Airstreamin: Charleston

Charleston, S. Carolina

10/24/10

6:00AM

There’s a full moon coming in through the Airstream’s skylight illuminating the interior with a grey blue hue. Yesterday we finally came down from the Appalachian Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway where we had spent many days. Coming down from the splendor of the skies with its mist or sun, from the color and back down onto the “flats” was very difficult to do. The rolling emerald pastures of Virginia on either side of the Parkway were especially picturesque. One understands why some people spend their entire life up in them thar hills. Life down here is timed from freeway to freeway and drivers that speed in tailgating packs playing dodge em with no more that 10’ between them! It’s always a rude awakening and hard to accept this as a reality.

We are here on James Island County Park in SC where sales tax on everything runs over 12%! I think Savannah, Georgia and Florida will probably be the same. Time to tighten up the belts another notch. Last night (I had promised, swore and screamed and cried that I would not drive at night to find a campsite again) we again pushed it to get to Charleston and had trouble finding the roads in the twilight. Fortunately the iPhone gives us fairly accurate directions, illuminated at night, that JoAnn has a pretty good control of as navigator. However it is not perfect. When you think about it how could it be when you consider every little alley and road in the US trying to show up on a tiny screen. But when it works its pretty amazing.

Anyway we got in late and of course and, after an interminably long check in with a one finger keyboard pecking white haired elderly County employee, got the bottom of the barrel site that required us to back into (in the utter darkness) a common drive between two tall screen hedges that were only 8’ apart. I still get confused with Jo’s vibrating hand signals, one finger pointing up which I still don’t know what it means, and the calls to straighten it out. Hell, my backing up is never straight in the first place. Between looking over my shoulders then looking in the mirrors then over my other shoulder the whole opposite direction steer backwards, reverse thing is just a fraction away from dissolving into shit. I’m working on it though but it sure helps to do it in daylight rather than by a high intensity flashlight that that she can only work on one side of the trailer and blinds me in the mirrors as it waves about.

Then.....

the trailer jack almost slid forward off the blocks after it was unhooked and with it the potential of the whole front end nose diving into the ground! We had driven one side’s tires up on two layers of leveling block to level side to side. The tires were not centered so that when I went to lower the front, without chocking the wheels on the other side of course, the whole trailer slid forwards and almost off the blocks under the main front hydraulic jack!

The front blocks were tipped upwards and forward and the jack base was half on and half off. I’m not sure why it stopped and hung there. If it had slid all the way off the damage would have been at least $600.00 for the jack alone not to mention the damage to the rest of the undercarriage, the steps, the four corner braces that were already down and the water and electrical services that were already attached. Thousands of dollars we didn’t have. Just what we needed after a hard days drive and a night time exhaustions.

We calmly, with suppressed panic, assessed the problem, shored up the jack base plate, which was half way off the original block, with additional blocks jammed under the front half of the (now bent) base plate, crossed our fingers and raised the jack again. The two sets of blocks held as did our breathing. We raised it high enough to re hitch the truck so that we could reposition the trailer and thus the tire levelers. At some point the campers across the drive yelled, “off the headlights man!” Guess we were blinding their campsite with our 20 minutes of backing in and out then our 15 minutes of panic “adjustments.” At last we got it all secured, leveled, braced and chocked again but we were so frazzled and depleted that we needed a drink! But no more brandy! So we settled for warm beer in a glass of ice cubes. Hey, when you gotta you gotta! And we think we wanna go sailing out on the ocean !!!

Deep breathing, deep breathing, and we shall see what today will bring in Charleston.

By the way, our last night up in the mountains we dry camped (squatted OK) in the parking lot of the Otter Peaks Lodge. It was a sublime day of sun and coolness and color beside the lake. The only lake I know of dedicated to a Landscape Architect a most noble profession. At day’s end we watched with binoculars half a dozen military jets write thread thin contrails in the heavenly blue cloudless skies.

On a minor note I would not recommend the Friday evening seafood buffet at $30.00.

An inland mountain lodge 400 miles from the sea ? What was I thinking ? Again my greedy stomach got the better of me. A hearty mountain breakfast buffet made more sense the next morning, and smelled better too but I refrained and punished myself for spending so much on so blah a dinner. God that bacon and maple syrup smelled good in the cold sunny morning air. Just a cupa joe to go.