One Small Step For Ham

Neither the camper nor the Jeep broke down. Nor did I, for that matter.

Two road trips are now under my belt and it looks like this idea of hauling 1600 pounds of steel and aluminum behind me just might work.

Last Thursday I took the Canned Ham on its maiden voyage to visit my friend Cass Morgan in Vermont. (The scenic aspects of that trip are elaborated on in my brand, spankin’ new column on Advocate.com. Feel free to leave a comment there. In fact, I beg you: leave a comment.) It was also a test run for Mickey. She’s only been in the car a few times and in those instances she was in the cat carrier and we only drove a few miles. She does not speak highly of those experiences. I put her catbed in the passenger seat and the hosed-down and sparkling clean litter box in back. She found that immediately and took a nice big pee before we got very far down the road. At least she found it.

I took the local road to Albany, at which point I was forced to get on the highway for a bit. My sister-in-law Amy is right: highway driving is easier than the back roads when you have something in tow. You get up a good speed (a dizzying 55 M.P.H. in this case) and the whole thing just hums along nicely.

But it was back to the blue highways once I hit Troy. The main road out of Troy goes all the way to Bennington, VT so I didn’t have to worry about directions too much.

Mickey, who at first seemed more confused than anything else at what was going on outside, soon settled into to a typical cat routine: nap, explore, nuzzle. She seemed fine.

Once across the border into Vermont I came to my first real challenge: the Green Mountains. By this point in the trip pulling the camper wasn’t really too much of a challenge anymore. It was, uh, braking and, um stopping that were not the sharpest weapons in my arsenal.

OK, I thought, trial by fire: mountains. And as I got further into them, the highway department threw construction into the mix, too. At one point, coming down from a summit, the “trucks use low gear” sign got my heart pounding a little harder. The runaway truck ramp didn’t instill much confidence, either, and as I rounded a bend and saw the “One-lane road ahead. Be prepared to stop” sign, the odor of cat urine cutting through my brain and Mickey herself deciding that between my feet was the best place to be, I did sort of wonder what the heck I had gotten myself into.

But it all worked out in the end, just a slight squeal of camper brakes giving away my novice status.

My visit with Cass was, as always, sublime. She’s got a very comfy log cabin that gets nicer every time I visit, but as this trip was to be the subject of my first column, I decided it would be a good idea to sleep in the Ham. Such comfort! Such coziness! I slept like a baby. A baby who had a cat sleeping on its neck.

The trip home was pleasant and uneventful, and I even started to pick up a few towing techniques (like, you want to start thinking about braking about a mile away from the stop sign. The Canned Ham is not quite as hard to land as the Ile de France, but you just want to take your time coming to a halt.)

The next day I took to the road again, this time to join Alan Cumming’s weekend house party in the next county over. (More from that at a later date.) Again, mountains... narrow village main streets... and—the real kicker—Alan’s driveway. If I tackled that beast (and I did) I’m in pretty good shape.

And again, it felt so great at the end of a long evening with friends to “go home” to my house-on-wheels to go to bed. I think it bodes well for life on the road. No matter where I am I’ll be going home to sleep.

And Mickey will be there waiting for me.

September 23/24 at Dixon Place in NYC. Tickets available here.

Canned Ham t-shirts available here.

It's A Miracle!

“Hey, Bill, it’s Tom. I was going to come by this afternoon to pick up the camper. Is it ready?”

“Yeah, it’s ready. I just have to put the wheels on.”

Ready… Put the wheels on… These two things do not sound like part of the same equation to me.

“Uh, OK, so when should I come by.”

“I’d have to say not ‘til the end of the day. Like 5.”

“OK, sounds good. Because I have to be in Albany by 6.”

Y’know, you just can’t come by and take it right out, though. We have to do a few things like figure out which hitch to use and test out the lights and put the license plate on and secure those two loose windows and make sure the brakes are working OK and install the propane tank and get those mirror extensions on your Jeep and do an inspection.”

“Uh…”

“So just come by around 3:30.”

And, lo, one of us was driven insane. And I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Bill.

But everything on that list was, in fact, completed in time for me to get to Albany. It was sure fun watching the wheels go on to the camper and then watching the camper being lowered of the jacks back to street level. I think it was probably the first time I saw the thing at the proper height: before being in the shop it was at my house resting low to the ground on flat tires.

Bill gave me a deadpan towing lesson in the parking lot of the shop (“You do want to brake very slowly because otherwise the camper will pass you on the road.”) before I started out for the short trip home. That was, um, interesting. One definitely knows there’s a 3/4-ton object following behind.

When I returned from my meeting in Albany I spruced up the inside of the camper for the big test-run I have planned for today: I’m making an overnight trip to visit my friend Cass Morgan in Vermont. I can avoid the highways for almost the entire trip there, which is a good thing for my first time out. Mickey’s coming along, too, so we’ll both get an idea of just what the heck we’re getting ourselves into.

Most certainly, there will be a full report in the near future.

In the meantime, here are Wayne and Bill, the excellent, and leisurely, geniuses that are Wolfie’s Tire and Auto.

September 23/24 at Dixon Place in NYC. Tickets available here.

Canned Ham t-shirts available here.

I Wake Up Screaming

I had a nightmare last night that my mechanic had not done any work on the camper since the initial spurt of activity when I returned home and discovered nothing had been done while I was away. This was probably due to the fact that had I dropped by the garage two days ago to check on the progress and… nothing had been done. Argghh! I realize there’s a good chunk of time left before I plan to hit the road, but you weren’t around when my Falcon was up on the lift for three months waiting for… well, I can’t remember exactly what his excuse was then, but it cost me an entire summer of convertible-ing around the countryside.

“So, Bill, what’s the status on the camper,” I asked.

“Well, you know you can’t just pull brake pads off the shelf for this…” blah blah blah.

“I know that. But what about the other things that could be worked on? The pull-out step, the propane tank holder? Installing those stabilizing jacks in the rear of the camper?”

“We’re getting to it.”

Pause.

“So, when do you expect it to be done?”

“When do you want it?”

“Well, you said it would be finished August 1^st.”

“Yeah, and it’s August 4^th.”

Pause.

I cocked my head. Did he somehow just win that argument with some weird logic? Is this a technique I should remember: simply shrug and state a quasi-non-sequitur with enough quiet authority to confuse the hell out of your opponent?

I left the shop and drove down the road muttering comeback after comeback to myself.

So you can imagine my relief when I dropped by yesterday to find almost everything was done. I don’t even care that Bill asked me about the new taillights (recessed vs. flush-mounted) with a tone in his voice that said “you’re holding me up on this until you give me a decision, y’know.”

As I said, his work is worth waiting for, even if your hair turns gray in the process.

But why dwell?

Tickets for the NYC premiere of “Canned Ham” are officially on sale. Yikes! No backing out now, I guess. The Dixon Place ticket ordering site is here. I don’t want to influence anyone, but I think there may be some sort of post-show shindig after the Wednesday performance.

The tour schedule is starting to come into focus. It’s still mighty blurry but I’m beginning to get a sense of what might be going on with this for the next 6-8 months or so.

Now if I can only decide which accordion to use in the show (I have two, naturally.)

(Oh, and did I mention you can buy T-shirts here?)