Indie Travel - Change

Change can be exciting and bring new joys into our lives. But it can present challenges that frustrate or annoy us. How has travel changed you in the last year? Did you welcome these changes or resist them at the time, and how do you feel about them now?


The subject for today is change. I wish changing my body could be as easy as changing my life has been. I still drag around an overweight body, lighter than five years ago by thirty pounds, but still with thirty pounds too many. If only shedding pounds could be as easy as shedding extra clothes I don't wear anymore or those boring boyfriends. 


In the last year, I worked on contract for a while, and when the contract ended, I looked carefully at how I could reduce the costs of my life and then pared it down. I sold a lot of things, gave a bunch of stuff away on FreeCycle - a very cool way to get rid of things you don't really need anymore, and a way to pick up (for free) a few things you might - gently pushed my son out of the nest, and made plans to travel around the world like a river of molasses slipping across the face of the planet, one little locale at a time. 


How has that changed me? For starters, this new life is a bit like camping full time. I have to stay organized and know where every possession is located, otherwise I'm in a bind. It's easier when there are so few possessions, but still, things can get misplaced and more than once I despaired at losing something. I left shampoo and conditioner at a campground shower. I misplaced a hairbrush and purchased another, only to find the original under my pillow on the van-bed. I looked all over for my little blue tube of mascara, purchased a new one, found an older one in my swim bag, and then the one I'd lost turned up in my cosmetic bag as if by magic, so now I have three. I only have two eyes, but three mascaras. What's up with that?


I pay more attention to the details of life. Things are not so habitual now. I don't wake up every morning with a routine: get up, stretch, take a shower, comb hair, eat breakfast, recomb hair, put on makeup, plaster wayward hair with a bit more goop, brush teeth, get dressed, swipe at the hair one more time, go to work. 


Now I get up and wander around a bit, maybe stretch. If I'm house sitting for someone or renting a furnished place, or in a campground, everything is "in the moment". I have to decide what to do, to actually think about each step I take, and some days it takes longer, and some days I just skip the shower, makeup, and the hair altogether and go au natural. Now comfort has taken the forefront in my life. Am I warm enough? Am I hungry? Do I make coffee or buy some at a coffee shop where I can also check email and the stock market? 


I agonized over buying a cooler. I had a small one but it holds only half a bag of ice when it's full of food. Do I buy one about the same size so I can keep all the food I bought while house sitting, or do I buy a much larger cooler and give the small one away? The woman at WalMart thought I'd lost my mind asking questions about coolers. I bought a small one. Easier to situate two small ones in different locations in the car than a single large one, and a half a bag of ice isn't wasted anymore. In my former life, I would have decided to buy a cooler, bought one, regretted it because it didn't have wheels, or it did have wheels that made it too big. Then I would have gotten a different one, needed to find a place to store it, lamented how much junk I've got, and in moving stuff in the storage shed I would have found the old cooler my neighbor gave me ten years ago. 


Necessity is the mother of invention. And cheap living is the mother of planning. I have to think a lot about things I never thought about before.  Now each minor decision I make can spell the difference between a life that works and one that's frustrating. Before making any decision to buy something, I try to envision myself using the object. What are the drawbacks, where can I store/carry/put the item, do I REALLY need it? Can I make something else do the job?


My 'spiritual' teacher in this arena was a (not boring) boyfriend, years ago, who was from India. He never purchased a thing for his home unless there was a specific place for it, OR unless something of like-nature went out first. Someone gave him a book, and he agonized over which of his several hundred books had to go to make room for the new one. A new skillet meant some other piece of cookware had to go. New pants? Old pants out the door. He was a big fan of the idea that everything should have several uses. A pot could boil water, or serve as a dog bowl. A  flat cheese grater with a handle makes a great strainer for a pan. It eliminates the need for those half-round strainers and bulky colanders, and it grates cheese too!  When you start thinking creatively because you don't want to spend the money or have extra junk to tote around, it's amazing what you find has many uses. On this long road trip, I discovered that a funnel with a No.2 coffee filter works just as well as a Melita Coffee gizmo. You just have to stuff a bit of filter into the hole to create some back-pressure so the coffee has time to steep as well as drain. And a funnel has many more uses than the filter holder. 


Now, to figure out how to lose those thirty pounds. Maybe some planning is in order. 












Thirty Days of Indie Travel

Tent on Wheels

Silver City, NM

RV's lined up at the 'trough'.

I’m staying at the Rose Valley RV Ranch. They raise RV’s here. You should see them, all lined up at the troughs of electricity and water. The ranch is thickly decorated in a western theme. There are wooden fences with rusting machinery, dried up ropes, a horseshoe pit, ancient saddles artfully nailed over logs, even the stop sign says "Whoa".  In the center of the park there’s a building with 4 individual bathrooms and a laundro-mat. I’m currently parked in front of that building because it’s the only place I can get electricity. You see, I’m anathema to the place. I’m in a tent on wheels, also known as a dry camper.  I don’t have a bathroom or kitchen in my van, it is literally like a tent, no services whatsoever, except that I brought an extension cord. Most campgrounds have a place for tent campers, maybe some shade trees and a picnic table. But since this is an RV Ranch, they don’t take to kindly to tenters. It brings down the property values.

Western decor at the Ranch.

However, I have no tent, and look like a vehicle that just might be an RV so I passed muster last night when I showed up. They let me have the parking lot next to the barn (actually it’s a craft room that is built to look like a barn). There was no electricity on the outside of the barn, so I’m recharging my 12V battery using my own extension cord and the outlet on the laundry building. People pass by, walking their tiny RV pooches, and look at me funny. Now I know why Chihuahuas and toy Schnauzers were invented.

Old Mesilla Bookstore.

I spent Friday night in Las Cruces with a friend. We took pictures of the sunset casting pink light on the Organ Mountains, had a late dinner at a really good little Mexican restaurant that served about three times what one should eat for dinner and stayed up much of the night talking. Saturday I took all day to drive the 2 hours to Silver City. First I went to a grocery across from the University that was sort of a cross between Smiths and Whole Foods. They seemed to have a lot of ‘new age’ foods and organics, plus regular products at a 15% markup. On down University Blvd is the town of Mesilla. There I got wrapped up in a wonderful bookstore on the plaza that has been there for 50 years, still run by the woman who was a little girl when her mother owned it. It’s charming, old, dusty, and full of beautiful antique Navajo Rugs, old time western lamps, Zuni dolls and figurines, and books tumbling around on the shelves as if they were all read on a regular basis.

City of Rocks State Park, south of Silver City, NM.

It was a long dry, dusty drive to Deming once I figured out how to get onto I-10. Off in the distance, dust devils towered half a mile high, once in a while a gust would blow me to one side like a giant invisible bear paw.  I was tired from a lack of sleep, the sun was putting my eyes into sand-mode, and I was thirsty. I stopped at the tourist information center and they directed me to a park where I could take a nap in the shade, and eat my leftovers from dinner that I’d stuck in the cooler. Deming is an interesting small town. The streets are wide! Wide enough to park rows of cars head in and still have more than enough room for two broad lanes of traffic. Of course there is NO traffic, but whoever planned the place certainly thought ahead to a time when people might want to crowd up in a desert with no water, food growing ability, or industry. Nice road north up to Silver City too. I stopped at the City of Rocks state park and drove up to the overlook, took some 360 degree photos of the landscape, and then drove on to the Blue’s Festival. I thought it would be a good idea to find a place to park/camp for the night, so I tackled that project first. Good thing too, as all the campgrounds were full including the one where I’m staying.

The bands were set up in a gazebo in the middle of the park. This is my 3^rd year coming down for this, so I thought I might run into some people I recognize, perhaps Unitarians from my previous trips where I did home-stays as part of their fund-raising efforts. I saw the vendor who sells the best locally produced nuts, so I bought a bag of red-chile-honey pecans and ate those as a prelude to dinner. The BBQ guy whose brisket I so enjoyed last year was there too, so I bought dinner from him. It was pretty late, the dinner crowd was gone but the food was still good.  A lovely day of tripping around on my own.

In the back yard of the bookstore.

The church in Mesilla, beautiful, inside and out.

Such difference a little water makes. Above: a
cabbage field near Mesilla. Below: a single
flower blooms above the City of Rocks. 

Symmetry: a Pecan orchard in the Rio Grande Valley.