Airstream

More days off – August

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So August began with us hitching up the old Airstream again and heading to magical Rockland, Maine, where our friends the Sauters were renting a house for a few weeks. This was their front yard.

img_9877The Sauters are from Germany – we met them at Wooden Boat School a few years back and have gotten together several times since – mostly here in the US (where they travel a lot!) and once in Barcelona, which was super sweet too. Here in Maine, where they come so often, the shopkeepers and lobster men know their names. And they’ve made some other friends too, who joined us for an epic “bbq” featuring every fish in the sea. A blueberry snack cup, Owl’s Head Lighthouse, and Pale Ale named for a Civil War general (from Maine) were just some of the other highlights.We might have talked about US elections a bit too.

Next weekend I scooted down to DC to for a “Close Up” reunion. Close Up was my first job out of college, and these five women were some of my first friends. The amount of girl power, teaching, lawyering, journalisting, and all around awesomeness among this group is HUGE. True of all the friends I met there and through them. Here we are at my favorite breakfast burrito spot on Capitol Hill. You can tell by our glow how hot it was that weekend. img_0083

Let’s see…the following weekend, four STEELES come to visit us in Woodstock! Maxing out our guest bedrooms and more, my brother and his kids came for a fun-filled weekend of cooking, biking, hide and seek, whiffle ball, sight seeing, and most importantly rope swinging! We spent hours one day swinging into the Ottauqueechee River from a rope tied to an upper tree branch. When we’d mastered that, we moved on to jump off some rocks down river near the Simon Pearce store in Queechee. The next day the kids went back for more.

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Other highlights included giving them all a tour of the mansion and a farewell picnic lunch on the grounds.

We capped off the month with a blockbuster visit to Boston to check out a couple of (wooden) sailboats that Ben has had his eye on. Before we had an Airstream, we had a boat and we will again some day. The one on the left was on the hard, but the one on the right was anchored. Though we didn’t sail, we did take a dinghy out to see it and it felt pretty nice to be out on the water.

We stayed with my friend Amy and her awesome family who helped us plot our course to see TWO national historical parks on the way home:  first, the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy. Popular culture -HBO series, Hamilton (note my t-shirt) – have brought John Adams into prominence. In the midst of a very urban area, some geniuses and heroes have preserved these places. You can explore his early homes, and the one he shared with Abigail after they retired. There, at Plainfield, you can see the desk from which he wrote his reconciliation letters to Jefferson, and the chair in which he died (or took ill, I forget), his last words being “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” (Wrong!) I thank our awesome ranger who explained that Jefferson had been ill, so his health was on Adams’ mind.

Then we made our way north to Lowell, MA and the Lowell National Historical Site. This site tells the story of the textile mills, the industrial revolution, and the New England and immigrant women who fueled it during its boom (1820s-40s). The entire town was built based on engineering the Merrimack River to produce maximum water power. Six miles of canals were dug and they are nearly intact today (our ranger explaining it all at left below).  In the middle, you see Ben next to one of the looms at which women labored for over 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. (Inspiring the first women’s strikes and union action in the 1830s). You can see (and hear) a video of the loom at work here, and get a feel for what an awful job it must have been.

At work, I had been preparing to do the “Service Wing” tour. Understanding more about how the textile mills in New England shifted women’s opportunities (away from jobs as servants)  in the market economy  is just the kind of “days off” I like!

So that’s too serious a note to end on…so I will end with some pics of our family’s visit. Summertime! The same kiddos just celebrated (with their mom the superfan) the Cubs’ World Series victory last night! Woot!

 

Alumapalooza – rally time!

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Until this week, we had yet to go to an Airstream rally (like a gathering) though they are quite popular ways for like-minded aficionados to get together and see what else they might have in common besides a love of Airstreams. Alumapalooza, in Jackson Center, OH where the Airstream factory is located, seemed just the one for us to check out since it would get us a little bit out into the Midwest (where we haven’t been on our trip yet) and to the factory, where 48 years ago, our baby was born. 

Upon arrival Tuesday, we were escorted to our spot (row 7!) on the factory grounds and got set up. Though it’s not an RV park they arranged to have water and electric hookups strung up for everyone.

The events throughout the week were a mix of social, informative, fun, artistic, mechanical, musical, healthy (daily yoga), unhealthy (daily happy hour) and as much down time as you wanted to check out other people’s Airstreams and visit with folks from all around the country – Canada, New Mexico, Boston, Gulf Coast and some “full timers” for whom the road is home. Since our trip has an end point (likely later this year) we are sort of a hybrid.

Some highlights included a talk about Pendleton national park blankets – history of, etc. Airstream has a partnership with Pendleton for the NPS 100th anniversary this year. And a wool blanket is a great way to warm up your aluminum trailer – get the connection?

Of course the Airstream factory tour was a must do (every M-F at 2pm – open to the public.) No pictures are allowed inside but the company takes a lot of pride in the fact that all of the components are built at the factory (nothing farmed out), they are up to about 800 employees now (from closer to 200 coming out of the recession), and can’t make them fast enough to keep up with demand. The goings on inside are a STEM teacher’s dream – lots of measuring, fitting, figuring, fastening, etc. Making dreams come true. (That’s for the humanities teachers.) Don, pictured at left below, worked at the company for years, most recently in the service center, but loves being a tour guide now.

They had door prize drawings every day and we won twenty Alumapalooza bucks which we applied toward a t-shirt (me) and hat (for Ben). That gift shop did a brisk business. (Wally Byam is the founder of Airstream – his name is everywhere.)

We got to meet the folks behind Alumniarium and Campendium. The latter is a growing website designed to help campers find campgrounds – user-generated reviews and pictures are its heart and soul. I have been entranced by every step Brian and Leigh have taken in the site’s development, so I was and have been very on board from the beginning, working diligently to add reviews as we travel-40 so far! We loved spending time with them (below in front of Wally Byam’s gold trailer) and their friends Adam and Susan, also Elizabeth and Ray, our neighbors Terry, Bernie and Dan, musician Steve and Julie, and Paul who lent us his blue boy (portable waste tank). We also got to spend quality time with Colin Hyde, whose NY shop did some great work on our trailer, and his girlfriend Brenda.

Brian and I found out we both worked at Baskin Robbins-for the same boss-in Glendale/La Crescenta in high school.

There was music throughout the event, both guitars around campfires (well, no campfires allowed) and pros up on a main stage. I did a little ukelele picking and pretended I could play. It’s such a treat to just fake it along a bit and I so appreciated the kindness of the real musicians, especially MJ. 

The sunsets out in the heartland were amazing, even if they were accompanied by noise from the factory (automated system that cuts plywood for interior furniture runs all night). It only rained one day, and cooled down enough at night to eliminate the need for A/C. Thank you to Mother Nature and all the organizers! Until next time!