Life on the Road

Twas the week before Christmas and all through the park
Not a creature was stirring, not even a lark.
The stockings were piled on the rig’s steering wheel
And we were home from the buffet after a great big meal.
The presents were on their way to loved ones,
We dreamed of a Christmas in Nevada’s sun.
When what to my wondering eyes, don’t you know?
But a stiff breeze and sleet and then– SNOW!
It fell soft like wings. It flew in flurries!
It blanketed campsites and made little dogs worry.
The white stuff it fell until early dawning,
And left layers of white stuff on every cold awning.
The palm trees, they sagged with the weight of the stuff.
The hoses, they froze. The retirees cried “ENOUGH!”
And I in my wooly slippers and hat
Was surprised by a sight, “Well, look at that!”
Twas a round little man in a jolly red suit
With sequins and spangles– almost a zoot.
His hair how it shone, his hips how wiggly!
He crooned to himself a tune quite jiggly.
As he passed by the rigs with barely a touch,
I heard him mutter “Thank you very much.”
The sun rose to spread its rays the next morn
We all were relieved to again feel warm!
It’s a curious sight in this land of mega
Hotels and casinos, Christmas in Las Vegas.
And I have a message here, a note from a friend,
A thought for you all, feel free to re-send.
Before you run off to win a few bucks,
Merry Christmas to All, and to All: GOOD LUCK!

Air travel has to be one of the worst industries in America. I say this with a lot of respect for the airline personnel, who come into contact with the frustrated public every day, and do the best they can with the hand they’ve been given by the airlines.

Take, for example, Northwest. It’s an old adage in customer service that your employees will treat your customers the way they themselves are treated. While I am sure there are many happy Northwest employees, I can also tell that the airline isn’t making their employees happy, nor their customers. Their newest money-grab? Charging for the seat. No, not charging for your ticket. Charging extra if you want an aisle or window or exit row seat.

Personally, I would only pay extra for an exit seat– the only seat worth paying extra for is one where you are legally guaranteed there won’t be a 2 year old child discovering the joys of shrieking squirming on the lap of the person next to you.

After being wedged into an unusually narrow seat in between two ladies who were even larger than me (we were in an extra legroom aisle– these aisles have more legroom but less seat width, and they put three short, round ladies there…. why?!?) I resolved never to fly Northwest again. Ideally, I would like not to fly ever again– John Madden doesn’t fly. Why should I?

In other news, I’ll remind everyone that today is the deadline for the postcard giveaway! I only have a few valid, non-spam entries, so drop a comment or your entrecard today!

As promised, I’m going to hold another 6-postcard drawing, this one to celebrate my birthday, which is today!

Post a comment on ustravel.today.com or drop your entrecard between now and Friday, August 22. ONE lucky winner will receive a packet of 6 randomly selected postcards from my travels. You can ask to have all six mailed to you in an envelope, unmarked, or I can write random messages on them and mail them to you one at a time– your pick!

By the way, I contacted the winners of last month’s drawing, but didn’t hear back from 2 of the 3 winners. Go Amie and Simply Mayang , would you both please drop me an email at mortaine at gmail.com with your mailing address so I can get these out to you? Thanks!

Fine Print:

Don’t put your mailing address in the comment, but do check your email or this blog after Saturday the 23rd. I’ll announce the winner on Saturday and try to contact you if I have any kind of link or email address to use.

Your contact information will not be shared with anyone for any purpose and will not be used for anything except sending you the post cards. Non-US participants welcome, but I can only send post cards where the U.S. postal service permits. All spam comments will be deleted and are ineligible for entry. “Spam” is defined by my own internal filter. Like obscenity– I know it when I see it.

This giveaway/contest is being run by the independent writer of ustravel.today.com and has not been reviewed or endorsed by the webhost, Today.com.

Note: Comments are moderated, so if you post one and it doesn’t go through, don’t panic– it’s just being held for moderation.

Also, I know the captcha is annoying. I already get about 20 spam messages a day, even with it, and I shudder to think what it would be if I disabled it. The plugin my host uses, re-Captcha, uses words that have been scanned for inputting public domain works into online libraries which the OCR software is having trouble recognizing. So, as annoying as it may be, at least you’re helping to contribute to the availability of e-texts.

Yesterday, my husband and I went out letterboxing. This is a bit like a scavenger hunt in the woods, or a low-tech version of geocaching. You get clues to the location of the box and you try to find it. The box contains a log book and a rubber stamp, often hand-carved but not always. You bring your own log book, your own stamp, and an ink pad. Once there, you exchange stamp impressions with your own stamp and the one included in the box. Rehide it where you found it, and go on your merry way.

Unfortunately for me, today’s hunt was more like getting lost in the woods. In fact, it was exactly like getting lost in the woods, complete with me uttering this sentence: “Maybe next time when we go hiking, and you pack a day pack with some water in it, you could actually bring that water with you….” (As you can tell, I clearly haven’t gotten rid of all of my anger issues yet.)

In any case, the instructions were something like this: “Go to the park, but I won’t tell you which entrance to use. Find the stone memorial.” For the record, we’re in Massachusetts. Everything is a stone memorial! We parked next to a stone bench in memoriam. We hiked up to not one, but two stones overlooking a soccer field, both dedicated to the memory of someone.

“Follow the ski lift down the hill to the trees on your right.”

Huh? Ok, it’s July. It is entirely likely that the ski lift is seasonal. More to the point: it’s Massachusetts. You can’t walk ten feet without walking into a tree!

I gave up at that point, because I never found the “trees shaped like a U.” Or the ski lift. Or the correct stone memorial. I did hike up a hill following some power lines, figuring they were the closest thing I was going to find to a ski lift, and since the clues are sometimes all “clever,” maybe the box hider was using “ski lift” more figuratively.

Anyway. I got home sweaty, tired, and wondering how the heck one hides a ski lift that completely in the woods!

Congratulations to our winners: simply mayang, Go Amie, and Killashandra! Simply mayang dropped an entrecard late Friday to get an entry in. Go Amie and Killashandra both entered via comments.

Thanks to everyone who entered this drawing– I had fun checking out your blogs and it was great to have a bunch of happy, hopeful comments in my moderation inbox to look at!

I’ll be contacting the winners by email to find out your preferences and address for receiving the postcards.

Check back later this month for another cool postcard drawing!

This is Bloggy Giveaway week. It’s also the end of my first month of blogging here on ustravel.today.com . Two great reasons to give free stuff away!

Here’s how to enter: Post a non-spam comment or drop your entrecard on any post at http://ustravel.today.com between right now and 11:00 PM August 1. On Saturday morning, I’ll draw three lucky winners.

The Prize: The prize is a set of 6 completely random post cards from my travels across the United States. You could get sweeping views of the Grand Canyon, or a funny alligator from Florida. You might not even get something destination-related; I have a lot of post cards! The post cards will be put into an envelope and mailed to you or, if you prefer, all six will be written on and mailed to you through the post within the month of August.

Remember: don’t put your mailing address in the comment, but do check your email or this blog after Saturday. I’ll announce the winners on Saturday and try to contact you if I have any kind of link or email address to use.

Your contact information will not be shared with anyone for any purpose and will not be used for anything except sending you the post cards. Non-US participants welcome– I can only send post cards where the U.S. postal service permits. All spam comments will be deleted and are ineligible for entry.

This giveaway/contest is being run by the independent writer of ustravel.today.com and has not been reviewed or endorsed by the webhost, Today.com.

Note: Comments are moderated, so if you post one and it doesn’t go through, don’t panic– it’s just being held for moderation.

Also, I know the captcha is annoying. I already get about 20 spam messages a day, even with it, and I shudder to think what it would be if I disabled it. The plugin my host uses, re-Captcha, uses words that have been scanned for inputting public domain works into online libraries which the OCR software is having trouble recognizing. So, as annoying as it may be, at least you’re helping to contribute to the availability of e-texts.

Living in an RV, we’ve had the opportunity to meet many nice, friendly folks on the road– opportunities which we’ve shunned, because let’s face it, other people are annoying. Therefore, I present to you 20 ways to annoy your neighbors when you live or camp at an RV park:

1. This weekend is the perfect time to start learning how to play the harmonica. Polka tunes for beginners only, please.
2. Wear your tightest speedo swimsuit to the pool. Make sure to sit on the edge of the pool with your knees wide apart.
3. Lie. Lie early, lie often. There are more retired U.S. CIA agents living in RVs than there are on the CIA pension plan.
4. Do the “I got me some steaks and you don’t got none!” dance whenever someone walks by your campsite. Then eat hot dogs for dinner.
5. Drink. Heavily. If you aren’t drinking a beer right now, or have just put an empty into the trash, you’re doing it wrong.
6. Tie your dog to the tree next to your campsite with the regulation 6′ leash. Bonus: yell at her when she whines or barks about being tied up.
7. Drop a melted marshmallow on the road, about 6 inches from the edge of the road. This will ensure that a pedestrian steps in it and wears it on her shoe for the rest of the day.
8. Park your RV under a seed-bearing or pine needle-shedding tree, then wash it daily.
9. Walk or bike in the middle of the road. You don’t want to step in all the marshmallows, after all.
10. Sewer hose? We don’t need no stinkin’ sewer hose! If you position the rig juuuuust right, the flow should go straight from the valve into the pipe, right?
11. Help other people park their RVs. Carefully detail which hand signals mean turn right or left, stop, and go forward. Then completely ignore those signals and wave your hands wildly around until the driver runs into a tree.
12. The ground is a perfectly fine place to dump your graywater.
13. RV tires don’t usually show signs of road wear. Break bottles in front of other people’s campsites. They will thank you for giving them a reason to replace their tires.
14. Show off your “converted” 1950’s bus, carrying photos around and suggesting to campground staff that “this park really needs to have a bus section!” Never mind that the only conversions you’ve done are to tape black plastic bags over the windows and set a hot plate on one of the seats.
15. When traffic approaches while you’re walking in the middle of the road, swerve to the left, then right, then left again before making it to one side or another.
16. Remember: poop bags are for other people’s dogs!
17. At the campground rec room, flip endlessly through TV channels until you find the most boring sport available (golf, bowling, and poker are all good choices). Then, if anyone in the room seems interested, talk loudly to them about how much you both like golf.
18. Compete with your neighbors (all of them) over lawn decorations and lighting. When you install a new bauble, take a photo of it and walk it around to the neighbors to show it off.
19. When a new camper comes in, stop by and chit-chat with them. Tell them to call you on the CB any time. Knock on their door, morning and night to ask if they have their CB on, cause you’ve been trying to chat with them.
20. Wander around the park with a clipboard and camera. Take photos of every third RV and campsite, then act cagey when they ask you what you’re doing.

Like this post? Stumble it!

With thanks and a nod to other great lists, like 248 ways to annoy people and Skippy’s list.

Something I notice these days is that we go through “fads” of activity. I was like this before, in the stick house, but it’s even more pronounced now that we have such limited space. I’ll go through phases of hobbies– for a few months, I’ll obsessively knit. Or I’ll want to do nothing but work on my novels. Or I’ll spent a month training the cat (yes, you read that right– my cat does tricks.)

With the cat getting sick last month, and my grandmother’s death this month and all the visiting that’s ensued, at the end of the day, we’ve found ourselves wanting to do little more than curl up with some DVDs on the sofa.

Except that, during the course of hanging out at my grandma’s and playing around on Facebook, and maybe in part as an extension of our recent obsession with Carcassonne, my husband re-discovered video and online games. Now, we’re far from the cutting edge of computer games– we play a couple of things on Facebook, online poker, and solitaire. He also re-installed Angband, which is an ascii-graphics computer game from about 20 years ago. And this morning, he actually pulled out the Playstation 2, a relic from our more acquisitive past.

I will not bore you with the details of the video games he’s into right now. It’s enough that he’s doing something fun and entertaining (and almost entirely free, since we already have the system and several games to play).  This dusting off of old pastimes to re-kindle an interest is a great way to put some controls on the endless rounds of building walls of clutter around us.

How does a recovering collector get by without her collections of “stuff” when pursuing the simple life? Before we divested ourselves of our “stuff,” and went on the road, we had a large collection of shot glasses from various destinations. Now, granted, it wasn’t a collector’s collection, but we had more than we could ever use, even if we threw a whiskey-tasting party.

I’ve also been known, in my life, to collect books, yarn, lapel pins, stuffed animals, post cards, stickers, flamingo-themed items, Muppet memorabilia, and medieval manuscript recreations.

I was recently reminded by my grandmother’s birding notebook that not all collections need to cost money. Grandma was an avid birder and lifelong member of the Audubon Society. She was a pioneer in conservation in her area, heading up commissions to save important habitats from overdevelopment.

She once told me that she had stopped birding because after several decades, she became tired of it. She turned instead to butterflies, but at her age then of 80, butterflies “move around rather fast,” so she switched again to flowers.

Her method of collection was simple. See a flower. Correctly identify it, or observe it well enough to look it up. Write it in a notebook. Move on to another flower.

If you’re the kind of collector who feels an urgent need to have a record of your collection, some physical thing that serves to preserve it, then you might collect the way my father-in-law does, with a camera. Imagine his delight when, frustrated with his flower photos coming out rather fuzzy, he discovered the “flower” setting on his camera. It is, in fact, the macro setting (a common setting on many digital cameras, used for closeup work). He’s now able to take beautiful up-close photos of his beloved cove, which he then shares online with friends and family. No paper, no scrapbooks, just a digital camera and some bytes.

I have another friend whose photo collection contains a sock monkey. Like those of us with “themed” collections, like flamingos, or cardinals, hers is a digital photo series in which her favorite sock monkey always makes an appearance.

Periodically, I take out my sketch book and pencils and go out into the field. I’ve taken a few small classes on the subject of nature sketching, and I follow the blog of a great nature artist named Cathy Johnson. Still, it’s an enjoyment, and something that spends time in a creative endeavor.

As we’ve gone on our travels in the last year, I have started various collections. Pins from the National Monuments, postcards, photos (of course), videos, jams and jellies, books… but the things I cherish are the things that carry memories from one mind to the next. The jams, when eaten, make us reminisce about being in the mountains where we first discovered them. The books, after being read and handed to a friend with a strong recommendation. The postcards, flying through the postal service on their way to someone else, announcing “here! Here is news from someone far away, but not forgotten!”

I don’t know what the purpose of a collection is outside of memory. I know that, for the advertising machines of the world, a collection is a way to sell you stuff, clutter, crap. It’s a way to brand a bunch of cookie-cutter plastic ticky-tack as “Hannah Montana” and pretend it’s a genuine experience. But it’s not. I cherish the photos of me drawing at the Grand Canyon more than I value the drawing, perhaps, but the photo captures my experience better than the drawing does.

And so, I charge all you seekers and collectors to look around you. I challenge you to replace one of your physical, clutter-making collections with a virtual one. If you have a “pigs” collection, pick one pig (your favorite, or the one your kids made for you) and begin posing it in new and inventive places, then taking a photo of it. Waste no time or money or space on printing these photos– in fact, limit your simple-world collection budget to less than $8 (the cost of a used field guide and a notebook). Let the photo simply be a record that says “I was here, I did this– the pig is just standing in my place.” If you have a postcard obsession, take all your postcards out, write a single sentence on the back, and mail them to a friend. The sentence can even be “I’m getting rid of all my post cards; hope you enjoy this one!” Let fly with your post cards; you will likely get in return a hug, or a smile, or an email saying “thanks for brightening my day.”

If you take up this challenge, come tell me about it. I’d love to hear about it!

There are a lot of games we can play on the road, but my favorite is “REALLY?!?!?” We usually cry this when someone in a much smaller vehicle is holding a cell phone in their left hand while merging onto the freeway, and they seem to have a few odd and wildly mistaken beliefs about our motorhome and basic physics:

• that we have an open spot somewhere around the kitchen where they can merge with traffic.
• that we’ll get over for them (we won’t– at 8 miles to the gallon, I can hear dollar coins hitting the pavement with every lane change).
• that they can speed up and get in front of us (by the time they’re at the kitchen, it is too late– we out-horsepower them, and if they do cut us off, they’re basically ensuring their death if there’s a sudden need to stop).
• that there’ll be space right behind us (there isn’t– there’s a towed Jeep in the way).
• that talking on the cell phone will magically make other drivers cater to their bad driving.

I’m sure you’re familiar with slug-bug, where you hit the other person (not the driver!) when you see a VW beetle, right? I propose a new game: cell phone tag. This is like slug-bug, and it goes like this: you’re driving and you see someone talking on their cell phone or texting while driving (yes, I’ve seen it– it’s “bad drivers r us”). And here’s what you do: YOU HANG UP YOUR PHONE. Eventually, everyone will hang up and drive, and we’ll have just one jerk driving around talking on their phone.

Don’t worry– I’ll leave voicemail so you can call me back later.