Monthly Archives: July 2016

Jul19

Infinity Scarf

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I’ve been making hats from yarn for almost two years. I bought one of those round loom sets at a thrift store and taught myself to make hats by reading the instructions that came with the kit, making a lot of mistakes, and practicing, practicing, practicing. I sell some of the hats I make and give some of them as gifts. My favorite aspect of making hats is playing with color. I like using bright, especially variegated yarn.

Here are some of the hats I’ve made:

This blue and white hat has a finished edge. The yarn is very thick. This will be a warm, warm hat.

This large blue and white hat has a finished edge. The yarn is very thick and should keep a head very, very warm. It costs $13, including shipping.

 

This large hat has an unfinished edge. It is quite purple, and costs $13, including postage.

This large hat has an unfinished edge. It is quite purple, and costs $13, including postage.

These large green and blue hats cost $13 each, including shipping. The one on the upper right has a finished edge. The other two have rolled edges.

These large green and blue hats cost $13 each, including shipping. The one on the upper right has a finished edge. The other two have rolled edges.

 

These large hats for are made from 100% wool. They cost $20, including postage. They all have rolled edges.

These large hats for are made from 100% wool. They cost $20, including postage. They all have rolled edges.

(You can see all of the hats I have for sale at http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/hats-ive-made-for-sale/.)

When I was on Facebook, someone in a group I was in mentioned making infinity scarves with her round loom. I asked her how she used the loom to make infinity scarves, and she directed me to http://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-knit-an-infinity-scarf-on-a-loom/. Again, I learned how to do the craft project by reading the instructions, making some mistakes, and practicing, practicing, practicing.

The first infinity scarf I made was a birthday present for a friend.

Here’s a photo showing what the scarf looked like shortly after I began work on it.

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Here’s another photo showing the scarf a bit later in the process:

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It takes a lot of time and yarn to make an infinity scarf. I’d have to charge a lot of money for these scarves if I sold them.

Here’s a photo of the completed project:

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I’m in the process of making a second infinity scarf as a gift for another friend, but it’s been slow going. The scarves don’t offer the quick gratification that hats offer and feel more like work than fun, another reason I’ll probably never sell one.

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I took all of the photos in this post.

 

Jul18

I Didn’t Like It

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The rush of midday in the parking lot had mellowed out into a slow afternoon. I was sitting in my chair, reading, when I heard a little voice to my right say, Excuse me.

I looked over. A boy child about six years old was standing there. I said, Yes? or maybe just looked at him expectantly. He made some word sounds that my ears heard as gibberish.

His mother-type person was walking far to my left. She understood what the boy child said, or thought she did.

What did you just say? the large woman in capri pants and tank top bellowed. Get over here right now!

The boy child was at her side immediately, and I heard him say feebly, It was a joke.

I don’t think it was very funny! she told him.

By the way the woman reacted, I wondered if the cherubic tween had suggested I fuck my grandmother or said something something rude about my appearance.

You just saw some amazing things! the mother-type person told the boy child, then went on to call him something along the lines of ungrateful or unappreciative.

He tried to tell her again that he’d only been joking, but she told him she didn’t want to hear another word our of his mouth.

Whatever he’d said to me sure had made that woman angry.

Ten minutes later, a giant motor home stopped on the roadway leading to the exit. If there had been any traffic, the motor home would have blocked it. I recognized the driver from when he pulled in. I’d told him to park before he paid me because I didn’t know if he’d find a spot for the behemoth he was driving. I couldn’t remember if he’d paid me. Maybe he had stopped there in order to hand over the parking fee.

I walked over to the motor home and asked the driver if I’d collected the parking fee from him. He said I had. Then he said, since you’re here…mutter mutter mutter…He called someone from the back of the RV, and the boy child from earlier came to stand between the driver’s and passenger’s seats.

I could tell the boy child had been crying. His eyes were huge and watery and his face was streaked with tears. He stood very straight and said, I’m sorry for my behavior. (It was obviously a rehearsed speech.)

I said something like I really didn’t even understand what you said, but thank you for apologizing. The whole situation was super awkward for me.

The woman in the passenger seat was not the mother-type person. The woman in the passenger seat seemed like a grandmother-type person. After the boy child had escaped to the back of the motor home, I again expressed bewilderment over not having understood what the boy child had said to me. The grandmother-type person stage whispered We thought it was very rude. He said he didn’t like it.

What? All of that brouhaha because the kid said he didn’t like the trail?

If the kid didn’t like the trail, I think he’s entitled to express that. If I had understood him to say he didn’t like the trail, I probably would have said, Oh, I’m sorry to hear that or What didn’t you like about it? I would not have been personally offended that some kid barely old enough to scrawl his name did not enjoy a trail I did not build and do not maintain.

My job brings me in contact with a variety of rude people of all ages. People hold me responsible for what they see as the (many) failings of the Forest Service. Some people think they can talk to me any old way they want. Finally someone apologizes and it’s for something I din’t even understand, something I wouldn’t have been offended over even if I had understood it.

And, what if, as the boy child told the mother-type person, he was only joking? I hope this incident does not deter him from a career in comedy.

Jul17

Creepy Lady

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It was the 4th of July, and while the parking lot was busy, it wasn’t the circus it had been the day before. We’d gotten to the point in the morning where my co-worker and I tell drivers to find a place to park, then pay us the parking fee on their way to the trail. We don’t want drivers to pay us, then demand their money back when they can’t find a parking spot.

The woman was driving a big pickup truck. She seemed to be alone, which was unusual, but not unheard of. (Most people come with friends or family, but some folks walk the trail alone.)

When I told the woman to park before she paid me, she acted as if I were doing her a huge personal favor. I was glad she was appreciative, but I wasn’t doing anything special for her; I treated her just like I’d treat anyone who rolled into the parking lot when I was unsure if there were a space for a new vehicle.

It wasn’t long before she was standing in front of me to pay her parking fee.

Oh, you found a spot to park? was the unimaginative greeting I used on her (and probably 30 other people that day) when she presented herself to pay.

Yes! she said and pointed over to her truck, which was easily visible from where I stood. She started gushing about how great her parking spot was, on the pavement and everything.

She took her money out of a soft suede wallet with fringe. As I got her change, she said, So what’s that meadow over there?

The back edge of the parking lot is bordered by a meadow. I know three things about the meadow:

a) it exists

b) a picnic table is located there

c) cars can’t park in it

This photo shows the meadow the woman questioned me about.

This photo shows the meadow the woman questioned me about.

My first impulse to her question was to say It’s a meadow. I figured that was a little too smart-ass because obviously she knew it was a meadow. But honestly, I couldn’t think of a single interesting thing to say about it. I managed to stammer that I thought it was part of the meadow joining the campground and the parking lot.

When I told the woman she didn’t have to put the day pass in her vehicle, she said, I think I’m going to check out that meadow!

Great! I said, I don’t really understand people who get excited about a bunch of grass, but to each his/her own. My attitude was Enjoy the meadow, ma’am.

None of the behavior I’ve described earned the lady a description of “creepy.” She was a little odd, acted a bit too familiar, but was well within the social norms of my comfort zone. It was her behavior as she was leaving the parking lot that I found creepy.

Every other week, I got to Babylon on my day off. I usually spend the night in Babylon, then head up the mountain late the second day. However, the post office where I pick up my mail is only open from 8am to noon, which limits my time in town on my second day off. Plus it’s so damn hot in the valley, which makes sleeping in the van quite uncomfortable. So I’d been scouting out places in the forest not far from my post office where I could spend the night in the cool mountain air.

I asked my co-worker who lives in the area year round if he could recommend any places that fit the description of what I was looking for. When he described a place he thought would work, I was delighted to realize it was a place I’d been looking at from the highway and wondering about. Apparently there was a creek behind where I’d seen campers parked and even pools of water back there. Score!

So back to the creepy lady…

Before she left the parking lot, she stopped her big pickup truck near where I was sitting and said, I heard you talking about BlahBlah Creek.

I was so surprised, I didn’t even know what to say. I’d had no idea that woman was anywhere in the area while my co-worker and I were discussing the creek. He and I had not been shouting. We’d been speaking in normal conversational tones. How had that woman heard us talking about the creek? Where had she been standing to eavesdrop on us? And how weird that she was admitting to me she’d been listening in, as if her behavior weren’t invasive and socially unacceptable.

I stood there thinking What the fuck?!?

She continued to chatter as if we were old friends.

I’ve never been down that road, she said, which confused me further, as I wondered how she knew about the creek if she’d never been down the road it is on. (My co-worker explained when I related this story to him, there is also a BlahBlah Creek Road, which is nowhere near the camping spot the creepy lady heard us discussing.)

What are you going to do there? she asked.

Hang out, I said. Avoid my boss. (I was planning on going there on my day off, after all.)

Then the creepy woman smiled sweetly and said, You should probably bring your head net, implying mosquitoes were going to eat me up.

I slept near BlahBlah Creek the next night and spent part of the following day there. I didn’t see a single mosquito, and more importantly, I didn’t see the creepy lady. Hopefully she forgot all about me, but if not, at least she was looking for me in the wrong place.

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Flowers in the meadow

I took all of the photos in this post.

 

Jul16

Take My Keys

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It was the Saturday of Independence Day weekend, and busy enough so a few cars had been circling the lot, the drivers looking for places to park theirs.

One car was driven by a very young woman. (Maybe she was out of her teens.) An older woman (her mother?) sat in the passenger seat. After several circles of the lot, the young woman stopped her car in front of me. She said they’d noticed some cars parked behind other cars, the second car blocking the first.

(Expectant pause)

I said those cars had come together. I said the people in those cars knew each other and would be leaving together.

The young woman wondered if it would be ok if she parked her car so it would block another car.

(Expectant pause)

I told her no. I told her she shouldn’t block a stranger’s car. I told her the strangers in the car she blocked would be mad at her if they wanted to leave first but were stuck because her car was in the way.

I thought I could leave my keys with you…the young woman said.

(Expectant pause)

No, I told her.

Apparently she thought I could hang onto her keys, remember what car the keys belonged to, remember where her car was parked, and know who was driving the car she had blocked in. She obviously didn’t realize I have to check to make sure I’m wearing pants every morning before I emerge from the van.

She also assumed I could be trusted with her car, trusted not to steal it and trusted not to back it into anything.

While she’s right that I can be trusted not to steal her car (not only do I think it’s wrong to steal, but what would I do with a stolen car?), she doesn’t know I’m not a thief. And as far as not backing into anything, I’m careful, but I can’t offer any guarantees when it comes to my driving.

What gets me is how some suspicious people think I can’t be trusted with a $5 bill and other strangers want to hand me their keys and allow me to take possession of their car.

Jul15

Suspicious

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It was Thursday, so after a slow four hours in the parking lot, I drove my van over to the campground next door to do a patrol for the camp hosts on their day off. I parked the van in the overflow parking area and grabbed my clipboard to check in the folks who’d arrived on site #1. After they were settled, I dropped my clipboard off in the van and walked over to see if the front restrooms needed attention.

As I bustled around, I noticed a couple who had earlier pulled into the parking lot. I thought they might have confused the campground with the parking lot (as happens often), but I didn’t want to insult them if they knew exactly where their car was. Maybe they were checking out the campground for future reference. So I minded my own business.

I peeked into the men’s and women’s restrooms. The men’s was fine, but the women’s needed paper. And—I remembered from the day before—one of the restrooms in the back of the campground was a roll short. I used my key to unlock the storage closet behind the restrooms and grabbed two rolls of toilet paper. Then I replaced the padlock and unwrapped one of the rolls of TP as I walked to the ladies room.

The man and woman I’d recognized earlier approached me. I thought they were going to tell me they couldn’t find their car or ask questions about the campground. Instead, the man said, Do you actually work here? It was not simply a question, but a challenge.

I thought maybe he was making the tired old you’re just a homeless person joke (read about that foolishness here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/09/20/just-a-homeless-person/), but he didn’t really sound as if he were joking.

I must have been looking at him with confusion all over my face. He said, Because your license plate is from [not California].

Then I was really confused. What did my license plate have to do with anything?

That’s your van, right? he asked at he pointed.

Yes, I answered as I looked over to it, as if my van could explain the meaning of this bizarre conversation. (My van explained nothing.)

The man again insinuated I was not actually employed and authorized to take money.

I said, Would I dress like this if I didn’t actually work here? (Note: I was in full uniform, including jacket with the company insignia, cap with the same emblem, and brown polyester-blend pants.)

He said, People will do a lot of things for money. You could be just anybody out here taking money. (Although at the moment, I was not taking money. At the moment I was restocking toilet paper in restrooms.)

I said, Do you want my boss’ business card? I was in shock, confused, and offended all at once. The man was basically calling me a liar and a thief.

Do you have a nametag? the man asked.

Yes, I said as I unzipped my jacket and pulled out my nametag.

He took a cursory look at it and seemed satisfied. He must not have realized that someone who would go to the trouble of acquiring a complete uniform and preprinted day passes designed to hang from review mirrors (and including a tear-off ticket for the worker to keep track of sales), anyone who would go through all that trouble then stand in front of a sign asking visitors to pay the uniformed employee, anyone who’d do all that could easily make an ID tag like the cheap ass one the company I work for issued to me. (No one even bothered to sign it on the line under the words authorized by.)

Don’t you see how it could be suspicious, the man asked me, that your van has a [not California] plate?

I didn’t try too hard to keep the you are an idiot tone out of my voice when I said, No. Their license plate (pointing to the camp hosts’ vehicle) has Ohio plates. People come from all over the country to work out here.

He said, Is this some kind of seasonal work?

I said yes and got away from them as quickly as possible. I was totally offended and did not want to chat. Honestly, I was afraid I was going to say something completely rude. Is it ok to call someone a liar and a thief because the license plate on her vehicle doesn’t match the state she’s working in? What about the people who live in Kansas and work in Kansas City, Missouri? What about all the people who live in Connecticut and work in NYC?

The man was not acting casual or interested. His attitude was accusatory, as if he were Mattlock or Jessica Fletcher, and he’d just solved the case.

I would have understood his suspicion if I’d been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. I’d have understood his suspicion if I’d have been collecting money at a place that didn’t have a sign advising visitors to pay the uniformed employee. I’d have (maybe) understood his suspicion if I’d been loading a case of toilet paper in my van. But he was questioning me while I was in the process of servicing a restroom. Who’s going to do that while impersonating someone authorized to collect money?

The weirdest part of the whole interaction was that when he handed over his $5 in the parking lot, he never questioned me. I would have been offended if he had questioned me in the parking lot. (I wonder if the guy goes into Burger King and asks the cashiers if they are really employees or just pretending to work there so they can steal money.) But in the parking lot, his questioning would not have surprised or confused me so much.

I wonder what he planned to do if I hadn’t produced a name tag, if I hadn’t alleviated his skepticism about my employment status. Was he going to put me under citizen’s arrest? Drive ten mountain miles to the nearest payphone and call 9-1-1? Demand his $5 back?

 

Jul13

Cock rings. Cock rings. Cock rings.

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It was Wednesday, and I was sick as a dog.

It was day #4 of my head cold, and I’d managed to patrol the campground for the camp hosts on their day off and work my four hours in the parking lot. I’d barely spoken above a whisper, but I’d conveyed the information and collected the money.

When I got back to my campground, I took a shower and hoped I wouldn’t have to put my uniform on again that day. I just wanted to relax in my pink house dress, then take to my bed right after dinner.

I was sitting outside my van, giving my feet a good scrubbing when a big grey pickup truck pulled into the campground. The driver took it around the whole place, checking out every site. I didn’t approach the truck because I wasn’t in uniform. Heck, I didn’t even have on shoes. I figured it was probably one of the vehicles driven by someone who was just looking around.

The truck left the campground, and I silently cheered. I barely had the energy to make myself dinner, much less go through the check-in procedure.

Unfortunately, my bubble of solitude was burst when the pickup returned to the campground. I grabbed a clean uniform shirt (and the same old dirty pants) and dressed behind the curtain that pulls in front of my bed.

When I finished dressing, the truck was parked on site #6 and two men were at the information board, probably trying to find the self-pay envelopes the new boss doesn’t want put out if the camp host is on duty to collect payment. I walked over and called out, Are y’all looking for a place to camp? They said they were and asked if I were the camp host. I said I was.

We all walked over to site #6 (where an older-than-I-am woman was waiting) to fill out the paperwork. The guy with the big beard and the intense look in his eye started talking to me. He was hiking the PCT (the Pacific Crest Trail, I knew thanks to Cheryl Strayed and her book Wild). He’d started at the Mexican border. He’d already dropped 35 pounds. He weighed (an amount I don’t remember) when he started. He’d hiked into (some place apparently nearby) the day before, and these were his friends (or maybe family members–he was unclear on that detail), and they were nice, and they’d picked him up, and he was going to take a couple of days off the trail.

This guy was talking like either

a) he’d only minutes before ingested a stimulant (and we’re talking something like a mega cup of coffee or a bit bump of meth)

b) he was a bit socially awkward and had never learned not to regale total strangers with every aspect of his current life within the first three minutes of meeting

c) he was so totally and incredibly excited about his current endeavor that he couldn’t help talk about it with everyone he met

d) he hadn’t spoken to another human being in several days

Then the conversation (which was more of a monologue) got really weird.

He started telling me about some hot spring he’d visited during his hiking of the PCT. It was a nudist place, he told me.

The nudist part didn’t surprise or offend me. I’ve been to free, natural, public hot springs. The good ones are clothing optional.

Then the guy with the big beard and the intense look in his eye said, There was a pervert out there. He was at least sixty years old. He was wearing a cock ring.

The cock ring part did surprise me.

First of all, the thought of someone wearing a cock ring at a natural hot spring strikes me as ludicrous. I think of hot springs as places to relax, and cock rings seem to be used for the opposite of relaxation.

Secondly, I was shocked to hear this guy I’d barely met talk to the middle-age, camp-host lady that I am about a naked older man wearing a cock ring. It seems like a risky topic to broach with a stranger. I wasn’t offended, but I could have been. How did he know I wouldn’t be offended? (Maybe he didn’t care if he offended me. Maybe I give off a vibe that says discuss cock rings with me.)

Then the man with the beard said the naked older man wearing the cock ring was hard. That’s what the man with the beard said: He was hard. And the naked older man wearing the cock ring at the hot spring had been posing. The man with the beard imitated the posing of the naked older man wearing the cock ring.

I wanted to scream TMI! TMI! but I was rendered speechless. All I could do was laugh uncomfortably. Why was the man with the beard telling me this story?

Before I could get us back on track and get the permits (camping and fire) filled out and signed, he told me about the teenagers (boys, ages approximately 13 and 17) who’d walked into the cock ring spectacle at the hot spring and their Christian dad who’d walked up behind them, taken one look at the topless ladies and the posing older naked man and announced that all of these deviants were going to Hell.

It was actually a good story, albeit perhaps not one to share with the camp host three minutes after making her acquaintance. It’s probably a better story to tell one’s buddies after a couple of hours around the campfire.

I guess it’s also a pretty good story to share on one’s blog.

The title of this piece comes from the skit “Cock Ring Warehouse” on the hilarious HBO comedy program Mr. Show, season 3, episode 2. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb-Kh1oJSGE.

 

Jul10

Hands Full

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It was the Friday evening of the Independence Day weekend. Seven of my nine campsites were reserved for the night, and I was busy checking-in my campers.

I was greeting the ladies who’d just arrived on site #5 when a big pickup truck pulled into the campground. The truck stopped at site #1, and I planned to head over there next. Before I could even head in that direction, and older man marched from site #1 to the middle of the campground where there is a capped water spigot. I didn’t understand what he was looking for until he bellowed (at me in particular or at the Universe in general, I was unsure) Where’s the water? Where’s the WATER?

There’s no water, sir, I called out.

We expected there would be water, he bellowed.

In the distance, I heard another man on site #1 say, Dad, I have water.

Great, I thought. The folks on site #1 have been here three minutes, and already someone is disgruntled.

When I finished with the ladies on site #5, I headed over to site #1. I spoke to the younger man since he’d made the reservation. He stood with his back to his campsite. As I told him about quiet hours and check-out time, I had a perfect view of site #1 and his dad.

The tent was already assembled, as was an easy-up shade shelter emblazoned with USC. Around the campsite were several old-school lanterns, the kind that run on liquid fuel. I wondered if such lanterns were a good idea and if there were any rule prohibiting them. I decided that even though they seemed like a bad idea to me, without a written rule saying they were forbidden, there wasn’t much I could do.

As I watched, the dad tried to light yet another of these 20th century light sources.

I’d just asked the son if they were expecting anyone else. (I wanted to explain the extra-vehicle fee as soon as possible if it were going to be an issue.) As I watched, the entire lantern the dad was working on was engulfed in flames. The dad said something like Oh boy! I said something like Oh dear! The son looked over at his dad fiddling with the flaming lantern and said to me, No, we’re not expecting anyone else. I’ve already got my hands full.

Jul9

No Baggage

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[amazon template=image&asin=0762457244]Recently, the Divine Miss M had Amazon.com send me a couple of books. I hadn’t asked for the books or even heard of them until they showed up in my stack of mail. One was a novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I haven’t read yet. The other was nonfiction, a travel memoir called No Baggage.

In No Baggage, author Clara Bensen tells the story of the existential crisis she had in her early 20s when she concluded she might not be able to follow her bliss and live her dreams. Heck, she was barely able to complete applications to grad schools. She had a prolonged mental health meltdown and spent quite a long time wracked with anxiety and unable to eat much more than choked-down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

She slowly pieced her fragile psyche back together while living in Austin, TX, and decided she needed to start dating. She joined OkCupid, posted her own profile, and began looking at the profiles of men on the site with advanced degrees. She encountered the profile of an intriguing college professor and emailed him. They went on a date, immediately hit it off, and started having fabulous times together.

The first part of the book read a little much like a teen romance novel to me, and I was a bit turned off. I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous and a bit bitter. I haven’t met a decent, unmarried man to date in years, but this gal met an incredible man on her first try. (It probably helps to be young, thin, and live in a major metro area.) But I stuck with the book to get to the good part, where Bensen and her beau went on The Trip.

The fellow was already planning on taking The Trip when he met Bensen, then invited her to go along with him. While it was risky enough to go on a multi-country journey with someone she only knew a short time, the No Baggage of the title refers to no suitcase, no backpack, no tote bag.

Here’s what Benson took with her on the three week expedition: in a “small leather purse,” she somehow puts three pairs of underpants, a deodorant stick, a toothbrush, a retainer, a contact lens case, a pair of glasses, two tampons, an iPhone, an iPad Mini, a notebook, a pen, her passport, a tube of ChapStick, and “a stack of cowboy magnets to hand out as Texas souvenirs.” (There’s no mention of a credit card or traveler’s cheques or cash, so I don’t know how purchasing food and transportation tickets worked out. Maybe the money the guy carried was for both of them?)

Since I live in my van, I have fewer material possessions than most Americans, but I still have so much stuff! The part of me that makes do with less was intrigued by the minimalist approach to travel introduced by Bensen’s guy, but after all, it was only for 21 days, not a lifetime. I’m pretty sure I could make it on no baggage for three weeks, especially if I had a new love interest to keep me company. (I’d leave behind the iPad Mini–which I don’t even own–and the deodorant and the cowboy magnets, and take my water bottle with me.)

I like travel stories, and I enjoyed Bensen’s. I enjoyed her tale of spending the beginning of her time in Istanbul not knowing if she were in Europe or Asia. I liked hearing about the positive experiences with Couchsurfing.com, especially what happened in Turkey, when Bensen and her guy arrived unannounced at a dark train station, only to be met by a woman on a bicycle who said, “I recognize the hat from your Couchsurfing profile.” She was one of the many hosts they’d emailed, and she’d somehow known when and where to meet them, even though they hadn’t known when they might arrive.

The book was full of such stories of traveling serendipity. Some call it luck, and the Rainbow Family refers to it as “Rainbow magic.” Hikers of the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails know about it too. Sometimes it’s as if the Universe is conspiring to get people where they need to go and make beautiful things happen.

In fact, this book is not just a love story or a travelogue or a treaty on minimalism. It’s also about coincidence and serendipity. It’s about What are the odds? and What are the chances? What are the odds that two people so well-suited to be together would meet on OkCupid and find a “weird, magical thing” happening between them? What are the chances a Couchsurfing host would appear exactly when and where she was desperately needed? Bensen’s guy “was in the preliminary stages of developing software to measure the experience of coincidence,” so they ended their three week journey with a visit to a “professor of Risk at Cambridge University…one of the premier researchers on the subject.” The book asks what causes the “connections between seemingly random intersections?”

The day before I finished reading No Baggage, I wrote a blog post partially about a road trip song by Dar Williams and partially about an idea of SARK’s about managing expectations. To illustrate my point, I told a story about a road trip I took in the late 1990s. In telling that story, I mentioned my friend who owned the car and did all the driving on that journey to a women’s gathering in an adjacent state. My friendship with the woman was intense during our time on the road, but mellowed out when we got back to the city. We still liked each other, but our everyday lives kept us busy, and we saw little of each other. When I moved away from the city the next year, I thought of her fondly when I thought of her, which wasn’t often. I could only remember part of her name, so there was no Googling her or looking her up on Facebook. And then suddenly there she was, driving through my blog post.

The next day I finished reading No Baggage on the afternoon of my day off, while lying in my bed with the back doors of the van open to the meadow. That was a good book, I decided after I’d read the last page. I liked it. I’m glad I read it.

Then I flipped the page and saw the heading Acknowledgements. I’m the kind of book geek who at least skims an author’s appreciations. I’m not sure why. I never see a name I recognize. Only this time I did. There among the four names thanked for their “generous feedback and critique” was the name of the woman I’d written about the day before, the woman with whom I’d shared a road trip and not communicated with for nearly twenty years. What are the chances of that?

I know in my heart of hearts that I’d not glanced at the last page of No Baggage and seen my friend’s name, not even for a split second. I know that Clara Bensen didn’t mention my friend in the book in any recognizable way, wrote nothing that would have made me think of her.  And yet, as I read a book about travel written by a mutual friend, I wrote of my own long-lost, seldom thought of friend and a time we traveled together. What are the odds of that happening?

I plan to write to  Clara  Bensen and tell her of this coincidence and our connection. Maybe she’ll tell me how to contact my old friend.

 

 

Jul8

A Time

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Were you ever really excited about a road trip in the preparation phase, only to find the actual time on the road left a lot to be desired? Maybe your traveling companion(s) annoyed you. Maybe the food you ate left you feeling sick. Maybe the roadside attractions were boring and not worth the money. Maybe you couldn’t wait for the entire “adventure” to end.

As an adult, I always had high expectations for road trips. I wanted my travels with friends to be so much better than the boring trips full of bickering I was forced to go on with my family when I was a kid. (Dad often got lost, then tried to pass it off as taking the scenic route.) As an adult, I wanted my road trips to be full of singing along to the radio and stops for ice cream. Other than “Take It Easy” with Mr. Carolina, I don’t recall much singing during road trips as an adult.

I remember a journey to a women’s gathering when I was in my late 20s. I was riding with two other women, and only the owner of the car knew how to drive. I thought the other non-driver and I would take turns napping so someone would always be awake to keep the driver company, but after the first couple of high excitement hours on the road, the other non-driver passed out and was pretty much comatose for the rest of the trip. The only time I remember her awake was when we stopped at a diner for breakfast, and an old man in the parking lot insisted on telling us a joke about a “polecat.” We couldn’t decide if he were actually trying to be funny or if he were trying to offend us.

We got lost in a large city in the wee hours of the night, and a man approached the car while we were stopped at a red light. He didn’t seem to want to give us directions. The driver and I were terrified, but the other non-driver—of course—slept through it all.

The trip took hours and hours and hours longer than it should have, and once we were close to our destination, the driver nearly fell asleep at the wheel, then got caught in a speed trap to the tune of a $300 ticket. The old man cop then asked the driver if the pressed leaf in glass hanging from her rearview mirror were marijuana.

When we finally arrived on women’s land, I was exhausted and overly emotional. I cried when I had to cross a rain-swollen creek to get to the main gathering spot. I do not remember singing at any point on the trip.

Now that I live in a van, road trips aren’t the big deal they once were. I usually travel alone, and time on the road is a means to an end, the way I get from point A to point B. Sometimes I eat ice cream, and I always sing at the top of my lungs, at least for a little while.

In one of her books (which I must no longer own, since I couldn’t find the exact quote), SARK writes about managing expectations about parties, but the same could be said about road trips. SARK says we often go into parties (and road trips) feeling pressure to have a good time. If we don’t have a good time at a party (or on a road trip), we feel disappointed, maybe even as if we have failed somehow. SARK suggests that instead of pressuring ourselves to have a good time, at a party (or on a road trip), we simply expect to have a time. Expecting only to have a time removes the pressure we may feel if we think we are obligated to have fun. Expecting only to have a time allows us to feel whatever we are authentically feeling, whether that is happiness, irritation, joy, exhaustion, boredom, sadness, elation, or some other emotion.

So if you are traveling this vacation season—whether alone, with your children, with strangers, with your parents or your partner or your friends—I wish you a time. And I hope there is singing.

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