Archive for FAQs
December 24, 2005 at 9:29 am · Filed under FAQs
It’s Christmas Eve and the birds are singing in the trees outside our windows.
A few people have asked questions recently, and I wanted to share the answers with all of you:
Q: How was it driving the curvy roads of Route 1?
A: Not a problem at all. The Airstream handled beautifully. Just remember to slow down in the tight curves and obey the speed limit at all times. By the way, we use the Reese Strait-Line hitch with Dual Cam. I think it is a superb hitch and it has worked very well on this large heavy trailer as well as on our previous Argosy 24.
Q: Are we re-greasing our bikes after washing them?
A: So far we have not needed to, but I expect to do that soon.
Q: How is Emma doing?
A: Very well. She has been traveling by Airstream since she was three years old, and to her this is just a normal part of life. She meets kids and adults everywhere she goes and just a few minutes after meeting a new folks she is starting games with them. She talks to her grandmother and grandfather via phone every few days, too.
Q: Can you use Google Earth for the Tour map?
A: Well, we can’t, for two reasons, but you might be able to. Google Earth requires both broadband Internet and a PC. We use Macs and we don’t have anywhere near broadband capability. Frappr works best for us. But if you want to see where we are, you can get the zip code from our Frappr map or www.usps.com, and then use Google Earth to explore the area.
Q: Will we make a book out of this trip?
A: You never know. I’d want to re-write a lot of it if I were to publish in book form. The original plan was to come out of this trip with a book on full-timing as a family. We might still do that.
Q: Where’s my free CD??
A: Would you believe it got lost in the Christmas rush? No? OK, the truth is that I haven’t mailed them yet. But I will get on that this week, I promise!
By the way, we have set up RSS syndication on this blog, which is a really cool feature. I’ve only tested it on the Firefox browser, but it may also work on Internet Explorer. On Firefox, you look for a little symbol in the bottom right corner of your browser window that looks like orange radio waves. Click this symbol and select “RSS 2.0”. This will put a bookmark on your browser.
I recommend you put the bookmark on your bookmarks toolbar so you can easily click on it. When you click on the bookmark, you’ll see a drop-down list of our latest blog entries. It will automatically update itself so you can see at a glance if we’ve posted anything new.
If anyone is running Netscape or IE on a Windows PC and figures out how it works on those platforms, let me know and I’ll post the instructions here. If you haven’t tried Firefox, I strongly recommend it. It disables pop-ups, is highly resistant to viruses, is fast, has many useful features, and it is free. It works on Mac and Windows.
Today we will probably head into town for a museum or something. Tomorrow, being Christmas, everything will be closed and so my plan is to go cycling on the many dirt trails around this park.
Last night we braved the crowds and did a little shopping, mostly for groceries. The result will be two days of fine dining courtesy of Eleanor’s culinary skills. We’ve added a few items to the menu to reflect that we are only 10 miles from Mexico now.
Today’s menu: Grilled steak with mushrooms and onions; salad of mixed baby greens with ginger dressing; corn and fried plantains; sugar cookies made by Emma, and Mexican hot chocolate.
Christmas menu: Roast pork with roasted potatoes, carrots, and pearl onions; haricot verts (French green beans) with onions and almonds; grapefruit and avocado salad with honey-lime dressing; hot apple turnovers. Who says Airstreamers never use their kitchens? 😉
We hope you are enjoying the weekend also. Happy holidays!
December 20, 2005 at 9:32 am · Filed under FAQs
I just tallied up some of our expenses for the trip. Our total campground expense to date has been $848.50, which includes all of our overnight stays from October 1 through December 20.
That’s remarkably low, because we have taken every opportunity to boondock and courtesy park. For example, our 13 days at Cherry Creek State Park in Aurora CO cost us $318.00 ($20 per day plus a park pass). But 14 days of courtesy parking in California and Oregon (Nov 5-18) cost us nothing. The savings of courtesy parking are huge, and we appreciate it when people offer us a space. Plus, it’s more fun!
Our camping expenses have risen lately. California state parks are generally more expensive and we’ve had fewer courtesy parking opportunities in the crowded areas along the coast. Paradoxically, the closer we are to cities, the fewer people can offer us a space. Neighborhood covenants, zoning restrictions, and limited parking space are the culprits.
Fuel has been another story. Since we spent most of October and early November logging about 6,000 miles, we purchased about $1,200 worth of gasoline. The way to reduce this cost is to drive less, but in our case we needed to get west before the cold weather set in, and so we had a large upfront expense to get out here. Now that we are here, we are spending much less on gas.
We also bought several 30# tanks of propane due to the cold nights in Denver and other high altitude areas, totalling about $150. Our usage is going down now, as we get into warmer evenings in southern California.
Although everyone focuses on the cost of campsites, the real expense turns out to be meals out and splurges. We can easily spend more on eating out in one day than we can on the campground, and a set of tickets for the family to go to an attraction (Monterey Bay Aquarium, Hearst Castle, etc) typically runs $30-50. We keep that under control by aiming for free natural attractions, like hiking, cycling, visiting friends, and beachcombing. Our ASTC Travel Passport is a big help. It gets us into science and discovery museums all over the country for free. Our National Parks pass is also great.
No matter which way we look at it, it is cheaper to travel in our Airstream than live at home. Of course, if we still had a house back in Vermont it would be a different story — a life on the road would be an added expense. I recognize that is the reality for most people, but hopefully our experience gives you an idea of ways you can keep the expenses down and have fun while doing it.
December 19, 2005 at 6:48 am · Filed under FAQs
In response to your requests, I have created a map which shows all the places we’ve stopped so far on our Tour. You can see it by clicking the link below.
I used a new service called “Frappr” to make it. You might note that Frappr allows you to add yourself to the map. But please don’t do that in this case, otherwise it will be hard to tell which of the pinpoints are Tour stops and which are blog readers like yourself.
Each “pin” on the map is a place we’ve spent at least one night. I’ll keep updating this map as we travel.
Click here to see where we’ve been!
December 18, 2005 at 7:45 am · Filed under FAQs
I’m glad we did take a night at a downtown hotel in San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll do it too much on this trip. The rate looked OK when we booked it: $109 per night. By comparison, the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero down the street was $265. So I thought, “Hey, that’s a good deal for downtown!”
But let’s see how that added up:
base rate $109.00
parking $36.0 (yikes!)
tax on parking $5.04 (they tax parking here?)
tax on hotel $15.26
TOTAL $165.30
Plus the optional extras, which I avoided:
— T-Mobile Hotspot Internet access for one day $9.99 (I picked up a signal from the Holiday Inn across the street, which gives guests free access for a day)
— Calistoga spring water in room $4.50 (Eleanor, put down that bottle!)
— And heaven help you if you make a long-distance call on the room phone.
At that rate, our 9 weeks of travel so far (not counting our week in Vermont) would have cost $10,413.90. Even at the national average or $85 per night, it would have been $5,355. We haven’t spent anywhere near that on lodging, with the Airstream, even counting the gas to haul it around.
People ask us about budgeting, but nobody wants to come right out and ask us what this trip is costing. To tell the truth, I don’t really know yet. I haven’t tallied it up, but I do know that it is less than it cost us to stay home. Our increased expenses (campsites, extra fuel, cell phones, etc) are more than compensated by the decreased expenses (no mortgage, real estate taxes, winter heating bill, utilities, ec). But we’ll have to watch it on the hotel splurges, that’s for certain!
November 29, 2005 at 11:07 pm · Filed under FAQs
Today we spent the day over in Sunnyvale (Silicon Valley) running errands and visiting our old friends in the area. Haven’t seen Alex & Nadine in about six years, and their son is now a boy of nine! He and Emma had a raucous good time laying waste to their house, while the adults caught up.
But it wasn’t a highly “bloggable” day so I thought I’d take the opportunity to answer the most common questions I’ve been getting lately about photos:
Q: What cameras do you use?
A: We shoot with two cameras, a Nikon D70 (digital SLR, 6 megapixels), and a Kodak DC3400 (digicam, 2.1 megapixels). The Nikon does all the heavy lifting, and the Kodak is primarily Emma’s camera, but Eleanor borrows the Kodak for family photos. I also prefer the Kodak for bad environmental conditions, like blowing sand and salt on the beach.
Q: Do you do any post-processing?
A: No. I don’t have any post-processing software, and if I did, I wouldn’t have time to use it. I barely have time to shoot, sort, and post them on the Internet as it is.
Q: Do you shoot at higher resolution than you post on the web? I’d like to use one of your photos as my desktop, or print it.
A: The Nikon photos are shot at 3000×2000 pixels. I upload them to the Flickr Photo Album at 800×600 because otherwise it would take too long. But once in a while I post a picture at full resolution so you can have it for your computer desktop, or make a nice print. When I do, I’ll put the tag “desktop” in the Photo Album description on Flickr, so you can find it.
Q: How do I see a higher resolution image than I see on the blog?
A: Everything is stored in the Photo Album. Click on the “Photo Album” link, or visit www.flickr.com/photos/airstreamlife . Once you are there, click on any picture for a larger version. For most, you can click again on a link to the lower right corner of the page which says, “See different sizes.” This will give you some options.
Q: Can I use your photo for (fill in the blank)?
A: All my photos are licensed under a Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.” This means you can feel free to download the photos and use them for non-commercial purposes, with credit to Airstream Life magazine. For commercial use, contact me.
Q: How do you get such great photos?
A: (1) Shoot a lot. (2) Know the camera. (3) Travel to beautiful places (4) Delete most of what you shoot. 😉
« Previous entries
