I think it is undeniable: we are missing the traveling life. Now that the house has ceased to capture our attention 24 hours a day, we are finding ourselves with lots more time and wondering what to do with it. I’m spending more time working, which is not my goal in life, and Eleanor is spending more time homeschooling (which is good for catching up, but unsustainable over the long run).
However, those extra hours at the desk aren’t really all that productive. I find myself wanting to pick up the atlas or a guidebook and plan a trip. I am starting to daydream about places we can go and explore. This is bad because I actually have a lot of work to do. I’m already well into the Summer magazine (Spring is at the printer’s now), and there are articles to edit and photos to hunt down. I’ve also got to get my writer’s pointed at their targets for the Fall issue, and so far I’ve only got a couple of them set. But I keep looking out at those mountains and thinking, “I could be hiking up there.”
Today Mike & Terri Church (authors of a series of excellent camping guidebooks — we carry a few in the store) wrote to me from the road in La Paz, Baja, Mexico. We missed meeting them in Arizona by a few days, and now they are down in the warmth updating their book on camping Mexico’s Baja peninsula. I felt a big pang when I heard from them, as I’ve felt pangs reading Bobby & Danine’s blog and Bert Gildart’s blog. Jim Breitinger called from Quartzsite — he’s still having a good time there. Everyone is out there traveling and it feels very weird to be sitting here in a house. We’re the ones who travel, remember?
I was thinking that stopping here to refit the house would be a good break from traveling, and in a way it is, but when there’s a lull in the house action it makes both Eleanor and I wonder what it is we are really doing here. Right now we are in one of those lulls. The kitchen cabinets are officially scheduled to arrive next Thursday afternoon, which means we have a few days to play before things get hectic again.
We are desperately out of practice at being stationary, and it shows. It is as if we had come back from a long safari in the wilderness, and lost touch with all the niceties and social conventions of modern life. We need to get “civilized” again.
A good start would be to make some local friends, and we are working on that. We are already meeting people with kids through Emma’s karate class. I’m hoping to get together with the Vanishing Tucson folks again, for another photographic foray. We’re also going to get together with a few local Tucsonians who read this blog. Once we know a few people in this town we may feel more like we live here, rather than feeling like we are just passing through.
Speaking of karate, Emma had her third lesson today. Watching James (the Instructor) work with the kids is incredibly entertaining. The kids love the classes. It’s a lot of jumping and kicking and fun exercises, and the tiniest tots in their miniature karate gis are just hilarious. The three-day-a-week schedule is an impediment to taking off in the Airstream but we can work around it. Emma looks forward to each class so we’ll try to not miss any days.
We have now settled on a firm date to return to the road: March 17, so everything we hope to accomplish here (house, furniture, side trips, karate, etc) must be completed by then. This particular date is driven by a combination of circumstances, including a houseguest and a rally in west Texas. We had considered going out for a while and then coming back to enjoy the fine April weather, but it didn’t make sense after traveling several hundred miles. We’ll just keep heading east, and take about three months to get to Florida and then up the east coast to Vermont. Until then, we have work to do, and I’ll have to let my daydreams suffice for the rest.
Appropriately, the uke song of the day is “Daydream Believer” by The Monkees. (Get uke chords here)
