Archive for Uncategorized
January 27, 2008 at 10:59 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
There are certain things that go with Airstreams. One of them, I’m coming to realize, is ukuleles.
Bear with me on this one. It’s all Tommy Green’s fault. He poured gasoline over my inner desire to learn a fun solo instrument and tossed on a match. Now I’m hooked on the uke, playing it as often as I get a chance in the hopes of being good enough someday to play in front of people who don’t already tolerate me.
The ukulele is an ideal instrument for the Airstream: it’s small, light, fun, and good around a campfire for sing-alongs. Try that with a harp or a trumpet. Sure, a guitar or harmonica is good too, and very traditional, but sometimes players of those instruments can’t resist the temptation to play depressing songs. It’s hard to play a sad ukulele song, and most of the time the thing is so darned cheery that you just don’t want to.
Those of us who are uke nuts have plenty of heroes. Ever heard of Jake Shimabukuro? You’ve never heard uke like this guy can play. Try his rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” by George Harrison. It’s amazing. It sure isn’t the annoying stuff you remember from Tiny Tim on “Laugh In”.
Or how about “Iz” (Israel Kamakawiwo’ole)? He was huge phenomenon in the ukulele world (sadly, he is now deceased) and I’m not talking about the fact that he weighed about 500 lbs. He’s like a deity in Hawaii. Guys like Iz and Jake are so amazing on ukulele that every time I hear one of them I have to get my uke and strum a few chords. Jake, Iz, and a few other guys are taking over my iPod, so if you ride with me you’ll get to hear them.
I think the nicest thing about the uke is that you can learn it much more easily than a six-string guitar. It’s something almost anyone can do with some practice, and before you know it you’re strumming your way through a song.
Of course, being enthusiastic about it, I’ve passed on the disease. Bill Doyle and Larry Ko, our Airstream friends from San Diego, have started up on uke. Now we’re exchanging tips and chord tabs via email. I don’t know where it will stop. At this point, it’s not just a few nutty guys — it’s a movement. You may want to join voluntarily before we kick in your door and hand you a uke.
My current challenge is to get a lot better at strumming. I need to learn some new patterns besides the basic up-down strum. I also want to expand my knowledge of chords considerably, so I’ve chosen a fairly difficult song to learn in the next few weeks: “Blue Skies” by Irving Berlin. It sounds great on uke — really. My family will be entirely sick of it soon, but I’ll try to keep their pain to a minimum by practicing in the house when they are in the Airstream, and vice versa.
And that is another reason that Airstreams and ukes go together. Airstreams make great practice studios — just ask Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam why he bought a Bambi.
I can see a future where Airstreamers gather in huge groups not to chat and chew, but to camp and jam. Wouldn’t that be fun? Grab a soprano uke for as little as $47 and get started. I’ll listen for you this summer. Aloha.
January 24, 2008 at 7:59 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Brett said he wanted to see the border town of Nogales (Sonora, MX) on his last day in town. While I’m not a fan of border towns in general, it is an interesting place to visit if you only have an hour. Once you’ve visited it you can claim you’ve been to Cuidad Juarez, Tijuana, and all the rest because once you’ve seen one border town, you’ve seen them all.
That’s probably not entirely fair, because some towns have interesting history and attractive neighborhoods, but all of them have things in common: aggressive hawkers in the markets, cheap meds in dozens of pharmacia, seedy areas where you can get things, and lots of restaurants. (I wasn’t surprised by the pharmacies advertising antibiotics and ED pills, but I was surprised by the guy on the street who leaned over and whispered, “I got Oxycontin, Vicodin … come on inside.”)
On the lighter side, there were literally heaps of iron sculptures, colorful rugs, leather boots, ponchos, and cattle skulls. I had no idea cattle skulls were so popular with the tourists.
We were joined in our walk around Nogales by Patti, the Mexican wife of a friend who lives in Nogales (Arizona). She steered us through the maze of shops and hustlers, and saved Brett from buying some fake silver. He found the real stuff eventually. If you buy silver, be sure it’s the real thing. The sellers weren’t trying to defraud him, but there was a momentary language barrier until Patti stepped in. Real silver is marked as such, and the metal is not any cheaper in Mexico, so if you see a nice “silver” bracelet for $8, think twice.
I got a chance to do some brainstorming with Patti about future trips to Mexico. She and my old friend Felix have a house in Sonora near the Sea of Cortez. It just so happens that there’s a nice open space across the street from their house, so I’m going to try to put together a gathering there, perhaps as a jumping-off spot for San Carlos and other towns. I also got some tips on things to do (and eat) in Hermosillo, so I’m greatly encouraged. The challenge will be finding the time in February or March before we head out of the southwest for the season.
January 20, 2008 at 8:58 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
About 30 miles south of Tucson is the town of Green Valley, where our friends Ken and Petey live three months of the year. They come down with a different Airstream every year, since they have a collection of vintage ones. Their collection includes some really spectacular trailers, including a 1948 Airstream Wee Wind, and the one-of-a-kind smallest Airstream ever made, named “Der Kleine Prinz”.
Ken and Petey also have a nice 1965 Airstream Caravel, which they took to the International Rally last summer in Georgia (above). We went to Puerto Penasco (Sonora, MX) last spring with them, and that time they brought their 1960s-era Globe Trotter.
This weekend we met up with photographer/author Doug Keister and his wife Sandi at Ken & Petey’s condo for brunch. You might recall we courtesy-parked at the Keister’s house last November.
Getting together a group with this much vintage trailer knowledge is always interesting. Brett has owned and restored several vintage trailers and motorhomes. Ken is habitually restoring trailers, and Doug has written numerous books on vintage RVs. In fact, his next one is coming out this spring, and we plan to carry it in the Airstream Life store.
It’s also helpful to talk to Doug about photography, since he knows more about it that I’ll ever know. Together with Bert Gildart, he has convinced me to add a few tools to my camera equipment. But of course, the real problem is finding the budget. I’d like to get a spare Nikon digital SLR body, preferably a D80, and I’m still looking for the Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom, the Tokina 12-24mm zoom, and an SB-800 flash. That’s about $3k in total. Some day …
January 17, 2008 at 11:43 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Sometimes working on a house feels like climbing Mt Rainier in a blizzard: one step forward, half a step back. Today three appliances were delivered and installed: washer, dryer, and refrigerator. This felt like good progress until we discovered that the painters crimped the copper water line for the refrigerator so we couldn’t attach it — it needs to be replaced with a flexible line. One more item for the “handyman list”.
The gas plumbers did an excellent job upgrading our line to supply four appliances instead of two. Now the house has natural gas to the cooktop, dryer, furnace, and water heater. This is helpful in several ways. Not only does Eleanor insist on cooking over gas flames, we are able to free up some breakers in our electrical panel because we no longer have an electric range and electric dryer. We need those breakers for other things, not the least of which is the 30-amp plug to the Airstream in the carport.
Eleanor spent the afternoon happily spinning clothes in the new high-efficiency washer and dryer, and they seem to have her stamp of approval. The new water-saving toilets are installed as well. Without getting into details, let’s just say that they were tested today and so far we are happy with their performance. They use less than 1/3 of the water of the old ones, and the washer uses about 1/2 the water of a top-loader, which is a good thing here in the desert.
The refrigerator seems massive. It’s 26 cubic feet, the biggest refrigerator I have ever owned, by far. Our Airstream’s refrigerator is 8 cubic feet, and we have lived happily with it for over two years, so I am sort of wondering what we will do with all the space in the new one. It does have a few advantages over the typical RV fridge, however, including room for a full-size frozen pizza and a gallon of ice cream. So guess what we ran out to the local supermarket to buy today?
Our cooktop and stove hood came in too, but we can’t install those until later in the process. So instead we are beginning to map out the kitchen with the appliance boxes. To one side of the room lies a big box marked “FRANKE” — that’s the sink. Atop it lies a box from Kohler, containing the faucet. Opposite is a box with the cooktop, and next to it a box from Braun contains the hood. It’s not a functional kitchen but at least we can see it growing. The only thing out of the box is the fridge, and the installers took the empty box with them. Hey, that’s the fun part! I bet they keep those boxes and play in them after work. I know I would.
Safelite came by this morning to replace the windshield of the Armada. The ding I picked up in the glass last week (thanks to a truck spewing gravel on I-10) turned into a large crack overnight, and so glass repair ceased to be an option before I even had a chance to try it. That was a quick $230 out the window — or should I say, “out the windshield” — since our deductible is higher. I would have liked to have captured the license plate of the truck that did the damage, but at the time it seemed the prudent thing to do was to slow down drastically and get away from the hailstorm of rocks it was tossing. So he got away and I got stuck with the bill. Between that and the slight bumper damage, it was not a good week for the Airstream or the Nissan.
This weekend we are expecting a few Airstream friends to drop by. None, however, will be bringing their Airstreams. In fact, we are expecting our first houseguest on Saturday. Since the house is still rough and sleeping quarters will amount to an air mattress on the rug in front of the fireplace, it makes sense that our first houseguest will be one of the most resilient people I know: Brett. We’ll use his visit as an excuse to take time off from hunting for house components, and go play around Tucson instead. But maybe he’ll help me fix the bumper too.
December 19, 2007 at 6:14 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
As I expected, everything went nuts when Bill and Larry arrived. They showed up with a snowball for Emma, collected up around 4000 ft in the mountains which they drove through on the way here. Next thing I knew, Emma was in their trailer learning how to de-vein shrimp with Larry, and soon we were eating jook (which is a sort of turkey soup), spicy shrimp, and salad.
But that was just a warm-up. Today at 2:00 the real show began. Bill is notorious for his re-enacted characters. Up at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego, you’ll see him in the museum, recreated in wax as the lighthouse keeper. Down here in the desert valley, he has appeared as the Conductor from The Polar Express. I warmed up the audience (consisting of Eleanor, Emma, plus our new Airstream neighbors Lisa, Kelly, and 6-year-old Austin) with a quick sing-along of “Opihi Man“, and then the Conductor appeared.
After the Conductor did his bit (with the silver bell that only rings for people who believe in Santa Claus), Larry did an introduction and then we had an appearance from the Plague Doctor. This fellow explained about the history of bubonic plague, a disease that still affects parts of the southwest, and his medieval beliefs of how it was spread.
Next up was a character from the Nutcracker Suite. He told the story of the Nutcracker, and demonstrated his invention the stereoscope. Interestingly, one of the stereoscope images was of the lighthouse keeper at Cabrillo National Monument.
Somewhere in there we all ended up with chopsticks eating samples of ginger bread, and before we knew it, the show was over. Then Bill broke out his mandolin and we took a crack at playing a bluegrass tune together. Tomorrow we’re going to see if we can work up a Christmas carol.
Christmas music on mandolin and ukulele in the sunny desert … non-traditional, but fun.
December 18, 2007 at 6:38 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The weather has been absolutely unchanging since we arrived here in Borrego Springs last Thursday: cool mornings in fifties with still air, then a whisper of a breeze starting around 9 a.m. We get mid-sixties for the rest of the day and blazing sunshine under cloudless skies, which gives us a few hours to open the door and windows of the Airstream.
But it’s over all too soon at 3:30, when the sun dips behind the mountains and suddenly there’s a chill that makes me reach for my fleece. By 5 p.m. it’s dark and back to the low 50s, and small campfires can be seen at other sites for a few hours, until finally the cold desert night chases everyone back inside to spend a night with the furnace running against near-freezing lows.
I have developed a routine to accommodate the daily cycle. At 7 a.m. I get up with the sunrise, to maximum my exposure to the light, and do a little email on the laptop. After breakfast, it’s warm enough to be outside, so I commute over to the Borrego Springs Public Library (a small place in a former bank), and take a bench just outside the front door. For two hours longer I work there, using the library’s high-speed wi-fi, until my laptop’s battery runs low, and then return to the campground for lunch.
A little more work after lunch means I’ve put in 5-7 hours and can justify an afternoon of play, which has been variously explorations around the state park or ukulele practice. By 4 p.m. when the coyotes are beginning to yip at each other, we are back at the Airstream and I can do another hour or two of work before dinner. Although I’m most definitely not one for routines, this strikes me as a very civilized way to work. I may have to adopt a similar schedule for January in Arizona.
However, all this nice routine is about to go straight in the dumpster tomorrow, I’m sure. Bill and Larry are arriving sometime tonight, and perhaps also Lisa and her son Austin. All of them are going to be in vacation mode, which means lots of “what shall we do now?” and “aren’t you coming to the …”. It’s hard to be a dedicated and responsible publisher when such bad influences are around.
I’ll have to try hard. Tomorrow or Thursday we are going to “go live” with the new Airstreamlife.com website. I’ll need to be standing by at the library to identify and resolve little launch difficulties, at least for a few days. It will probably take until about Jan 1 to get all the content running smoothly.
As I type this, Bill and Larry have pulled up in their very beautiful new Airstream Safari Special Edition and matching silver truck. They made a reasonably dramatic entrance, as good Airstreamers should, with trailer gleaming and red LED clearance lights glowing against the dusky blue sky. Larry says he’s made jook, which is a Chinese thing that we will be eating tonight apparently. Whe she heard this, Eleanor shelved the dinner she had already begun. Sounds like our routine is busted already, but in a good way.
December 16, 2007 at 9:22 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
And then, absolutely nothing happened.
Early this morning, Tommy and Kathy packed it up for points north. They have an engagement in the area of Long Beach. Eleanor woke up with some coughing leftover from the cold, and the sky had a thin overcast which took away the warm sun, so it felt like a winter day for the first time.
This time of year there are few scheduled events in the park. There was one ranger talk scheduled for 2:00 pm, but nobody showed up except me (not even the ranger!). We went for a bike ride around the campground, took a couple of walks, and practiced ukulele all afternoon. Eleanor stayed in and worked on craft projects. In short, a quiet day.
That’s probably good. On Tuesday we are expecting a few Airstream folks to join us and things will probably get a lot busier. For them, I will provide a few tips for camping this week in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
- Eat Mexican food downtown. There are a couple of restaurants but we prefer the one right on main street. It’s inexpensive, good, and casual.
- Plan on at least one day on the backroads and offroad, if you can. That’s where the park gets really interesting. Even with a small car you can explore some of the “off-road” spots. Ask a ranger for tips and buy the $1 map in the Visitor Center.
- Catch some history. I know history is not everyone’s area of interest, but this place has geologic history (volcanoes, inland seas, etc), evolutionary history (mammoths and dinosaurs), and human history (Juan de Anza, Marshal South, Peg Leg Smith). It’s all interesting. I can specifically recommend the film on Marshal South in the Visitor Center. His “experiment” in living off the land with his family in Anza-Borrego back in the 1930s is fascinating story which deserves to be better known.
- Take an early hike. Early in the morning is when you’re likely to see the bighorn sheep in Palm Canyon, and by mid-day you can stop for lunch at a palm tree oasis. There are also petroglyphs to be found in a few places.
- Bring something to do in the long dark evenings. A book, a movie, a game, a telescope, a musical instrument, or a pile of firewood. While the stars are beautiful here, it’s also cold enough that you won’t be outside after dark without a hat and a warm jacket, or a good warm camp fire.
« Previous entries ·
Next entries »
