“If people want to pigeon hole you then just view it as an opportunity to prove them wrong.”
— E. Gordon Gee
All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.
— M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
I consider today the true start of my journey, my first chance to take a break from eight- and nine-hour days driving my diesel-powered Mercedes Sprinter van west on the never-ending I-80, and to slow down — the speed limits out here are typically as high as 75 mph — and observe what I’ve been passing by since starting out from Connecticut last week.
Continue reading “Dollar Slices”Life “is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
— E. L. Doctorow
I’m parked at the Portage Service Area off I-80 in western Ohio, balancing my laptop on my legs, and every tractor trailer that enters the rest stop passes right in front of me: Dominion, AmeriFreight, Prime, ITS Logistics, and so on.
Continue reading “Bridge Ices before Roadway”Anna, whom everyone calls Queenie — a childhood nickname that took hold — lives down the hall from my now-empty third-floor apartment. It’s not really a hall — more like an elevated walkway with a full wall on one side where the apartment doors are and a half-wall on the other side open to a four-story atrium with skylights that sound like snare drums whenever it rains.
Continue reading “251 Court Street”I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost
I leave Middletown a month from today (Aug. 19). Just writing that makes this whole adventure seem almost impossibly real.
I plan to take Robert Frost’s advice to heart and take the road less traveled — but not until after I get to Boulder (to have my electrical system installed) and Portland (to spend time with my West Coast family).
Continue reading “T-Minus 30 Days”“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
― Hunter S. Thompson
I spent my first two-and-a-half decades sailing, safely, piloting small craft around harbors and coves and creeks and occasionally venturing out onto the usually docile Long Island Sound in my family’s 26-foot sloop, Weepecket, and various 35-footers.
Continue reading “Braving the Storms”I said the road is my redeemer
I never know just what on earth I’ll find
in the face of a stranger
From the song “Jesus In New Orleans” by Over the Rhine
When I share that I plan to travel the country in a camper van, some people tell me it sounds exciting or that they’ve always dreamed of making such a trip.
Others ask: “Why on earth would you do that?”
Continue reading “On the Road to Find Out”We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
My bedroom is done.
Well, “bedroom” is probably an exaggeration.
But the bed platform in my van is built and with a few minor adjustments will soon accommodate a twin-size futon so I can stretch out and rest my weary bones after long days of nomading. (Yes, that’s a thing.)
Continue reading “A Good Night’s Sleep”I will be “building out” Nautilus this spring and summer.
I named my Sprinter van after the submarine that Captain Nemo piloted in Jules Verne’s prophetic tale of adventure, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Consider that Step One in the camper van building process.
What’s Step Two?
Continue reading “The Lure of Lithium Iron Phosphate”By the time this year’s cicadas have vanished from the Connecticut landscape, I could be halfway to Oregon, where my middle daughter lives in a floating home with her wife and their two dogs — a shepherd the size of a wolf and a tiny Chihuahua — and a colorful beta fish named Sailor.
Or I could be halfway back to Connecticut.
That’s how fluid and casual things will be in my newly nomadic #vanlife.
Continue reading “Parked on Pearl”