Monthly Archives: July 1996

life in a camper

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Life on the road in a VW camper just doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s pretty great.

Last night Tobin, Christa, John and I pulled our campers together in Dawson City. We parked by the Yukon River, and cooked a meal together. John steamed organic broccoli, and I made some spicy wonton egg-drop soup. Christa made a fabulous rotelli with a smolked salmon sauce. As a salad course, we had some left-over taboulli, and some fresh cherries for desert. It was delicious, and we even had leftovers.

I’ve been sleeping in a VW Camper for two weeks now, but I’m still comfortable. John and I maneuver around one another in the van, managing to avoid invading one anothers’ space. We cook, clean up, and sleep. Right now, John is cooking dinner while I type this, and it smells wonderful. He’s making a pepper, onion, and tofu stir-fry, served on a bed of wild-mushroom couscous. I am *not* making this up. (Lest you think this is unfair, I’m doing laundry, and I’ll clean the dishes afterwards.)

I find that I don’t feel slimey if I find a shower every two days. When I wake up without a shower, and my hair is a real nightmare, a gas-station sink serves me well. I soak my hair, dry it with paper towels, and it’s manageable once more. (Not fashionable, but manageable.) I can brush my teeth in the van’s sink, so that’s not a problem.

And the bed is comfortable. I don’t really miss by home bed, though I do miss having my boyfriend by my side. I could sleep in here every night, and not have a complaint.

The EuroVan is very nice. The cabinents are wonderful, with tons more storage than my Vanagon. Likewise, the fridge is much better. It’s about the size of a dorm fridge, and we store tons of food in it. In addition to being larger, it seems to keep things colder than the old Vanagon fridge.

The beds in the EuroVan are also a little bit improved. The bottom bunk folds out just like the old EuroVan bunks, but because it slides as it folds out, it actually sits further back in the living area, giving more floor space. The top bunk doesn’t only fold, but you can even remove the floor and push it back, giving you head room through the entire floor area.

It’s the little things that I really appreciate in the EuroVan. The tent on top opens on three sides, giving the top bunk a great view. Also, the pop-top contains a light at the very top that illuminates the entire van very nicely. If it’s not bright enough for you, there are two flourescent and two incancescent lights around the bottom compartment.

Outside the van, the wind is whistling, and the it’s cold. Tonight we’re going to fire up the propane heater and see how that does. I’m looking forward to giving it a try.

What don’t I like about the EuroVan? Well, first of all, I miss having cloth curtains. The blinds in the EuroVan are efficient, but cloth curtains are so much more homey. Also, the front curtains in the EuroVan attach with velcro, and I much prefer the old snaps.

I don’t like the automatic transmission at all, but you can avoid that. Standards are supposed to be hard to find, but they exist. I have to admit that this is a reasonable standard, however. In addition to drive, there are three low gears.

Harder to avoid is the ground clearance. Because the EuroVan rides lower, the propane connection guard is only about six inches above the ground. Ours has scraped the earth (and roots) several times. Right now, it’s looking pretty warped.

Lastly, the EuroVan just isn’t a bus. That might be fine for mini-van buyers, but it doesn’t have as much personality as a Vanagon or older VW bus. And I want to drive an interesting car. From the outside, this looks remarkably like a Chevy Lumina or any of the other mommie-mobiles. Volkswagen needs to allow its designers to go wild again, and design something really off-the-wall. The bug was one of the best-selling cars of all time, and it didn’t look like anything on the market. And look at the microbus phenomenon, still ongoing.

Tomorrow, we arrive in Inuvik. Our journey is almost half over.

Peace,
Ron

dawson city, northwest territories

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We’ve taken a free day in Dawson City, for folks to fix up their busses and get some personal time away from the group. We’ve been on the road over a week, and lots of folks haven’t had time for laundry or provisioning.

Three days ago, we had our first serious incident. Jorge was lighting a campfire. It flared up on him unexpectedly, and his long hair caught fire. Before he was put out, one half of his face had been burned pretty badly. The group salved the burn, but it looked pretty nasty. My van had split off from the group so that John and I could travel through Whitehorse, and the accident occurred while we were away. The accident occurred while we were gone, on Yukon highway 4 near Ross River. When we rejoined the group at Frenchman’s Lake (outside Carmacks), we found out about Jorge.

He was being brave and a little too macho about it, insisting that it didn’t hurt too badly. He didn’t see the use of going to a hospital, but we finally convinced him to go. Yesterday, he left Frenchman’s Lake early heading for the clinic in Dawson City.

Meanwhile, another problem occurred. Don Kane’s bus refused to start, and all of the mechanics on the trip couldn’t figure out what the problem might be. Don, Bob Hoover, Eddie, and Tobin were all looking into the engine compartment, debugging the engine. They couldn’t figure out what the problem might be, and we eventually tow-started the Kanes’ bus. Don’s bus continues to have weird electrical problems (no headlights, no radio.) We’ll keep it running.

Disasters aside, Frenchman’s Lake was a beautiful spot. The lake was clean down to about 3 meters, and Dave had brought a canoe with him from Anchorage. We took turns taking the canoe out onto the lake. John and I paddled to a far shore of the lake, and pulled ashore. I wanted to walk somewhere where no one had been.

The shore was thick muskeg, a deep bed of moss and fungus. It sank six inches under our footsteps, and then sprang up again. When we laid down, the spell of the forest was thick in the air, and the moss was more comfortable than a featherbed. The sunlight speckled down through the fir trees, and we lay there, listening. The only sound we could hear was the buzz and hum of insects, and the occasional bird.

Yesterday morning, John woke me up to listen to the cry of the loon. We both listened to the song, and the echoes over the lake. Then we got up and dressed.

On the way to Dawson City, we passed a sign that said ‘Organic Vegetables!’ We all agreed that Organic Vegetables would be a Good Thing, so we stopped at Partridge Creek Farm. The veggies there were amazing. You could select what you wanted from a list, and the proprietress would walk into the field and pick the veggies fresh.

Now we’re in Dawson City, here at the base of the Dempster. Dawson City is remote, and the streets are dirt. Along each road is a boardwalk. The place is half-falling-down, and only about 2000 folks live hear year-round from a gold-rush population of around 30,000. It’s also expensive here. Gasoline is around $2.80 Cdn, and a mug of draft beer is $4.50. Still, it’s damn tasty, and “Better than that American shit”, as one guy at the bar told me. I had to agree.

I had two beers, and John drove us back to the campground. Now, two beers is double my limit, and I was very tipsy. I made a point of walking around saying hello to everyone who was still awake. It was 12:45, but it was still very light out. Yvette said “Wow, you look really relaxed!” I laughed.

Tomorrow we head north once more, leaving Dawson City early to hit the dirt of the Dempster. My next dispatch will be from Inuvik.

Ron

trailer park from hell

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We left Fort Nelson this morning, heading North on the Alaska Highway. Last night we stayed in the Trailer Park from Hell. The place sounded good in the guide… shaded spots, showers, and mini-golf.

When we arrived, however, we found that the campground was little more than a parking lot occupied by uptight old folks in huge RVs. They kept asking us to turn down our already-quiet-music. Eddie was quietly singing folk ballads by the campfire when one neighbor asked us to ‘can the music, okay, buddy?’

The past day’s drive from Moberly Lake was a fairly uneventful one. The Alaskan Highway consisted of gently rolling hills through forests of stunted fir trees, none over 15 feet tall. I later learned from a native of Fort Nelson that this was muskeg, a boggy land. He also told me that there was permafrost at this latitude (59 degrees).

The arctic circle is defined as the latitude where the sun never sets at least one day of the year. We’re not there yet, but the days are getting noticibly longer. It was still quite light out at 10pm, and when I awoke at 8am, the sun was already high in the sky.

I’m writing this on Don Kane’s Powerbook Duo. Mine appears to have died in a fairly significant way. It doesn’t boot past the little ‘happy mac’. I’m somewhat depressed about this, since I was really enjoying my role as chronicler of the trip. I’m going to try to find an Apple Service Center in Watson Lake or points North. The machine is still under warranty, and it would be great if they could fix it.

Until I find a fix, I’ll continue to write using Don’s mac, and I’ll take one or two photos a day with the Quicktake camera. I’ll then upload the photos to the net when I return.

Today we’ll get to Liard Hot Springs, just 200 miles or so down the road. And then we’ll soak our mosquito bites in the healing waters.

Scratch scratch scratch…
Ron

prince george

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I’m writing this from the back of the EuroVan, heading north from Prince George. The rest of the convoy should be about 3 hours ahead of me now, camping at Moberly Lake, just outside of Chetwynd (“Chainsaw Sculpture Capitol of the World.) This puts us 2/3 of the way up through B.C. on our second day out. B.C. is BIG. Much larger than I imagined. I’m told that end-to-end B.C. is larger than California, and in land area, B.C. is larger than California and Texas combined.

Last night, we were pulled into a filling station when we started attracting attention. First, a group of five kids came over and said, “Hey, were you guys on the radio this morning???” We admitted to the deed and then showed them the interiors of our vans. Meanwhile, a brown ’67 splittie puttered up and out came a gentleman looking like a younger, slimmer Santa Claus. He introduced himself as Wilbur and a fellow VW nut. “Hey,” he said, “would you guys like me to show you a camping spot with a great view, near a lake, quiet and isolated?” Well, we were supposed to be an hour north last night, but then again it was 9pm. The mutiny took about 1 minute, and we all rolled up the hill behind Wilbur. His ’67 bus was faster than the EuroVan, which was faster than any of the other busses. Then again, his bus was optimized for B.C.’s hills.

The spot was everything that Wilbur promised, and the 11 busses pulled tight together beside a lake. We cooked, and ate, and Wilbur told us that “You know, I own a house, but I still sleep in my bus most of the time. I’m comfortable there.” We all nodded knowingly. And then we slept in that grassy meadow by the lake, and Wilbur slept beside us, in his bus.

At 6:15 this morning, John and I packed up the EuroVan and pulled out of the quiet meadow. We were huntin’ Hoover. Bob Hoover, that is. Drivin’ a ’65. Sorta curmudgeonly-like.

Tobin was sleep deprived from trip hosting. John and I were going to look for Bob Hoover at the scheduled camp sites, and then proceed on to Prince George, where the busses would be serviced by VW.

We didn’t see Bob along the way, but when we pulled into Hub City Motors in Prince George, there was a scruffy-but-noble-looking splittie bus there, with a huge rack and two tires on top. Inside, were two auto dealers in striped white shirts and ties. Between them stood a man wearing a woolen cap and an evil grin. He looked like a cross between Adam (the mad chef from Northern Exposure) and a local lumberjack. “You must be Bob Hoover” I said, extending my hand. He grinned wider, nodded, and shook my hand.

We waited there for the rest of the gang to arrive. Now, I can move pretty fast. I can get stow the van, get dressed, and be ready to drive in under a half hour. When I’m travelling with someone, that amount stretches to 45 minutes.

When you add more folks to the equation, you have to figure around 10 minutes extra per person. Bob, John, and I waited there for the rest of the vans to show. And we waited, and we waited.

Finally Bob got antsy. His bus is a ’65, and thus is pretty slow. His engine is the same engine they put in VW bugs. Bob and I made an executive decision on a campsite where we’d meet. Two things influenced our decision… it had 109 spots, and it had showers. That it was by a lake was only a bonus.

While waiting my Mac had hung up. I’d spin the trackball, and the cursor would move grudgingly and with great trepidation. The machine was hesitant, and I was getting very frustrated.

Now, I love Macs. They’re beautifully designed machines. But their total dependance on a mouse is a major downfall. Hopefully at some point they’ll give users a way to use dialogs and menus with the keyboard.

Around 12:30, folks started pulling in. John and I went off to the Internet Cafe, where Eddie Hintz tried to get my Mac working better. (He is using a Duo to write his many dispatches.)

Can you believe that there is an Internet Cafe in Northern B.C.? I was surprised. Even more surprisingly, it’s one of the coolest coffee shops I’ve ever been in. It does this in by being both incredibly huge and incredibly eclectic. The place is literally the size of a Woolworth’s, and contains terminals, pool tables, murals, paintings, a bookcase, and some things that were fairly inexplicable. I think that this must be a big-time happening place in the long winters. (Note: Bob Hintz noticed that many of the local cars had a plug dangling from their front radiators. The locals would plug in their cars to heat up the block before even trying to start them.)

So Eddie had marginal luck getting the Mac to feel better. Meanwhile, I’d discovered that there was an Apple Authorized Service Center just around the block from the Internet Cafe. The convoy was to leave soon, and the Apple repair folks told me it would take a few hours, so I told Eddie and Co. to go on ahead. I handed over the Duo, and John and I bummed around Prince George for a few hours.

Notes on Prince George:

  • I counted three internet service providers during my walk.
  • There is a shop called ‘Dead On Arrival’ that delivers boquets of dead flowers artfully arranged in old paint cans and shoes.
  • John spotted the lone town clone.
  • Fashions in Prince George aren’t that different than in San Francisco. Folks have shaved heads, piercings, and I saw yet another one of those pesky goths.

So around 5pm I picked up the laptop. The boy servicing it was adorable, but didn’t look a day over 17. I was fairly certain he didn’t know what he was doing. He told me he’d cleaned the trackball but didn’t find anything else wrong.

I went back to the van, booted the laptop, and lo! Everything worked fine! So I’ve been given a reprieve to write this dispatch, and hopefully I’ll get it sent off soon.

Now we’re camping by Moberly Lake, I’ve eaten well, and even showered. Life is good. Thanks to the time zone change, it’s 2am, and time to sleep.

Until tomorrow,
Ron

vancouver / day 2

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Well, I’m here in Tobin’s parking lot typing this short note. Folks walk by just a few feet away, but I’m comfortably cocooned here in my bus, the top popped, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

I’m using an Apple Duo 280c, lent to me by a friend at Apple Computer. At the last minute, just as I was about to leave without a computer, Ramesh phoned and said “Oh, I just got back from vacation. Would you like to use my computer?”

The Duo is classic Apple. Light and stylish, it’s the perfect computer for this sort of thing. It has a built-in 14.4 modem, hidden just behind one of the fold-out legs. The screen is beautiful, 640 by 480 pixels of active, sharp color. I haven’t used a Mac in several years, but the OS is so intuitive that I can usually figure out how to work things.

(I had a little trouble getting PPP to work right, but my friend Bri has done this before. He stuck FreePPP on the system and now it works like a charm.)

I’ve been taking the pictures on this trip with an Apple Quicktake digital camera. Using the Duo and the Quicktake, I can examine the images, crop them, and enhance them (usually just a little tough-up to the brightness.) When I connect up to the ‘net, I just FTP the images to Chaco, and Stev0 takes it from there.

Tobin and Christa are even nicer than I imagined they would be. They’re extremely vivacious, as you’d expect. Jack Stafford arrived before I did, as did Johnny and Heidi Stutsman and their two very cute kids, Sage and Reed. Jorge and Yvette also arrived this evening, having driven 5,000 miles just to get to Vancouver. Attached to the front of the bus was a very shredded tire, their last spare. They’d blown four getting here. Jorge is going out tomorrow to get a full set of new tires.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. I need to get more film, meet John Schirano (my co-pilot), and pick up some fresh produce. Everyone else starting from Vancouver will arrive (except Bob Hoover, who is meeting us on the road North of town.) And then tomorrow night is the going-away party.

I’d better get some sleep…

vancouver

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Last day to get ready, last day to prepare, and probably the last chance to get really good vegetables before hitting the road. I’ve trasferred my stuff to the EuroVan, garaged the Westie, and eaten a yummie lunch.

Vancouver is a very lively city, beautiful in the summer sun. The temperature is a reasonable 70 degrees, and Vancouverites have stripped down to skimpy bathing suits in city parks, gathering as much sun as possible in this often-rainy city.

Today I’m seeing everything with rose-tinted glasses. I’m not sure why. Maybe its having been emotionally flushed clean by a few days alone in my bus. Perhaps it’s the euphoria that comes from the start of something really important in my life. And maybe its that Vancouver is a really pretty city.

The people are beautiful, the temperature is perfect. Tobin lives in the West End of Vancouver, which is also the gay district. (Pink triangles, rainbow flags, self-sufficient women and overly stylish men are everywhere.)

Big John and Little John came over, and the three of us took the cutest little ferry over to Granville island. The ferry is about the size of a bathtub, and the journey to Granville island is about 250 feet across a channel. Along with art galleries and street artists, Granville island contains the Public Market.

The Public Market is the Vancouver equivalent of Pike Place Market in Seattle… i.e., Very Dangerous. Lots of great looking produce, fresh pasta, olives, cheeses (unfortunately no stinky french cheeses), and seafoods. John and I stocked up on oranges and lemons for the trip, so that we wouldn’t get scurvy.

Everyone showed up for the party, including folks why weren’t going on the trip, like Harry Yates. Eddie finally got here after his repeated tries to run the border (see his dispatch for the whole story.)

Christa’s brother (Peter Ovenell) and Peter Viney, the rep from Volkswagen, both came down with me to check out the EuroVan. Peter Viney was checking out the sign I made for the camper, when Peter Ovenell said, “Ron, what’s this ‘homo’, eh? Is it your sexual orientation?” (Stev0 gave me a darwin-fish that says ‘homo’ inside.) I was worried that Peter Viney would freak, but he didn’t say anything. He was worried a little about my ‘Free Tibet’ bumper sticker, but I think he was half-joking. (He told me that VW has two factories in China.)

I got everyone together for a photo. From right to left are Eddie holding Indra, Tobin & Christa (up above), Glen, & Caron, Yvette & Jorge, Jack Stafford, John Holland from Victoria. Down below are Neil Wigley (absorbing the flash), Johnny Stutsman, Niniek Wigley (below Johnny), me, Elvis, and Bob, Eddie’s father.

Christa’s sending us all off to bed now. Tomorrow we hit the road. And we’ll soon be sending EMAIL from the ARCTIC!!! (Insert reverb here.)

Ron

roslyn, washington / cicely, alaska

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Okay,

I admit it. I’m a total “Northern Exposure” nut. I love the show, and after watching it for a year I was begging my boyfriend to move with me to Sitka, Alaska. I figured that Sitka was the REAL location of Cicely, and I wanted to live there.

I even wrote to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce, asking for information on living in their no-doubt-fine community. They sent back a number of brochures, all relating to working in the fish-packing industry. “Don’t come to Sitka unless you already have a contract with a cannery!” warned one pamphlet. “Cannery work is hard, cold, back-breaking labor” bragged another, “The smell often stays with you the entire season.”

These leaflets did not convince Dan that Sitka was a happening place. I would point out the happy gay couple running a B&B in Cicely, Chris being intellectual on KBHR, and the friendly service at the Brick. Dan would either look sadly at me or start hunting around for the dart gun. “I’m perfectly willing to live in any city that contains a Library of Congress” he’d say. “But U/Alaska at Sitka and their well-known Forest Management curriculum doesn’t cut it.”

My passion led me to the town of Roslyn, here on the eastern slopes of the Cascade mountains. Driving into Roslyn was one of the strangest experiences of my life. Everywhere are scenes from life in Cicely… and the entire town is a living, breathing place. I peaked through the window of Minniefield Communications, and radio station KBHR. Across the street was the Brick, with its penis-shaped sign. Ruth-Ann’s store was there, too, with a 36 cubic foot can of SPAM in the window. (Roslyn has a SPAM festival of some sort, about the same time that they have their He-Man festival.)

My head was swimming. I wanted to meet Marilyn, and tell her how beautiful I thought she was. I wanted to hear Shelly sing.

I ate dinner at Roslyn’s Cafe (‘An Oasis’). The owner was a woman in her late 30′s, with a very friendly smile and twinkly eyes. She was the ur-waitress, with a deep, honest beauty and an easy laugh. I think she may have called me ‘hon’. Families would come in, and she would sit with them and gossip. Her son and husband worked in the kitchen. He husband would emerge occasionally to eat or talk to customers. Her son would pop out to sit at the counter, drink a coke, and brood.

The camel on the Roslyn’s Cafe sign came from the previous owner, incidentally. “He had thing thing about camels” said the new owner. “Couldn’t get enough of them.”

Down the street, a goth girl sat in front of the pizza parlor. Her face was pale, and her clothing and hair jet black. Around her heck was a large silver crucifix. She sat there, not eating, not smiling. A little boy in jeans and a bright yellow shirt ran around her, occasionally climbing into her lap. When she kissed him, she almost smiled.

On the Brick, there is a set of double doors. One door has a sign reading “Employees Only” and the other door has a sign reading “Brick Restaurant Entrance!”. Those two doors stopped me cold. I tentatively opened the ‘Entrance’ door, thinking maybe that the double doors really did go to different places. They didn’t. Beyond lay the kitchen and then a curtained doorway. I stepped back onto the sidewalk. A few seconds later, I went to open the door again, and a woman popped out. “Howdy!” she said. “Is this the entrance?” I asked. “Beats me!” she smiled, and walked down the street.

Walking down the sidewalk, three little kids on bikes swerved around me. “Howdy!” said the first boy, seriously. He gave me a Meaningful Look, or at least what looked like one. “‘ello, old chap!” said the second boy, grinning. I shot back a “Good morning, my fine fellow!” as he zoomed by, weaving down the sidewalk. Following the two boys was a girl, running with a pup on a leash. She didn’t say anything, but just laughed and ran with her dog, chasing the boys.

Cicely does exist, but not in Alaska. Roslyn has enough real stories and eccentric people to fill any television show. And it’s a lot closer for most of us.

Following my bliss,
Ron

what in sam hill?

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I’m enjoying my breakfast of toast and tea at a Brooks State Park in midsouthern Washington state. This is a really nice place to camp, and seems out-of-the-way enough to not be crowded.

My body seems to be falling apart. At the end of the first day, my back hurt, and I walked around like a stooped old guy, looking for asprin. By the end of the day yesterday, my gas pedal knee was stiff and painful. And last night, just as my back started to recover, I started getting a sore throat. I imagine this is my superego, telling me that I’m bad for forsaking my work. “Look, you take time off and now you’re suffering,” it says, “Get back to work!”

Nope. I am going to see this through. Fuck the subconcious. What does it know?

Last night the only other car here was a EuroVan in the spot next to mine. We talked. The owners are retired schoolteachers from Hawaii. (I guess everyone in Hawaii knows everyone else. These two knew my friend Brian and his family.) They are retiring to Portland, and bought a EuroVan to live in while they look for a house. This is the first time I’ve compared a Euro to my Vanagon… The EuroVan is really nice! Because the engine is out front, the Van has lots of storage under the bed. Also, the van is 4 1/2″ wider, and they’ve added all of that space to the cabinets. The fridge is dorm-sized. Rather than the bins in the Vanagon, the Euro has floor-to-ceiling shelves where the left-rear window is on the Vanagon. Very nice.

Yesterday I drove through Oregon. North and south central Oregon are two very different places. The southern part of route 97 was wooded and mountainous. Northern 97 passed through high desert country, rolling hills and scrub.

The Columbia river is an interesting place. It’s been massively dammed (damned?), flooding native fishing grounds and churning the water with silt. The natives in the area still fish from platforms over the river, but they no longer use spears. You can’t see the fish in the muddy waters. Now they use hoop nets, dropped into the water from the platforms.

There is definitely an ‘us vs. them’ tension. The natives are trying to retain their treaty fishing rights, while non-indian fisherman complain about the unfareness of netting. An American flag flew upside down from a fishing platform. (Flying a flag upside down is an international sign of distress, and has been adopted by the American Indian movement.) Grafitti reads ‘Fuck Amerikkka!’ and ‘How the tides have turned.’

Despite this, the few natives I stopped to speak to were really nice. These aren’t folks making a fortune off of fishing. Several families were living in shacks along the river or in their cars.

A little later I stopped by Maryhill, a mansion & museum built above the Columbia by Sam Hill. Sam Hill was a quaker, and around the turn of the century he tried to build a utopian community of farmers along the river. He named the community after his daughter Mary. Unfortunately, he was seen as more of an eccentric than a visionary, and the then-remote community failed.

Sam Hill also constructed a replica of Stonehenge as a tribute to the men of Klickitat county who had died in world war I. (It was the first such monument in the country.) Hill was a pacifist. He’d heard that Stonehenge in England was a place of pagan sacrifice, and built his Stonehenge to remind people that “humanity is still being sacrificed to the god of war.”

Next stop, Roslyn, home of the insanely great show Northern Exposure.

Ta!
Ron

sunset over mount shasta

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I’m waiting here at the base of Mt. Shasta for the sun to light the mountain before it sets. Waiting is hard for someone from the Silicon Valley. In the computer industry, waiting usually means that someone else will beat you to market. Folks here don’t take vacations. Sometimes they don’t sleep.

Yet here I am taking a month off, heading north to someplace near the arctic ocean. When folks ask me why I’m doing it, I usually stare at them without a good answer. Maybe by the time this trip is over, I’ll know.

Shasta is in the shade of clouds now, fluffy cumulonimbi hovering lower than the summit. As the sun sets, I can watch the light slowly climb the slopes of Shasta. It reddens as it approaches the top of this old volcano, and I wait for ‘the perfect moment.’

Earlier, near Arbuckle, I got off of the freeway to photograph. What I originally thought was an access road turned out to be the old route north, Highway 99. I stopped and spoke with the owners of an old filling station. The weathered guy who owned the place told me his folks opened it up in 1920. He closed down the place in the 60′s, within a few years of the opening of the freeway. Not enough business anymore on highway 99. I headed north on the old road for a while, through Artois (named Germantown until world war II…) I passed many closed old filling stations, motels, and restaurants. They looked more interesting than Denny’s, and I wished that they were still open.

The Central Valley of California is a horrible place, and I feel sorry for anyone forced to live there. Well, maybe not the folks who burn rice straw… they deserve their fate. The air is hazy and brown, and I passed one blackened field after another. In the distance, I could see grey mushroom clouds rising higher than the few natural clouds in the sky, signs of a burning field. The farmers burn the fields because the straw doesn’t decompose quickly when it is plowed under. There are other ways to deal with this, but burning is cheapest.

Leaving the central valley was the first step in shedding the stress of my day-to-day life. I climbed up into the mountains and forests. For a few wonderful seconds, it rained.

The sun is ready for me now. I’ll write more later…

Okay, it’s around 11pm, and I’m at a rest stop just across the Oregon border. After photographing Shasta, I continued north looking for a place to sleep. I found a great road heading up a mountain. It was dirt, but seemed solid. I drove for a while, getting higher and higher, when I noticed that the bus was sliding in a really funny way. Then I noticed the squishy noise… the road had turned to mud on me! Now, mud is something I don’t expect in California, but there it was. I slowly turned around, and then drove/slid back down the mountain. Other than huge muddy boogers on my car, no damage done. I wish I had taken Tobin’s advice, however, and brought chains.

So now I’m going to catch some sleep and hope I don’t get woken at 3am by Oregon’s finest. I think it’s a good sign that I’m in a line of campers, all obviously spending the night. (It’s a bad sign that a train seems to pass by every half-hour, horn wailing.)

Peace,
Ron

My mid-life crisis has been subsidized

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My mid-life crisis has been subsidized. More on that later…

As a teenager growing up in Massachusetts, I would watch the VW busses drive by with envy and admiration. During my college years, the Vanagon Westfalia camper was my dream car. I would get excited whenever I saw one drive by. (In rural Massachusetts, this wasn’t that often.)

VW campers were a symbol of all that was adventurous. I knew that if I had one of these wonderful busses, I could get onto the nearest road and see all of America. On the road, you really see the country. Get off the interstate (where every Chevron and Burger King looks the same, corporate, sanitized for your comfort…) Drive down the thinnest dirt road on the map, and see what’s there. Don’t aim for the dot at the end, but rather your destination should be every point on that thin line. Stop at a creek and listen to the bugs. Walk around the inside of an abandoned old house. Fall in love.

Growing up on a farm in Massachusetts, a confused, insecure gay kid, I was a mess. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I wanted out. (Does every farm boy want out? Seems like it sometimes.) It’s not that the farm is a horrible place. It’s wonderful. We used to build forts in the bales of hay, chase the turkeys (dumb bastards), and wade in the brook getting leaches. If I was given a second chance, I’d go back there and do it again.

I picked the right school. UMass/Amherst is a old aggie school, and is surrounded by farmland. Rows of tobacco and drying barns have a comfortable beauty that almost makes up for the millions that the final product will kill. UMass was also a big school, full of people from all over. I swear to god, I met my first asian, black, and jewish friends at UMass. My people, the Rhode Island cajuns, just keep to themselves. Until recently, church services were still held in french.

Last year, at the age of 34, I bought my camper. A white 1990 Volkswagen Vanagon GL Westfalia Camper. Since then, it has become my sanctuary. I’ll be driving, with Ben Lee wailing on the CD player, and the engine humming oh-so-smoothly way back behind me, and I’ll feel totally at peace with the world. I’ll start singing along Ben, and my entire body will relax. A few runs to the corner store like that and I’m totally skinnerized. My bus makes me happy. Just thinking about being in my bus feels good.

So I lost my job, got a big severance check, bought a bus, and started a company with four totally excellent hacker friends. It’s July of 1995. We’re doing our Chaco stuff, and I’m checking out the Vanagon mailing list, when I see a note from Tobin:

David’s GNATT took him through the western US as far as the Mississippi River. Christa and I are planning an adventure that will take us a little farther afield…

As my japanese friends say, ‘Pin Pon!’ This was something that called to me. Tobin’s note gently suggested “Perhaps you ought to get off your fat hacker ass and make your dreams happen!“

So I spoke with Tobin, set up a mailing list, and started assembling the bones of a web page. A year later, here you are. I hope you’re having a good time.

One of the first thoughts I had when I decided that I had to go on this trip was that it would occur almost immediately after I turned 35. Running off to the arctic ocean seemed like the perfect age-defying midlife-crisis type of thing to do. I’m very big on symbols, and I plan on making the most of this trip. I even went to far as to tell my coworkers that I was taking a ‘sabatical’. (I’ve always wanted to be able to say that!)

Volkswagen nicely offered to give the busses leaving Vancouver oil changes and filters, and they’ll be loaning me a Winnebago EuroVan to drive along on the trip. (I asked, they said “Sure!”. Nice folks. Polite, too.)

I’m making this trip to figure out what the heck I want to do with my life. In Chaco, I’ve been heads-down working without any time for philosophy. Despite enjoying my company, I feel like singing “Is that all there is…?”

One of my dreams is to write and photograph, and I’ll be doing that on this trip. Having written that, I’ve upped the ante. You know my motivations, and I know you’ll be judging me. Go ahead. I’ll give you lots of material over the next few weeks.