Change is inevitable, and pivoting can be hard. Both mentally, and physically. I’ve already told you the story about how Alex made a major pivot FROM open-ocean sailing TO exploring North America in an Airstream instead. If you missed that story you can read it here.
Welcome to my new section on Briefly about life in the Airstream. If you’re new here, Briefly is where, for the past couple years, I’ve been sharing my original poems, short stories, and essays every Friday. I’ve grown from 40 subscribers to 120, and now I am also telling stories about my husband’s and my adventures in Joy, our Airstream. To see what I’ve shared about that so far, click the button below.
Now back to today’s story about learning to pivot…
Anyone who’s ever towed a trailer knows how tricky it can be to turn, let alone back up. This has a lot to do with where the “pivot” point is, which is determined by how close the hitch is to the axle, the length of the trailer, and how the weight is distributed. Done wrong, it’s easy to jack-knife and end up in a difficult situation. It can actually be more challenging to turn and back up a tiny U-Haul trailer than a 28-foot Airstream. People in those giant motorhomes towing cars don’t ever back up because it’s almost impossible to do without damaging something.
Some campground sites are pull-through, which means you just drive forward into them. But most of the time sites require backing in, which as I’ve described above, is tricky. To prepare, Alex and I studied up by watching YouTube videos. Most YouTubers recommended that one person get out of the truck to give directions to the driver. They suggested using terms like “driver side” and “passenger side” to indicate which way the driver should turn the steering wheel, rather than just saying “left” or “right.” If you just say “left”, the driver doesn’t know if you mean turn the steering wheel left, or make the trailer go left, and you need to turn the wheel left (driver’s side) to make the trailer go right. The YouTubers also emphsized the importance of taking it very slow. The only way to actually learn how to do it, however, was to just do it.
Alex is always the driver, so my job is to get out of the car and direct him as he backs up. Much like trying to wallpaper a room with your spouse, directing your partner as they back up a trailer is a similar test of love. 😵💫
We used to use walkie talkies (because that’s what we saw YouTubers use and we are nerds like that). Picture the two of us arguing by walkie talkie, with all the nearby, already parked, probably more experienced, RVers standing around watching Alex back in and out, left and right, over and over, inch by agonizing inch, at a snail’s pace, making little to no progress, with me repeating over and over, louder and louder, “Driver side! Driver side! What the F%$#@!!!! DRIVER’S SIDE!!!” as Joy went in exactly the opposite direction I was telling him to go.
Remember that scene when Austin Powers was trying to parallel park? The word “painful” only begins to express it, but it can be pretty hilarious too. I wish I had a video of us trying to back Joy into a site. It would probably get over a million views.
When the walkie talkie batteries died, we’d resort to our iPhones, with limited success depending on how well the bluetooth was working. I think sometimes Alex just turned the volume all the way down and told me the bluetooth wasn’t working. I also used many hand signals. Official and unofficial, sometimes involving just one finger.
Of course we’ve both gotten a lot better at the art of physically pivoting Joy. It’s become a symbiotic thing between us. We’ve gone analog – Alex just rolls the window down and I shout “Stop!” if he’s about to hit a tree, someone else’s RV, or drive off a ledge. Most of my communications involve me waving my arms around like those people at the airport with orange batons, but without the batons. I look crazy, but it’s effective. But sometimes the best way to support someone in the midst of a tricky pivot is to just let them do their thing, so there are plenty of times where I just go sit on a picnic table and check my email while Alex handles things on his own.
Emotionally or mentally pivoting is a different kind of beast than physically pivoting in and out of tight spots. It’s hard to not get what you want, the way you want it, and enter the realm of the unknown. When you don’t know what’s coming, it’s easy to feel off-kilter, fearful, and anxious. However, I have learned/am learning that one of the keys to coping with change is the importance of being flexible. If you can embrace change, lean in to whatever it brings, and stay open to mystery, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Originally as we set out in early December 2020, we’d planned to spend Christmas at an incredible RV resort in Buellton, California, near the Santa Barbara wine country. It was a place offering not only spaces for people traveling with Airstreams/RVs, but also hotel-style lodging provided by the resort in vintage Airstreams, glampy tents, and a variety of cabins. Our plan was to bring all our kids there to join us and spend a few days together over Christmas by the campfire, wine tasting, and visiting cool towns close by like Solvang, Los Olivos, and Santa Ynez.
We were all looking forward to a unique camping Christmas experience, but the pandemic created a need for housing first responders and the place cancelled all non-critical reservations. Our family was bummed out, but given everything going on at the time we weren’t about to complain. Millions of people dying from a killer virus has a way of putting things into perspective. We all went about making new plans. My kids would spend Christmas with their dad in Oregon, Alex’s kids and their partners would remain at their homes in Los Angeles and San Diego. Meanwhile, Alex and I had to quickly find a new place.
I worried that finding availability anywhere would be impossible – things were either fully booked or closed due to the pandemic. I was afraid we’d end up spending Christmas in Cracker Barrel parking lot, or worse. Nothing against Cracker Barrel! Lots of RVers use those parking lots as a safe overnight stopover when you’re just trying to get from point A to B. But I didn’t want to spend our Christmas there. That thought revived unpleasant memories of my spring training trip with my college crew team in 1986. We drove 15 hours from Hanover, New Hampshire to Louisville, Tennessee to train on the Tennessee River. When we arrived, tired and cranky, we found ourselves at a crappy Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere with a pool in the middle of the parking lot that was filled not with water, but gravel. Meanwhile the guys’ team got to fly to Miami 🧐 and train alongside schools of dolphins 🐬. But I digress…
While I am an expert worry wart and catastrophizer, Alex is an expert problem solver. Symbiotic, remember? He found an opening at a place in Pismo Beach, just north of Buellton and very close to the cool college town of San Luis Obispo, for a few days, and after that we would spend Christmas parked in front of his son’s (my stepson) and our daughter-in-law’s house in Los Angeles. We’d be with family after all! And neither of us had ever been to Pismo Beach, so it would be fun to check that area out. Disaster had been averted and there would be no pools with gravel or Cracker Barrel parking lots.
The RV campground in Pismo Beach was a place where a few people lived year-round in their RVs, and many of them had decorated for the holidays. I’m not sure I’d enjoy that level of RV living, but made me think of the old American TV show, The Rockford Files, about the detective (played by James Garner) who lives in an RV parked on the beach in Malibu. This person’s car in Pismo had more of a Magnum P.I. vibe, another favorite show of mine growing up in the 1980s.
We spent a day exploring the town of Pismo Beach, which had the usual beach town shops filled with t-shirts, tchotchkes, pulled taffy, and fudge. The vintage Airstream food trucks on the pier were cool and of course we found a little wine tasting room. 🍷🤩
I was not prepared for the size and scope of the dunes at Pismo Beach. They are vast. It seemed like you’d have to walk for miles to get to the ocean, so we just went up to where we could see the ocean way off in the distance and watch the sun set. Walking in that sand and scaling the slopes is an incredible work out! The views are stunning.
We didn’t know it then, but our all time FAVORITE place to go Joy was just a few miles up the road… but we didn’t discover it until 2023, and we’ve gone there every year since. I’m planning to tell these stories about our life in the Airstream in chronological order, so stayed tuned if you want to learn where that is... That said, I’m going to stay flexible and reserve the right to pivot every once in awhile, and maybe I’ll tell you sooner! Until then, take it slow!
