Travels with Charley

October 21, 2013

No More Sleeping Around!

IMG_2444My wanderlust is almost shameful. I desire nothing less than to try every town on the map, and Colby doesn’t mind too much, so long as I feed him wherever we go, and so far I always have.

Here is a list of places I’ve slept since Sept. 8: St. Johnsville, NY; Buffalo, NY—Motel 6, Silo City, Best Western; Allegheny National Forest; Oil Creek, Pa., Family Campground; Washington, Pa., KOA; Monroeville (Pittsburgh) Holiday Inn; Akron, Ohio; Rockford, Ill., Comfort Inn, Candlewood Suites; Mark Twain Caves Campground, Hannibal, Mo.; Columbia, Mo., in a real house; Hickory Haven Campground, Keokuk, Iowa; Milwaukee; NYC; Utica, N.Y.; back to NYC; back to Milwaukee; Lasalle, Ill.; Sullivan, Ill.

This reminds me of learning that Magic Johnson had slept with more than a thousand women; I always wondered how many days or years he spread that across. I mean, in 20 years, a tally of 1,000 women is not quite so epic for a guy who is clearly not shy. But fitting 1,000 into one highly active year? That would be madness.

A road trip can feel a little chaotic like that and it is time, I think, to consider a new strategy of campsite fidelity. Monog-campy.  How unlike the amped-up dash of Kerouac, moving the same way he typed—one long, taped-together sheet of paper threading through the typewriter, letting the words roll on and on like the road he traveled down with his stimulant-fueled consorts.

But let’s be real human beings for a moment. Remember: Each time Scampers such as  Colby and I move, it involves four basic steps:

  1. selecting a new destination, which means poring over maps and checking event calendars online and reading the reviews of campgrounds, plotting a course, making a reservation…
  2. Breaking down camp and hitching up the trailer, which I’m getting pretty good at but which still takes me at least five tries before the ball lines up right under the hitch (I’ve learned that the scamp is light enough for me to pull or shove it the final inch, though),
  3. Getting to the new place, and
  4. Setting up camp again.

I have decided to set up camp where I am for awhile, detach the trailer, and dash out for some day trips. It will be easier. And truthfully, it would be better for Colby, who is a creature of routines, and likes to feel grounded, I think. Every time I start to pack the car again, the look on his fuzzy face says, “really?”

I shouldn’t expose the boy to my geographic infidelities. We will sit. Stay.

Scamp bathroom
September 20, 2013

Buy a Scamp, see the world

The Scamp

This is my trailer.

kitchen

My galley kitchen

I decided that I wanted to travel with Colby in the simplest manner possible, and not in some sort of monster truck. I did my homework. Steinbeck traveled with Charley in an early version of the RV–a camper affixed to a truck body. He named it Rossinante.

Fifty-three years later, it is mind boggling how much more there is to choose from: Fiberglass campers, aluminum campers, travel trailers, mobile homes, fifth-wheels, truck-bed set-ins, pop ups. I knew I wanted to be surrounded by something solid, for safety. And I knew I wanted to be able to untether my car, so that when I parked somewhere I could leave the trailer and go explore.

I searched online for deals. There are some fantastic little trailers out there. You can check out fiberglass trailers on the Web and read about some of the ones for sale. I really dug this one little Boler camper that I saw in New Jersey–I took my mom and dad with me to look, because I am mildly paranoid about going alone to visit people I meet on the internet. (Though how my parents, in their 80s, were going to help me if I landed in a nest of marauding cannibals is another matter.) This little Boler was awesome; it had been redone with a checkerboard floor and painted white and aqua, very retro looking.

But the truth is, I needed more than cute. I needed functional. I needed an actual bathroom, not a port-o-pot, and I needed everything in it to work. Another couple was there to see the Boler at the same time as me; they were about 15 years younger, they were more the type for buying something that would not quite work so that, when they get to be my age, they can appreciate the need to do the sensible thing. In any case, my search landed me in Thetford, Vt., where I purchased a 13-foot Scamp trailer that was just a year old from a guy named Warren.

Now, what was especially awesome about this purchase was that Warren came down on his price because he liked my project and was willing to barter. He is working on a website for people who give up drinking. He knocked off a thousand dollars so long as I agreed to provide four short profiles for his page. As of today, I have found two people I know who have given up booze and neither have consented to an interview–so if you are a sober person, preferably one who is famous, please contact me.

I knew I’d buy that Scamp even before I saw it. The day Suzanne and I went to look, during the tour a horrible sulfur smell escaped from somewhere deep inside the thing, but, it might have been Warren, I thought, who was a very nice, energetic, well-groomed guy but, hey, maybe he stank? Or it may have been coming from the Scamp fridge…because we found two Power bars in there growing mold… but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was my trailer.

I returned to pull it home, and spent a few hours dashing around to Walmart and U-haul and AutoZone, looking for an adapter for the trailer hitch, but, that just cemented my strange bond to Warren, who I like very much and feel connected to; he got this Scamp just a year ago as if he had been saving it for me. It is not easy to find a used Scamp, especially a newer one with a bathroom in it (instead of extra beds). Warren had used it, but, he and his wife had a baby and that meant they weren’t likely to use it again. And so in late August, adapter in place, money exchanged, promise to write about sober people made, I took my trailer home.

I am not as bookish as Steinbeck, I suppose, or maybe it’s just that our culture has changed so much, exchanged its high brows for lower ones. In any case, I christened the machine The Dog House.  I was ready to put me and my dog in it and hit the road.

September 17, 2013

Reasons for a Road Trip

Like Steinbeck, when he famously traveled the country with his dog Charley, my dog Colby and I set out on a trip. But also like Steinbeck, we quickly found that we needed to take care of a few things first. Steinbeck wrote, in “Travels With Charley,” that when the travel bug bites and “a man” (it was 1961) wants to hit the road, “the victim must find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.” Of course, someone imbued with the degree of wanderlust that Steinbeck and Charley and Colby and me are imbued with does not really need to put the reason into words, it’s just a thing that we long to do and given any opportunity, we will do it. But I have one good word to suffice: Sabbatical. I’ve been given a year of my life to pursue a few dreams with the security of knowing my job awaits when I return.

Earlier versions of my adventures did not end so well, because when I tried this before, within about a day of being alone on the road I was lonely, scared, and confused. In 1989 my friend known as Madeline told me at the Bozeman, Montana, airport as she stepped onto the tarmac to leave me there, “You stay on the road as long as you can.” Go have adventures, go see the world, go find whatever the hell you’re trying to find that is making you too crazy to be with. But I was 24, and I did not have a dog, and I had not made myself a map and did not have a purpose and did not have a job waiting for me anywhere. In short, I was lost. There is a certain amount of being lost that is crucial to a road trip, but when it is out of proportion, the journey is doomed. And so in 1989, the day after Madeline left, I turned tail and started for home, which was New Jersey.

It is now–and I really can’t believe this–about 24 years later. I am twice the age I was when I seemed to have nothing but time. And for the first time in my life I really do have time, and along with that I have just enough money, and I have spent the past 24 years learning how to use it–the time, I mean; I try not to use the money too much. The purpose of my sabbatical is to explore America’s industrial ruins–cities that are past their glory days, and struggling to retain their identity, or remake it. (Golly; does that sound a little bit like a metaphor for me? Well, read on. We’ll see.) I need to learn to use the internet and social media as a journalist, which required having a focus, and dying cities is the subject I picked. Just is. Maybe that metaphor thing was at play in my mind (words of wisdom returned to me from the student I gave them to a couple years ago: “Does your narrator ‘want’ something? Of course she does…) But in any case, armed with this mission and inspired by Steinbeck (and a million thanks to Gail Howard, for handing me the book on CD before I left for a drive back in June), I decided to visit those places in one big, long swoop, in a trailer, with my dog at my side, to combine a personal adventure with that professional one.

Here are a few tips if you are thinking of embarking on a similar adventure:

  • Have a partner who is also a writer, and who will support you 100%–thank you, Suzanne Parker.
  • Be sure to thank the rest of your family because they helped, I’m sure; thanks, mom and pop.
  • Dogs make good companions, but any pet will do. A horse might come in handy.
  • Have a good reason to go, but be willing to change it once you get started; more on that later.
  • Be absolutely sure that you are fully prepared…because without planning, you’ll probably fail.