Travels With LD
Hoosic Reservoir, Cheshire MA, August 21, 2010
On November 15, 2007 I moved into an old Lazy Daze motorhome and left Red Rock on my first extended journey to the Southwest to spend the winter in warmer climes and to try my hand at this fulltiming thing as a way to explore this beautiful country in my retirement.
It turns out I love this life more than I could have imagined and now can't imagine living in a so-called sticks and bricks house again.
Fulltiming is central to my life now.
Fulltiming refers to living full time in a motorhome, whether parked in one place or on the move. Some folks move seasonally. Some travel regularly. Some seldom move at all. Early on I traveled a lot but now I find myself moving more or less seasonally between places I've grown fond of, while cherishing the traveling I do between stops.
Genesis of an idea
The seed of the idea of living a mobile lifestyle was planted back in the late '80s when my cabinetmaking business went bust and I started riding around the country on my old 1974 BMW R90/6 motorcycle, licking my wounds and thinking about what to do next.
On one of those trips I met a couple at Arches National Park traveling in a small motorhome and started asking questions. They lived full time in a larger motorhome in Arizona and traveled in this smaller one. They were very enthusiastic about the full time RV lifestyle and urged me to try it. The seed planted, I spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how I could make that happen.
No workable plan came to mind; there was too much going on back home and I just wasn't ready. But the seed germinated and the sprout grew slowly for years while I continued with the motorcycling and became infatuated with the west.
Out of the trees
At some point I remember beginning to say how it felt so great on those motorcycle trips when I crossed the Mississippi River and got "out of the trees" and into the open country of the western plains and mountains. It fed my soul. I couldn't explain it and still can't but the feeling was visceral and deep and I was determined to live a mobile lifestyle and travel the west. Somehow, someday.
Time passed, life went on, and the dream flourished
Finally early in this century I was ready to start moving toward the dream but I had no clear idea how to proceed. I lost interest in my work and knew it would soon be time for a change. This could be the opportunity to launch the dream. I was developing an interest in making forged wire jewelry, among other things, and jewelry was something I could pursue in a small space with very little equipment. Maybe there was a way to make it work.
In 2004 I stumbled on an old Starcraft truck camper I thought I might rebuild into a mobile jewelry studio. That idea quickly proved impractical and fizzled so I abandoned the project and moved on to the next idea, converting an old 1969 Airstream Tradewind trailer I found. That idea fizzled too when I concluded it needed too much work to be practical.
By then I was beginning to think a self- contained RV would be a better choice and research led me to Class C's and eventually to a 1992 Lazy Daze Mid Bath, now my home since November 15th, 2007.
Journal
I set up a Journal to record this ongoing adventure, beginning the day I left on this long adventure on November 15th, 2007.
Night Camps
Traveling and living full time in my Lazy Daze RV for a couple of years, here's where I've made my night camps.
Tags: RV Information
When Hope Dies
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no.