Travels with Shelby

2010-11-26 Testing MacJournal

2010-11-26T21:36:00.000-08:00

Dateline Las Vegas
36.109993,-115.06046

Except for an accidental posting I made several weeks ago, it has been over a year since I updated the Travels With Shelby blog and story.

I am testing out a new program called MacJournal to see how well it does posting to Blogspot and Picasa.

It is still my intent to finish the part of the story as it relates to Shelby, but not in this test post.

To see how it does with pictures, here is one of my buddy “Og”, who joined me in Las Vegas. We tooled around town in his awesome 2004 Corvette. Hunter would approve.

My doctor advised me to get my heart rate up to 150% of its capacity for 20 minutes every day. Thanks to Og, I was able to do this each time we drove somewhere.

2009-08-26 Mea Culpa from California

2009-08-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

Dateline Crescent City, CA
Lat 41.7456
Long-124.1796

Okay, I am way behind in my Blog updates. Sorry about that. I am way beyond Idaho, my last update but I have been posting pictures and the map is at least up to date.

I have about eight open and unfinished blog entries from the points I have covered since the last update and will try to get them posted before I go offline for Burning Man this Saturday.

Trust that all is well, Shelby and I are fine, and we appreciate the feedback from our reader.

2009-07-17 Montana

2009-07-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Dateline Carmen, ID
Lat 45.2411
Long -113.8918

It's real obvious why they call Montana "Big Sky".

It redefines Big. It is Infinite. Stunning. Largely empty.

Except around towns like Bozeman (which Frosty calls "Boz Angeles"), the horizons just go on forever. Boz Angeles does, in fact, remind one of Los Angeles in many ways. The overdevelopment, miles of the standard US Stores, and people driving like they have to get to an audition. That's okay with us. We putt along in the slow lane at about 55 on average.

On a rare day when I had actually had a decent amount of sleep, we decided to plug on through Montana, cross the Continental Divide around Butte, then catch the I-15 south which goes all the way past Los Angeles to San Diego.

The topography started changing again as we headed south. We still had endless horizons but the hills were smoother and had more green on them.

Stopping at a rest area, we had something happen for the first time.

We were the only ones there.

Shelby took the chance to enjoy a nice roll in the grass as I plotted out our course that would take us down MT-93 into Idaho.

More photos are in the Montana Picasa Album.

The drive along 93 was exciting and stunning, taking us through the little town of Wisdom and crossing the Continental Divide again as it intersected with 43, which we took south into the Salmon River Valley, following the river the whole way.

That part of the trip is down hill. At that altitude, the outside air was fairly cool but better yet had a fresh pine scent.

I felt a huge load of anxiety leave after clearing the Divide. I had pretty much faced all the expected stress points and dealt with them one at a time.

The stress fairies started flitting about after a while of thinking too much on the realization that most of the road had no shoulders to pull out on, and for the most part there were no guard rails to keep you from taking a swim in your car.

I found myself continually scouting ahead for landing strips (a throwback to when I worked on my pilot's license all those years ago) and marking mileage of spots I might head back to if I found myself hiking.

But my trusty old Suburban laughed off the fairies and plugged on through like a horse returning to the barn. Except this was a barn we had never been to.

Our goal for the day was to make it to Frosty and Mambo's house near Salmon.

So you are not left hanging, we made it and will write about it in the next post.

2009-07-16 Wyoming

2009-07-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Dateline Carmen, ID
Lat 45.2411
Long -113.8918

When we last looked, I was still in the Deadwood area, contemplating my route choice for getting across and through Wyoming.

It took three Californians (two active, one former) to convince me to avoid Yellowstone.

My buddy Frosty (the former Californian) said you see three things in Jellystone:

Geysers
Bears
10,000 Japanese tourists

I figured if I wanted to see blow holes, I could watch Fox News.

As to bears, Shelby voted no.

And I have already seen 10,000 Japanese tourists in captivity, thank you.

The other two active Californians were Brian, a cameraman on The Ellen Show, now on Summer hiatus, and his friend Debbie, an NT Administrator. He invited me over to their cabin where we sat around the picnic table chatting for a little while. They had just come through Yellowstone on their way to Deadwood in a pickup truck with a big fat Harley on the back. Since they were headed into South Dakota from there, I gave him all my stuff I had found useful when traversing the state.

Brian said the drive through Yellowstone was painful. Loads of tourists who not only drove slowly and erratically, but were prone to stopping right in the middle of the road to get out and take pictures. [Insert stereotypical joke here]

If you look at a map, you see that not only is Yellowstone simply huge, it's also not particularly close to any major highways.

Weighing all this fresh input from these always-helpful Californians, we decided to skip Jellystone and beeline to Frosty and Mambo's place in Idaho.

As it turns out, we continued to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail as we set out across Wyoming.

Just inside the Wyoming state line was a tourist information spot and rest area, so Shelby and I checked it out.

Caving in to my curiosity, I decided to take the jog around Devil's Tower, adding only about 30 miles to the journey. The cheerful Information Lady told me that I would have to unhitch as I entered the Tower area as the parking lot at the Tower itself was small. She added they didn't allow dogs.

Undeterred, we went up far enough that we could take this and these other pictures, then scooted back over to I-90.

In a short while we started catching glimpses of the 1200-foot tall tower from a great distance. We continued on until we came to the location where the above picture was taken.

I took a bunch of photos, now posted in the Wyoming Photo Album.

Let me say this about Wyoming and Montana to get it out of the way:

If you don't have a wide angle lense, you can't really take pictures here.

The terrain and skies are endless, and made this driver get tired after only a few hundred miles, where we spotted a little campground near Buffalo.

While I run the risk of blathering on and on about the wide open spaces, the campground we chose didn't seem to read the blog.

They cleverly took a plot of land and calculated the absolute maximum number of spaces they could carve out of it. To say the rigs were close is kind of obvious from the picture, which also as it happens shows Larry, a guy who seemed to talk even if no one was around. I would like to call this local color but Larry told me he was from Pennsylvania.

Anyhow, we didn't unhook. I grabbed a shower, caught up on my Internet stuff, fed Shelby and racked out for a good night's sleep.

Next morning, we were up early and headed for the border...

2009-07-12 Spearfish and Deadwood

2009-07-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

Dateline Spearfish, SD
Lat 44.5172
Long -103.8637

Departing The Badlands, we set course to Spearfish and the Black Hills National Forest, home of Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument.

It was the same day that the Greenpeace people decided to make a statement by unveiling a 2300 square foot banner on Mt. Rushmore.

To say that the Park Service was caught flat footed is an understatement, as 13 people penetrated their security, clamberered all the way up to the top before unveiling their banner adjacent to Lincoln.

It is not without irony that the image of President Obama was juxtaposed right up there against Honest Abe, along with the message "People follow leaders, not politicians. Stop Global Warming Now!".

A sampling of the local radio and TV frequencies revealed a unanimous position of outrage among the locals, who cheerfully offered alternatives to the judicial system ranging from tar and feathers to being strung up. Yep, this is still the good old wild west out here.

The locals refer to Mt. Rushmore only as "The Shrine of Democracy". Only outsiders call it by its formal name. You can practically hear the capital letters.

I'm not sure how the Greenpeacece demonstration will affect policy in Washington, but I think it's fair to say that some Junior Park Ranger will enjoy his or her new posting in Abe's left ear. Maybe they could install a nose cam.

The Spearfish Scenic Bypass is a 23-mile loop through the scenic Spearfish Canyon and Deadwood.

This campground is hands-down the best I have encountered so far, offering not only the fastest WiFi I have enjoyed on the whole trip, but also cute young ladies who cheerfully deliver cheeseburgers right to the boat.

It also enjoys a large ratio of bikers, and it's easy to see why. The Black Hills are amazingly beautiful, the roads are wide and open, there is no helmet law, and the Harley is to the area what the horse was to the Wild West.

Deadwood is pretty much what one would expect it to be, a wild west street of saloons and bars, only paved.

We didn't stop, other than to take pictures.

Spearfish is just stone's throw from Sturgis, the mecca for bikers, with the big rally coming up in several weeks. We'll be in Oregon by then.

Pictures of Deadwood and Spearfish Canyon are posted on my Picasa page.

2009-07-07 Good Dog, Badlands

2009-07-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

Dateline Badlands National Park,
Interior, SD
Lat 43.6946
Long -102.5553

After two weeks in the Lewis & Clark Recreation Area in Yankton, Shelby and I decamped to the Badlands National Park yesterday, about 300 miles to the west.

Halfway through the flat and uneventful trip, we passed through Chamberlain and in crossing the river a curious thing happened. The topography changed and the humidity went away. The land changed from impossibly infinite open plains and farmland into gently rolling green hills.

I was reminded of the passage from one of my favorite Robert Heinlein novels, The Green Hills of Earth:

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth,
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies,
And the cool green hills of Earth!"

The real reason I remember that passage is that it has long been my happy place I go to on extremely turbulent flights, so it is well drilled into my brain.

But there was no turbulence during our short flight. Just a lot of rest stops to fight off the soporific effect of long, straight highways. We sat under a shady tree in one rest area for a while, loving the fact that in any direction you looked, you could see forever. I have missed horizons during my stay back east, which is almost entirely covered by trees. We are rich in horizons today.

After docking Serenity in a KOA campground just outside Interior, SD, we chilled for the evening to rest up for today's exploration of the Badlands National Park.

It was spectacular, and surprisingly busy with tourists and rented RV's. Yet with all that open space, even a large crowd gets swallowed up.

A series of photos are now posted on my Badlands Album on Picasa.

We're pulling out in the morning to head up to Spearfish, SD, just outside the Black Hills and Deadwood. Options are open at that point. We may see Mt. Rushmore or possibly scoot over to Devil's Tower.

Lest any of our players from home wonder why we spent two weeks in Yankton, I will share a bit of local information that may be useful in making plans to visit South Dakota Parks, especially around holidays like the 4th of July.

Premium spots in SD State Parks run about $18 per day. The rest are $16. This is in addition to a state sticker for each vehicle that costs $20 per year. The maximum stay in one site is 14 days. So, what the locals do is book the premium sites well in advance for a 14 day stay ending on the holiday. They bring out their units, or at the very least a pup tent, and set up on their reservation date. Then they go home.

This creates a kind of eerie effect during the week for us full-timers. The park is fully booked, but everyone's home. Their campers, RV's and pup tents sit empty during the week, enjoying the best views people could hope for if they were actually using their spot.

So as I was checking ahead, I found everywhere I looked was fully booked for the holiday, so we stayed put until the locals cleared out. Our next port of call is already booked.

2009-06-29 Yanks Angels

2009-06-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Dateline Yankton, SD
Lat 42.8586
Long -97.5246

The serenity of the Lewis & Clark Recreation Area was temporarily interrupted this weekend by a marauding tractor gang.

Click to embiggen

Blazing past at speeds up to eight miles per hour, this band of overall-dressed outlaws showed little regard for the law and stretched on for acres.

Some even had their old ladies along.

As expected, the local Police were out in force to keep an eye on these rowdy riders.

I had a chance to speak with a local Deputy about the club who told me "they pretty much just come to town for the all-you-can-eat buffet at JoDeans. They only get unruly when they run out of steak."

2009-06-22 Lewis & Clark Camped Here

2009-06-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

Dateline Yankton, SD
Lat 42.8586
Long -97.5246

After Vermillion, we followed the Missouri river along the same route as my direct ancestor, Meriwether Lewis, who, along with his partner William Clark, managed to get this State Park named after them. They did other stuff, too, including providing a rich industry of royalty-free name usage to lots of businesses along their trail.

The Lewis & Clark State Park (and Realty) is conveniently located a few miles west of the tiny town of Yankton, the Cow Capital of South Dakota.

The campground is situated on a massive reservoir made possible by the Gavins Point Dam which generates hydroelectric power from the Missouri River.

In the late afternoon the sunsets illuminate the cliffs of Nebraska.

That's about as exciting as a day gets around here and we are liking it.

There are more pictures in the Yankton album.

2009-06-19 Verily, Vermillion

2009-06-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Dateline Yankton, SD
Lat 42.8586
Long -97.5246

Pushing off from Onawa, Iowa (say that out loud a few times to exercise your facial muscles) rested and showered, we set out for the short hop up to Vermillion, South Dakota, who celebrates its Sesquicentennial Celebration - 150 Years August 6-9, 2009.

Having plotted this out in advance, we scooted around the very small town and headed to the Clay County Recreational Area to camp among the cottonwoods on the edge of the Missouri River.

One thing that doesn't picture doesn't show is that I finally had to face my second-greatest fear - backing up. Yep, this had been the source of much anxiety, since I have managed to only go forward so far in roughly 2500 miles of road trip.

This campground only had back-in spaces but I managed to do it - very, very slowly - and after three tries got it place.

We basically hung out among the cottonwoods for a couple days, which apparently get their name from the seeds they drop that float down like cotton tufts. You would almost think it was snowing if it were not well into the nineties with an extra humidity bonus. You would be forgiven for thinking this when your brains are melting.

There are more pictures in my Vermillion album.

And in case you were wondering, my greatest fear is timeshare presentations.

2009-06-17 Onward to Onawa

2009-06-26T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dateline Yankton, SD
Lat 42.8586
Long -97.5246

I am back filling blogs in an attempt to catch up on what's happened since the last post.

The day after blogging about the pups, Shelby and I pushed off from The Sanctuary and headed out I-64, passing this town along the way.

With South Dakota being a little over 900 miles away, I planned to break the trip into several segments of 300 miles or so each, but as it turned out, that was not to be.

After a scenic and uneventful drive, we came up on St. Louis. We could see the Arch from many miles away, but my goal was to bypass downtown and skirt around. That sort of happened. Even at around 8pm at night we hit a lot of traffic going over the bridge crossing the Mississippi so didn't really get a chance to enjoy the scenery.

I managed to get us through town without incident or being shot in East St. Louis, but it took a lot of patience, planning and just flat out being careful.

Eventually, traffic and civilization thinned out and we spotted a Flying J Truck stop ahead. My buddy and RV Mentor Arthur swears by these, so we decided to pull in, gas up, grab a bite and assess the situation.

It was lucky we did, as when I chatted with a waitress she asked me which way we were coming from. She said it was lucky we were not coming from the West as the roads were being closed due to approaching cells of intense storms. So in a sense we were lucky, but now stuck.

The short version of the outcome is that we waited for a while for a storm that changed direction and avoided us and for the first time camped in a truck stop. Positioned between a guy running a diesel engine all night and another running a generator, we had no power for the AC so just sweated it out in the camper. I repositioned it to take advantage of the wind coming into the overhead vents which offered a tiny bit of respite but introduced the worry of my neighbor's fumes coming in. We woke up alive and unrefreshed and pressed on.

Kansas City was a bit easier to bypass, which we did, pressing on into Iowa.

Iowa is what you probably think it is. The whole state is crops. To its credit, its rest areas are the only ones we have seen on the journey which offer free Wifi access. We drove along until the energy ran out, then pushed on a little farther. When I started splashing water on my face to stay awake I knew I had pushed too hard so I pulled over into a convenient rest area and checked my GPS for a campground.

We were less than two miles from the KOA Campground in Onawa. I phoned to check on space and was told they had plenty. Less than ten minutes later, I was standing in their office checking in.

As this photo shows, the campground was adjacent too (surprise) a big field of something.

Shelby now spends most of her days and nights sleeping, except when we are driving. She stays right next to me, leaning over the seat on a pillow I have arranged for her, and watching the scenery. Never makes a peep in the car or has ever had an accident. When she wants to look out the window, she nudges my left shoulder with her nose until I lower her window halfway. She then props her foreleg on the armrest and lets her ears fly in the breeze. While I have heard this is not a good thing for dogs, as they can catch debris or bugs in their eyes, I judge whether we are in bug zones. She usually only wants to stay out for a couple seconds anyway, then returns to her co-pilot position.

So she was pretty tired when we arrived, pretty much sacking out immediately upon docking.

The campground was clean, level and the people who ran it were super friendly, but the WiFi was non-existent. I went up to chat with the lady who ran the place who explained that it frequently went out so she just used her Verizon as backup. 'Nuff said. I did, too.

We only stayed the one night. Waking up refreshed and ready, we pushed off to South Dakota, which I will describe in the next entry.

2009-06-16 The Pups Need a Home

2009-06-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

Since this is the first official post from this location, those playing from home may notice I am back on my cousin's farm. The trip thus far has had a sort of "A to B to A to B" nature to it, but such is the life of a good shakedown run.

I have also revised the travel plans and am heading from here westward then north at Kansas City, heading up to South Dakota. You can follow on the updated map.

We would have pushed off today but allowed The Weather Channel to suggest waiting one more day to avoid "Severe thunderstorms and tennis-ball-sized hail." Really. In the Kansas City area. Bet that would leave a mark.

Instead, we are just hanging out with the cousin and her sprouting garden.

And just a few minutes ago a phone call and the inspiration for this blog post were phoned in. The neighbor who owns the three pups called Terri and asked if they were over here, which they pretty much have been non-stop since I pulled in. When Terri confirmed, the neighbor said "just go ahead and keep them or take them down that place you talked about", referring to the Downtown Athletic Club and Rescue I wrote about a few months ago.

So I phoned to see if they had room and was told they are pretty full with cats right now.

Here again are the usual suspects:

Megs is the largest and most stoic member of the pack. He has all the makings of a great dog.

Maya, pictured in the center is the smallest and quite likely the smartest of the lot. She has beautiful markings and a very gentle disposition. She relentlessly tries to nuzzle with Shelby, who doesn't want any part of that and makes all kinds of scary faces proving once and for all she has no bite.

Fluffy got a haircut while I was away and suggests that his mother was perhaps seeing a Huskie. Could easily pass for a discount sled dog. Not the smartest of the lot, but very friendly.

So we are waiting on a callback from the Rescue and put this out just on the off-chance someone might see it in time and consider taking in a furry little life changing event.

The names currently attached to these pups, by the way, are far from locked in.

2009-06-13 An excerpt from the book "Old Dogs"

2009-06-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

I am filing this on my blog to have it easier to spot and refer people to. I hope the attribution made to its authors transcends the reposting of someone else's work, but this is just too good to not share.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Not long before his death, Harry and I headed out for a walk that proved eventful. He was nearly 13, old for a big dog. Walks were no longer the slap-happy Iditarods of his youth, frenzies of purposeless pulling in which we would cast madly off in all directions, fighting for command. Nor were they the exuberant archaeological expeditions of his middle years, when every other tree or hydrant or blade of grass held tantalizing secrets about his neighbors. In his old age, Harry had transformed his walk into a simple process of elimination—a dutiful, utilitarian, head-down trudge. When finished, he would shuffle home to his ratty old bed, which graced our living room because Harry could no longer ascend the stairs. On these walks, Harry seemed oblivious to his surroundings, absorbed in the arduous responsibility of placing foot before foot before foot before foot. But this time, on the edge of a small urban park, he stopped to watch something. A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog. The dog, about Harry’s size, was tracking the flight expertly, as Harry had once done, anticipating hooks and slices by watching the pitch and roll and yaw of the disc, as Harry had done, then catching it with a joyful, punctuating leap, as Harry had once done, too.

Harry sat. For 10 minutes, he watched the fling and catch, fling and catch, his face contented, his eyes alight, his tail a-twitch. Our walk home was almost … jaunty.

Some years ago, The Washington Post invited readers to come up with a midlife list of goals for an underachiever. The first-runner-up prize went to: “Win the admiration of my dog.”

It’s no big deal to love a dog; they make it so easy for you. They find you brilliant, even if you are a witling. You fascinate them, even if you are as dull as a butter knife. They are fond of you, even if you are a genocidal maniac. Hitler loved his dogs, and they loved him.

Puppies are incomparably cute and incomparably entertaining, and, best of all, they smell exactly like puppies. At middle age, a dog has settled into the knuckleheaded matrix of behavior we find so appealing—his unquestioning loyalty, his irrepressible willingness to please, his infectious happiness. But it is not until a dog gets old that his most important virtues ripen and coalesce. Old dogs can be cloudy-eyed and grouchy, gray of muzzle, graceless of gait, odd of habit, hard of hearing, pimply, wheezy, lazy, and lumpy. But to anyone who has ever known an old dog, these flaws are of little consequence. Old dogs are vulnerable. They show exorbitant gratitude and limitless trust. They are without artifice. They are funny in new and unexpected ways. But, above all, they seem at peace.

Kafka wrote that the meaning of life is that it ends. He meant that our lives are shaped and shaded by the existential terror of knowing that all is finite. This anxiety informs poetry, literature, the monuments we build, the wars we wage—all of it. Kafka was talking, of course, about people. Among animals, only humans are said to be self-aware enough to comprehend the passage of time and the grim truth of mortality. How, then, to explain old Harry at the edge of that park, gray and lame, just days from the end, experiencing what can only be called wistfulness and nostalgia? I have lived with eight dogs, watched six of them grow old and infirm with grace and dignity, and die with what seemed to be acceptance. I have seen old dogs grieve at the loss of their friends. I have come to believe that as they age, dogs comprehend the passage of time, and, if not the inevitability of death, certainly the relentlessness of the onset of their frailties. They understand that what’s gone is gone.

What dogs do not have is an abstract sense of fear, or a feeling of injustice or entitlement. They do not see themselves, as we do, as tragic heroes, battling ceaselessly against the merciless onslaught of time. Unlike us, old dogs lack the audacity to mythologize their lives. You’ve got to love them for that.

The product of a Kansas puppy mill, Harry was sold to us as a yellow Labrador retriever. I suppose it was technically true, but only in the sense that Tic Tacs are technically “food.” Harry’s lineage was suspect. He wasn’t the square-headed, elegant type of Labrador you can envision in the wilds of Canada hunting for ducks. He was the shape of a baked potato, with the color and luster of an interoffice envelope. You could envision him in the wilds of suburban Toledo, hunting for nuggets of dried food in a carpet.

His full name was Harry S Truman, and once he’d reached middle age, he had indeed developed the unassuming soul of a haberdasher. We sometimes called him Tru, which fit his loyalty but was in other ways a misnomer: Harry was a bit of an eccentric, a few bubbles off plumb. Though he had never experienced an electrical shock, whenever he encountered a wire on the floor—say, a power cord leading from a laptop to a wall socket—Harry would stop and refuse to proceed. To him, this barrier was as impassable as the Himalayas. He’d stand there, waiting for someone to move it. Also, he was afraid of wind.

While Harry lacked the wiliness and cunning of some dogs, I did watch one day as he figured out a basic principle of physics. He was playing with a water bottle in our backyard—it was one of those 5-gallon cylindrical plastic jugs from the top of a water cooler. At one point, it rolled down a hill, which surprised and delighted him. He retrieved it, brought it back up and tried to make it go down again. It wouldn’t. I watched him nudge it around until he discovered that for the bottle to roll, its long axis had to be perpendicular to the slope of the hill. You could see the understanding dawn on his face; it was Archimedes in his bath, Helen Keller at the water spigot.

That was probably the intellectual achievement of Harry’s life, tarnished only slightly by the fact that he spent the next two hours insipidly entranced, rolling the bottle down and hauling it back up. He did not come inside until it grew too dark for him to see.

I believe I know exactly when Harry became an old dog. He was about 9 years old. It happened at 10:15 on the evening of June 21, 2001, the day my family moved from the suburbs to the city. The move took longer than we’d anticipated. Inexcusably, Harry had been left alone in the vacated house—eerie, echoing, empty of furniture and of all belongings except Harry and his bed—for eight hours. When I arrived to pick him up, he was beyond frantic.

He met me at the door and embraced me around the waist in a way that is not immediately reconcilable with the musculature and skeleton of a dog’s front legs. I could not extricate myself from his grasp. We walked out of that house like a slow-dancing couple, and Harry did not let go until I opened the car door.

He wasn’t barking at me in reprimand, as he once might have done. He hadn’t fouled the house in spite. That night, Harry was simply scared and vulnerable, impossibly sweet and needy and grateful. He had lost something of himself, but he had gained something more touching and more valuable. He had entered old age.

In the year after our move, Harry began to age visibly, and he did it the way most dogs do. First his muzzle began to whiten, and then the white slowly crept backward to swallow his entire head. As he became more sedentary, he thickened a bit, too.

On walks, he would no longer bother to scout and circle for a place to relieve himself. He would simply do it in mid-plod, like a horse, leaving the difficult logistics of drive-by cleanup to me. Sometimes, while crossing a busy street, with cars whizzing by, he would plop down to scratch his ear. Sometimes, he would forget where he was and why he was there. To the amusement of passersby, I would have to hunker down beside him and say, “Harry, we’re on a walk, and we’re going home now. Home is this way, okay?” On these dutiful walks, Harry ignored almost everything he passed. The most notable exception was an old, barrel-chested female pit bull named Honey, whom he loved. This was surprising, both because other dogs had long ago ceased to interest Harry at all, and because even back when they did, Harry’s tastes were for the guys.

Still, when we met Honey on walks, Harry perked up. Honey was younger by five years and heartier by a mile, but she liked Harry and slowed her gait when he was around. They waddled together for blocks, eyes forward, hardly interacting but content in each other’s company. I will forever be grateful to Honey for sweetening Harry’s last days.

Some people who seem unmoved by the deaths of tens of thousands through war or natural disaster will nonetheless grieve inconsolably over the loss of the family dog. People who find this behavior distasteful are often the ones without pets. It is hard to understand, in the abstract, the degree to which a companion animal, particularly after a long life, becomes a part of you. I believe I’ve figured out what this is all about. It is not as noble as I’d like it to be, but it is not anything of which to be ashamed, either.

In our dogs, we see ourselves. Dogs exhibit almost all of our emotions; if you think a dog cannot register envy or pity or pride or melancholia, you have never lived with one for any length of time. What dogs lack is our ability to dissimulate. They wear their emotions nakedly, and so, in watching them, we see ourselves as we would be if we were stripped of posture and pretense. Their innocence is enormously appealing. When we watch a dog progress from puppyhood to old age, we are watching our own lives in microcosm. Our dogs become old, frail, crotchety, and vulnerable, just as Grandma did, just as we surely will, come the day. When we grieve for them, we grieve for ourselves.

From the book Old Dogs, text by Gene Weingarten and Michael S. Williamson, based on a longer excerpt that originally appeared in The Washington Post.

2009-06-05 Places I Have Been

2009-06-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

This FaceBook application showed up today.

I got tired after the first 609 places, so here is the map it produced

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Find Cheap Flights at TripAdvisor

2009-06-05 Dixie Pics

2009-06-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dateline Dixie Caverns, VA
Lat 37.2461
Long -80.1764

The tour of Dixie Caverns was everything I expected it to be.

Short, cool, and wet.

Pretty much like Shelby today as we ride out the rainy day on the boat.

I posted an album of Dixie Caverns shots in case you don't get the chance to see it for yourself.

The photo above doesn't really capture the coolest feature on the tour, the "infinity pool", but you kind of get the idea.

2009-06-03 Way Down South in Dixie Caverns

2009-06-04T10:24:00.001-07:00

Dateline Dixie Caverns, VA
Lat 37.2461
Long -80.1764

After several months shaking down the camper, it has been suggested that it needs a name. I'm kind of leaning towards Serenity. Those of you who know the movie and short-lived TV series on which it was based upon would probably appreciate the reference. Those who don't may think it is just a Zen kind of thing. And you would both be correct.

Shelby and I retraced the western route out of Virginia for the third time in a year, and our first stop was the kitschy Dixie Caverns, an all-encompassing slice of Americana offering a campground, gift shop and the only above ground cavern in the state. That's correct, you go up as you enter the caverns.

Talk about your triple threat.

The campground spaces are a little on the tight side, offering very limited options for Shelby to be outside, but we improvise. Right now it's raining and I'm enjoying the first great WiFi access in a while as she naps. I'm going to take the cavern tour while I have this window of time. It lasts a little less than 45 minutes. (The tour, not the nap.) If no further updates occur on the blog after a couple weeks look for me Dixie Caverns gift shop and Antique Mall.

Last evening, we were invited down to funky Floyd, VA, home of the FloydFest and Fandango Beer and Wine Fest held on the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway for dinner with three ladies who are involved with the Renaissance Fair Industry. I had no idea until the Google showed me that there are lots of these Fairs going on pretty much all the time.

I guess Rennies are the Nerd cousins of Carnies, and overall have more teeth.

2009-05-31 By the Time I Got to Woofstock

2009-05-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

Dateline Richmond, VA
Lat 37.5542
Long -77.46005

On our last weekend in Richmond before resuming the journey, Shelby and decided to take in the 2009 Woofstock Festival today.

This is an annual event orchestrated by the Richmond SPCA and a whole pack of other dog-related industries.

A section of the landmark Monument Avenue is shut down, from Robert E. Lee down to Jeb Stuart.

Hundreds of dogs brought their owners out on a gorgeous, sunny day for fun, music and communing with other butts.

Shelby cheerfully walked the whole length of the event, pretty much stopping to greet every human along the way.

In the fullness of time, she spotted a cool vantage point from which she could stay cool and keep an eye on the whole event.

2009-05-23 Nobody Knows the Truffles I Seen

2009-05-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Dateline Richmond, VA
Lat 37.5199
Long -77.4744

I stopped by the Farmer's Market at Forest Hill Park in Richmond today, only to discover that it's still too early in the season for most of the produce, except for some wilted leafy stuff left over.

But I fell to the sweet talking of Kelly the Chocolate lady, who had something I had not seen before. She had taken waffle cones and lined the inside with dark chocolate and then filled with banana, blueberries and strawberries. Unfortunately, you won't see them either, as I didn't think to take a picture of it until I had consumed the last one. Trust me, it was delicious and had nearly all my food groups represented.

The very cheery Kelly shared the booth with these other two ladies who had some righteous coffee from Blanchard's Coffee, located a short distance away on Forest Hill Avenue. Given that they completed my food group pyramid plus offer free WiFi at their shop, I see a return visit in the future.

I wish I could take credit for the headline for this blog, but the truth of the matter is that Kelly came up with it. She said she was kind of like a bartender for a number of her clients, who share their troubles over truffles. We can only hope they don't drive after the Vodka-Cranberry Cordials.

2009-05-01 Tres Cachorros

2009-05-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Richmond, VA
Photos from Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

In the absence of having anything great to blog about, here are some pictures of my cousin Terri's neighbor's pups who paid us a visit shortly before my departure.

Incredibly, all three of these pups were from the same litter. I think their Mom has some 'splainin' to do.

The first one shown is named "Fluffy", for obvious reasons. Easily the fattest of the lot under that massive fur coat and quite enthusiastic around bowls of food.

This little female is named Maya and is characteristically submissive around older dogs (Shelby, in this case).

Finally, this handsome lad is named Megs and was the calmest of the bunch. Very friendly and my guess is he'd be the easiest to train.

I post this from the safety of being 500 miles away from these little temptations, lest anyone think that they might be the next ones to have blogs written about them.

I'm a one-dog man with a plan to see this one through her third act.

There are quite a few more photos of these little guys on the tail end (har) of my Mt Sterling Album on Picasa.

2009-05-17 Such stuff as dreams are made on

2009-05-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

Dateline Lake Anna Winery
Spotsylvania, VA
Lat 38.0567
Long -77.6678

I'm kind of a sucker for people who have a passion for something. And you don't find more passion than in a group of "Rennies" - those who populate the many Renaissance Fairs that occur around the country.

This weekend, the Virginia Renaissance Fair opened at the beautiful Lake Anna Winery in Spotsylvania, VA, about an hour north of Richmond and a lightyear south of Washington, D.C.

Like last year, I came up to hang out for the weekend among the enthusiastic cast and vendors who really give their all and go all out to make the event as authentic as possible.

One vendor, a lady named Gabriella, whom I helped erect her terrific tents, called this a "baby show" by comparison to the Granddaddy of them all, the one in Maryland. By this she meant that this show is more intimate and personable and I would heartily concur with her assessment, given the friendly, outgoing nature of its participants.

Arriving early by a few days, I stopped by the winery and met Eric, who along with his brother run the place. Eric passed my card to Cornelia Rutherford, who had phoned me before I even got back to camp.

I helped out on setup day, then helped with parking on the first day of the show.

Despite the weather being kind of threatening, a fairly good sized crowd showed up and much fun and merriment was had by all.

Sunday, the weather was far more ominous and while it went all day without raining, the attendance was off, but not the mood of the Rennies, who put on their shows as though they were performing before thousands.

Since pictures better convey the colors, costumes, events and general feel of the show, I have posted an album on my Picasa page.

2009-05-05 #1 in #1

2009-05-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Richmond, VA
Lat 37.604555
Long -77.56938

One of the most important reasons for my rebooting the trip was to get Shelby back to her terrific Veterinarian at Tuckahoe Veterinary Hospital.

Over the course of our last week in Kentucky, Shelby had several uncharacteristic "accidents" involving tinkling in inappropriate places. This is not a function of letting her out enough, and I was concerned that she may have some sort of illness, so got her back to town and was given an immediate appointment.

After an exam by the very friendly and personable Dr. Chris Kaloski, one of his talented assistants followed Shelby and I out into the parking lot to collect a urine sample. This involved following her (Shelby, not the assistant) around with a plastic soup ladle. When Shelby stopped to mark a location, the assistant was there on the spot and skillfully collected the sample.

I asked her (the assistant, not Shelby) if she ever thought while she was in college that she would be doing this as part of her job, she admitted she had not but we both agreed that this was at least better than working at Starbuck's.

After a quick analysis, Dr. Maloski called us back in and said she (again, Shelby) was fine and just needed to take a medication that would help her with sphincter control, an ailment fairly common in older animals.

I would not be exaggerating here if I admitted I was impressed that they can now engineer a medication that so specifically targets a specific area of a body. My only personal experience with this exact phenomenon was riding in the cars of very bad drivers, who tended to have that same effect on me.

So if you are ever in the Richmond, Virginia area and find yourself either in need of a great Vet or just want to see cute Vet Assistants following old dogs around parking lots with soup ladles, you would do well to pay a visit to the very nice folks at Tuckahoe Veterinary Hospital.

2009-05-13 R2R2RnR

2009-05-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Lake Anna State Park
Spotsylvania, VA
Lat 38.100812
Long 77.795046

Okay, that last post may have been a wee bit optimistic, in terms of the damage being undone. It would perhaps have been more accurate to say the Damage was Masked. It is now undone.

"R2R2RnR" in the above heading means "Return to Richmond to Repair and Restock", which I did last week at the very capable hands of my trusty friends at RV Services of VA. The very talented Charlie took the time to straighten out the tweaked bumper and craft a little patch for the broken plastic on the corner. The end result is shown above and you'd barely be able to tell it was ever a problem.

He also replaced all three roof vents, which had become old and brittle (something I can relate to). And the capable Doug had a look at my refrigerator check light and discovered it needed cleaning. (The mechanical bits, not the fridge.)

While they did their magic, I visited my favorite store - Trader Joe's - and restocked the food supplies. I also swapped out the Winter clothes, putting them into deep storage for the Summer, which kicked in overnight last week.

As an added bonus, I arrived back in town in time to celebrate Mother's Day (and her birthday) with my Mom.

Yesterday, Shelby and I decided we needed a little adventure and set out for Lake Anna State Park. This location was chosen for two reasons. First, it's close to Richmond and easy to get to. Secondly, and more importantly, it's three miles from the Lake Anna Winery, where the Virginia Renaissance Festival opens this weekend.

I will produce several more separate blog entries on the Winery and Festival, but wanted to provide a little background on the Lake Anna State Park.

First off, it's beautiful. The whole campground is surrounded by lush green forests without a lick of light pollution. Last night, there were only three campers in the whole campground and it was just amazingly quiet and beautiful. You could practically count the satellites and space junk. Also the stars.

From their Web site:

"The land in Lake Anna State Park used to be known as "Gold Hill" and contained the Goodwin Gold Mine. Gold was first discovered in 1829 with mining reaching its peak in the 1880s. In 1971 Lake Anna was created to serve as a water coolant for Dominion Power’s nuclear plant. In 1972 work began on the acquisition and development of a water-oriented state park. Lake Anna State Park opened in 1983."

So it's not a very old park as it turns out and offers many recreational activities, including hiking and boating.

But it's the fishing I am anxious to check out, having heard that the lake is filled with the very tasty Blinky fish, shown here being served to Mr. Burns.

It's making me a little homesick for Dana Point, CA being within ten miles of a Nuclear Reactor. I wonder if I still have the Potassium Iodide tablets the nice folks who ran the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and Beach Grill thoughtfully provided to all of us in the immediate area to take in the event of an "event". There is something disconcerting about a Nuclear facility providing pills (unsolicited) to area residents should things go wonky.

So for those of you playing along from home, our course has kind of backtracked but we still plan to head West from here, after the Festival.

2009-04-23 The Damage is Undone

2009-04-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

While the blog has gone without updates for long enough to have a number of people ask why, I have not been completely idle.

I have come to the decision that weather should be either ignored or celebrated, but not discussed. So one thing we have done during this quiet time is to celebrate the exciting array of weather choices provided locally. Everything from gorgeous sunny days to snow; light misty rain to epic thunderstorms; and my personal favorite, tornado's. We have not actually seen any up close, but neighboring counties have been paid visits. Given that my current abode is a tornado's favorite food source, knowing when and where these windy predators are hunting has become a more than passing interest.

Earlier in the blog I mentioned a little mishap that took place on the first real day of driving, where I tagged one of those pylons they put around gas pumps. Even with my careful planning my egress before choosing a pump, I did not account enough for the turn radius, plus you may recall I was slightly distracted by an increasingly aggressive wanderer who was looking for a ride to Knoxville.

In any case, I clipped this unusually large pylon, catching the left rear corner of the rig and bumper, as shown in the top photo.

Mostly out of embarrassment for my rookie mistake, I dragged my feet on posting a picture of it until now. Since I took the time to at least partially mitigate the damage as shown in the next photo I am now willing to lay this out for digital perpetuity. A little time with a scrubber and some white duct tape removed the most obvious part of the booboo, leaving the tweaked bumper as the main reminder of my inexperience. I will get this fixed upon my return to my home base.

At the encouragement of my artist cousin Terri, I also pulled down the cheesy header wallpaper that lined the top portion of the living room area. I spent the next couple days laying down a few coats of white primer, then topped it with the same paint she has on her walls in the Sun room where I write this post.

For all the pictures I have taken of the boat, I only found this last photo that showed the original wallpaper header. It was also used as a wall treatment around the stove but is now gone.

I want to thank all of you followers for taking the time out of your busy lives to read this little blog and hope to pick up the pace of my posts as the journey recommences in the coming days. It's time to go mobile again, rested and ready.

2009-04-12 Pickin' n' Grinnin'

2009-04-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Winchester, KY
Longitude: -84.212693
Latitude: 38.005814

If you ever find yourself in the Winchester, Kentucky area on a Sunday, Monday or Thursday afternoon, you can experience an amazing slice of Americana in the back corner of Peddler's Mall.

Helen Martin set up the area for local musicians to gather and play eight years ago and operates the snack bar in the adjacent booth. Local tip: a "dressed" (and pronounced "drayussed") hamburger means "the works".

Initially, Helen told me, the music was headed up by an old guy that couldn't hear so good, who eventually left over what I gathered were philosophical differences.

In the fullness of time the group came to be known as "Peddler's Pickers", yet on the two occasions I heard them play, it was an entirely different group of pickers.

And yet the music was the same: the real-deal, down-home Kentucky Blue Grass, played with stoic enthusiasm right from the heart. Beautiful, plaintive, old-time style stuff like you might have heard in the movie "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"

More photos and a few short video clips are on my Peddler's Pickers Album.

2009-04-10 Up the Creek

2009-04-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

For those of you playing at home, here's a very quick update and Mea Culpa for a lack of updates in the past week.

It's been an array of weather here, from gorgeous sunny days to snow to biblical thunderstorms and not one but two days with tornado warnings necessitating a retreat to the basement of my cousin's place.

It was kind of reminiscent of the great Laguna fire in Southern California in 1994, where we'd watch it on the TV, then go outside and watch the line approaching.

Only this type involved torrential rain, then progressively larger hail, then beating feet to the basement where we peeked out the windows watching for the twister.

This last shot, although kind of fuzzy, shows the hail and was shot through a saturated screen at eye level to the ground looking out a basement window.

After the worst of today's storm, the emergency responders shown in the top photo stopped on the other side of the decrepit bridge and cogitated for quite a while before deciding to ultimately cross it. You can see in the lower shot how swollen the creek was in the background.

We have no idea what they were doing, as they both turned around after a couple minutes and went back across the bridge. If you're really bored, you can see the whole sequence on my Mt. Sterling gallery on Picasa.

In between epic storms, I have been very busy between work, working out, chores, exploring the area, and interacting with some amazing Americana.

I need to figure out how to encapsulate some of these experiences into words, as a camera was not always at hand, a situation I am trying to rectify.

2009-04-02 A Puppy's Tale

2009-04-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

Sorry for the delay in sharing the good news, but it's been a busy week between my new clients and working with Terri and Kevin on the farm.

I am happy to report that all three dogs featured in previous posts: Hobo, Ginger and Dusty have found homes. Hobo was adopted by a loving family. Ginger was reunited with her lost owners and it turns out that Dusty is a permanent fixture at the Gym & Doggy Rescue Center.

And two more puppies were brought in. That pretty young lady pictured here was one of three pups left at a local house. One found a home there and these two lovely ladies were given to Michael to help find a home.

They are probably only about seven weeks old and have not been given names yet.

Update April 3, 2009

Both of these puppies have already found a home!

2009-03-30 The Road Less Graveled

2009-03-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

Shortly after posting my last update, ten tons of gravel Kevin had ordered showed up in a dump truck.

In three quick sweeps, the driver spread the load out as flat as a tabletop exactly where Kevin asked him to. Got to love people who really know their job.

Yet even more impressive than the driver's skill at his load was his bravery for crossing the dilapidated bridge to get here.

The entire series of the gravel delivery is posted here in my Mt. Sterling gallery on Picasa.

2009-03-26 Terri's Garden Ver 1.0

2009-03-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

Been a surprisingly busy week here. I've been to the gym/doggy rescue every day, taking in a handful of cookies and bacon treats to Dusty, Ginger and the irrepressible Hobo, who tries to take gentle Ginger's away but I skillfully prevent with a little extra for him.

My cousin Terri is back from Chicago awaiting results of her tests and not losing a moment's time. On a trip to the garden center she appears to have bought at least one of everything.

Some of those stacks are pretty deep, with loads of wild flowers and a full complement of tasty herbs.

On the first day Kevin has had off in a few weeks, it's very rainy but not so cold here today, preventing him from his detritus removal project. The gulch on his property apparently has been used as a dump since the beginning of time, but he has beavered away at cleaning it up, each week getting a bunch of bags together and hauled out. He loves doing this.

Still undecided is where to put the garden. The flat area behind the house affords the most level ground, but Terri has it in mind to put in the beautiful, sloping front side of the house.

On the camper front, the seal I put around the outside fixture seems to have worked. It has been raining steadily for the past day or so, sometimes fairly hard, and yet the GFI has not kicked in. But it has lead to another leak discovery above the doorway on the inside. There is a nicely positioned padded bar above the doorway, which I would estimate is about five and a half feet from the deck. Being six feet tall, I have to duck going in and out, yet I have never paid much attention to it as I keenly focus on not missing the single step down. It's tight and narrow, and also Shelby proof. She won't jump out on her own, necessitating the use of the Shelevator for egress.

So between the life on the farm and adding three new clients in the past week after a long dry spell things are great here. Spring has Sprung and the gentle rains are most welcome to a thirsty region. The trees are springing into bloom, the hillsides overnight go from grey to green and the rich brown mud is a reminder to get a little Earth on you. Shelby loves it and is incredibly easy to clean.

When people ask how I keep her so shiny, I explain that I simply toss one of those dryer sheets with her in the dryer after a bath. That works for the shiny part, but she is no less clingy afterwards.

2009-03-23 Hobo, Ginger & Dusty

2009-03-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

As promised, I went back to the Downtown Athletic Club (and doggy rescue center) yesterday, this time with a camera. Over night, one of Mike's rescue dogs had found a home.

I had more time to hear the stories about the other two dogs and to grab a few more pics of the whole pack.

The top picture today is Hobo, a pup of unknown age. Hobo was abandoned in ten degree weather at a campground with two of his other litter mates. Apparently he was also used for target practice with a BB gun as when they were cleaning him up they found large scabs that when removed had BB's embedded in them. This could also account for why he is missing an eye, tragically. But his spirit is not broken. He's very sweet and outgoing, fat and sassy and probably just several months old.

Ginger is a Beagle mix found walking the streets of Mt. Sterling. Also of unknown age, she is docile and calm and also very sweet and loving. She and Hobo are patiently waiting for good homes, with a steady stream of well-wishers passing by each day to admire and play with them.

I also had the chance to catch a few more shots of Dusty, the sweet three-legged coonhound. It seems that the only thing Dusty likes better than peppermints is his friend and handler Diana, who looks after the whole menagerie with her son JJ. Diana is also a softie when it comes to cats. She told me she would likely take home the whole gaggle of cats currently in residence.

Mike and I also had more time to talk. He's a very open, friendly guy who explained that his whole life savings is invested into the club. He also goes into his own pocket to look after these rescues with no assistance from any formal agencies.

2009-03-21 Dusty

2009-03-21T19:12:00.001-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

Today, Shelby and I went out exploring. And forgot the camera, darnit.

We drove around the small town of Mt. Sterling, KY, studying the people, businesses and surprising number of burned-out homes within city limits.

I'll be back with a camera for a pictorial essay, but the day had an interesting turn when I popped into the Downtown Athletic Center and met the owner Mike, an affable, friendly guy I would put around my age.

Mike gave me a tour of the facilities and in the back corner was a large glassed-in room with several rescue dogs patiently hoping for someone to take them home. I mentioned to Mike that I had a three-legged Lab out in the car and he said "I got one here, too".

So he took me around to an area with two nice leather couches, one of which, he explained, was Dusty's.

Dusty is a 7 year old coonhound (not sure if that is one or two words). Very friendly and very popular with the staff and members of the club. Dusty lost the same leg as Shelby to a car.

Now that I know of the gym I will be heading back there with both Shelby, a camera and my gym stuff.

I will see if Mike will allow me to take Dusty out for walks.

What has eight legs, six eyes and smells?

Me and the dogs.

2009-03-16 Shelby's Resume'

2009-03-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

Synopsis: A real go-getter and team player. Particularly adept at working with and training people. A natural diplomat. Not a work dog but can work a room.

Education: Happy Camper Dog Training, Santa Ana, CA

Degrees Earned: MS - Master of Sitting, Minor in Staying

Work experience

1996-1997 Spent my first year in Newport Beach, CA, learning how to bend my master's will to my own.

1997-1999 Refined training in Laguna Beach, CA in capacity as emergency backup dog to my Senior Associate Milo. On the job training included teaching my master to pick up after me on walks and also persuading him to leave a bowl of cookies out and available to us at all times. We never abused the privilege and appreciated the show of trust and good faith.

1999-2000 Duties escalated as we moved to a 10-acre property in the mountains near Durango, CO. Still served as emergency backup dog and took over comic relief position full-time. Also learned how to stand on one leg.

2000-2007 My master transferred back to Dana Point, CA during the acquisition of a company and merging his company in with the new one. Served as backup watchdog and companion to Milo. Also persuaded master to bring the Dog Van back from the ranch in Colorado, so the three of us could all ride shotgun again.

From 2004 to 2006 provided assistance to Senior Associate Milo as he progressed through an illness I can't spell and will leave to my master to describe. In 2006, upon the passing of Milo, stepped into main dog position, taking over all duties.

2008 Helped my master with travel planning and companionship. He voluntarily shed most of his stuff and buried the rest of it in storage, freeing us up to travel, and that we have. Principal role as travel companion is reminding my master to stop regularly so we can check P-mail.

2009 Changed to full-time traveler with my master, aboard his road ship with the comfy couch. Duties mainly companionship and keeping furniture warm. Also to make sure he gets a workout in the form of lifting me in and out of the car.

Special Skills

Mail-handling. I employ a unique skill of dealing with third-class mail and mail-order catalogs.

Party Consultant / Fashion Advisor

I excel in being a party person and helping others with their wardrobe and fashion decisions.

Super Power

Ability to stretch my body to ten times it's normal length. Okay, it's not a great Super Power but it is funny.

2009-03-15 The Son Also Rises

2009-03-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

I apologize for the scarcity of updates and assure those who have asked that everything is fine here, despite my making daily posts here.

It's been an interesting week, weather-wise. We had a few inches of snow overnight several days ago that was gone by the time we got up so no pictures exist. Shelby likes to spend as much time as possible outside and there's a little spot next to the house with grass, some mulch and Terri's Eris statue.

We have to keep an eye on her (Shelby, not Terri) that she doesn't stay out too long, as she gets cold and requires extra blankets and time to warm up.

The snow was less of a problem than the rain of the past few days, and that was only a problem in as much as my GFI keeps kicking out. I spent the better part of a day working on it, trying to isolate the cause of the problem, which I strongly suspect is the single outside electrical plug. I mentioned in the first week of the blog that we had an outage during the time the snow was melting from the roof.

This outside plug is mounted directly under a seam in the roof gutter, and a steady bead of water travels down from there, jumps off the ski lift of the stove air vent. Some of the water does the Wide World of Sports Skier Wipeout Thing where it travels off the side of the jump and beelines for the socket.

It's only a hunch and I have to wait until it dries out, then I will attack the socket with some clear Silicon I purchased yesterday for the purpose. In the meantime, the good news is that the furnace is not on the GFI circuit so it and the fridge work just fine. I am being very cautious with the lights inside the camper on the supposition that they are running off the battery (I might be wrong on this) and using some portable LED's and getting used to doing things in the dark.

This has been an excellent lesson in appreciating the things we tend to take for granted. Running water. Heat. Electricity. Luckily, Terri's art studio is a mere 30 feet from my camper and has a great bathroom with shower and even a mini kitchenette.

Speaking of Terri, I can now reveal the principal reason I came to see her when I did.

She has posted on her FaceBook page a link to a video entitled What Matters To You: Scleroderma, and for the first time to my knowledge has publicly revealed that she has Scleroderma.

Her family and I have known for a while and she is now of the mind that she wants to raise awareness of this disease, which allows me to now mention it here.

This is a particularly nasty illness, described as follows on Wikipedia:

"Scleroderma is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by a hardening[1] or sclerosis[2] in the skin or other organs. The localized type of the disease, known as "morphea",[3] while disabling, tends not to be fatal. The systemic type or systemic sclerosis, the generalized type of the disease, can be fatal, as a result of heart, kidney, lung or intestinal damage.[4] It is currently not fully understood what exactly causes this disease, although there are various theories."

I wanted to get here to spend time with her before she begins treatment. Tomorrow, she and Kevin are driving up to Northwestern University in Chicago to be evaluated for a radical treatment program being offered there. They will be gone several days while Shelby and I keep a couple pairs of brown eyes on the farm.

Despite the terrifying prospects of what she may have in store, she is a force of nature and good karma. We're having lots of laughs and fun, and are making plans for a vegetable garden, bee hives, and a vineyard. They have plenty of room for all of these and I hope to help at least as long as it takes to get the crops in. Whatever that means.

So for those of you who were concerned about my lack of posting, it has to do with a number of factors, including bandwidth and time, but trust that everything is fine, except my cell phone coverage. The only bars my cell phone can find are Honky Tonks, so I have forwarded my cell phone to my Skype-in number. While I am at the computer I can get calls immediately. Otherwise it will take a voice mail and I will get those the next time I am on the computer or near a cell phone tower.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for the help and support. Special thanks in this post goes to Wild Bill Morrison, who spent quite a lot of time explaining the intricacies of electricity and GFI's.

The only thing better than being smart is having smarter friends.

2008-03-15 Shelby's Story

2009-03-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

While I am ensconced in the country and not technically traveling, I plan to fill in some background information. There's no better place to begin than telling the story of how Shelby came to be with me.

It was around the end of April of 1996, while I was living in Newport Beach, CA.

While I have told this story a thousand times, in this permanent version I will clarify an important point: I was not actually present when the crisis began, but the details to follow emerged over the next few days and have ridden for the past thirteen years in my memory.

Those who were there relayed to me that someone apparently threw Shelby out of a car or truck, then ran over her, severing her right foreleg. My neighbor Jim, a commercial airline pilot, was the who found her in the street bleeding and in shock.

He bundled her up in a clean towel and took her to the same Vet we used for Milo just a few blocks from the house.

I had been out of town when this all happened but I returned later that night and heard the tragic story.

The next day I went over to the Vet to meet this little puppy, who had instantly become the darling of the pet hospital. When she was brought out, it was love at first site. She squirmed from Vet assistant's arms and made for mine. I practically heard her say "Can I come home with you, Mister?"

The next thing you know, I am the proud owner of one and 3/4 dogs.

My main dog Milo, who was about a year old at the time, immediately took her in and made her welcome. He never stopped that in his whole life. Milo will get his own background story here later.

Shelby was probably about six weeks old when she came to us. The photos in this post were taken with a Canon digital camera I had just bought (and later returned) and are the first images captured of Shelby, but far from the last.

Right from the onset, Shelby was a good puppy. She quickly learned her lessons, and soon after pretty much had us wrapped around her paw.

Milo shared everything: toys, food, water, cookies and especially nap time, never once in his whole life ever snapping at her. He loved his job of being big brother, protector and doggy mentor, and did it with his gentle stoicism and patience.

Within a year or so I made the decision to send them both out to a 6-week training camp. It was rough. I desperately missed them and could not visit.

When they were returned, the trainer demonstrated how well they had learned their lessons. They stayed. They sat on command. They healed. They came when called. And they forgot just about everything the instant the trainer drove off.

Milo continued to remember his lessons but Shelby, not so much. To this day she still doesn't come when called and she will only sit or lay down if bacon is involved. Some have said I never broke her spirit. I never even dented it.

Neither dog was ever struck in anger or for discipline. Shelby has zero flinching instinct. She is as unaware of being hit as she is driving a car. And while I gave her the opportunity to forget her formal lessons, I never stopped doing the thinking for her. This accounts for why she is on-leash in nearly every photo in her collection. I think she actually likes it. Even when she stops suddenly and the collar slips off her neck, she comes to a dead stop and waits for me to put it back on.

I think we both feel more comfortable leashed together and I try to let her have some dog time every day.

Mr. Steinbeck wrote in Travels With Charley that Charley was the only dog he ever knew who could talk. Due to a slight misalignment of his teeth, Charley could say "Ftt". Mr. Steinbeck took that to mean that Charley was ready to do his business.

Well, Shelby can't talk, but she sure talks back. The nearest she gets to talking is this pattern that sort of sounds like she is saying "no, you". Shelby, sit. No, you.

I have worked with her on this in hopes of getting on the Stupid Pet Tricks segment of the David Letterman show but she doesn't want to go to New York City, even on a TV network's expense account. Can't blame her for that.

Shelby tends to come to life around 11pm local time pretty much every day. This is the time she likes to play, and she will bark at me until I relent. This usually doesn't take long, as there is no shutting her up. She may be part Labrador but she may have not inherited the Retriever bit. She will fetch what is thrown and only gives it up if it looks to her like play time is over.

Shelby's missing leg has been the source of thousands of comments and questions throughout the years as she has traveled all across the country, coming into contact with people of all shapes, sizes and ages.

Depending on my mood, the person asking, and various other circumstances, my response to "what happened to her leg?" comes from the following repertoire:

"It was part of a bitter divorce settlement." I only use this on adults and older kids when I think they can appreciate the humor. Saying this with a completely straight face really throws people off, and only about 2 out of 5 laugh right off the bat.

"She didn't eat her vegetables." Reserved exclusively for the under 5 year old set. This always cracks up the parent units and leaves Grandparents laughing and thanking me.

"Beach/River/Creek Shark bit her." Used when near a body of water and gullible people.

More often than not, however, I just give the condensed version of the story told above. Everyone always says how sad it is and I usually point out that "their bad Karma is my good Dogma", and we all agree that she gets along just fine. I almost always observe that she does everything any other dog can do, just does not corner well at high speeds.

And she really does. Digs. Climbs. Jumps. Runs. She's not fond of swimming and I don't force the issue, but she loves getting wet like most Labs.

As to her actual heritage, well we don't know. There are black spots on her tongue which I am told is characteristic of Labs. She is clearly a mix, but the other ingredients are debatable.

But the best part of Shelby is her heart. She is simply the most gentle, loving, friendly dog I have ever known. I warn people she is a trained kisser when they put their face within striking distance and she rarely disappoints. Like a Cobra she strikes, tongue-first. Anyone within a 24 inch radius is going to get licked.

She loves babies. Old people. People of every color and income bracket. And she treats them all the same, expecting that everyone likes her as much as she immediately likes them. This is only problematic with people who are deathly afraid of dogs in general and Shelby gets it in her mind that she wants to meet them. So I am forced to restrain her in respect of their fears.

As near as we can figure, and not without irony, she was born on this day in 1996. I didn't realize that it was her birthday until just now. She's Thirteen today.

Since every day she is treated like it's her birthday, this will likely go unmarked. But I am very happy to have had her this long and to report that she is in excellent health and even better spirits.

Reaching the end of our shared attention span, if I still have you at all, the final point I will make here is that Shelby was named by my daughter Brynne. I'm pretty sure she's named (Shelby, not Brynne) after some character in a schmaltzy chick-flick from that time, possibly even Julia Roberts, who will help this blog show up in more Google searches now.

2009-03-11 Moonrise over Mt. Sterling

2009-03-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Mt. Sterling, KY
Longitude: -83.94502
Latitude: 38.06882

I arrived at the home of my cousin Terri and her husband Kevin a few days ago and have been quite busy getting settled in, setup and connected during that time.

We're about 40 miles East of Lexington, Kentucky in an area of gently rolling hills, farmland, horses and a big, warm slice of Americana.

You know you're out in the country here, as cell phone coverage is very spotty. This has posed a small problem in using my cell phone as a tethered modem, with transmission throughput down to the old days of dial-up speeds.

I'm working on improving this. Yesterday we went into town and bought a Wireless-N WiFi router and installed it last night, solving another problem in the process. Terri is moving into a new computer so now both her old and new computers can be on the same LAN visible to each other for moving stuff over.

Naturally, the MacBookPro saw the WiFi network and efficiently connected, while I was within a few feet of the router. Unfortunately, the camper is not upstairs in her office. Rather, it is about 100 feet from the back of her house. The Mac sees the network from inside the camper but the signal is not strong enough to connect, so I am researching alternative methods for improving my reception a la Arthur, who is the King of WiFi, often picking up Access Points from upwards of a mile away.

The Hawking Hi-Gain™ USB Wireless-G Dish Adapter I found online looks like it might fit the bill. Plus, it's kind of retro.

Newegg.com and Buy.com both carry it and include a bunch of good comments from happy users.

Shelby has taken to the camper very well and I am now able to leave her there for longer periods of time without her going into a panic. After a few days of nice warm weather, it got a little colder today so here's a picture of her warming up after spending a while outside in her favorite spot.

We're going to decamp here for at least ten days in hopes of helping Terri get her garden planted after returning from a brief visit to Chicago early next week.

2009-03-08 In Transit

2009-03-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

Dateline, Dunbar, WV
Longitude: -81.7477
Latitude: 38.376

One of my favorites movies, The Return of the King is notable for having about nine separate endings. This trip has had nearly as many beginnings, and Frodo could have probably walked to Mordor in less time than it took me to pull out, but today we did.

On a gorgeous, sunny Sunday we headed out I-64 across the Western part of Virginia, taking a few snaps along the way. That first picture from today doesn't actually reflect how sunny and warm it was, but shows that the trees are still sleeping for the Winter.

Compare that with the second photo from the drive out I-64 in October, when the leaves were about to finish their colorful show and drop.

I carefully steered the rig out on the Interstate and within a little while started getting comfortable with its handling. The empty weight on the camper is 4400 pounds, and I probably have added a few hundred pounds to that, even with the tanks empty. So you notice it back there. Plus, it's 25 feet long which comes up again later in the blog. After passing Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia and Thomas Jefferson, we stopped in a rest area for a stretch.

Wandering over to the passenger car side, I spotted a service truck and guy talking to some citizens and waited until he was done with them before asking if had a compressor on board, to which he replied "yep". I asked if he might add some air to the rear tire on the Suburban, which I had neglected to do before pulling out. He said sure and pulled his rig around and alongside mine.

I asked if this was a free service and he politely told me yes it was. The markings on his truck didn't make it clear if it was State or not so I asked who he worked for. He explained that he was a actually part of a company that contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, but works closely with the State. I asked if business was good and he said yes but he mostly spent time involved in drug searches. He explained that the State Police are short-handed and bring him in on drug stops as backup. "Plus", he added as he pointed to his rig, "I have that big push blade". Interesting. It was a very big push blade and I didn't have the nerve to ask how that helped in drug searches.

He quickly brought my tire pressure up to 50psi on all four tires and I thanked him.

One thing I can say about Virginians is that they are uniformly polite. In almost all my dealings with them, they tend towards courtesy more often than adversity.

We had a brief rest, Shelby checked and left her P-mail, then headed on down the road.

I plan to provide much more back story on Shelby as time and energy permit, but I am hear to tell you she is just a great traveler. Always has been. Never once got carsick, always ready to go, always looking out the Window or hanging over the seat so she feels like she's up front with me.

With no particular destination in mind, I got it in my head that Charleston, WV would be a good goal for the day.

A Chevrolet Suburban holds 42 gallons of gas. Really. The 2500 model, which I have, has a towing package and 4 wheel drive. It can go places I would not even watch on TV, much less go to. On a good day, with the wind with me, and without the Thule carrier on top, it gets about 12mpg on the highway. Today, it got 7.5 on a pure highway test. I filled up twice today and the second time took 28 gallons for going 210 miles. Holy Jumpin' Jesus, that is embarrassing.

We also had our first little incident. Pulling off in Nitro, WV, where fittingly there was a Nuclear Reactor. I pulled into a Pilot station and carefully swung the rig into position so I could fuel and egress without backing up. While I was filling up I spotted moderately old and road-worn traveler going from driver to driver at the islands filling their cars asking them something then moving on. Being on the end, I was his last stop. And being the friendly guy I am, I listened as he asked if I was heading to Knoxville by any chance. Explaining I wasn't, he must have sensed something as he sort of started moving in on me, eventually putting his hand on the open window ledge as I started to pull out. I judged the front part of the turn correctly, but not the camper. As the rig pivoted, the tail end swung around and caught the concrete pillar protecting the gas pumps. I felt a good thump up front and quickly stopped, hoping I had not hit the hobo. I hadn't, but the left rear end of the camper was scraped about 18" and the bumper was tweckled a bit. My first ding. Great. It was already dark so I couldn't get a picture of it but will upload one.

I pulled out my Verizon cellphone which also has the terrific built-in GPS service and punched in campgrounds. Finding a KOA on the list, I let it guide me the final 16 miles to the Fox Fire (as I compose this in FireFox) campground where we are hunkered down for the night just in time for what sounds and feels like a big storm coming. The wind is already picking up pretty good, shaking the whole camper.

So overall it was a pretty good day, short of the minor ding on the camper, but all of it gets chalked up to experience and gratitude that no one was hurt.

2009-03-07 The Fix is in

2009-03-07T18:01:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Ashland, VA
Longitude: -77.8881
Latitude: 37.7338

Here's what's happened since the last update. That picture I posted of the water tank in its pregnant pose was kind of prescient. It should not have looked like that, and was probably a consequence of my filling the freshwater tank the day before the Mega Storm of 2009. Dumb.

So I spent Thursday in snow-related duties, while Shelby also had a few snow-related dooties. I borrowed a ladder to clear the snow from the top of the unit and slideout. I kept the space heater under the tank all day until it was shut down by the GFI. Probably got some water in the plug where the heater was attached, as it was under a fairly prolific drip. Everything dried up pretty quickly once the snow was off the roof and the Sun did its job all afternoon. But it took until the next morning for the GFI to reset. By Thursday night I was able to drain the fresh tank using the water pump.

Another shakedown surprise occurred Thursday night when the four screws holding the closet hanger bar gave way under the load of clothes. Apparently, the lowest bidder who installed it never thought anyone would hang more than, say, a couple Hawaiian shirts and a pair of jeans.

On Friday, I dropped the camper at RV Services to fix it while we hit the stores and did some chores.

Mac did a super job on both the closet and securing the tank, shown in this post.

2009-03-04 Tanks Where It's Due

2009-03-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Ashland, VA
Longitude: -77.8881
Latitude: 37.7338

Well, we survived the Mega Storm of '09. The fresh water tank, however, appears to be pregnant. I put Mary Lou's little space heater on duty to help thaw the tank out and the weather is already starting to cooperate. Today it's supposed to get all the way up to 40 and by Friday it should be in the 70's.

I paid for a couple more nights so we can wait out the thaw. Friday, I will take the camper to RV Service and have them install a stick-on heater and insulate the fresh water tank.

Now that I am caught up on details I can start backfilling this blog with background and history.

I should start this by thanking two people who really helped out a bunch during the months of preparation.

First off would be Arthur Tyde who is not only one of the smartest guys I know, but who also has a vast knowledge of RV's he graciously shared with me. Arthur has an RV he uses for Burning Man and it is rigged out as a Nerd haven, with all sorts of cool things to support life on wheels.

Secondly I would thank "Wild" Bill Morrison, another Burner bud, who has provided many good tips and ideas, not to mention doing an extraordinary amount of detailed research into the various systems an RV contains.

Make no mistake, an RV is a house on wheels. As such, it has all the maintenance issues a regular house has, and then some. For a novice, this can be overwhelming.

I should also thank the guys at RV Service of VA for all that they did in making this trip possible. I could not have done it without their help and diligence.

So we're just waiting out the thaw, enjoying the snow before it turns into mud.

2009-03-02 Five Tracks in the Snow

2009-03-02T18:30:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Ashland, VA
Longitude: -77.8881
Latitude: 37.7338

What an interesting couple of days. On the morning of our second day, I solved the sewage hookup problem by purchasing a hose and the connectors at the cg office.

Next, I hooked up the TV to the cable but having only one long coaxial with me I had to borrow one from the cg, which Brian cheerfully gave me.

After getting that hooked up, the second channel I found was TNT, playing Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. Nerdtastic. We had something on we could actually watch and enjoy, so I set about getting things squared away.

Around 4pm - 24 hours into the trip - the snow began. In what was to be later called a "Mega Storm", the entire Eastern Seaboard was blanketed with a layer of fat, wet snow.

Thanks to having supplies laid in, fuel, water & Shelby, we enjoyed the change of scenery to stunning white as we spent the day ensconced in hot chocolate and Orcs.

Shelby loves the snow. It brings out the Labrador in her. She just can't get enough of it and it doesn't seem to make her the least bit cold, despite having a very thin coat comparatively to most Labs.

To avoid freezing under the snow, I disconnected the sewage and water hookups. Curiously, the level gauge inside said that the fresh water tank was empty and I have come to the conclusion that it is possibly frozen, having filled it on the first day.

Randy at RV Service of VA suggested leaving the cabinet doors open to allow the heat to get to the pipes, which I did. Sonny, the husband of Mary Lou, who runs the cg, suggested hooking up the water feed. I did this and soon had running water, a luxury.

Mary Lou even suggested putting an electric space heater on the water pump and offered me the very one she was using behind the front desk. I put it on overnight and today the tank still says it's empty and no water is flowing.

Then again, it has not gotten above freezing since Sunday and it's now Tuesday. But the Sun is out and the temps are supposed to get up to the 60's in a couple days so we will just dig in and wait it out.

We're enjoying this, and it's made all the better by having WiFi so we can remain in touch and see what's going on outside the campground.

2009-02-28 And so it begins...

2009-02-25T07:29:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Ashland, VA
Longitude: -77.8881
Latitude: 37.7338

As of 4pm today, the journey has begun. Shelby and I are successfully camped at a campground on the north end of town not two miles from RV Service of Virginia, where the camper has resided since I bought it last June.

Sorry for the delay in posting, but let's just say I was busy and leave it at that. It took a lot of preparation, planning and thought to make this happen and as each load of stuff was shlepped out to the camper, it disappeared nicely into storage, closets, etc. After loading in all my stuff you couldn't even tell anything had changed, short of the thick feather bed on top of the bunk.

It was cold and rainy when we hugged Mom goodbye and pushed off. I had spent a lot of time searching for campgrounds within a 100 mile range so we could take a few days to shakedown the rig and work out any problems. Incredibly, almost none of the state parks or RV campgrounds within that range were open until after March 1st or later, so I went with this local campground.

In a short while we reached the campground and checked in. Still raining, I hooked up the electricity, lit the water heater, filled the fresh water tank, then hooked up to the water feed and went inside.

Almost immediately I encountered my first potential showstopper. The thermostat that controls the furnace was pegged all the way to the right, indicating it was 90 degrees (it wasn't - more like 35 degrees) so the furnace would not kick in. Shelby and I discussed this, and could see each other's breath while we did.

She suggested that we should probably eat something so I thawed a couple chicken breasts in the water that had already heated up, then put them into a ZipLoc bag filled with blackened Cajun spice, sort of like a poor-man's shake 'n bake. I cooked them in an iron skillet and made a cup of hot chocolate while I thought through the possible scenarios of freezing here.

After eating the chicken and giving Shelby a tub of the tasty Beneful Beef Stew she is fond of, I took the cover off the thermostat. The needle assembly is embedded in the cover and terminates in a round dial on a screw. On a hunch, I rotated it and it moved without resistance, setting it to the other end of the spectrum at 50 degrees.

That still didn't cause the furnace to kick in. So I found the circuit breaker panel and opened it up. It said the furnace was the third fuse and when I spotted it, that fuse was hanging out of the socket, barely hanging on by one prong. I gave it a little shove and presto, the furnace came on. Sweet. My toes and fingers almost immediately started to thaw.

To find out if I had munged the thermostat I set it at 60 to see if it would cut off. Around three paragraphs into writing this blog it shut down on its own. Success! I notched it on up to 70 and it is now warm and toasty inside the camper.

The temperatures here tonight will just bottom at 32, but the next two days it will not go over that and will be down in the teens, with possible snow on Monday. But now that we have heat, we don't have to worry so much.

At the request of the campground, I detached the water feed and drained the hose, so we'll just use the fresh water tank for now.

The big project for tomorrow will be to hook up to the sewage line. All I have is one dinky little drain hose with a connector only for the camper end. I wandered around and saw that the experienced ones have a long hose with an L connector on the tank end, plus they have these neat little supports to keep the hose under control. I'm fairly sure I can get my hands on one of these somewhere tomorrow.

The campground has WiFi so I am not having to use my cell phone as a tethered modem yet.

I am very pleased that the heat is on. It's funny how we take things for granted. I am even more pleased that I was able to fix this myself, without a lick of training or experience. This leads me to my final thought for this post.

It is my opinion that the handyman gene is recessive. My Dad could build a garage or addition to the house with one tool and no plans. I did not inherit that skill set.

If I had been a carpenter in Jerusalem, Jesus would have died of old age.

But I got lucky tonight. Dad would approve.

2009-02-14 I Drank the Kool-Aid

2009-02-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

Dateline Richmond, VA

I will fess up that I have been behind the laptop curve for a while. Eight years to be precise. My last one, and still a stalwart but bulky friend, was a Dell 8100 I picked up in August of 2001. It has seen lots of travel, been through 4 hard drives at $250 a pop and had two screens. Total investment: $6000usd give or take. Sheesh.

So I started looking for replacements last Summer, after falling in love with the ASUS EEE PC A client loaned me while teaching a class in Jamaica. Very cute. Only $299, runs Linux, fits in a pocket and boots up in under 15 seconds. Plus it has all the apps preloaded (all open-source, natch).

By the end of the week I was actually getting used to the tiny little keyboard and screen and was very much interested in the NetBook route. Upon my return I started studying up and found that ASUS had an array of higher end Netbooks, the top end of which at the time had a 10" screen, larger keyboard and lots of great built-in features. You could even get it with XP on it. But the price was over $600. That put it within striking range of the low end but still very powerful full-size laptops.

So I studied all of them. Read reviews. Visited stores and played with them. Still, there were a couple things I couldn't stand. One was the prospect of getting a machine running the heinous Vista O/S. I have extra copies of XP I scored through a friend at Microsoft in anticipation of a day when they would no longer be available. So I could potentially buy a Vista box then attempt at lobotomizing it, scraping out the Vista weirdness and replacing it with XP. Yechh. Not fun.

Then in August, I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks with a MacBook Pro. What a sweet machine. Leopard is an operating system the way God intended one to be. It is actually BSD Unix underneath, which gives me great confidence, being an old Unix guy dating back to the mid-80's.

While I didn't jump on it straight away, I had the opportunity to spend more time with Macs at a buds house and really took Leopard to town, examining all its components and ending up being damn impressed.

Knowing September would bring a new announcement from Apple on their laptop line, I waited to see what they would unveil. And they didn't disappoint. The new MacBookPro offered a single-piece body, a very thin glass screen (and no matte option), and a few other features I can't recall at the moment. But they had no announcement for their 17" models, to my disappointment.

I waited and continued studying the overall laptop landscape until the evening of Feb 13th, when I just decided to go ahead and get the MacBookBro 15". The following evening found me at the local Apple store.

After describing what options I wanted and conditions I had (like examining the unit for dead pixels at the advice of a friend), I handed over a credit card and in five minutes became an Apple guy.

I had heard of the "out of box" experience with Apple gear and have to say I was very impressed with the minimalist approach.

Out of the box, the computer was already charged and good to go. Not a dead pixel to be found. So I scooped up my new Mac, a neat messenger bag, a copy of VMWare, a mouse (okay, so I am old school) and headed home to start moving in to it.

I'll just jump ahead to my conclusion and spare the gritty details.

In my opinion, this whole Mac or PC thing is bogus.

By adding VMWare, I was able to load a fresh copy of Windows XP underneath it. Again, I won't bore you with details, but I have a number of packages that only run in XP, so I actually needed it.

It was surprisingly fast. In fact, it boots up XP many times faster than my desktop box, shuts down in just a few seconds, and I have yet to experience a single crash or BSOD. Sweet.

Within several days and after a lot of detailed work validating that my original data was all intact, I am officially moved in to the MacBookPro and loving it. It will replace a tired but well-worn Dell desktop nicely.

2009-02-13 We got the goods

2009-02-18T12:01:00.000-08:00

Dateline Richmond, VA

A couple days after my previous whiny blog about Best Buy and everything "being on the truck", I went back over to see for myself if the proverbial truck had arrived.

To my surprise, it had.

So I went to town and splurged on a couple nice things to add to the camper for the trip, starting with:

A Toshiba 19" LCD HD/DVD Combo

The camper is "cable ready", but I figured that there really would not be many opportunities to plug in to someone else's cable on this trip, so I opted for a Digital TV / DVD combo unit to be able to watch movies as time permits. The day after I got this I read an article that rabbit ears (antennas, for you youngsters) were making a comeback in the new post-analog TV era, with many people reverting back to these to take advantage of the crystal-clear digital TV offered free over the airwaves. The camper has an antenna on top and we will see what kind of reception this affords.

Next up was to replace the funky (and broken) old CD/Radio built in to the unit.

So I picked up the Pioneer DEH-1100MP. This is a digital radio with a CD player capable of playing regular and MP3 CD's, plus has the all-important MP3 input on its front panel. Having exploited some of the great deals offered on woot.com during the past several months, I now have five Sansa MP3 players, 2 each of the 1gb model and 3 of the 4gb model. All have built-in radios and the big ones also play videos. Total cost on all five units togeter: $90usd. Really. The big units were originally around $250usd. I can't say enough good things about woot.com so will just give it a big old Woot and recommend it.

Of course that fine new Pioneer CD/Radio wouldn't sound great through the crappy old speakers currently installed in the camper, so I picked up two pairs of Alpine 5-1/4" Type-S Speakers. They sounded fantastic even in the store and had both good bass as well as a decent high-end. At least enough for these ears.

I happily trotted all of these out to RV Services of VA on Friday and handed them off to Wendell, who assured he would get to them "next week".

See the next post for the real electronic score.

2009-02-10 Best Buy, If You Can

2009-02-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

Dateline Richmond, VA

I have spent a lot of time thinking of what things I need to acquire for the camper for the road trip, beyond the standard stuff one carries.

This list includes a LCD TV/DVD combo, a replacement stereo with four speakers, a video camera, and a new notebook computer. All things one could, in theory, buy at a store like Best Buy.

I've made several recon missions to Best Buy over the previous few months, scoping out possible candidates, and then researching them. But it wasn't until last night that I actually was able to locate a knowledgeable sales associate in each department who actually knew the products and seemed to enjoy talking about them. The added bonus was that the store was empty of customers, so I had each of them relatively undistracted.

In each case, I told them my criteria and requirements, and we soon found the ideal model for my needs. And with each separate case we ran into the exact same problem: they didn't actually have that particular model on hand. In three cases it was "on the truck" and I should check back in "probably like 3 or 4 days".

In the case of the car stereo, there was a model replacing the one we had chosen, which was only 30% more expensive, but also included an iPod cable. Even then, the higher priced model was not "out yet". It was somewhere between "on the truck" and "where it could be carried to a register".

So I left empty-handed, despite having the budget and intentions of spending a good chunk of change.

I actually considered that visit to Best Buy a good experience, despite the outcome.

It was fun talking with the sales guys, who knew an awful lot about the products that they didn't even have for sale.

If I can get them delivered quickly enough, I may order them online, otherwise I will make due and improvise.

2009-02-08 The Word is Out

2009-02-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

Dateline Richmond, VA

In celebration of getting near the end of squaring away my things in storage for this trip, I updated the main page of JonSisk.com with an announcement of the upcoming Travels With Shelby trip, which I expect to begin by mid-week.

I'm now putting the word out on my social networking sites in an attempt to arrange meetings with friends, family and former clients along the way.

Our routing map is published and will be updated with actual routing as the journey evolves.

We're shooting for getting in about 300 miles per day and hope to stop at YMCA's along the way to work out.

Shelby has her spot in the Suburban picked out, warmed up and is ready to go.

2009-02-04 Cold Preparations

2009-02-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

Dateline Richmond, VA

It's been a couple days since I updated the blog. I've been busy getting stuff squared away in storage and pulling stuff from storage that will be useful in the camper.

I'm also about halfway through reading "Travels with Charley" again, fascinated by the things Mr. Steinbeck pioneered. From the whole camper concept to his ingenious bucket method of washing clothes, he innovated a lot of things people take for granted today.

In the absence of having a trip-related photo to post, I'm submitting one of my Son in Law's new office, the Supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan. This shows it in the "Man at Rail" configuration, with the crew lining the rail as it pays it's respects at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor.

While I am very proud of him and his new job on the world's largest machine, there is a chance I may be able to join him on it for a 5-day cruise back from Hawaii to San Diego in October of this year. Each year when it returns from deployment, the Navy books several commercial airliners and offer crew members the option of flying home early. Apparently, they never have trouble getting enough volunteers for this.

Family members of the crew are then invited to join in on their "Tiger Cruise" and experience life on a Super Carrier for what must be an amazing five days. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this comes to pass.

2009-01-29 Hurricane Caden

2009-01-29T18:19:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Richmond, VA

Today we had a visit from my daughter Sarah and her son Caden, who was born on the day Katrina hit New Orleans.

They visited her Grandmother - my Mom, shown here with Shelby.

Caden is possibly the missing link to perpetual motion, and is very difficult to get into a shot.

That is not to say I did not sacrifice many pixels in an attempt to catch him.

Here's one where he was hamming it up for the camera. He's a huge Gators fan, in no small part as they are from the University of Florida, where his dad just picked up his MBA in December.

So not much progress was made on the trip today, but it was great to see Hurricane Boy and my daughter prior to them setting out for their move to California.

2009-01-28 Ice Storms

2009-01-28T17:05:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Richmond, VA

Still here and making ready for the trip.

The whole Eastern Seaboard is reeling from cold weather and storms.

Here in Richmond, freezing rain is making road conditions hazardous.

A stalwart old plant and trellis adjacent to the house collapsed under the weight of the ice today, narrowly missing my car.

I am studying routes, looking at points I plan to hit and will publish the tentative map of the journey in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, Shelby is busy storing up energy for the trip.

2009-01-27 Update

2009-01-27T19:23:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Richmond, VA

To force myself into the habit of updating this blog, I'll report even minor progress updates but try not to just post any empty calories.

I went out to visit the camper yesterday at RV Service of VA, where it has been in storage for the past few months.

The Amerilite survived its brief Winter storage without a hitch (har). Not a drop of leakage, and no funky smells.

I gave Wendell a short list of things I wanted to have done:

Possibly swap the manual water heater for one with an electronic starter

Install a new CD/Stereo and speakers once I provide the new unit

De-winterize (this only takes a couple hours he says)

Fill the propane tanks

Add a hitch lock

Add a kill switch on the battery

Look into the viability of adding a second battery. I anticipate a good amount of boondocking on this trip

and finally, to verify I have the right size hitch ball.

We had already tested everything end to end before Winterizing it, so it shouldn't take much more than topping the tanks and battery and it's good to go.

Today, we had about an inch of "sneet", causing a lot of road problems around here, so I chose to work on things around the house in preparation for this long trip.

I ordered a Solar Charger from Woot.com to help put a charge on the battery while boondocking. My good buddy Dr. Phil told me of a great DC Inverter at Costco for $20 which could potentially work with the charger so I could use a laptop on it. I paid a visit to CostCo on Sunday (a big mistake) and found the inverter but could not find the patience to wait in half-mile long check out lines for one item, so I will pop back over again during the week for that.

In Search of America, 2009

2009-01-26T17:00:00.001-08:00

Dateline Richmond, VA

It has come to pass that I am now able to embark upon a massive round-the-country trip.

This has been in the planning stages for many months, including a kind of false start in June of last year. But that was then.

So over the coming days, weeks and months I hope to keep this blog updated with the results of what we learn and observe in this year of Hope.

By "we", I mean of course Shelby, my 12 year old Lab mix who has been my faithful companion throughout her life.

In the course of this blog I will provide history about her life, how she came to change mine.

I will also use this opportunity to share some of my own observations on a variety of topics.

Since this is a Blog, it invites comments. I can only hope that the spambots don't discover this and use it to sell their evil wares. I will endeavor to remain ahead of them but it's been my experience this is a time consuming and never ending task.

Finally, I hope to pay homage to the great John Steinbeck work Travels with Charley (In Search of America) and if you can forgive my shameless lifting of that timeless subtitle I will use it as a model for crafting and styling my reports from the road.

Mr. Steinbeck's trip took place in 1960 at the age of 58 and in seriously failing health. His objective, according to Thom Steinbeck, the author's older son, the real reason for the trip was that Steinbeck knew he was dying and wanted to see his country one last time.

Mine begins in early February, 2009, at the age of 52, with the country teetering on the edge of what appears to be a Grim Depression that could make the previous one look like a cakewalk, while a new, young, talented President scrambles to fix it. Unlike Mr. Steinbeck, I'm in excellent health if you don't include a couple minor aches and pains as a consequence of working out every day.

Nope, happy to have all my hair, teeth and a good amount of my wits left.

And happy to once again embark on another trip with little Shelby. She's an amazingly good traveler and loves going to new places.

Thank you for joining us on this journey.

Your comments and questions are most welcome.

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