The other day a retired man approached me in a big box parking lot. Initially I tensed up. That's the instinctive response these days, since you expect to be panhandled. But he said that he had noticed bicycling on my tee-shirt. As it turned out, he was a newbie van camper who went on bicycle tours all over the world in previous years. I listened to his stories for an hour or two, as we stood in the lee of my trailer in the cold New Mexican wind. He cycled through third world countries. When he approached a village he was received like an alien from a UFO that had just landed. He never camped in normal campgrounds. (Sigh, I just don't like tent camping or cycling highways enough to do cycle touring like him.)
How strange. No encounter has ever happened like this to me before, as an RV traveler. Of course I gave up trying to socialize with RVers years ago, so it's my own fault in a way. RVers are nice middle-class folks who have worked hard all their lives. They are responsible, law-abiding, and sane about unimportant things. But if you don't overlap with the stereotype, there just isn't much that can be done about it.
I was sad to see that fellow leave the next day. Wouldn't it be nice to travel with somebody like him for awhile? How long has it been since I've done anything like that? But what were the chances that I could travel with a newbie, considering their 300-miles-per-day habits:"whoopie I'm on vacation".
Actually I've had better luck crossing paths with fellow bloggers than anything. This happened again recently, this time with Kurumi Ted. How nice it was to go on daily walks and talks in the desert with another RVer.
How strange. No encounter has ever happened like this to me before, as an RV traveler. Of course I gave up trying to socialize with RVers years ago, so it's my own fault in a way. RVers are nice middle-class folks who have worked hard all their lives. They are responsible, law-abiding, and sane about unimportant things. But if you don't overlap with the stereotype, there just isn't much that can be done about it.
I was sad to see that fellow leave the next day. Wouldn't it be nice to travel with somebody like him for awhile? How long has it been since I've done anything like that? But what were the chances that I could travel with a newbie, considering their 300-miles-per-day habits:"whoopie I'm on vacation".
Actually I've had better luck crossing paths with fellow bloggers than anything. This happened again recently, this time with Kurumi Ted. How nice it was to go on daily walks and talks in the desert with another RVer.
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