August 17, 2007 at 7:53 pm · Filed under Travel / lifestyle musings
For my birthday last week, my brother gave me a few magazines. That’s a great gift for a full-time RV’er, since magazines are fun and consumable. I like to see what other magazines are doing, for professional reasons, and yet I rarely go to the bookstore and buy them myself.
One of them was a wakeboarding enthusiast magazine. It was the sort of typical pumped-up “extreme sports” angle that you see on all kinds of sports, with macho and jargon-filled ads, articles about pushing oneself “to the limit”, and plenty of photos of buff young guys doing amazing tricks.
Now, I like to see the photos of guys showing the possibilities of wakeboarding. It’s inspirational in a way, even though I know I’ll probably never practice enough to do the things they do. But I was irritated by intimations by the editors that people who don’t do the sport they way they think it should be done, aren’t really wakeboard riders, but rather poseurs. They even went as far as to claim that a certain trick isn’t up to their standards, and therefore people shouldn’t do it. And of course there are plenty of hints that if you don’t have the expensive equipment (board, boat, etc) you’re not a legitimate practitioner of the sport and probably should just stay home.
That sort of attitude is something I work to keep out of Airstream Life. We don’t run articles with titles like “Monster Tow Vehicles — Whose Is the Baddest?” and “Why Triple Axles Rule the Roads!” and “Extreme Marshmallow Roasts!” and “Camping the Proper Way.” It’s not my business to tell people that their camping style or equipment doesn’t meet some arbitrary standard. Unless you’re using your RV as a meth lab, my rule is that if you’re having fun, you must be doing something right.
Of course, Airstream Life doesn’t feature a lot of photos of buff 20-something guys with their shirts off, busy making a campfire or hitching up their trailer. (Perhaps we should, we might sell more copies on the newsstand.) RV’ing is not the exclusive domain of retirees anymore, but the reality is that a lot of us guys don’t have the 6-pack abs anymore (if we ever did!) and we tend to keep our shirts on while we’re camping.
Thankfully RV’ing isn’t likely to become an “extreme sport”. It’s more of an equal-opportunity recreation, friendly to the young & old, fit and not-so-fit alike. It gives us Baby Boomers something to do when the knees don’t allow us to go skiing anymore.
And therein lies the beauty of it. You can do it in any way that works for you, without fear of crossing some rules ordained by a puffed-up National Association or popular magazine with delusions of majesty. I have written about our form of travel and adventure for a long time, but I’ll be the first to acknowledge that what works for us may have no relevance at all to how you’ll do it. That’s fine. All I want to do is give you ideas and inspiration. If your style is totally different from ours, that won’t be any impediment to us becoming friends when we meet on the road.
There are few rules to traveling or camping in an RV, and the arbiters of etiquette are relatively moderate. Just have drive safely, and have a nice time. Your experience will not be mine, your tow vehicle and RV probably aren’t the same as mine, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest. I’ll share the road, some tips, and perhaps a nice campground with you all the same.
August 16, 2007 at 3:18 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I got a call from Colin Hyde on Tuesday. He runs an Airstream restoration shop in Plattsburgh NY. He was running down to the Boston area to pick up his latest eBay purchase — a 1962 Tradewind in “project trailer” condition — and invited me to join him at Vintage Trailer Supply in Montpelier VT on his way back.
Steve Hingtgen is the owner of Vintage Trailer Supply, and he and Colin are both good friends. The three of us have worked together for years in various ways. We’re all customers of each other and suppliers to each other. Both Steve and Colin advertise in Airstream Life magazine, and I have bought vintage parts from Steve for our 1968 Airstream Caravel, and Colin has done the restoration work. Likewise, Steve has a trailer at Colin’s shop undergoing restoration, and Colin fabricates certain parts for the Vintage Trailer Supply catalog. So we interact quite a bit, but we only seem to get together as a group about once a year.
The shop is a fascinating place for vintage trailer nuts. Steve has been relentless in his search for obsolete parts, “New Old Stock” parts, and fabricators to make parts that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. He’s got an incredible assortment of goodies there — enough to make a vintage trailer nut salivate. I scored a couple of original-style hubcaps for the Caravel, and Colin came out with a pile of stuff for the trailers currently undergoing restoration in his shop.
Colin’s latest trailer is above (like he needs another project). This diamond-in-the-rough will sit on his lot in Plattsburgh until a customer comes through who wants a 1960s 24-foot trailer. It’s a good floorplan and will be a nice trailer after a total makeover, just like my 1953 Flying Cloud that’s still sitting up there. (Someday I might even get around to refurbishing that trailer, if somebody doesn’t buy it first.)
August 15, 2007 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A lot of people think it is peculiar that we don’t appear to have a “home”. Of course, the Airstream is home, and we have always had a “home base” of sorts in Vermont (where family members live), but it is hard for non-RV’ers to get their heads around the concept of a wheeled object being home.
For us, the Airstream became home pretty quickly. It was easy to adapt to the idea that this was where we lived, simply by the act of living. The harder part has been reconciling ownership of property that we would return to from time to time. Having more than one home is harder for me to accept than having just one that happens to be mobile.
Now, with a house waiting in the desert, we have a future home. Sitting in Vermont — our former home — I find the sensation a bit confusing. Where is home? The state we are in, the trailer I’m in, or the city we are moving to in a few months?
This confusion shows up on my computer. I have a pair of (Mac) Dashboard Widgets that instantly show me the weather for where I am, including forecasts, radar, and current weather patterns. But I find I am often interested in the weather “back home”, which can be one of the places I’m currently not, so I’ll reset them frequently to different areas of the country. “Home” can be be where I am, and where I’m not simultaneously. It’s fun to look at Vermont in January and chortle over the bitter cold from a safe distance, and likewise it’s fascinating to look at Arizona in July and marvel at the flash floods.
Santa Catalina Mountains from Univ of Arizona, Aug 15 2007
For a more granular look at “home base”, I can check the view anytime from the University of Arizona’s webcam. The sky and Santa Catalina mountains are so beautiful and ever-changing that I never get tired of seeing them. The view is updated every minute.
The changing view is a surprise to people who think the desert looks the same all the time. Check out this album of photos from the U of A webcam. That mountain view is very similar to the one we have from our house, so I like to see the diversity of it. It reminds me of … “home” … well, one of them.
Checking the local news once in a while can be interesting, although it always seems a million miles away when we are on the road. I check Arizona’s news when we’re in Vermont, and Vermont’s when we’re in Arizona. Mostly I’m interested in evolutionary changes to the landscape, environment, and culture, not so much the day-to-day politics and weather, so it’s fine to just check in once in a while. Local newspapers and TV stations are all online these days, so I keep my favorites from each state bookmarked & handy.
I’m also interested in learning more about our upcoming home base in Tucson, so I have quick links to things that teach me about the area and keep me updated on what’s going on. For example, there’s a Yahoo! Group called “Vanishing Tucson” that I joined just to learn about the past few decades of the town and how it is changing. From that list, I’ve gotten tips on great books to read about Tucson and the southwest, which fascinate me.
Oddly enough, I found a copy of Arizona Highways in the doctor’s waiting room yesterday. (I dropped off a copy of Airstream Life so they’d have something new in there.) It turned out to be a pretty decent magazine so I may subscribe once we get settled in the area.
This morning Eleanor and I both woke up thinking about our Arizona house. I had a dream in which we got back and found the new slate floor had been removed and replaced with patterned ceramic tile. She was thinking about furniture choices. It’s coming to the top of our minds because we are nearly done with our tasks here. Soon we’ll be completely moved out of Vermont (well, at least the physical stuff, but not the personal connections) and eventually we’ll have to get back to Arizona and start the task of making it into home.
But for the interim few months, I think the Airstream will remain our home and the other places will be just favorite stops. I’ll keep peeking in on them from time to time, but try to go no further. No need to get involved in local politics or fret about road construction or flooding. We’ve only got a little time left to enjoy full-timing, and I want to do it without undue worry about the future home base, so that we can enjoy the moments that are left.
August 14, 2007 at 12:12 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We have resolved our moving problems. A blog reader (who we met last year in Utah) suggested the moving company they used. Their company is a freight hauler that has a “household move” division. You load and unload the truck, they just haul it. Since our stuff is already fully packed, that’s a perfect solution for us and it saves us about $2000. We’re meeting the truck next week to load it up and we’ll hire people at the other end to unload it and put it in the empty house.
We’ve also decided to take the Honda Fit with us, at least as far as Ohio. We’ll leave it with friends there, and either fly back and drive it home another time, or have it shipped. Driving it to Ohio gets it about 700 miles closer to Tucson (thus reducing cost if we pay to ship it), and it’s easier to fly to Ohio cities from Tucson than to Vermont. We decided against taking the Fit all the way west with the Airstream since splitting up our team over two separate vehicles will be inconvenient for much of the travel we intend to do.
So when we leave Vermont, we won’t be leaving a lot of things behind to deal with later. I’m glad to have that finally resolved. But it seems we are not alone. I have heard from a lot of people about the plight of storing and moving stuff. They have come to the same conclusions: acquire less “stuff” and don’t let your possessions possess you. It’s a false economy to hold on to a lot of things that you might need someday, if you are likely to move or attempt to go RV’ing full-time in the future.
One blog reader put it well, writing:
“I have moved the same boxes out to Vegas, through several storage units, a condo, a house and now a second house. Add to that grandma’s and aunties gifts, the stuff our parents no longer want to store for us and you have a continued burden that we ‘promise we’ll go through and downsize someday, when we have the time’. HA!
Here’s the secret… READ IT AGAIN ALOUD, before making non-consumable purchases. Ask: do I really need this? Will it make my life better? Will the same money, invested in a 401k allow me the comfort cushion I need to retire earlier? I saw a neat billboard a while back from a retirement investment firm. It showed a Rolex watch. The caption simply read, ‘Cost: $6500, Cost at retirement: $28,500’. It all adds up.
It may not seem like it now, but you are richer for the experience and your burden lighter. I couldn’t believe what you were doing originally. I thought sure, sell it now only to buy it when you have another home. Ridiculous…but now I’ve put the numbers to it, you’re right.
My buddy in Vegas had an unimaginable way of upgrading his belongings. You see, for me, I can never throw out or even give away something that still has use. This must be the depression era parenting I’ve had. He on the other hand will buy a shirt and give one away. Buy a new set of golf clubs or artwork? Sell the ones they replace. He doesn’t have a basement or a storage unit. Never has. That’s what I have to do.
I looked up some of my ‘prized possessions’ on eBay. You know, the stuff I’ll never use but placed too much value on to part with? It’s all worth less than the cost of one move, say nothing of the three I’ve been through. It’s not worth the mental, physical and psychological burden it places on us. You should have seen me the past few week-ends, trudging up and down stairs in godawful heat, then wear and tear on a vehicle and missing the selling season for our home. That’s truly ridiculous.
And don’t get me started on furniture that is more valuable un-refinished but which looks so awful to me that I won’t have it smelling up my living space. Antiques road show can have all of it!”
———
Now the question is whether we will be able to resist the urge to fill up the new house with stuff. It is so easy, so tempting, so comforting to buy the things you see because “I’d like to have that,” or “Wouldn’t that look cool?” It is so insidious to accept gifts and keepsakes from relatives and friends because they are free and given with the good intentions. It is so hard to divest yourself from things that are perfectly good but unneeded.
Our “acquisition test” will have to be strict. We will have to remind ourselves that we got along just fine for two years in an Airstream without anything more than what we possess today. Plus, we have several thousand pounds of additional stuff left over from the last house, including tools, china, spare clothes, some furniture, and specialty things like a pasta maker. It’s already more than we need in most departments. If we are buying something for the house, we need to ask why.
It’s like going on a lifetime diet. In this society, as sated as we are with food and consumer products, it’s the exception to be thin or have an empty garage. You actually have to work at not having too much. But this is a nice problem to have. Living lean is less expensive, which means more money for freedom and perhaps even earlier retirement. Rather than being a painful experience of “doing without”, it is relief from a silent burden. I am looking forward to continuing the simplicity of full-time RV living even when we eventually move into a traditional house for 3/4 of the year.
August 13, 2007 at 10:24 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Being the only person in the family with a summer birthday, I tend to get an all-day celebration of sorts. It’s not so much that people want to spend the full day with me, but that the weather is usually nice and everyone appreciates an excuse to be outside and play by the lake.
The lake settled down to calm water and that made perfect conditions for wakeboarding. Steve downloaded a guide with various accomplishments for us and point scores. For example, simply riding the board for 5 seconds earns 20 points for a beginner. One-handed riding is another 20 points. Crossing the wake is 80 points, etc. Three of us tried it and eventually racked up between 775 and 1025 points each. We’ve managed to complete all of the Beginner tasks except for catching air off the wake, the “Bunny Hop”, and the “Surface 360”. I almost got the Surface 360 but need to work on my arm position a bit more.
We also went power snorkeling. This is something most people have never heard of, but it’s a blast. We use a device called a dive plane towed behind the boat. The snorkeler holds onto the dive plane after fifty feet behind the boat, and the boat trolls at about 2.8 MPH.
With this rig, a snorkeler can easily cover vast areas with little effort. There’s no need for fins or kicking. A twist of the dive plane will send you flying down to the bottom for a closer look anytime you want, and since you aren’t really working much, you can hold your breath for long times while exploring the bottom. A twist of the board upward, and you’ll pop right back up to the surface. It’s like flying underwater — the closest thing to being a penguin.
Snorkelers who attempt this need to be able to equalize their ears while holding their breath, know how to clear their snorkel without touching it, know how to clear their mask without surfacing, and should know how to swim. I wear a shorty wetsuit for comfort since you can easily get cold because you aren’t kicking.
Emma’s too inexperienced for power snorkeling, but Steve took her out for a little paddling around. She’s getting better all the time. We’re still working on her tendency to pop to the surface every 30 seconds to exclaim something, but that’s just part of being an excited kid. Every fish is cause for celebration.
Eleanor had started work on the special birthday cake on Saturday, loosely based on my suggestions. On Sunday she was still unable to do much outdoor stuff due to her broken toe, but she had plenty to do in the kitchen. The cake was made up of three layers of chocolate ganache and chocolate-hazelnut cake, with hazelnut buttercream frosting and coated on the sides with toasted crushed hazelnuts. Dinner was Shrimp and Grits, a Charleston specialty we picked up last year during our visit. It was well received by all, and made a wonderful final touch on a great birthday at the lake.
We’re doing so much on the water that it may seem monotonous, but to us it is simply a reflection of our travel philosophy to do what is available. Every region, every state, every little town has its own flavor and activity, and it makes sense to us to embrace those things as they are presented. Here, in summer, the best things to do are outdoors, so we’ve been hiking and enjoying the water, but we’ve also been visiting the small-town events that make Vermont special.
As a travel philosophy, you can view this two ways. You can go where your interests take you, or you can go everywhere and see what interests you locally. I think either approach is valid, and we try to do a little of both. It makes for a very fulfilling trip, because you can seek out new interests while simultaneously expanding your knowledge of your own interests.
August 12, 2007 at 9:37 am · Filed under Roadtrips
The Region 1 Rally that I attended was fairly quiet and I had only planned to go for an overnight, so after breakfast with my hosts Rick & Sandi, and catching up withe some other friends, I packed up the tent and headed homeward. I could certainly have stayed longer and chatted more, but the sky was brilliantly blue and the air was crisp and the trees were green … and the Route 100 was calling.
My friend Chuck, surrounded by aluminum
Route 100 runs down the spine of Vermont, and it is without a doubt one of the most beautiful and fun roads to drive in this nation. It’s not fast, but that’s not the point. It is particularly scenic, passing through little villages and over small rivers, up and down hills, and past antique houses. There is a bit of every sort of Vermont life set alongside Route 100, and as you travel along it you can be a voyeur of small-town life, and even drop in for a moment on a whim.
With the right vehicle, the driving is fun too, which is why I saw motorcycle and ragtops and a bevy of Corvettes all running down the road, probably going nowhere in particular. The Honda Fit may be an econobox but it is fun to drive, so it was a great “fit” for the road too. I didn’t feel the slightest bit jealous of the Corvettes as I swung around curves and through tall stands of trees and over narrow old bridges on my way home.
This time of year along Route 100 you’ll see Farmer’s Markets, town fairs & festivals, sidewalk sales at the art galleries and antique shops, and people doing their ordinary business at farms, in their gardens, and at the tiny general stories that are the centerpiece of almost every town. In a few weeks, the drive will be even more colorful, as the fall foliage begins to strike the upper elevations around late September. It would be worth doing the drive again — just to do it — but we’ll have to be on our way west by then if we want to see anything in Montana before the snow threatens.
If Eleanor had been with me on this ride, I would have stuck with Route 100 all the way north to Waitsfield, and then cut over the mountains to our parking spot. We don’t often go for drives just for driving’s sake, but Route 100 in the summer is an exception.
Of course, it helps to be driving a fun car that gets 40+ MPG on the open road. That way the trip isn’t tainted by the knowledge that we’re burning $50 worth of gasoline. My trip to and from Bondville, 200 miles in total, cost me just $15. I’ll miss that when we have to say goodbye to the little car in two weeks. However, if I can plan things properly, it will be waiting for us in the driveway in Tucson when we finally arrive there in 2-3 months.
The other reason to get home soon was because the lake was perfect: calm, crystal clear, and reasonably warm. I wanted to get out on the boat again. Steve towed me around on the wakeboard and since I was feeling confident I pushed a bit and tried some new basic moves. It’s easier than I thought and a lot of fun. I was able to reliably cross the wake in either direction, ride the wake, make S-turns, ride out bumps (caused by crossing our own wake), and even do a fakie several times. Of course, there were plenty of crashes too, but I’ve even learned to crash comfortably, so except for water up the nose it was a great time. We’ll try again today.
Our forward Fantastic Vent (of the three we have installed) has suffered from a strange defect since we installed it last year. It’s a 14-speed wireless remote model, and it would occasionally exhibit a “surging” behavior at certain fan speeds. The fan would speed up and then slow down to nothing, then repeat multiple times and eventually shut down altogether. I talked to Fantastic Vent’s representative at the International in Perry about this, and she recognized the problem as an issue that struck some of the early units.
She called me last week to follow up. I told her the problem was still happening and she promised to immediately contact the factory about it. Two days later, a brand new vent “upgrade kit” arrived via UPS. This kit replaces the circuit board and gives me a new remote control.
Talk about GREAT SERVICE! The Fantastic Vent people have always run a top-notch organization, but this level of care and responsiveness really shows their dedication. They are one of the few truly “customer-focused” organizations out there. I’m not basing this just on my experience, but on the reports of many people I know who use their products and have also had great customer experiences.
I’m thinking now of making a minor change to our itinerary and crossing west through Ontario to Michigan. This will bring us right past Imlay City, MI, where Fantastic Vent is located, and in which case perhaps we can arrange a factory tour. I love factory tours, and I’d like to take a look inside their organization to see how they have created their culture of customer service.
August 11, 2007 at 8:48 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I took the little Honda Fit down to Bondville Vermont on Friday to drop in on the WBCCI Region 1 Rally. It’s about 100 miles from where we are parked. Since we are so settled and busy where we are, it made more sense for me to just drive down for one night with the economy car rather than towing down the trailer. I brought the tent again.
Bondville, the location of the rally, is one of 254 towns in Vermont. I lived in Vermont most of my life and had never heard of it. For the past two weeks I’ve had fun asking long-time Vermonters where Bondville is (near Stratton Mountain Ski Resort in southern Vermont). It’s a rare person who knows where it is.
We’re about 1800 feet elevation here, a fact I had overlooked when I packed. I only brought shorts, no pants. Fortunately I had a fleece. Already around here the cooler temperatures have arrived and yesterday was only about 70 degrees, with 40’s and plenty of dampness at night. Last night’s campfire was essential.
The theme at Happy Hour was something to do with hippies. At least, that’s what they told me. Maybe some of these people just dress like this all the time.
This Airstream Interstate B-van is driven by a happy new owner. He says he gets 22-23 MPG on diesel fuel and he just returned from an Airstream B-van rally organized in Ohio which was apparently a big success. These vans are small inside but really practical for fast, lightweight, and low-cost travel.
Tenting overnight was fun but I’ve been reminded of the condensation issue that plagues tenters. Last night the humidity was high and as soon as the sun went down the grass was soaked, the tent was beaded with shiny drops of water, and anything left on the ground inside the tent got damp. I still had fun tenting, but an Airstream is certainly easier.
Part of my reason to be here is to meet with friends who I otherwise wouldn’t see this year. A lot of them we last saw in October 2006 at a fall rally in Townsend VT, but I correspond with several via email. That’s one of the best things about this community. We can miss each other for a year or two, but when we do finally meet again it’s like the time lapse never happened. Everyone understands that we all travel and have busy lives, and they’re happy to see the faces again and recount events and travels and ideas whenever we do have a chance to get together.
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