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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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Accidental Snowbirding

So I went to Florida and accidentally became a snowbird. I drove south in September with no real timeframe for anything in mind, and I ended up staying on the Gulf coast north of Tampa (Pasco County) for almost three months, minus a couple of weeks I was in Georgia.

Some friends have asked me how the new, nomadic life is going, and I tell them that it hasn’t really felt that nomadic. I’ve enjoyed being close to my friend Ron — I had a regular rotation of several campgrounds, none of them more than half an hour from his place. It reminded me of the decade-plus ago when we both lived in Denver, in old, cheap apartments within walking distance of each other. A friend calls and says “do you want to come over?” and you just go over. It’s lovely. We both got into paddleboarding (more on that later) and explored some rivers. We even took an airbnb trip to the Smokies and northern Alabama before the pandemic escalated. So it’s been interesting and good, if different from the types of images that motivated me to buy this big-ass van (wilderness, solitude, aspen groves, desert mesas).

Here’s what I remember from the last few months:

A cotton-candy-pink bird forages on a shoreline and it is so quiet that you can hear its three-clawed feet pattering in the mud. Ninety minutes later we are scarfing down fried chicken in the car in a crowded parking lot.

In the trailer park, people drive golf carts around in loops: maybe this passes for exercise, or maybe they are hoping to run into someone to talk to.

Until November, I sweat and sweat and sweat, and then it cools off enough for me to run in the morning and it’s glorious.

During the day, there is constant traffic and the lights are always red. There are a lot of billboards, all promising different things, but the one that makes us angry is the one that says “Jesus promises stability.”

I spend the night at a trailer park and the ladies in the office are sweet and efficient and wearing masks. But the spot I’m assigned is across from a mobile home with one of those flags that is half the U.S. flag and half the Confederate flag, and although my privilege probably keeps me safe here, I keep running through the equations with slightly different variables: who would be safe in this spot, in this trailer park/this county/this state/this country, and under what circumstances? What could make all of us safer? And the people who chose to pay for and display that absurdity of a flag, why is that flag the story they tell themselves? And what is the topography of the shared responsibility for all of this bullshit?

We paddle the Hillsborough River and see no other boaters but two alligators. One is basking on a log, and when I turn my head for a second it drops into the water with a massive splash: one moment there was a six-foot alligator; the next moment there was nothing but ripples. It was that fast. My friend decides he will not paddle here alone.

I see live oaks that have Spanish moss hanging from their branches, sure — but they’re also covered in lichens, and on the horizontal branches there are carpets of multiple kinds of moss and clusters of foot-tall ferns. It’s a whole ecosystem in one tree.

I’m driving “home” (most frequent campground) late one night and I am alone on a very dark road. In my headlights, I see a human figure in the middle of my lane, facing directly at me. I think: goblin! But it is a human person. I swerve into the other lane in case he moves. But he doesn’t move a muscle. He is in a half-crouch with his hands on his knees. I catch a glimpse of him in profile as I pass: his face is set in a rictus, jaw clenched. He is still staring straight ahead, unblinking, as if he hasn’t even seen me.

I call Ron just to reassure myself that I haven’t slipped out of the real human world and into someplace else.

“Oh my God,” he says. “But no, you’re still in the real world. There’s a lot of meth around here. He’s not a demon or anything. It’s just Florida.” He is wearing a dark sweatshirt and standing in the dark on a dark road; what if he gets hit? I call the police and I hate that to this day I still wonder if that was the right decision.

We get into paddleboarding. Ron already has an inflatable paddleboard, and I buy one with money I should be saving for things like van insulation or the loose crown on my lower left molar that is already living on borrowed time. But the paddleboard is amazing. Previously, I hadn’t gotten it: why stand when you could sit? I’m lazy and I have crappy feet; I hate standing. But this isn’t regular standing. It’s walking-on-water standing. In our favorite river, the Weeki Wachee, you can see all kinds of things from a paddleboard that it’s harder to see in a kayak, just because of the angle. On a paddleboard, you look straight down and there’s a fish striped like a zebra, an old pine log submerged ten feet down in the clear water, a scurrying blue crab, a bed of rippled sand.

We start at the public park and paddle up against a stiff current. Twice, we get to the three-mile mark and there is the same black-and-white cormorant in the same tree both times. We are familiar with the fact that if you time it right, so that you get back to the park as late as possible without actually paddling in the dark, and the crowds taper off so you have the river to yourself, the deepest pools are turquoise on our way upriver and viridian on our way down.

There are sometimes manatees on the river. In this part of the world, manatees are THE charismatic megafauna. And they are charismatic as hell. Once we are out late, a couple miles up the river with no one else around, and we see a mother and baby grazing on eelgrass in shallow water. We watch for minutes, mesmerized. The baby is tiny for a manatee: about the size of a Corgi. It must be very, very new. There is another manatee that I’m pretty sure I see several times on different days: it is very plump, with three pink slash marks across its back. We get to the point where, if there is a throng of other boaters stopped near where manatees are feeding, we don’t try to stop and see the manatees. We’ve seen them before, and we’ll see them again, when we don’t have to worry about the people and their kayaks and canoes in the current.

The last time I went to the Weeki Wachee, I went alone. The leaves were turning, because the calendar’s close-to-Christmas is Florida’s fall. I hadn’t ever planned on seeing a blazing orange maple next to tropical blue water, but it happened. Close-knit formations of big, soft gray, doe-eyed fish darted under my feet, and at the appointed time the water started turning dark green. In one of the final bends just upriver from the park, there is a deep spot called Hospital Hole. As I paddled down towards it, I saw one manatee, then another break the surface to breathe. I drifted over the hole, away from the manatees near the surface, and I saw the outline of another one eight or ten feet down against the very dark blue of very deep water.

The Weeki Wachee is a very narrow river, usually not more than thirty feet across and often only twenty. It’s also shallow, four or five feet on average, twelve where the current has carved a deep groove or pocket. Hospital Hole is at one of the river’s widest points, I’d guess maybe 150 feet from bank to bank. The hole itself — technically a sinkhole, but with a couple of small springs feeding into it — is only about 30 or 40 feet wide, but 140 feet deep. It goes down so far that there are different layers of water: freshwater, saltwater, a layer that is anoxic, another layer that is so full of hydrogen sulfide that divers can smell the rotten-egg odor even though they’re breathing compressed air. I read online that the manatees often go to Hospital Hole to sleep at night. The sinkhole-spring, like a big deep pocket, gives them space to stay together and still spread out. They can sink down below where they have to worry about boat engines or curious paddle boarders or whatever else manatees worry about. Every so often, they come up to breathe, then sink down again. Respire, rest, repeat.

It’s 7:17 p.m. as I am writing this, so they’re probably there right now.

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So that’s Florida! Other, more nuts-and-bolts things that have happened include...

I installed lights and outlets. This was a big project and a big deal, since it means that I can have things like a fan (to keep me from sweating to death in the summer), an electric cooler (a.k.a. mini-mini-fridge) for things like vegetables and hummus and cheese and cold boozy beverages, and, well, lights at night that aren’t a harsh blue-white solar lantern, which is what I was using before October, when I made these improvements. Anything electrical is always a little scary; I’m nervous every time I have to go into the breaker box and always surprised when I’m able to touch it without shocking myself. I also had an extremely minimal understanding of how to splice wires together and how to connect all these lights to each other, to the dimmer switch, and to the breaker box. This involved a lot of googling, and even though the DIY van blogs seemed to say that installing lights would take half a day, it took me the better part of two days. But it’s done, and I’m very happy with it. Fiat lux, motherf***er!

My new favorite public agency is the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Occasionally, if I’d had a few drinks at Ron’s house, I spent the night parked in his driveway. Sometimes I stayed in private RV parks. (This was mostly driven by the need to empty the van’s port-a-pot once a week or so — public dump stations are not easy to find in this area of Florida; the closest was about an hour away.) But mostly, I stayed at campground operated by the SWFWMD. These campgrounds are in big tracts of forested, marshy, watery land, and they are great primitive campgrounds that cost $0. There’s no water, no showers, no other fancy campground amenities, but there is usually one outhouse, and each campsite has a picnic table and a fire pit. They’re basic and beautiful.

My favorite campground is called the Serenova Tract. It’s about 15 minutes from Ron’s house, and the campground is in a bunch of pines and live oaks. Horses are allowed, and on one of the last weekends I spent there, several people with horses stayed overnight and hung up Christmas lights. The next morning, they were joined by a dozen other horses and riders who all went for a morning trail ride through the woods. I was insanely jealous.

The other SWFWMD campground I stayed at was called Cypress Creek. It’s a little farther from Ron’s place than Serenova, so it was my second choice when Serenova was full but my van’s shitter wasn’t. It’s a beautiful spot, with tons of big pines. But right now I’m a little wary of it because the last time I stayed there I woke up from a dead sleep at 4:51 a.m. when I heard someone singing and talking to themselves. (The campground had been totally empty when I got there and still was as far as I could see.) It was probably just someone who had come in on foot and was drinking because it was cold (40 degrees) outside, but it was still a bit unnerving.

I also have a favorite RV park. I was thinking that my relationship with these places would be strictly utilitarian, and it still mostly is. But out of the three RV parks that I’ve stayed at, there’s one small one called Suncoast that I actually kind of enjoyed: even though I only went there occasionally, the three staff people remembered me when I called or came in, and they often gave me a discount on their regular rates because I don’t use any electricity. They (both staff and most guests) also seem to be taking pretty good pandemic precautions. (I actually saw someone get kicked out of the office when they tried to come in without a mask, something that I’ve never seen in any other business since March!) The place has nice big pine trees, and by the office there’s a table where people put free food that they aren’t using, or occasionally two-day-old bread that someone got from Publix for free. The last time I was there, some people had decorated their campers and RVs with lights and it was kind of charming. I still heavily prefer to be out in the woods by myself and not spending any money, but I’m glad I found someplace pleasant for my once-a-week-or-so sewer/water needs.

I figured out how to stay warm while sleeping. This is a bigger deal than it sounds because a) I haven’t insulated the van yet, so at night, it’s only a few degrees warmer than whatever the temperature is outside, and b) I’m a very cold sleeper. Florida is SUPER WARM compared to any other place I’ve ever lived, but in December, it started getting a little chilly at night: down into the fifties, then the forties, then, a few nights ago, 30 degrees. I’ve camped in near-freezing or slightly-below-freezing temperatures before, but sometimes it wasn’t very comfortable — even with good long underwear and socks and a hat and a zero-degree-rated sleeping bag. But I’ve figured out a system for my bed that uses four blankets, layered like a licorice allsort: a quilt, a heavy wool blanket, another quilt, and a faux-wool blanket. If it gets below 40, I can add my zero-degree down sleeping bag and be not just comfortable but actively toasty, like a baking croissant.

Unrelatedly, I’ve been having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

I’ve found that my life in a van is basically like my life has been anywhere else. I work. I sleep. I stay up late reading things on the internet when I should be sleeping. Sometimes I go running or do yoga (while trying not to bump into the cabinet or kick the front console or hit the ceiling). Sometimes I do fun things, like paddleboarding or talking to friends. I make goals and plans and don’t follow through on them, except when very very occasionally I do. But when I’m looking up van stuff online, I often run across photos of people who are #selfemployed #vanlife and the photos of them working are:

A woman is seated propped up on pillows in the bed in the back of her van. The doors are open, framing a view of the cerulean sea, so that you can practically smell the gentle breeze blowing over the dunes. She has a laptop on her lap and is looking thoughtfully out to sea while a cup of tea steeps on a tray that is on the white coverlet of her bed.

A man is seated at the dinette in the back of his van. He has a laptop, a French press, a mug of coffee, and a plate with two scones on it on the table. The table, and in fact the whole dinette with its two upholstered benches, would be at home on a small luxury yacht, and it’s the kind of dinette that you make into a bed at night. The astute, intent expression on the man’s face give the viewer to understand that he is competent and disciplined and never stays up two hours past his bedtime because he’s too lazy to lower the dinette table and rearrange the cushions and put on all his sheets and blankets. We are also given to understand that the electrical system in his van would have no problems handling the power drain of a bean grinder, even though he is clearly parked in the high Rockies — again, with the back doors open, the better to take in the late spring air and see the fresh green of the aspen trees — and it’s often cloudy. Lastly, we are given to understand that he baked those scones himself, because when he’s not working, hiking, lumberjacking, or otherwise living his best life, he enjoys unwinding by baking bread and pastries. (Not in the van; don’t be silly! He bakes outside, over a wood fire.)

(A tangent: Why do so many people have their van doors open in photos I see online? Do they only stay in places with no bugs? If I tried that in Florida, or even Maryland or Colorado half the year, I’d be awake half the night swatting at mosquitoes and/or flies.)

In contrast, a photo of me being self-employed in a van would look like:

A woman is sprawled in an ungainly fashion on her narrow bunk. Her laptop is braced by her lower ribs and propped up with a pillow placed over her gut. The pillow has a cat on it. The windows of the van are covered in silver bubble-wrap, so very little light gets in. Absolutely no doors are open, because the van is parked behind a Dunkin Donuts so the woman can get free wifi and not burn through all the data on her phone plan. She takes a break to heat up a can of Campbell’s soup on an alcohol stove, adding a handful of dehydrated mixed vegetables, to be healthy. As she stirs the soup, she gazes contemplatively out the windshield towards the adjacent parking lot, where there is an IHOP. #vanlife

A woman is sitting in the passenger seat of her van with her feet on the dashboard and her laptop on her lap. Beside her in the cupholder is a steaming Hydroflask full of the cheapest tea she could buy at Publix. The van is parked in a grove of live oaks. Spanish moss sways gently in the morning breeze. Behind the woman, in the dark recesses of the van, sets of clothes are hanging: leggings and a shirt, still sweaty, by the side doors, a bathing suit over the sink, a t-shirt and shorts for sleeping in by the rear cabinet. Several kitchen towels are draped on the driver’s seat and on the dashboard because the cab leaks above the sun visors when it rains, and even though she’s tried caulking it three times, she still can’t get it to stop. #vanlife

The good thing, though, is that I’m still getting work and making a living. I can do it someplace that’s safe, without having to risk my life to do it. And I’m getting paid a fair hourly wage. But then the very terrible thing is that everyone should be able to say what I just said, but so many people can’t: they’re not making a real living through their work, they have to risk their lives to do it, and they’re not getting paid a fair wage.

(Brief interlude as I stare at the ceiling angrily.)

***

Here’s what I’m doing next: I left Pasco County on the 16th. I’ll be in what I think of as “traveling quarantine” until the 30th, staying in a national forest near Jacksonville. (With a couple of stops at state parks to refill water, empty the port-a-pot, and maybe take a real shower.) I’ll be in Maryland on New Year’s Eve and will stay at my parents’ while I insulate the van, build interior walls, and do a bunch of other stuff so that I can call it (mostly) finished. Then I’m thinking of going to New Mexico and spending late winter/early spring there… parked on top of a mesa… sipping a cup of French-press coffee on my white coverlet while I thoughtfully gaze out the open doors of my van… (I really would like to park on top of a mesa though.)

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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A few photos: 1) First night on the road in Kansas 2) Inside, on the road. Fitting all my stuff in there was A LOT. I definitely need better storage, but for a few days I just dealt with boxes all over the place. At night, I had to stack the boxes up in the rear so I could move around and get to the bed, and in the daytime, I had to move the boxes onto the floor so they wouldn’t topple over. I also got rid of the regular-size twin mattress, which just dominated the whole living space, and replaced it with a narrower, lower one, like you might have on a boat or in an RV. I don’t need a ton of bed space anyway, so I think that’ll work out better. 3) The inside looks cuter with the fairy lights. 4) Dinner in Greenridge State Forest in western MD.

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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One of the most important features of the van is the roof vent/fan. It’s a deciding factor, actually: without it, I’d probably get heatstroke in the summer. My brother (whose help and whose driveway/garage space/tools were crucial throughout all of this) helped me install the fan. We had to cut a hole in the roof and it was terrifying. I don’t have good pics of the vent/fan installed, but here is the scary roof hole with a scary forest fire sun. (It was only around 5pm when these photos were taken -- the light was so weird!)

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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JANKY SHAPES MADE OUT OF WOOD! There are four janky shapes: a cabinet; a very tall bed frame; a cube that goes over the toilet; and (not pictured) a low shelf with storage underneath that goes across the back of the van. Prior to this, my only experience building janky shapes out of wood was when I was 15 and built a treehouse. So the build quality of all this isn’t great, but so far none of it has collapsed, and that’s really all I’m going for. The white cloth stuff is an old sail. I figured it would a) look kind of neat and b) save weight compared to using plywood panels. It’s also cheaper than plywood -- a guy down near Chatfield Reservoir south of Denver with a boatyard was willing to trade an old sail for a bottle of medium-shelf red wine. I’d like to incorporate more of those found/repurposed/traded/recycled materials like that, but the pandemic makes it tricky. It was nice to be able to use a lot of scrap wood: some of the frames and paneling for these janky shapes were old 2x4s and plywood that my brother just had lying around.

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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This is the core of the solar power system, which will definitely outlast the van itself (and cost more than the van itself!): a 100-amp-hour lithium battery powered by a 315-watt solar panel on the roof.

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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Update!

So y��all probably figured as much, but: I made it to Maryland! This was weeks ago, and it seems like I’ve been inundated with life stuff and work stuff ever since. But it still feels like I just got here three days ago; it also feels like I’ve been here for three months. For 2020, that sounds about right.

Here’s what happened:

August 17: Denver to Hoxie, Kansas

August 18: Kansas to a state park somewhere in Illinois

August 19: Illinois to Indiana in a rainstorm, COVID test, drove to western MD

August 20: Did some work in western MD, socially-distanced visit with my parents and brother after my niece and nephew were in bed, spent the night in their driveway

August 21: Left before 6, drove back to western MD, did some work in a state forest parking lot, got negative COVID test results; turned around and drove back to parents’ house. Spent the weekend with family.

Since then, I’ve just kind of been here. I officially sold my condo on the 28th — which probably won’t seem fully real to me until I go back to Colorado and can’t stay there anymore!

It seems a little anticlimactic, maybe, to go through all the work of making the van into a self-contained cross-country travel machine and now I’m just staying at my parents’ house like I’ve been doing for years. But the pandemic has made everything weird. I’m assuming that it’s going to get a *lot* worse this fall, so before it does and before there are more widespread outbreaks or travel restrictions, I want to make sure I check in with family/friends. So right now is about spending time with people while I can, and hopefully later this year/next year will be more of the parked-in-a-forest-for-a-week kind of stuff.

Here’s how the trip went:

Overall, great! There was a weird moment when I was looking for a campsite near a small lake in Kansas, and I was going downhill and the brakes locked up and made a weird noise. I later realized that this may have just been because the dirt roads around the lake were very muddy and slick. The next morning, the tires and tailpipe were caked solid with like half an inch of mud. I haven’t had any weird brake noises since, even when driving in heavy rain.

The bigger issue, though, became obvious during that same torrential downpour west of Indianapolis. The cab leaks… a lot. But only when the van is moving. By “a lot,” I mean a steady drip. Water dripping into the passenger side footwell. Water splashing on my left arm. Water darkening the industrial gray headliner above the windshield, starting from the right and left sides. The funny thing is, I thought I fixed this. There was some leaking in a rainstorm as I was driving around Denver a while ago. So I caulked over a seam between the van’s fiberglass topper and its old metal roof, figuring that was where the water was coming from. But either I didn’t fix it well enough, or the water is coming from somewhere else — like the above the corners of the windshield, where there are some patches of rust.

Fortunately, when the van is parked, there are no leaks at all. When I spent the night in the woods in western Maryland, it rained during the night and I stayed dry. Even the roof fan that my brother and I installed by ourselves (more on that in a while) has kept the water out, miraculously.

And there were no breakdowns, no mechanical issues. The bed was comfortable, the nights were dark and quiet.

It was definitely a weird sort of trip. I was traveling in quarantine, essentially: no going inside at gas stations, no public restrooms (with one exception where I was 99.9% sure the outhouse hadn’t been used in months and no one else would come in), no fast food or snacks on the road. (I subsisted on some chocolate zucchini bread my sis-in-law made, protein bars, and dehydrated chili mix, and I cold-brewed tea in a Nalgene bottle.)

The choice to get COVID tested rather than do a 2-week quarantine was kind of a weird one. My brother, niece, and nephew were visiting my parents but couldn’t stay very long. With all future plans very up in the air, this visit might be the most family togetherness we’ll have in quite a while. And I got the test through a private lab and paid for it out of pocket, so I wasn’t using public resources. But on the other hand — resources are resources. So I feel ethically murky about it.

What’s next?: While I’m in MD, I’m hoping to do some repairs to the van and build some more storage. In about a week or so, I plan to head south, possibly stop at my brother’s place in Atlanta, and visit my friend Ron in Florida.

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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I mapped the inside of the van, including the distances between things and the holes in the floor

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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Creative Destruction

After our very successful shakedown cruise, I immediately started destroying the van. This was mostly because of the upcoming solar installation: the installer asked me to strip the ceiling so she can put in the roof vent and brackets for the solar panel, and also to strip a small area of the rear wall down to bare metal so she can anchor the battery and electronics.

During this process, I realized that there was mouse poop in the ceiling. My friend Julie, who is a genius, suggested I vacuum it out so it wouldn’t all fall on me when I removed the ceiling upholstery. I did this, but didn’t find out until later that my brother had removed the filter from his shop-vac — so it just kind of scattered the mouse poop around the interior of the van. It was a good idea in theory, though.

It was a long day, driving from Gunnison to Denver and then ripping the ceiling out of the van. But then the next day, I just kind of kept going. I eventually want to insulate the interior and put up nice new walls, so I figured I’d go ahead and remove the old walls now.

And reader, it was so gross.

For one thing, I found the mouse. Or *a* mouse. I’m assuming it was the same one who pooped in the ceiling, but maybe there are more mice that I have yet to find.

I found an old coffee cup. I found years’ worth of spilled coffee and who knows what else that leaked down from the cupholders. I found shredded and half-shredded candy wrappers. I found the mouse’s nest, made out of fiberglass insulation, which does not seem like a good thing to make a nest out of and may have contributed to the mouse’s demise? I found two Embassy Suites key cards. I found that one whole wall is filled with hoses and wires, the vast majority of which I don’t need and which it will be A Chore to remove.

I found that the dumpster behind my condo building was full. I piled the debris on top of it anyway.

#vanbuild

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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First night!

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thismightbeaterribleidea · 5 years ago

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Shakedown Cruise

I took this past week off from work. Everyone is dealing with A Lot right now, and my specific assortment of A Lot (need to move out of the condo, need to get the house-on-wheels in livable condition, need to do more writing, urgently wanting to get out of the city and into the mountains) had me feeling kind of burned out.

So I went for a three-night trip in the van, just to try it out and start getting a sense of how life on wheels might work. The van was a champ! A few things I realized:

* The fold-down rear bench seat isn’t an ideal bed. Part of that has to do with the fact that I am only 62” long but the bed is only 60” long; even though I slept diagonally, I still sometimes ended up bumping my head on or kicking the windows. I’m going to try to build a bed platform that I can store the bench seat under and then dismantle easily when I want to install/use the rear seat.

* I love tent camping. It makes me feel like a little kid in a fort. I love tent smell. I love (except for those middle-of-the-night “what’s that noise?” times) feeling so close to whatever is going on around me: cicadas, chipmunks, rain, wind. And since I’ve done a lot of tent camping, I can set things up and take them down pretty quickly and don’t have to think about it much. But I can see how one can get used to camping in a vehicle. It’s so easy! More than once, as I got ready to leave my overnight spot, I’d find myself standing there and thinking, “is that really it? I just… drive away?”

* Colorado has been breaking my heart for the last decade or so. For most of that time, I was living elsewhere. When I’d come back to visit I would be shocked, even though I heard what was happening: the rising costs of living, the increase in crowds and traffic, the feeling that everyone is being increasingly squeezed. It’s harder to even find a campsite in the mountains close to the front range or in some of the more popular areas. But I was so relieved to find that the mountains are still powerful and magical and compelling to me, and that I can still find ways and places to be alone surrounded by wildness. The first night I was east of Buena Vista, parked off a forest service road. I didn’t see a single person pass. I fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. The second night was in an aspen grove that a heavy wind sluiced through. I took an amazing hike on a trail that kept climbing and climbing until I was in a meadow surrounded by mountain peaks, where hummingbirds jousted and dive-bombed over the wildflowers.

* That being said, I was really unsettled by most of the humans I did see. It seems that a lot of people are going to the mountains to pretend the pandemic isn’t happening. I might’ve seen a couple bandanas around people’s necks on hiking trails, but no one had anything actually covering their faces as they passed me or each other, and no one made even a token gesture of stepping off the trail. Crested Butte was downright crowded — tons of people eating at outdoor tables on the Main Street, and those tables definitely weren’t far enough apart. Many license plates were from Texas, which is a virus hotspot, so… that doesn’t feel great. On the trail outside of town, I would’ve had bikers literally breathing down the back of my neck if I hadn’t scrambled into the sagebrush. It made me grumpy and anxious. But that’s also the feeling I’ve had here in central Denver: especially in a neighborhood that skews young and hip, most people don’t seem at all concerned about the health and safety of others. I’ve taken to deliberately farting in stores. But that’s a whole other post.

* When I left for this short trip, I told myself I’d be cautious. I hadn’t gotten a professional mechanic to inspect the van yet, I was still getting a sense of its size and geometry, and I don’t yet have a jack or lug nut wrench that I would need to change a flat tire. And there was no cell phone reception for most of the trip. But a couple of times, I really needed to see what was down a rough, potholed, rocky, narrow forest service road. And the van did really well — I think it can make it down roads that would be tricky in any other car I’ve ever owned.

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