Occupation of Independence

No, I didn't go out and buy one, the gadget that is. But I did follow through on a commenter's suggestion of downloading Kindle ebooks from Amazon onto my netbook. I chose a freebie of course. Buying books is a "bridge too far". I firmly rejected the option of reading the eBook in the over-hyped "cloud" since that requires an internet connection, the very thing I want to liberate myself from. Instead, I opted to download the Kindle eReader onto my (Windows PC) netbook and to do the same with the eBooks themselves, since an internet connection is only needed during the downloading process, itself. Soon I was using it on a free classic, Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare . By his own admission he could write a preface to anything, even a cookbook, and the preface would be more popular than the book, proper. There is no "Edit" tool at the top of the screen; to copy a juicy quote you must highlight it first and then right-button for copy

At the moment I am in the Valley of the Sun, the Phoenix megalopolis. (If only it would run out of water and start shrinking. It would be a better place.) Its only real significance to me is that it is still on the Gila River migration route. But I can't help wondering about Verizon's 4G wireless service, available only in big cities like this. My mi-fi gadget is only a 3G model, so I can't actually sample the 4G service. It seems like I should be as excited about this improvement as I was when Verizon upgraded from 2G (1xRTT) to 3G (EVDO) a few years back. But back then there was no 5 Gigabyte per month limit. It makes sense that there should be a limit like that, despite the howls of gamers and video-addicts on the tech forums. So I have no real complaint against Verizon. But it does make a customer wonder what is so great or important about 4G wireless service: the only thing it's good for is watching videos, but if you give in to that temptation, you'll smac

Oh sure, I knew Globe AZ was a bit higher than the Gila River that I was following into the state. But a casino is a good place to wait out a winter storm while watching NFL football. The sun wouldn't come out long enough for a good morning shot of palmas y sierra nevada . At least the photo proves out the title of this blog. I thought the weather would recover on Monday. I don't mind the cold, but a dog-owning RVer hates precipitation. So I took off this morning only to find that the small climb to Globe was enough to create a heavy snowstorm. The road didn't actually feel slippery but after my clay debacle of last week I am feeling cautious. So I pulled off into a big box parking lot. There sat a nice-looking pickup and camper, who probably had the same idea. I snickered when I saw the Florida license plates. After all, what sort of moron would drive all that way to Arizona in December and then get stuck in snow? (grin)

It wasn't so long ago that "AT&T" charged $20 per month for wi-fi at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, McDonalds, and various hotel chains. Now all the wireless telecoms are delighted to give you free wi-fi at such places. Off-loading data to wi-fi hotspots to lessen the data traffic jam at cell towers is a huge trend these days. In theory this should be a nice help to travelers. Having failed to win any looks of envy (or even respect) at Starbucks with my new $200 netbook, it seemed like McDonalds might promise more success: surely some toothless old man would be impressed with my spiffy new machine; you know, the old boys who find section D of yesterday's newspaper and read it in slow motion while drinking bottomless refills of senior coffee. Old habits die hard: walking into the store my eyes scanned the walls for an electrical outlet. First, they seem to design public wi-fi places without a single electrical outlet. That must be deliberate; they're not

Every Age has not only its own spirit, its zeitgeist , but also its characteristic vices and diseases. The Information Age sucks us into paying attention to too much trivial and trashy "news". For travelers in particular, the same syndrome manifests itself as Novelty idolatry. I was feeling very pleased with the world on the last day of November when this (un-edited, un-photoShopped) sunset crowned an excellent day. I was camped on some BLM land, on the western edge of New Mexico, watching my first Arizona sunset in over three and a half years. For some reason it was important to me not to enter Arizona before December 01. As luck would have it, a winter storm was arriving the first day in Arizona. On this autumn's migration it was satisfying to have connected the Colorado/San Juan river systems with the Rio Grande, and back again to the Colorado/Gila system with a minimum amount of driving. It was sweet revenge to revisit the place near Grand Junction where I alm

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 respon

It's a world of a different color where I'm camped now compared to Moab, which is just a couple weeks in the rear view mirror. Here in the lower Rio Grande Valley the world is grey, brown, and buff, which is rather bland compared to the red sandstone of Moab. After a night of hard rain it began to dry up.  I needed to go to town to do the usual errands. (Here an RV travel blog should begin spoon-feeding the eager reader with every minute and mundane detail of his errand and shopping trip.) The road was a recently graded county road, with a hard gravel surface. But at one spot the color abruptly changed from buff to "red". Having been in Moab recently, I thought that it was a small area of red sandstone. Still, a slow yellow light began blinking in the back of my head. Then there was a small dip. I was surprised how difficult it was to get back up the hill. Whew! That was close. What the heck kind of sandstone do you call that? A couple hours later, the errands wer

It was a thrill for this chronic late-adopter and used-computer-buyer to finally have his first new computer. I boldly squatted in the parking lot outside the Target where I bought my new 11.6" Acer netbook at the loss-leader price of $200 and brazenly challenged a security guard or parking lot Zamboni to even try to kick me out. Nobody dared. I stayed up until midnight -- real midnight, as in media noche , as in mitternacht , not motorhome midnight of 9 p.m. -- transitioning to the new netbook. I had always feared doing this but it ended up being fun watching functionality and the software breath-of-life appear on a soul-less machine, step-by-step. At 530 in the morning I practically leaped out of bed, wondering if Starbucks would waken at 6 am. I didn't have to drive far in New Mexico's megalopolis, Albuquerque, to find one. Soon I was ensconced in a chair next to a personable floor lamp, with a scone and a (disappointing-tasting and over-priced) espresso, and pr

The geology and plant life of my current boondocking location makes for some uncomfortable walking, at least in places. The other day I howled because of something jabbing me in the foot; I had just stepped on a rock with a sharp, pyramidal point. But the pain occurred a couple more times over the next day, and always in the same spot of the same shoe. Why was I being so stupid? Something was embedded in the sole of that shoe. I just wasn't used to getting punchadas (or pinchazos ) all the way through a sole. It's a mesquite thorn, if I'm not mistaken. Lots of them are growing nearby. This is what you get for hiking in trail sneakers instead of real hiking boots with a nylon or steel plate in the sole. And yet I have a friend who has lived in the Southwest for 15 years and hikes everywhere in sandals.

(Yahoo News: Unnamed location, lower Rio Grande valley, New Mexico, North American continent.) Either something has changed on the internet, or I have just gotten around to noticing it: there is a race to the bottom with news headlines. They are becoming pure tabloid, especially the "What's New" tab on yahoo mail. But I've noticed the same trend in more serious news sources. But who am I to fight progress? After all, we live in the modern Information Age, and therefore, all change represents progress. OK seriously, I was taking the dogs out for their sunset walk when I looked to the east and saw this shadow. I guess it was a shadow of the hilly ridge in front of it, but the angles didn't seem right. It was unusual enough that I stopped and gawked. When I realized that it was towards Roswell NM, I had a good laugh. (As usual, click to enlarge.)

No matter how much a person might like their mobile lifestyle, there must be times when it seems frivolous and vacuous: when it degenerates into "channel surfing with gasoline". In the back of his mind, the traveler might yearn for experiences more substantial and challenging than mere sightseeing. But it would still be nice if mobility enabled these deeper and richer experiences. For instance, during the Arab Spring, I was in the habit of reading bicycle touring blogs. Most of them were pretty boring: "...yesterday I was there, today I'm here. This morning I had instant oatmeal instead of corn flakes for breakfast." Then they photographed the oatmeal. In contrast, one of these cycle tourers was staying in a Bed and Breakfast in downtown Cairo, right next to Tahrir Square where all the demonstrations took place. What an experience he had! Driving to an "Occupy Wall Street" rally could be one of those experiences, and one that an RV is uniquely ad