Flash of insight.
It’s not just about really disliking airline travel.
Or the much more recent gut-level aversion to rental cars and motel rooms.
It’s actually less about aversion and dislike, and more about something positive.
Most of the time, traveling to ‘other’ places is just not going to be worth it to me, and that’s only partly about the increasingly insane amount of money the Machine expects for motels, or a nasty airport-terminal croissant. No.
It’s not worth it because–no matter how much I could pay–the travel industry cannot provide me with the infrastructure I need to support my essential daily rituals in a serene way.
Even if they gave me a kitchenette, for a reasonable price, they can’t and won’t provide my good heavy enamel pan to make full use of it, nor the gas stove whose burners I understand instinctively. They can’t furnish a way to get meds into my green-eyed cat, or check the fluid levels on my car fully and properly, or the infrastructure it takes to make a world-class cup of coffee in the morning.
Instead, the system expects me to pay top dollar for what is almost always an inferior product. Five bucks for a cup of half-ass corporate coffee, or hotel swill for free, but no actual cream in sight.
For longer trips to be worth it, a version of my fridge stocked my way has to come with me, and so does my bed, with the good pillows.
Things were different, decades back. I was younger and my ritual was woefully unevolved. I could put up more easily with a crusty motel room because it only cost me twenty bucks, or less than ten in Tucumcari, and I was still willing to spend my time working for the man to obtain that ten or twenty.
This is all tangled inextricably with the question of what would be “nice” for me for real. Though that is a topic for both many prior shows, and at least one definitive future one–I’m working on it.
The point is, there’s a reason to actually need an ALiner, and that reason is that a fully functional home on wheels is essential, if I want to temporarily vacate my home tierra for any reason.
I wish I’d known this with more precision when I cashed in my pension, but c’est la guerre. That unthinkable act did get me six months of living in Silver, and a piece of still-naked land there, and a lovely old 4WD pickup truck, and a power bank to let the fridge-away-from-Fridge hum for days.
And: in some form or fashion, there’s still some equity in this house, to conceivably be traded for the tools required for these more or less noble purposes.
If the stars align for me, it is still remotely possible that I can live the dream, at home and away, while I’m still sound enough in mind and body to enjoy it.
Today, without any dreaming necessary, I can live a very modest variation on that very enjoyment, and so to the best of my ability, that is exactly what I am going to do.