Making things

One of the activities which has given me pleasure in the late summer and fall has been preparing presentations.  One on the history of the "leather" subculture in the US, another on pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent the spread of HIV.  These have involved research, writing, and what I'll somewhat pretentiously call "visual production:" slides and short videos for group talks.  

This is re-visiting some old territory for me: I once taught video documentary production, and have done a little off- and on-camera narration for non-fiction projects like documentaries and industrial videos.  I'd forgotten how much I liked it.  Not just the story-telling part but playing with images and sequences.

Of course, I'm not the first person to be intrigued by the forms of natural "objects." O'Keefe and Mapplethorpe come to mind. This short clip was pure play, rewarding for its own sake, and with absolutely no purpose.

So part of what I want to do is take the show on the road.  Take pictures, and videos.  Maybe talk to people, maybe listen to flowers and trees and grasses.  Put those together and upload them so people can see them.  On blogs, YouTube, maybe Vimeo... it's now possible to make images, still and moving, with relatively inexpensive equipment, and edit it carefully on a good laptop.

That's why the inverter and solar and extra battery in the RV: not just to have light, but to play with images and share them.

I have no idea how this will work.  Maybe it'll turn out not to hold my attention.  But for now, I'm thinking of the Beast as the Mobile Media Wagon.  We'll see.

That was then ...

With a few short trips and one longer trip under my belt, what's next?  I told myself that I'd give the whole RV thing a year.  Would I keep the thing or not?  More trips? What kind?

Here's the reasons I haven't used it more, and expense isn't really high on the list.

Emma.  She's hard to travel with.  The drugs take the edge off her anxiety while we're on the move, but she's not real happy.  I think this would decrease with time, so it may just be a matter of putting in the miles.  She's fine in camp... as long as I'm there with her.  But if I leave her, to go for a walk or a bike ride, she gets whiney and obnoxious.  This is a problem for what neighbors there are ... and I'm not sure whether this behavior would decrease with time.  It did at home ... as it is, though, I feel pretty much tethered to the dog.  As in, almost literally.  Visit someone and park on the street by their house, or in their yard/drive?  Not really an option unless they want to host an anxious dog along with me.  She's not relaxed in ANY new place,  so being a guest in someone else's home is a little iffy. More drugs?  I don't like that much ...

Set-up and takedown.   If I could just park the thing in the side yard ... as it is, getting it out of storage, shuttling back and forth with the car, parking it next to my place to pack it up and getting glared at by neighbors who drive by... parking it in a lot here in the complex overnight.  All of this is a matter of getting better routines down.  This will get better with more trips.

Local travel.  Even without Emma, this is a problem. It's why people tow their cars behind their RV's.  Say, I go visit friends in Palm Springs and park in their yard.  I want to go into town for dinner.  Putting the rig in "travel" mode just for a few hours, not to mention the adventure of parking it somewhere near where I want to go, doesn't sound like fun.  The bike is great for exploring the local area... but at night, on the roads, coming back from dinner ... I don't think so.

So the kind of travel which makes sense in the RV is where the destination is the destination, and Emma can sniff around outside happily.  I've been reading several blogs from "full-timers."  One which caught my eye was from a guy who spends summers on Forest Service land near Flagstaff.  In the winter, he heads south.  What he does is nature photography... he went over to New Mexico to the Sandhill Cranes reservation.  He's also a "van dweller."  His writing makes it clear he's on a major "simplification" mission ... as in Thoreau's preface to Walden:  "I came to the woods not to rough it but to smooth it."  This is not really my motivation.  Couldn't be, with my love of gadgets.  But solitude and quiet are motivating.  I have a lot of that right where I am, of course... and the question is how it would be to go someplace like, say, Quartzite AZ, and live in the RV for a week or so parked on public lands.  I've been taking a lot of pictures of flowers and plants on my Tucson patio... I have ideas of doing that in different places.  Would the travel cost and tsuris be worth it?   Would I be just as happy at home?

I've gotten some gear to help with boondocking.  I just got a small solar panel --

which may, in sunny southern climes, keep my two 12V batteries in good shape for quite a while. I also got a small PSW (pure sine-wave) inverter so I have a source of quality AC power from the batteries.  I have the generator, of course, but it's noisy and smelly and uses gasoline.  I'm hoping that I can use the generator as a backup rather than a primary source of power.

This strategy depends on a certain simplicity in living.  Not all the way to Thoreau, but on that road. I'm not looking to have all the comforts of home while camped in the desert in the middle of nowhere.  I'm hoping that I can stay places where I won't be miserable without a/c.  And that I won't feel deprived not using the microwave.  Camping, in other words, in an uber-tent.  I'm OK with camping as long as I don't have to sleep on the ground.  :-)

Next post -- after I take Emma out for her morning jaunt -- is about making stuff.

Excuses, and the Dolores report

Yup.  Me again.  It's been a while.  I do have a problem with blogs -- eventually I just get tired of talking to myself.  Some new directions here, maybe, so I'll try again to stay with a program.

Last post I was on my way to a group camp-out in the Four Corners area, near Dolores CO.  Two days' travel from Boulder.  Lotta up and down over the Rockies.  Funny how I never really notice that in the little car!  The truck makes such heavy weather of climbing hills; it gets very very loud, and if I don't stay right on top of it, and let my speed get too low, it just won't accelerate until I get on the flat again.  I guess I'll get used to it.  And regardless of all the ups and downs, the think gets a pretty constant 10 mpg, which all things considered isn't that bad.  Particularly now that gas prices have nose-dived... last summer it cost me about $0.35 per mile for gas, right now it looks more like $0.25.

My idea with the blog was that as I travelled, I'd sit down and write about the day's adventures and upload pictures.  What happened was that internet access was pretty spotty.   The hot spot works like a champ, but T-Mobile has a long ways to go to catch up with, say, Verizon, in coverage.  Plus, I'm drawn to more out-of-the-way places to stay.  The dedicated RV bloggers and vloggers park outside a MacDonald's or a Starbucks are use the free wi-fi to upload.  If I'm staying a few days off the grid, I'm, well, off the grid.  The solution is to write daily and upload when possible.  Obviously.

The event at Dolores was interesting, but I'm not sure I'll go again.  I have a few pictures which will give an impression of the place --

Emma loved it.  It was the first time that I could just let her wander around off-leash; there were lots of other dogs, and her social skills from Doggy Day Care came to the fore.  

I was less enthralled.  My appetite for the human equivalent of sniffing butt is pretty limited, and sitting around in a circle exchanging small talk isn't my idea of a good time for long.  This group was largely composed of people who know each other, and I felt very much the outsider.  Not because they were unfriendly, I hasten to add.  If I were a more aggressively gregarious person it might have been very different. 

At any rate -- from Dolores I pretty much hightailed it home.  Took a couple of days.  And that was the last Summer trip in the Beast. I'll ruminate on why, and what I might do next, in my next post. 

Grand Junction, CO

Time with family is always rewarding, particularly with a very active 5-yr old in the mix.  The conference in Denver gave me a chance to contact some old friends and acquaintances, but the program itself wasn't as interesting as it has been.

Tonight I'm headed for Dolores CO, down in the SW corner of the state, for a multi-day off-grid campground event: CampOUT, the Four Corners Pride festival.  I doubt there will be internet or cell service where I'm headed!

The rig is running well.  Some minor maintenance issues to be attended to when I got home: The entry door handle is loose, for example.  Yesterday had two LONG stretches of construction on I-17 between Denver and Grand Junction.  Crawling at 5 MPH for 30-45 minutes...

In spite of a lot of climbing up and over the Rockies, the Beast is getting 9-10 MPG pretty consistently.  Today I have a choice of a longer route which is mostly on freeways, or a shorter route on blacktop.  I don't go much faster on the highways, so I'm taking that option.  Live and learn ...

Emma's been pretty good.  I think the meds help.  She'd still rather be home reading a good book.

Breakfast time, then to find a supermarket in Grand Junction to stock up for a few days in the boonies.

Checking in from Boulder

Yesterday was one friggin long-ass day.  Left Santa Fe at 7, got in Boulder at 5:15.  The standard route would have had me take I25 N from Santa Fe and continue on across the Raton Pass and up into the Denver area through Colorado Springs.  Dull and some nasty traffic through CSP and Denver.

So I took US285 mostly, up through Alamosa and then crawled up and down over several passes and even more "hills."  The first part of the day was great: tooling along classic western 2-lane blacktop in  high plateau.  The second was not so great.  The road surface was generally rough, and the resultant vibration set Emma's teeth on edge; her whining (in spite of the sedative) set mine on edge. And when I hit Boulder in multi-lane rush hour traffic it was NOT a good time.

By the time I got to Mike's house I wasn't fit company for man nor beast.  And Emma did her "I don't like this strange place and there's only skittery hard floors" number.  I gave her a nighttime sedative and threw her on my bed.  She woke up at 3; so did I.  But in the course of the morning we both chilled out.  She spent some fun time romping with Louie, Donna's dog, and walked into Mike's house like she lived there.  I'm hoping she'll just be a normal laid-back Lab this weekend, when Mike gets to take care of her while I'm in Denver.

The Beast was parked at an angle last night; as a result, the refrigerator wasn't refriging all that well this morning.  It's currently parked on the level near Donna's place, and my frozen food is in her freezer. Hope that by the end of the day the box is back to icy.

I'm not sure what the lesson is from yesterday.  Was the great morning worth the difficult afternoon?  Or would it have been better to just take the freeway and save more than an hour and a lot of aggravation?  Dunno.

And will the refrigerator fix itself?  We'll see.

Mike is due to take me out to lunch.

Lunch on Day 2

Lunch view at El Malpais Natl Monment, south of Grants, NM. 

The drive from Show Low east on US 60 , then angling NE on NM state roads to intersect with I-40 near Grants, was a joy.  The Beast hummed along happily, Emma dozed in a druggy way, and I just grinned.

Going through ABQ north to Santa Fe was not so fun.  I got in camp here at about 5.  A longer day than I'd thought, but no problems.  Beast got between 10 and 11 mpg.  

Day 1 -- in camp

In camp, near Show Low, Arizona.  Yes, there's a place named Show Low.  Had to do with a long-ago poker game.  Google it.

It was a really good day.  The medication got to Emma after about 90 minutes, And after that she just snoozed on the couch.  No way is she getting off the couch, though!  The navigation system worked flawlessly:  The iPad in its cradle, audio out into the truck cassette player.  The Dual GPS receiver.  And Navigon:  Navigon isn't my favorite nav app, but it has the advantage that it downloads the maps and thereafter doesn't need a network connection.  I suppose I *could* fire up the Samsung T-Mobile hot spot so the iPad could talk to the world, but since I'm paying for that data, I prefer to use it for something that requires it.

All the campground connections are fine. This is the first outing for the power conditioner, which reports that I have 118V at 60 cycles. And no errors of any kind -- and it knows about LOTS of possible problems.

I'm staying at an Arizona state park, and so far AZ is two for two.  It's attractive, quiet.  It'sin the White Mountains area, where they're just puttin out a medium sized wildfire, so there's no open flames. Propane is good, though.  I was kind of looking forwward to grilling burgers, but I have options in the freezer.  "In the freezer!"  This is some pretty strange way to camp.  I could get used to it, though.  

So far I'm aware of two things I forgot:  ice cube trays, and the bike helmet. I may get some trays on my way out of town;  ice in my drink would be good. While I'm roughing it.

The internet service here for both ATT and T-Mobile is "E" -- that stands for slow.

I'm not sure I can post this.  I'll try, and if it works maybe I'll have more to say after a pre-dinner bike ride.