Sitting Here in Limbo

This Jimmy Cliff song suits us well right now: 

Sitting here in limbo
Waiting for the tide to flow
Sitting here in limbo
Knowing that I have to go

I can't say what life will show me
But I know what I've seen
I can't say where life will lead me
But I know where I've been

(Jimmy Cliff recorded that album at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, that we’ve visited, woohoo! Another aside: it’s hard to say woohoo with the chaos and destruction being caused by our government right now. Last aside: photo above was from a renaissance festival with our friends; more on that later.)

The Hitch Non-Update

The hitch is cracked and bent and broken in all the important places, and Tracy has determined he’s not equipped to rebuild it; it needs a machine shop. It’s been a 10-day process, so far, to figure out what’s broken and how to fix the situation, and right now he’s thinking the company that makes and sells this hitch will have to rebuild it, or we’ll have to buy a new one from them. 

A problem is that the hitch company is in Michigan, and we’re in Texas, and we can’t get up there without a hitch. Will we pay the kazillion dollars to ship the old hitch to them, have them fix it, then ship it back to us? Or the kazillion dollars times two for a new hitch to be shipped to us, then figure out who will install it down here? The clock is ticking on our self-imposed month we told this RV park we’d be here for, but we are close to at least deciding what to do. Of course, when I say we I mean Tracy, seeing as how he’s got the hitch in pieces under the Airstream right now. 

Where We Are

It’s a good place to be stranded in, this RV park. We’re close to Austin in the SXSW season (it’s a huge art & tech conference/festival thing, although with our aversion to crowds and civilization, we may do only peripheral activities). 

Our park is a pleasantly odd private park in the “Keep Austin Weird” style: we’re on several acres but kind of crammed in in the RV area. The owners live here in tiny houses and they’re super-laid back guys. My first clue towards that: in a text exchange about our reservations, one guy said to me, “Bro, no worries.” When he realized his mistake, I told him that I answer to “bro” when needed, and we both stuck HaHa stickers on each other’s texts and settled that we’re bros at heart. 

When we were here 10 days ago visiting friends, Tracy did his usual wizard-planning (I’m gonna call it that now because he’s so suited to wizarding in D&D) by picking out a good spot for us were we to come again, and now we’re in that spot, on the end of a row so there’s no one parked on our door side, and we have room for the tent and privacy for Banjo to lie in the sun.  

There’s a path on the acres behind the RVs that I’ve been walking each day to build up my knee’s tolerance for hiking. Yesterday I went five miles, but only because I thought I’d lost an earbud. That’s a long story involving high winds, a pack of loose farm dogs, and me retracing my steps for eons when it turns out my earbud was in the trash can in the Airstream all along; I’d thrown it out inside a tissue in my pocket. 

My point is, the path is not only walkable, it has three landmarks jokingly identified by our friends: the tree, the rock, and the hill. They remind me of the three saguaros we used to visit on our daily walk on Mars. Hey, any hike can be made interesting as long as you have landmarks.

Hi, tree!  Hi, rock! Hi, hill! Keeping Austin weird here.

Who We’re With

Of course, the biggest draw to being here is those friends. They work full time, but from home, so we see them when we’re walking back and forth from the showers or the laundry. I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to bump into a neighbor and have a long chat about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein while you’re holding your shower basket. That has some elements of neighborhood life I miss so much but enough nomad weirdness that it still feels right.   

So, here we sit in limbo. While Tracy puzzles out the hitch problem with his wizard hat on, I’m finding more things to fix, wash, order that I should have done in Brownsville.  Time goes by so strangely when you’re not on the road and don’t have a travel routine. I don’t have a day-before-travel to-do list or a day-after travel relax day or explore days or then day-before-travel day again.  I do have a trail with three landmarks and friends nearby, and that’s fine with me.