I want to take a small diversion from our current efforts of packing and planning for this summer’s Airstream travel, to step back and consider why we do all of this.  Everything we do is part of a journey through life.  Today’s work of planning where we’ll tow the Airstream may not necessarily be consequential in the overall scheme of our life, but in some small way every experience we have and every effort we make adds to the sum total of who we are.

I named this blog “Man In The Maze” out of respect for the local native Americans, the Tohono O’odham (which means “desert people”) and their story of I’itoi, the man in the maze.  The I’itoi Ki pictured here is the sacred symbol of the O’odham.  It describes the path to wellness and wholeness, and symbolizes the spiritual journey of each person as they seek the deeper meaning of life.  I’itoi travels through life as through a maze, experiencing twists and turns while growing stronger and wiser.  He grows larger in respect to his surroundings, representing his increasing understanding of the world and himself.

Each of us follow that maze.  The life-changing twists and turns make us who we are.

Following the white path, we eventually we reach the dark center of the maze, which represents death but also an opportunity for enlightenment.  At the final turn, we can look back at the trail, reflect on our lives, and find acceptance of the last step.

Hopefully we’re all a long way from the center of the maze.  While a perspective on our whole lives will be nice someday, I use the I’itoi Ki to remind me that the twists and turns we are experiencing are a part of life, and every one provides a new chance to learn and grow.  We can’t stop traveling through the maze, so we may as well make the most of it.

Our summer plan is coming together.  Our first major stop will be Denver CO, then Jackson Center OH for Alumapalooza, then Vermont.  I’ll tour New England for a few days with my brother and some friends.  I’ll be Temporary Bachelor Man again in Tucson for a while, then joined by Eleanor and Emma at various points.  We’ll go to Alumafandango in August, Starfest (Mercedes) in September, and a few other places.  The Airstream will cover at least 6,000 miles (probably more).  It should be a good, busy, summer.  More later.

It has been a long strange road since I last wrote in this space, and yet we have not managed to go anywhere at all.  If anything, the events of the past month have reminded me of how much I love my Airstream, and how relatively trouble-free it has been.

You might be thinking, “Aren’t you the guy who had the brake actuator problem that canceled your trip a few months ago?” and yes, you’d be correct.  But that failure was one of only a rare few incidents that have derailed Airstream voyages, whereas our success rate with airplanes has been much worse.

It all started last October, when Eleanor and I decided we finally had accumulated enough airline points to book a family trip to Japan for the cherry blossom season in late March.  The mystery, beauty, culture, and food of  Japan have long beckoned to us, especially Eleanor, and we have been saving up points on our airline-affiliated credit cards for that dream trip over the last five years. We worked every angle to build up points until we could get (almost) free tickets to Tokyo, with a stopover in Oahu, to depart in mid-March.

From that point, we spent many hours over the winter preparing for this trip.  We bought maps and guidebooks, and downloaded information about Tokyo’s complex rail system.  We planned out our days, reserved hotels, figured budgets, and researched specific historic and natural sites we wanted to see.  I figured out how to stay in touch with the office (using Skype, and iPad, wifi hotspots, and remote access to my computer).  I even bought a translator app for my iPhone, and guides to the language and culture.

But the trip didn’t happen. Japan is an extraordinarily expensive place to travel, and with various unexpected expenses over the winter, by February it became clear that this wasn’t our year to go to Japan.  Reluctantly, we canceled the trip and got our points returned (for a somewhat painful fee of $300), and vowed to try again sometime in the future.

In a way, we were lucky.  Two days before we were scheduled to fly, Emma and I were stricken with some sort of horrible virus.  We thought it was a cold, but it turned out much worse (fever, chills, nausea, etc.) and in retrospect we think it was actually the flu.  Whatever it was, we were incapacitated for about a week. Only Eleanor was spared, and she was kept busy with nursing duties.  If we had kept our trip to Japan, we would have been sick on the flight to Oahu, and on the flight to Tokyo (a total of 14 hours on airplanes).  That wouldn’t have been feasible for us, and if we had tried it we would have probably infected the entire airplane.  Plus, our entire first week would have consisted of Emma and I lying in bed at the hotel and looking out the window at the cityscape of Tokyo, while refusing all offers of food.  It would have been a disastrous “dream” trip to Japan.

However, when we canceled Japan, we kept the trip to Oahu as a sort of consolation prize, shortening our trip from three weeks to six days.  So all the time we were sick, and all the time that Eleanor was taking care of us, we had the knowledge that at least we’d still get a vacation to the beautiful islands of Hawaii.

Now, there’s definitely nothing wrong with going to Hawaii for six days, but if we had originally planned to go solely to Hawaii we would have not chosen Oahu as our destination.  So after we recovered from the virus, and after a lot of discussion, we changed the destination to Maui.  This required cashing in some more airline points and another $272.  We re-booked the hotel, reserved the car, and started researching hikes in Haleakala National Park. All seemed well, until …

… two days before we were to leave, Emma woke up with a cold.  This triggered an ear infection, which meant a visit to the doctor and antibiotics.  She wasn’t capable of flying in that condition.  Reluctantly, we canceled the trip to Maui too.  Another scramble ensued to recover airline points ($180 in fees) and cancel all the associated reservations.  This trip to Hawaii and Japan has become the most expensive trip we’ve never taken.

Today would be the fourth day of our Hawaiian vacation, or the 17th day of our tour of Japan.  Instead, it is more memorable as the fourth day of a ten-day course of Amoxicillin.  It’s pointless to wail about the trip we aren’t having right now, and we know that someday we will manage to pull it off, but at this time I have to contemplate the Airstream and how very good it has been to us.  Many times we have been sick while traveling and rather than punishing us with fees or threatening us with exploding eardrums, the Airstream has always provided a cozy, safe, peaceful place to lie down and get well, without serious interruption of our travels.

The Safari has been busy this season doing duty as a guest house, and is doing so right now, so we can’t take it out this weekend.  But we will find somewhere to go in order to feel as though we got a little bit of vacation, as soon as Emma is feeling better.  No more booking airline flights for us.  This time we’ll take the car.

Time slowed to a near standstill for me last week, when I was suddenly struck down by one of those cruel stomach bugs.  You know the type.  I was in the car with Eleanor and complaining that her erratic driving was making me carsick, but it wasn’t her driving at all.  A few minutes later we were sitting in the car talking while Emma finished up her karate class, and then alarms went off in my lower intestines.  A minute later I was crumpled in the parking lot, trying not to puke on the pavement while the karate moms watched.

There’s something about the nature of an abdominal illness that quickly reduces your personal pride to a level you did not previously think you could reach.  I was overcome by an urgent desire to lie flat, even on the ground amongst the dirty asphalt and cigarette butts, if only that would alleviate my distress.  I broke out into cold sweat and shivered with chills. It had come out of nowhere, and there was absolutely nothing to do for it but get home as quickly as possible.

I spent the rest of the evening and the night shaking and groaning.  Whatever had struck me, my body wanted it out as quickly as possible.   This is a time when all of your pride, all of your possessions, all of your social status are stripped away.  At the moment when your guts are twisting there’s little to think about except surviving to kneel on the cool tile floor of the bathroom.  It doesn’t matter if an few hours earlier you were flying on your private jet, returning from a sun-filled weekend on the beach with a harem of bikini-clad masseuses.  In the cold dark night, as chills rack your body, you can finally appreciate what older folks meant when they said, “At least you’ve got your health.”  We are all equal in the world of the stomach virus.

It was late morning before I was able to contemplate anything other than clear liquids, and a full day beyond that before I felt well again.

When we were full-timing, this was one of the nightmare scenarios for me.  Being incapacitated myself would be an inconvenience, but Eleanor and I had a simple plan: we’d pull over at the first available opportunity and wait it out, no matter where we were.  This strategy occasionally resulted in being stopped in some odd places, but usually when someone was getting sick we had enough warning to find a decent campground.

No, my nightmare scenario was either “E” or “e” getting sick suddenly.  That scared me a lot more.  When Emma was a tyke we watched several times as she was knocked flat by those viruses that little kids get, and each time it was horrible to see.  This is a situation that all parents end up in; it’s just a little tougher when you’re away from familiar health care.  Emma’s pediatrician was always on speed-dial, and we learned to mentally note the location of the nearest hospital or urgent care center as we rolled into town, a habit that sticks with me even today.

The illnesses that we have dealt with to date in our travels have been fairly garden-variety (colds, migraines, cuts).  Fortunately we never needed the hospital, but we came close once in Florida when Eleanor sustained a massive migraine that lasted an unusually long time.  I found a full-hookup campground and covered the trailer with blankets to dim the interior to near-total darkness during the day.  We ended up at an urgent care center.  It ended well, eventually, but the experience was fair warning that anyone, at any time, can suddenly run out of time.

What’s to do about that?  Nothing, except go on with life.  If anything, this reminded us how lucky we were to be traveling, because so many other people we knew had missed their chance and were now stuck at home with medical conditions that prevented them from traveling.  Eleanor’s father wanted to buy an Airstream and visit all the national parks, but he died before retirement—and he’s just one of many examples. I wouldn’t say “live every day like it’s your last,” because you’d quickly run out of money and probably catch a venereal disease, but at least live every year like you might not get another one.

This is harder than it seems, especially when health concerns have already caught up you.  I’m always impressed by those who have such severe wanderlust that they manage to overcome difficult illnesses and see the country anyway.  We know people afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis, people on dialysis, people in wheelchairs, and some who can barely see, but with the assistance of their partners are getting out there to explore their dreams and make new friends. It makes my tiny bout with a “24 hour bug” seem hardly worth considering.

If there’s a silver lining in the virus that I just had, it’s that it briefly took away all my quality of life, to remind me of all the good things I might have taken for granted.  I’m glad it’s gone, and that I’m eating real food again, and able to walk fully upright.  If I may, I’d like to say to the viruses of the world, “Appreciate the thought.  No need to remind me again anytime soon.”

There was a time when I really hated Spam, the canned meat product made by Hormel.  I still am not a big fan of the stuff, but with time I have gained a perspective on it that makes it more palatable. It’s iconic of America, it’s still a staple of contemporary Hawaiian cooking, the yellow and blue can brings back childhood memories whenever I see it on the shelf, and really, it can be good if you make it right.

Oh, I know, some of you are saying, “Yuck—he can’t be serious.”  But I am.  For example, when Emma was born my brother visited us in the hospital and handed me a can of Spam and a spray can of Cheez-Whiz.  He said, “Get used to it—this is all you’ll be eating for a while.”  Eleanor decided to make him eat his words, literally, and kept those two cans on the shelf for a year.  One day she mixed them up with some polenta and made a well-disguised appetizer that she called, “Polenta and cheese with ‘domestic pancetta‘.”  My brother and my father ate ‘em up (the little wedges she’d made were actually darned good on crackers), and only after the entire plate was gone did she tell them what they had actually eaten.

So Spam can be a tasty treat once in a while, and I don’t hate it.  I still don’t eat it much, but I do have more of an appreciation for the stuff, and for its role in our society.  Likewise, I’m gaining a small appreciation for the other type of (lower case “s”) spam, namely spam email.

In the early part of the First Decade, spam was pervasive, annoying, and even intimidating.  There was fear that the unchecked volume of spam email would eventually overwhelm us all, clogging the Internet and billions of email Inboxes like an invasive species.  New takes on confidence tricks like “phishing” for passwords and “advanced fee fraud” (AKA Nigerian 419 scam) were sucking in many people, who lost hundreds of millions of dollars.  Like any red-blooded Internet user, I hated spam just on principle. It had to be stamped out.

Eventually, the geeks came to our rescue.  Math geniuses hired by companies like Google and Microsoft worked up clever algorithms to quickly identify and divert spam to places where it can do no harm, in effect, toxic waste dumps for email.  Like everyone else’s, my Google email has a Spam box where about 99% of all the spam email I receive is automatically filed.  I never have to see it or sort through it.  Like the prospect of global nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, spam email has faded from being a source of constant anxiety to just another one of life’s realities.

Even though I don’t have to pay attention to it anymore, I do go look once in a while.  It’s a good practice, just in case a legitimate email accidentally gets mis-filed, which happens once in a long while.  But mostly I look at the Spam box because it’s a great source of entertainment.  When things are dull around the office, I look for interesting new variations on the advanced-fee scam, or funny announcements of various European lotteries that I have won.  (I win a lot of lotteries these days.)  I like the constant barrage of people who “just happened to be looking over your website and noticed you aren’t listed at the top of Google”.  (So many wonderful people are looking out for me.) I’m flattered by the beautiful women in the Ukraine who are looking for husbands just like me.  Just about the only thing I don’t appreciate are the many offers to “increase your manhood.”  Hey, I’ll take a winning lotto ticket but just what are you implying about my love life?

In fact, it has gotten to the point that I’m now disappointed when my Spam box contains a bunch of garden-variety re-runs.  Note to scammers: I’m looking for creativity.  When you send me a plaintive cry from the cancerous wife of a deposed Africa dictator, I want an engaging and heartbreaking story or I’m not going to bother reading all of it it.  Next time I win the “Pan-European” lottery, give me a good spiel to explain how the heck I got entered in the first place.  If you want me to visit your porn site, have “Rudmilla” write me a better come-on than “I’m hot for a man like you!”  And if you’re going to buy my car off Craigslist, at least have the decency to know the car’s year and model before you send me a bogus check for $2,000 more than the purchase price.

This is the next frontier for the scammer and spammers, as I see it.  Like any marketer, they’ve got to try harder to get my attention, and I don’t mean by being more obnoxious.  They’ve had a free ride all these years with dumb email blasts that favored quantity over quality.  Now technology has given us the upper hand, and that means it is time to demand better things from our spam.  Otherwise, I’m not eating it.

Although we are in the desert southwest and have a mild winter that allows camping, it’s still winter.  That means the nice low-70s sunny day quickly becomes a frigid black night after the sun falls, and if you are camping with a mountain range to the west, the sun stops warming you around 4 p.m.  The effect can be startling to people who aren’t used to the climate.  It’s typical for the temperature to fall 30 degrees in three or four hours because the dry air doesn’t hold warmth and we have no large bodies of water nearby to moderate the swing.

But the desert offers some intangibles that make it worth a little chilliness.  The winter days can be startlingly clear, with fantastic views through clear blue sky for a hundred miles.  Daytime hiking is superb, and there’s always lots of room to find your own campsite.

The past few years we have spent New Year’s Eve in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, about 70 miles south of Palm Springs.  We like it for the peacefulness (we don’t go to have a blowout party). Every New Year’s Eve the primary sound we hear is coyotes howling, and occasionally a breeze blowing through the long fronds of the palm trees.

The early sunset means that dinner is always in the dark.  Typically it’s in the 40s as I’m outside grilling something on the Weber, wearing a ski hat and gloves.  It reminds me of days in Vermont when we’d grill in the winter, except in the desert I don’t have to spend the first 30 minutes shoveling snow out of the way. (Although last year we had a brief moment of sleet.)

Last year we were joined by Alex & Charon, who travel with a substantial collection of cast iron cookware.  Alex gave me my first instruction on Dutch Oven cooking, a subject I’ve been interested in since we ran an article on the subject in the Fall 2010 issue of Airstream Life.  Alex piled some hot charcoal atop and beneath his Dutch Oven and baked us a nice dessert.

The combination of glowing charcoal, and a nearby campfire with a roast on an iron spike, reminded me of reading about the exploration by Lewis & Clark.  They cooked in much the same way, over a century ago as they walked and canoed across the new American wilderness.  It transformed the cold dark night into a great camping experience, full of delicious scents and great karmic rewards.

So it was with pleasure that I received a late Christmas gift: a #10, Lodge four-quart Dutch Oven, a gift from my mother.  It comes with a booklet entitled, “Dutch Oven Cooking 101,” to get you started.  I’ve been studying it and planning out a few basic recipes.  Today I am going to get some charcoal and some welder’s gloves, and piece together a complete set of tools and ingredients so that I can try some Dutch Oven cooking of my own next week.  What better time and place to learn this new skill, than out in the desert at night, with no distractions and plenty of time?

Of course, there’s a small fear of committing some heinous Dutch Oven error and producing a charred or inedible dish.  I’m not generally known as a cook, although I do a lot of grilling.  For this reason the Weber Baby Q will also come with us.  It’s my safety net.  I’ll just stick to “optional” items with the DO, so if my experiments turn into charcoal briquettes themselves, nobody will starve.

Tomorrow we are going to seriously start prepping for the trip.  Already we’ve been buying groceries and making lists of things to bring.  The Airstream itself is kept mechanically ready to go at all times (empty holding tanks, cold refrigerator, cleaned, fresh bedding, etc.), so our efforts will be focused on packing our personal stuff. Since we only anticipate being out for 10 days or so, it should be a straightforward job compared to the usual challenge of packing for several months.

We’re not just staying in the desert this time.  Our route will take us all the way west to the Pacific Ocean.  Depending on circumstances, we may make a second stop in Anza-Borrego on the way home, or make a longer trip out of it up the Pacific Coast Highway in which case we’ll be out a little longer.  Friends have popped up all along our route, which is always superb.  We’ll see Bert & Janie, Leigh & Brian, John & Helena, David & Ariadna — Airstreamers all — and perhaps a few other people.  So it’s shaping up to be a great trip.  We’ll hit the road on Saturday and I’ll blog regularly as we travel.

OK, that’s all the musing. One random note: We still have a few spots available at Modernism Week 2012 (Vintage Trailer Show), Feb 25-26.  The Mod Week people have sweetened the deal for trailer owners.  Now for your $95 entry fee you get one free night of hotel (a $100 value right there), two receptions, a chance to win one of three Airstream Life awards, an electrical hookup if you want to stay in your trailer, and a pump-out at the end of the event.  It’s a great way to meet a lot of really cool people, and we always have a wonderful time. All you need to participate is a very nice vintage trailer of any make.  It’s a great reason to visit Palm Springs and check out some of Modernism Week.  If that sounds like fun to you (and it really is), ping info@alumapalooza.com for an application form & details.

It’s a few days before Christmas, but instead of sugar plums in my dreams, I am looking forward to our next Airstream trip.   Don’t get me wrong—this holiday week has already been great, and we’re looking forward to a nice quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.  Emma and Eleanor are decorating the tree as I write, and some fabulous holiday meals are pending.  Seasonal tunes are playing in the background, and tonight we’ll light a fire in the fireplace.  It’s a great time.  We even have a 10% chance of snow tomorrow, which is pretty awesome for Tucson.

But the big highlight of this time of year has lately been our annual trip around New Year’s Eve.  Typically we pack up the Airstream and get lost in the southern California desert for a week or so.  This year we’ll do that, and a bit more. The trip plan has been stretched to include a jaunt up to Santa Barbara (CA). I am not sure how long we will stay out, but it will be at least ten days … and you know how susceptible we have been in the past to ad-hoc trip extensions.  Once we’re on the California coast, it may be hard to convince ourselves to head back home.

The holidays are great times to be Airstreaming.  We’ve spent many Thanksgivings, Christmases, and New Years Eves in our Airstream—every one memorable for the great places it has taken us.  All of the holidays we have spent at home have melded into one blob in my memory, but I remember clearly the Christmas in San Diego, the Thanksgiving turkey Eleanor cooked in the redwoods, picking out seven fishes for a Christmas eve meal at St George Island (FL), and all of the great New Years we have spent in Borrego Springs.

Holidays seem special when we spend them in the Airstream.  The small space encourages us to get outside and absorb whatever holiday vibe the local area has to offer.  The Airstream is always peaceful in a campground on a holiday.  It feels like the world has gone away for a day, and left us alone to enjoy each other’s company.  And it never feels like the sort of horrible travel experience people normally associate with holidays.  We move at our pace, free from airport crowds and TSA body searches, not rushing on a snowy highway to get to a relative’s house, not pressed to be anywhere, far from home and yet still at home.

We spent so many holidays in the Airstream that when we finally bought a house it was a huge novelty to spend Christmas eve in it.  The house was uninhabitable because of all the renovation going on, but we cleared a space in the living room, made a fire, and slept on the floor in sleeping bags just so we could wake up by the tree.  I like having the choice of home or Airstream every year, although we typically select the house for Christmas and the Airstream for New Year’s Eve.

Of course, in most of the country it’s hard to get out this time of year.  Most people have winterized their Airstreams for the season, and would be facing drives of 1,000 miles or longer just to get somewhere that the weather is reliably above freezing during the day.  But even if you can’t tow, you can play.  Does your Airstream live in the driveway?  If so, can you get a power cord to it?  That’s all you need to “camp out” for a few days.  Seems silly, but I know lots of people who do it all the time.  It’s just the change of scene that makes it fun.  It’s an adult version of sleeping out in the backyard in a tent.

Decorating the Airstream is easy, too.  It doesn’t take much to make it festive inside: a string of lights or two, a little rosemary bush trimmed to look like a miniature pine tree, a few small presents, and maybe a pie or some cookies.  Perhaps a little Christmas music on the iPod?  Add in your favorite beverages and some fuzzy slippers, and you’re in business.  Curl up on the bed or couch and watch a Christmas movie with someone you love.

And while you’re doing it, think about places you want to go.  Call up the Ghost of Christmas Future and ask him to show you where you’ll be spending the holiday some other year.  The world is wide open, and if you already own the Airstream, all you need is a little time.  Don’t wait for “someday.”  Happy holidays—this year and next!

Since Emma was born in 2000, it’s obvious that she is a child of the 21st century while her parents are relics of the previous century.  We are the old timers who remember when music came on vinyl records, soda cans had dangerous pull-tabs and saccharine sweetener, pay phones were on every corner, smoking was sexy, and — most shocking of all — there was no Google.  We have fun from time to time, as I suppose every parent does, telling her tales of the “old days” and exaggerating the realities of life in the 1970s and 1980s.

I think most people tend to concentrate on the thundering advance of new technology and social rules because they can be overwhelming and the pace of change seems to accelerate all the time.  But let’s not forget the things we’ve left behind, whether they are a loss or not.  Sure, nobody really wants the 1976 Ford Pinto to come back, and there’s very little to recommend a manual typewriter in our increasingly paperless society, but they are still intangible and permanent influences on our view of the world ahead.  Our child of the 21st century doesn’t have such baggage.  This is her advantage, for the most part.  She doesn’t have the benefit of history (yet) but she has the “clean sheet of paper” mind that us more experienced people sometimes must strain to achieve.

One of Emma’s homeschooling books recently reminded me of this.  She was supposed to learn something about abbreviations and concepts of written information.  As an exercise, the book gave her a “classified ad” to decode, as follows:

NEED EXEC SECY — typ 70 wpm, shthnd, fil.  Local ofc of nat’l co.  Paid hosp ins, 2 wk vac, top hrly pay.  40 hr wk.  Apply 8-5, M-F.

This was of course a simple exercise for Eleanor and I.  But keep in mind that our student grew up in the age of the Internet.  She was completely baffled.  First off, she’s never heard of a “classified ad.”  We had to explain that in the old days, people used to pay to have tiny ads inserted in the printed newspaper.  This inspired a series of follow-up questions, such as “Why would you pay for that when you can just use Craigslist?”

Once we got past the concept of no Internet and having to pay high rates for three lines of print, we moved on to the ad itself.  This proved no better.  How could she be expected to decode “EXEC SECY” when the concept of corporate “executives” is rapidly becoming obsolete, and the term “secretary” is so anti-P.C. that it is one step from being a pejorative?

“Typ 70 wpm,” was easier, since typing is the new version of writing, for modern kids.  In fact, educational pundits are now decrying the loss of cursive writing skills from our school curriculum.  But again, the idea of being tested for typing speed struck Emma as odd.  After all, typing is no longer a specialized skill — these days, we’re all supposed to be able to do it.  So when would the “executives” need someone else to do it for them?  How do they do their own texting and update their Facebook pages if they can’t type?  Not being able to type these days is kind of like not being able to dial your own phone numbers.  (Oh wait, that “skill” may go away soon too, since we can now just talk to our phones and tell them who we want them to call.  How many of you have your spouse’s phone number memorized?)

“shthnd”:  I just laughed at that one.  I know only two women who can take shorthand: my mother and a lady about her age in Denver named Rhoda.  They both are amazing to watch as they effortlessly write beautiful squiggles on paper that mean nothing to me, and yet have a nearly perfect transcription of whatever is being said.  It’s nearly a lost skill.  I wish I’d learned it because I still take notes in my job, but who teaches it anymore?  Even when I went to journalism school in the 1980′s it was no longer taught.  Of course Emma had never heard of it.

“fil.”:  Filing?  What’s that?  These days a job ad would be far more likely to ask for someone with database skills.  Emma knows what a database is, since we were practicing building rudimentary ones two weeks ago, but I would like to see her face if she were confronted with a room full of file cabinets.  I can hear the question now: “Why don’t they scan this into a database and make it searchable on Google?”

“Paid hosp ins.”:  Another obsolete concept, but not because we Americans don’t need health insurance — a lot of us just can’t afford it.  Hardly any non-governmental or blue chip corporates still offer 100% employer-paid health insurance.  I am setting Emma’s expectations appropriately:  don’t expect any corporation to take care of your retirement, healthcare, or other personal needs.  Take care of yourself.

“2 wk vac, top hrly pay.  40 hr wk.  Apply 8-5, M-F”:  I have to admit that these are our fault.  Emma has never known a time when either of her parents worked outside the home or for any company, and thus the concepts of paid vacation, hourly pay, and strict working hours are foreign to her.  Hopefully this will be a plus for her.  I believe that 21st century kids will have to be creative, flexible, and entrepreneurial to be successful in America, as many of the recent economic victims of our recession have had to be.  Us relics from the previous century were the last of the era of factory workers, taught to show up on time, toe the line, and do the job until the clock says 5.  That’s not going to cut it anymore.

The home school curriculum we buy is pretty good, but once in a while it comes up with a real clinker like this classified ad.  Fortunately, one of the advantages of home schooling is that we can modify the program as we see fit.  It’s also a reminder to me that we need to stay atop the social and technological changes that are bombarding us, for her sake, and think about how they’ll change expectations in the future.  We can’t prepare her using only the skills of our past.

The blog has been quiet lately because we are in that rather dull period between trips, commonly referred to as “daily life.”  It’s something I do my best to avoid but occasionally it does happen. It’s really true as they say that life is what happens while you’re making other plans.

This has been a period mostly for me to simply take care of business.  The Winter 2011 of Airstream Life magazine has been printed and was mailed this week, and meanwhile Spring 2012 is well underway with a lot of great articles in development.  I’m also working on a busy program of 2012 events, including Alumapalooza (June 2012), Modernism Week (February 2012), and an exciting new event to be held out west next summer.  We expect to have an announcement about that in January.

Of course, the Airstreams have not been neglected.  Before parking the Caravel in a secure off-site location, Eleanor and I replaced two more of the leaky water hoses and fixed another water leak at the tank fill.  It should be ready to go when we are.  The Safari remains in the carport, fully hooked up, cleaned up, and stocked with goodies for future “hotel” guests.

The most recent visitors, however, brought their own: Tiffani and Deke of the traveling blog “Weaselmouth.”  They were passing through last week, heading for California, and spent a night parked in front of the house.  Eleanor and I had met them at Alumapalooza last June, and I saw them again in Texas when I was picking up the Caravel, but they had never met Emma.  I’m not sure if my offer of free parking was really what enticed them here, since Tiffani did mention several times that she really wanted to meet Emma…  In any case, it was a superb visit and far too short.  We may cross paths with them again next year if we get up to Washington state, as I’ve been hoping to do.

Part of being home is a process of recovery.  We’ve proved we can live in the Airstream indefinitely but when circumstances place us back in the stationary house, we try to take full advantage of that by catching up on projects, relaxing, and saving up money.  The latter goal never works out as well as I’d like.  Living in a house is far more expensive than living “on the road” in an RV when you really factor everything in.  Being back at the house means activation of expensive projects, repairs, and tempting upgrades.

This time was no different: the house demanded a few things, and the local Tax Collector demanded the real estate taxes, and — whoosh — we were thousands of dollars poorer in an extraordinarily brief amount of time.  Worse, there was nothing tangible to show for it.  This always seems to be the pattern of home life, so after a few months we usually give up on the idea of “financial recovery” and move back into the Airstream for a reminder taste of the inexpensive alternative lifestyle it affords. Eleanor has often commented that if we hadn’t bought a house in 2007, and had simply remained in the Airstream full-timing, we’d be financially far better off, but you can’t re-make history.  And the house is something we all enjoy … in moderation.

In the interest of saving money we have resisted the call of Tucson’s many interesting restaurants, favoring meals at home.  This is no particular hardship, as anyone who has eaten Eleanor’s food can attest, and it often results in intriguing culinary experiences resulting from home experiments.  For example, last Saturday we really wanted to go out for Dim Sum, but we stayed home, collected the various ingredients we had in the house, and Eleanor whipped up “Dim Something.”  It was not what you’d call authentic but it was darned good.

This brings me to the subject of today’s essay.  You were probably wondering about the title, “The duck.” Thanksgiving is coming up soon but due to minor obligations on the calendar, we are going to celebrate it this weekend instead.  Bored with traditional turkey, after some discussion we opted to try cooking duck instead.  Or to be completely accurate, Eleanor will try preparing duck, and I will stand by as Advisor, Dishwasher, and Errand Boy as needed.

Normally I would expect this to be a minor footnote in our lives, but even today, days before the actual cooking event, it has become obvious that The Duck is going to be a formative experience.  It turns out that the culinary challenge is significant, even momentous, if you want to get it right.  There are tricky carnivorous issues of fat distribution and moisture content to confront.  Eleanor has pulled out an arsenal of references from her bookshelf and is sweating the details to the point that you’d think she was expecting the Queen of England to join us.  (I’m pretty sure that Thanksgiving is pretty low on the Queen’s list, along with Independence Day, so no danger there.)

Since things are quiet, I’m going to document The Story of The Duck this week, as it happens.  The first entry will go up tomorrow.  This is risky because we have no idea if the duck will be delicious or Daffy.  The gauntlet has been tossed down, and now she (and her two bumbling assistants) are committed to this meal.  Will we find sweet success or smoking disaster?  You’ll see.

I deliberately booked four nights here at Ft Pickens State Park so that we’d have time on our hands to do nothing.  A two or three-night visit is always busy; setting up, seeing the local sites, running an errand, making dinner, etc., until the final tear down, which always comes too soon.  With four nights I knew we’d have time to visit the downtown, spread out, see most of the state park, and visit the beach … and then have another day with “nothing special” planned.  That’s today.

It would be better if today weren’t Monday — the day my phone is most likely to ring and the day I receive the most emails — but the people who really might need to reach me all know better than to expect an immediate response.  My motto has always been that there are few true emergencies in a quarterly magazine schedule.  Whatever it is, it can wait until Tuesday, when I’ll have lots of time in the car as we tow the Airstream westward along I-10.

Sunday was our day to visit Fort Pickens, which is only a mile from the campground and technically part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore rather than the state park.  I think I was last here in 1983, as a senior in college.  Pensacola was one of my favorite hangouts, four hours drive from Baton Rouge in my heavy old hand-me-down 1977 Camaro.  I loved coming down here and seeing the dazzling white sands and the long empty stretches of dune covered with sea oats, along Santa Rosa Island.

The island has of course changed with the tropical storms and hurricanes that stretch and replenish the island, but Fort Pickens is still the same as I remember.  It was fun to show it to Emma and Eleanor, with the ghostly dark passages and dramatic brick arches.

The interpretive museum adjacent to Fort Pickens is currently empty, having been devastated by Hurricane Ike, and so all we saw there was a 25-minute video and the historical buildings that now house the park staff.  Nearby on the bay side is a small fishing pier, and further along toward the west end of the island is apparently a popular diving spot.  We saw families surf fishing, people zipped past on jetskis and in larger boats, aircraft practicing approaches from the Naval Air Station across the bay, and schools of fish jumping all at once. Yes, it was hot (86 degrees) and humid (don’t ask), but I can see why many people pay the $8 entry free to the National Seashore — there’s so much to do, and the park is beautiful.

More than once we were asked by someone where we came from.  To keep things simple, we usually just say “Arizona,” rather than try to explain the complexities of our current tour.  Then they say, “Oh, well you’re used to this heat!”  or “So this is nothing to you!”  I guess they think that Arizonans don’t feel the heat.  We do; It’s just that we don’t stand around in the direct sun for long when it’s 108 degrees, even if it is only 6% humidity.  Since we were out walking in the sun most of the day, we had broken out the same gear (clothing & sunscreen) that we’d wear in Tucson in June.  When it came time for our picnic lunch, we chose a fine spot in the shade of a grove of Live Oak trees.

Afternoons like this were made for the beach, or perhaps the quartz-white sand of Florida’s panhandle were made for hot days.  The sand never gets too hot for bare feet, and it squeaks as you walk on it.  The water was crystal clear and bathtub-warm.  The water’s edge at first seems sterile, with few shells to collect, but when Emma and I waded out we made some little fish friends, who circled us curiously and seemed to be wondering if we might be carrying a bit of seaweed that they could nibble off.  Tiny schools of fish wandered by, and there were occasionally clear jellies with pinkish edges floating by (all dead for reasons unknown to us) many of which were hosting cute little scavenger fish taking their lunch from the tentacles.  We were three of perhaps 20 people spread out over a half-mile of beach.  There was nothing to do but make sand castles and play in the water …

Having learned from prior nights, we wrapped up at the beach an hour before sunset so that we never saw a mosquito.  That left plenty of time to rinse off in the campground showers and enjoy a moment of coolness.  We were lucky last night; our neighbors’ charcoal fire was carried off in a different direction by the wind, so we finally got that blissful evening of fresh breezes in the trailer while Eleanor made a fine dinner for all.

That brings us to today, the Monday that we will pretend is Sunday, part 2.  We have no plans.  We may go somewhere, we may not.  Looking ahead on the travel schedule I see many long days of driving and absolutely no beach time, so this is our last chance to soak up la dolce far niente and we will make the most of it, or perhaps more accurately, the least of it.

We’re getting serious about gearing up for travel now. The Airstream has been stored all summer in the most unfavorable conditions: exposed to sun, rain, falling tree branches and leaves, in a humid environment, and used essentially as a giant storage locker.  It is our joint mission to turn it back into a habitable travel trailer in the next 48 hours.

It’s always best to work from the top down, so I started with the roof disaster.  The debris was so thick that the first step was to get on the roof with a broom and sweep away most of the accumulated branches and leaves.  It was pretty nasty up there with older leaves that have composted and filled every possible corner and crevice — worse than I remember from the previous year.  I think an extra layer of tree bits landed in the past week thanks to Irene.

Then I got into the detail work, using only water and a soft brush.  I never use soap on the roof because there’s too much chance of slipping off.  Working outward from the centerline is most efficient, as things tend to wash down to the sides.

It took quite a while to clean up the detail spots, like beneath the TV antenna, under the solar panels, the upper gutter of the awning, and around the refrigerator vent.  The work would go faster if I wasn’t working on a wet sloped roof with numerous delicate obstacles (like plastic roof vents) and hardly any open space to stand.  I recommend extreme caution if you ever do this.

The rear solar panel was so obscured by tannin from decaying leaves (far more gunk than you can see in the top picture) that I had to spend several minutes scrubbing it.  A small amount of brown stain on the glass can have a large impact on electrical generation capacity.

Once the roof was done, I gave the rest of the trailer a conventional wash.  I got the bulk of it with a telescoping brush and Eleanor followed up with a plastic scrubber, cleaning up the details. Even after our efforts, the trailer will win no prizes in a Concours d’Elegance but at least it is no longer embarrassing. If I have time today, I’ll also wax the front dome, as that seems to make it easier to clean off squashed bugs later.

Getting ready to go is obviously important.  (I spotted a tree turning color yesterday — a warning sign from Mother Nature that the cold weather is coming.)  But we’ve got other important things we must do before we leave, including eating birthday cake.

We missed the normal time to celebrate my birthday (in mid-August), because I was in Tucson.  Being of a certain age, I am not really all that hung up on birthdays, but for some reason my birthday is a well-attended event every year.  I am pretty sure that the entire family takes an interest in my birthday primarily because Eleanor always makes a special cake with butter-cream frosting, and each year the cake is different.  Usually a few weeks or months prior, I dream up a rough idea and then Eleanor figures out the details.

The cake this year stems from the fact that I am an admitted and unrepentant maple fiend.  There is no ten-step program for people like me and if there were, I wouldn’t follow it.  The Addison County Fair (held in August) is my annual maple pig-out, but again, I was in Tucson and missed it this year.  You have no idea what a serious loss that was to me.  The Fair has an entire building dedicated to all things maple.  Maple frosted donuts, maple milk, maple creemees (“soft serve” to the rest of you), maple milkshakes, maple bread, maple candies, and this year they added some sort of baked confection that had walnuts on top.  Having been entirely deprived of all these goodies in maple-free Tucson, I requested a maple-walnut cake for my late birthday celebration.

So Eleanor did some research and has developed her own recipe, which starts from scratch.  Some of it is roughly based on an Italian cream cake recipe that we got from (believe it or not) our insurance company USAA some years ago, but at this point Eleanor has modified it so much that it is truly her own.  The cake contains about $30 of ingredients, as real maple sugar and such things are rather expensive, but as I often point out to anyone who will listen, I’m worth it.

The cake, which you can see here during construction, is not only maple-flavored batter with fine-chopped walnuts, but between layers contains a whipped chocolate ganache with maple flavor.  (If you’ve never tried maple and chocolate together, you need to.  I can recommend the maple crunch chocolates from Lake Champlain Chocolates as a source for aspiring addicts.)

The final layer is a maple butter-cream frosting that literally melts in your mouth, leaving a buttery coating and a strong desire for more.   So we’re looking at triple maple cake with walnuts and chocolate ganache.  Talk about decadence … there will be no leftovers.

There are a few other rituals that we must complete before departing.  Last night, for example, the humidity and temperature rose and so I was finally motivated to go jump in the lake.  Lake Champlain is running a bit cooler than normal, due to all the rain and storminess (which stirs up cold bottom water).  It’s a “refreshing” lake at the best of times, usually peaking around 68 degrees, and I think yesterday it was a few degrees cooler than that.  But this is what I grew up on, and I’m used to it.  On a sticky afternoon it’s just right — a thrillingly icy splash as you dunk under for the first time, and then in just a few minutes your body core is cooled down and it feels like no amount of heat and humidity will ever bother you again.  Emma and I got in and played a few splashing games.

With that, another summer tradition has been accomplished.  Only a few things left to do.  It looks like we’ll be ready to hit the road by Tuesday.

Birthday menu:

lobster ravioli with an orange saffron cream sauce
mushroom ravioli with browned butter & sage sauce
grilled asparagus with lemon & parmesan shavings
endive, mushroom, & artichoke salad with mustard & white wine vinaigrette
maple walnut cream cake

Orange Saffron Cream Sauce for Seafood Pasta

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 thinly sliced strips of unsmoked bacon, most fat removed, cut into 1/4″ dice
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• zest and juice of 1 orange (preferably Minneola Tangelo or Blood Orange)
• saffron threads (about 6, crumbled)
• 12 ounces light cream
• freshly ground black pepper
• kosher salt