Roseberg, OR to La Grange, CA – 522 miles

Go here to see the all the blog posts.

The truck stop I boondocked at had no fewer than four score and seven trucks bedded down for the night. I wedged my vehicle between two big rig trucks that cycled generators every thirty minutes or so. Add to this annoyance that when I did the death cleaning of my trailer, I forgot to put back the metal fence piece so I had nothing that would keep my blankets from draping down into my heater (I’ll note that I found a Home Depot and replaced it during the day today so I don’t have to worry every night). As you can imagine my sleep wasn’t the best ever recorded. On the plus side, I think I have the temperature control inside down to a reasonable art. I was never too hot or too cold. And I actually had room to move about. I never felt like I was totally jammed up. Getting to things is still like one of those number puzzles where you have to move the tiles around to get the numbers in order, but imagine instead of one empty space in the four by four grid, that there were two or three empty spaces. Much easier.

I knew that not making Ashland would have its consequences. The time in saddle today proved it. I woke up, performed my ablutions, wrote for an hour (yes, I take the time to write when possible), and had some cereal for breakfast. I hit the road at 8AM. I didn’t arrive at my destination until 9PM. I stopped for necessary breaks such as toilet, gas, and drive-through food, but that was pretty much all. I felt every one of my years of age by the time I put up in front of my parent’s home. I’ll try NOT to do that again. Thirteen hours is too much.

For those who don’t know, the border between Oregon and California is mountainous. Via I5, the trip is all up and down, up and down, rinse and repeat. My poor RAV4 strained up the steep mountain sides but did it nearly at speed, dodging around trucks plodding up at significantly less than half the posted limit and trying to stay out of the way of high-powered cars racing up like it were a segment of the Tour D’France.

As I was focused on the end point, I missed two photo opportunities (Welcome to California sign and the mountain pass elevation sign). My apologies. I did get a pic of majestic Mt. Shasta. I still prefer Mt. Rainier, but Shasta is also quite the imposing visage.

For those of you who have never had the joy of driving solo on a long trip, you have to keep yourself amused. I have four main activities to keep me from going berk while driving. 1) music… I love my music. Usually Pandora radio running eighties music (Sir Elton John, the Beatles, most anything from the eighties, and more. 2) Letters to/from a friend. No, I don’t read/write an actual paper letter while I’m driving, but long ago a good friend and I started sending cassette tapes back and forth instead of paper letters. We’d blather on as we drove and that would keep us up to date with one another. We’ve grown with the technology and now send audio files back and forth. I can listen to his adventures (he is a huge travel buff), or record my own daily activities. 3) Write / Author. No, I can’t actually type words while I’m driving and I never graduated to the voice recognition software, but I CAN develop plots for upcoming books / stories, hash out the next scene of my current writing project (Of Demons and Coal). For those that care, at the moment I’m dealing with a character who is feeling survivor’s guilt for somehow not saving some people. It is emotional writing. 4) I listen to movies. I did say that correctly. If I’m paying attention to my driving, I’m obviously not watching movies, but I can listen to them. I pick movies I’ve seen before that have a good deal of dialogue and don’t necessarily rely on visual effects. A really bad choice of movies for this would be: Any JJ Abrams movie, Castaway, Live/Die/Repeat, Dances with Wolves, Godzilla, Jurassic Park, etc. For the record I listened to three movies on this long trip segment. Apollo 13, My Cousin Vinny, Ike: Countdown to D-Day.

Off topic: Looking through my pictures I realize I forgot to share my booth set up at RadCon last weekend, and a mystery guest who I just had to grab a snap of (No, I really don’t know who it is.)

And finally, as promised, a couple of shots of my “desk”. Yes, it is crude beyond belief, but it works. Totally worth the time and lumber scraps I threw together to make it. It doubles the usable space.

I won’t be adding to this blog for a couple of days as I’m visiting family. Important to me, but likely boring to the extreme to anyone else I’ll touch base again when I get on the road south toward LALA Land. By plan that will be the 21st.

Next Post: Well THAT wasn’t a good idea.

Feb 16 – Pasco, WA to Castle Rock, WA   265 miles

First, I want to start this by saying that my expectations of RadCon, while higher than my previous years, didn’t come even close to the reality. I appreciate how us book sellers are now out where people can see us. HUGE improvement over the hole we were in before.

I can hear the joint voices crying out to me, “So why was it so much better than before?”

Finding out how many loyal fans I had in the area,

~40% better sales,

A request by Barnes and Nobles to come and do a book signing/reading and possibly even have my books stocked on the shelves,

A possibility of having one of my short stories (“Programmed Loyalty” which can be found in the Impulsive Walrus Anthology “Well… It’s Your Cow”) turned into a dialog play by an international voice actor!

Now all authors (but maybe not readers) know that getting ANYONE to take notice of your works or you is difficult. At RadCon I not one but TWO such wonderful interactions in the space of the weekend. I can tell you I was walking on air the whole weekend.

But all wonderful things must come to an end. Sunday rolled around and I found out that the dealer’s areas closed at 2PM, not the 4 or 5 I’m used to. This made it possible I could make it HOME to sleep in my own bed (and other reasons I’ll note below).  I decided to grab hold of this opportunity with both hands (which is why you didn’t get this blog yesterday).

So, why head home? Well, why not? Also, I’d learned that living in the trailer, as I’d stocked and packed it, very difficult. Primarily I needed to be a yoga master to move around. I’m not that young any longer.  I needed to remove several items, move others, and make a few items in my woodshop to make the trip more viable.

The cassette toilet was a mistake. It took up a HUGE amount of real estate inside and even as an emergency use, would fail (It took me a goodly amount of time to get it out). I removed several other remnants of an earlier camping trip (two chairs and a backpacking mattress) as well as some leveling jacks that I’ll never use. I moved some blankets (just in case it gets REALLY cold) into the storage as well as my dirty clothes bag. I can tell you that this alone made it feel like I’d just added an extra bedroom to my mobile closet.

To see all of the posts go to www.tanstaaflpress.com/tgrt

Next Post: Best Laid Plans

Even More Preparation!

Fuel sources for all my different off-grid materials became a problem quickly. I need gasoline for my generator (backup for my car) and propane for my heater, I decided that I didn’t need to carry yet another fuel (white gas) for my Coleman camp stove. So instead I splurged and bought a folding propane stove and installed a five gallon propane cylinder to handle the demands. Small issues with the propane like drilling a hole through the wall to run the hose, grommets around the hole edges to prevent damage to the hose, and venting just in case there is a leak to prevent fire/explosions.

Ohhh, how to stay clean! That was a fun problem. The primary thought that came to mind is “What do long haul truckers do?” They use three primary methods: they stay dirty (ewwww), they use truck stops where you can purchase a shower (good for occasional use), and baby wipes. Oh they aren’t really baby wipes but something similar and larger. Take one of those, wipe yourself down and you are nearly as clean as a shower. It leaves a little bit of a sticky feeling to it that takes getting used to (yes, I tested them), but good enough for road days. BTW, most truck stops also have coin op laundries so you can do your laundry while you shower. I figure once a week.

Thankfully, all of the books and show materials all fit within my Toyota RAV4 leaving the trailer for sleeping and sanity alone time.

With the way I interact with people at shows, many don’t understand that I’m an introvert, almost to the point of being a hermit. Without the trailer to retreat to I would soon be in people overload making me a good candidate for a rubber room. Even with that, I don’t have much space.

My simplified packing list went something like this:
Clothes (don’t forget con specific clothes like kilts)
Toiletries (don’t forget toilet paper, soap, spare glasses and sunglasses),
Water,
Food,
Fuelx2,
Medications/first aid,
Ice chest,
Rechargeable batteries of all sorts (CPAP, mouse, lights, phone, etc),
Books to sell and read (figure out max you can sell as you are unlikely to be able to get extras on the way)
Show materials (tables, tablecloths, lights, banners, etc)
Electronics and any chargers (phone, laptop, cpap, etc)
Tools (in case of a breakdown or issue with RV)
Games (to share with new friends)
Emergency gear (low temp sleeping bag, thermals, fire extinguisher, etc)

Now look at what is left of space for me in my trailer. Hope you aren’t claustrophobic.

Also I wanted to share my mood. The last couple of days I could have left at a moment’s notice. The excitement/anxiety has been building. I think the closest I can come is the anticipation of a race horse in the starting gate. It’s gonna open soon… soon… soon… soon…

Next Time: Kick off and the Disaster!

Previous: The Great Road Trip

So I decided I was doing this long book tour. Where was I going? Could I find a route that made some kind of sense?

First requirement, stick to what I know works – conventions. Limit that to SciFi, board/roleplay gaming, comic, book, and fantasy conventions. Throw anime conventions in there as well just to round out the field. After doing some significant searches online, I found over seven hundred shows in North America every year. That sounds promising.

Second requirement the route has to make a loop with as few double backs as possible. While there might be shows in Sacramento one week, Miami the next, and then back to Denver the week following, the cost to drive that kills the driver, the vehicles, AND the bottom line. But with seven hundred shows, surely we can find something!

Third, with no air conditioning (see the preparation discussion on the following days) and dealing with a moderately heavy trailer, only shows in spring and fall. When I concocted this outrageous plan in the summer of 2019, there wasn’t time to coordinate a fall tour, spring it was.

Fourth, no more than ten weeks. As my wife couldn’t come with me (she has her own business www.bloomingartichoke.com where she is doing her own shows), I didn’t want to be away too long. After twenty two years married, I’m more in love with my wife now than when I proposed. This would be a hardship for us both.

As a nice to have, I would like to stay in the continental US. I’ve done research on doing business in Canada and the regulations make it neigh on impossible.

Oh, I had a few other things I’d like to add in there: a stop in Memphis to see a long lost friend, as well as friend/family visits in Vegas; Amarillo, TX; Sonora, CA; LA, CA; Dallas, TX; Dayton, OH, and more. But all of these were just N2H.

If I wanted to expand my customer base, any convention I would be attending would be somewhere I’d never been and never experienced. With over seven hundred shows you would think there would be some route that matched my needs. I never appreciated the effort that goes into routing planes for the airlines until I started this task. It took the better part of a month to come up with what I’m going to blithely jot down below.

I needed to research the show to see if it was even worth doing. Find out when it was going to be in 2020 (as shows wiggle around every year). And then find shows that would line up.

Location                      Con Name                   Start date

Pasco, WA                  Rad Con                      2/14

Las Vegas, NV           Dice Tower West        2/26

Salt Lake City, UT      Salt Con                      3/5

Dallas, TX                   All-Con                       3/12

Memphis, TN              MidSouthCon             3/20

Chicago, IL                 Adepticon                   3/25

Chicago, IL (again)     CodCon                      4/3

Seattle, WA                NorWesCon                4/10

HOME!

9+ weeks, 8 shows, ~6500 miles

Couple of notes:

I’ve done both RadCon and NorWesCon before, but it has been a couple of years for each of them due to conflicting priorities on my time.

I couldn’t find a show for the week of 2/21 that would fit in the trip so I’m taking the opportunity to visit with friends/family that are kind of on the way.

Previous: The Great Road Trip
Next: The Preparations

Time to compete with Amazon and all of the other sites that offer free shipping within the USA. But, as our name says, TANSTAAFL – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. In this case for you this lunch is mostly free.

Mostly. However we have been keeping our prices low despite the increasing cost of getting books printed which have increased by about a dollar a book. This means I will have to increase our print book costs to cover the print cost increase, both in our online store and at conventions.