Monthly Archives: July 2015

Jul18

Book Review: H.R.H.

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[amazon template=image&asin=0440242045]I thought I would entertain you today with a book review I wrote in November 2011. The book being reviewed is H.R.H. by Danielle Steel.     

Oh boy. This book was bad.

I picked it up from the top of a trash can in a bus station. I was in a desperate situation. I had almost 24 hours more on the bus and nothing left to read. I didn’t have high hopes for this book, but I really, really, really needed something to help me pass the time. I’m not a big Danielle Steel fan, but I had to read something, so I was glad to find a free book.

The plot is weak. A sad, noble, unspoiled little rich girl princess (literally) can’t have the life of freedom she wants, but is allowed to volunteer in Africa with the Red Cross for a few months. In Africa, she meets a commoner she is not allowed to marry. In the last twenty (or less) pages of the book, tragedy strikes, allowing her to live happily ever after.

The writing is weak too. Ms. Steel must have been getting paid by the word, because there is a lot of repetition, many examples of the reader getting the same information in an only slightly different way.

May I give examples of two of the worst sentences I have ever read?

“The drinks were made by an African company, and tasted sickly sweet, but they drank them anyway, as it was hot and they were thirsty, although it was winter in East Africa, but the weather was warm.” I figure that sentence really consists of three sentences strung together with commas. Has this Steel woman never heard of a run-on sentence? Any of my high school English teachers would have failed a student for writing a sentence like that! The last clause, “although it was winter in East Africa, but the weather was warm” is so awkward that I cringe whenever I read it.

Here’s my second example: “Or how hard they worked, they all did, and he had, too.” All I can say to that sentence (?) is WOW.

I am amazed that someone actually paid money for this mindless piece of poorly written fluff. I’m grateful I found this book when I needed it, but I feel sorry for the person wasted her/his money on it

Jul16

The Fourth of July (Part 2)

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To read the first part of the story of my Fourth of July experiences, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/15/the-fourth-of-july/.

After thinking on site #4, I knew the only option I really had was to drive to the other campground and get the refund form from the other host. I wasn’t happy about that idea for several reasons.

#1 I was exhausted and didn’t want to drive again that day.

#2 I was exhausted and hungry and wanted to eat dinner and go to bed.

#3 I was exhausted and I didn’t want the other camp host to hold me hostage and talk my ear off (figuratively speaking on both counts).

#4 It was late in the evening, and I didn’t want to drive back to my campground in the dark.

#5 The rest of the party had arrived on site #9, and if I left, I’d have two cars to contend with when I returned and had to back my van into my campsite in front of God and everyone.

But I did my duty and drove down to the other campground.

The other host did not have the form I needed.

She dug through folders and boxes and bags, but didn’t find the form. She had what I had, a single page photocopy of the form with the sections to be filled out by someone other than the camp host crossed out. She decided what I needed to do was fill out both forms with the same information and have the camper write the reason for seeking the refund on the back of both sheets.

I took the page she had and drove back to my campground. It wasn’t dark yet, and for that I was grateful.

When I got to my campsite, I began maneuvering the van so I could back into my site. I could have pulled in nose first, but then I would have had to back out in the morning or—Heaven forbid—in the middle of the night if there had been an emergency.

There’s a stump on one edge of my campsite, and I didn’t want to hit it. I’m well aware that the stump is there, as I maneuver next to it several times a week. I knew I was close to it, but suddenly one guy from site #9 was on the side of my van “directing” me (and making sure I didn’t hit his car, I suppose), and the Eastern Block (or German or Russian or whatever) authoritarian was standing between my van and the water tank, waving his arms around. I was not amused.

However, when I got out of the van, I thanked them.

Before I could walk away, the authoritarian asswipe gestured at my van and said with contempt dripping from his words, What is this? A bus?

I wanted to kick him in his nuts and tell him to go fuck his mother, but instead I said very calmly, This is my home. Then I walked away.

Before I ate dinner, I went back to site #4 and completed the request for refund paperwork.

As I cooked my dinner, the children from site #9 crossed into and out of the meadow at the back of my site. I hate it when people cross my site—it’s so rude!—but since we all own the forest, I have no right to expect people to polite and take ten extra steps.

It was dark and late by the time I finished cleaning up from dinner. I was entirely exhausted by that time, but still had to listen to the children camped next to my site squeal and shriek and generally make noise until we all passed out.

I was up around 6am on the 4th, cleaning the restrooms and making sure nothing terrible had happened in the night. (I found no evidence of terribleness.)

I arrived at the parking lot at 9am, as instructed. I don’t remember anything noteworthy happening. The day is a blur in my memory–a lot of people and a lot of cars with nothing and no one standing out.

I did ask my supervisor about the folks on site #6 who were given a discount on a card the company I work for doesn’t honor. She told me I was going to have to ask them to pay the balance. She said anybody could enter any numbers and get a discount, so if people get a discount they don’t qualify for, I have to ask them to pay the difference.

So I did it. I explained the situation and asked them to pay the $22 they hadn’t been charged. And they very nicely paid the money. While I wrote the permit for the additional payment, I regaled them with stories of working at the parking lot. They laughed in all the right places, and I wished I could hang out with them for the rest of the evening.

There was one sad event of note on Sunday morning before I left for the parking lot. I heard the sounds of angry voices and some kind of scuffle coming from site #9. I looked up to see the authoritarian asswipe smacking the older boy on his head and upper body. The boy tried to run away, and the man chased him, grabbed him, and smacked him a few more times. Neither of them was speaking English, so I don’t know what words were passing between them. I don’t know if either of them knew I’d seen what happened.

I didn’t know what to do. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to yell at the asswipe and beat him with a stick. But I knew that would get me fired and probably thrown in jail, and it wouldn’t have helped the kid at all. I didn’t know how to intervene in a way that would have diffused the situation. It’s not like the asswipe and I had some sort of rapport. Even if I had been able to speak calmly, I don’t know what I would have said. I worried that if I intervened, the man would just take it out on  the kid later. I wondered if I should say something directly to the kid, but what? You dad is a mean idiot, but you won’t be little forever. Would that have been helpful in any way?

I didn’t know what to do, and I haven’t had any good ideas in the ensuing days. I’m haunted by the whole experience, and I think I really failed that kid.

The weekend did end on a (literal and figurative) sweet note. As I was about to pull out of my campsite and head to the parking lot, the two gay Australian guys walked up and offered me their leftover pink and white marshmallows. They told me thy had a “lovely” time, told me I’d been just “lovely.” They said they hoped to come back to the campground next summer, and they hoped they’d see me again.

If the 4th of July is the midpoint of summer, my time on the mountain is half over.

Jul15

The Fourth of July (Part 1)

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The Fourth of July turned out to be pretty low key after all. It was actually the third of July that stressed me out.

I arrived at the parking lot at nine in the morning, as instructed. The parking lot was mostly empty, and I got a spot for the van right in front. The lot was normal weekend busy, not absolute chaos busy.

I was expecting nine groups of campers, and when I returned to the campground, five groups had arrived. I started going from site to site, filling out permits and handing out car passes and the glossy pages on which the rules were printed.

The people at the first site were friendly and gave me no problems.

The group at the second site was a bunch of dudes, and their leader immediately began questioning me when I said they needed to pay $7 per night for the extra vehicle on their site. Here’s how it works: One car is included in the basic campsite fee, but each additional vehicle on the site costs an extra $7 for every day it’s there. The extra vehicle fee is explained on the reservations website, but I think most people don’t bother to read the details. They’re not pleased when I drop what they see as a surprise charge on them.

In any case, I collected the $14 for the extra vehicle on site #7, and I moved on, feeling a little flustered.

About that time, the people staying next to me on site #9 arrived. The universe has yet to send anyone I really want to hang out with to be my next door camping neighbor. These neighbors were a mother, a father, and two young sons. The father, a man in his mid-30s with an accent (German? Russian? Eastern European?) and a stern demeanor was their spokesman. I greeted him, and he immediately wanted to know if he could put his tent here, if he could park his car there. He tried to park his car right up on my van, but I told him it had to be on the other side of the wooden block separating site #9 from site #10. He said their friends would be arriving soon to share the campsite and where would they be able to park?

When I untangled myself from Mr. Authoritarian Father Figure, I went to check in the campers on site #6. They were a group of young, attractive gay men. (Especially attractive was one of the Australians who was J. Crew model gorgeous. Every time I looked at him, I thought, Put your eyes back in your head, bi girl!) As I filled out their permit, I realized they’d been given a 50% discount on their camping fee using a pas the company I work for doesn’t honor. When I went back to the van, I double checked my information, and sure enough, we don’t give discounts on that card. I had to go back over there and tell them I’d present their case to my supervisor, but they might end up owning an additional $22. Awkward! They were cool about it, which made me like them, AND they knew they owed for the extra vehicle, earning them bonus good camper points.

While I was checking in the guys on site #6, I saw the folks arrive on site #4 and set up their tent. I checked in the family on site #5 (mom, dad, and vocally bored preteen boy) with no problems, then went back to the van to drop off paperwork and pick up blank permits.

Before I could gather the blank permits and get out of the van, the woman from site #4 (young, pretty, wearing glasses and a light blue dress which would have made me think she was Amish if it hadn’t ended above her knees) was standing right outside my door. She said she’d seen the sign on the information board near the restrooms that says campsites cost $20 a night…I told her campsites are $2 a night more on holidays.

She said, Oh. Is this a holiday?

I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to figure out if she was from a country other than the United States of America. She had no discernable accent.

I said, Yes. It’s the 4th of July weekend.

She said, Oh. That’s a holiday?

I told her it is. I did not tell her it’s the biggest holiday of the summer season, the biggest holiday (ok, maybe second to Christmas) in the country in which we were standing. How could she not know that the 4th of July is a holiday? (Maybe she was Amish. Or a space alien.)

She said she’d been charged $57 for two nights on her campsite. I grabbed my reservation list and showed her that she (or more accurately the fellow she was with, in whose name the reservation had been made) had been charged $44 for two nights of camping. I suggested the additional charges might have been reservation fees. She asked if she’d been charged $13 in reservations fees. I explained I had no idea, since I don’t work for the company that makes reservations, and I don’t know their fee schedule. I suggested she look at her confirmation letter (which she had not printed) or call the reservation company when she had cell phone service.

The she told me something had come up, and she and the guy wouldn’t stay the second night of their reservation. She asked if they could get a refund on the night they wouldn’t be staying and if there was a cancellation fee involved. I told her I didn’t know, since I don’t work for the reservation company. I told her again she should look to her confirmation letter for that information.

I told her I’d be at her campsite soon to check her in, and I’d bring with me the form she needed to fill out to request a refund on a reservation. Of course, when I looked through my paperwork, I saw that I didn’t actually have that form. I wanted to get the form from the camp host in the campground next to the parking lot when I went to work down there the next morning, but the woman said they’d be leaving early the next day. I mulled over the situation while I checked in in the folks on sites #2 and #3.

Those two sites were taken by one party of three older Asian couples. One of the sites had only paid 50% of the normal camping fee because the reservation had been made using a Golden Age card. When a Golden Age or Golden Access (GA) card is used on a reservation to get a discount, the camper has to show the card to me. Since the card only provides a discount to a person actually camping on the site, I have to be sure the cardholder (and the card s/he is holding) are indeed on the site. I had a moment of worry when the man half of the couple couldn’t find his GA card in his wallet. I knew if he couldn’t produce the card, I was going to have to ask him to pay the other half of the camping fee, and I knew that was going to be a pain in the ass. His wife saved the day by producing her GA card, so all was well, especially since the man half of one of the other couples paid their extra vehicle fee with no complaint.

(To be continued…here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/16/fourth-of-july-part-2/.)

Jul14

Clusterf*%k

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When I arrived for work at the parking lot at 11am on the Saturday before Independence Day Weekend, it was already a clusterfuck.

All of the front parking spots were taken. There was a crowd of people milling around my co-worker. Some of the people in the crowd were standing in the roadway and wouldn’t move so I could drive the van through. I had to honk my horn to get them out of the road.

As I slowly drove around the parking lot loop, I didn’t see a single empty parking space. I did, however, see a tent set up in one of the picnic areas. As I tried to decide if I should stop the van in the roadway to talk to the person I could see standing in the tent, an unattended dog trailing its leash trotted across the street in front of me. I decided I did need to find the dog’s person, so I put the van in park and left it right where it was as I went after the dog.

The dog trotted toward the tent, and I called out Is this your dog?

A voice behind me said it was his dog and apologized for letting it get away from him.

As he reached for the dog’s leash, I took the opportunity to call out to the woman in the tent, Camping is not allowed here.

She screeched, We’re leaving! We’re leaving! We didn’t know!

The man behind me echoed her, telling me they didn’t know they couldn’t camp there. That’s when I realized the man and the dog belonged to the woman and the tent.

If the couple had bothered to read the signs near the self-pay station (which I suspect they had conveniently overlooked), they’d have seen the one which reads, “No overnight camping.”

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This is the board near the entrance with the informational signs, including “No overnight camping.”

IMG_3210I got back in my van and continued to look for a parking place. There was nothing. Some people had parked on the edge of the road, just barely leaving space for me to drive the van through. When I tried to tell them it wasn’t such a great idea to park there, they haughtily told me there was plenty of space for other vehicles to pass. I shrugged and hoped they wouldn’t come crying to me if their car was scraped or crunched by a giant truck or massive RV. No one did come crying to me, so everything must have turned out OK.

As I slowly made my way back to the beginning of the loop, I heard a loud cracking noise. I thought someone was shooting off fireworks or maybe firing a gun. I didn’t even try to find out what was going on, but my co-worker did. He told me later he’d heard the noise too and also thought it was fireworks or a gun. He went looking and found a man standing on one of the big boulders in the parking lot, repeatedly cracking a bullwhip. I didn’t think there were any rules against such an activity, but our supervisor told us later it’s considered a projectile and there is a rule against it.

When I got tot he front of the parking lot, I jumped out of my van and told my co-worker there was no place for me to park. I told him I’d put the van in the overflow parking at the nearby campground, then walk back to the main parking lot. He was preternaturally calm in the face of the chaos.

Turns out there was no room in the overflow parking at the campground, and I had to leave my van in the second overflow parking area.

When I got back to the main parking area, my co-worker and I started warning people who drove in that the parking lot probably couldn’t accommodate them, but they could pay us the $5 parking fee on their way to the trail  if they did find a spot. I also warned people not to park anywhere “stupid.”

I found out my co-worker saw the people in the tent when he got to work and had already told them they couldn’t camp there. One thing I still don’t understand is why the tent was up when I arrived at 11am if my co-worker told them no camping when he arrived at 8am. Even if he didn’t talk to them until 9am, it shouldn’t take two hours to take down a tent and pack up a campsite that had been occupied for less than 24 hours.

It seemed like I’d been at work for a long time–talking to people in cars, writing day passes, and collecting fees from people who had found spots to park–when an older lady told me there was a smoking, smouldering campfire near one of the picnic tables. Can you guess which picnic area the campfire was in? Yep, the one where there had earlier been a tent.

I told my co-worker what the woman had told me and said if he’d go check on the fire, I’d take care of the front.

He briskly walked away and quickly returned. The illegitimate campers had gathered rocks and used them to construct a fire ring to contain their illegal fire. However, in their haste to leave, they’d left what remained of their fire smouldering. I don’t think there were any flames, but there was smoke, and presumably embers, which could have been blown away and started a wildfire.

My co-worker grabbed his large Gatorade bottle filled with his beverage of choice and took it to put out the fire. He said when he poured the liquid onto the remains of the fire, there was hissing and more smoke, and the water boiled and bubbled.

He decided to hop on his dirt bike and ride down to the campground to get water out of their tank. He wanted to be sure the fire was “dead out” (as the Forest Service signs say).

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While he went to get more water, cars continued to enter the parking lot.

While I was trying to collect fees and write day passes, a woman approached me and asked where she could go hiking.

I am not a hiker. I enjoy walking on flat ground for about a mile, but the thought of a long, strenuous hike does not excite me. (Once in Utah, friends convinced me to go on a “little hike” with them. We ended up temporarily lost and very hot, and I had a head cold. When one of the friends commented, oh well, none of us are miserable, I raised my hand and declared that indeed, I was miserable.) Because I don’t like to hike, I haven’t really made it a priority to find out where to hike. I figure people who like to hike should do their research before they come out here or get information at a ranger station or buy a mp or find someone who likes to hike to talk to.

I made two hike suggestions to the woman; she’d already done both of them. Since that was the entirety of my hiking information, I hoped the woman would go away, but she did not.  Since I hadn’t  been able to answer her questions, I pulled out a topographical map of the area for her to look at. Of course, she couldn’t just look at the map and make some decisions for herself. She had to ask me if the little tree on the map was a symbol for a sequoia  grove. (After consulting the map key, I said it was.) Then she wanted to know how far it was from this place to that place. (I told her she should find the map’s distance key and consult it.) In between her questions (to which she could have found her own answers), I was hustling back and forth from cars to her. I’m all for helping tourists, but I don’t feel I’m responsible for reading a map for them and telling them which hikes are best when I’ve never been on any of the hikes. (You can bet I wanted to tell the woman to take a hike, but that would have been really rude.)

While I was still trying to satisfy the woman so she’d leave me alone, my co-worker zoomed back into the parking area and went to finish quenching the fire. It occurred to me that while we were working quite literally to put out a fire and keep things in the parking area running smoothly,this woman was insisting I give her information I didn’t even know. I was relieved when she was finally satisfied enough to walk away.

Jul12

Another Adventure in Cleanliness

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I’d decided to go to Bigger Babylon on my day off to shop at Trader Joe’s. (I especially like their precooked brown rice.  For $1.69, you get a couple of servings. Sure, I could buy raw brown rice cheaper, but by the time I used fuel to cook it for 45 minutes, I don’t think I’d be saving much–if any–money.)

I checked for truck stops in Bigger Babylon and discovered there was a Flying J with showers and public laundry facilities. Flying J is my favorite of the truck stop brands, so I was happy to find one.

I arrived around eight o’clock on a Monday night. The first thing I did was look for the laundry facilities. The three washers and six dryers were tucked in a narrow hallway between the truckers’ lounge (which consisted of about a dozen padded, possibly comfy chairs and a flat screen television mounted high up on the wall) and the showers.

As I looked across the truckers’ lounge, I noticed a woman sitting in the back row of chairs. Lone women lingering at truck stops are rare enough to be noticeable. Of course, there are women truckers and the wives of truckers who ride along, but this woman had a certain look about her. Her short blond hair was slicked back. She was wearing all black, and although she was a big woman, her top was sleeveless and strapless, showing off a large tattoo on her upper chest. (I think the tattoo was a word, a name perhaps, but I didn’t let my eyes linger on it long enough to read it.) She was wearing a “gold” choker made up of large, rectangular links. But really though, it was the shoes that gave her away. No trucker or trucker’s wife would be wearing shoes like those at the Flying J. They were black with high, high heels. She was sitting with one knee crossed over the other, dangling one of those ridiculous shoes off the end of her toes. If we’d been in a strip club, I’d have thought of them as stripper shoes, but since we were in a truck stop, all I could think was HOOKER!

I’ve been in a lot of truck stops all over the United States of America, and I have never before looked at a woman in one of them and so clearly thought HOOKER. (I’ve heard that prostitutes that work truck stops are referred to as “lot lizards.” See Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lot+lizard) I’m not scandalized by sex workers and don’t think it’s necessarily morally wrong to buy or sell sex, but this woman didn’t look particularly enpowered or even happy. She looked really sad. What could be sadder than a truck stop hooker sitting in the truckers’ lounge and getting no attention? What career choices does a lady have once she has failed as a truck stop hooker?

I walked through the truckers’ lounge, trying not to give off any vibes that would attract attention, making eye contact with no one. I dumped some detergent in two of the washers and loaded in my clothes. There was no change machine in the laundry area, so I had to walk back through the lounge and to the front counter registers to get quarters. Each washer cost $2.25 a load, so I put in the quarters and let the machines get to work.

It was so hot outside and especially in my van, that I just stayed inside and texted friends while waiting for my clothes to be ready for the dryer. The dryers also cost $2.25 each. A sign on one of them said a cycle lasted 45 minutes. Although the dryer did run for a really long time, my clothes were still disappointingly damp when the cycle ended. I was not going to pay another $2.25 or hang around in there any longer, so I just folded my clothes and shoved them in my tote bags, knowing that the desert heat would dry everything. Unfortunately, my work shirts didn’t look clean, and in fact maybe looked worse than they did before going through the wash. I won’t do laundry there again.

After a hot and mostly sleepless night in the van, I went inside before 6am and paid $12 for a shower. After waiting no more than fifteen minutes, my shower customer number (69) was called, and the recorded computer man directed me to shower 2. For a moment I was confused because the door was closed, and I hadn’t been given a key. Then I realized that I had to enter the PIN on my receipt into the keypad next to the door. After putting in the code, the green light lit up, and I was in. Like the Love’s shower I reported on before, this one was impeccably clean. No mold. No mildew. No dirt. And the door had a deadbolt I secured from the inside.

Although I have no complaints about my shower at this Flying J, I won’t go out of my way to do it again.

To read more about how I stay clean while living in my van, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/17/adventures-in-cleanliness/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/18/more-adventures-in-cleanliness/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/09/adventures-in-cleanliness-revisited/.

Jul11

Restroom Confusion

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I’ve been promoted to driving the company truck and picking up trash at the nearby group campground and at the parking lot on the days off of the co-worker who is normally responsible for trash detail.

The other day I was getting the trash from the two cans near the restrooms in the parking lot. A man and a woman approached the doors to the restrooms. The man had on a ball cap and a t-shirt and pants of some kind. He was nondescript. The woman I can best describe as citified. If she wasn’t from L.A., she wanted to be. She was one of those women who’s worked so hard to look like Western society’s ideal of a woman that she looks like a drag queen. Or maybe she was a drag queen.

The restrooms in the parking lot do not segregate genders. There’s not a women’s restroom and a men’s restroom. There are two restrooms, both accessible for folks with disabilities and both available to men or women or any other gender variety. The signs have those humanoid figures representing males and females one finds on restrooms. Each restroom displays both the “male” and the “female” humanoid symbols.

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This is the type of sign on the restrooms in the parking lot. (Photo by me.)

The citified woman stood in front of the restrooms and repeated I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

She said something else (that I now don’t remember) which made me realize she didn’t understand the signs and therefore didn’t know which restroom to use.

I piped up helpfully, They’re unisex.

“Unisex” did not seem to be in her vocabulary.

Then the man reached out and tried the handle on the restroom door nearest to him. It did not open.

It’s locked, he told the woman, seemingly perplexed.

That’s probably because someone is in there, I said, still trying to be helpful. You should knock to find out if someone is in there.

Both of them seemed to be ignoring me.

Then the woman tentatively tried to open the other door.

You should knock, I told her before giving up on trying to be helpful.

The woman managed to open the door. She went into the restroom, and the door closed behind her. She immediately came back outside, shaking her head. She said something quietly to the man, and I could tell she was disgusted, but whether by the bad smell or the fact that the toilet was vault style and not a flusher, I don’t know.

At that point I’d collected the trash, so I got in the truck and drove away.

Sometimes I wonder if what appears to be humans acting strangely aren’t actually space aliens confused by our human ways. How  could a human someone not directly arrived from a developing nation have never encountered a unisex restroom? Target stores have unisex restrooms. Even Wal-Marts have unisex restrooms. And why didn’t the man know to knock on the door in order to find out if it was locked because it was in use? Doesn’t everyone know to knock on a locked restroom door?

Space aliens I tell you.

Jul10

Water

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There’s no running water in my campground. There’s no water at the trail head parking lot. There’s no running water at the campground next to the parking lot or at the campground twenty miles up the road. There’s not water on this mountain.

I buy my own drinking water when I go to civilization; I pay thirty cents a gallon from a dispenser in front of a grocery store. There’s a big tank of water on my campsite. The company I work for trucks in that water from campgrounds along the river. It’s safe to drink and I am allowed to drink it, but I don’t like the taste, so I only use it for cleaning and putting out campfires.

Tourists are often shocked when I say there’s no water on the mountain.

Many campers aren’t too surprised that there is no water at the campground. It’s not so uncommon for a remote campground to have no potable water. However, almost everyone who visits or stays at my campground wants to know about the tank.What’s in it? I tell them it’s water for cleaning toilets and putting out fires. Then they want to know if they can use some, even just to wash their hands. I have to tell them no. It’s a complicated legal situation when water is provided to the general public, so I’m not allowed to share. Besides, if I let one group have a little to wash their hands, another group will want some to wash their dishes, and pretty soon I’d have none for cleaning toilets and putting out fires.

People at the trail head often seem flabbergasted when we can’t provide them with water.

One day in the parking lot, a woman and her adult daughter were standing a few feet from me. I overheard part of their conversation.

The mother said to the daughter, something something restroom?

The daughter said, not unless something something.

The mother said, well, I’m sure something something.

The mother looked over at me and asked if we had a water faucet. I said, no ma’am.

She said they just needed to wash their hands.

I said, No ma’am. There’s no water here. There’s no water at the campgrounds in the area.

She looked at me with a confused, pained expression on her face. She clearly did not understand how we could not provide for her liquid needs. She looked at me as if I were speaking in a foreign language. Or lying. Or lying in a foreign language.

One day as I was coming out of the parking lot restroom, a man asked me where the water fountain was. I said we didn’t have one, that there was no water. He asked if there was a faucet where he could fill his water bottle. I told him no, repeated that we had no water in the parking lot. He asked if he could get water at the campground next door. I told him the campground had no water. I told him there was no water on the mountain. He said, interesting, but he didn’t seem to believe me. I think he thought I was lying just to be rude.

My co-worker told me on a recent weekend morning a woman rode up to the parking lot on a bicycle. He said she looked tired, hot, and thirsty. She asked him for water. He told her there was not water available in the area. She went from car to car asking people for water. Someone finally gave her two bottles.

Sometimes when people ask me where they can get water, I tell them they can drive fifteen miles to the nearest general store and buy drinking water there. The way folks look at me, I know they’re thinking, you’ve got to be kidding.

I get it. Until I started living in the rural Southwest, it never occurred to me that Americans in the 21st century lived without running water. I thought everyone got their water right from the tap. Turns out it doesn’t always work that way. Lots of people have to haul water for drinking and bathing and washing dishes.

Sometimes when tourists ask about water here, I tell them how once there was water on the mountain, but now there’s not. Weird, isn’t it, I ask them, that one day there could be water and the next day nothing?

It’s a concept city people really should think on.

Jul9

Adventures in Cleanliness Revisited

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I was in Babylon, sitting in my van in front of a thrift store, talking to the Jewelry Lady. I was telling her about my shower (mis)adventures and complaining about how hot it was in the valley. I said I needed to find a park so I could sit in the shade of a tree while I talked on the phone.

The Jewelry Lady asked if the town had a pool. I said I didn’t know, but I’d check into it. Pools have locker rooms and locker rooms have showers. Right?

When I got on the internet, I searched for information about the town pool. Yes, there was one. Yes, it was open this very evening. Admission price for adults: $2.

I called the pool to check on the shower situation. Yes, the woman on the phone told me, there were locker rooms, although there were no lockers in the locker rooms. And yes, there were showers in the locker rooms.

I was so excited. The $2 admission fee was approximately 1/6 of what I’d pay for a shower at the Love’s and I wouldn’t have to drive the 40 mile round trip out of my way. With those kind of savings, I could afford to take another shower the next afternoon when the pool opened again.

I packed a tote bag (soap, shampoo, washcloth, towel, razor, clean underwear, deodorant, clean shirt and skirt, and bathing suit, in the event I decided to get into the pool) and put on my purple plastic shower shoes.

I arrived at the pool about half an hour after it opened. The place was packed. There were little kids, teenagers, and adults filling the water. There were no poolside chairs, but people (mostly adults) were sitting around the pool, up against the fence surrounding it. I smelled the chemical tang of chlorine and heard the splashes, squeals, and laughter that seem to accompany all public pools.

I also noticed that I was quite possibly the only person of non-Latino/a heritage in the place. Not that it mattered to me one way or another, but I was the only only white girl I saw.

I stood in line, paid my $2, signed the waiver.

I walked through the entrance marked both “girls” and “women,” entered the locker room. Straight ahead were three or four toilet stalls. In the middle of the room were benches. To my left, there they were, the showers.

There were four shower heads mounted on the back wall, no walls of any sort between them. No curtains. No walls. No stalls.

As I stood there awkwardly, contemplating my situation, people (mostly little girls) were in and out of the locker room. Some of them decided to follow the order on the sign directing folks to shower before swimming. They turned on the water and were immediately squealing about how cold the water was. Of course. Showers meant to provide a rinse before one jumped into the pool on a summer day were not going to have hot water.

Maybe I could take a cold shower behind a curtain or door. Maybe I could take a hot shower out in the open with my excruciatingly white ass on display. But a cold shower out in front of God and everyone? Forget it.

I was soon on the road to the Love’s.

To read more about how I stay clean while living in my van, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/17/adventures-in-cleanliness/, here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/18/more-adventures-in-cleanliness/, and here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/07/12/another-adventure-in-cleanliness/.

Jul8

He Was Just…Odd

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The other morning a family came off the trail. I believe they were a father, a mother, and a young adult daughter. I have no recollection of what the man looked like. Both women were average size; both were pale and freckled; and both had bangs and long, straight hair down nearly to their waists. On second thought, they could have been sisters, but I feel confident they were related.

They approached me and had some questions I couldn’t answer, things like which tree on the trail was the tallest and which one was the biggest around. That information is not included in the brochure we give visitors, so I sure as hell don’t know.

As their questioning ended, my co-worker returned from whatever he’d been doing, and the older woman said, I just wanted to let you know…We saw a man on the trail, and he was just…odd.

My co-worker and I looked at her with great interest. An odd man on the trail? Such a situation could add some excitement to our day.

I told him good morning…,she trailed off, not telling us if he had responded by ignoring her or telling her to go fuck her mother or in some way between the two extremes.

My co-worker and I waited for her to describe some odd behavior.

He had grey hair in a ponytail and a beard, and he was wearing a white shirt, she went on (un)helpfully.

Maybe he had come from the campground and was just out for a morning walk, she speculated, still not explaining what she found so odd about the guy.

Then the man (husband? father? brother-in-law?) with the women said that as the guy walked over the bridge, he had hit on the railings.

This behavior did not strike me as odd. Unusual perhaps, but not really odd. There was no report that the man was talking to himself or invisible others. They didn’t say he was fighting invisible monsters/mobsters/dragons/aliens. They didn’t complain that the man was exposing his genitals. What was so odd about him?

We just wanted to let you know…He was just…odd.

Had these people never been to a city, never seen any real oddness?

They certainly didn’t realize that my co-worker and I are probably two of the oddest characters they’ve ever met. We’ve just learned to hide it pretty well during short, public encounters.

I spent the rest of the day hoping the odd man would emerge from the trees so I could meet him, but I never noticed anyone fitting his description.