(pretty) home on the road

Hi there! So, while mr. a-go-go works on the important things like organization and space, I've been thinking of the other important things like how to make a Transit Connect into home sweet home. If you have ever checked out my flickr page or my blog posts or even taken a meander though any of our camping picks, you may have noticed that I tend to go a leetle overboard in bringing pretty into the picture. Why not? Just because we're on the road and I'm living in my New Balance and Lees, doesn't mean I can't make a pretty bed or have happy cups to drink from.For the BIG ROAD TRIP however, I just may have to settle for pretty enough. There won't be room to bring multiple bed changings and there won't be room for more than a handful of t-shirts and skivvies. I'm not worried though. I can get creative...right?

No matter what, there will be a happy bed. Maybe I can squeeze in a couple of changes of pillowcases to mix it all up. Oooh, maybe I should make some pillowcases that are two-sided...and reversible. That would be space-saving and satisfy my need to pretty up. Excellent idea. I am so pleased.So, other than allowing for a pretty bed, how else can I bring home to our traveling home? Ooh, I know, curtains! Our landlord threw out two refrigerators and mr. a-go-go jigged right on over to 'em to pull out the magnet strips that hide inside the doors. His plan is to use them to hold curtains over the windows and windshield so we don't have all sorts of lookie-loos lookie-looing in while we snooze and snore (yep, I am a major snoring-snorie sort) away. So if we're gonna have non-traditional curtain, I and my pseudo sewing skills can surely make something kicky and vintagey. Yay, two ways of infusing some color into the car.

Okay, bedding...check. Curtains...check. Oh and there's the chicken rug that will act as our welcome mat, gotta have one of those and one that is handmade with a chicken on it surely will keep things purdy (no eye-rolling please...or just wait until the end, okay?).Other than that, I'm not sure. Lights may be involved. You know, like twinkle lights only the non-twinkling kind. Music is a given of course. I may need to upgrade my very old, slighlty fading iPod though. There is a lot of music I will want to have on hand. Can't go traveling without her or him or them or her. The ukes will travel with us of course. Mayhaps I'll finally get the strumming part down. What else?

Oh yeah, the Transit itself. See, if we can get sponsorship in a Transit we're certain we can make it as homey and nifty and purdy as a Teardrop or other small campervan thing. And while we have been thinking of the outside of our Transit we're really not picky you know because we're kinda asking for someone (Ford) to give us one. And if they give us one, we will graciously accept it decked out with logos, information and what have you. All we really would like for the outside is a poster board sized rectangle filled in with chalkboard paint that we can write our destinations and stops on. How cool would that be? So what say you Ford...think we can work something out?

road trip anecdote, visiting the dead

Often when I'm at the wheel mrs. a-go-go will point and gasp or say, "Ooh ooh!" This makes me a little bats. Instead, I wish she would just say, "stop the car!" I never really know what she wants while she is in that speechless state so I check the rear view mirror for cars. If it's all clear I hit the brakes to find out if she really wants to stop for photos. So often the cause of the gasp is a small cemetery just off the road. The weathered wood grave marker above was in a small dirt and gravel plot near Tehachepi, California in 2007. We had headed out for an unplanned day trip just to see if we could catch up with the thunderhead clouds we could see over the dessert. We ended up finding this grave yard and getting silt in our underpants in a muddy patch of the Kern River.
On a wet afternoon near Sebastapol mrs. a-go-go spotted these stone and concrete grave markers among the eucalyptus trees and a small heard of sheep.
The ever present coastal damp had frosted all the headstones with moss and lichens. We stayed a while and wished we could afford to move to picturesque, quiet Sebastapol. Then we headed on our way to Eureka and at last to Portland, Oregon.
A few cemeteries we have visited were the objective of the trip to begin with. On a whim one Saturday afternoon we drove madly to Manzanar in the Owens Valley of California when Mrs. a-go-go learned that day was the annual pilgrimage of former prisoners and their families. We arrived after four hours of driving just in time for the end of the event. We met a few people who were still in the cemetery paying their respects to the people who died in the camp. One of these visitors had been born at Manzanar durring the internment. The dedication obelisk had been decorated with strings of thousands of paper cranes. We stayed until sundown walking among the few remaining traces of the camp and the few restored buildings.
Just south of Death Valley Junction and the Amargosa Opera House we nearly tripped on this still active small grave yard.
The few and widely scattered residents of this little township still bury their dead in a stark, dry plot where you can see so far that the distance looks like a painted backdrop.
In a place named for a grave marker and famous for violent deaths we couldn't pass up visiting the Boothill cemetery. Few of the markers are tombstones but that doesn't deter the keepers of the place from maintaining the freshly painted epitaphs. Tourists will know who is buried here for as long as there is someone with a few planks, some black paint, and a will to keep Tombstone's claim to fame alive.

again with the transit?!

I went and fiddled with the image of the Transit Connect in Photoshop. Am I obsessed or what? It was hard to get the picture from Ford's website to fit scaled rulers but I think I got close. I wish I had some scale elevation drawings to work from but this is the best I can do. I hope the readers who don't care about this part of the project will humor me and remember that one of the points of this blog (for me, anyhow) is to prove to Ford that it can be done. I posted some scribbly images of the same stuff a few days ago but I though this stab at a scale drawing would shed some light on the subject. I described the details of how all this could work in that post so I won't repete myself here. That's me, by the way, in my martian costume. It was the best head to toe picture I could find that would make this a little less boring.

I can do so much more with Ford's little van

That's not me in the picture**. It's Carlos Lago of Truck Trend Magazine. He wrote an article in December about living in a Ford Transit Connect in Los Angeles. I have to give the benefit of the doubt and presume that he wrote the article with his tongue in his cheek and a comic intention. I hope that he was not serious about being forced to live in the Transit Connect, and it was just a stunt for the sake of the article. [If it was out of necessity then I hope things will be looking up soon for you, Carlos. Having to live in a vehicle on the streets is nothing to laugh at. There are several familiar vehicles in my neighborhood that occasionally move a few blocks here or there, and I worry and wonder about my nomad neighbors' plights.]

Anyhow, I know I can make the Ford Transit Connect a much more comfortable (temporary) home for us on our road trip. That is, if we can get our hands on one. The conditions of our trip will differ wildly from those described by Carlos' story. For starters we will make great use of camp grounds where facilities are available. In addition we will be visiting relatives and many friends across the country so we'll be sleeping in lots of places other than in the van. Lastly, we have no reason to turn our noses up at small motels, indeed we have a weird way of finding the oddly comfortable ones. We won't be forced to search the cities for out-of-the-way places to secretly park and sleep. With some carpentry and clever design our imaginary (for now) Transit will add up to more than an air mattress, a cooler, a curtain on a bungee cord, and a guitar. (There's Carlos' first mistake. Ukes take up so much less real estate than a clunky guitar.)

**photo by Carlos Lago/Julia LaPalme

road trip anecdote, the bristlecone pines

In August 2009 we traveled up highway 395 to Reno Nevada and Lassen Volcanic National Park. On the way we made a slight detour for our first camp out of the trip. We started out from LA early in the morning so we were turning East off the 395 at Big Pine a bit before noon (even with some noodling around on the way for photo ops at Fossil Falls and Independence).


The road winds up hill for quite a few miles with very few guiding signs. We had to wonder if we were going the right way. At last we found Grandview campground at 6,000+ feet elevation. I liked this campground in spite of some initial trouble finding a spot. It's what they call "undeveloped, dispersed" so there were dirt tracks leading this way and that into the juniper forest. There were pit toilets but that was it other than a flattish spot for a tent. The fire pits were just rock piles but that suited me fine. I could cook on a very small fire with the rocks piled to hold a pot, better than the metal fire rings that don't shield the fire from the wind. After lunch and setting up camp we drove the rest of the way up the mountain to the surreal Bristlecone Forest. These are some of the oldest known living things, and some trees here are more than 4,000 years old.


Even more altitude there, 10,000+ so we didn't walk far (we got crazy winded). A short hike in the thin dry air wore us lowlanders out right away. The oldest of the trees are so weird and gnarled. The ones that bear the brunt of the harsh winter weather turn out to grow the slowest and thereby become the longest lived. In fact it is likely that they would grow even older if their shallow roots were not inevitably exposed by erosion. The very old ones eventually just tip over when they loose their footing.


We returned to our camp before sun down and had an early bed time for the next day's adventure. After the moon set that night we had a very nice dark sky. I could see why Grandview is a favorite campsite for amateur astronomers. It was thrilling to look up during my brief foray out of the tent to empty the ol' bladder. It was cold. With no cloud cover and the dry, dry air the temperature dropped right off the thermometer after dark. In the morning we packed quickly and headed off for more sights of the Owens Valley.

tiny plans

So in-spite of initially being turned down by Ford I'm still hopeful that maybe we can talk someone into giving us a deal on a Transit Connect. Before the dreadful rejection form letter from Ford's sponsorship web page I had been dreaming in three dimensions of all the swell modifications I could make to the back of the van to make it a little home for our camp outs. Before I get into describing all the details maybe I should say what we had in mind for accommodations for our trip.

2009 saw the a-go-gos on the road quite a bit. We packed in Death Valley, Owens Valley, Manzanar, Whitney Portal, Reno, Lassen Volcanic Park, Mojave National Preserve, Mitchel Caverns, Carrizo Plain, the California Poppy Reserve, Mono Lake, Valley of Fire, Bristlecone Pines, Schat's Bakkery in Bishop, Rock Creek in the Sierra, Bodie ghost town, and lots in between. With all that we developed a nice road trip stride and a simple bundle of junk that comes with us on these trips. We typically camp out in a tent when we can and stay in motels when dictated by weather or on relatives' or friends' couches where available. All this is great but we long for a vehicle that we can sleep in with more comfort than a tent (not to mention more weather and wind resistance). We have slept in the back of our marvelous little '99 Toyota Rav4. That works OK, but it requires that all the stuff crap and junk be stored outside while we sleep as our bodies take up all the available floor space and head room. Arranging all this is as cumbersome as setting up a tent at every stop. I love sleeping in a tent and I figure we will likely bring a small one even if we have a vehicle to sleep in. Our trip to the Mojave Preserve drove home the need for a cozy, reliable, and solid place to sleep when the tent wont cut it. The wind kicked up something fierce. Miraculously our cheap little tent held up just fine but a good sleep was out of the question. The gusts drove us nuts all night.

So, what to sleep in? We're not the sort to have an RV, not even a van conversion. Our need for fuel economy makes any of that too dear. I like the Ford Ranger pickup and it's little four cylinder engine can easily pull a teardrop trailer, so that is an option we are weighing. Used Rangers go pretty cheap but getting a teardrop will cost some $$$. New they are out of our range and used ones are very popular and get snapped up right away (yes, I have been looking). I may have the time and space to build one someday but that's out for now as we live in 450 sq. feet and have no garage. I like the Honda Element but it presents us with the same troubles as the Rav4, all the junk has to be moved out of the back before you can make the bed up and go to sleep.

This brings us to the Ford Transit Connect. It is little by all measures, and the idea of sleeping in it will be a pinch but I think I've come up with an attractive plan. I have proven my skills in light weight, durable carpentry for tight spaces with many previous projects. As an example when I was a bachelor I lived in dinky studio apartment upstairs from a hair salon in South Pasadena, CA. The brick building was from 1915 and had lots of quirky charm but the apartment couldn't hold much more than a bed and a bureau. The rent was right so I went to work. First, a Murphy bed. The bed would fold against the wall for the day and as a bonus I built into its base a table that folded down for the day. Built from recycled scrap lumber and engineered like a hollow core door, it was light weight and carried years of restless sleep, folding, unfolding, breakfasts, carpentry and painting projects. Later I added book shelves next to the entry door, and moved the clunky stove out of the tiny kitchen to turn it into a better art studio (cooked on a hotplate instead... hey, I said I was a bachelor. I was practically a hermit artist). My bike hung from the ceiling, I built small steps up to the window so I could use the roof as a balcony.... soon it was like living on a small boat. The only thing big about that apartment was the bath tub. Boy, do I miss that tub. There was no heat in the building and no insulation so in the winter (very mild in southern California, but at 45 degrees some nights it was cold enough for me to wear a coat and hat inside) I would take soaks in the huge tub to escape the cold.

But I digress.... back to the Ford Transit Connect. After test driving the Transit, laying in the back, and poking around with a tape measure I was convinced it could work. The best feature is the head room. The scribbly drawings above will be hard for anyone but me to understand but I worked out how to build a bed deck in the back of the Transit and still have more than three feet of sit-up head room. The bed space would actually be larger than the bed that mrs. a-go-go and I sleep in now. The deck would be high enough to stow all our stuff in bins that can slide out the back and side doors. The front two feet of deck would be removable (in fact it has to be to allow the front seats to have some recline while driving) and it would double as a kitchen table when the rear doors are open. Like the design of a teardrop trailer the rear door would function as a galley, and I would add a pantry cabinet above the foot of the bed. All this would give us that precious quick bed set up and not require all the clothes, kitchen equipment, bags, camera stuff, and more to be stashed outside.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. I better quit here before I wax on about a tent canopy for the back and other stuff. It's all moot if we can't get our hands on one. Maybe we can talk Ford into selling us one at cost. Hmmm...

Rejected

Yup folks, you read that right, Ford has rejected our application for sponsorship. Excuse us while we take a moment to run around the casa sighing our heaviest of sighs and woeing our heaviest of woes. Drats!

Okay, I know, I know, this doesn't mean we can't take the trip and this doesn't necessarily mean we won't be in a Ford Transit Connect. I think the form letter we were required to fill out is probably mined with spots for keywords and all that hullabaloo and well, since we're not like most folks, our keywords don't match. What can we do to get their attention. What can we do to convince them it would be worth their while to sponsor us on our trip? Any ideas? Oooh, maybe we should hold a blog drive of sorts and create some sort of button or post to collect comments in our favor. Do you think that would work? It might if we had all my scrumdillydilly and scrumdilly-do followers but this blog here is a newbie with um, not so much fanfare. (But we do love each and every one of you followers, we do!)

Does anyone know anyone at Ford? Does anyone wanna send me a lottery ticket? See, we've checked out all sorts of cars. We've took them on test drives and crawled around the back and checked under the hood to see if we could cook there and all that and out of all those cars, we like the Ford Transit Connect the best. And as it stands we could by a Transit Connect but then we couldn't take our trip as all our savings would end up in a vehicle that was intended for adventuring but instead is schlepping groceries and vintage sheets and books and benches and stuff. (all together now...SIGH)

And see, when we do this trip, we're going to be writing about it. A Lot. We're gonna be blab blab blabbing away about this nifty place or that nifty place and we're going to be talking about the car we're in and what works and what doesn't and so on. So you may be hearing all about the Kia Rondo or the Honda Element instead of the Ford Transit Connect. Okay, I'm officially a little bit bummed right now. I guess it's back to the drawing board.