We've All Been There

I awake to the sounds of silence in the Sunsetters Park RV.  I had set the alarm for six to get an early start, very cognizant that my short-term future is in the hands of the Ford Motor Company.  I went to sleep with the comforting thought that my engine merely was polluting the environment and was not a deadly threat.

With the light of dawn things went surprisingly well.  I fixed my coffee, shaved and took a hot shower.  I sipped my coffee and checked my email.  Packing up the Airstream was much easier and faster than previous mornings.  I disconnected all the hoses, emptied the trash, checked all the compartments and was ready to roll in record time.  Sure, I had yet to get the grill working and was on my third consecutive night of frozen dinners but a hot shower counts for something doesn’t it? I was buoyed by the notion that perhaps I was finally soaring up that steep and daunting learning curve. 

There was only one trepidation hanging over my head.  Would the truck start?  Would that menacing orange icon light up once again?  Only one way to find out.  Start the truck.  Curiously, I caught myself stalling.  I walked around the Airstream once too often.  Checking and then rechecking to see that all the plug caps were tight, that the step was up and the TV antenna was down.  I knew they all were.  It was more than sunup now- maybe 8:30 or so and I was still tidying up the trailer, double then triple checking things, locking compartments when I admitted to myself that it was long past time to face reality.  I had to turn on the truck.  If the icon was still there my thought was to limp into Blythe, California where last night I found a Ford dealership and see if they could fix my truck.  That or simply push on and risk blowing up my engine while hoping all the way that it was some simple emissions control system malfunction. (whatever the hell that means!)  Either way my reckoning had arrived. 

I climbed in the F-150 inserted the key and cranked it.   The engine promptly started all the dashboard warning lights blinked on for a brief second and then all but one blinked off.  That one was the little man without his seatbelt fastened, not the evil orange engine!

I was elated.  The orange engine icon was off!  I was saved!  And also vindicated.  My theory worked!  All the truck needed was a little rest and it would heal itself.  Triumphantly, I buckled my seat belt and pulled out of the Sunsetters RV Park toward the open road.

As I eased out onto I-10 for the last 250 miles to LA I was actually thinking about writing the Ford Motor Company to suggest that this concept of let it rest and it will heal itself should be written into its owners’ manual.  I was overcome with another more powerful thought. In spite of my successful technique in having my truck cure itself, I had ignored the advice of Rich Luhr, the Airstream guru – Go slow – pick a lane and stay in it.  I realized that in my eagerness to see my daughter I had violated that one most basic tenant of Airstreaming.  In had driven like a civilian yesterday.  As soon as I heard from Kat, I abandoned the back roads, hit the Interstate and started to focus on making time.  I was doing 70 to 75 miles per hour, passing other cars, switching lanes and in the process not only almost blew up my truck but missed a big hunk of the trip.  I decided to go back to basics, not only for the sake of my truck – if the icon came on again I would plunge back into jeopardy – but for the sake of my trip.  I was not sure why I was out here but rushing forward would only force me to miss the present.  After all wasn’t that really what this trip in its most basic form was all about - Don’t worry about the future or fret about the past but focus fully on the present.  I eased off the accelerator and slipped in behind a truck doing 55 and started to enjoy the trip again.

As I said, I love that states look like states.  The strange thing about California is that it doesn’t look like California right away – at least until you get to Palm Springs.  I mean there are miles and miles of desert in California.  You gotta get pretty close to LA before California looks like California.  I suspect that the powers that be in California realized this and decided to do something about it.  The Colorado River is the border along I-10 separating Arizona from California.  As you drive over the bridge and enter California, the Colorado River looks like a little piece of paradise. 

Welcome to California.  

There are palm trees clustered along the winding blue river.  I could be dead wrong but I swear all the palm trees and other greenery were all on the California side of the river.  It a desert in Arizona, then you cross the bridge and everything is lush.   The scene assures you that you are in the right place.  “Yep, this is it.  What I have been traveling all this was for folks.  This is California.”  I don’t know if this was Mother Nature’s doing or the California Department of Tourism but it does the trick.  You get excited.  I’ve made it to California!  So, where are the movie stars?  This blissful feeling last for quite a while.  The truth is you are still a long, long way from movie stars - another couple of hours of desert and then you have to deal with the LA traffic.  The goal is still hefty 250 miles down the road. A long slog through the desert that doesn’t pick up until you get to the windmills that sprout up outside of Palm Springs along I-10. 

I know these windmills are meaningful but I just can’t come up with the significance.  By now, I too focused on my destination to ponder their significance.  As I get closer to LA I am in touch with Kat through text messaging – another miracle of communication that I attribute to Mr. Jobs.  I tell her now I am only 35 miles away.  She responds, “Why don’t you come to the office.  We can have some lunch.”  I think about Wilshire Blvd. and my Airstream but am too anxious to see her, so I respond, “I am on my way.”

Outside - The Pacific Dining Car

The end of I-10 is no problem for the Airstream because for the last ½ hour I am going about 20 miles per hour.  I have no idea where everyone is going at 2:30 on a Tuesday but they are not making much progress.  I crawl along listening to my book on tape – poor Walt is about to die – when at last the traffic breaks, for no obvious, I exit on Cloverfield Avenue and make my way over to Wilshire and Kat’s office.  I am reminded of another tenet of Mr. Luhr.  Think about where you are going to put it.  That thought barely crossed my mind from the day I purchased it.  It was just so much fun having an Airstream.  Liberating me from my troubles, physical, mental and marital.   Such an outward and visible sign of freedom and new horizons that, that I hardly had time to worry about where I was going to leave it, which, turns out to be about 340 days out of the year!

Inside - A railroad dining car - Only in LA 

My initial thought is that I can probably park in the johnnie-O parking lot, which is always empty.   Johnnie-O shares this huge parking lot with a relic of a restaurant, called the Pacific Dining Car.  The place is an unusual 24-hour, white table cloth restaurant with an interior fashioned to look like a turn of the century railroad dining car.  It could only exist in LA.  

I figured I might just pull in the lot.  After all the lot had been empty whenever I visited Kat.  I carefully turned the corner of Wilshire and Princeton Street and was surprised to see the parking lot full.  I realized that every time before this when I visited Kat it was Saturday morning or in the late afternoon.  Now, at 2:30 the parking lot was full and a handful of valet parking people were standing around.  The Pacific Dining Car was apparently doing a pretty healthy lunch business; way too healthy to accommodate a 25’ trailer pulled by a Ford F-150.  I also had failed to notice on my previous trips the huge canopy awning at the entrance of the valet parking area.  Even if the lot was empty the Airstream would never fit under the awning.  I drove slowly down Princeton street wondering what to do.  Parking in LA is challenging everywhere.  Parking a pickup truck pulling an Airstream is impossible.  You’d think I would have thought of that before now. Such is my current state of mind.

Where we were going to leave the Airstream certainly didn‘t cross Kat’s mind either.  Every time we spoke she’d say, “Don’t worry about it.  Venice Beach has people living on the street.  They won’t mind an Airstream.”  So when I turned on Wilshire I called her on my IPhone.  The first thing she asks, “Hey, Where are you going to park?”  “That’s what I have been saying every time we spoke,” I replied.  “I’m on my way,” she said hanging up. I circled the block maneuvered around Wilshire once more and there she was with Loo Loo.

Luckily there was enough room in front of the parking garage entrance of an apartment down the block from the restaurant that I was able to pull over to the curb and get out of the traffic.  Rather than immediately solve our problem I gave Loo Loo and Kat a tour of the Airstream.  Kat never lacks exuberance, which is her great strength.  “Wow!  This is so cool,” said Gatto. Her ebullience was more essential than my parking problem.  I gave the two of them the tour of the master bed room, the kitchen, the toilet and the shower.  She raved the entire time about what a great thing it is, how much fun it was going to be and what a good diea it had been to buy it.  Our shared euphoria was shattered when we heard a car horn.  I stuck my head out of the open Airstream door to see a car which was looking to pull into the apartment’s parking garage.  It thought we were in for a problem but the mystical quality of the Airstream kicked in.  The driver couldn’t have been nicer.  I could tell at a glance he thought the Airstream was “cool.”  He wave me off announcing that there was no problem and that he would wait patiently.  He even volunteered to park on the street.  In the meantime, Kat – naturally – used her IPhone and instantly came up with a solution. “You gotta head to Dockweiler’s.”  Dockweiler’s it turns out is an RV Park, operated by LA County located right on the beach near LAX.  I grabbed my IPhone, punched in the address, thanked our patient driver and told Kat I’d be in touch. 

Dockweiler’s, it turns out is in Play del Mar, just six miles down the coast from Kat’s cottage in Venice.  Being part of a state beach complex it was priced right - $55.00 per night to be on the Pacific Ocean!  True it is under the LAX takeoff path but an ocean view room will run you $450.00 a night in Santa Monica.  I had hit on a real deal.

Dockweiler's on the Pacific Ocean

The plan became to find a spot there, unhitch the Airstream, drive my truck over to Kat’s house, meet up with her after work and go out and get a real meal.  A great plan – until I checked in and realized that the park had no pull through spots.  Up until now everywhere I stayed had “pull throughs”.  A pull through is a parking spot where you can drive in the front, hook up and in the morning drive straight through.   The beauty of this is you never have to back up the trailer.  “You are in spot 114,” the young lady at the check-in counter announced. 

I made it to the beach!

My heart was in my throat as I drove slowly through the lot looking for 114.  Damn it.  Of course, the slot had parked RV’s on both sides of it.  To compound things the area was super tight.  I was going to have to pull ahead then cut the Airstream as sharp as I could, deliberately jack knifing it to get into the space.  My dread tripled when I noticed two veterans RV’ers sitting in their folding lawn chairs in the spot next to mine.  Of course, I didn’t know if there were veteran RV’ers but they looked the part.  They had one of these massive RV’s called fifth wheelers.  A fifth wheeler is a two level trailer that actually contains a master bedroom suspended over truck bed. They are designed to be towed by a truck much bigger than mine called duallies.  Duallies are those huge pickups with four wheels in the back rather than two.  I have an F-150.  Duallies have numbers like F-450!  Don’t know what the numbers stand for but it the truck world 450 trumps 150, I can tell you that. The immense fifth wheeler was serenely parked and unhitched from the dually.  Got it?  You can see why I figured they were veterans? 

I pulled past my slot, took a deep breath and started to back up.  (Another Luhr axiom flashed in my brain – “When backing up - Go slow.”)  Moving cautiously, I didn’t do too badly.  This might work, I thought.  What happens with trailers, at least with my trailers, is once you get past a certain point there seems to be a point of no recovery.  You have to go forward, like I did at the Jiffey Lube, straighten out, then try again.  My problem this time is there is no going forward.  I would hit a wooden fence.  I stopped for a second to catch my breath, calm down and try to figure what to do next.  I got out of the truck to do a quick survey (another piece of advice from Rich Luhr, who is rapidly becoming the Steve Jobs of Airstreaming for me.)   As I jumped down from the truck I noticed my other neighbor, an old guy in one of those electric wheel chairs.  He sported a long grey beard, a tattered cowboy hat and skinny arms laden with tattoos.  He looked at me expressionless and said, “Cut ‘er hard the other way.”  I mumbled, “Thanks”, jumped back in the truck and cut ‘er hard the other way.  I backed up slowly and the trailer responded.  Soon, however I felt that I was starting to reach that point of no return.  As I started to reverse to the wheel my wheel chaired friend said, “No.  Keep cutting it.”  I turned it back as he suggested.  “That’s it.”  I looked over my shoulder and one of my RV vets was now standing behind my trailer signaling for me to keep backing up.  The Airstream glided like an aircraft carrier on water as it glided slowly into its dock.  On the vet’s halt signal I jumped out to thank them both.  “Thanks so much.  Just bought this thing.  That’s the second time I’ve backed it up,” trying to explain the reason for my incompetence.  “We all been there,” the vet said not even looking my way as he stomped out his cigarette butt and returned to his folding lawn chair.  He was right.  We’ve all been there. 

The perfect parking job - with a little help from my friends.

It took me no time at all now to unhitch the Airstream, checking all the systems and locking up.  As I took off for Kat’s my new friends had all disappeared, for a walk down the beach or to settle into their own homes on wheels. As I drove out of Dockweiler’s turning left on the Vista Del Mar to head for the first non-frozen dinner of my trip my only thought was – Maybe he’s right.  Just maybe, we’ve all been there.