Archive for Uncategorized
February 27, 2006 at 6:44 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We spent the morning catching up on work but when we finally poked our heads out we met two neighbors right away. NTAC is a friendly place and everyone wants to say hello and offer something: laundry machines, lunch, a place to work, directions.
It feels like a rally all the time. There is an Airstream in every garage, literally. NTAC is a gated community of villas, “RV port” homes, and grassy lots, each with full hookups for an Airstream. People lease the lots and own the improvements. Most are second homes, but for some people they are their primary residence.
By the way, any Airstream owner can visit here. You don’t have to be a member of WBCCI. Normally you’d be parked in the gravel lot, but since we are courtesy parking, we are parked on grass between two houses just up from the clubhouse. Our host has told us we can stay as long as we like, which is very good for our budget.
NTAC is across the way from the town of Hillsboro, which is centered on a mammoth French Second Empire courthouse. I’ve spotted two of these courthouses in Texas so far (the second one being in Weatherford).
Jim and Janie Haddaway invited us to their NTAC villa for dinner this evening before my scheduled talk about our travels. We feasted on “taco soup” — a Texas dinner, I’m told. Jim is a past International President of the WBCCI, and we were joined by Dr Earl Elam, the current president of the NTAC Board of Directors, and his wife Eleanor.
At 7 pm I presented a slide show about our travels to about 25 community members. I picked out 160 slides from the thousands in my albums, and talked about where we’ve been, how we live, and what we do. Although that sounds like a lot of slides, we were done in 90 minutes and everyone seemed to like it. People are always curious about us since we are a bit of a anomaly as full-timers who aren’t retired, and traveling with a child.
The audience poses after my slide show
In short, NTAC has rolled out the red carpet for us and we are having a fine time, so we’ll be here for a couple more days at least. I’ve got plenty of work to do, and tomorrow I’m on the program for the Computer Rally going on this week, speaking on “Getting Online While Mobile.” Emma wants to ride her bicycle and Eleanor is going to catch up on laundry. We’ll also do some research and figure out where we’re going between here and Indiana. I’m leaning toward Natchez Trace Parkway but I’m not sure we’ll have time to do it properly.
February 26, 2006 at 7:35 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Now that was the right way to run a rally “¦ er, “campout”. The Heart of Texas Unit really has a great way of doing things. We had the most relaxing Saturday, and a great time despite the fact that it rained nearly all day.
Emma and her newfound friends spent the entire day together, playing card games in their ’67 Caravel, and getting into mud by the lakeside. We got her back at dinnertime, soaked, covered in mud, and as happy as a five-year-old can be.
I spent the morning sleeping. After my dawn breakfast, I decided to go back to bed, and didn’t wake up until 11! By then, breakfast was over but everyone was still out under the canopy talking, so I just showed up and nobody questioned where I’d been all morning. Eleanor and I ended up with David Tidmore in our trailer all afternoon, exchanging Airstream knowledge and planning some of our trailer upgrades.
David is a man of ideas and he knows how to execute them. In a few hours, he had me convinced to upgrade to disc brakes, re-wire my trailer for more efficient charging, and add solar. He also showed me the upgrades his dealership has done for other members, some of which are pretty clever, and he pitched me on switching to a Hensley Arrow hitch. We pitched him on our ideas to change some of our cabinetry, upgrade two of the windows, and possibly add a Vista View window. We’re going to keep talking this week about those projects.
Carter and Karmen Yountz’s 1961 Bambi
Saturday’s dinner was an incredible Mexican-themed potluck. People in this unit really know how to cook. I was amazed at the quality. By dinnertime, a cold front had blown through and cleared out the rain, so it was cool but still nice enough to eat outside with a jacket on.
Emma and her friends came over at 8:30 to watch “The Princess Bride” on our TV and I made a big batch of popcorn for them, while Eleanor spent the evening out in our folks’ trailers looking at pictures and exchanging travel ideas.
In short, we had a great day. Today was nice too “¦ a casual morning with breakfast at 9:00 or so, plenty of sunshine and chat, then I roamed around taking photos for future articles.
One “typical” family at the campout
In the afternoon we headed over to North Texas Airstream Community in Hillsboro and that’s where we are right now. I’ll tell you all about that this week.
February 25, 2006 at 7:30 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We are finally at the first organized rally since we started traveling in October. The new “Heart of Texas” unit of the WBCCI invited us to join them in here for a “campout”, and so we slogged for four hours through the biggest rainstorm Texas has seen in months to get here.
I am certain it will be worth it. There are about eight or nine Airstreams parked with us beside a little lake, ranging from a nice ’67 Caravel to a polished Classic 280 Turbodiesel motorhome and several newer units. Two of the couples besides us brought their young kids! That’s a rare event indeed for most WBCCI events (but the norm for this new unit). Of course Emma is thrilled with her new friends, even though they are all a bit older than her. By nine o’clock she had been adopted by the other kids and was off playing flashlight tag in the dark.
A couple of people were kind enough to say that they made an extra effort to come because David Tidmore, president of this unit, told them we were coming. They all want to hear about our travels, even the people who read the blog regularly. It’s really nice to see that people are interested, and so I’m going to try to put together some photos and ideas to share with them this evening.
One of the unusual things about the Heart of Texas Unit is that almost all the members are not retired. So they do things a bit differently. The usual WBCCI unit rally includes breakfast on Saturday morning at 7 or 8 a.m., but David stood up last night to announce that as usual, breakfast would be held at “about 9:30″. Given that dinner was set for “about 7″ last night and we didn’t actually get to eating until 8, I figured I’d sleep in and then have brunch with the group.
But it has rained hard all night, with thunderstorms, and they woke me up at 6:30 “¦ and I ended up having breakfast alone at 7 while Eleanor and Emma slept blissfully through the patter of rain our aluminum roof. The forecasters say the rain will end today, which is fine with me. The Texans wish it would keep raining, because the state is in a severe drought right now.
February 23, 2006 at 6:46 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The highlight of today was grocery shopping, which is remarkable coming from me. I normally hate grocery shopping but the Whole Foods Market in Austin is definitely one of the exceptions. This place is amazing.
Eleanor has a culinary arts degree and I like eating good food, so the combination can be dangerous sometimes. This was one of those times. We went nuts, trying samples and buying all kinds of things. I grabbed some terrific nectarines and “pink navel” oranges while Eleanor shopped wild mushrooms and peppers. Then we bought smoked salmon, seafood paella (rice with seafood), kung pao tofu, fresh cut pineapple, watermelon, potato latkes, olive & artichoke antipasto, French boule bread, and a pint of chocolate gelato. That was our smorgasbord dinner. Yum.
Halfway through our Whole Foods Market dinner
We also bought ingredients for Eleanor to make something Mexican for the potluck dinner this Saturday, since that’s the theme the “campout” organizers have announced: tomatillos, chipolte peppers, corn, bell peppers, onions, limes, and various Mexican spices. She’s making a roasted corn salad.
We also bought a lot of other things we love: Maytag blue cheese, chocolate milk (something I don’t digest well, but I can’t resist), dried cranberries, Turkish apricots, roasted cashew butter, freshly roasted coffee beans (still warm!), a chocolate truffle dessert, china black rice … mostly stuff you can’t find at the remote grocery stores we usually shop at out in the boonies.
This is the key to traveling well. You’ve got to try to have fun even in the mundane errands. It doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a shot for the times like this when you succeed. Shopping at the Whole Foods Market was an evening’s entertainment (and that’s not even counting the people-watching, which was some of the best since California…)
So we’re stocked with goodies for a while. Between the staples we bought before going to Big Bend and the Whole Foods spree, this Airstream is loaded with enough food to keep us in gourmet heaven for weeks. It’s not just weenies and beans when we travel!
February 20, 2006 at 10:21 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Sunday we ran errands, so it wasn’t a fascinating day. Still we did get to the Witte Museum (free, because we used our ASTC Travel Passport again). Emma seemed to like the Texas animal exhibits best.
We also researched the bike rack problem. Here’s the short version: Yakima no longer recommends ANY bike rack on the Nissan Armada. That’s a change in their policy, since we bought our rack. Presumably the problem is the flexible factory crossbars that allow bikes to wobble too much.
Thule offers a very weird solution that is essentially a set of their crossbars mounted to the factory crossbars. This provides a rigid base and probably solves the problem, but it looks like a Rube Goldberg invention and raises the height of the rack a couple of inches, which would make mounting a bike even harder than it already is.
On their website, Nissan recommends a Yakima rack that is discontinued. No help there. I doubt it would have worked better anyway.
A few readers suggsted putting on a front receiver hitch. Unfortunately, nobody makes a front receiver hitch kit for the Armada so far as I can tell. Trunk racks don’t work for us because they force us to remove the bikes everytime we need access to the back, which is often.
Another reader suggested dumping the bikes and rack and getting a pair of folding bikes. But folding bikes are expensive, and we’d take a huge hit on the bikes we already have (which we just bought last September). Plus, the folding bikes would end up in the trailer or the truck, which is what we are trying to avoid. Interior space is at a premium.
That leaves us with putting a receiver hitch on the rear of the Airstream, for a receiver-type bike rack. It can be done in some cases. In the 1970s Airstream sold a bike rack option for their trailers, which I have seen on rare occasions. It was bolted to the sides of the bumper compartment and carried two bikes. However, the 1970s plague of “rear end sag” on some longer rear-bath models put an end to that. People got paranoid about overloading the rear, and legitimately so in some cases, where the trailer was heavy and the frame was light. Those 70s frames couldn’t take the shock load (“moment arm”) of the extra weight when it bounced over a bump.
But not all Airstreams are made the same. In our case, we are lucky that the Safari 30 is built on a Classic frame, meaning that it is very strong. We believe that we can put a receiver hitch on it and be safe as long as we keep the overall added weight to <100 lbs, including the hitch itself. But clearly more research is indicated. I'll continue looking in to this to see if we can get away with it. If so, I think this would be the best long-term solution.
Sign of the week:
“Seen” at the Pima Air Museum, Tucson, AZ
February 19, 2006 at 10:52 am · Filed under Uncategorized
It rained a tiny bit last night — a sign that we are finally coming out of the desert. We haven’t seen rain since December in Los Angeles!
We’re taking a day off today, which in our world means no tourist stuff, just a few errands. I am going to keep my eyes out for a red-and-white barber pole since I need a haircut. You need a sense of adventure (and a distinct lack of concern for hairstyle) to just pick a random barber in a strange city. Sometimes the results are good (as in Borrego Springs CA) and sometimes they are tragic (as in Cupertino CA). Be grateful I didn’t post a picture of the Cupertino haircut. Eleanor said I looked like Moe of the Three Stooges.
I want to remind you of a few events, in the hope you can join us. We are having a dinner at the Salt Lick in Driftwood TX on Wednesday night. Also we will be at a rally in Cleburne TX next weekend and and also at the Region 9 Computer Rally in Hillsborough next Monday. If you think you might want to drop in on any of these, check our Schedule page for details or use our Contact Us form.
In less than three weeks, we’ll be up in Indiana for a brief visit, at Twin City Airstream of Indiana (Lafayette). This will be the only stop we make up north until July, so if you can drop by, please do! I’ll be fine-tuning my presentation on “Getting online while mobile” if anyone is interested in seeing it. We also have a slide show of about 80 of our favorite Airstream photos. Let me know if you might be able to visit while we are in Indiana.
February 18, 2006 at 2:40 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
COLD! Something is wrong here in Texas. The temperatures in Big Bend dropped into the 40s on Friday, a 30+ degree change from the day before. By the time we arrived at Seminole Canyon State Historic Park Friday night it was 37 and the wind was blowing hard. We turned on the furnace and spent the evening watching a movie (“Emma”, the Jane Austen story with Gweneth Paltrow) and having a belated Valentine’s Day.
This reminds me of two things: First, we stepped up our Netflix subscription to 8 CDs at a time. We love movies and we rarely watch (or can receive) over-the-air TV, so having a choice of movies on disc is essential for those bad-weather evenings like last night. People ask us how it works when we are always moving, so I’ll tell you.
It works fine. We have our mail forwarded to General Delivery or a friend’s house every week or two, and that’s how we get our movies. Having the “eight at a time” plans means that we usually have 3-4 handy at any given moment, and each mail package brings the balance. I try to plan the Netflix queue to include at least two kid movies, two family movies (hard to find these days), and some movies for adults like thrillers. We’re Jackie Chan fans, so I’ve got his latest (“Thunderbolt”) here right now.
The second thing I wanted to mention is that we like to be flexible about holidays and birthdays. If our schedule makes an event inconvenient, we postpone it. No guilt, no pressure. We were so busy in Big Bend that we skipped Valentine’s Day until last night. With nothing to do in Seminole Canyon, Emma and I worked on making Valentine’s cards with glue, markers, construction paper, and rubber stamps. Then Emma and Eleanor made a cake and we watched “Emma” the romantic movie. That was Valentine’s Day for us: February 17, 2006.
Valentine’s Day 2006 in our Airstream
Now the problem is what to do for the next few days. Today (while driving to San Antonio) we started off at 33 degrees and never warmed above 37 all day. These are the coldest daytime temps we’ve seen since we started the trip.
It’s not much fun in the 30s. It’s too warm for winter activities (skiing, sledding, skating) and too cold for summer activities. We’re going to have to exercise some creativity to keep busy until it warms on Tuesday. I’ll catch up on work and Emma will do some schooling, but then we’ll have to get out for at least a few hours. The San Antonio Riverwalk does not seem appealing in the 30s. We are parked in the midst of several historic Missions, so we may attempt them, but if the weather is really abominably windy as it has been, we may resort to doing our shopping and laundry.
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