The RV Guy

Getting Into the RV Club After living in the RV for two weeks, my niece Ivy started to get her RV legs. She didn't mind the RV rocking a little bit when people shift in bed or sit down and she learned to walk with bent knees so that you don't shift the RV so much. She'd been watching us set up the RV and taking lots of pictures of us doing it, so it was time to have her help out. To fully become a member of the RV club, Ivy had to perform the ritual of connecting the RV to the sewer system. You might think it is easy to connect a couple of pipes, but it is rather disgusting and surprisingly confusing with common misconnections and the ever-present danger of a disasterous ... read more

On the Road with Ivy and Grace It's August and my RV's thermostat says to head north. Grace and I took three truckloads of gear back to the RV and headed north from Morgan Hill. This time, we’re not alone. We’re taking Grace’s niece Ivy with us. Ivy just graduated college in Taiwan and wants to practice her English before getting a job. In her first 7 weeks here, she’s learned a few choice words like nasty, VD and wussy. She’s reluctant to say worse words, but we’ll have here cussing like a plumber before she heads back in September. On Saturday, we spent $150 on diesel before the truck overheated above Redding, CA. With the temperature at 96 degrees in the shade, it wasn’t hard to overheat our Allison transmission over 200F. We stopped ... read more

High Above The White Sandy Beaches I flew down to Pensacola, Florida for my cousin Ian's wedding. Ian picked me up from the airport and took me to the rented high-rise condos overlooking the white sandy beaches of the Florida panhandle. I had feared that the beautiful coral sand would be stained with black, sticky oil from the BP spill, but no blemish was to be on the wedding or the beach. Ian is the youngest son of my mother's youngest sister Kathy, so Ian is over a decade younger than I. He is also my godchild, but I had lived away most of his formative years in California, England, Taiwan and Colorado. When he was a teenager, his family moved down to Pensacola, so by the time I moved back to Kansas City, he ... read more

Burn Baby Burn I just finished an epic journey into the high, dusty Black Rock desert of Nevada to be a part of the the most amazing festival in the world. I'm talking Burning Man 2010 - Metropolis. Over 50,000 people and 10,000 RVs made the annual pilgrimage to the playa - the largest dry lake bed in North America that no one would want to live in for more than a few days. The playa could be considered one of the largest beach parties in the world but there isn't any water and the sand is replaced by fine clay silt - dust - that blows up into huge cyclones and blinding storms. What is amazing about the event is the absurdity of it. Out in the middle of the perfectly flat desert that stretches ... read more

Santa Barbara II We flew back to LA from KC and stayed with Mark's friend Donnie and Jenn in Manhattan Beach. We spent a nice evening with them and tasted the local fair near the beach. The next day, we went to the Getty Museum which is an incredible free collection of artwork, buildings and gardens. If you're ever visiting LA, be sure to see this 110 acre museum perched in the mountains above Santa Monica. The architect Richard Meier created this state-of-the-art museum with modern architecture and incredible gardens. They built the main structures out of 16,000 tons (1.2 million square feet) of white travertine stone that was imported from Italy. The art collection is world class and they rotate shows all of time. They're open some weekend evenings as well to see the sun ... read more