Life on the Road

Yesterday on the TV news, I heard this statement, in connection to a recent death on a cruise line. The speaker was discussing the risks of cruise travel in general, and the footage was stock footage of various cruise boats.

“What people don’t realize is, of course, is…. it happens more often than not.”

More often than not? Oh, my god– I am so glad I survived my 3-day cruise in Ensenada, then! The phrase “More often than not” indicates that something happens more often than it does not happen. So, more than 50% of the time, that thing happens.

Thus, according to the speaker, who was clearly not thinking while his mouth was flapping,  more than 50% of cruises (or perhaps, more than 50% of cruisers!) will result in a death by someone falling overboard.

Now that I think of it, there was an emergency on board our cruise– someone had an existing medical condition that required them to be picked up by the Coast Guard and returned to shore for medical treatment. But they didn’t die, and they rejoined the cruise later that day.

Here’s a tip for writers, commentators, and in general anyone who doesn’t want to look or sound like an idiot: Know what’s going to come out before you open your mouth.

You probably read about the TSA’s new uniforms in the news yesterday. If you didn’t, you will probably notice them the next time you fly. Previously, the TSA had white cotton shirts which looked rather informal and, after a few years of wear, they all became a bit stained. What’s more, TSA screeners have been tasked with rifling through your luggage and your belongings, but without any sort of symbol that says “I have the right to dig through your underwear.”

Well, although you can debate the appropriateness of letting strangers paw through your neverminds, I think we can all agree that the new TSA uniforms are nothing but snazzy! The shirts are a rich blue color that I affectionately called “Corporate Blue.” It’s a tone-neutral a shade that looks good on almost everyone, regardless of skin tone or hair color (unlike white, which looks bad on 75% of the population). There’s a tie– butterfly for the ladies, straight for the men– which is optional in the short-sleeved version of the shirts.

The TSA’s uniform code is stringent, like all good uniforms. A uniform demonstrates respect for the worker and delineates the person from the office– something that is all too necessary when you might be taking away a 6-pack of butterfly knives from a forgetful hunter. The socks are limited to blue or black, and can have no visible decoration below the cuff. Pantlegs are carefully measured and must break at a specific spot on the foot. For a number of TSA employees who served in the armed forces, the uniform is refreshing.

But the uniform now has one more detail that is new, and important. It’s the symbol of office, and a symbol of the trust the government has placed in the TSA employees. It’s the badge! When these federal employees have been digging through your underthings, they did so with as much visible authority as the guy who drives the shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport. The badge changes all that, and the TSA’s new badges give an aura of respectability to the most visible change in domestic security resulting from 9/11.

I complain a lot about the state of air travel in the US today, but I also have a lot of respect (and even love, in one particular case!) for the TSA employees. It’s like any government job, of course– there’s good apples and some bad. But in general, I try to believe most of them are people like my dad, who are doing a difficult, public-facing job to try and keep America a little safer.

I don’t post very often about my work, because my clients like discretion. When you’re trusting a writer with your unreleased products and specifications, it’s a good policy not to “talk shop” in your blog. And I’m working on a project right now that requires me to be a little discreet with my own intellectual property, to keep the secret from getting out too soon.

On the one hand, I feel like things are “slow” because, well, I don’t have a lot of money coming in. On the other hand, I’m working on four major writing projects, including this blog.  And here we come to the crux of the problem with financial freedom and simple lifestyles: what do you do when you’re there?

I’m not there, not by a long shot, but we’ve reached a point now where we’re able to take a bit of a breather and pursue less money-intensive activities. When your adult working life has been driven by market forces, finding opportunities that do not devalue your skills while still celebrating the freedom of your creativity…. that’s hard to do!

Right now, I’m just going to focus on the four big projects on my plate. One is scheduled to launch in September. One in January. This blog is ongoing and already live. The fourth is a test project to help me build some skills for other potential projects coming in. November is spent doing NaNoWriMo, and I won’t be giving that up.

Whew! I guess things aren’t so light around here after all!

Why haven’t I been writing about all the cool places in and near Boston that we’ve gone to? Because we haven’t gone anywhere!

It’s very hard to write about destinations when it rains every blessed day here. And not just light little rain. Torrential downpours. Tornadoes. It might be sunny and nice for 3 hours, but if we go out to do something, we’ll be holding newspapers over our heads and running to the car, hoping the lightning is a little further off than it looks.

It’s been so bad, my uncle’s workplace was actually struck by lightning. If you knew my uncle, this wouldn’t shock you in the least. Bizarre seems to follow him around. The man cut his thumb off at work 2 months ago.

We have a pile of papers we need to shred or get rid of– papers with enough personal information we don’t want to just throw it away. Guess what? All those lovely paper places, like Kinkos? They don’t take paper for shredding! They have shred-boxes on the premises, they use shredded paper in packing materials… it seems like a win-win for them to accept sensitive papers, shred them for customers, and use the shredded paper in packing. We have a teeny tiny shredder as part of our paperless lifestyle, but there’s a stack of backlog papers that would take days to shred in our little dinky home shredder (which would, no doubt, overheat).

So, what to do? Well, I suggested recently that we should have a campfire and burn the sensitive papers. Then they’d be destroyed and we would have one less box kicking around the RV. Plus I have a couple of old wax candles I don’t need anymore that could go into the flames. The problem? It hasn’t been dry enough at night for us to pick up a cord of wood and have a non-smoky campfire!

So, here’s hoping for a little less “weather” around here, so we might get out and enjoy the location for a change!

It’s birthday season around here. My mom’s birthday is today, and mine is coming up in a couple of weeks. I look around my little house-on-wheels and think “gee, what do I want for my birthday?”

I know what I don’t want: more stuff! There’s no room for the Stuff we have right now! But, like everyone who has everything they possibly could need, there are still a few things that I want. In no particular order, I bring you a short, handy list of gifts and guidelines for someone who has no space for anything, or who is trying to live a simple life:

•  Make the world a better place. Make a donation in their honor to a charity they care about. Most importantly, though, make this donation over the phone and be extremely explicit in telling the person taking the donation information that you do not want the recipient to receive newsletters, solicitations, ads, or follow-up mailings. If possible, ask to receive the thank you card at your own address and forward it to the recipient. It’s not a good gift if it comes with 3 years of headaches and junk mail.
• Gift the gift of entertainment. Find out what kind of entertainment (be it books, music, movies, or TV) that the recipient enjoys, and give them a gift that is weightless or re-giftable. If they have an iPod and know how to use it, an audiobook download from audible.com is a great one for book lovers with no space.  Only give digital gifts to those who already know how to use them. If you have to spend 30 minutes explaining how to use it, it’s a bad gift.
• Share a legacy. Have a favorite family recipe? Share that with a friend. Have some funny stories from your grandparents? Write them down and give them to your folks. It’s all right to re-gift a family tradition.
• Enjoy some time together. This one’s only useful if you live nearby, but it’s pretty common and acceptable for friends to buy each other a round of drinks or coffee for birthdays. Watching your pennies? Bring a picnic lunch to your friend or host a double date at home. Time with friends reduces stress and increases lifespan. Time well spent leads to more time.
• Give a service. This is an old, old tip from Dear Abby, but it’s still somewhat true today. Now, while Dear Abby suggested gifts for older friends and family that included trips to the hairdresser, the fact is that some people might consider that to be a not-too-subtle “hint” about one’s hygiene. Instead, find out if there’s something your recipient wants or needs– a website, a blog, some writing, a logo, their yard weedwhacked, and offer to do it for them. The problem I’ve always had with this gift is that I love to give my loved ones my time– but only on my terms. So, I’ll happily set up a web site, then spend no time updating it, and of course, the recipient has no idea how to do so, either. Tailor your gift to what the recipient wants, not what you think they need.

Come to think of it, these are good tips for birthdays, holidays, and business proposals as well. I’ll have to keep that in mind this week as I spend some quality time drafting some quality proposals.

Last Fall, we had planned to go to Arizona to meet up with my dad and stepmom during their vacation, and visit Sedona and the Grand Canyon. We’d been to Sedona  in 1999 for our 1-year wedding anniversary, and were looking forward to a return visit.

I made reservations very early for September, but failed (in my way) to record them in any meaningful way. So the day after my reservation was supposed to start, I called the LoLo Mai Springs campground in a panic– we were about a week away from being able to get there, and they were very understanding and accommodating about changing the reservation to a date we would actually be able to make.

When we finally arrived at LoLo Mai, we were startled by what a long and windy and out-of-the-way path our directions told us to take to get there, considering there was a straight shot from a wider, non-windy highway just a mile up the road. But we pulled in and checked in. During checkin, I was amused by the presence of many animals in the office. What I was not amused by was the clerk’s inability to do simple math on a calculator. By the time we were checked in, I just let her overcharge me by $2 because I didn’t want her to make yet another mistake and this time come up with a $90 overcharge like she’d done before.

We went to the campsite and quickly learned that the satellite dish was not going to work– too many trees (they were brushing the top of the RV!) We were right next to the bathroom building, and I immediately saw that our side yard was being used as the pathway. Not cool.

We asked at the office about alternative sites, and they said they had none. We said “but you have wifi, right?” remembering the ad. “Yes, but the signal up at your site is broken.”

Uh, okay. That was probably not going to work for us. I had already tried using my cell phone with no luck– the signal strength was 0 and had been for about 3 miles before reaching the campground.  No satellite, no internet, and no phone mean no working!

We said we would have to think seriously about this. After conferring, John went down to the office to have them refund all but the first night’s charge (since we would be staying for the night). On his way back, he was startled by a family of skunks. It turns out their fondness for animals is not limited to the dogs and rats in the office. They feed several families of skunks and raccoons in a “habitat.”

We had a bit of culture shock at that one. After my meltdown, we went out to dinner and I lost my credit card– it fell right out of my pocket. We returned to the campground to ask at the office if anyone had turned it in. We had to wait at the office for someone to come back, and in the course of talking with them about it (and the fact that I couldn’t call out on my cell phone), I said that we would use the pay phone, which was at least up at the bathroom building next to our RV.

“Oh, that phone’s gone. There’s no phone there.”

I was really glad I was talking to someone with keys to the office, because she was at least able to let me use the office phone to call my bank and put my card on hold until I could call back with the complete information to cancel it.  I can imagine a scenario where I went back to the RV and found the phone gone, and no way at all to call and cancel my credit card that night. What a pain!

Understand: if we had been “trying to get away from it all,” LoLo Mai would have been an oasis of escape. As it was, we were trying to live our normal daily lives, just in a different place. We weren’t on vacation or retirement, so the disconnectedness of the park made it really unsuitable to our needs. They were also above-and-beyond understanding about our rapidly-changing travel plans, and did a great job of making it painless to escape their escape!

In the morning, we went scouting for a new campground and found an oversized parking lot across the highway from an Indian casino, called Distant Drums RV Resort. It had a pool and hot tub. It had wifi at the sites, but there were no trees to speak of, so satellite reception was exceptional.

It had some of the most beautiful desert sunsets I’ve ever seen. We would go out for a walk and just stand on the edge of the park, staring as the sky shifted through hues of gold and yellow and purple. It was sparse and surprisingly simple, given that it had the appearance of yet another overgrown parking lot.

It’s possible that Distant Drums is where I learned to love the desert. Certainly, it’s where I learned to love parking lot-style RV parks, where the park gives you the space to do what you need to do, the room to spread out just a little bit, while still enjoying your lifestyle.

Travel Details:

LoLoMai Campground
PO Box 3169, West Sedona, AZ
(928)634-4700
Distant Drums RV Resort
583 W. Middle Verde Rd., Camp Verde, AZ
(877) 577-5507

Remember the rat race? For a few years, my life consisted of waking up in the morning, meeting my husband at a coffee shop for a latte and muffin, then driving for an hour in challenging, frustrating Bay Area traffic, hoping that this would not be the day my car was totaled by some jerk juggling a coffee mug, cell phone, and electric razor while driving an enormous SUV or shiny pickup truck.

I would get to work and go into my cubicle. I am a very short person, and I can tell that cubicles were invented by tall people. Short people would never invent something with 5′6″ tall “walls” that only tall people can look over.

I worked in my cubicle, using a Windows computer (hate), until 5 or 6 at night, when I’d head out to the car and start the horrible drive home. Sometimes, the drive was easier. It was lighter during the holidays, and it was a lot lighter when I first started, when everyone had been laid off.

Today, I work from home. My home office is a small desk in the living room area of my RV. It’s less than 20 feet from my bed, and I can work from bed if I choose to. I can work from the picnic table outside if I really feel like it.

But I still work. From 8:30 in the morning until 3 or 5 at night, I’m at my computer, thinking about and doing work-related tasks. I might be writing a blog post, reading other blogs, writing a script, formatting a document– but I’m working. Monday to Thursday, I’m usually at work.

I like my life, and I love working from home. I work for myself as a freelancer, but I suspect I would be happy if an employer hired me, as long as they wanted to preserve my productive hours by letting me continue to work from home on the road. I know employers want to have employees present and viewable, but I suspect that comes from a mentality that needs to justify the existence of middle management, and one which neither trusts nor empowers employees. An organization that really trusts its employees to do right by the company and which is honest with itself and its purpose? That’s my kind of place!

[I promise, I’ll get around to talking about U.S. travel soon. Really.]