An Introduction to My Travels with LD
Hoosic Reservoir, Cheshire MA, August 21, 2010
Genesis of an idea
The seed of the idea of traveling full time and living a mobile lifestyle was planted way back in the late '80s when my cabinetmaking business went bust and I started riding around the country on my old 1974 BMW R90/6 motorcycle, licking my wounds and thinking about what to do next.
On one of those trips I met a couple at Arches National Park traveling in a small motorhome and started asking questions. They lived full time in a larger motorhome in Arizona and traveled in this smaller one. They were very enthusiastic about the full time RV lifestyle and urged me to try it. The seed planted, I spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how I could make that happen.
No workable plan came to mind; there was too much going on back home and I just wasn't ready. But the seed germinated and the sprout grew slowly for years while I continued with the motorcycling and became infatuated with the west.
Out of the trees
At some point I remember beginning to say how it felt so great on those motorcycle trips when I crossed the Mississippi River and got "out of the trees" and into the open country of the western plains and mountains. It fed my soul. I couldn't explain it and still can't but the feeling was visceral and deep and I was determined to live a mobile lifestyle and travel the west. Somehow, someday.
Time passed, life went on, and the dream flourished
Finally early in this century I was ready to start moving toward the dream but I had no clear idea how to proceed. I lost interest in my work and knew I it would soon be time for a change. This could be the opportunity to launch the dream. I was develop an interest in making forged wire jewelry, among other things and jewelry was something I could pursue in a small space with very little equipment. Maybe there was a way to make it work.
In 2004 I stumbled on an old Starcraft truck camper I thought I might rebuild into a mobile jewelry studio. That idea quickly proved impractical and fizzled so I abandoned the project and moved on to the next idea, converting an old 1969 Airstream Tradewind trailer I found. That idea fizzled too when I concluded it needed too much work to be practical.
By then I was beginning to think a self- contained RV would be a better choice and research led me to Class C's and eventually to a 1992 Lazy Daze Mid Bath, my home since November 15th, 2007.
Travels With LD records this ongoing adventure.
Life is to be Lived, Not Controlled
No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I lived a public life and attempted to function under the assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up above there's an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern.
.... Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? - diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that were to happen. .....Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.