Almost four months since we returned to the east coast. Here’s a quick update-

I spent most of the end of July and August restoring my dad’s old Harley Davidson. It had spent most of the decade rusting away in the back of the garage; my brother and I put a ton of time into it (and about $2500), and it turned out pretty well. Pictures coming up.

After this, for the end of August/early September, Magic and I crashed at my brother’s place outside of Baltimore. My main takeaways from this experience are a) the MARC train is awful, and b) suburban Maryland is not somewhere I want to live again..

In September, I got an apartment in NYC — West Village, to be specific. This pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the nomadic life for at least a year. It was bittersweet, but it’s nice being consistently around my friends again.

In October, I traveled to London and Zurich, and in early November, I did a short trip back out to Santa Monica.

I’ve also laid the groundwork for some ridiculous future mission by buying a bunch of mountain land near Hamburg, PA. It’s not clear what I’m going to do with this, if anything, but it’s nice to scratch the homesteading itch every now and then. This will probably be the temporary resting place for the Airstream after I rescue it from storage next spring.

Lots of pics coming up!

Life

My original plan for my fulltiming adventure was to roam around the country for most of the spring, spend some time on the east coast toward the end of May, then head overseas for awhile, then figure out what to do from there. Of course, The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley. Or, ridiculous vehicle problems screw everything up. Whatever works.

So, I decided to get out of the perpetual truck-broken-annoying-limbo-state, ship the truck back east, rent a car, put the Airstream in storage, and do a mad dash across the country. Four days later, here we are, back in PA, eating some good food and takin’ it easy. (one would assume it would be easy to take it easy in redwood forests and southern california beaches too, but that gets complicated when you don’t actually have a vehicle that works..)

It’s nice being back around my family. Not much has changed, besides the fact that my dad now has a very mighty beard. But, they say that personal relationships and a close family life are the real keys to happiness — that’s one thing I haven’t focused on much in the last few years. I’ve certainly tried a lot of other things, so maybe it’s time to give that a whirl for awhile.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep this thing updated as the adventure continues. Will be a bit of a disgrace as the airstream theme is on a bit of a pause, but hopefully that can be taken care of soon. (Anybody know of a cheap way of getting an RV shipped across the country? DAS wanted over 4 grand!!)

Well, faithful friends and readers, that’s all for now. Drop me a line via email if you like:

                                    THE STRANGER
                         Take it easy, Dude--I know
                         that you will.

               THE DUDE, LEAVING, NODS:

                                     DUDE
                         Yeah man.  Well, you know, the Dude
                         abides.

               Gazing after him, The Stranger drawls, savoring the words:

                                     THE STRANGER
                         The Dude abides.

               He gives his head a shake of appreciation, then looks into
               the camera.

                                     THE STRANGER
                         I don't know about you, but I take
                         comfort in that.  It's good knowin'
                         he's out there, the Dude, takin' her
                         easy for all us sinners.  Shoosh.  I
                         sure hope he makes The finals.  Welp,
                         that about does her, wraps her all
                         up.  Things seem to've worked out
                         pretty good for the Dude'n Walter,
                         and it was a purt good story, dontcha
                         think?   Made me laugh to beat the
                         band.  Parts, anyway.  Course--I
                         didn't like seein' Donny go. But
                         then, happen to know that there's a
                         little Lebowski on the way.  I guess
                         that's the way the whole durned human
                         comedy keeps perpetuatin' it-self,
                         down through the generations, westward
                         the wagons, across the sands a time
                         until-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin'
                         again.  Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed
                         yourselves.

               He brushes his hat brim with a fingertip as we begin to pull
               back.

                                     THE STRANGER
                         Catch ya further on down the trail.

Indeed.

Life, Travel Heaven

My last full day on the west coast included a visit to the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation. What a way to conclude nearly 6 months of craziness.

The MVTF is one of the largest private collections of military vehicles in the world. My head was spinning by the end of the tour, as there was just so much to see in a few hours, but we had a great time checking the place out. (For fans of the show Mythbusters, this was the place that they used the two tanks to pull apart the phonebooks)

Anyway, pictures speak for themselves. Really cool stuff. Highlights for me were the SCUD missile and the bridge layer (just like in GI Joe!)

Also, if I am ever forced to settle down permanently in the bay area, Portola Valley is really the only reasonable place to live. It’s like rural wilderness in the middle of suburban mess. (er, according to wikipedia, it’s also apparently in the top 20 wealthiest neighborhoods in the country. sigh. although it would have to take a pretty serious amount of money to get me to live full time in the bay area.

NorCal

Today, the campground hosted some sort of big Vespa meet-up — there had to be over 100 vespas here, including a ton of older two stroke models. (nothing like the smell of 2 stroke exhaust in the otherwise calm mountain wilderness..)

Being a motorcyclist (albeit one coming off of a three year NYC-induced hiatus), it was interesting to compare the scooter crowd to the biker crowd. While “serious” riders often mock the squids riding their CBSXR1400Ninja++-R in shorts and flip-flops at maximum speed, watching the scooter crowd all day left me with a certain feeling of darwinism-

Here you have a ton of people wearing street clothes, open faced helmets, no protection at all, class-M endorsements not required, riding scooters on twisty mountain roads. While there were a few people in some minimal amount of gear, they were in the minority. I saw one person crash after being unable to negotiate a speed bump (!) and another person who added *training wheels* to a Piaggio MP3 (yes, the one that already has three wheels that you don’t need to balance).

While I certainly don’t begrudge these folks the enjoyment of getting out there on two wheels, doing so in street clothes without proper training is asinine. Apparently some of these scooters can do 80mph! (to be fair, I believe those are 250cc which would require class M endorsement in the state of california..)

Anyway, can anyone explain the use case of scooters in this country? Why not just get a motorcycle? They make sense in european cities, but our cities are not configured to be scooter friendly. Even NYC is a nightmare for two wheeled vehicles.

Anyway, in other news, the truck is still broken, and my current plan is to ship it back east, rent a car, and head back to PA for some vacation time. A major repair will be easier back there anyway. I guess that means the “on the road” counter on the right side of the page has to be reset. Sad.

Randomness

head gasket. and no warranty coverage.

I give up.

Randomness

No coolant, and an oil leak. And watery oil. And stranded again.

good times.

Randomness

Appropriate lyrics for the times..

The Haul Begins.

Randomness

The truck is back in action, and seems to be working fine — 450ish miles since the repair and all is well.  I decided to do a shakedown run from Malibu up to the Bay Area just to make sure things were in order, and all seems good.  In 20 hours I leave for a cross-country attack run — I-80 from San Jose to Pennsylvania in 3 days.  The last time I did such a drive alone I was 21; we’ll see what these 30 year old bones can handle.  (Given how pathetically tired I was after last night’s 6.5 hour jog, I’m not anticipating much success..)

Not sure how many updates I will make from the road, so here are some pictures of the last few weeks to keep you occupied until I return..

Magic boycotting the day -- after a hike, he slept almost 14 hours!

Yes, that is a dog. On a motorcycle. Ridiculous.

I was sick for almost 10 days, and Magic was good company. Didn't make soup, but was a good pillow.

Crazy FJ45 parked next to me in Malibu

NorCal

We appear to have a mouse. Magic is now keeping a watchful eye. But, he is too slow.

Anybody know of good humane mousetraps?

Randomness

Happy Father’s Day — my original plan was to pop back east to celebrate a combined retirement/father’s day with my dad, but the truck had other plans.  Will have to take a raincheck on that.

Father's Day Ride, 2005

So, the counter on the right tells me this is the 5 month anniversary of full-timing.  Time flies.  Time for a recap:

• I’ve towed the airstream about 5300 miles so far.
• This is the longest consecutive time in my life that I’ve been away from the east coast.  (2000 comes close, but I had a trip back east in may/june sometime)
• I’ve spent about $2500 on various airstream-related stuff, including upgrades, accessories, and repairs.
• I haven’t really calculated RV park fees, but it’s probably close to $6000 including electric/pumpouts/gas/etc.  Way less than my $3000/mo NYC apartment, but 1200/mo seems high for this sort of activity..
• I’ve spent $1700 on truck and motorcycle repairs, not including the upcoming truck repair.
• I’ve ridden my bicycle a disgracefully small number of times, probably countable on two hands.  Most of my exercise has been dog-related, which is good for Mr. Magic.  Also, riding alone isn’t much fun.
• I’ve spent way more than I ever expected to on laundry.  Magic stinks up the sheets.  I do 2-3 loads a week, at about $3 a load, which is $40/mo on laundry.  wtf?
• I’ve read a few books: The Illuminatus Trilogy (which I started 3 years ago and never finished, so I reread it cover to cover), Watchmen (never thought I’d be into graphic novels, but it’s badass), and Ghost Rider (”Travels on the Healing Road” — I’ll write more about that some other time)
• My favorite RV park by far is Malibu Beach RV park.  My least favorite is Trailer Inn’s in Bellevue, WA.
• The most off the wall place I’ve stayed was definitely Dufur RV Park.
• This trip would not have been doable without the dog.  Way too isolated and lonely.
• Women generally aren’t interested in dating transients, unless they are also transients.  Unfortunately most transients either don’t have jobs or don’t shave their armpits.
• I expected to learn to surf while I was on the west coast, but I didn’t.  I also expected to be in amazing shape from hiking and biking, but that didn’t happen.  I do have a wicked tan, though.
• It takes way more effort than you’d think to keep 165sqft of living space clean.  Especially with a dog and only a dustbuster.
• I have eaten at least 20 boxes of Raisin Nut Bran.  Maybe more.
• I did a surprisingly good job of packing.  I wear or use almost everything that I brought with me.
• Whenever I end up back in an apartment in NYC, space is really not going to be a big deal.  As long as you’ve got good light and location, small spaces can be really cool.

Ghostbusters marathon on AMC.  My friend Ross said earlier that Ghostbusters completely shaped his image of New York as a kid.  I was thinking the same thing.  Toward the end of my 3 1/2 year stint in New York, I kept looking around wondering why I didn’t “feel” like it used to when I first got there.  I realize now that part of this was because I was trying to compare it to my presumption of how it seemed in Ghostbusters..  (and the rest of it was probably due to some sort of burnout, I guess..)

Anyway, I leave you with this, worth watching if you’ve got an hour and a half (thanks Liana for finding it!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

happy trails..

-d

Life