Driving Around the World!

 Whoa!  we stopped at a small shopping center to have lunch and look what parked by us!

 

  It wasn't crowded, they took up 5 parking spaces parking crosswise and the 2 flags in front were Swiss.  Terrorists? - they were going to remove our part of San Diego from all maps?

    Walking around the truck and trailer  - we saw this map on the back.  I insisted we wait to see who drove this from Switzerland.

 
  After a few minutes Monika and Rico walked from the McDonalds.  They were eager to talk and tell us their story.  They were from Switzerland and friends found and encouraged them to buy this 1962 military rig from Germany.  They test drove it down to Africa before putting it on a ship for Canada.  They then drove it across Canada, up into Alaska and down the coast to San Diego.

   I was correct when I asked, "Into Mexico next, right?"  They'll drive through Central America as far as the road goes and board a ship in Panama for Columbia.  After driving South America, they plan to travel by ship to Australia ($6,500 to ship it across the Pacific).

   They were eager to show us inside both the truck and trailer.  Rico hopped up and quickly started unlocking things.

   Rico first unlocked the trailer and told us they carry over 400 gallons of water (the large box on the left, rear) and actually can bathe/shower in the green trash can (left).

   Rico completely built and outfitted the truck cabin.  It reminded me of the sailboat we used to have - sleeping up front, table/seating on one side and food/stove/sink on the other.

   Monika and Rico told us, "We're normal people, with normal jobs, etc.".  When we asked, he added, "We put everything in storage when we run out of cash - head back to Switzerland to work and save more money".  He said his parents look after their home while they're on the road around the world and that they have been travelling this way since 2007.

       They just came from Las Vegas, a detour from the coastal route from Alaska.  Rico told us they get 7-8 MPG and just bought new tires in Las Vegas.

   They said they had checked at a nearby WalMart, but it was the first one they saw that had signs, "No Overnight Parking".  We suggested a small airport less than 2 miles away.  Maybe they could park there for the night.  We gave them directions.

   We drove out together, Monika driving.  We both stopped at the red light and she waved good-bye.

   Earlier Monika gave us a card with their email/website, but apologized it was in German:  http://www.tipitapa.ch/

   If you click on the counties on the left and then scroll down, you can see route maps where they've already traveled.   We drove out together, Monika driving.  We both stopped at the red light and she waved good-bye.

The Turquoise Lady

We went for an early morning photo walk through La Jolla, without wallets - past some of the most expensive shops in this part of Southern CA. When a jewelry store finally opened I browsed several silver and stone bracelets and fell in love with one. Joking about Mother's Day made the decision and Brock left to walk several blocks for a wallet and credit card.

While waiting, I talked with Olga, 57, the owner who told me (with a thick Italian accent), she met her American husband 40 years ago, moved to the US and travels frequently back to Italy to see her Mom, ". . . still a tough old woman", she laughed. "You know my husband too is so nice like yours", she added. "When he sees I really like something, he wants very much for me to have it."

Olga has owned upscale jewelry shops i n Newport Beach, Portland and Palm Desert - but now wants to stay indefinitely in La Jolla where "the weather is perfect!" She glanced at my camera and was excited to tell me about her new adventures with photography. She pulled out a tiny Lumix 10X digital and showed me some recent photos she'd taken of jewelry that just seemed to hang freely in an all white space.

Excitedly she picked up a heavy piece of funiture to put a large white cloth wrapped box on it.

She told me how she constructed the thin wooden frame (with lumber from Ace Hardware) and shopped at Wal*Mart for the white satin fabric. Using a staple gun she assembled the covered box which she moved around to show me the various lights from her open back door.

Placing a neckless in the box, she proudly demonstrated how her mini photo lab worked and handed me a business card to her website: http://www.turquoiselady.com/

She also told me about the colorful birds that land in the trees out her back door and her new photo collection of them as they sing in the branches.

And my new bracelet (my photo just on plain paper with kitchen light).

Henry Hog & Dissatisfied Dave

San Diego: Henry Hog gets to follow his master out to the fishing pier in the mornings . . . better than where he was a year ago even if he does kinda get tangled, tied under the benches. His owner tells me: "Whyyyy he's a 25 pound over weight beagle - that's what he is!" when I ask his breed.


Dave goes on to tell me he rescued Henry Hog from the dog pound a year ago when they were giving 5yr olds and older, away for free one week. He said he was adopted for a few days, then returned - but originally owned by a bed bound person who only fed him human food, "Tacos and burgers", he added.

Dave said he used to raise beagles when he was 13, so he knows the breed well and has promised Henry he'll never give him up. He says Henry Hog is a crazy one though, he would starve rather than eat dog food. Henry Hog hummed, whined and wiggled a lot while we talked.



Dave then told me how bad the economy is, how corrupt politicians are, how his best friend has to schedule everyday of the week (and can't fish on Thursdays) and how everyone is wrong about the baby grey whale that's been living in our bay this week.



Dave knows the whale lost his mother and is obviously very sick even though the experts say it's perfectly normal a young grey (old enough to be on its own) would explore our bay on its migration north . . . sigh . . .

Suzie and Harold the Indian - Pinos Altos, NM

Suzie owns a little country store in Pinos Altos, NM - up in the mountains from Silver City. I'd guess 300 people live in the little rural settlement. Suzie used to live in Encinitas, CA and came to the "hills" when her mom and dad got ill.



Harold (a wooden Indian) sits in the end seat at the cafe counter. Suzie says he was carved by a local Indian craftsman. I moved carefully by him at first, thinking he was just a quiet person who needed a little time alone.


Suzie went back to peeling a huge pile of potatoes for the red chili stew she was making - the strong smell totally filled the cafe. She talked with us about the special silence - a different way the air feels and sounds in the NM mountains. She talked about the lack of crime and her amazement with the retired folks moving to the mountains who build 5,000+ sq ft houses in the woods.


Then we talked of "stuff" and how so many of us at this age want to downsize and simplify our lives. When her parents died within months of each other, Suzie took everything - a lifetime of their "stuff" and not being able to deal with it, stored it in her home. It's been 5 yrs now and she's trying hard to understand our need to hang onto things as if they were memories to never forget.

Sunshine & Ian

Dayton, Tennessee:

Jus' passin' on through - First we met Sunshine. She came dashing over to us when she saw we parked near the funky green houseboat she calls home. She's 8 months old and tried to be fierce, barking aggressively at us - but when I told her sharply . . . "Hey! none of that! we're friends!" . . . she immediately melted, wagged her tail, started dancing around us and wanted to play as we leaned over to pet her.

Her owner - Ian, put her in his pickup while we talked. He explained how he found Sunshine in the parking lot, a tiny 5 wk old skinny bundle of puppy, abandoned - a "drop off" he called her. Not wanting a dog - his emotions gave way though, when that first day she sat on the gang way to his boat without moving for 2 hours.

With easy movement and a friendly southern drawl, Ian first answered my questions about what's it like to live on a houseboat on a small Tennessee river - "Great!". Being a boat mechanic, he waved his hands at all the other houseboats and said, "I've worked on and fixed all of'em". He went on to describe how he's rebuilt everything on the junked green boat he found - that it only needs an engine now, all the other systems (water, waste, heat) are in great working order . . . and being divorced, he now has a girl friend who shares his dream of owning a 65 foot barge, loading it with his truck and all their belongings and boating down to Pensacola, Florida to live in the warmth.

Ian said he needs the warmth now because he sounds like a 'bucket of bolts' in the cold Tennessee mornings - all his joints crack and creak, mainly his knees and legs because of a horrendous motorcycle accident - hitting diagonal RR tracks during the first few minutes of a rain - remembering only keeping his legs together as he flew off and slid feet first towards a guard rail.

Waking up in the hospital days later with 2 broken legs and other fractured bones - a cop stood over his hospital bed writing a ticket for riding without a helmet. Weeks later when he could walk, he took the officer into the field where he finally landed. They searched and searched and eventually found his helmet that saved his life, cracked in half like an egg in the back and only held together by a thin piece under the chin.

Lucky to be alive, he got out of that ticket!

Beale St. Memphis, TN

At night he drives a totally lit, twinkling and blinking horse drawn Cinderella coach up and down Beale Street in Memphis. There's a sleeping dog named Gypsy under the blanket by his lap, his "best girl", he said.

When he heard about our 16,000 mile road trip, he told us about driving to Alaska and back (from North Carolina) with his parents when he was younger -an amazing drive with hundreds of memories.

Not at all hustling us to buy a ride, he pulled a old worn piece of paper out of his wallet, handed it to me and said a drunk in a bar once told him if he ever made it to New Zealand, he had to be sure to visit:

*Christchurch
*Queenstown
*Dunedin
*Invercargill
*Milford Sound

Holding his creased, thin paper of dreams, seeing those five places I visited scribbled on paper, sure brought back wonderful memories for me too. Then he talked of trying to get work in New Zealand - maybe driving a truck.

Hard Core XXX - read on!

There's a tiny ferry dock (with a waiting room hut) on Cousin's Island near Yarmouth, Maine.




This is the official looking boarding gate.



And motoring in the bay close by, I noticed 2 men on a barge working with the mooring buoys and their long underwater chains that keep them anchored.



After he got off the barge, I asked Bill Reagan about the work. I didn't expect the scientific explanation he gave me about the preservation of the equipment and their interactions with the corrosive salty sea water.

Bill (Yale educated) told me until the past few years, he's been a prep school biology teacher (as well as his wife). Now he works for a marine company and also does TV ads (The Crocodile Man) for the local NBC station.

When I mentioned Ron from Rockland, Maine (WRFR FM radio/environmental report) who I met a few weeks ago (see a previous Nov. 19th blog entry here), Bill started laughing and told me his own WRFR FM radio station story . . . that the man who started that small local station way back in the 1970's, became a local icon who had an amazing talent for turning on the local lobster fishermen to . . . -guess again- . . . classical music. Bill added, "You know, not that elevator stuff - but the real deal".

Long before NPR ever offered classical music in the area, WRFR was unfortunately bought out by larger forces and the locals (including the fishermen) were horribly saddened to lose that bit of culture they had grown to appreciate - plus the esteemed, intellectual DJ/station founder who made it all possible.

Well, during the purchase and take over, Bill Reagan (a student at the time) working as a plumber with others, was hired to fix things at the radio station. One job needed to be done through a back closet and as Bill opened the old jammed door - completely packed, floor to ceiling stacks of XXXX hard core porn of all types came tumbling down . . . spilling smut over everything and everyone!

Kids they were then - with WIDE eyes and they couldn't stop laughing as they looked - as the very prim and proper Mr. Classical DJ was - yes . . . of course . . . out of *that* closet now!

Eye Catching Buoys of Sorrento, Maine

I saw the unusual Christmas colors of these lobster buoys and wondered about them.

Fortunately the lobster fisherman who owned them was nearby. He told me he's had those colors since he was 3 years old - that his dad (also a lobster fisherman) registered those colors for him - telling him, "As soon as you can be on my boat without wetting your pants, you can have your own colors".

He added, "My poor parents - it took a good year longer to potty train my sister, because she wasn't interested in boats, lobsters or buoys".

Ron from Rockland, Maine

We've been wandering the working lobster docks along the coast of Maine since we first drove in from New Hampshire 11 days ago.

Many of the docks are old, smelly, strangely quiet and piled high with unused lobster traps.

Today we met Ron, the first person we've seen on the docks in days. Ron told us he has a weekly radio show on WRFR/93.3fm out of Rockland, called: 'The Penobscot Bay Report'.


Every Thursday he reports on environmental issues. Today he said he was just "Checking on the lobster business" - one that has been recently so affected by the slow economy and a glut of cheap lobster available from Canada.

Before the wind blew too hard and the air got too frigid, Ron answered many of our questions - that lobster fishermen can earn upwards of $200,000 . . . that cams lowered into the water have recently revealed the lobsters climb freely in and out of those rusty cages, they don't actually get trapped by the funnel shaped holes . . . that the local herring (lobster bait) is being fished out and could soon cause serious problems for the Maine lobster business . . . and that the Australians tested using strips of cow hide for bait but their main market, the Japanese gourmet, didn't like slicing open their freshly boiled lobster for dinner and finding fuzzy chunks of cow hide inside that lobsters can't digest.

The Rooster of Lordsburg, NM

On a very desolate stretch of I-10 just east of the Arizona border is Lordsburg, New Mexico. With nothing but dry desert as far as one can see, there's a small NM Vistor Center huddled by the side of the freeway.

A pet exercise area is offered with two signs next to the parking lot. A third sign but a few feet away warns, "Beware of Rattlesnakes".

Gordon is a volunteer at the visitor center and has been protecting and guarding Harvey the rooster for a year now since he was abandoned in the parking lot, left behind when a RV drove off without him.

Gordon offers lots of stories about Harvey to anyone who will listen . . . how Harvey was nearly dead he was so starved . . . how Harvey eats a special mix of food that Gordon buys for him each week . . . how Harvey can be coaxed out of the bushes for visitors who want to take his photo.

After Memorial Day, May 2007

Other than a photo in a newspaper, I've never seen a National Cemetery decorated for Memorial Day.

Yesterday (Memorial Day) we discovered you couldn't get within miles of the Cemetery. The crowds here in San Diego had the narrow single access road along the ridge of Point Loma - a total stand still, a parking lot that barely moved. We abandonded the try.

I headed back to the Cemetery early the next morning and found myself completely alone with graves as far as I could see. Over the acres and acres of gently rolling fields, every grave was marked with a single small American flag.

Within an hour workers started the long walk, pulling up flags. Thomas told me there are 90,000 graves/90,000 flags and though it will take hours for his crew to pick them up, there are so many volunteers (mainly Boy and Girl Scouts), that all 90,000 are placed right before Memorial Day in 45 minutes!

Sex with Richard

Yesterday Richard posted an ad with our local Freecycle group, offering kumquats 'free for the picking!' I responded as quickly as I could and was invited to his home to pick fruit in his back yard.

The morning sun was warm and inviting, shining soft light on all the fruit trees he has planted since buying his beautiful La Jolla home 25 years ago. Richard told me he retired as an engineer after 35 years, last year. Walking towards the almost totally orange (with fruit) kumquat tree, I noticed a tree I've never seen before.

Richard explained it's a Chilean fruit tree. The unfertilized tree makes tiny unappealing fruit, but fertilized (when the seed grows properly), the fruit is large, juicy and sweet. The problem growing the tree in San Diego is that the only insect (a tiny moth) that fertilizes the tree, doesn't exist in California.

Richard went on to explain how he uses a soft paint bush at night to move through the branches, brushing the tiny flowers - spreading the pollen to go forth and multiply.

Tree Travellers, Drew & Shannon

I parked by the bay under the shade of a tree and was totally surprised to hear large bird sounds in the branches above. Drew was up high - very busy tying ropes, looping straps, hanging a backpack and trying to set/turn on a small plastic motion sensor dangling in the breeze.

He explained to me they intend to travel through Asia - "Maybe sometime in the next 2 years". He added, "Because it's so dangerous in those 3rd world countries, we've already purchased our tree hammocks to sleep in each night".

They plan to climb high into trees every evening, install their parachute thin hammocks high in the branches under the stars and hang all their belongings with them. Because Drew travels with expensive things and doesn't want to get robbed, he's working with an outdoor light sensor, to set it for any motion at the base of their trees.

Shannon was as quiet, calm and patient as Drew was busy, anxious and a bit frustrated. Shannon held long cords, moved around as instructed and kept setting her cell phone timer as Drew tried to get the sensor to work.

Shannon told me, they've come from Humbolt, CA where they met. She works as a nanny and Drew works as a juggler on various boardwalks around San Diego beaches. Shannon is learning juggling and seemed pleased to share she'll soon start performing with him.

Reynaldo, his art and his puppy Furullis

The brightly painted RV caught my eye.

Reynaldo and several friends were enjoying the warm sunshine, sitting in their lawn chairs with an 8 week old puppy chewing shoe laces.

When they saw my camera, they kidded it would cost me $20 for photos and if I wanted the puppy's photo, that would be an additional $15, please.

Reynaldo told me he paints all the time and never took a single art course. He added that he especially loves painting faces from photos.

He was excited to pull portraits out of his RV and tell me who they were. He asked if I might have some portrait photos I would like painted.

Armed and with a statistics degree from UC Berkeley too

(June 2005) - I met Helen (in her mid seventies) at the Lochsa Lodge (Idaho) registration counter (Lewis & Clark Hiway #12/ 60 miles west of Missoula, MT) as I sought a cabin for the night too.

Unpacking our vehicles in the muddy parking lot, we learned from each other that we drove the exact same picturesque route from McCall, ID that soaking rainy day, were road tripping alone from CA, were the youngest daughter in a dysfunctional family of 3 females and raised only sons.

Later that evening and the next day during a delightful early breakfast together, I met Tara, her 90# furry traveling companion and learned Helen often tent camps on her road trips, but never without her 45 Magnum pistol under her pillow. She added she's licensed and it's a must for the 240 acre cattle ranch she owns alone in northern CA. She said just flashing the holster is usually enough to discourage would be trespassers.

She then shared with me how her husband died of brain cancer at 41 and how she added a teaching degree to her statistics degree to raise 4 sons by teaching elementary school. Whew!

A First Book and Baby

In a San Marcos coffee shop Michelle's fingers fly over her keyboard, tapping in triple time. She takes a break after working all morning and tells me she's writing her first book. She started in January (took 3 months off for morning sickness) and has 100 pages done now. She proudly tells me about the agent she already has.

Her husband totally supports her writing - she writes everyday now having quit her job. Together they built a beautiful writing center for her in their new home but trying as hard as she can, she totally can't write there. "There's just too many distractions", she offers.

She's on schedule to finish her first draft by the end of the year because after that she's planning for another first - a February baby.

Floating for Bass

Mike (foreground) found his fishing raft mismarked in a sporting goods store. They rang it up for $27.00 so he gave his old one (in the background) to his friend. Mike (from N.J.) likes to fish every chance he can get. He just got out of the Marine Corps - he and his wife can't believe California weather. They've decided to make San Diego their permanent home now.

Mike's dad worked in a fish market in N.J. and hated to fish. He was always begging his dad to take him fishing. He fishes for bass today - catches them, likes to look at them, sometimes even takes photos and then throws them back in. He uses live bait that swim in a yellow bag floating by his right side.

The full body neoprene waders he wears keeps him dry in the water. He says you really have to clean them out well though or they smell like dirty sneakers in no time at all. He paddles and steers with large bright blue scuba flippers on his feet.

He said in the spring the carp get so big and territorial that they constantly bump into your legs. He said if he caught some trout, he might keep those to eat though.

Squeaky Clean

Bike riders casually roll by and patrons relax outside with their afternoon coffee on tables by the sidewalk.

Inside, an energized man climbs up on the window seats, soaps down the huge glass windows and then reaches for his giant size squeegie. With headphones firmly in place he bops, gyrates, dances and sings to music only he can hear.

The glass becomes crystal clear. He works amazingly fast.