More Thoughts from the Road

Well its official, the carpet is super really disgusting now. Within five minutes of leaving the Gunks I managed to dump a cooler full of water all over the galley area. The carpet is soaked and I don’t really have a way to dry it out. This is just the icing on an already disgusting cake. I can’t wait to throw this crap out and find some new flooring.

I’m really not sure what I was thinking when I decided to come out climbing this weekend. Climbing rocks that are baking in the sun when its 90+ degrees out just isn’t much fun. The rock almost sweats with this grease that destroys all hope of any friction. To make matters worse I decided to spend the day working a climb that I’ve been trying to do for a couple of years now. I’m really not sure why I thought climbing it when it is 30 degrees hotter than it has ever been when I was on it would help matters. I wasn’t able to climb it as usual but this time I was able to return to the van and drink cold beer to my failure at the end of the day. Cold beer the second you leave the crag really makes the failure go down a lot more smoothly.

A thought: this van is more than old. Driving it down the modern expressway gives you a feeling for car travel 30 or 40 years ago. For the first time in my 12 years behind the wheel 65 and even 55 feel like reasonable limits on speed. When you drive a rig like this 65 just feels way too fast. The funny thing is that nobody and I mean nobody actually drives the speed limit. Cruising down the highway in this thing is like walking along a river filled with canoes. Everyone out here is just floating by much faster than you and paddling hard. It’s a really different perspective to drive on the highway and not be trying to find the optimal path to your destination. I found myself looking at all the people passing me by in an instant with their windows rolled up and their world only consisting of calculating a way around all the other obstacles traveling even the slightest bit slower and wondering what they are daydreaming about because they sure aren’t watching the scenery.

Another thought: a lack of air-conditioning makes summer travel feel epic. The miles just wear on you differently with the windows down. The road really makes you tired when you’ve got to feel all the wind that you’re flying through. I find myself really not wanting to press on more than a few hundred miles at a time in this thing. I’m normally the kind of guy who’ll drive solo for 12-14 hours straight just to get to where I’d like to be. I just don’t feel like I can drive like that in this van. The air rushing through, the noise pounding your eardrums, and the vibrations working up through the hot uncomfortable seat just wear me down. The fact that I’ve got to throw on the defrost every time I hit a little slowdown for fear of overheating just adds to the fatigue. To think that I was considering what I thought would be a leisurely cross-country trip in this thing spending only ten hours a day behind the wheel. Driving for ten hours straight in a Vanagon is like driving 16 hours in a modern car. That’s the kind of distance that would really wear you down. I’m just not sure I could do that for five or six days in a row.

Yet another thought: RV campgrounds are brickless suburbs. I swear I have never seen anything like what I’ve seen for the past two nights in a row. I thought that perhaps the first night was an anomaly but I’m 200 miles away from that campground and it’s the same thing all over. With as much camping as I’ve done I really just don’t understand how I haven’t seen this all before. Going from primitive or walk-in sights to sights with full hookups is like going from living in the middle of nowhere to living at the damn strip mall. Every single site has one or two cars, a popup trailer, two or three house sized tents, a screen room, a clothes line, a full-on kitchen, a BBQ grill, and no less than 4 camp chairs surrounding a campfire. Everybody has what seems like 8 kids and they all have their own bikes, toys, cell phones, and video games. This is seriously more like a time to move your house out to the woods for $40 a night. I really can’t knock it since I’m doing the same thing right now as I sit in front of my three fans typing on my laptop but that really doesn’t lessen the shock.

You know, I really shouldn’t judge – these folks are just out to have a good time and at least they are getting their kids outside. However, all I can think about when I’m sitting here listening to the pounding Latin music from the campsite next to mine is what are these kids thinking about out here? Does this count as “nature” to them? Are they “roughing it”? Are they missing out? I mean really, does a kid need to carry all of his belongings on his back for several miles and then after unloading it go on bear watch for the rest of the evening to appreciate nature? I really don’t know the answer to that but my kids will not refer to sleeping in the Vanagon as camping.