How long?

Back in April or May I didn't think I’d be in Oregon at all this summer. Then I thought I’d go for maybe a couple of weeks at the beginning of June to be around when Lou had his eye surgery. Then I figured a week, ten days, while I did some video editing for Bob. By then it was horribly hot everywhere except the thin band along the Pacific Coast or up in the higher elevations of the Rockies. So I went to the coast.

Here it is, a week into August and I'm still in Oregon. I go to Salem tomorrow to see Hal and Loretta and pick up my new fridge. (More on that later.)

Then where?

My nomadiversary is at the end of the month. Is there anywhere special I want to be to mark the occasion? (Shrug)

Mr. Towd

I was sitting in the Rolling Steel Tent, enjoying a muffin from Safeway, when this guy pulled his Jeep up behind his RV. Oooo, I thought, I’ll be able to see, beginning to end, what it takes to turn the Jeep into a towd. (In case you don’t know, towd is RVer slang for the vehicle that’s towed behind and used to make side trips and run errands.)

First he had to line the Jeep up behind the RV, which took about three tries.

Then he unloaded stuff from a storage compartment to get to the hitch components that were also in there.

He fumbled with some fittings that connected to the Jeep. He struggled with the cross bar that attached to the fittings (a hammer was employed).

He got more things from the storage compartment. Clevis pins, hitch locks, safety cables, electrical cable…

He got something from the back of the Jeep.

He made a few attempts attaching the bars that connect the Jeep to the RV.

He fought with the coiled cables.

He got something else from the back of the Jeep. And something else from the storage compartment. And he put some things away.

He eventually got the pebble guard properly attached.

Then he checked the right turn signal. The left turn signal. The brake lights.

He put the rest of the stuff away and checked the locks on all his hatches.

He put the Jeep in neutral and maybe unlocked the hubs. He locked the Jeep.

And he was ready to hit the road.

It took him about 40 minutes. I suspect he hadn’t set this stuff up many times. But even if an experienced RVer could do it in, say, 15 minutes, it’s still quite a process—by my just-put-the-step-in-the-van-and-go standards. Yet, if the towd towers are happy, tow away.

Visitor

Nautical bumper guard

Good morning

A slight shift in the weather the past couple of days has kept away the usual night and morning overcast. But a little fog hangs around for artistic effect.

A tip from the Clumsy Chef

I learned this a few years ago: If you’re cooking something gooey, sloppy, runny or sticky in your vehicle, and the interior surfaces can’t be power washed, step outside to flip it.

If the weather is too nasty to be stepping outside, don’t go cooking anything gooey, sloppy, runny or sticky that requires flipping.

Where did you say I am?

Oregon has some tricky place names—or names I didn’t know were tricky until I learned how the locals pronounce them.

Part of my problem is after a couple of decades living in California and then traveling around the Southwest and Mexico, I tend to test unfamiliar words by applying Spanish pronunciation rules. But most of the tricky names in Oregon are anglicized Native America names. And some are… I don’t know what. But not Spanish. And there seem to be no consistent rules. It would be helpful if the Welcome to ____________ signs included phonetic spellings.

Luckily, I came across an article on The Oregonian site featuring audio clips of how to pronounce various names. Thanks to them I learned:

Nehalem is Nuh-HAY-lum  

Yachats is YA-hots (with a short A, as in cat) 

Heceta Head is Huh-KEE-tuh Head

Umatilla is YOU-muh-TIL-uh  

Philomath is Fil-O-muth 

Yaquina is Yuh-KWIN-uh  

Champoeg is Sham-POO-ee

See what I mean? It’s as if the rule is to imagine the most incorrect way to say a name, and that’s the correct way. So I propose new pronunciations for some other Oregonian names.

Portland – Portal-AINED  

Eugene – EH-yug-EN-ee 

Salem – Saw-LUM 

Corvallis – Cor-vale-EEZ 

Astoria – ASS-toh-REE-uh

I’m certain those will catch on quickly.

Ya pays yer money and takes yer chance

It wasn’t until I was naked and loading quarters into the campground shower that I noticed there was no water temperature adjustment.

“Oh. Okay. I’ll see how this turns out.”

The last quarter dropped and the water started. A little on the chilly side at first, but then the good stuff made its way from the water heater. Mmmm, that was nice, but would it get too hot? Nope. Perfect the whole time. And with good pressure. Too bad the nozzle didn’t have more range of adjustment, though. Still, I got all my parts clean and happy for a buck.

Something’s following you

I dislike hitch-mounted racks (HMR). I don’t care that other people use them, but from a personal, philosophical, how-I-hope-to-live-my-life perspective, getting an HMR would be a sign I’m hauling around too much physical and maybe emotional baggage.

From the perspective of the little I understand about physics and engineering, I wouldn’t want one hanging from the back of the Rolling Steel Tent. It seems like attaching a wiggle machine to one’s rig.

How is having a few hundred pounds attached by a single point a good idea? The thing’s a pendulum, diving board and teeter-totter combined.

Sure, it’s fine sitting still, but once under way, various forces want to flop it around. Every turn and bump of the vehicle gets transmitted to the HMR. The HMR reacts (in that Newtonian equal-and-opposite way) and transmits its motions back to the vehicle—all through that one point where the HMR meets the hitch.

Mounting rack to the vehicle at two points could eliminate roll and yaw. Attaching it at three triangulated points could eliminate pitch too. But the buying public loves the idea of easy installation and removal, so we have HMRs.

HMRs don’t necessarily flop around in a way you can actually see, but the forces are still in action, still causing stresses, still causing wear and tear on itself, the vehicle and you.

What are the odds?

A couple of years ago I posted about the joy of following an RV that was actually driving the speed limit instead of the typical ten miles per hour slower. I figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But it happened again yesterday.

I was driving south along Oregon’s central coast and a Class A was about five vehicles ahead. Traffic was a little slow and I assumed it was because of the RV. A curve in the highway revealed the holdup was a car in front of the RV. After the car took a different road, traffic—now led by the RV—sped up. Alright. Driving bliss.

After a while I noticed another Class A gradually approaching from behind, which meant it was going faster than me. Two RVs within a quarter mile of each other driving like they meant it? Impossible.

The second RV settled in behind me then, in one of the towns with four lanes and a couple of traffic lights, it passed me. I chuckled and saluted. Drive on, dudes.

Another way to do it

You’ve got mail. Or maybe not.

Two popular mail forwarding services have gone out of business and their former clients are scrambling for replacements.

MyDakotaAddress, in Madison SD, is ceasing operations, effective immediately. They’ve stopped accepting mail delivery from the Postal Service. So if you’re awaiting an important delivery, who knows where it might be or how you could receive it. And those using MyDakotaAddress's address for South Dakota residency are screwed.

MyDakotaAddress did a terrible job notifying their clients. Some still haven’t received official notice and only learned about it on various nomad and RV forums. The suddenness, and the slipshod way they told their clients, suggests some sort of big trouble. Or big incompetence.

J&B Mailroom, of Pahrump NV, gave more warning. It was known for a while the owner was terminally ill. What wasn’t known was whether someone else would take over the business. Now we know both the owner and business have died. Condolences to the family, and sympathy for former customers.

Although we nomads like to be as independent as possible, mail forwarding is something most of us need. A few have friends or relatives handling that chore, but most of us use a service, and those services are small businesses—sometimes just one person and a part-time assistant. While the small forwarders can give more personalized service at a lower price, they’re at greater risk of things going south.

My forwarder—which I’m in the process of abandoning—is a decent sized operation. I just don’t like them as people. So I’m switching to a mom & pop outfit in a different state and crossing my fingers they’ll be around for a while. And that they’ll give plenty of advanced warning if things change.

Vindication

When I told my mail forwarder, Americas Mailbox, I wanted to step down a level of service, they tried to talk me out of it with threats warnings it would mean they’d no longer sort out my junk mail and I’d be buried under a mountain of the stuff and I’d be begging them to go back to the higher level and the extra postage would negate any savings in the plan and it would be a pain in the butt for them and…

Whatever. Just make the change.

So, as I waited yesterday for the postal clerk to retrieve my latest shipment from General Delivery, I pictured a big courier pack bulging with junk mail. There might even be a box of it. Maybe they shipped me a crate of other people’s junk mail just to make me regret my decision.

But it was just the usual large envelope, thin and light. It contained:

June’s bank statement
July’s bank statement
A new Medicare card
A letter from Social Security about the new Medicare card
A fundraising letter from a women’s health charity
And that’s all

I’ve been away from the consumerist mainstream long enough to fall off junk mail lists. “Put this guy in the Ain’t Gonna Be Spending Money On Our Crap pile. He’s debt-free and hasn’t used a credit card in five years. He’s useless to us.”

Yeah, so bite me.

UPDATE: So here it is, October 5th, over two months since the last time I bothered having mail forwarded.  This time there were just the bank statements for August and September.

Embracing the grayness

The weather has been fairly predictable along the Oregon coast. Marine layer and fog until about noon. But I headed to the shore early to get some of that misty moodiness.

Curiously wrong mints

So, what happens when the Rolling Steel Tent goes around a traffic circle with a tin of Altoids on the counter?