It Begins

Day 0

There’s something refreshing about setting off on an adventure with your foot pressing the gas pedal down to floor, only going 35mph, and not getting impatient. After a morning outside in the freezing cold rain with my dad and uncle, frantically - and semi-successfully - trying to connect the auxiliary battery in the back of my marginally more beautiful van (I cover the rust with primer....on one side), my uncle and I caravanned up 101. We occasionally passed semis going a tad slower than we were, but more often than not we were the two vehicles in the slow lane getting passed by grandmas and beat up jalopies. There was no hurry. Our VW machines wouldn’t have allowed us to be in a hurry even if we had wanted to. Through a maddening flurry of downpours and sunshine, we made it home. My first home. Arcata.

To be fair, my uncle lives in Bayside, which, I came to find out, technically isn’t Arcata. But still. In my mind they’re one in the same. Heck, they share a police force (another fact I didn’t already know). So there I was, starting my van trip where I started my life - amongst the lush redwood trees of Humboldt County. Of course, since no trip starts quite as planned, I didn’t end up sleeping in the van. Before you start clamoring for my head and calling me a fraud, bear in mind that this might not be the only time on my “van trip” that I don’t stay in my van. Plus, there were two perfectly legitimate reasons why I didn’t sleep in my van: 1) Because of the aforementioned auxiliary battery debacle, my entire van was turned inside out to run wires from the battery to the alternator, from the battery to the battery, from the battery to the fuse box, from the battery to the inverter, and so on. There was nowhere to sleep. 2) We were running a test to see if the refrigerator could be fooled into thinking that the inverter was actually AC instead of DC and to see how long it would run. The only problem (as this method is quite sound), is the damn sound. The inverter runs its fan the entire time, and the inverter is right under my head. Well, it would have been had I slept in the van. Which I did not because of numbers 1 and 2.

No harm in starting a trip both comfortable and well fed, right?

Day 1

My wonderful caretakers turned out to be cruel taskmasters. The first day of vacation from real life and I’m put to work! The nerve. Luckily, being incredibly rich, they put me to work using only the best of tools. Case in point: a riding mower. Unfortunately, I came to find out that the best of tools were old and somewhat decrepit. Case in point: the riding mower.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how a day intending to be productive and fruitful quickly became frustrating and unproductive:

- We show up, realizing that we only have a single pair of ear mufflers. So my uncle drives back into town while I start mowing.

- After mowing for roughly 15 minutes, the blade belt snapped. So I start to sweep the driveway.

- My uncle returns with the extra ear protection. I attempt to weed whack instead, but the whacker won’t start. It’s flooded. He then leaves to buy a new belt while I continue sweeping.

- After putting on the new belt I return to mowing. After roughly 3 minutes the mower won’t move. Not forward, not backward. We discover that a different belt (we’ll call this the driver belt (technical term)) has fallen off.

- We take apart the mower to put the belt back on.

- After roughly 7 or 8 minutes of mowing, the mower stops again.

- We again take apart the mower, and figure out that one of the round spinny thingies that belts go around is loose. We tighten it. I mow like a mad man.

- Close to finishing, the mower dies. Out of gas. We refill the gas. The mower won’t start. We try again. The battery is dead.

It’s as if the gods were angry that on my first day of vanventuring I was attempting to work. But what the gods don’t understand is that without my uncle’s help I’d never have been able to even begin the trip. I was simply trying to begin giving back. Stupid gods. On the bright side, I learned that riding a mower around and around in circles is incredibly fun and might be a decent career move. I mean, even with banks screwing up and housing markets tanking, grass continues to grow and continues to need mowing. It didn’t hurt that I was mowing the grass atop a beautiful sunny hill in Trinidad where I could look out onto the white caps of the ocean and listen to sea lions barking. Well, when I wasn’t busy focusing on cutting every blade of grass while listening to the incredibly noisy motor of the green riding mower. Glorious.

Day 2

Copy. Rinse. Repeat. Only with more success. I worked on the van; I sat on the sweet mower, riding giddily around in circles; I pulled some pesky blackberry bushes and pulled some surprisingly more pesky ferns. And then, in a weird twist my uncle gathered up some strange objects: a long wooden post with a pointy end (perfect for jousting), some rags, gasoline, and a maul. I thought my uncle and I were about to go all Braveheart over some unsuspecting neighbors. In my mind we would be hooking the joust to the side of his jagdwagen (look it up if you’ve never seen one), dousing the rags in gasoline, wrapping them around the lance and setting them on fire. He’d drive toward those crazy neighbors while I stood in the back wielding the maul. Unfortunately, we used the jagdtwagon’s winch to pull a tree upright, the rags to protect the tree from harm, and the maul to hammer the post to hold the tree in place. Then we lit it ablaze. Kidding. The gas? For another project. I guess it’s all for the best anyway. He only has one neighbor (an old man who likes mowing grass as much as I do), and he’s out of town, so there really weren’t any potential victims for our 13th century hijinks.

Dinner was a trip down memory lane at local Hippy-Mexican eatery HeyJuans. Huge burritos, $3.50 pints ($2.75 all day Saturday!), and 10% off everything because it was Wednesday. Seriously. After eating our filling (and spicy) burritos we stepped outside to see a sad crime of stupidity taking place as a couple of young college students went into Subway. What the hell is wrong with people?

Day 3

One step forward, two steps back. Why is it that whenever you manage to get the auxiliary battery working you invariably back the van into a stationary backhoe and shatter your rear window? I’m doing my best to stay positive because these minor setbacks would be huge catastrophes in any other part of the country. Luckily, my uncle is the mother f’ing VW man. I’d certainly be sunk without him.

We went to Bob today - a recommended locksmith - to see if he could fix a little lock problem that I have with the water tank. Here’s how Bob plays it: “Well, it’s not getting done today. I left two minutes ago. And it’s not getting done tomorrow either. Maybe Monday or Tuesday at the earliest. I’m going out of town.” So we ask him what he thinks of the job and an estimate. “Well. To rekey this is going to take a while. At least an hour. And I might not even be able to do it. It might not work. Something like this will be thirty, thirty five.” We tell him we’ll think about it and come back Monday morning when he opens. “You come in Monday morning, I might not get it done until later in the week. Monday’s filling up. Got stuff for Tuesday.” We say alright and start to leave. “Going to a funeral in Sacramento.” Sorry to hear that. So we head down to the south side of Eureka to another lock shop and ask them the same thing. Their answer: “Eight or ten bucks. Be done by tomorrow.” Have fun at the funeral Bob.