Category: Travel

Baby Steps

On By Kat CouchIn RVs, Transportation, TravelLeave a comment

Folks talk loosely about RVs as houses on wheels, and that sounds reasonable enough. There's nothing new about hitching wagons to livestock; caravans have a long history. But modern travel trailers (dealers like to call them coaches) are less like moving houses and more like flying freighters. There is the towing. The truck needs horsepower, an integrated braking system, a hitch receiver the size of a washing machine, a rear camera, special side mirrors. There are torque wrenches, cotter pins, ball mounts and, in my case, a large wooden mallet I bought just so I could hit something that didn't work.

The Angels’ Share

On By Kat CouchIn Growing Up, TravelLeave a comment

Every student will tell you that precious hours of study don't necessarily stick. How much do you retain? How much do you lose to fading memory? And if the task is more abstract — say to create goodwill in your community — how many warm greetings, a cheerful wave here or there in passing, how many welcome baskets, pet sits, apple pies, Girl Scout cookies will do it? If you are looking for adventure, happiness, a sense of life fully lived, how do you measure it? What dead-end towns, three a.m. truck stops, blank-eyed looks, fruitless hunches will you suffer through to find your Eldorado? How much of the journey evaporates without issue?

Nomad is an Eyeland

On By Kat CouchIn Geology, Photography, TravelLeave a comment

The second time my family crossed the U.S. it was in an old-model Mercedes, a car held together by rust and kitchen string, altogether at odds with the grandness of the name. We flew from Belgium; it followed us by ship, swung over the sides onto the dock in a cargo net. At least, that's the picture I hold: I could be conflating it with a Spanish ferry on the Costa Brava. The family was together then, the five of us, and we stopped into a coffee shop, just off the plane at JFK. I ordered a hot chocolate. "Honey," said the waitress (they still had waitresses and stewardesses in those years, until they were all exchanged at equal value for servers and flight attendants)..."Honey," she said in a mellifluous New York accent, "we don't have hot chocolate in August."