path: root/chapter1.txt

A roar comes up every time I press down on the pedal. It's an addictive roar. Not a good one really, but I didn't know that at the time. In fact, the first time I strapped myself to the 27-foot-long bright blue fiberglass tube with the swept back windows and curved lines that make it look like something straight out of a future that never happened, I had not idea that all that fiberglass was encasing a rather small, underpowered Dodge 318 engine bolted to a solid steel, 1969 steel, frame, I did not know at all what it was capable of, even less what I was capable of. Neither of us had any idea what I was doing. 

I fired it up, pointed it downhill, and we were on our way.

The first few corners are nerve-wracking, the kind of white knuckled terror-inducing driving I haven't done since the very first time I sat down behind the wheel. Or the time in Thailand that I claimed I could ride a motorcycle when I actually had no clue. Or the time I said I could climb a 5.9 crack up the side of sheer slab of granite in California's San Jacinto mountains despite never having been on a roped climb in my life. 

I have, thus far in my life, found that there are very few things that you can't do given sufficient time and money with which to work on them, provided you have the will to do them. There will no doubt be plenty of things you think you are absolutely no good at -- I can't learn a foreign language to save my life -- but the truth is, assuming you're of sound body and mind, the things you are not good at turn out to really be things you simply lack the will to do. WE beat ourselves up about these things sometimes, at least I do, I spent years thinking I was somehow an idiot about languages, and I am, not because I'm an idiot about languages, everyone is an idiot about languages, but because I currently lack the will to change that. 

This conversation requires that we clearly define some terms though. Like will.

I will. That's the opposite of waiting. I used to wait. I once wrote a very boring novel only one person had to suffer through about waiting before I realized that waiting is a choice and nothing good ever comes of waiting. The way to overcome waiting it to make a plan, however terrible it might be, and then go an do it in a way that's nothing like the plan. The plan is irrelevant, but the planning is very important. There are only two ways to beat the fear you feel inside. One is to sit around waiting for it to pass, the other is distract yourself suffiently until you are able to move yourself forward without noticing that you have done so. A good plan takes your mind off the fear, off the unknown unknoable future. It frees your mind from fear so you can catch your breath and think. That's why armies plan, it's why sailors carry charts, it's why everyone writes things down on a calendar. We all love a good plan, the real trick of planning though is actually start doing the first steps of the plan so that you move forward without realizing that you've done so.

That's how you find yourself five feet in the air, strapped to a 27 foot long 1969 motorhome with no clue if the brakes even work. I have driven somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 miles, that's what you might call, planning, but this is the first time I've strapped myself to a 27 foot long monstrosity in unknown condition and promptly set off into unknown roads, barreling down a mountain on narrow streets through a town I arrived in a scant 2 hours ago. 

The prudent man would have done some sort of test drive around the I suppose. Meh, screw that, let's go.

There's one big hairpin turn at the bottom of the hill that I noted on the way up and it's the main thing that has my palms sweating. It turns out to be nothing. I pump the brakes a bit, take it nice and slow and slice around the corner like it's not even there. After that the road straightens out as it heads through downtown Mars Hill.

At the first stop light I pull up close enough to the car in front of me that the entire facade of the Travco is visible in the back window. I start laughing because it is quite simply the coolest thing I've ever seen. Over the course of the next 18,000 or so miles home this will happen over and over again whenever I stop and catch a glimpse of this thing in some window or mirror. 

It's not me either, it seems to happen to just about everyone. I get 180 miles of smiles and waves. The first time I stop a man is up at the window asking if he can take a picture before I've even taken off my seatbelt.

I get smiles and waves from hoodlum kids lounging on skateboards behind a gas station, a couple coming out of an antique store in Fletcher, NC. An old man walking through Anderson, SC tips a baseball cap to me and everyone I see looking my way it smiling. I pull into a gas station, but it proves too small (the tank is in rear and these pumps were not 27 feet from the door of the building) so I leave. My parents, who are in town and graciously agreed to following me back, stop and go inside and later report that the entire gas station is talking about the Travco, speculating on the year.

Pulling into Athens I stop at a light downtown and everyone waves. A man making a left comes around the corner and I watch his eyes widen as he takes in the Dodge grill and then he breaks into a smile and starts laughing. I completely relate to him.

Usually wanting is better than having. We call this buyers remorse, but it's basic evolutionary biology -- wanting, that is, imagining having, releases more dopamine than having. So you have all this dopamine associated with the thing you want, but then when you actually get the thing, well, no more dopamine.

Unless it's a Travco apparently, because I get a huge hit of dopamine every time I see this thing. It's been in the driveway for nearly a week and I still smile every time I walk out the door. Yesterday my wife and I stood in the front yard just staring at it and giggling like children.

To call it an RV is to say a Stradivarius is a violin. The Travco is not an RV; it's a 27 foot long fiberglass container full of magic and joy. I have no idea what it is about it, but it's clearly not just me that feels it. It'll make you giddy.