Occupation of Independence

I was given fair warning when I started the driveway-guarding gig in Ouray that the late sunrises and early sunsets would take their toll on me. But it's beneficial to experience voluntary, short-term suffering when traveling. It just whips up your appetite for the next thing, and it adds drama. Even Mark, of Box Canyon Blog , had to buy a new and more mobile rig just so he can escape to Arizona in the winter and receive self-administered emergency "heliotherapy treatments". Near the end of the gig, the dogs were becoming despondent. In fact the sun was perverse on the last day. After a day or two of clouds and rain, the sky finally cracked open. Here's how things looked from Mark's driveway: Impressive indeed. That was at 2:30 p.m. By 2:38 the sun went behind the western cliff. That did it! I'm outa' here. I love being back on spacious BLM land. I'd forgotten how much pleasure you can get from small aspects of boondocking, such as orienting yo

It's Dawn now. From this cold and lonely mesa in western Colorado I see the city lights, below. I'm surprised how gorgeous they look from this vantage point of only a couple hundred feet above the valley floor. How could so much be gained by so little? I shouldn't avert my eyes from the ugliness of Montrose, a rather standard sprawling noisy American city, completely dependent on automobiles for transportation. Much of the beauty of those lights comes, not from their color or faint flickering, but from the contrast with the unpleasantness of city life, and from my own detachment from it on this mesa. There's just enough light to judge the type and extent of the clouds. Day seems real again and full of promise.

It hardly seems intuitive to begin an autumn migration by going north, but that is what we did yesterday. Latitude does matter, at least 400 mile chunks of it, and especially at this time of year, but altitude still matters more. The Uncompahgre River drains to the north. A cynic might argue that half the appeal of a reverse migration is just the feeling that one isn't supposed to do it. Actually, one of the sweetest pleasures can be gotten by noble and voluntary suffering in the Cold before finally relenting and moving towards the Warm. (We all know certain Sybarites of the Road who would never believe this.) When the dogs and I got out of the van in Montrose CO, the sun felt delicious; but it was the rareness of this pleasure that was most appreciated. How many times does the driver of an un-air-conditioned cargo van actually enjoy warm sun coming through that big windshield? Normally I loathe it, and worry about the heat harming my dogs. I can't imagine bathers in fam

The San Juan Mountains still have plenty of tourists here for the fall color season. I wonder if this is what they had in mind. Wasn't it Arthur Koestler's Act of Creation that discussed the usefulness of inversion in creativity? Maybe he was on to something. For instance, every windshield tourist is running around the mountains trying to take "breathtakingly beautiful" postcards of autumn colors. Since digital cameras are so good, most of these postcards look pretty much the same, and the world's supply of pixels is depleted for nothing. A yellow leaf is just a yellow leaf. What if, instead of joining the leaf-peeping hordes, we asked, "What is the ugliest thing we could photograph at this time of year?" Or is that negative thinking? Well at least it is thinking, and a difficult type of thinking it truly is. For instance I thought wet, disgusting snow coming down in early October might be a suitably perverse subject. But being anti-beautiful i

I got on this "What is Art" kick because it seemed that I might find something in the general subject of art that I could apply advantageously to the Art of Travel, which is part of my job . Remember that this blog is not aimed at sight-seeing vacationers or RV newbies. I used to feel a bit disappointed that art, that is, beauty, had so little effect on me. But rereading Tolstoy's essay puts my mind at rest. Perhaps beauty is over-rated. If Tolstoy was correct there is a completely different way to approach the subject of art. Finally in Chapter 5 Tolstoy's What is Art? (Google books) gets to the affirmative side of the question. What is art, if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses the whole matter? But first, one last exclusion: A man may express his emotions by lines, colors, sounds, or words, and yet may not act on others by such expression; and then the manifestation of his emotions is not art. The peculiarity of [art], distinguishing it

Several times my little poodle has made a bad situation worse by not barking when he was in danger, so when I heard him bark outside my trailer today, I was both relieved and alarmed. Sure enough, it was the deer that likes to munch on the suckers of a dead stump on the Johnsons' driveway. She has two half-grown offspring who travel with her. Since the little poodle can barely see, his interaction with mama Bambi was probably accidental. I charged out of the trailer and saw Mama "facing off" with the little poodle. She wasn't particularly afraid of me. Actually, I think it's in the interests of any wildlife to stay frightened of Man; otherwise, they will hang around too much and eventually get run over by a car. So I thought I was doing the deer a favor by sending my 40 pound Australian kelpie, Coffee Girl, to chase the threesome out of the yard. But mama deer was completely fearless. She faced Coffee Girl head on, and wouldn't yield an inch. Coffee Girl

Ouray, CO. So why would a reputed curmudgeon, who typically belittles postcard scenery, bother with this postcard, taken today on a hike with both of my dogs? The key word is 'both'. My little poodle is acting older now that he is almost 16 and a half years old. That's like a person in their eighties. So I haven't been taking him on hikes with my younger dog, Coffee Girl. Today we actually drove (blush) the van up to a trailhead. The little poodle was so frisky that he wouldn't stay in the van and sleep like I expected. He insisted on going on the hike. I had to improvise a leash, since his collar wasn't even installed. Instead of tiring in five minutes, he charged the leash, and acted like he could go for hours. This isn't the first time that I've underestimated him. By the time we crossed the creek and got back in the van, I was getting pretty misty-eyed just thinking about the wonderful life we've had together and how, miraculously, there

It's rare for me to experience gadget lust. Normally all the sex appeal has gone flat for the boring ol' gadget by the time this late adopter gets one. But recently I've gone crazy reading about Tablets; not the iShackle line of products made by Apple, of course. Their gadgets are for aspirational consumers, whereas I am a maximum bang-for-the-buck, no-nonsense type of customer. This is about the Toshiba Thrive tablet, 10 inches, with the Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) operating system. The Thrive is distinguished from all the other Android tablets by its user-removable battery and its ports: it has a full-sized USB port, a slot for a full-sized SD card, and a full-sized HDMI port. Thus, the Toshiba Thrive tablet is the one most suitable for functioning as a substitute for a mini-notebook computer. So you can see why I got excited. Then I searched for Android versions of the programs that I use now on my Paleozoic laptop: Firefox with AdBlock, Picasa on disk (not in the cloud)

Artists, artists everywhere! From the northern Rio Grande Valley, Sante Fe, Taos, Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, and into Colorado, the whole region is infested with artists. I'm even squatting on the driveway providing driveway security services at the home of a couple Colorado artists. You'd think that art was a major part of the economy. Since when did Americans become so arts-oriented? If a traveler takes travel seriously -- that is, if travel is more than trivial sightseeing and generating digital postcards -- he needs to ask: what is this place good for? What is special about it? Then he needs to do some thinking about a topic that the location brings up. I reread Tolstoy's What is Art? (*) Before showing some juicy quotes from that book, let's first try to imagine an elderly Tolstoy -- with his beard and earnestness, now an ex-novelist, working to reform Christianity, and totally outside the intellectual mainstream of Europe -- walking through an art festival in

...comin' home, to a place he'd never been before. Or something like that. Being back on the road I am mindful of doing things better; hence all the preaching about being flexible and avoiding rigid habits when traveling. There is a fair bit of adaptation necessary here in Ouray, although the deck was stacked in my favor by the generosity of my "clients", Mark and Bobbie Johnson, over at Box Canyon Blog . When walking the sidewalks in downtown Ouray, it is fun to imagine what various people like best about a scenic mountain town. I almost feel sorry for the bourgeois matrons from a big city; they must be bored to tears with nature and scenery, after a few minutes. When I watch them it is always with an impish smirk on my face. Think of the classic Disney movie, Homeward Bound (The Incredible Journey) , in which a cat, Sassie (voiced over by Sally Fields), and two male dogs try to make a long distance journey over the mountains to get back to their people. At o

On the trail to Upper Cascade Falls, Ouray CO. Unlike my little poodle, who would pose for the camera at the slightest suggestion, Coffee Girl is difficult to photograph. Her mostly black color restricts the photographs to silhouettes. Even worse, the second she hears the camera click on, she obediently runs back to Daddy to see if she can help. Herding dogs are so attentive!

It was a rough night. Once again I fell asleep to a DVD movie, Roman Polanski's MacBeth . No director understands cold rain, mud, and peasant agriculture as well as Polanski, perhaps because of his early life in Poland. Watching this movie is a great thing to do when you want to glory in the misery of unpleasant weather. Around 1 in the morning I awoke to find the electricity off in the RV. I was curious, so I walked out to the edge of the rocky shelf that serves as a driveway here and saw -- not just another hateful night of cold, stygian rain and gloom -- but the entire town of Ouray CO pitch black. Another Colorado summer: Out, out, brief candle. Against this visual emptiness, the noise from the Uncompahgre River stood out alarmingly, enraged as it was by a night's rain. The movie overwhelms the viewer with oppressive rain, mud, and cold. Remember that special efforts were required in that pre-CGI era to make rain register on a movie screen. Just before MacBeth had his

My circa 2004 Toshiba laptop doesn't like to boot up on cold mornings, and I thought that was the problem today. But instead, it gave a message about a hard drive crash being imminent. I wonder if it meant it. I have mixed feelings about this. It's nice being the Second Chance Store for the surplus gadgets of an RV friend, and this laptop has been a winner. But I've been impatient waiting for the oldie to die so I could get something modern. Unless somebody knows of a stupendous deal, I will probably go with a 12 inch Asus mini-laptop, with an AMD E350 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium, 2 GB of RAM, $440. I couldn't care less about how big the hard drive is; in fact, I wish it didn't have one. The 12 inch size should be just perfect for easy reading plus portability; after all, I will need to cart it into a wi-fi spot on occasion, and I hate dragging in a larger laptop since they're like a patio flagstone. I wish that the gadget write-ups mentioned how man

This driveway in Ouray CO is crawling with milkweed tussock caterpillars. Earlier I tried to photograph how "punk" they look. Today I followed it around for a couple minutes and photographed it showing off its technical climbing skills. And this little bugger was fast! He seemed so intelligent: he'd look (?) at one angle of attack, feint towards it, and then change his mind to an alternative route. I won't be here in winter when the ice climbers show off their death-defying skills in the Uncompahgre gorge, so this caterpillar will have to serve as substitute.

In their heart's heart, don't most professional travelers know they are spoiled brats? The idea used to gnaw away at me, quietly and in the background. In the real world there are many things about the job, family, weather, etc., that people wish were better; but they're not , and an individual is usually powerless to change them, at least in the short term. All he can do is try to keep them from bothering him by using some mental discipline and creativity. Most adults accept platitudes like this, but practicing them isn't so easy. For instance I currently enjoy a rare driveway-sitting gig in a uniquely beautiful area, Ouray CO, while enjoying house amenities. Most travelers would consider themselves extremely lucky to have an opportunity like this. But the weather has turned against Ouray, for about ten days now. Remember that most people yearn all year for September and October, since autumn is usually the best time of the year. But this year, I'm missing it

There is supposed to be at least a grain of truth in old adages and proverbs. Take, as an example, 'Invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.' Sigh. I'm still waiting for Nike or some other big shoe company to beat a path to my door and offer a six-figure buy-out for my invention of the ultimate bicycle footwear . Cycling footwear is better at its job than hiking footwear. You'd think it would be just the opposite, since feet are far more likely to be problems for hikers than for cyclists. (A certain blogger claims that the weak link is about halfway down the body, for cyclists.) But since the situation is upside down, perhaps the hiking footwear industry could learn something from the cycling footwear industry. For instance look at these upscale cycling shoes carefully: We can laugh off the toeless innovation as being inappropriate to hiking. But look at the ratchet-strap. What a marvelous device for footwear: you could build shoes

Ouray CO has an "Art Walk" on a certain evening, once per month. Many boutique towns do something like that. But I didn't go. Why not? Wouldn't it be to my advantage -- especially as a traveler -- to make my life a little more varied and pleasurable by taking advantage of all the talent that is offering its wares to the general public?

People who have experienced little sickness or injury in their lives should be expected to over-react to some bad luck. The other night I felt dizzy and nauseous, and am still not sure what it was about. The next day I felt better by the hour, but was still unnerved by being sick for a change. During the afternoon siesta I grabbed the mp3 music player and punched in some of Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack music. It was so medicinal to have something for the mind to focus on, besides discomfort. Some music must be hoarded and rationed, lest repetition destroy its power. It was strange how this familiar piece of music had a different and more powerful effect on this particular day.

The long hours of dawn and dusk would be the hardest thing about living in Ouray long term. Should we call it "sunrise" when the morning sun finally clears the mountains that are 2000 feet over the town, or should we call it "cliff-set"? I follow the trail information left to me by Box Canyon Blog . On the approach, it always seems like there has been a mistake: there's no way that a hiking trail could go up that cliff . Surely only a serious rock climber with all the equipment could do it. But the trail does make it up. Yet, a hiking trail is so simple: it's just a triangle cut transversely to a steep slope. How could it work as well as it does?! If the trail wasn't there you would never bushwhack it; it would be too daunting. How was the trail built in the first place? They didn't look up the terrain on Google Earth and run a software program that told them to put a switchback right here or right there. As usual, I feel humbled by the hardin

  You'd think that the caterpillar I showed a couple days ago would turn into a moth like this instead of a boring moth. If there's any justice in the world today's polyphemus moth started off as a plain ugly caterpillar. This photo (click to enlarge) was taken by my nature consultant in the American Midwest who saw the moth out by the mailbox at the street, walked back to the house to get a camera, and returned to the mailbox to find the moth still there. Then the nature consultant tickled the moth with a blade of grass, he/she claimed, to open its wings.

It's fun to meet other bloggers and I've been lucky enough to do a lot of it lately. I learned of Ed Frey from the Bayfield Bunch when the latter when through Silver City; but Ed, I missed. He came through Ouray CO recently, where we had breakfast together. Ed walks 4-5 miles early every morning and usually has breakfast along the way. He certainly has a powerful and graceful stride, no doubt because of his methodical walking.

I was laboring in the dirt under the hot sun like a peasant in the fields: shoveling, jerking weeds, carting them away without a burro to help. Geesh, the sort of things a guy has to do to get world class scenery, ideal weather, and eye-popping hiking trails, with free camping and amenities in Ouray CO. But my back-breaking toil and suffering momentarily abated when I saw this little guy in the newly disturbed ground. I've never seen such a spiked, punk caterpillar before. Even more than his interesting appearance was his attitude: he was frisky. It's not exaggerating to say that he was a sentient being, instead of the usual slug-like personality. When I brought the camera in, he seemed to look (?) at it: who the hell are you and what's your problem, the look seemed to say. Then again, maybe it was the other end that was aiming.

We have witnessed new categories of communication arise the last few years, and none of us were schooled to use them effectively. For instance, wouldn't it be nice if people wrote concise stand-alone email messages that pertained to just one action item? DVD movies are a big industry; most have a commentary track. It's easy to tell that the people making the track don't know what kind of information is desirable. That is why I was pleasantly surprised to be listening to the commentary track of Love Actually and hear an informative and non-self-absorbed comment by Hugh Grant.

In ten days I've gone from southwestern New Mexico to southwestern Colorado. The daily weather pattern is the same, since it's the monsoon season. Not so much has changed regarding altitude. A bit more has changed with latitude and temperature. One of the most noticeable changes is the presence of more running water. It is the highlight of any hike to see my dog stop at a creek crossing and lap up clear stream water against the rocks. But the biggest change has been in the color green. New Mexico had been greening up by its standards. But here in Ouray forests, greenness overwhelms me. There's just too much of it! Whenever my eyes latch onto something not green, such as in the photo, I stop and gawk at it.

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Ouray CO had such an extensive trail system that could be reached right from town. (Torching off a half a tank of gasoline just to get to a trailhead is not my favorite part of the sport of hiking.) It adds so much to a town or city to have recreational trails, greenways, etc. I'm not sure what a town is good for, if you take that away. Household drudgery, job, commute, traffic, big box stores, noise; that's about it.

Ouray CO. The other day Box Canyon Blogger and I were talking about how stereotypical RVers were, as exemplified by dozens of "me too" blogs on hitchitch.com. Perhaps that was a bit unfair. After all, you sometimes you see an old bus or Class C motorhome painted up in wild designs, proclaiming God, love, peace, etc. Of course after you've seen just a couple of those, you realize that they are just large versions of the VW hippie bus, circa 1968; which reduces it to a stereotype. After finishing the Perimeter Trail around Ouray yesterday, Coffee Girl and I were relaxing on a bench downtown enjoying one of the killer cookies, recommended by Mark and Bobbie, when a noisy old motorhome ground its way up the main drag. A young woman was half-hanging out of one of its windows, gawking with delight at the mountains or cliffs on the perimeter of Ouray. She wore a bonnet of the style worn by Amish or Mennonites. My eyes went quickly to the driver; sure enough, he had a beard wi

It is a Rip van Winkle experience to live a car-free existence for three years and then start traveling again. For one thing it makes you realize how much inflation there has been, despite what the government statisticians tell us. But I was even more shocked to discover that our local Walmart just doesn't sell many of the things it used to. The employees are surly. Apparently the space has been allocated to clothes, cheap household stuff, wider aisles, and other things that I don't care about.

Silverton CO. One of the hangups an RV Boondocker has to get over is the exaggerated fear of breaking some petty rule or ordinance that is seldom enforced. You aren't going to get a ticket or hauled off to the hoosegow. (Well maybe in California, Manhattan, or Massachusetts.) The average Amerikan is so docile or fearful that they won't push the envelope a little. But I'm rusty, having just gotten back on the road after three years in an RV park. So it took a little effort, but I did find a dead end road by a washed out bridge that seemed like it would be OK. (Dead end roads are favorites of mine.) I was camped a few steps from a stream that was quite, uh, anim ated. Oh, by the way, the Verizon signal had four bars out of four. This was the kind of experience I had been yearning for: beautiful white noise to wake up to instead of roaring traffic, boom-cars, or the neighbor's subwoofers.

Farmington, NM. Apparently my driveway security services really are in demand, so I'm on the way to Ouray, CO to hold down the driveway for old buddy Mark at Box Canyon Blog . It was enjoyable getting back onto the Colorado Plateau, with its characteristic mesa, butte, and cliff look. It was quite noticeable north of Quemado NM. Noon, Silverton CO . It's fun to hear the train whistle again. It's been several years. I wonder if I should have a rematch with the Bunkhouse ? 5 pm, it's nice to see the mountains again. But I appreciate the flowers and running water even more. I found a deadend gravel road to walk the dogs on. We had to cross a small stream. The water wasn't that cold; this is probably the only time of year when you can say that at 9500 feet. I had to carry my little poodle across -- with his vision and scarediness he might have been washed away!

Datil NM, 7200 feet. Normally late August is a time of jubilation. There are signs of beating another summer. Most people are eager for autumn. But today I had mixed feelings about digging out a winter stocking hat for the dawn dog walk. The memory returned of surviving sub-zero temperatures in my trailer last winter in Silver City. Not this winter. It's funny how important a stocking hat is to a camper. Sometimes I take emergency supplies on my mountain bike; the stocking hat and an emergency rain poncho are the first things I take. But seeing summer temperatures peak and head down is still good news since there are many more places to choose from, at mediocre altitudes.

The dogs and I went exploring the Plains of San Agustin. Wikipedia tells us that it is a graben , like Death Valley. Graben means ditch in German; have some fun ggrrrowling the word out. It is a block of land that sinks between two parallel faults or cracks. Supposedly San Agustin sank 4000 feet, and then filled halfway in with sediment from the nearby mountains.

It's interesting to watch my own habits changing, now that I can't walk five minutes to a grocery store. But at the moment I'm more interested in what effect Bernanke's intentional debasement of the dollar is having on people who live in places an hour drive from the nearest real grocery store. Here in Datil NM we are 60 miles from the nearest one. And yet people still talk about how they drove to the big city last weekend, even though it is 150 miles away. So much of the rural lifestyle involves driving long distances in giant pickup trucks. It's true they do more of the maintenance on vehicles themselves; that helps some, but the nearest real auto parts store is still far away. One tire shop told me he made a run into the big city one day per week to load up on tires. So maybe that's how a lot of survival takes place: you renounce the idea that everything must be available every day of the week. Say, maybe I should do that with the internet. I wonder if

Datil, NM. We crossed the first cattle gate in the national forest this morning and immediately had good luck: a good old boy on an ATV rolled up, with five happy dogs running along side. After disporting with the locals Coffee Girl and I headed off on our first mountain bike ride in this new chapter of our RV camping life. As satisfying as it might have been to successfully adjust to routine rides in Silver City NM, it really is more fun to explore while cycling, that is, to ride where you don't already know the "answer". Now, it was happening again. We followed an informal ATV track uphill; at first it wasn't particularly interesting. Of course it wasn't really supposed to be. There were no brown signs leading us to some official tourist site. But then we found this flower, which grabbed my attention because blue flowers are rare. (The blue is true; no software tricks.) As usual, I want to know it's name, but am too lazy to research it. If a reader know

Whatever you do, don't try to drive a large trailer or Class A motorhome to the old mining town of Mogollon NM. You might possibly make the 9 mile climb of a couple thousand feet, but only if nobody is coming the opposite direction. I made it because it was Thursday and the two businesses in the town were closed, so nobody did come down when I was going up. Once again this shows the advantage of small RVs; I can't wait until mine is less than forty feet long, combined. What a marvelous first impression the old place made. It's in a ravine that wasn't too tight, fortunately. Greenery, running water, and butterflies are everywhere. It would be nice to know some names of these beautiful insects, but when something sounds like a big project it gets put off. This guy looks like a mountain biker doing an end-over: The next impression was just as pleasant: a small, fast-moving stream ran right down Main Street. A small RV could squat overnight on a gravel turnoff a

Well, it didn't take some people very long to adjust to traveling again. Neither dog will permit me to stuff him in the trailer; they insist on being in the van, where the big windows are, this despite the fact that the little poodle (age 16.3) is 90% blind. When we took off this morning, heading through High Lonesome ranch country, it looked great to see how green everything was! Coffee Girl (my Australian kelpie) stuffed her nose into the dashboard vent every few seconds; then she quickly switched over to the window where she shoved half her body out, for yet more exciting new aromas. With great satisfaction, I watched her do this time after time.

It is a good idea to go off on short trips before a long one. Since I haven't done enough of that and since the trailer has barely moved in three years, I feel a bit nervous. But preparation can get a bit tiresome after awhile. At some point you just have to jump in and hang on. Off we go, to the north, through Glenwood. It's hot there, so there won't be any stopping until Reserve, NM. Got to stay above 6000 feet, and 7000 would be more like it. Maybe Datil or Pie Town tonight. So, I'll jerk the cord out of the utility post, and off we go...

A cycling website that I visit frequently mentioned the results of the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. Sigh. Just hearing of Leadville (use Search this Blog on the left) brought back some powerful memories for me. For the first time I started getting emotional about getting back on the road; until now it was hard to believe that I was really leaving tomorrow. A week after the Leadville race, still in the mid-August, I used to notice Leadville (10,200 feet high) getting cooler and foggier. Summer was on the wane, and it was time to start a slow retreat towards winter camp. Many high places in Colorado would still be good until late September. No matter how many years I was traveling, the autumn migration kept bringing a lump to my throat. And now I'm "migrating" north in mid-August? Everything is upside-down.

Here is my first post back on the Verizon network. Gee, I remember it being faster when I dropped the service three years ago. My campground's WiFi is actually twice as fast, even though it is all coming through a 3 Mbps DSL line, and then sharing that signal amongst all the users in the campground.

Straws and camels' backs, indeed. August is not the month when the migrational sap runs in my blood, but when I learned that my boom-da-boom-thud-boom neighbor might renew for another month, the decision became easy. I leave on 18 August. There's nothing wrong with how people live here, if that's what they like. But I have nothing in common with them. Any unpleasantness is my own fault for being in a place I shouldn't be. My 1995 Ford cargo van is all cleaned and waxed up -- beautiful. After three years of weathering in the New Mexican sun, the paint had turned dull and chalky, leaving the water bucket looking like a pail of milk. These cargo vans work so well as towing and storage machines that I wonder why more people don't use them: there are four bicycles and a BOB trailer in there -- and how could a human being live on less?! It has also swallowed up 33 gallons of water, a generator, a wall of supplies in shelves, and it's half empty! Granted, most bou

The only expense and chore remaining is to start up a wireless data plan with Verizon. I already have a MiFi gadget to use, thanks to the generosity of an RV friend. In Chapter 1 of my RV lifestyle the Verizon plan worked quite well. Trying to get by on free WiFi would have been false economy since it entails extra driving and temptation to buy expensive coffee and food at the "free" WiFi spot. Actually I made a game out of spotting cell towers and then camping in the forest or on BLM land where the topography gave me coverage. Nevertheless, getting wireless coverage did restrict my camping locations quite a bit. It is easy to resent that. It's natural to want Chapter 2 to be better or at least different from Chapter 1. Won't starting up a Verizon plan inevitably pull my camping lifestyle in the same direction as before? The satellite alternative doesn't appeal to me because of equipment cost, set up, and maintenance. And yet I have 18 hours per day to fi

It seemed odd that my resuscitation of the old van had not yet involved a drive out of town at highway speeds, so I used a tire purchase as my excuse to drive out of the Little Pueblo, down to the torrid high desert town of Deming, NM. It brought back some memories. For one thing, I remembered how much I would actually like driving the van and, yes, looking out the windshield, if the world would just let me drive at 45--55 mph. Call me heartless if you wish, but I don't really give a damn if the people who pass me end up in the ditch. But I don't want that to happen to an innocent motorist in the opposing lane, so I end up driving the speed limit instead of the leisurely pace I prefer. The other fact that came back with a vengeance was how different it is to drive south -- downhill and into the sun -- than north. My dog would heartily agree with that one. This was a reminder that an RV camper will find Dry Heat in the summer to be the source of 90% of his annual discomfort.

Financial turmoil is a serious business, so it's with comic relief that I read about Apple's market capitalization becoming bigger than Exxon's for the first time. 'Who has the biggest market capitalization' is a far cry from being the official 'most important' company; still, it does say something about the financial zeitgeist in a loose and unscientific sort of way.

Perhaps you are spending a lot of time these days reading financial websites. Today I have been drowning in informational trivia; maybe it's my fault for not choosing better websites. Why is it so hard for business writers, in the opening paragraph, to compare the relative sizes of Lehman (September 2008) and the current sickies, Bank of America and SocGen in France? That would let the reader quickly assess the risk and importance of the current mess with one already experienced. Sure, there are many facets to a comparison of SocGen and Lehman. But American news sources underestimate the importance of anything outside the USA; they are famously parochial. A simple numerical comparison might help their readers overcome some of this.

It is strange that Geitner, Obama, Wall Street liquidity junkies, and the usual cabal of narco-Keynesians would be so upset by Standard and Poor's downgrade of US government debt. Why don't they just nationalize Standard and Poor's, that is, literally make it a branch of the US government? Now, you might think I'm being facetious because that would result in the US government rating itself . To old-fashioned people, that might sound like a conflict of interest. They might even say it makes a farce out of ratings. But ratings are already a farce. Many people have gotten used to the idea that the budget deficit can be "funded" by the Federal Reserve buying US Treasury bonds. So why not take this sort of incestuous arrangement to the next logical step?

Yesterday was the day for the last big ticket items needed to get back on the road: I bought four new Interstate (GC-2) golf cart batteries; these are the conventional 6 volt, flooded, lead-acid batteries that lose water gradually and give off trace amounts of hydrogen when charging.

One of the difficulties of writing about financial markets these days is that it's hard to tell where politics ends and real markets begin. Many times it seems as though the stock market is just the tail of the Federal Reserve dog. Yesterday's market was down big enough to make mainstream news. Wall Street is desperately hoping that Bernanke's helicopter will come to the rescue, perhaps playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries , like in the movie, Apocalypse Now .  This scenario is playing out as I sketched in an earlier post . Obama must be nervous about Bernanke being too quick with QE3. There is a tremendous opportunity for him here if Bernanke doesn't blow it. If Obama wants to get reelected, the bloodletting in the job and stock markets needs a chance to look more desperate.

How many times have you bought something and experienced a real Wow! ?  In my case the first digital camera had that effect; so did the first GPS gadget. More times than not, I find new gadgets and appliances to be overblown; the ownership experience is disappointing or even embittering at times, and for good reasons. No gadget is better than its battery or its weakest connector or its cheapo plastic battery case lid. Typically the plastic display scratches up the first day. Yesterday I experienced a Wow from a homemade gadget: a trailer brake and light tester. Knowing how cheesy the connector is between the tow vehicle and the travel trailer, and how amateurish the wiring is near the trailer brakes, a driver can feel a vague dread in the back of his mind when he is driving down the road with many tons of stuff under his "command".

It is a pleasure to experiment with an affordable, high-efficiency, 12 volt DC, compressor-driven refrigerator. Results so far have been good. These units match up well with an RV camper who camps away from electrical hookups. (Do not confuse a compressor-driven refrigerator with those small, cheapo thermoelectric jobs.) The RV industry probably does the right thing in installing (Dometic or Norcold) ammonia/hydrogen-cycle refrigerators as standard equipment. They are versatile and satisfy a wide range of customers. Mine gave pretty good service for 9 years with only one expensive repair job. Its performance on propane was mediocre in the summer, though. But when one of these standard RV frigs is old and needs to be replaced ($1500 or more) or is begging for several hundred dollars of repairs, it's worth looking at alternatives, especially considering how expensive propane has gotten. (This blog is aimed at non-hookup campers of course.)

There are purists who aspire to going to heaven and sitting upon the right hand side of Thoreau and Gandhi; usually they proudly eschew generators on board their rigs. I think this is a mistake; more on that in a second. Generators would have a much better public image if small, quiet units were paired with the right chargers and batteries, and only used to power appliances that make sense.

How many articles do you remember from glossy travel magazines? Believe it or not, I remember one. The title was "Camp Dead End." It was a warning against holing up permanently in an RV park, instead of 'chasing adventure out there on the open road'. The article was in harmony with the RV industry's economic self-interest, of course. But the article was still eloquent.