Archive for Home base
April 6, 2008 at 9:45 pm · Filed under Home base
Today I am feeling like taking a vacation from blogging, and it just happens that I have a houseful of guests here right now. We invited a few people over for pizza from Magpies, which is incidentally the best pizza we have found in Tucson (so far). So combining my disinclination to blog with the guests, I have come up with an idea: a group blog. Everyone here is being asked to contribute just a sentence or two (or a paragraph). As they say, “many hands makes light work.” So let’s see what my friends have to say.
First up is Susan, because she’s the bravest:
It was a beautiful day for a hike and Rich and Emma took Adam and I to Tanque Verde for a hike and look at the waterfalls. Along the way we saw every kind of cactus imaginable, frogs, a swarm of bees, and a bunch of college geology students who told us about the local formations. Beautiful!
Next up … Judy:
This was an almost perfect Tucson day-blue skies, 80 degrees and 8% humidity with an occasional cool breeze-ahhhhhh. (but don’t move here, THERE IS NO WATER!) This is the weather that brings out the gardening bug in Tucsonians so we walked to the nursery and bought plants, three Blackfoot Daisies which are the native daisy for this part of the southwest.
And now her husband Rick:
I could go on about how nice a day it was in Arizona, so I will. It’s the reason many or most of us are here. Generally, Sundays can be uneventful but this evening finds my family with friends, some new some not so new and it certainly made this Sunday special.
Now, let’s see what their son Sam has to say:
Well, hello all. Today’s been a lovely day, absolutely gorgeous Arizona weather. My day began as any other day and has come to a close with an amazingly stimulating philosophical conversation that spanned everything from human nature to James Bond novels. It’s such a nice experience to be able to hold an intelligent conversation with such intelligent people, at least every once in awhile; as well as it is heartening to realize that there are, indeed, other intelligent people in the world who have the mental capacity with which to hold these conversations. It’s one of those lovely little moments that recharge your faith in humanity; which is very refreshing in these days of uncertainty”¦ when it can, at times, feel like you’re the only one who thinks this way; or, to be brutally honest, even thinks at all. I must thank everyone here for the opportunity to expand my mind, and maybe even expand someone else’s.
Adam here:
Today’s hike was wonder full as Susan says. Tonight we got to see Carol’s beautiful book on the Birds of Sonora and I gained great insight and hope from our new friends Sam and Joe who re-enforce our belief that the next generation can teach us a lot and will continue to change our world for the better.
It’s Joe at the deck:
Hobbes, Locke, Descartes””We’ve been over them all, over a 30-something minute conversation with Adam, it’s amazing at how three people from different backgrounds have their paths crossed in a intermingling dialogue, from the internet (a series of tubes cleaned out by the powerball) to Alexander the Great to Bernard of Clairvaux. The morality of human nature, the motivations behind political careers, the fallibility of mankind, the power of advertising. And the amazing thing we all found, the conversation came full circle””back to communication and upbringing. Ah, but to have more chances to experience this caliber of conversation, dust off your ideals and bring your views out into the light, so as you read this, make a decision, the next time someone approaches you with an idea or an opinion of this nature indulge them and yourself.
[By the way, Joe is 15 years old. Both sons, Sam and Joe, have been homeschooled all their lives. You can see the results. — RL]
Carol here,
The desert bloom is ending, it was a spectacular wildflower show in SE Arizona. I enjoyed the evening with Rich, Eleanor, Emma and their friends. Pizza was great.
And thus concludes our group blog this evening. Our guests are on their way home, the pizza leftovers are in the refrigerator, the dischwascher is quietly dealing with its inaugural load of plates and glasses, and we are settling in for the night. Thanks to all our guest bloggers this evening.
36 hours until we head out!
March 29, 2008 at 8:54 pm · Filed under Home base
Ready for launch.
We have gone through a procedure familiar to many an RV owner. The trailer has been cleaned thoroughly, the propane tanks are filled, the food is stocked. I lubed the hitch, filled the fresh water tank, checked the lug nut torque, and checked the tire pressure. Eleanor pared down our unneeded supplies, re-packed, and re-organized everything. We’ve checked in with the neighbors and put out the trash. A hundred details have been attended to. And now we are ready.
All the preparation is good but of course it is no guarantee that we will not encounter adverse events as we strike out. It wouldn’t be an adventure if it were entirely controlled, programmed, and guaranteed. We have set things in place and from here on in we have to put our faith in our Airstream and ourselves.
Marlin: How do you know? How do you know something bad isn’t gonna happen?
Dory: I don’t!
This marks the end of the house blog, and the return of the full-time traveling blog. Aside from a short stopover in Tucson about a week from now, we expect to be on the road for about six months. We have stops planned in NM, TX, LA, FL, NC, VA, VT, NY, ME, OH, CO, UT, and AZ again … and those are only the ones we are sure about. SC, MD, MA, KS, and SD are on the “possible” list.
Bert and Janie tell stories of their adventures in Alaska
As enticing the possibilities are of this next phase of our travels, they were put in perspective today by Bert & Janie’s tales of their adventures in Alaska. Ten years ago, they spent about a year in northern Alaska, living in a wall tent, exploring the Yukon River by jon boat, and living with the natives.
At one point, they spent a month walking north into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from Venetie to Kaktovik, about 200 miles over the Brooks Range, only to find their pre-arranged ride wasn’t going to show up. They walked another 15 miles to the nearest village, completely out of food. Bert got two ducks with the last shot in his shotgun as they were walking, thus averting a near-disaster. Their year in Alaska resulted in dozens of printed magazine articles authored by Bert. They are amazingly humble for all the incredible things they have done. Whenever I think we are taking on too much, I look at what Bert & Janie have done.
By comparison, our trip is just a fun little jaunt, 300 miles south to the beach. We sure won’t run out of food and resort to hunting ducks. I think all we’d find would be pigeons and hummingbirds anyway.
For the next week blog entries will be sporadic. I will write every day but my ability to get online and post from Mexico may be spotty. When I can, I’ll upload and backfill all the daily entries. If anyone needs us this week, leave a message. We’re outta here.
March 28, 2008 at 10:03 pm · Filed under Home base
It is a good kind of crazy here. Our house is filled with people coming and going, talking incessantly, doing laundry, re-heating pizza, reading books, and planning dream adventures. Our schedules are random and constantly changing. I never know who will be in the driveway from hour to hour. It’s like days in the college dormitory.
Having Adam and Susan, and Janie and Bert here is dangerous. They are all full of ideas of places we might go, and schemes for making exotic trips possible. We’re talking about the Yucatan Peninsula, South Africa, and Australia. The dangerous part is not the destination, but the fact that our friends might actually pull off these trips with us coming along. I know we’d love to do some overseas traveling if we could figure out how.
We have been notified that our last portion of kitchen countertops will be installed on Saturday, exactly 24 hours before we leave. Talk about cutting it close to the wire. Actually it’s far too late, because now we can’t get the final paint touchups and appliance installations done. We plan to take a couple of days after Mexico to finalize what we can, and that will be it for this season.
I think at this point we are already mentally checked out of the house-renovation process. It would have been nice to have had it all done a month ago, but since it wasn’t we’ve turned our attention to other things. The contractors and projects have been superseded by other suburban tasks, and soon this entire phase will fade away to a memory as we rejoin our lives as travelers.
For all the aggravation of renovating the house, I don’t regret it. We have what we set out for: a safe, reliable, easily-maintained home base in a nice climate. Our investment of time and money means it will be here to support us when we get back, or whenever we need it. We know we’ll be comfortable here, and the door will always unlock for us. It is not perfect but it will be home whenever the Airstream isn’t. For most people, that’s the ordinary situation but for us it’s a novelty.
I have a checklist of things we must do before we go. The list has dwindled by half since Monday, but the rest will have to be tackled in the next 36 hours. That means Saturday will be one more crazy day, as we move back into the Airstream and mothball the house, while overseeing the countertop installation and helping our guests stay busy with their own activities (sightseeing, etc). It’s a lot of effort but fun at the same time. I guess I prefer this sort of crazy to being sane and stable all the time.
March 27, 2008 at 8:30 pm · Filed under Home base, Maintenance
For the past month I’ve been opening the windows in the house to let the afternoon air seep in and warm up the cold stone floors and adobe blocks of the house. In February and early March there are so few insects in the air that not having screens was never a problem. Once in a while a fly would buzz in, look around, and buzz out again.
But now the desert is warming and the flowers are blooming. Bees are examining the blue flowers on the rosemary bushes, and the occasional “mosquito eater” wanders in and stays out of confusion. Last night Eleanor trapped a beautiful Painted Lady butterfly who was stuck in a ceiling light, and released it after Emma identified it in her butterfly book.
Our days are now consistently in the 80s and the nights are in the mid-50s, so the house is at last a comfortable 71 degrees throughout. This means we can start to leave windows open at night, too, to moderate the thermal mass of the house and keep the house from getting too warm. I put in the window screens and thought, not for the first time, that it would be nice to stay just another few weeks to enjoy the very best of Tucson’s weather.
But that won’t happen. We are still committed to our departure on Sunday, because we’ve got far too many things to do this spring and many people we want to visit.
So this morning I pulled the Airstream out of the carport past our temporary tenants (the Gildarts) and across town to the local Airstream dealer. I left it there to have the heat pump fixed, and four hours later I got a call that it was done. The problem turned out to be a bad circuit board. Dometic is replacing the board under warranty, but we have to pay for the labor. That’s $200 to us.
In the big scheme of overall maintenance it’s not a big deal. It has to cost something to stay on the road, and our annual expense has been about $2000, counting all repairs and scheduled maintenance. So far this year we have spent about $350, which for three months is not bad at all, but it’s reflective of the fact that we haven’t traveled much.
Being separated from the Airstream, even for a day, has been tougher than we expected. We took out all the daily things we thought we’d need, but then all day we were looking for items that inevitably turned out to still be in the trailer: a notepad, a particular knife, and birthday candles. Friday morning I’ll go over and bring our first home back to our second home. It’s clear we can’t be separated from the Airstream for long.
The birthday candles were of course for Eleanor, whose birthday snuck up on us in the confusion of house projects, trying to get back on the road, and people coming and going. But it turned out for the best, since Adam and Susan arrived and with Bert and Janie it meant we had four of our best friends on hand for a party. It was just a wonderfully lucky coincidence.
Emma and I made a card using some of the techniques taught to Emma by our friend Lou in Ohio. It featured a palm tree and a “slider” of a monkey, swinging from limb to limb. Eleanor got two bouquets of flowers, a bunch of kettle corn (not from me, even though I love the stuff), and a white chocolate/raspberry birthday cake. Bert & Janie bought pizza for everyone and we just hung out in the dining room and told stories of past adventures and past lives.
It was a good birthday party on a wonderful desert day in Tucson, in the middle of a great week. We’ll look back on this day and remember it not for the money that the heat pump cost us, and not for the things in the house that still aren’t right, but for the people who made it a great day by traveling hundreds or thousands of miles just to share it with us.
March 26, 2008 at 9:52 pm · Filed under Home base, Maintenance
We’re down to the home stretch. This Sunday, we leave, whether the house is done or not. Every day we tackle lists of things that both the house and the Airstream need, and we try not to think about how much more there is to do.
We’ve made this harder for ourselves than it had to be, strictly speaking. We didn’t have to thoroughly remove everything from the Airstream, clean, sort, and then re-load, but we wanted to. We won’t have another chance to do this for at least six months. So Eleanor has been taking the time to clean those things that have been bugging her, like the aluminum kitchen blinds.
Those blinds sit right by the stove and they get dusty and greasy. It turns out that if you try to clean those blinds in place, they tend to get bent and creased. The better way to go is to take them out entirely and soak them in the tub, which is what Eleanor did, among many other tasks inside the Airstream.
I have mostly been doing stuff in the house. The big job was to finish sealing the slate floors in the dining room and living room. We used a matte sealant but when they are first done the effect is very glossy. It will eventually calm down, so I took a picture to remember how it looked.
I also took the little Honda out to have its windows tinted, in preparation for life in Arizona. Even though it will sit in the carport all summer, the tint is nice to have for Arizona’s intense spring and fall sunlight. We are already entering the warm season, with mid-80s every day. Crickets have moved into the house and are chirping merrily away each evening. The first days in the 90s are only a couple of weeks away.
There are a thousand lesser things on the list: adding fuel stabilizer to the car, removing things from the backyard that might make good snake homes, turning off the water heater, etc. It’s a lot like the pre-departure checklist we use for the Airstream, but everything is bigger and takes longer.
Today our second Airstream guests of the week arrived: Bert & Janie Gildart. They just came out of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and squeezed into the space formerly occupied by the Welshes last month. Bert & Janie have a Safari 28 with slide-out, but there’s no room for the slide right now. They’ll be here a few days, but mostly on their own as we continue to hustle around the house trying to get ready.
Bert backed the Airstream into the carport exactly in the right spot, on the first attempt. I thought Bobby had done a good job but Bert made it look downright easy.
I had to get a picture of the two Airstreams right away, because Thursday morning ours is going over to the local Airstream dealer for service on that non-functional heat pump. Once we are out of the way, Bert will be able to deploy their slide-out. Then we’ll bring our trailer back on Friday night for the last two nights.
Susan and Adam called in from Texas and said they’ll be in town on Friday. They are going to park their Airstream Class C down the road at a campground until it’s time to launch the caravan to Mexico on Sunday.
I haven’t decided if it will actually be a caravan. Caravaning implies that we all leave together and travel together, like a trucker’s convoy. I really prefer not to do that.
In the past, we’ve traveled very loosely with friends. Our usual mode is to tell everyone where to end up, and let them all travel on their own schedule. That way we are all able to be independent and nobody is chafing because somebody else slept in, or didn’t want to take a bathroom stop, etc.
Also, while we would all help each other whenever possible, I don’t want to be responsible for holding someone’s hand every step of the way — it doubles my responsibilities and makes a trip seem like work. So I tell everyone, “You’re on your own. If you have a problem, give a call and we’ll try to help, but no promises. Drive like you are traveling alone, because you probably will be.” Fortunately, all of our friends are pretty independent and self-reliant, and they have no problem with this. They are bright enough to prepare in advance (for example, getting good insurance with English-speaking telephone assistance) and they know how a smile and a few words of the native tongue can work miracles when there’s a problem.
Another reason I prefer not to caravan is that it is a nuisance to try to find a place to park three big Airstreams all at once, such as for lunch. One of us can pull over to check out that interesting-looking little taco stand, but with all three we’d probably have to pass it up. In all sorts of situations (getting fuel, stopping for border inspection, checking out a scenic vista), it’s easier if we arrive separately rather than in a bunch.
One reason to keep the vehicles together might be that there are more unusual circumstances on the roads in Mexico. For example, I have heard from other Mexican caravanners that the lead vehicle alerts the following ones by CB radio of speed bumps (topes, pronounced “tow-pays”) coming up. But my feeling is that you shouldn’t drive hoping someone in front of you will tell you what to do. Why, after 50,000 miles of towing, would I suddenly stop looking out for myself? Keeping my eyes open and my head focused on the task has helped us avoid a lot of problems so far.
This brings up another frequently-asked question: Do we have a CB radio? No, we don’t. If we did more caravaning it would probably be indispensable, but with our type of travel I haven’t yet felt the need. I know lots of people who do have CB radios and they love them for getting reports from truckers and others on the road, so I’m not saying they aren’t useful. But we have two cell phones, mobile Internet, a GPS with a multi-million point database, maps, and the ability to stop and ask questions when we need to. I haven’t felt the need for more.
We do carry walkie-talkies and have used them a few times, but mostly we use cell phones and the policy above. On this trip I’ll be the only person with an operable (Mexican) cell phone, so with the limited communications and our unfamiliarity with the roads, we may choose to caravan tightly on certain stretches. For those times we’ll assign a walkie-talkie to everyone, so they can communicate at close distances, and the rest of the time we’ll just say, “See you there.”
March 25, 2008 at 5:06 pm · Filed under Home base
Today I got a huge gift from a blog reader and contributor to Airstream Life. Craig arranged for me to take an hour of flight instruction in a Robinson R-22 helicopter at the Tucson airport. Now I owe him big-time.
Just before departure: thinking maybe I have the Right Stuff
Those of you who have read the blog for a long time know I love flying … when I’m in one of the front seats. In January 2007 I got my first helicopter experience courtesy of an Airstreamer who works at FlightSafety International in Dallas. I flew the Bell 430 and 212 jet helicopter simulators. That was absolutely amazing, but flying the real thing was exceptionally cool too.
The Robinson R-22 is a tiny little helicopter, just big enough for two people to squeeze in (and not very big people, either!) It’s like a sporty little car. From the moment it lifted off the ground it was like magic. So fun it hardly seemed it could be legal. Even a hover at just 6 or 7 feet was thrilling.
My instructor was Laura, a superb and natural teacher who seemed to have almost as much fun as me. Our first task was to practice hovering, turning, and tracking in a straight line at an uncontrolled ramp near the flight school. It took a few minutes for me to adjust my brain to the way the cyclic (control) works, during time which we enjoyed some interesting see-sawing hovering.
In forward flight things are much easier. Since I’ve got a few hundred flight hours in fixed-wing aircraft and an Instrument rating, I’m used to “attitude flying,” so Laura was able to enjoy the scenery as we cruised over the ASARCO open pit copper mines to the southeast of Tucson airport. That’s not to say she just turned it over to me completely — she kept a hand on the collective at all times, ready to react if I did something bad, or if we had an unexpected event.
Flying the R-22 in warm weather like today’s seems ideal. (It was about 80 degrees with full sun.) There’s no air conditioning, but just by removing the doors we could have kept the interior very comfortable. As it was, I was comfortable in forward flight at 3,700 feet, as long as the bubble windshield wasn’t pointed south. Any sweat on my body was solely due to nervousness. The turbulence wasn’t bad either. It’s smoother in a helicopter than in a small airplane.
So would I like to get my heli certificate? You bet. But I’d need to drop about $15,000 to complete the rating, and then of course, I’d need a helicopter once the flight training was done. The little R-22 costs about $120 per hour to run if you can afford the quarter-million to buy it, and between $180-200 per hour to rent. I’ll have to wait. I can only afford one traveling hobby at a time.
But wow …. that was fun! Thanks to Craig and to Laura at Voyager Helicopters in Tucson.
March 24, 2008 at 12:30 am · Filed under Home base, Maintenance
Easter was a success, by kid standards. An appropriate basket of candy was left for Emma, and a small one was left for Eleanor (a pleasant surprise from the Easter Bunny, who is always full of tricks). About two dozen eggs were stashed in various places around the house too. I think we got special treatment this year because Emma left a basket of goodies for the Easter Bunny, including a cookie with instructions.
Once the fun was over, it was time to tackle our task list. Anyone who arrives at our house this week is on notice: you may be put to work. Gunny was the first victim. He showed up mid-morning for a visit and within an hour we had him helping to move furniture and boxes so I could finish sealing the dining room floor. When Bert & Janie arrive, and Susan & Adam, they might get jobs too, but don’t tell them because I don’t want them to suddenly realize they’ve got to detour by way of San Diego.
Emma had her job too: entertaining Gunny’s German Shepherd puppy. It turned out that both of them found the same enjoyment in the garden hose. We were wondering which would tire out first. It turned out to be the dog.
We have begun to seriously clear out the Airstream. It is scheduled for an overnight service later this week (for the heat pump problem), and so we will be forced to spend at least one night in our house. I know it sounds bizarre but we’ve reached the point where it would just be easier to stay in the Airstream until we leave for the next voyage.
I would just grab what we need for an overnight “campout” in the house, but this is our chance to re-organize and slim down our possessions. So we moved a lot of our stuff out of the Airstream and into the house today and will continue to do so through Wednesday. The stuff we don’t need will get sorted out and packed away in the house. Tonight we will spend our first night in our new beds in the house. I doubt it will become a habit.
Mostly the re-organizational process means reducing our equipment and clothing, but in a few cases we’ll actually add stuff, like books on Mexican travel. Eleanor is also planning a total refit of our food supply, which is substantial. Right now the 25-cubic foot refrigerator in the house is full, and the 8-cubic foot refrigerator in the Airstream is empty. Somehow all the food in the refrigerator must disappear before we go, and it can’t all fit into the Airstream. Eleanor says she has a plan …
I’m also removing a lot of spare parts. Over the past couple of years I’ve accumulated little-used items (like spare wheel lugs) which are basically souvenirs of past mechanical disasters. These things were useful in past situations which are unlikely to recur, and so I’m finally clearing them out. Other items were never useful, like the caulk gun (it was always easier to use squeezable tubes for the little jobs inside the trailer).
It is hard to pack for a very long voyage. People seem to take one of two approaches: They either attempt to pack something for every circumstance, or they take hardly anything and expect to acquire what they need as they go. Having the storage of the Airstream we tend to take the first approach, but in moderation.
For example, we are often asked how we pack for different seasons. We have learned to take a little something for every season, just not a lot of it. Even though we are heading into summer and expect to be back in Arizona before late fall, we know better than to offload our long underwear, hats, gloves, and warm socks. Somewhere in this country there will be freezing temperatures at night in June and August, and we’ve managed to find those places every year, sometimes without meaning to.
So although my cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts will be front and center in the closet, somewhere under the bed in a Rubbermaid tub you can also find a set of black synthetic thermal layers, a spare fleece, and a few other warm things. It doesn’t take up much space and it leaves open the possibility of camping just about anywhere this fall.
I really don’t know for sure where we will go. I can foresee mountains, beaches, deserts, swamps, and lakes. I know we’ll attend rallies, birthday parties, and business meetings. We’ll hike urban streets, western mountains, park boardwalks, and shopping malls. We may be back in the heat of Arizona summer or out ducking raindrops in the Pacific Northwest again like last fall.
The uncertainty of this tends to spook people, but it’s really the fun part. So packing the trailer is not a drudgery but rather somewhat exciting. Every decision about what to bring reminds us that all kinds of interesting possibilities lie ahead.
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