I’ve about had it with RV and road trip how-to books. Of course I brought this upon myself. I chose to read them. Understand, I appreciate knowing how the 12-volt electrical system works, how to level the trailer at a campsite, and how to properly empty the dump tanks. (That last one is crucial.) But this stuff doesn’t exactly inspire. And it can only take you so far. You can’t learn to back up or hitch a trailer by reading a book.
So I’m tapering off the how-to stuff and moving on to guide books on parks, food, and nature, and travel literature. The guide books are fun to skim and they get me excited about heading out. The travel literature provides perspective and promotes a kind of thoughtfulness about the experience and what to make of it. Danine reads a lot of Bill Bryson. His books are funny and full of shrewd insights. Like Mark Twain, he’s a keen observer of human behavior (folly) and good at teaching you to not take your adventures, or yourself, too seriously. I was an English major, which means I tend to read books many people hate. For example, one of my favorite travel books is Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In it Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the many strange cities he has visited. The book is not travel writing in any conventional sense. It’s about the imagination and the nature of all cities. I like it.
I just started reading Journey without Maps by Graham Greene. I’m a big fan of Greene’s novels (especially The Power and the Glory), so I thought I’d check out his travel writing. Like a fool, I read the introduction. Never read the introductions to books. Not once have they ever enhanced or clarified the book for me. In this case, it’s by Paul Theroux, who I believed was a Greene disciple, as well as a great travel writer himself. But he considers Greene’s idea for the trip (hiking through the bush of 1930’s Liberia for four weeks) to be half-baked and focuses on Greene’s more prejudiced observations. In other words, the intro deflates the book and damns it with faint praise. I can’t say for sure if he actually liked it! Anyway, my mistake. It’ll be good.
You may be asking, “What does some Brit’s four-week scramble through the Liberian jungle over 70 years ago have to do with your rather comfortable tour of the US in an Airstream trailer?” That’s a great question. I haven’t a clue. Yet.
I recently subscribed to Airstream Life magazine. It seemed like a good idea, since we bought an Airstream and plan to live in it! When you subscribe online, it automatically generates a username based on your full name: it takes the first 2 letters of your first name and the first 3 letters of your last. Thus, Bobby Welsh = BOWEL. I can’t tell you how proud I am. I pointed this out to the publisher, Rich Luhr, who said I should have subscribed as Robert instead. His wife Eleanor said that it could be worse and suggested a more hilarious possibility I won’t write here. The upside is now we have a Dave Barry -esque game perfect for car trips (or Airstream trips of course). Try it!
In unrelated news, we are probably going with the Hensley Arrow hitch. It’s unique and eliminates the trailer’s ability to sway. It’s also a little controversial: no one seems to dispute that it works better than all others, but not everyone thinks it’s worth the huge cost. Our truck has a relatively short wheelbase for our trailer length (this is a relationship that matters when you are concerned about trailer sway). So we are going for it. The company sends out free marketing CDs which border on the absurd: showing little cars towing really BIG trailers. But the hitch is great.
Thanks to all of you who have wished us well, shared ideas, and shown us your tremendous care. It feels good and we are deeply grateful for the support we have felt through this little blog — and in the real world too! I’m not surprised though. Not because we’re so great, but because somehow we have so many outstanding people for family and friends.
Many of you have said how envious you are of our undertaking, but strangely, the idea of selling the house and taking this trip has been the easy part. I don’t doubt the decision or question it. It’s all of the logistics that bug me: buying stuff, selling stuff, storing stuff, arranging, and rearranging. I think that makes me a “vision” guy and not a “details” guy. Hmmm. This may explain why I switched from engineering to English in college….
I’ve been contemplating recently that the money we are spending/losing to take this trip is a kind of luxury, but also a calculated investment, in time and experience. Something we believe is well worth the price. However, the real luxury of this trip is that we can travel about the country relatively easily and safely. Not only does the US have many beautiful places, but we can visit them, no problem. The infrastructure of concrete and asphalt, as well as of laws and culture make it so. I say this to remind myself more than anybody else, so that I maintain a spirit of gratitude, which tends to serve me much better than fretting or second-guessing.
There’s my ramble o’ the week. Now back to scrutinizing truck caps for the pick-up bed, or something.
It’s funny. For the past couple of years, I have been thinking (and sometimes actively planning) about finding another place for us to live. I figured that since I have lived here (Northern Virginia) since I was three and Bobby was born and raised here, that we should find a new place. A place for us to explore and slow down. It’s so busy here. Too much traffic. I wanted a small town with a real community feel. People who really cared about each other and looked out for one another. As Bill Bryson, an author I really like writes, “I was looking for the perfect town.”
What’s funny is that in just this year, as we have been planning this trip, I have discovered all of that here. I love the children that Elise goes to school with (and the parents are great, too!). I love our church community. I love living so close to family (Mom and Dad are .5 miles away, as is my brother, his wife and 2 girls. My sister and her family live 3 miles away.). We have a small faith group that we belong to and the other couples are wonderful. I found a job that I really like.
And now we are planning to leave it all! Where is the logic in that?! It actually provides a great deal of peace to know that it is all here. We hope to come back here when the trip is over. All told, we really like it here. Yes, it’s expensive and busy and full of traffic. But the people who live here are just as real and caring as people who live anywhere else. You just have to get involved and care back.
Part of the trip, originally, was to take a look around the country and see if there is somewhere else we might call home. While we are still open to that, somewhat, I think we hope to come back here. But never say never, as Elise is always telling me!
Ever seen the magazine Real Simple? It’s about half an inch thick and weighs as much as the Sunday paper. I have always mocked it (in my own mind anyway) for not being real or simple. But now I see I’m being a hypocrite. You see, the idea of this trip, which crystallized in our minds last spring on a trip to Sesame Place with Elise, was in part to simplify our lives. We expected to sell our house and divest ourselves of, not all, but a significant portion of stuff; to not focus on the schedules of jobs, school and lessons, but instead on the vast and diverse geography of a country we’ve hardly seen; and to enjoy the company of each other and strengthen our little family. Then I realized I would have to learn all about RVs and how they operate. Ugh.
As you can see in Danine’s previous posts, we’ve come a long way in understanding trailers and how they run. We’ve even bought our rig for the trip: A Nissan Titan crew cab pick-up and an Airstream Safari trailer. ‘Course these components are currently 600 miles apart and neither of us has any experience driving a truck with a trailer in tow. Soon and very soon.
So our planning continues and it’s a mix of cool National Park guides, talks with people who’ve been to this or that beautiful place, and poring over maps (which is fun regardless). Oh, and it includes lots of reading of vehicle manuals, analysis of gross vehicle weight ratings and similar statistics, and figuring out what to sell/give away and when to do it and where to put the left over stuff. It ain’t simple, but it’s real.
Elise’s exuberant presence provides perspective of course. Her energy and inventiveness tend to push us back to the present: we already are a great little family, experiencing life and discovering and enjoying many things right here. Gotta keep all that in mind…
