurs, until the amateurs get knocked out. And nobody is guaranteed to be successful, no matter how good a player they may be.
Brian is also the driving force behind ThePokerAtlas.com, a site where you can submit and read reviews of poker rooms all over the country. Poker has experienced a huge resurgence since 2002, and Brian’s site has become increasingly popular.
Brett and I also took a walk through all the new (2008) Airstream models that are being introduced at the dealer meeting this week. I’ll have photos of those tomorrow.
June 6, 2007 at 9:52 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The unseasonably hot weather has broken. This morning we were able to stand outside the Airstream in the full sun and feel the soft breeze without melting into a puddle of human flesh. Overnight the Lake Mead RV Village has transformed from an oven to a garden spot. Suddenly I’m noticing the red flowers on the bushes, the ravens in the palm trees, and the blue-green water of Lake Mead seems much more tranquil.
Rich and Emma floating in Lake Mead, near Hoover Dam
But it’s time to move on. We towed the Airstream into Las Vegas today to a staging area for a few days of business. This week Airstream introduces its new 2008 models to its dealers, and Brett & I will be there to represent the magazine. I love the fact that we come to the annual dealer meeting in an Airstream, living the life as much as possible every day.
The blog is about to undergo a temporary change. For about 10 days, we will be childless. Tomorrow Emma and my mother will fly off. Brett and I will have a brutal schedule of meetings in the next two days, and then on Saturday Eleanor and I will begin a cruise across the country to catch up with Emma in the east.
This sort of mode shifting often strikes people as “stressful” or confusing. We don’t feel that way, perhaps because we are used to it. We have to adjust from family mode to business mode, from fast travel to slow, and from city to country, rather frequently. Life and diversity go hand-in-hand, so we expect this, and even embrace it.
Perhaps that’s why we were both feeling the loss of the road lifestyle while we were parked in Tucson. Stability is one thing, but a static existence feels very artificial to us now. We are addicted to change and challenge. Travel junkies.
Eleanor was a bit sad for a moment in Grand Canyon because being there was so great, and it reminded her that our full-time travel is coming to an end soon. We are still trying to come to grips with what that will mean, and we are trying to find ways to keep the best aspects of the full-time lifestyle. If we figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.
June 4, 2007 at 11:18 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Yesterday Emma suggest we name the rental boat Titanic, but Brett pointed out that we would prefer a lucky name. It turned out to be an apt suggestion by Emma.
The day started off well. We got work under control and the boat ready by 11 a.m. and headed out to the Hoover Dam area. The water runs about 400 feet deep or more in Black Canyon, just up from the dam, and the water was a 80 degrees or so, which felt perfect when jumping off the boat in the 108 degree air.
Emma and Brett floating near Hoover Dam
A few miles northeast, we were exploring a cove when Brett noticed the boat wasn’t performing as well as it should. He checked in the bilge and found it full of water. We were “taking on water”, which is a polite way of saying we were sinking. Moreover, the bilge pump didn’t work.
Fortunately a boat like this won’t sink completely, but if we’d left it alone it would have eventually flooded the engine compartment and then it would have been a matter for the Coast Guard. We pulled the drain plugs, piled three of us in front to get the boat on plane (counteracting the weight of the water in the bilge), and zipped across Lake Mead back toward the marina.
We pulled the drain plugs so that when the boat was moving at speed, the water would drain out of the plugs. This worked, but once we were back at idle and docking we found water flowing back into the bilge very quickly.
Several calls to the boat rental company ensued. In the end, they came out to fix the boat, and when it couldn’t be fixed on the spot, they took it away and brought us another one. By then, it was 5:30, and Leigh & Brian were coming over again for dinner.
We’ll try again tomorrow. Unfortunately, the wind has picked up and it seems likely we’ll have a bumpy ride tomorrow — reminiscent of our attempt last year to ride jetskis on Lake Mead. It’s still a beautiful lake, but I wish we’d have more luck with the weather.
June 3, 2007 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
If you’ve followed this blog for over a year, or read the archives, you may recall our last experience with Lake Mead. Brett and I rented jetskis on a windy day and were basically flogged by the lake until we crawled out of it, bruised and missing a few things.
This year we vowed to try again. We have rented a 22-foot jet boat so that Eleanor and Emma can join us. Brett flew in this morning and we picked up the boat in the afternoon. We’ll take our first ride on the lake Monday morning.
Renting a boat is much harder than renting a car, renting a 28-foot box truck, or running for President of the United States. At least when running for President you don’t have to sign half a dozen liability releases and watch a tedious 30-minute safety video. (But maybe that’s not a bad idea — it might cut down on the crop of publicity-seeking candidates.) We endured the process and at the end I think we basically agreed to buy the boat if we ding it.
That may be a small challenge. Lake Mead is down to its lowest level in 40 years. There are islands poking up that we didn’t see last year, and some shallow areas are now dry. The low level is quite visible as a white “bathtub ring” on the rocks. The white is caused by minerals deposited on the rocks, not by bleaching as a lot of people guess.
Fortunately, the canyons are very deep and still run 300-400 feet. That’s also where the nicest boating can be found, so we’ll concentrate some time there and try to avoid the various submerged objects (ferries, airplanes, even an entire town) that Lake Mead normally covers. With some luck, our day on the lake will be much more successful than last year.
June 2, 2007 at 11:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We’ve relocated to Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the man-made lake formed by the building of the Hoover Dam. It’s a big blue-green splash surrounded by the small jagged hills of Mojave Desert.
It’s hot. Really hot. Today we hit 110 degrees by 2:00 pm, and it stayed above 100 most of the day. The air conditioner in the Airstream can’t keep up. It runs continuously to keep the interior in the upper 80s. We’ve decided that after 105 it’s not so much fun, but it is certainly novel.
I’ve been anticipating tonight for weeks. We had some special friends coming over for a barbecue. In the picture above (left to right) are Phil and Anita, Brian and Leigh, and Emma. Anita was formerly the personal assistant to a certain movie star whose trailer we are re-doing inside the pages of Airstream Life magazine. We became friends over the phone during the past year, and this is the first time we’ve been able to meet face-to-face.
The same is true of Leigh and Brian. They recently came off the road after 650 days full-timing in their 1963 Airstream Flying Cloud. Their blog was a daily “must read” for me over the past year, and we’ve been communicating via email during that time. Now that they’ve settled in Las Vegas, we had to meet up.
So we got our friends together for a single great night, and cooked dinner on the grill over charcoal in the 100-degree heat. It was fabulous. Grilled shrimp, steak, chicken, mushrooms, onions, plus salad by Leigh and tons of neat appetizers & desserts courtesy of Anita. And great times with the friends we’ve never met before.
This reminds me that it’s not just the travel opportunities that make this full-timing life so appealing. It’s also about the friends we make along the way. These folks, who we met strictly as a result of our involvement with Airstream, are some of the nicest people we can hope to meet, and we’ll stay in touch even after we’ve moved east from Las Vegas.
June 1, 2007 at 8:12 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Yesterday I mentioned the diverse architecture that can be found at the Grand Canyon’s south rim. It’s even more fascinating to me to know that most of it is the work of one woman, Mary Colter.
Mary Colter was a schoolteacher and apprentice architect from St Louis when she was first tapped to do interior design for the Fred Harvey Company. Around the turn of the century, she came to the Grand Canyon and designed the amazing Hopi House.
Hopi House was, and remains, a unique piece of architecture. Designed to reflect traditional structures of the Native Americans, it was actually constructed by Hopis and housed their artwork. Today it’s still a gift shop, right across from the El Tovar hotel and just a few feet from a miraculous view at the canyon rim.
Mary Colter also designed Hermit’s Rest, another fascinatingly unique structure about eight miles west of Hopi House. Like all her buildings, it seems to grow from the landscape, and it immediately invites you in to the cool shady overhands. A massive fireplace dominates half the space. It incorporates earth-sheltering, solar design, clerestory windows, and stone construction.
Mary Colter’s story is more amazing when you consider the era in which she did her work. Despite being a woman at a time when women weren’t expected to rise to power, she was the dominant force behind the Fred Harvey and Santa Fe Railway company’s hotel building efforts for decades. She designed several magnificent structures at Grand Canyon, and all over the southwest, many of which are still in use today.
I bought a book published by the Grand Canyon Association about her work, and it is a fascinating look into the times and the architecture. It’s called “Mary Colter: Builder Upon The Red Earth.” It’s available in the book stores here at Grand Canyon, but you may have to hunt for it if you want to buy it online or used.
After a full day of hiking we returned to the patio at Bright Angel Lodge to watch the condors again. We met up with a few new friends from yesterday (other photographers) and I got some better pictures. I’ve learned that to capture the condors you need a shutter speed above 1/500th at a minimum.
Today we are moving on. It is a shame to leave after only three nights, but the Grand Canyon will call us back next year. We are just getting to know this place a tiny bit, and I can see that to make our acquaintance better we will need many visits. Just the story of one person (Colter) who contributed to this park is enough to keep me occupied for a while; I can only imagine the thousands of other human stories here waiting to be heard.
May 31, 2007 at 6:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our walkabout on Wednesday turned out perfectly. The Grand Canyon is far from being just a “big ditch” as I’ve heard people cynically describe it. It has been a place of surprises and learning for us. Our route has been the Rim Trail, an easy paved walk that offers spectacular canyon views every step of the way. We picked it up where we left off on Tuesday afternoon and moseyed our way westward, stopping often.
Everything along the Rim Trail is worth investigating. The Grand Canyon is one of those older western parks that is developed with man-made overlooks, lodges, and restaurants, so the paved portion of the Rim Trail is not a place for quiet solitude, but it is accessible to just about anyone. Tired? Sit on a bench or catch the next shuttle bus. Hungry? Drop in on one of the many restaurants. Overloaded with scenery? Hit one of the four or five shops. It’s as easy as Disney World.
Fortunately, there’s still a lot of Grand Canyon that isn’t highly developed. And for those who don’t go to national parks for the eating and shopping, the historic architecture along the Rim Trail is fascinating. The Hopi House, El Tovar (lodge), Kolb Studio, and others are examples of the innovative architectural styles explored in the western national parks in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. They reflect a mix of Adirondack style, western style, Fred Harvey, and Victorian style all at once.
Bright Angel Lodge
The Adirondack/Victorian mix, called “Parkitecture”, is particularly well demonstrated by El Tovar. It’s the classic brown wood style that is associated with state and national parks developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. We’ll have an article on how Parkitecture came about in the Fall 2007 issue of Airstream Life magazine, coming out in August.
Near the Bright Angel Lodge (circa 1880s and still in use today), we began to spot California Condors soaring over the canyon. It turned out that a dead Bighorn Sheep was down in the canyon and the condors, being scavengers, were showing up in big numbers.
These massive birds with their nine-foot wingspans are ancient relics. They survived mass extinctions on the planet over two hundred million years ago when thousands of other species died, but today they are a highly endangered species. Lead poisoning, attacks by humans, and collecting of eggs by scientists contributed to their decline.
All of the California Condors alive today are tagged and known because the entire remaining wild population (22 pairs) was taken into captivity in 1987 in a last-ditch attempt to save the species. They did well in captivity and now over 200 are roaming California and Arizona. A lot of them are here at the Grand Canyon right now according to the guy who tracks their radio tags, and the best place to spot them is from the patio at the Artist’s Studio, just west of Bright Angel Lodge.
That’s where I ran into half a dozen other photographers, including one fellow who is writing a book on them. He’s snapped photos of all but ten of them. I surveyed the photographers and most were using fast 70-200 Canon zoom lenses, some with multipliers for effective lengths up to 320, and some with image stabilization. I was using my slower 55-200 Nikkor zoom, with no multiplier or image stabilization and finding it difficult to get good shots, but I did manage a few OK ones.
The condors kept us entranced for over an hour, and then we caught a Ranger talk on condors, and then Ranger walk on fossils. Emma loves fossils, and she spotted numerous brachiopods (shells), as well as coral and sponges. Grand Canyon isn’t a major place for fossils but there is a spot right off the Rim Trail to find thousands of them.
Emma’s Junior Ranger book is just about full. She has completed two ranger programs and one campfire program, hiked, spotted all kinds of plants and wildlife (including an elk that wandered by our camp last night), written a haiku, and written her impressions of the park ( “I feel amazed and relaxed. The air smells sweet.” Etc.) We’ll drop it by the Visitor Center at some point today to get her badge.
With all of the stops we made, our total hiking distance yesterday day was less than three miles, but it was a very full day and both Emma and I returned with full memory cards in our digital cameras. Today we will do the same, walking the less-developed and unpaved section of the Rim Trail toward Hermit’s Rest, to see how else the Grand Canyon’s rim can surprise us.
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