Strolling Amok

Pops goes on tour.

Archive for the category “Navel Gazing”

20 Jan 2016
12 Comments

Listening to The Inner Idiot

My '74 was silver with a RED interior, and this '75 has no clumsy split seam down the middle of the urethane bumper, but this is otherwise it! Hard to believe I ever owned one, but I've lived the dream, baby! Or was that a nightmare?...

My ’74 was silver with a RED interior, and this ’75 has no clumsy split seam down the middle of the urethane rear bumper, but this is otherwise it! Sexy, no? Hard to believe I ever owned one, but I’ve lived the dream, baby! Or was that a nightmare…?

You know, it would be nice if the human brain shut down during sleep. I mean really shut down, with only one brain cell glowing just enough to keep the automatic systems like heart and lungs going. That can’t be, of course, since we must be able to hear and react quickly when the hungry saber-tooth tiger enters our cave. We need to be able to scream before we’re torn to pieces.

So, what we’ve got is this gray lump too exhausted to stay awake and too restless to kick into a true, restorative idle. With no tiger within audible range, it eventually begins to rummage through the dusty bins of memory to pull a toothpick’s worth of something here, and a speck of something there, and then entertains itself by piecing those little random bits of electrical energy into a partially coherent story line. This is not an easy task, as anyone who works on “continuity” in the movie industry can tell you. They work desperately to ensure that the appearances of people and places seems unchanging from scene to scene, even when those pieces are shot months apart.

In sleep, our brains can’t be bothered with such trivialities. Basic elements change radically from moment to moment, time shifts, and even the storyline itself flip-flops around like a fish out of water. I think this is due to two factors. First, the brain is improvising, having to work with random impulses, and weaving anything together to create a sequence that makes sense is an impossible task anyway. Secondly, the human brain knows that, in a sleep state, there are no critics around. It can do whatever it likes, and the worst that can happen is Read more…

Posted in Navel Gazing and tagged ,
23 Dec 2015
13 Comments

Have a Vintage Christmas!

Title: "Christmas morning (and forever after) she'll be happier with a Hoover". Copy: "P.S. to husbands: She cares about her home, you know, so if you really care about her...wouldn't it be a good idea to consider a Hoover for Christmas? Prices start at $??.??. Model 29 (shown here) $??.??. Low down payment; easy terms. See your Hoover dealer now."

Title: “Christmas morning (and forever after) she’ll be happier with a Hoover”. Copy: “P.S. to husbands: She cares about her home, you know, so if you really care about her…wouldn’t it be a good idea to consider a Hoover for Christmas? Prices start at $??.??. Model 29 (shown here) $??.??. Low down payment; easy terms. See your Hoover dealer now.”

The resolution of the above scan was too rough to make out the prices, but they were less than now. I’m guessing that this one is from 1960, give or take five years. Such advertisements seem mighty crass in today’s “be all you can be” gender-neutral American culture and are presented now as humorous sources of “look how far we’ve come since then” pats on the back. After all, we have made advances. Today, we consider that the sprawled woman may be perusing the notecard and thinking, “Ooo, that bastard’s gonna get his…”

However, apart from the issues of unfair bias, equal opportunity, stereotyping, putting talent and capability to waste, and equal pay for equal work, we do tend to propagandize the past in order to validate where we are now. Utterly unable to look back and examine any culture in context, we tend to look back only with today’s lenses, and the view is upsetting or unsettling, a reminder of oppression of some sort or other. Without the context, our view can easily be distorted to resemble Read more…

Posted in Navel Gazing and tagged
16 Dec 2015
13 Comments

What Do You Dream?

https://youtu.be/dHiEA3l-QOk

The above video was made for the Overland Expo 2014, and nicely offers its alternate perception of what camping is to some people. Just for fun and because it’s well done, enjoy three minutes of sizzle.

Posted in Camper Nirvana, Navel Gazing and tagged
28 Nov 2015
23 Comments

Black Friday is the New Thanksgiving

Placed.com: 'As the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday is the pinnacle event for deal-hungry consumers who brave the crowds in search of steep discounts and door buster deals. For retailers, understanding who these shoppers are and how they behave is critical to driving more shoppers into their stores and capturing a greater share of holiday dollars."

Placed.com: “As the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday is the pinnacle event for deal-hungry consumers who brave the crowds in search of steep discounts and door buster deals. For retailers, understanding who these shoppers are and how they behave is critical to driving more shoppers into their stores and capturing a greater share of holiday dollars.” And isn’t that what “The Holidays” are all about? Well, it is now.

I have cable TV here in my RV park. Sometimes, something interesting or entertaining is on, and sometimes, it’s too painful to watch, and I have to call up a familiar, favorite movie to try to purge it out of my mind. Last night, on the night of Black Friday, I was watching TV and waiting for the weather forecast. The news segment showed a passel of shoppers loading up at Best Buy on the previous day, Thanksgiving Day. They highlighted one guy in the mix, who strode around, smiling confidently and loading his cart with electronics. He claimed that he was buying items for other people, and putting the charges for them onto his credit card, which he waved about. The camera returned to him at the close of the segment, and he added, “I’m thankful for all the things I already have, so I’m throwing them out and replacing them with all new things!” Having been properly amused as intended by the prior footage, this last claim put me into an apoplectic fit, all conscious thought imploding and coasting to a stop. I searched his face desperately for little signs of humor or sarcasm, but in vain. He was trippin’, dude.

The galley slaves, chained to their benches, go down with the ship if the battle is lost.

The galley slaves, chained to their benches, go down with the ship if the battle is lost.

I had been wondering about the employees no longer having a day to gather with family, since this was Read more…

Posted in Navel Gazing
26 Nov 2015
8 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving

IMG_0720

My granddaughter.

While so many people do their best to make the world a more difficult place to live in, it helps to step back every now and then to remind ourselves what life is really about, and to appreciate that our place in it matters, whether we sense that or not. “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” We are not left helpless as we look around ourselves. Live in your own little piece of the world as it needs to become, not as a contributor to the one that is.

Posted in Navel Gazing, Uncategorized and tagged
22 Nov 2015
2 Comments

Smile of the Day

My friend Matt found this photo online and put it on his Facebook page. I liberated it. No end of amusement here.

My friend Matt found this photo online and put it on his Facebook page. I liberated it. No end of amusement here.

 

Posted in Navel Gazing and tagged
31 Oct 2015
6 Comments

The Best Halloween Costume in Florida

Photo forwarded to me by my sister and brother-in-law.

Photo forwarded to me by my sister and brother-in-law.

Posted in Navel Gazing and tagged
06 Oct 2015
40 Comments

The Other End of the Spectrum

Stock shot liberated from The Four Wheel camper website. I doubt that they will mind. They'd probably prefer me to use a half-dozen more.

Stock shot liberated from The Four Wheel camper website. I doubt that they will mind. They’d probably prefer me to use a half-dozen more.

In the first part of this series, I pulled out a partial laundry list of traveling issues presented by the travel trailer Defiant, a tired 1994 Gulf Stream Innsbruck 26-footer. While evaluating what to do to make my travels less of of a physical ordeal, less stressful, and better able to place a living space in the most desirable (to me) locations, I had to mull over more questions about myself than about technical RV rig choices. After all, any given rig can be vouched for as being “better”, but better for whom? RV Spartans follow one rigid ideology, while “he who dies with the most toys wins” RVers follow another. Regardless of the pressures either way, it’s your life, your wallet, and your rig, and you’re the one who’s going to have to live with it. No one will be apologizing for steering you the wrong way for you.

So, the questions returned to the basic starting point. What did I want to be able to do that I’m not doing now? Since I am already on the road, what did I want to be able to stop doing?

The stopping part was easy. Hauling around the uber-comfortable Defiant dictates a certain mode of living. I wanted to stop Read more…

Posted in Navel Gazing, The Intrepid and tagged , , , ,
18 Sep 2015
33 Comments

Setting a New Course, Mateys!

Camped near the Bonneville Salt Flats to watch some land speed record attempts. They were there for a week, I stayed for about 2 and a half months, to see other events too.

Camped near the Bonneville Salt Flats to watch some land speed record attempts. They were there for a week, I stayed for about two and a half months, to see other events too. This was last year, and this is what the Defiant does best.

When it comes to RVs, or living mobile, I think one of the reasons that I harp so insistently on figuring out what you want to be doing in what kinds of places ahead of time is because that level of self-awareness is not all that easy when the span of those activities or kinds of places begin to go Jekyll/Hyde on you. RV rigs each come with inherent things that they do well, and things that they don’t. Thanks to the Internet, such limitations can be perceived ahead of time – mostly, anyway. My time to mull things over and reflect was very limited, as was my camping experience. But, I knew I’d rather be living out there than renting a room someplace. It’s kinda like life, I suppose. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, and start doing course corrections when you find that it’s necessary. Having gotten some full-timing experience under my belt since 2012, it appears to be that time now.

As a vehicle to actually live in, with no home or secret rented storage space(s) somewhere to keep overflow in, the travel trailer USS Defiant did and still does work very well. At 26 feet, it just plain works wherever it is, in any weather short of temperature extremes or very high winds. It is a home which can be moved from place to place, which is what I had envisioned. I enjoy getting out to quiet, solitary areas, but have no particular interest in having to battle flies and bees while I’m attempting to cook every meal, having my meal choices depend on what the weather is like, huddling bored inside a cold, dark box or tarp to escape bad weather, moving because of biting gnats, or cleansing my digestive system behind a bush, day or night. “Camping” or “outdoor living” is refreshing for me – for a day or two.

As a permanent lifestyle, that’s not for me. I’m just not an outdoorsy person. I like going outside when it’s nice, just to be outside for awhile. Go see things, feel the sun’s warmth on a cool day, bike around, walk around. I like staying inside when it’s not nice, or when I’ve had enough of the sun, wind, cold or heat, or when I have something to get done. When push comes to shove, Read more…

Posted in Navel Gazing, The Defiant and tagged , ,
27 Aug 2015
12 Comments

Itch de la Hitch

Low sun look toward the Kishwaukee River.

A low sun look toward the Kishwaukee River.

With my scheduled departure approaching late next week, I find myself with a natural mix of dread and anticipation. Dread of the necessity of shoveling out the Defiant’s interior to make it ready for travel, swapping wheels to get the new tire mounted in place and to put the spare back on its perch, and hefting those big panels. What can I say? I’m lazy, and all that’s too close to being actual work.

Yet, there’s the anticipation of getting out to the big sky and solitude. A lifetime of points East and their own wonders makes me pine for less familiar terrain. True, the West is technically a place of relative desolation, but the connotation of a bleak and barren wasteland doesn’t cut it for me. It has its own rewards which cannot be matched here. Each area has its appeal, and the West’s is Spectacle.

Here's something you don't see every day - except here.

Here’s something you don’t see every day – except here.

Mind you, the trip out there won’t have much entertainment value. I’ll be leaving at the start of the Labor Day weekend, a Duly Authorized Holiday Camper taking my allotted space just hours after I yank the Defiant out. All campgrounds from here to Seattle will be packed with them. So, it will be Interstate rest stops for me, all the way out to Wyoming. Rest stops are, on average, quieter and less closely packed than truck stops.

With a full two months before I will roll into Yuma, Arizona, four two-week stops are planned. That’s how the Defiant is oriented. Find access to a perfectly level or at least correctable spot, unhitch, break out and hang the solar panels, and put interior accouterments into a living arrangement. From there, it’s a matter of Read more…

Posted in Daily Life, Navel Gazing, The Defiant

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