Good news for those who are only interested in Airstream travels … we will resume our Airstream explorations sometime next week, with a three month voyage down the east coast and then westward back toward Arizona.

I have re-settled in Vermont, joining Eleanor and Emma in the Airstream, currently parked in my parents’ driveway along the shores of Lake Champlain.  The Airstream seems to have survived its very wet summer fairly well, with only a dozen or so major spider webs strung along the wheels, hitch, and roof vents. It rarely sits in one place so long.  I am sure there will be some maintenance items before we can head out again, but hopefully nothing worse than greasing the hitch and adding air to the tires.

Likewise, the Mercedes has survived.  You might think that was a no-brainer, but I was receiving regular reports that made me a little nervous.  The car’s parking space is drastically humid, with daily bird overflights that result in frequent acidic attacks on the paint.  But Eleanor has tried to clean up the messes promptly, and I will forgive her for letting Emma eat Cheez-Its in the back seat.  The car had its 30,000 mile service last week, which shows how much we’ve been using it.  It is only 16 months old. We’ll need a new set of tires, and possibly brakes, before we get back to home base in November.

Coming from Arizona, where hot “summer” weather will continue well into October, to Vermont where summer is already winding down, is quite an adjustment.  Everyone is grabbing the last moments of beautiful weather and outdoor activity here.  Last night a gang of friends showed up to race the Hobie Cats on the lake, but the wind was light and it turned into more of a leisurely sail.

Eleanor and I invited our friends Guy & Katie to come over as well, and we watched the Hobies depart while we had grilled dinner on the deck.  Due to their slow speeds, there was plenty of time to eat dinner and hop in the Boston Whaler to intercept them as they came back across the broad section of Lake Champlain (about 3 miles).  There wasn’t a lot of white-water action, but it was a good night to enjoy the blue-green view of Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains as the sun set.

In the picture above, you can see Steve and Carolyn puttering along with the distinctive shape of Camel’s Hump in the background.  Camel’s Hump is a regular summer climb most years, about 4,000 feet in elevation.  There’s some wreckage from a WW II era plane crash near the summit, and spectacular views.  I may see if I can recruit someone to do that hike this weekend.

I hustled at work last week so that this week would be relatively easy.   This is just past the peak of summer in Vermont, and in some ways it is the very best time of year.  The bugs are signing out for the season, the humidity is gone, temperatures are in the 70s most days, thunderstorms are less frequent, the lake is perfect for any activity, and the sunset is still late enough for a quick boat ride after dinner.  This is the season of county fairs and chicken suppers.  There’s still fresh corn on the cob to be had, the gardens are still producing, and ripe apples are just around the corner.

In late August, the frantic rush-rush of summer is over.   Vermonters have done their bike rides, scenic walks, farmer’s markets, historic house tours, swimming, boating, fishing, and dinners out on the patio.  Late summer comes with a feeling of satisfaction, if you’ve played it right.  Anything after this point is bonus time.  You can get becalmed on the lake at sunset, and it doesn’t seem like any big deal to have to paddle the last few hundred yards back to port.

This is probably the last really quiet week we’ll have for a while.  The travel plan calls for numerous stops in September and October.  We’ll be on the move every few days.  I can see half a dozen visits just between Cape Cod and New Jersey, and we’ve got about ten stops planned in Florida during October.  This next week will be about getting mentally re-charged and prepared for an extended trip, and it looks like I’ve timed my return perfectly, because it looks like the perfect week to do it.

One of the fun parts about being Editor of a magazine is that I get to meet all kinds of interesting writers.  One of the writers to recently join the Airstream Life team is Becky Blanton, a very interesting person.  Becky is a middle-aged single woman and accomplished writer with several awards to her credit, who just happened to become homeless late in life.  She has since turned circumstances around again, so that now she is able to live as she pleases, but she chooses to continue as a “homeless” person while she writes for Airstream Life and many other publications.

Becky recently raised the question in a provocative blog entry over at Change.org:  When she travels and lives out of her rickety old van, is she “homeless” or is she a “full-timer”?   She makes the point that homelessness is an attitude, not a condition, because it is not defined by “living in a van” but rather by choices and status.

This resonated with me because we spent two years “full-timing” in our Airstream with no home or apartment to come back to.  The Airstream was our home.  We often told people that we were “homeless by choice.”  It was less expensive to live in the Airstream than the house we previously owned, but we didn’t move to the Airstream because it was cheap.  We wanted to improve our lives.  Along the way, we tried to help people understand that having or not having a house is irrelevant, and could even be a detrimental factor, to having a good life.

Homelessness is descriptor that defines nothing.  You can be living in a trailer or van and having the dream adventure of your life, or you can be down-and-out and addicted, or anywhere in between.  Quality of life is a factor that, barring mental or physical illness, is within our control. After selling our house in Vermont and going on the road in 2005, I realized that I regarded myself as more successful and happier than I had ever been before. Eleanor and I traded the trappings of success for freedom.  My startup business, Airstream Life magazine, was not able to pay me a salary for years.  Our living quarters encompassed a measly 240 square feet — for three people.  So why was I so much happier?  As we said many times along the way, “We are paid in lifestyle.”

Coming back to a house, it was obvious that we could easily get caught in any number of house ownership traps again, so we did what we could to avoid it.  We bought a small, moderately priced house that could be left empty for months at a time, should we choose to go traveling again.  We refused to get into the trap of buying furnishings and other stuff to make it into “house beautiful.”  (Our living room is still so empty it looks like a zen garden.)  We have fought hard against accumulating “stuff,” especially stuff that doesn’t fit into the Airstream, on the theory that if we can go six months without missing it, we don’t really need it.

Even now, it’s still unclear which is our primary home: the house or the Airstream?  But it’s just academic.  A stripped-down life on the road brought us back to the things that were really important to us, and now we have a better perspective on the choices that lie ahead.   Homelessness — or at least the positive mental attitude about having more with less — can be a factor to improve one’s life, under the right circumstances.  Whether you live in a Malibu beach home, or a van down by the river, the bottom line is, “Are you happy?”

It is the blogger’s curse:  When things are uninteresting it is difficult to inspire oneself to write, and when things are too interesting, you often can’t tell the full story.  So it has been for me lately, and thus I hope you will forgive me for telling a highly edited version of recent life.

Suffice to say that TBM is no more.  “Kryptonite” Eleanor flew into Phoenix and my alternate identity evaporated while I was standing at the security checkpoint waiting for her to arrive.  (Still, TBM will be back in a couple of weeks when she departs again.) Because Eleanor was scheduled to arrive late in the evening, we took advantage of the off-season and booked a very nice resort hotel in Scottsdale for the weekend.  In June and July you can pretty much have those places to yourself, at bargain prices.  We snagged a 4-star hotel for about $70 per night, and trust me, it was posh.

I don’t know why people are so afraid of the desert heat.  Everything is air conditioned, and even the outdoor bars and restaurants have misting systems cooling the air all the time.  Sure, it was 110 degrees in the afternoon, but we didn’t notice most of the time.  (Did I mention that we haven’t seen each other for three weeks?)

Besides, you can beat the heat by getting up early.  Imagine if the Great White North were like that:  a frigid 10 degrees F during most of the day, but every morning it warmed up to 70 degrees for a few hours, and the sun was always shining.  How could you complain?

Even the pool was virtually vacant, with just a smattering of like-minded cheapskates taking advantage of the bargain rates.  We stood in the shallows and talked for two hours while our fingers wrinkled up from the 90 degree water.  (It would have been perfect except for that crazy wasp that landed on my neck.  I brushed it off and the dumb thing stung my index finger. Fortunately, I’m not allergic.)

To keep the weekend exceptionally cheap, I brought a huge collapsible cooler along with snacks and drinks.  We had to make daily trips to the hotel ice maker to fill gallon-sized ziplock plastic bags with ice, but that was a minor price to pay.  I was hoping that someone would come along during one of my ice runs and ask what I was doing with three gallons of ice in plastic bags.  Had an answer all ready to go:  “We need it for the ice chest.  Just took out someone’s kidney.”  But again, there was hardly anyone in the hotel to ask me.

In a way, that cheap, low-concept weekend in the hotel was a warm-up for the travel we plan to do.  There’s a two-week period between issues of the magazine in which my workload is traditionally light.  Having just about wrapped up the Fall issue, I’m about to enter that period now (no coincidence with Eleanor’s travel plans) and we are going to take full advantage by traveling around Arizona as much as we can.  We have no tow vehicle for the Caravel, so our trips will all involve tent camping. The living room floor is covered with all of the gear:  tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, stove, lantern, Arizona Gazetteer, guide books, cooking equipment, headlamps, water purifier, etc.   We just need to get the food organized and we’ll be ready to go.

Go where?  We’re not really sure.  We’ve got lots of ideas but no specific plans.  The general plan is to wander into Arizona’s White Mountains region where there are several large national forests, and see what looks interesting.  One advantage of tenting over RV’ing is that you can pitch it in a lot more places, particularly in the mountainous national forest lands of Arizona where many campgrounds are tiny and inaccessible to large vehicles.  This is our chance to see the places that we wouldn’t go with either of the Airstreams, and the high-altitude spots that we would have to skip in the winter.

But most of all, this is a chance to get back to our travel roots, the type of footloose and utterly basic travel that we did in our first nine years together. Everything in a backpack, $24 worth of gas in the car, and no itinerary whatsoever.  It won’t matter if it rains or shines, whether we see the Mogollon Rim or just the inside of a local deli, whether we come home on Sunday or Monday.  We’re pretty much guaranteed a good time (or at least an adventure!) just by taking the effort to pack the bags and head out.

There’s a new superhero in town …

… a superhero for modern times …

He’s TBM!  (Temporary Bachelor Man)

Superpowers include the ability to make manly fires, type 100 words per minute, and hike tall mountains slowly.  Note the details of his costume:  A torch symbolizing his ever-readiness to do “guy stuff”; Wrist protectors look cool and guard against Carpal Tunnel Syndrome; Yin-yang symbol indicates his constant quest to balance work and play;  Sunglasses protect against desert sun (shade hat not shown); Khaki jeans hide dust and sand; Hiking boots protect feet on long trails; Belt with the symbol “T”.

Yes, this is what a superhero looks like at age 46.  (Actually, his musculature and hairstyle are just slightly exaggerated.)  If I don’t look like this in photos from Alumapalooza, because I normally hide in my secret identity as a mild-mannered magazine publisher.

Although I am separated from Eleanor and Emma, there is plenty of sunshine and heat to keep me energized, and lots of stuff to do.  In fact, my “to do” list is so long I wonder if I’ll work through it before Eleanor arrives in 19 days (noooooo, I’m not counting).  I have house stuff to do, light yard work, and tons of magazine work.   I also have a new bike that is just begging to be ridden in the cool early mornings, so I’ll try to stay on Eastern Time and get up at 5 a.m. with the dawn. It’s reliably 69 or 70 degrees every morning, and stays cool until about 8 a.m., so the cycling is primo for early risers.

Tucson is just loaded with interesting things for a TBM to do.  One great perk of being here is that we have Saguaro National Park just 15 minutes away.  When we are traveling we always gravitate to the National Parks, so why not visit them when they are right in our front yard? Last night a volunteer was leading a night hike through the park, which is a relatively rare offering. A small group met in the Visitor Center and then walked down one of the popular loop trails as the sun set.

If you’ve never done a sunset hike in the Sonoran Desert, this might seem sort of crazy.  After all, it was still 100 degrees at 7 p.m. last night, and all the critters come out at night (scorpions, snakes, gila monsters, bats, etc.)  But that’s exactly what we were hoping for.  Our group was equipped with water bottles and flashlights — even a few blacklights to spot scorpions, since they fluoresce under black light.  Also, the views from Saguaro National Park at sunset are absolutely stunning.  The Rincon Mountains turn pink, then purple as the sun goes down.  The saguaros make fantastic silhouettes against the twilight glow.  A sunset walk in the desert is one of the “must do” activities when you’re out here.

We heard fledgling elf owls calling to each other from their nests inside tall saguaro cactus.  We saw numerous bats flitting over our heads.  We saw a pair of Lesser Nighthawks chasing each other.  We talked about the traces of ground squirrel activity, and packrat houses along the trail.  The two-hour adventure went very quickly.  It was a shame we didn’t spot any snakes and found only one scorpion, but it’s still early in the season. As the monsoon gears up in July and August, the tarantulas will start to get active, too.  There are a lot of interesting creatures that live here, and believe it or not, it is rather rare to see them (except scorpions, which get into people’s houses in rural areas).

According the the weather service, it is going to get hot by Wednesday.  Since our back porch thermometer indicated 104.7 yesterday, I am not sure how only Wednesday gets the designation of Hot, but perhaps the delineation is at 105 degrees.  Those three-tenths of a degree might make all the difference.  But the difference I’ll feel is probably in the overnight lows, rising to mid-70s.  That means no more cool mornings to open the windows and chill the house.

In cases like this, TBM seeks higher ground.  I’ve got a hike planned for Friday or Saturday, starting at about 5,400 feet and ending just below 10,000 feet.  The “Sky Islands” of southern Arizona always provide a cool getaway when you need it.

But in the meantime, I’ve got to don my costume and grab my torch.  It’s time for TBM to do manly errands around town.  Adventure awaits!

… episode #1

Imagine, if you will, a man, torn from his beloved family and Airstream and sent to a strange land where nothing is as it used to be.  Food no longer magically appears on the table, ready to eat.  Uninterrupted naps are possible at any time of day.  Things left out, stay out.  Working by day in one’s underwear, and venturing by night to the local art cinema, become the norm.  You’ve entered … the Bachelor Zone.

I have never been separated from Eleanor and Emma for the length of time that now lies ahead of me.  Three weeks of complete bachelor-hood is the program for June, as I live in the Tucson house while they spend the summer in New England.  I will survive only by my own skills (and those of Eleanor’s via telephone link, more on that later).  I will pace the house wondering why it’s so quiet.  I will buy my own groceries.  I may get to a level of loneliness experienced only by prison inmates on remote desert islands in French novels, and end up giving names to the cockroaches.  But I will persevere, because this is all part of the grand adventure of Temporary Bachelor Man.

On Wednesday Eleanor and I drove down to Manchester NH for a night in a hotel, so that I could catch the 6:20 a.m. flight to Tucson this morning.  It was cool and damp in Manchester, the way June has been consistently in the northeast this year.  Two easy hops, and by 10 a.m. local time I was stepping out in the morning sunshine of Tucson, with the temperature at 86 degrees and rising rapidly toward 103.  Even without the three hour time change, the change was disconcerting.  I had left Manchester wearing warm socks and a fleece, feeling like mold was going to grow on my skin from the relentless humidity, amidst the gray industrial/commercial wilderness that is so common in the northeast.  Back at home base, I had the strange sensation of having never left, because out here in the desert the seasons are subtle and things always seem to look approximately the same.  It was just like the day we pulled the Airstream out, back in May, except hotter.

The house has survived well without us.  A thin layer of dust covers everything outside, of course, since it hasn’t rained in a long time.  Inside, a few plants died and there was the unfortunate discovery of three dirty plates in the dishwasher, but otherwise the house just seemed empty.  (The food on the plates has baked on in the sealed environment of the dishwasher, and the smell is … unpleasant.  Fortunately,Temporary Bachelor Man — TBM — knows how to turn on a dishwasher.)

Despite being seriously jet-lagged, I attacked my first task — groceries — almost immediately.  Right off the bat I needed Eleanor’s guidance.  She left the freezer packed full of pre-cooked dinners for me, but I had no idea of what the house might be missing for my other meals.  As it turned out, the house had been mostly stripped of the really useful food items, e.g., those which can be prepared easily and quickly.  All the good stuff was in the Airstream, 2000 miles away.  We consulted on the phone for a few minutes (the first of many telephonic consultations), and with a short shopping list in hand, I headed off to the grocery store.

But let’s not get our priorities mixed up.  A car left outdoors in Tucson quickly becomes unconscionably dusty.  It wouldn’t do for TBM to be seen in a filthy car, so I hit the local car wash first.  Once the car was appropriately shiny again, I felt it was safe to attempt the grocery store.

There are mostly two types of people in a Tucson grocery store on a 100 degree afternoon on a weekday:  Moms, and old folks.  And me.  I felt a bit out of place, but then it wasn’t a comfortable geek-land like Best Buy.  This was a place full of mysterious packaged items, none of which plugged into anything.  I was definitely out of my element.

Although I had been in that particular store many times, it was still a battle to find the Bachelor Essentials, such as prepared guacamole and salsa. I never paid attention to where things were, before.  Eleanor was not answering her phone at that time for some reason, so your hero was left to his own devices, but I maintained my composure and came out with everything I went in for … plus a few things that seemed critical to bachelorhood once I saw them on the shelves.

Ask Eleanor the definition of an “ingredient,” and she might mention examples like paprika, eggs, and butter.  My view is that the ultimate bachelor ingredient is the “Spice Packet,” as mentioned on the side of a box.  (”Empty contents of Spice Packet into bowl with 2 cups water and contents of box…”)  Ah, the miraculous Spice Packet.  It’s right up there with the amazing Sauce Packet used to complete the premium-type macaroni and cheese.  Who knows what’s in it?  It doesn’t matter, it’s darned convenient.  When the Spice Packet is around, a pair of scissors are the only cooking implements needed.

My first cooking attempt went well, involving two microwaving experiences and one Spice Packet.  Sure, it was easy, but it’s best to ease into new routines.  I also made a salad, although “made” is sort of hyperbole when the process involves a pre-mixed tray of salad greens into which I sliced a couple of mushrooms.

Once these domesticities were completed, I realized two fatal mistakes:  (1) No entertainment; (2) No ice cream.  See, the house lacks a TV.  When we are here in the winter, we watch movies on the laptops (streaming them over the Internet via Netflix or on DVD).  We don’t have cable or satellite.  If we want a larger screen, I unhook the Airstream’s TV and haul it in to the living room.  But the DVDs and TV were still in the Airstream back in Vermont, and I had forgotten to remove the vacation hold on the house’s Internet.  Mindless video entertainment is a staple of bachelorhood, but for one night I was happy to make an exception and continue re-reading “The Count of Monte Cristo” on the Kindle.

The ice cream problem was more solvable. There are three large grocery stores within 3 miles of the house.  So I’m now set for the next hot quiet evening with Klondike bars and fruit pops, streaming Internet videos and, once the mail arrives, DVDs from Netflix.  Already the house feels more bachelor-like.  By the time Eleanor gets back here, I might have fully converted it …