RVing is humbling.
There are two kinds of basic humbling aspects of RV life - one involves wielding a large vehicle poorly, and other, frankly, has to do with the toilet.
In the first instance, I am reminded of the time I gassed up in the presence of a large contingent of biker dudes, only to drive away from the station with the gas nozzle still attached to the RV. This was supremely embarrassing.
This morning, when we returned from breakfast, we opened the door to the RV, only to be hit broadside by what smelled like every rotten egg in the county. We lurched for the RV troubleshooting guide, convinced that there was some sort of exotic battery acid leak, or some such. Janine had remembered that in the RV guide, there was something about sulfer smells and problems with the battery. I was convinced that we were sitting on a powder keg that would make the USS Cole bombing look like a firecracker.
Turns out the problem was a bit simpler, but way more humiliating. I called the RV emergency number and explained that their forty thousand dollar vehicle was about to blow sky high, and the bored woman on the other end of the line asked, "Did you put the packet of deodorizer in the toilet?" Ouch. Won't be making that mistake again.
There may be nothing worse than an RV tenderfoot, loosed on an innocent nation with several tons of unwieldy rolling steel and sloshing about with gallons upon of gallons of untreated raw sewage. There oughta be a law against menaces like me.
Thing is, we've done this before, but apparently I forgot a few key bits of useful information in the interim. I will endeavor to file this imporant piece of infrmation away into the long term memory this time.
The day started somewhat inauspiciously - my mother's husband Ray, eager to maximize his time with us, implored us to come right in for coffee in the morning. Later in the day, with a raging headache, I figured out that he'd made decaf. Next time I'll dose up on the strong stuff first, no matter what. So much for my self satisfied rant about drinking one's own coffee.
We finally took off at about noonish. My mother was obviously sad to see us go, but we did get the chance to tuck into a large box of old photos, and I raided the book shelf in the garage, where my mother had spirited piles and piles of books I had as a kid. Next time you see your mother, ask her to pull out the box of photos. She'll know who's in the pictures, and you'll feel like a kid again.
We were off to northern Arizona, where Janine's mother's first husband (oh, it's complicated) has seven acres. This was a family union (one would have had to have gathered together once before to call it a reunion, I'd say), with a good sized pile of Janine's family - half brother, half sister, birth mother (she was adopted, but was reunited with the family in adulthood) among others.
So I write this post to the tune of the crickets and an occasional yelp of a distant coyote, on an incredibly dark night, somewhere near Prescott, Arizona. I think it's Tuesday, but on the other hand, I'm not exactly sure.
That's an excellent sign.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Goin' to Vegas, Baby
Any trip is fraught. Whether you’re packing for the weekend, or a month in Upper Volta (“should I bring extra Chapstik?”) or two weeks in an RV, in which you can conceivably overpack beyond all imagining, the experience can be troubling.
Friday dawned clear and complicated, as I pondered the long list of crap we were certain to need on our little excursion. Bringing the dogs added to the list – food, various tethering gear, beds, crates. And half the fun of RVing is the moveable feast – literally – of the traveling kitchen. So we threw in half the kitchen – pasta, canned things, what was left in the crisper drawer, a few pounds of coffee (and grinder), truffle oil, a zester, stuff like that. Then weird things started showing up. Microwave popcorn! In our seventeen years of marriage, my wife has never once bought microwave popcorn. RVing brings out the freak in you.
Okay, so we loaded up, and after many, many, many trips to the driveway, we finally pushed off at 2:30…and literally made it a quarter of a mile. After all that build up, we were getting peckish. So we made our first pit stop down the block from our house, at In-n-Out Burger, which is the only burger chain on the planet that mixes a double entendre name with helpfully suggested Bible verses on the bottom of the soda cups and French fry holders. I may suggest some new verses – “Blessed be the Lipitorites, for they shall keep our customers alive.” How about “Blessed be the double-double animal style, for it sounds amusing in a beatitude.”
Duly fortified by our double-double Jesus Burgers, we finally, finally, really pushed off.
Our first true destination was Las Vegas, to see my dear mother (for more on visiting family, please see the first post). I happen to love Las Vegas – it’s kitchy, it’s unapologetic (sorry), and the food’s good. Time was, you felt ripped off if you spent more than $3.99 for a steak – now you’ve got Thomas Keller and Hubert Keller and Michael Mina tripping over each other to open snazzy new places. But it’s a good nine hours from Palo Alto, so we picked a halfway point – Tehachapi, California – to make camp the first night.
I have fond memories of halcyon days in Tehachapi, which was sort of why I picked it. Way back when, when I was playing in pseudo celebrity golf tournaments (“On the first tee, please put your hands together for Irving Osmond!”), I had a real live hole in one, and I try to take advantage of any opportunity to relive golf and pseudo celebrity glory, so Tehachapi it was.
This was also the place where in a semi scuzzy golf course bar Glenn Ford (yes, THE Glenn Ford) regaled me of tales of the ghost that lived in his house. So Tehachapi it was.
We rotted in traffic south of San Jose, but rotting in traffic in a twenty five foot long RV is different from the clutch-first-second-first gear silliness of my Mazda. Family members can wander about, make a sandwich, or take a nap, and the captain (that would be me) could sit high above the fray, languishing in the freedom of a two week vacation, caring not a whit that he had left the house three hours before, but still hadn’t made Gilroy.
Undaunted by the helpful suggestions of my loving wife (“that lane over there looks pretty good”), I pressed on, and eventually things loosened up, and we were on our way for realsies.
We came loaded for bear, sort of – two honking big RV atlas books – and Janine started working the pages, calling the various Tehachapi RV parks, when the second call bore real fruit. The first sounded dodgy “I’ve got a few spaces near the office,” but the other woman gave Janine a warm feeling, so we decided on the Mountain Valley RV Park. Normally, an RV park next to an airport might give one pause, but we were undeterred.
We finally pulled up at around 9:30 at night, found a nice, quiet little hookup, and dragged our little camp chairs out to hoist a beer and take in the light show – a bajillion stars in this dead quiet setting. This, my friends, was what we signed up for.
Friday dawned clear and complicated, as I pondered the long list of crap we were certain to need on our little excursion. Bringing the dogs added to the list – food, various tethering gear, beds, crates. And half the fun of RVing is the moveable feast – literally – of the traveling kitchen. So we threw in half the kitchen – pasta, canned things, what was left in the crisper drawer, a few pounds of coffee (and grinder), truffle oil, a zester, stuff like that. Then weird things started showing up. Microwave popcorn! In our seventeen years of marriage, my wife has never once bought microwave popcorn. RVing brings out the freak in you.
Okay, so we loaded up, and after many, many, many trips to the driveway, we finally pushed off at 2:30…and literally made it a quarter of a mile. After all that build up, we were getting peckish. So we made our first pit stop down the block from our house, at In-n-Out Burger, which is the only burger chain on the planet that mixes a double entendre name with helpfully suggested Bible verses on the bottom of the soda cups and French fry holders. I may suggest some new verses – “Blessed be the Lipitorites, for they shall keep our customers alive.” How about “Blessed be the double-double animal style, for it sounds amusing in a beatitude.”
Duly fortified by our double-double Jesus Burgers, we finally, finally, really pushed off.
Our first true destination was Las Vegas, to see my dear mother (for more on visiting family, please see the first post). I happen to love Las Vegas – it’s kitchy, it’s unapologetic (sorry), and the food’s good. Time was, you felt ripped off if you spent more than $3.99 for a steak – now you’ve got Thomas Keller and Hubert Keller and Michael Mina tripping over each other to open snazzy new places. But it’s a good nine hours from Palo Alto, so we picked a halfway point – Tehachapi, California – to make camp the first night.
I have fond memories of halcyon days in Tehachapi, which was sort of why I picked it. Way back when, when I was playing in pseudo celebrity golf tournaments (“On the first tee, please put your hands together for Irving Osmond!”), I had a real live hole in one, and I try to take advantage of any opportunity to relive golf and pseudo celebrity glory, so Tehachapi it was.
This was also the place where in a semi scuzzy golf course bar Glenn Ford (yes, THE Glenn Ford) regaled me of tales of the ghost that lived in his house. So Tehachapi it was.
We rotted in traffic south of San Jose, but rotting in traffic in a twenty five foot long RV is different from the clutch-first-second-first gear silliness of my Mazda. Family members can wander about, make a sandwich, or take a nap, and the captain (that would be me) could sit high above the fray, languishing in the freedom of a two week vacation, caring not a whit that he had left the house three hours before, but still hadn’t made Gilroy.
Undaunted by the helpful suggestions of my loving wife (“that lane over there looks pretty good”), I pressed on, and eventually things loosened up, and we were on our way for realsies.
We came loaded for bear, sort of – two honking big RV atlas books – and Janine started working the pages, calling the various Tehachapi RV parks, when the second call bore real fruit. The first sounded dodgy “I’ve got a few spaces near the office,” but the other woman gave Janine a warm feeling, so we decided on the Mountain Valley RV Park. Normally, an RV park next to an airport might give one pause, but we were undeterred.
We finally pulled up at around 9:30 at night, found a nice, quiet little hookup, and dragged our little camp chairs out to hoist a beer and take in the light show – a bajillion stars in this dead quiet setting. This, my friends, was what we signed up for.
My peeps in Tehachapi - looks nice, doesn't it?
The next morning, I went for a dawn run, jogging along field after field of lettuce, spinach and cauliflower as I watched a single engine Cessna take off from the “airport.”
We were in the middle of nowhere, and it was really lovely.
The next morning, I went for a dawn run, jogging along field after field of lettuce, spinach and cauliflower as I watched a single engine Cessna take off from the “airport.”
We were in the middle of nowhere, and it was really lovely.
When I came back from my run, I ran into a fellow who appeared to be taking inventory of an extensive wine collection, so I struck up a conversation. As it turns out, he's a home winemaker, and he was indeed finally taking stock of his extensive holdings. He makes the wine at his son's house in Carson City, and he is currently shlepping it hither and yon in this honking big rig that looks like Reba McIntyre's tour bus. He'll be on the road for six months with his wife. The people you meet...
The next morning we pressed on for Vegas, finally rolling up at around 4, where the mercury stood at a mellow 104.
How in the hell can people spend four months out of the year in this kind of heat? Beats the crap out of me, although my mother seems to make do, which is comforting.
We pulled up and parked in front of my mother’s house, plugged in the electric supply, and became the perfect guests.
My mother did not have to make any beds, wash any linens, turn her office into a spare bedroom, buy special coffee – nuthin’. And as for us – well, if my mother’s husband wanted to stay up late and crank up the TV so Wayne Newton could hear it down on the strip, cool. We could get up early or sleep in – who’d know?
And best of all, this is totally guilt free. Normally, if you politely decline your family’s infinite generosity by decamping to the Mirage or Mandalay Bay, you bear the burden for decades. And while our RV doesn’t come with turn down service, it accomplishes so much so elegantly.
Today we went to the barn where my mother boards two, count ‘em two, horses. Maggie went from stall to stall giving each horse a nice handful of hay while my mother worked her Tennessee Walker. (Can you imagine? A seventy three year old woman riding horses? It warms the heart.) Eventually, they tossed Maggie onto my mother’s horse and she walked around the ring – my daughter and my mother, and it was a lovely Father’s Day indeed.
How in the hell can people spend four months out of the year in this kind of heat? Beats the crap out of me, although my mother seems to make do, which is comforting.
We pulled up and parked in front of my mother’s house, plugged in the electric supply, and became the perfect guests.
My mother did not have to make any beds, wash any linens, turn her office into a spare bedroom, buy special coffee – nuthin’. And as for us – well, if my mother’s husband wanted to stay up late and crank up the TV so Wayne Newton could hear it down on the strip, cool. We could get up early or sleep in – who’d know?
And best of all, this is totally guilt free. Normally, if you politely decline your family’s infinite generosity by decamping to the Mirage or Mandalay Bay, you bear the burden for decades. And while our RV doesn’t come with turn down service, it accomplishes so much so elegantly.
Today we went to the barn where my mother boards two, count ‘em two, horses. Maggie went from stall to stall giving each horse a nice handful of hay while my mother worked her Tennessee Walker. (Can you imagine? A seventy three year old woman riding horses? It warms the heart.) Eventually, they tossed Maggie onto my mother’s horse and she walked around the ring – my daughter and my mother, and it was a lovely Father’s Day indeed.
My mom and my daughter on Father's Day
Tomorrow, we’re off to Prescott, Arizona, for part two of family fun – Janine’s side. I have put in a request to take a detour onto the famed Route 66, just for kicks. Eventually, we’ll return to travelogue, but for now, dear reader, I hope I can keep you occupied with family dynamics.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Eastbound and Down, Loaded up and Truckin'
Our daughter Maggie "graduated" from elementary school this month, and so we offered to take her on the trip of her choosing, within reason.
Mind you, gradating from elementary school is not particularly difficult (and California, as yet, has not instituted an elementary school exit exam), but Maggie is a pretty good kid a deserved some kind of reward. In fact, they don't even call it graduation, they call it "promotion," which is actually a little too corporate for my tastes. Anyone I know remembers being sentenced to middle school, so perhaps on the last day of fifth grade they should hold a conviction ceremony.
But I digress.
Maggie is beautiful little traveler. She was born in Japan and had her first passport (a prerequisite for obtaining her "alien registration" card) before she had her first solid poop. In her passport photo, she is lying in her car seat, a gelatinous, unfocusing, week-old ball of goo. Previous attempts to save money by taking her passport photo by holding her up in a cheapo photo booth ended in hilarious failure that would not have passed muster with the Department of State, so we ended up opting for the more expensive camera shop version. We still have the failed photos, though, in which the baby looks like a cross between Edward G. Robinson and Yoda.
Anyway, we have dragged this kid to Thailand, France, Spain, Italy, back to Japan, and who knows where else. So I was fully prepared to dip into the line of credit when we asked her where she wanted to go for "graduation."
"I want to go on an RV trip," my aspiring redneck child replied.
This did not surprise us as much as you may think. Four years ago, when moving from the east coast to the west, we rented an RV as much by necessity as anything else - how else do you move two dogs, a cat, and two pet fish with more than a 50% confidence level for survival?
That trip was much more fun than we expected, and all the pets survived, although little Trixy, our rat terrier, tried to make a break for it in Virginia, and we spent the better part of an hour chasing her through the woods as she cheerfully eluded us, as I crapped and moaned about the foolishness of owning small animals and letting them off the leash in foreign lands.
In fact, our trip was a hoot - with our copy of Road Food, which catalogs weird but wonderful regional holes in the wall, and a desire to see large presidents carved out of stone, we spent two weeks on the road, meandering our way west to our new life in California. It was educational and delicious - with the highlight meal a "pig salad" in some barbeque joint in Arkansas.
So when Maggie opted this summer for recreational travel, as the industry wags undoubtedly call it, we agreed almost immediately.
When you tell most people you’re going on an RV trip (at least most people I know), they look at you kind of funny. RV trips conjure up images of, among other things, RVs, RV parks, and Wal Mart parking lots. (For more on that, I recommend the highly entertaining and infinitely disturbing film, This is Nowhere.)
But RVs are actually a lot of fun, especially when you’re traveling with children or, ahem, women. Problems like “I have to go to the bathroom,” or “I’m hungry,” or “I’m tired” are very easily dealt with. On the flip side, backseat driving can be a challenge, but you can’t have everything.
In an RV you’re actually encouraged to visit all those cool places you always wanted to see but never got it together to do – Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon – there are more RV parks than gun shops in these places (this is actually a made up statistic, but I’ve been doing that for years, which wouldn’t be such a problem is I weren’t in nonprofit communications, but we all have our faults), and that’s saying something.
RVs also allow you to visit family members without sleeping under the same roof or necessarily having to eat their food, which can be dangerous. This may sound harsh, but we all know it’s true. A certain member of my family snores like a youth hostel full of teamsters – a low, disturbing rumble that causes you to dream that you’re on a subway car from Brooklyn to Panama. The food part’s not a problem, but I’m lucky on that score.
On the downside, RVs require driving. If you don’t like driving or being in driving things, you will hate an RV trip. If you have navigational problems, or relationship issues with your loved one that center around navigation, do not ever do this. If you dislike small spaces, unless you get one of those RVs that resemble Air Force One, you’re probably going to be sad.
We are undaunted and intrepid - at least we like to think we are. So it's eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin"...
And now, on to our saga.
Mind you, gradating from elementary school is not particularly difficult (and California, as yet, has not instituted an elementary school exit exam), but Maggie is a pretty good kid a deserved some kind of reward. In fact, they don't even call it graduation, they call it "promotion," which is actually a little too corporate for my tastes. Anyone I know remembers being sentenced to middle school, so perhaps on the last day of fifth grade they should hold a conviction ceremony.
But I digress.
Maggie is beautiful little traveler. She was born in Japan and had her first passport (a prerequisite for obtaining her "alien registration" card) before she had her first solid poop. In her passport photo, she is lying in her car seat, a gelatinous, unfocusing, week-old ball of goo. Previous attempts to save money by taking her passport photo by holding her up in a cheapo photo booth ended in hilarious failure that would not have passed muster with the Department of State, so we ended up opting for the more expensive camera shop version. We still have the failed photos, though, in which the baby looks like a cross between Edward G. Robinson and Yoda.
Anyway, we have dragged this kid to Thailand, France, Spain, Italy, back to Japan, and who knows where else. So I was fully prepared to dip into the line of credit when we asked her where she wanted to go for "graduation."
"I want to go on an RV trip," my aspiring redneck child replied.
This did not surprise us as much as you may think. Four years ago, when moving from the east coast to the west, we rented an RV as much by necessity as anything else - how else do you move two dogs, a cat, and two pet fish with more than a 50% confidence level for survival?
That trip was much more fun than we expected, and all the pets survived, although little Trixy, our rat terrier, tried to make a break for it in Virginia, and we spent the better part of an hour chasing her through the woods as she cheerfully eluded us, as I crapped and moaned about the foolishness of owning small animals and letting them off the leash in foreign lands.
In fact, our trip was a hoot - with our copy of Road Food, which catalogs weird but wonderful regional holes in the wall, and a desire to see large presidents carved out of stone, we spent two weeks on the road, meandering our way west to our new life in California. It was educational and delicious - with the highlight meal a "pig salad" in some barbeque joint in Arkansas.
So when Maggie opted this summer for recreational travel, as the industry wags undoubtedly call it, we agreed almost immediately.
When you tell most people you’re going on an RV trip (at least most people I know), they look at you kind of funny. RV trips conjure up images of, among other things, RVs, RV parks, and Wal Mart parking lots. (For more on that, I recommend the highly entertaining and infinitely disturbing film, This is Nowhere.)
But RVs are actually a lot of fun, especially when you’re traveling with children or, ahem, women. Problems like “I have to go to the bathroom,” or “I’m hungry,” or “I’m tired” are very easily dealt with. On the flip side, backseat driving can be a challenge, but you can’t have everything.
In an RV you’re actually encouraged to visit all those cool places you always wanted to see but never got it together to do – Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon – there are more RV parks than gun shops in these places (this is actually a made up statistic, but I’ve been doing that for years, which wouldn’t be such a problem is I weren’t in nonprofit communications, but we all have our faults), and that’s saying something.
RVs also allow you to visit family members without sleeping under the same roof or necessarily having to eat their food, which can be dangerous. This may sound harsh, but we all know it’s true. A certain member of my family snores like a youth hostel full of teamsters – a low, disturbing rumble that causes you to dream that you’re on a subway car from Brooklyn to Panama. The food part’s not a problem, but I’m lucky on that score.
On the downside, RVs require driving. If you don’t like driving or being in driving things, you will hate an RV trip. If you have navigational problems, or relationship issues with your loved one that center around navigation, do not ever do this. If you dislike small spaces, unless you get one of those RVs that resemble Air Force One, you’re probably going to be sad.
We are undaunted and intrepid - at least we like to think we are. So it's eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin"...
And now, on to our saga.
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