Chores and musings as snow and colder weather come to the Great Plains.
Well, I put the rig away for the winter. And just in time, too. It went into storage here in Bismarck on Monday, and it snowed for the first time Wednesday night. With the help of my friend Kent, who knows things, we drained the tanks and then poured three gallons of pink antifreeze into the system, turned on the water pump, and made sure all three faucets ran pink. I say “we,” but mostly, I stood around observing and handing Kent the things he needed, like a dental hygienist.
I’m not a very good North Dakotan. I can change a tire, change the oil, jumpstart a vehicle, change a spark plug, lug a hay bale, and replace a car battery, but I’ve never done drywall, installed floor tile, or wired a family room in the basement. I can weld, but it has been a while, and I don’t have the equipment. Kent can do everything — the complete set of North Dakota skills, and he is not afraid to start pulling bolts to see what’s wrong underneath.
Steinbeck took ca. 300 lbs. of heavy tools when he toured the country in 1960. I’ll take a few wrenches, screwdrivers, a hammer, and pliers, but my actual “tool kit” will be my 2-ounce AAA card.
It’s sad to park my new Airstream in a storage bay for the winter. Winters are very long and often quite rough on the northern Great Plains. Unless something changes radically, I don’t expect to pull it out until late March. That’s a long hibernation. I strewed Bounce dryer sheets all over the rig’s interior to keep out mice. Apparently, that works.
The snow came, and now I am starting to read in a big way. I plan to create a road life commonplace book, like the ones people assembled before the advent of copying machines and digitization. I’m reading every road book I can fit into my schedule. I just finished rereading Kerouac’s pioneering On the Road this morning (for the umpteenth time). There will be a dozen plus quotes from On the Road in my commonplace book.
I’ve had the Airstream since mid-August. I picked it up in Silt (near Rifle), Colorado, and drove it home to North Dakota. That was shakedown cruise one. Takeaway: driving it is easy, backing it into a camping slot less so. It was still a hot summer. The AC works well if you have electricity. The refrigerator is great, but give it a day to get things cool. Then, I took it to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I discovered that the water drain valve was broken and I could not keep water in the holding tank. That had some comic aspects. Later, when I was home, Kent installed a replacement on the street outside my house. Takeaway: the solar panels are great, but when the sun doesn’t shine, it is not strong enough to overcome the drain on the batteries. Finally, I took the rig to the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I could not get the thermostat to work, so I had no heat. The temperature plummeted both nights to 33 degrees. I could not get warm enough, no matter how many blankets I piled over my body. I could see my breath. Eventually, I used the gas stove to take off the edge of the cold. Takeaway: the thermostat needs to be replaced.
I’m keeping an Airstream journal in a green Moleskine notebook. So far, it’s the account of someone just learning the ropes. One by one, I have overcome the little learning curve obstacles. By spring, when I fire it up again, it should be ready, or rather, I should be ready to go see America.
Here are the things I need. Feel free to donate them to the Listening to America project!!
1. A spanking new Ford F-150. My 2013 GMC Sierra is fine, but it is not what it used to be.
2. A Honda whisper generator so that I can camp in the middle of nowhere (no hookups) and still have electricity to do the writing that is the center of the great journey.
3. A few $1,000 gas cards.
I’ll be teaching an online course on Books of the Road beginning two days after Thanksgiving. That gives me double incentive to read Kerouac and then Steinbeck to get ready — ready for the course and prepared for the great journeys of 2024 and 2025.
Winter has arrived. I had the darndest time getting my snow blower to fire up, though it worked fine two weeks ago when I checked it. And now it has a flat tire. I can tell you this: if you lose control of your sidewalks in a North Dakota winter, they can be covered with ice to the spring equinox. Tens of thousands of North Dakotans flee the winter and spend the tough months in Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Hemet. Snowbirds. I love winter, actually, and cannot imagine fleeing. There are other things to flee here, but not the climate. I don’t mind the cold, but I hate seeing the light lose ground every day until just before Christmas.
So far, I have learned this much about my Airstream. The bed is great. The dinette table is a good desk to work at when the chill creeps on the evening. It has the aura of romance and the open road that I wanted. I am going to use to go out and see America. The decal on the side of the rig intrigues people. They ask questions.
This is going to work. Let’s hope it is an early spring.