I know how.

I have lived in a cramped camper van with my wife and our cat for 8 years. Here's how we make it work.

You never had children, that's how.

The article was from Business Insider, which is on my news feed for some reason, even though I'm not really a fan of it. The headline comes from a blog entitled:

Van Cat Meow

Now, I'll be frank that at my stage of my life, having worked since age 13 and now 60, a life in which I could take my wife in our camp trailer and go annually from Alaska back home, catching the seasons (fish, hunting, etc.) would appeal greatly to me.

It wouldn't appeal to my spouse, so this will be another dream unrealized.

But two young people living as vagabonds with a cat?  Well, it's not for some reason.

Let's be even more frank. This trip is made possible only by the pharmaceutical industry as it's made possible, probably, only due to birth control.  There's something weirdly narcissistic and self focused about it, therefore.

In a prior age, being an adult for most people meant taking on adult things, and that meant for most people, given the nature of nature and what that means, ultimately meant getting married and having children, the second following from the other.  Chemicals made the first possible without the second, which ultimately radically muddled the minds of many as to the true, deep, existential nature of the essential act that goes with that marriage.  In turn, that really gave rise to the "alternative" definitions of everything we have today, as the deep natural nature of that relationship became one for self defined entertainment, although at some level the deeper meaning is never lost.

Also lost, however, that going forward with the true nature of the relationship is deeply adult.

Or, in a former era, for one reason or another, it meant going into adult life on your own, and plenty did it.  But that was a pretty serious affair in and of itself.  People like to say "marriage is hard", which it isn't. Being on your own, as an adult, and as you age, is hard.  Frankly, for most people, it got pretty hard in all sorts of ways by the time a person was in their late 30s.

Traveling by van around Australia?  I'm sure it's fun.  But is also dropping out, in more ways than one, including dropping out of a part of nature while viewing it. The cat?  Probably not a conventional pet the way pets were in prior decades, but a substitute child, that instinct never really gone.

Dropping out, however, also says something about the state of our world.

Some people have always dropped out of the active world, to be sure.  But it's become a sort of post-pandemic pandemic.  Quietly Quitting, Laying Flat, and this. All symptoms of a world we've built that we don't like.

In an earlier era, this very British couple (and I know that one is Australian) probably would have met and farmed.  They seem to be angling for a simple life.

One pretty hard to achieve in our world today.

Related threads:

July 29, 1968. Humanae Vitae

The Case Against Travel.

That's the title of an article in the current issue of The New Yorker.  It's available online, and it's brilliant.

I'm in that category of people who don't like traveling.  I like it in the abstract, but in the reality not so much.  When travel is approaching, I frankly dread it.

This is a bit ironic for a person who has traveled as much as I have.  I've been to three foreign countries, a minor number by real traveler standards, and a large number of the States.  Having said that, since graduating from college, all of my travel to foreign countries has been work related in some sense.  And prior to that, every trip out of the country, in those cases all to Canada, were to visit relatives, save for one.

The ironic thing is that I generally don't mind traveling when I am traveling.  The article itself taps into why. Travel for work is not vacation travel, so there's nothing, if you will, artificial about it.  Vacation travel can be artificial, although unlike the author of this article not all of it is.  I could imagine living a life in retirement in which I traveled with my spouse and dog in our trailer to hunt and fish, perhaps going all the way up to Alaska, but that's also a bit different.  It's more like being a nomad, which our species once was universally.

A friend of mine loves traveling, and given the traveling that he does, I have a sneaking suspicion that the day will arrive at which he wants to retire and that retirement will have been delayed, some of his retirement money having been spent on travel to far distant places.  He's invited me on trips more than once, and I've always declined.  "Don't you want to see the Holy Land?".  No, I don't.  "Don't you want to see Rome?" Well, if I was in Italy, I'd go to Rome, but I'm not going to make it a purpose destination.

Travel for work. . . or for study, and study can be one's own personal studies, is different.  That's noted in here as well.  

It's refreshing to read somebody who gets it.

I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places. . . . The idea of travelling nauseates me. . . . Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel.

Fernando Pessoa

Airborne

I flew this week for the first time since COVID hit.

Before that, I used to travel a lot for work.  

I'm not a natural traveler, so it's never been something that I really enjoyed, even though I usually enjoy seeing any place that I go to.  That is, I don't enjoy the process of traveling much, and I don't enjoy thinking about traveling.  My father was the same way, and nearly all of the long distance traveling he'd done had been due to the Air Force.

Occupational traveling, so to speak.

Most of my traveling has been that way as well.

This is 2022, and to be accurate, the last time I flew somewhere was in 2019.  I can't really recall the last time I flew anywhere, or to where, but the mostly likely spot would be Denver, as I used to fly to Denver and back in a day routinely.  COVID ended that as when COVID hit, it dropped air travel down to nothing for obvious reasons, and when it came back, the number of flights in and out of here locally were cut significantly.  The red eye to Denver was a casualty of that. The one to Salt Lake also went away, although I think that was even prior to that.

I used to also fly a lot to Texas for depositions.  I'm not sure of when I last did that, but it was before COVID.   Zoom took over most of that, so it's rarely done now.

One major thing I worked on should have had trips to South Carolina, Arizona and Illinois, but did not.  All of those were done via Zoom.  It worked out okay, I guess, but I can't say that I'm a fan even now.  It's good enough, however, that you acclimate yourself to it and begin to believe that it's good enough

Anyhow, some travel is slowly coming back, and earlier this week I flew to Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City.

I've been to OKC before, the first time in 1982 when an airliner discharged me there after having taken off from Cheyenne.  Their terminal was much more primitive, by my recollection, at the time, and we did the classic old-fashioned walk down airliner stairs, which is seemingly a rarity now, across the tarmac and into the terminal, and then on to a bus, which went to Ft. Sill.

More recently, and in different circumstances, I've flown to Denver and boarded a large Boeing airliner.  Based upon another one of our blogs, the last time I was there was in 2014.  On that trip I went with two other lawyers, one of whom I knew really well, and it was a fun trip. We flew from OKC to Houston after that, that time on a small commuter jet.  Since that time, he's passed away, having only been retired for a year or so when he became very ill and died.

As noted, we flew from Denver to OKC in a big airliner on that occasion.

Not this time.  

Locally I boarded a Bombardier CRJ200 and then, to my surprise, in Denver boarded a second CRJ200.

Boarding the CRJ200 in Denver.

I'm not a huge fan of the CRJ200, although it's better than boarding a twin-engined turboprop.  Looking it up, I see where production of the CRJ200 ceased in 2006 and that may partially explain it.  I've never been on one that was really new, and they show it.   Back in 06, locally, you probably boarded a turboprop.

On the ground, the stewardess assured us the plane had been thoroughly cleaned, but we were given wipes.  I didn't use mine.  I'm getting pretty fatalistic about COVID 19, although I'm zealous on the vaccines and boosters.  Some folks did use them, and I can't blame them. The plane smelled vaguely antiseptic.

The stewardess in Denver, upon taking off, warned us the flight was going to be turbulent.  The last times I flew, in 2019, they were doing that too, with the same result.  It wasn't at all.  I'm okay with that, but I wonder what brought about the hypersensitivity to warning of turbulence.  

She was also pretty blunt and somewhat familiar in her tone, which is a change from what had been the norm.

It was a smooth ride all the way to OKC.

Getting off the plane was hot.  That was the same as it was in 1982.

So the first change noted.

I never would have expected a flight from Denver to OKC on a CRJ200.  Are they trying to run smaller planes now as fewer people are flying?  I wasn't the only one surprised, the guy sitting next to me remarked, "I thought for Oklahoma City they would have used a bigger plane".

The trip back was more remarkable, but not in good ways.

First of all, I'd moved my flight up by two days, due to a big change in what I was doing there.  I didn't pay that much attention to the closeness of the connection in Denver.  I used to always do that.  It was extremely right.

Concluding my business in OKC I had to rush, by foot, back to the hotel and turned my right ankle something fierce.  As a high school student, I turned it severely, and it's never really been the same, although it rarely causes me problems.  I injured it very severely a second time, probably about fifteen years ago or so.  So it'll turn.

It's still really hurting.

Added to that, some weeks ago, I somehow injured my right elbow.  I haven't gone in for attention to it, but it really hurts.  

I've never flown injured before, but it's miserable.

When I got on the plane in OKC, an elderly woman was seated next to me.  I rarely pay any attention to the passengers seated next to me, but she was hard not to notice right from the onset.  For one thing, she was extremely nervous getting seated.  She even remarked to me, "you'd think I'd never flown before".

Once on the plane, she was absolutely convinced that there was some trouble with the airplane, as the pilots were not in the cabin.  As luck would have it, a pilot from another airline was seated in the set in front of her, and hence nearly me, flying back to his home in Denver.  That meant he was subject to continual questions, including "can you fly the plane if they don't come?"

She wasn't kidding, and actually assumed that he could.

The pilots weren't in the cabin as the airplane, we learned, had been on the ground in Denver all day and the interior was very hot.  They were outside as there's a way that the plants can be hooked up to external air conditioning, and they were working on that project.  The plane never did get cool, but it was tolerable.

The same type of plane on the way down was fine, I thought, but two colleagues who also traveled down, at different times, both indicated that their planes were hot.  One volunteered the opinion that CRJ200s were simply a hot aircraft.  I'm not sure.

At any rate, we got rolling on the tarmac and the stewardess announced we'd lost some time, but would try to make it up, particularly as there were afternoon thundershowers expected in Denver.  As it was, we left twenty minutes late, and then again announced that there were afternoon thundershowers expected, and it might be rough.

The lady next to me was really now worried about her plane being late in Denver.  In spite of the instructions of the crew to turn off cell phones, she didn't, and texted the entire flight and took placed a phone call using the hands-free option, making those of us near her unwilling eavesdroppers.  From time to time, she leaned up to the traveling pilot and asked if we'd make it to Denver on time.  He always assured her that we would.  In the row behind me, in the meantime, there were two gentlemen from a foreign land speaking in their native language so loudly that I'm sure it could have been heard back home, wherever that was.

I don't know if we landed on time or not, but we were delayed on the tarmac as they looked for stairs and then had a hard time hooking them up.  By the time they opened the cabin door, I had 20 minutes to make it to my next flight, on a different concourse.  When they opened up the doors, the stewardess, as they now do, asked if anyone had a "tight" connection, and the lady next to me said she did. The pilot immediately said "two hours, you do not".  

I did, and stated that I did. They let me go.

I sped walked through the terminal, concourse A to B with the train in between, on my injured ankle, making it just as they were boarding my plane.  Amazingly, they were loading my baggage as I got on.

That's pretty impressive, really.

The final plane was a CRJ700.  They made them up until 2020, and they're a little bigger. Better yet, the exit row actually has legroom.

Overall observations?  I don't like the smaller planes for longer trips, but who would?  I guess I can't blame them for switching to them.  I suspect fewer people are traveling for any reason.  

And it's easy to forget the manners and habits of traveling, even after just a short couple of years break.  I mean that for myself as much as anyone else.