Go Slow

The Learning Curve
So far, we've moved exactly nineteen point seven miles from East Mesa to Tempe, Arizona. I took a brief trip (less than a week) from here to Witch Well, Arizona to attend the Arizona regional burn, Toast and to test the RV functions. All was well except for what we think was a little vapor-locking. We're hoping the adjustments and repairs my mechanic friend made will take care of that and that we won't have this problem on the next trip to set up the Abundance Tree at the Star School outside of Winslow. Although we're not quite "on the road" because of repairs still in the works, we're meeting all sorts of good people. The serendipity is already working. In the house we're parked live artists and others we're sharing stories and helpful input. There is something that happens when you leave your house and enter the larger world that feeds the serendipity - that alone, begins the process.

I knew intuitively that this experiment was going to teach me things. I just didn't know what, or how much. So far I've learned things ranging from ways to find free everything, low cost whatever is left, and exactly how many truly decent people there are in the world when you get out of your house and start meeting them. I've learned how to patch holding tanks with fiberglass and epoxy - which has me seriously considering more artistic uses of the material, and several minor mechanical processes. I have a really good understanding of what the construct of an RV septic system looks like. I can tell you where to buy some pretty cheap plumbing and vent cover supplies, and I'm not as afraid of things failing as I used to be.

Slowing Down
The one thing I didn't count on learning, however, is exactly how important it is to slow down. The first week in the RV left me battered and bruised. I flung myself around as I, apparently, have been doing all along and knocking into just about every surface of both the vehicle and my body. I bruise easily. People looked worried. But I've begun to notice myself slowing down - physically, I'm moving more slowly, stepping more lightly, and seem more aware of my surroundings - the minutia of those surroundings. This has caused my mind to also slow and reason a little more carefully.

In an RV or other small space, it's extremely important to be aware of where everything is, and so organizational systems become a lifeline. Without knowing where everything is, you can easily spend hours moving things around trying to find one thing that you know you have, but have no idea where. I anticipated this journey making me more organized and facilitating my already in motion simplification strategy, but I had no idea just how much. Stepping over things gets very tiresome, very quickly. Everything is suspect - everything must be justified. CD Jewel cases make no sense. Drawers turn two cubic feet of usable space into one.

Good Things Come to Those Who Stop Complaining
There is no way to make everything work all at once, or to create the usability of the space I want as quickly as I want, and the comfort level in the meantime is vastly different than it would be in a regular home environment, and so the patience it takes to keep at task, instead of attempting to escape, and to pick away at the space while maintaining sanity is its own new skill. And this bleeds into all areas of life. My patience for all people, all situations, even the most annoying has doubled. Spending my birthday at the airport - all day long? Not nearly as bad as bumping into four boxes of things to be organized on my way to, well, everywhere, in the hundred square foot area I now call my only home.

Someone on a mailing list I'm on shared the Buddhist concept of Dana, or the practice of the perfection of giving. I realized that what I'm doing has a lot to do with this type of practice. The trees are gifts, and represent this virtue - allow people to experiment with the concept. But a little more digging led me to the Six Paramitas - Buddhist perfections or virtues to practice - and I began to think that somehow, intuitively, I've been set on a path to practice what I can of these. True believers of Buddhism may take issue with my stumbling upon these ideas and taking from them what has meaning, but it's not so much that I am pulling piece-meal from a religious philosophy as it is that I am intuitively following a path that only after being set in motion is revealed to be closely aligned with an established path. This all leads me back to my reliance on the intuitive mind. It keeps bringing me closer to peace, happiness, and a magical existence. Even the drudgery is fruitful - learning to work with new materials and becoming more self-sufficient beats coding papers for meaningless entry into databases any day.

Home Free
I've begun joking about being homeless to people I know, or new people I meet. I'm trying on the label for size. It sets people's minds at ease somehow and makes for some fun conversations. A new friend that I tried this with shook his head and refused to buy my label and instead told me that I wasn't homeless, I was "home free". It's funny, isn't it, how words and the ways they are manipulated can make such a difference in how we perceive our reality.

Checklist for New Towns

The repairs on the RV are within sight of being wrapped up (knocking furiously on anything resembling wood, rhyming with wood, or reminding me of wood in any way), and so my mind has begun to turn to where to go next. We've been afforded a wonderful spot in front of a friend's house in Tempe for the last few weeks and a hookup to electric for twenty dollars (thank you friends!) but the focus is on self-containment and so although we've still got a ways to go to get there, I'd like the plan of action firmly in place for the big kickoff. So I've assembled a checklist of what to do upon entering each new town. Some of these steps will be skipped (for instance when we are not setting up an art project, or when we are staying with friends) but having the checklist will ensure we never forget something important. Some fo these may be done before entering the new town, but they all should be in place soon after.

Checklist for New Towns

Quickly find local free campgrounds or bookdocking here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+find+free+campgrounds&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=

http://www.freecampgrounds.com/

http://freecampsites.net/

Settle on a couple and meet up with the people staying there, or ownders/ managers where applicable and make sure that boondocking there is really ok. If possible, offer some small exchange - ask what you can do to help, etc. I think it's important to always keep in mind that this is not an effort to take advantage - just a way of bypassing the quid pro quo system of exchange. Giving is always at the forefront of my thinking on this.

Since Free Campsites often do not have ammenities, you need to find free or cheap dump and fill sites soon after:

http://www.sanidumps.com/

Here are a couple good reminders about maintanance on holding tanks, of which I am becoming somewhat more aware than I had hoped.

http://www.camping.com/rv-stuff/rv-articles-a-information/1756


Find Local Library - interview Librarian about local resources, history, sights

Find Closest Hospital , 911 system, Police, Ambulance- add to emergency list on fridge
Find Free Newspapers - best source of free stuff to do.
Find a few discount RV supply stores and hardware/ auto supply stores so there's no panic if something goes wrong.
Find Chamber of Commerce
Find out permiting requirements for art project from City Hall - usually Treasury Dept (I have no idea why).
Send emails to network looking for waylays, land to occupy, businesses that need watching, remember references.
Check craigslist site (and papers and yellow pages) for free food, items needed, supplies, gigs etc.
Check local camp grounds for jobs
Post gigs wanted on craigslist and check gigs sections.
At library check out local edibles and medicinal and calendar of availability
Make list of Free and educational events
Check out local hiking and other sights to see.
Make a loose calendar of events and day-trips
Check out local flea markets and find craft and art shows
Check out local museums and galleries, find free days.
Meeting people - mailing lists, on the road groups, etc. Get to know people, meet up with friends in the area.
Register with temp agencies
Go to local food banks and food kitchens - offer volunteer for dinner each day.
Figure out best deals fast - ask around.
Fresh and Easy in AZ - has deep discount deals on foods about to go bad. One store usually has meat on manager's special or eggs on discount - where they gather all those left when a carton breaks. There are restaurant supply places for bulk beans and such, Aldi's and Trader Joes on East and West coasts respectively. I recently discovered that a local dollar store in Tempe has great deals not only on things like medicine and vitamins (for a dollar!) but also things like produce.

Which brings me to:


Ask the locals - talk a lot with the locals when you first get into town - about where to stay, where to eat, what to see, and what they do. People love talking about their town almost as much as they love talking about themselves - ask them the best places to get great deals, the best little known pub or diner, and what the place is famous for. You'll get a lot of experiences out of these conversations and make a lot of new friends. It helps to ask people who seem similar to you to get what you're after. I remember asking a nice enough lady who was very different from me to give me a recommendation for a really nice seafood restaurant in Maine on my way to Bar Harbor. I was shocked when she replied "Red Lobster". Now I choose wisely before my fact finding mission begins.

You can check for low clearances in the area here:
http://www.aitaonline.com/Info/Road/Low%20Clearances.html

Please share any ideas you have for additions to this list. I'll do a follow up after our first couple new towns have tested my planning abilities and I'll add in any new information you all share as well.

Do Something

There are many things we're trying to accomplish with this journey we've undertaken and one of them is to find new ways of interacting with the world than the pure commodification of goods and services, and consequently of people and relationships. The method we've chosen to do this is to give freely. This brings up the question of volunteering, which I think has been a bit bastardized by the industry that has sprouted up around what was essentially a very good idea. Having worked many years in volunteer organizations, I've come to the conclusion that most are really just businesses in disguise. And the magic of giving has been strip mined from this essential dynamic.

Helping people is a natural part of our human drive - it makes us feel good, useful even. With time and our basic needs taken care of, we all tend to branch out and lend a hand to those around us - starting with those closest, but when their needs are also sated, our good works naturally rupple outward. These days, we're often guilted into "volunteer" work - or children are told to do this for a reason - to get into college, to show future employers that they are well-rounded, or to keep a job. The CEO's of some volunteer organizations are making upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars and throw lavish parties for potential donors, justifying the exchanges of money as being necessary to get these important works done. I don't buy it.

So we've decided to volunteer for the pure joy of it. A few weeks ago I helped pull weeds at Harvest for Humanity in Gilbert, AZ and will go back to do so again. The director of this organization is out in the fields every day and invites anyone who wants to drop in - no filling out papers or writing off on your taxes - just giving food to those who need it. The project we're creating will also be a gift to the communities we call our temporary homes, and the serendipity it creates is also created in the pure giving of our time and energies in other ways. Since beginning this trip - which has not yet left the metropolitan area in which we resided - we've met a mechanic who has offered his services for meals, a solar energy designer who has offered to help outfit the RV with solar panels and have been offered extra food people in this neighborhood have extra, showers, interenet access, help with a website, singing lessons, and more. I believe this serendipity happens because of the giving - the kind of giving that happens when you are not looking at what comes back to you.

So if you need help, let us know - we're looking for things to do for people when we're not building trees. Two strong people can add a lot of value to your projects and I want to use this post to offer our services to anyone reading this - I can't guarantee that I can spend the gas money to get to where you are - but if we're in the area and you need some helping hands, I want all readers here to know that you can call on us and if we can make it, we'll be there - no payment necessary. Sure it's idealistic, but you know, if everyone did it - even just some of the time - it also just might work.

Just a Light Drizzel

We are in Denver for the hand-fasting ceremony of our good friends, Tim and Aicilla. There's a mad dash of activity after a lovely night spent meeting up with all of their friends. It's wonderful how well everyone meshed. I guess living a life authentically facilitates that. I've discovered that my new laptop has no spellcheck for any application. And I've not been able to fing the mind power to search out a fix yet. Be warned. We're still working on the many leaks on the RV we bought, but are blessed with good friends and wonderful help. We're docked at a house right now but are slowly gaining in autonomy. I guess I should have known that this would be a slow process. We did not take the RV to Denver - it's not quite ready for its maiden voyage but this weekend we will be taking it to Witchwell for the regional burn, Toast. We'll also be doing some more work on it there as it still has no bathroom.

Well, that's about all my brain can offer this week. Next week I should have adventures to share and insights to explore. Till then...