travel | 2 Old Hippies

2oldhippies love fresh bread, the smell of fresh laundry from the clothes line, and as you might guess if you’ve been reading the blog, fresh road cuts.

We are old enough to remember when the interstate highway system was built. One of us cannot remember the new roadcuts created then back in Tennesee, but in Montana where I grew up, the road had to blow through (literally, with a lot of dynamite) a canyon of the Missouri River between Great Falls and Helena. (near the stretch of the Missouri River that Lewis and Clark named “Gates of the Mountains.”) Those fresh road cuts were so awesome, so beautiful, and so revealing that my brother, who had just selected geophysics as his university major and was quickly turning into a rockhead, made us all take a field trip on the new highway just to pull over and look at the fresh road cuts. I’ve loved them ever since, and my reaction is pretty much the one with the snapped head and the word “Squirrel!” only I say “Roadcut!”

Here in Vermont, the Interstate construction did much the same service, opening up the inside of the earth for closer inspection, and Vermont is very interesting, geologically speaking. Periodically, our beloved rockheads at the Agency of Transportation decide to widen the cuts, clean up after rock slides and such, and we are treated to fresh roadcuts (thus increasing my driving time between Burlington to Montpelier, rather the decreasing it, I might add.)

Our original 2014 adventure travel plan — US 2 West, then down the Rockies through Wyoming to Boulder/Denver, included following the Interstate route through Wyoming that got another roadcut fiend, John McPhee, all excited, and which he wrote about in detail in Rising from the Plains, a great read about the geologic history of the Northern Rockies. We were all set to marvel at those road cuts. It was the geologic wonders of New Brunswick and the Bay of Fundy that gave us our alternative destination once our plans had to change, but we didn’t know that the relatively new Fundy Trail Parkway was waiting for us with dozens of fresh “Roadcuts!” Wow. As everywhere along this coastline, bending, folding, piling on, intrusion, uplifts, hundreds of millions of years of “all hell breaking loose” on display. And in case you can’t get here soon enough to see them in their fresh state, before mosses, lichens, mineral leaching and other aging processes dull them, we are pleased to offer you our views.

Behold the Road Cut!

When 2oldhippies were growing up, the term our parents used for searching for, digging around for, otherwise searching high and low for something, was called”rummaging.” Rummaging is sometimes unavoidable, sometimes pointless, sometimes a total waste of time.

We learned on our honeymoon camping trip to the Gaspe Peninsula nearly 30 years ago that to make rummaging as productive as possible, certain rules had to be set down and agreed to by all parties. On such an extended camping trip, absent said rules, we’d be spending a lot of time rummaging and not enough time enjoying it all. We bought a small blank booklet and developed “Rules for Rummagers.” (Actually, because we were in Quebec, we included the alternative title “Les Regles des Rummageurs.”)

We’ve added to the Rules over time as we’ve continued to live out of small places for extended periods: camping out of a car or canoe, navigating a French river in a small power boat, and now in the Westy. And frankly, the Rules apply pretty well when any two people live under the same roof in a small house and need to find/use the same household equipment.The rules do seem obvious, common-sensical even. The imporance is the agreement – this can reduce annoyance and aggravation, as well as the use of language that would make a sailor blush (as in: Where the @#%^ did you put the *()@%(#& ‘ing !%*#*^ ??????

(Of course, as 2oldhippies get older, we do forget the rules, just as we often forget what we were looking for in the first place. The Rules cannot help you with that problem … Be patient with each other, is our only advice there.)

So, herewith, a few Rules for Rummagers:

1. Once there is agreement on where something is going to be stored, don’t move it. If you use something, put it back where you found it.

2. Rule #1 applies even if you later believe you have “found” a better place to put it.

3. When something new is acquired along the way that will be used frequently, decide and agree right away where it will be stored, and following #1.

4. Looking for something just to confirm that it’s still there is not legitimate rummaging; it’s either the aging process, or a touch of OCD or paranoia (take your pick). So cut it out; you are making ME nervous.

5. Do not rummage in other people’s stuff, no matter how interesting it looks. A corollary to this rule is keep your eyes on the road when you are behind a full pickup truck, because you’ll never get to rummage in that stuff anyway, even if you follow them home.

2oldhippies came up with some hacks to help enforce the rules and minimize some kinds of rummaging — such as, crocheting a lot of little bags to gather together stuff that belongs together, to keep it together and make retrieving it easier. One of our little bags contains everything necessary to make the coffee in the morning: filters, a miraculous collapsible silicon filter holder (the red thing to the left of the carafe in picture below), ground coffee, sugar, spoon, and coffee cups. No rummaging required early in the morning – everything needed is already in one place.

Another kit is my “going to the shower house” bag: small bottles of shampoo, body wash, face wash, razor and a poof in a net bag that can hang in the campground’s shower and then hang back in the Westy to dry out.

While we technically have room for suitcases or backpacks, getting in and out of them is a drag, and after a couple of days, there’s a lot of rummaging involved within those containers. I pack instead in small zipper packs (sometimes called packing cubes), and then stack them in the closet – one for underwear and socks, one for shirts, one for pants. Roll items up to make them easy to pick out. A separate one serves as a “dop kit” for toiletries. (Limiting yourself to a small amount of space for your stuff is a very good way to limit rummaging anyway….)

What are your Rules?