STEVE JOBS FAILS ME

Teasdale, UT – April 14, 2014

I slip out of Las Vegas but notice that it is already 11:00 AM - late start to get to Capital Reef National Park.   I was going to take a more scenic route that would take eight hours, but after consultation with Kat on the phone where she said, “Are you crazy?  Do not take the scenic route pulling a trailer,” I elected to stick with Interstate 15 that would get me there in 6 ½ hours or so.

Utah and Nevada together are just short of 200,000 square miles in area.  The population of Utah is 2.8 million people.  All but 500,000 people live in and around Salt Lake City.  Nevada is the same.  The population of Nevada is 2.7 million but three quarters of them live in Vegas.  So that leaves about 1,000,000 people to share 200,000 square miles.  That compares with Manhattan which has 1,5000,000 people in an area that is 23 square miles!  In other words, you don’t run into many folks driving through Nevada and Utah on a Monday in April. 

Rush Hour in Utah

As a result I make real good time.  I am a little concerned.  Not because I am making good time, but because it seems to be my first truly uneventful day.  What was I to write about?  The scenery?  Truly impressive, but impressive in its emptiness.  I stop for gas…no crisis, no colorful figure.  The most impressive thing is the price of gasoline.  At $3.49 a gallon, Texas still stands apart as the cheapest gas I have seen and I am 3,200 miles into the journey. 

At about 3 PM I leave the Interstate to drive toward Capital Reef National Park.  I am happy to get off the highway.  It is more fun for me to pass through little towns and to really see the countryside.  I pass through the town of Greenwich, Utah, not to be confuses with Greenwich, Connecticut.  It seems this Greenwich has many more sheep than people, which is only one of the many differences between the two villages.  Interesting perhaps --- but not worthy of a blog.

I stop for gas around 4 PM and chat with a man who is filling his car and admires the Airstream.  This happens almost every time I stop. 

“Where are you headed,” says the man who lives in Torrey, Utah, coincidentally, where I am headed.  I tell him the short version of my story (leaving out the triple whammy, of course).   I also mention the RV Park in Capital Reef.  He says it is quite nice but fills up fast and is on a first come, first serve basis.  Maybe not this week, he adds, but next weekend as Easter weekend approaches it will be packed.  He says there is a trailer park right outside of Torrey where I could certainly find a spot for the night without a problem.  He wishes me luck and drives off.  As soon as I fill up I do the same. 

As I get to town Seri, the lady on my IPhone, who gives me directions tells me to turn right.  I follow her instructions faithfully as I pass down a quiet street on the edge of town.   As the homes thin out, the road starts to go up an incline to some treeless countryside.  I think to myself that this doesn’t seem like the right way, but I check my phone and the map says I am only 8.3 miles to Torrey.  The road continues to climb, eventually turning into a well-maintained gravel street. By the time this happens I have left the little town behind.  I keep driving and the road keeps climbing.  Eventually, the road becomes more of a dirt road than a gravel street.  Now, I have climbed quite a bit altitude wise.  I can look down and see the town I left far behind.  I stop and again question again if I am on the right track.  When I check it says Torrey is now just 3.1 miles ahead.  This can’t be right but I figure maybe its because I am headed to a national park.  Maybe this is the back entrance.  I know nothing about Capital Reef.  Never even heard of it until I started researching my trip.  I drive over the crest of a hill and as I

Where am i?

proceed down, now I am on a dirt and rock path.  This has got to be wrong.  The path now, however, is so narrow that there is absolutely no turning around; not with an Airstream on my back.  I check the phone and it indicates that I am only two miles away from Torrey.  I might as well keep going.  There is no way I can turn around. 

Suddenly, Siri says, “Proceed to the route.”  Proceed to the route?  What the hell?  I am on the route.  I glance down at my phone.  It indicates that I have passed a turn.  Passed a turn?  There was no road to turn on.  I can’t turn around.   The path keeps getting tighter and tighter and if that all wasn’t bad enough, the sun is starting to set. 

Alas, Steve Jobs has failed me.  There is no Torrey around here.  There is no route to proceed to.  I turn a corner and to my dismay across a broad barren pasture, see snow!  Not a ton of it but definitely a field

Where's the turnaround?

of snow perched on the sloop of a shaded hill.  Jesus, it’s April!  I suddenly am gripped with the feeling that I might be above the timberline - with the sun going down.  At last I come upon another dirt road that intersects the one I am on.  I have no interest in taking that road.  It does give me enough area that, if I am lucky and skillful, I can turn around.  The turn is tight but I have to do it.  The road ahead doesn’t look any better in the fading sunlight.  If I don’t give it a try here they may be no other opportunity.  If I keep going and it dead ends, which seems likely, I sure as hell can’t back up.  I am left with no choice but to take a shot.  So, I drive pass the intersection of the roads and put it in reverse.  I pause of a second and take a deep breath.  Man, if I screw this up I could be spending the night on this hill!  Rather than start to back up I slip it from reverse to park, get out of the truck and walk back to the Airstream.  I check out every obstacle that could spell disaster.  There’s this sagebrush here and there but I can run over it without messing things up.  There are a couple of rocks that I will probably by pass.  The road does drops off into a ditch.  If I screw things up I am pretty sure I will feel the trailer start to slid down and can stop before it passes the point of no return, but I think, all in all, this is doable.

Still breathing deep, I say to myself  “OK, Zimbo.  It’s go time.  No more trial and error. You gotta make this work on the first time.”  At least I think I said it to myself.  Maybe, I might have said it out loud along with, “Dear God, help me.”  No, I didin’t. I am certain I took a couple of deep breaths and thought, “suck it up, my Brotha.” I get back in the truck and start to channel all the gurus and advisors that have helped me back this thing up from Rick Luhr , my Airstream expert, to the RV veterans down at Dockweiler’s,  

to Kat and everyone in between that has ever said,  “Turn the wheel in the opposite direction you want to go.”  No time to panic.  It’s go time. 

 

It's about time to take a little action.

Strange how anxiety can trigger focus as well as fear.  You never know which camp you are going to fall into at any given crisis.  Turn the wheel in the opposite direction you want the trailer to turn.  I heard that refrain in my head - an exhortation that no matter how many times repeated never made sense in my right-brained, dyslectic, left-handed brain.   I crank the wheel to the right, start to back up…and the Airstream obeys.  I have this moment of total clarity.  It all makes sense.  Have I finally climbed the learning curve, or is this some sort of mystic Airstreamian divine intervention karma like event?  It could be dumb luck?  Mine is not to question.  I glide back into the intersecting road until I sense I should crank the wheel the other way and the Airstream and truck float back in place, ready to return in the direction I came.  I am in both shock and awe.  Have experienced something that is unworldly? Moment of spiritual awakening or dumb freakin’ luck?  The only thing of which I am certain is I am headed back from whence I came and that alone is good enough for me.

Obviously buoyed by the experience yet still sobered by the realization that I am on a mountain ridge with the sun setting I start to retrace my steps.   As Siri would say, my job is now to “proceed to the route,” but screw her.  Maybe Jobs was a genius but he had obviously never been to Torrey, Utah.  But it wasn’t Jobs’ fault.  A disgruntled Apple programmer back in Cupertino no doubt did him in?  Angry that Jobs did not like the way he programmed the maps, or dressed down in public, as I am told Jobs liked to do.  But why I have to suffer because of his retaliation?  I don’t know and at this point I don’t care.  I am dead tired, it is getting dark and I don’t have a real good idea of where I am headed.  I know one thing for certain.  I turn off my phone.  I am not taking Siri’s counsel. I gotta get out of this fix on my own.

By the time I get back to the original turn it is dark.  I figure I will just stick to the road I was on before Siri, (that bitch) advised me to turn on a road I knew was wrong. So I trust my instincts with no help from the GPS world and drive maybe two miles and am greeted by a sign next to the road that says, “Entering Torrey, Utah.”  Not funny, Steve.  Sooo, not funny.  I go another mile down the road and there is a sign reading “1,000 Oaks RV Park”.  I curse Jobs again as well as Siri.  Three hours ago I was right down the road, but no.  I go against my instincts and follow Steve and his evil yet mildly erotic accomplice Siri.  Would I follow these two over a cliff?  My God.  I almost did.  Now, for the first time in my life I contemplate buying a Samsung smart phone.  I like you Steve, but don’t fuck with me, man. 

As my friend at the gas station predicted the RV park have lots of available spaces.  The office is closed but there is a phone in a wooden box hanging on the porch that I pick up.  A pleasant woman comes on the line and just tells me to pick out a place and pay me in the morning.  I start back to the truck thinking that - Thank God, Kat stuck a cold piece of pizza in a goody bag she fixed for me.  Cold Pizza and pistachios tonight for dinner and I am glad to have it.   I am thankful simply to have arrived in one piece.  Well, almost one piece. 

As I return to the truck I glance down and am startled at what lies before me.   The stabilizer bar, this menacing steel contraption that is part of the wicked hitch apparently snapped a pin that holds it in place, which broke off the steel bar. No doubt the result of my bouncing dirt road journey.  It is lays under the Airstream hooked by a chain to the hitch.  I don’t knowhow long I have been dragging it, but when I pick up the metal bar it is apparent that most of the paint has been blasted off by miles of asphalt against metal on the highway. The steel, which was painted black, is now gray, heavily pockmarked, pitted and gashed, the result of bouncing along for miles under the carriage of the Airstream. 

Holy shit.  I am no Airstream expert but plainly, this is not good.  I unhook the chain but can only stare at the piece of metal.  I am alone, in the dark in the middle of a trailer park in the middle of Utah.  Nothing can be done about this now.  I am just going to retreat to the Airstream, have my pizza (an a glass of wine or three) and get a good night’s sleep.  I hook up the electricity, water and the sewer. 

But, my surprises for this day are not over.  I open the door and it looks like the Airstream has been ransacked by a marauding band of Nihilists.  The closets are opened and anything not on hangers is strewn on the floor.  Pillows that I left in neat arrangement on the couch look like they were discarded weapons in a failed pillow fight.  The toilet paper in the bathroom and the paper towels has completely unrolled themselves under their hanging holders.  I can’t even imagine the horror that went on unwitnessed at this place.  I am relieved to see that nothing is broken and that no one peed on my rug.  (My second reference in this paragraph to an epic movie.)  What is most disturbing is that when I go to pick things up it is impossible not to notice that everything is coated with dust.  The Airstream looks like King Tut’s tomb after 3,000 years.  Though marvels of engineering and widely admired around the world, I learn the hard way that the Airstream is far from airtight.  Evidently, as I bounced along in my F-150 on the Steve Jobs Memorial Highway I was apparently spewing dust that the Airstream sucked up like a vacuum. 

Cold pizza and pistachios is postponed in favor of the Dirt Devil and a mop along with something that my daughter Liz taught me about which is the true elixir of life for Airstreamers – Formula 409 All Purpose Cleaner.  This shit is the kryptonite of cleaners.   A miracle drug developed to cure the common mess.  Dirt doesn’t stand a chance against this stuff, provided you have enough paper towels.  (I have plenty - an entire roll had unrolled itself into the sink. 

After awhile and a bottle of Formula 409 All Purpose Cleaner I was feeling better about the day.   Yes, I almost perished in the Utah wilderness.  Yes, I have partially or, perhaps completely destroyed the hitch, but I had a great story to tell on what I thought was going to be a rather uneventful day.  I wondered as I dozed of, what will tomorrow hold?