HEALTHY AGING IN AN RV

There is a stereotypical RVer, and too often the stereotype is accurate: an aging man or woman wearing Bermuda shorts topped with a beer belly, sprawling on a folding chaise longue, eating barbecued meat, drinking beer, watching TV outdoors with the aid of a noisy generator. These people are just pathetic, and many are actually ill as a result. Fortunately, the RV life—and those of us who live it—can be much better. My partner and I have found that it actually can help us stay healthy if we avoid some rather obvious mistakes.

Spending too much time driving is one mistake that interferes with health. Driving an RV can lead to a mad dash across hundreds of miles a day, with few breaks. While one family member is driving, a passenger is making sandwiches that are eaten during the drive. Instead of driving for a long time, we stop often and walk for a while. This is less stressful and provides a little needed exercise. In addition, we see much more of our surroundings on foot than from the RV.

Many of us elderly Rvers are on a lot of medicines (I take about 20 pills a day, including vitamins as well as prescription meds). These need to be easily accessible at all times, especially in case of an emergency. We keep all of ours in a bag behind the passenger seat. It’s easy to reach at any time, and if we ever need to escape quickly, we can grab the bag on our way out. Once a week, we dole out a seven-day supply of pills in one of those handy divided containers. (I keep my daily pills in my backpack or purse to help me remember to take them. It’s important to maintain that daily routine.)

Too often it is tempting to stop at a restaurant as a longer break from driving, but this is likely to end in taking in too many calories and eating the wrong kinds of foods, as well as spending a lot of money. Nearly always, we prepare meals in the RV and eat them at a roadside picnic table or at our own dinette.  Farmers’ markets are a wonderful source of healthful food that is also an enjoyable part of experiencing a local area.  Rather than carrying a heavy cookbook, I loaded my own book, Cooking without Sugar, onto my  laptop computer, where I can easily use the search function to locate recipes or ingredients. If I learn about an appealing recipe en route from another camper or from a newspaper, I add it to the collection.  Being addicted to coffee, I may get an occasional “restaurant fix” and get to know some locals by spending time in a coffee shop.

Cooking in an RV must be rather basic to save pantry space (unless you have one of those humongous RVs, in which case I have little to say to you), so I don’t bother with any recipe having more than five ingredients. We eat little meat even at home, which helps in keeping things simple.

Drinking a lot of alcohol seems to be a major activity for many Rvers, as it goes along with campground sociability. Though a couple of drinks a day can be part of a healthy lifestyle, you need to be careful not to overdo it. Alcohol can be fattening and has little nutritional value. Besides, it can make you relax so much that you eat too many snacks along with it! If you are trying to lose weight, or taking certain medications, it is better to skip the booze altogether. (I know.  . . I used to drink my share of wine, but have gradually given it up, and no longer miss it.) There’s always iced tea, cocoa, or some other substitute.

Getting enough sleep is essential, even when you are trying to rise early and do as much as possible in your travels. Be sure your RV bed is comfortable; you may need to add a mattress pad, for instance. The Travasak was a wonderful sheet-and-comforter combination that could be turned over for comfort summer and winter. It is no longer manufactured, but turns up for sale at Tuesday Morning and similar shops, as well as on eBay, occasionally. Especially in hot summer weather, you may want to get up early, then take a nap in your moveable bed after lunch.

Mental health can suffer in an RV; you may be cut off from the classes or other educational opportunites you have at home. Unless you can find something really worth watching, turn off  the TV in the evening. Have a few good paperbacks with you to read. (I confess that I read a lot of mysteries, but try to alternate them with something more serious.) My partner and I are fond of playing Scrabble on a small travel set, finding that the game helps us stay aware of spelling and word usage.  On Sunday mornings we try to find an NPR station wherever we are, so we can listen to Will Shortz’s Sunday Puzzle and try to solve it. (We have solved it many times and submitted our entries, but have never been called.) Luckily, we both love museums and libraries, so visiting them during our travels is another mental boost.

Loneliness can be especially hard on us older RVers. Our old friends are dying, and we may feel cut off from friends and family while traveling. Most of  us try to stay in touch with people by using e-mail and phone calls often. Also, we can chat with our neighbors in campgrounds.

Some of these suggestions may not appeal to you, but if you apply the general principles of eating healthfully, getting some mental and physical exercise, and resting, you can avoid being the kind of Rver seen in cartoons. You will return home healthier than when you left.

DEATH IN THE SUNSHINE STATE

In the seventies, my parents retired and moved to Florida. Wanting a peaceful, nonstressful environment, they picked the small town of Sanford. Sanford seemed rather dull to me, but I could understand their wish to be away from the faster-paced life in Orlando or Miami, and they seemed content with life there. So, when Sanford was suddenly in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, I was horrified to realize it was not so different from Chicago or Oakland. There is no escape from "urban" problems.

George Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury of six women—five Caucasians and one Hispanic—an outcome that didn’t surprise me. I had noticed plenty of prejudice against African Americans when I spent time in Florida, and would have been amazed if Zimmerman had been found guilty. Whether he actually was guilty of murder, or even of manslaughter, is another question, one that I cannot answer. Certainly the prosecutors failed to prove their charge against him.

Trayvon Martin

What is certain is that a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed because he walked through a white gated community and appeared to Zimmerman as if he might be up to something. Zimmerman, a self-styled neighborhood watch volunteer, followed Martin and confronted him. The details and sequence of events following that are unclear. Zimmerman claimed that Martin pounded his head into the sidewalk, and that he shot Martin to death in self-defense. Which of them was the attacker, and which was the victim?

Having been an officially sanctioned Neighborhood Watch block captain for several years myself, I feel strongly that Zimmerman should have called the police to report his suspicions, then stayed in his car instead of following the boy. Neighborhood Watch members are not supposed to be vigilantes, but to be extra eyes for the police force.

If only he had simply waited for the police. If only he had not followed Trayvon. If only he had not been armed! For that is the final link in this tragedy. Too many people like Zimmerman are carrying weapons and are too eager to use them. We need tough laws that restrict access to guns to those who must have them, and who will use them responsibly. Without such laws, more Trayvon Martins will die, and more Sandy Hook children will be murdered. More moviegoers like those in Aurora, Colorado, will be victims. During the twenty days of the Zimmerman trial, three teenagers and a five-year-old boy were shot to death in Chicago alone. There will always be murders and violence, but we can at least lower the number of shootings.

DISAPPOINTED WITH NPR

Years ago, while living in Chicago, I discovered the “Midnight Special” radio program. WFMT, which ordinarily broadcasts classical music and brief news items, every Saturday night substituted their  “weekly aberration of folk music and farce, show tunes and satire, odds and ends, madness and escape.” Hosts Ray Nordstrand and Norm Pellegrini had come up with that inimitable program in 1953. When NPR was formed in 1970, WFMT became an NPR station, and the Special continued. I listened to it nearly every Saturday, along with other NPR programs.

In all the years since I have listened to NPR, even during pledge breaks, and have been a member at whatever level I could afford. Sometimes today, though, I question my allegiance to it. Recently NPR cancelled “Talk of the Nation,” a long-running show moderated by Neal Conan. For years, Conan took calls from listeners around the country about various issues, handling them with tact and intelligence. The program has been replaced, for no apparent reason, with an inferior one.

It would be bad enough if this were NPR’s only grievous error. Unfortunately, this is only the latest one. Terry Gross, for example, is an excellent interviewer, and in the past I greatly enjoyed her conversations with interesting subjects ranging from academics to entertainers. More and more, though, her program has been invaded by fading rock musicians and hack writers pushing their latest books. As she is the co-producer of her “Fresh Air” program, I find this hard to understand. Surely she knows better.

On the morning of 9/11, I turned on my kitchen radio in California to learn from “Morning Edition” host Bob Edwards that planes had just hit the World Trade Center. As I struggled to deal emotionally with that tragedy, the only thing that kept me from breaking down completely was Edwards’ voice. Somehow he managed in spite of obviously being shaken himself to sound sane and reassuring. His listeners got a feeling of “this, too, shall pass.” I will never forget it. Surely millions of people were as fond of Bob Edwards as I was, and were just as disgusted when NPR let him go.

I could go on and on.  For instance, Capital Public Radio, my local NPR station, recently replaced some of their excellent classical music and jazz programs with hard rock—I guess that‘s what you would call it—that is simply unbearable.

What is NPR thinking? Are they firing middle-aged broadcasters, and changing the content of programs, in the hope of attracting a younger “demographic”? (I hate that word.) I wish that they would base their choices instead on whether their programs appealed to their listeners’ intelligence.

In spite of this criticism I still listen to NPR in preference to any other radio program, and to most television. Michael Krasny’s “Forum” on KQED in San Francisco is a fine source of information, with a brilliant host. I play Will Shortz’s Puzzle every Sunday morning, but am yet to be the winning player. “StarDate” and Ira Flatow’s “Science Friday” are usually good programs about the sciences. Back in Chicago, the “Midnight Special” is still running! Sadly, Nordstrand and Pellegrini are both dead now, but Rich Warren does a good job of continuing their work. So, NPR, you still know how to do it right. Just do it!

CELL PHONE MADNESS

 

Before my partner began the long RV journey, we bought an extra cell phone and made sure that we could call each other easily. ICE numbers and contacts were added to the phones. We each had copies of the phones’ manuals. We were confident that we would stay in touch daily. What could go wrong?

It worked well as he drove from California through Nevada and Utah. Then he didn’t call for four days, and I panicked when he didn’t respond to my voice-mail messages. Had he had an accident? Was he ill? Had someone hijacked the RV? The temperature in Utah was over 100 degrees—had he been overcome by heat while boondocking? My imagination is better than my common sense when it comes to disasters.

At last he called, blissfully oblivious to my worry. He had been camped near Dinosaur National Monument, out of cell phone range, and in a small campground where the pay phone didn’t work. He had simply assumed I would realize he was traveling through an area with numerous dead zones and  might not be able to call often.

There is a problem here, aside from the obvious Men from Mars/Women from Venus difference. Before cell phones became ubiquitous, no one expected to stay in contact with others under all circumstances. Occasional long-distance calls and postcards were enough. Now we demand instant access to our friends and business associates. One woman I know says her pet peeve is people who turn on their cell phones only to make calls! I can hardly blame them for wanting to be untethered. Must we always be available for anyone who wants to reach us and doen’t even want to bother with voice mail?

When other RVers heard my story, they sympathized, but with some I also detected an attitude of annoyance that we didn’t have some higher-tech communication system. They seemed to feel that GPS, satellite devices, and God only knows what else are essential for the good life in an RV. I disagree. Though my anxiety would have been allayed, my partner would have spent too much time fiddling with electronics instead of studying the dinosaur fossils that were very important to him. He might just as well have watched television at home.

Fifty years ago the English actor Dirk Bogarde starred in The Servant, a powerful psychological film about how the roles of master and servant were reversed. It was primarily a comment about the English class system, but I also interpreted it another way: When we depend too much on a servant like technology, it may become dominant over us. I had depended too much on our cell phones in this instance, and was betrayed by the many dead zones. Others go off too far into the wilderness carrying gadgets that can broadcast their latitude and longitude, and risk injury or death; or they depend on a ghostly voice in the RV to tell them which way to turn, and it gives them bad advice.

There is also some research indicating that using too much technology is harmful to the creativity and thinking skills of both adults and children. We need to retain our abilities to memorize, to imagine, and to make simple calculations without relying on computers.

I am no Luddite, and have no desire to return to life without my laptop computer and cell phone. On the other hand, I need to keep them in their place as tools to be used with discretion. I can live with some uncertainty in return for not being burdened with too much technology.

RV TRAVEL ON 5 DOLLARS A DAY

Long, long ago I saw a copy of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on Five Dollars a Day, and was enchanted by the idea of such inexpensive travel. I had studied  French in college, and fervently desired to see Europe, but had little money. (At the time I was a young editor living on a salary of less than $5000 a year.) Could Frommer somehow tell me how to visit Europe anyway?

He could. The book told of many restaurants offering full meals for a dollar or less, hotels where the bathroom was nonexistent or down the hall, cheap forms of transportation, and low-cost museums. The book also contained much advice from seasoned travelers who wanted to share their low-budget finds. My favorite advice was that from a woman who traveled for months with no luggage except a large purse; if I recall rightly, she wore one outfit everywhere, varying it slightly with scarves and a sweater.  If she could manage that well, perhaps I could also.

Though all that detailed information would prove to be extremely helpful, the main thing I gained from reading Frommer was his outlook. He advised scrimping mightily on unimportant items in order to save money for the truly memorable ones, such as the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Alhambra, with perhaps one luxurious splurge.

As it turned out, it took several years and a divorce for me to visit Europe for the first time. In 1971 I saw an ad for a special American Express tour from New York to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco that cost only $250, and realized I could combine it with Frommer’s approach in order to see some of Europe at last. The tour lasted only ten days, but I had a wonderful time, felt very cosmopolitan, and carried one of Frommer’s books everywhere. (By that time travel was a bit more than five dollars a day, but most of his advice was still good.)

It has been more than forty years since that first adventure, during which I have traveled as much as possible. Even when it has been possible to spend more, I have continued to use Frommer’s “biggest bang for the buck” principle. Today, traveling in an RV having a small closet, I think appreciatively of that woman traveler with her one outfit, who helped point the way. A few good tee shirts and pants can go nearly everywhere!

Amazingly, on some days we do spend only five dollars or less on RV travel. If we are boondocking in a Forest Service or BLM campground, we may pay nothing at all for the privilege. Until we move on, gasoline costs us nothing. The fridge is already filled with supermarket foods. Hiking a nearby trail is free.

Of course, my remarks are made with tongue firmly in cheek. The RV cost nearly as much as some small houses, gasoline is very costly when we are driving all day, and if we stay at an RV resort in order to have campground power for a night, the costs can add up quickly. However, the principle is still true: RV travel helps makes it possible to cut costs for unimportant items like hotels and restaurants, and to save up for the worthwhile things like taking a tour of the Biltmore estate or the Hearst Castle, spending a day at Chicago museums, steaming across Lake Michigan on the Badger ferry, and buying Canadian gasoline. Thank you, Arthur Frommer!

WASTED RESOURCES

The Target stores have become known for good design at low prices, and I have happily bought quite a few things there for the RV and our homes. So, when I needed some clothing recently, I headed for the nearest Target.

The bras I chose were on small plastic and metal hangers rather than in packages. As I handed them to the cashier, I said, “I don’t need the hangers—you can keep them for reuse.” She refused to do so, saying that larger plastic hangers can be recycled, but these smaller ones cannot. I indignantly pointed out that this was a waste of plastic and metal. The clerk rolled her eyes—I was obviously being one of those obnoxious customers clerks dread—and told me to just throw them out if I didn’t want them. Muttering “That’s not the point!” I took the hangers with me and left the store. I certainly don’t hang bras in a closet, and doubt that any other woman does. (Well, maybe an elaborate bustier deserves its own hanger.) So, these hangers will end up in my own trash bin.

There must have been several hundred bras in that store, each one on one of those hangers that will be thrown in the trash. How many stores are doing the same thing? What a waste! And how much pollution they will cause! It’s not as if the hangers are necessary—a bra can be packaged in a bag that uses very little paper or plastic. Better yet, hangers can be used for displaying merchandise, but the store can keep them for reuse.

My ire in this case was directed at one Target, but that particular store is only one of many across the country, and Target is only one of the big-box stores with similar wasteful practices. Walmart, K-Mart, and others all do it. Sears, Macy’s, and Penney’s put clothing and other purchased items in huge plastic bags. Supermarkets such as Safeway and Food4Less almost seem to make a point of putting only one or two items in each plastic bag; I have seen some customers leave with what looked like hundreds of plastic bags in their shopping carts.

We customers are at fault almost as much as the stores are. Only a few of us carry reusable bags, though it is easy to do. Like me, some customers allow themselves to be coerced into accepting hangers or other wasteful packaging rather than vociferously objecting to it. Clerks sometimes add to the problem, too. Many of them seem annoyed if they must interrupt their robot-like filling of plastic bags to use our reusable bags instead.

Recently a bill banning plastic bags was introduced in the California legislature, but it failed to pass. As a result, the problem will continue in this beautiful state that thrives on tourism and prides itself on environmental awareness. Except for stores in the few cities that have wisely banned plastic bags, supermarkets and other stores in California will continue this wasteful, polluting practice. A few of the bags will be usefully reused in homes; some may be returned to stores for recycling; most will end up in landfills or waterways. Birds and mammals may choke on them or be asphyxiated by them. Roadsides and picnic areas will be made ugly.

Being an RVer, I see some of this wastefulness in campgrounds, but think having to live in a small space actually encourages conservation. We campers are less likely to load our grocery carts with unneeded items, and to accept extra packaging, than those having lots of storage space at home. In some campgrounds we even have to “pack it in, pack it out,” which truly discourages schlepping a lot of extra items around with us. Most of us care deeply about preserving the natural environment, because we have made an effort to spend time in the national parks or other areas for aesthetic and spiritual reasons. With any luck our concern will have some impact, and our attitudes will prove contagious.

RV GRIPES

Who designs motorhomes, anyway? Though we like the simple interior of our Winnebago View, we cringe at the exterior. The basic white surface, which has the advantage of reflecting sunlight and reducing heat, has a couple of swirling decals on the sides that might have been painted by a chimpanzee on steroids. And our little View is rather tame by comparison with most of the new RVs on the road today, in garish colors and cheesy designs. Readers of RV magazines are starting to write annoyed letters to the editor about the swirls and swoops, but the manufacturers are so far ignoring them.

Part of the problem may be the “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” mentality of some customers. The motorhomes that cost a million dollars or more ought to be beautiful, tasteful homes on wheels; instead, some of them have lighted mirrors everywhere, Christmassy lights in the bathroom sink (!), and far too many TV sets. In a review of a new coach in a current magazine, Bob Livingston writes, “The HDMI Matrix central video selection system is a nice touch and being satellite ready and having the Blu-ray home theater components is great, but getting everything to work in harmony is complicated. There are three TVs in this coach, counting the one in the outside compartment, and connecting them to the system requires on-screen programming and poring through multiple instruction manuals. . . we never did figure out how to connect a satellite receiver without an HDMI input.” This is insanity!

Of course, there may be customers who will buy this garbage. I’m reminded of one RVer who pulled into his campsite, hoisted his TV aerial, and stayed indoors for days. One would hope that he at least looked out the window at the rocky cascades below.

And that reminds me of other despicable RVers: The ones who allow their children and dogs to run through our campsite. Those who run their noisy generators for hours. The overcautious drivers who allow traffic to pile up behind them instead of pulling off the road for a minute.  (Then there are their opposites, the speeders who feel they belong in the fast lane, whatever they are driving.) The owners of 40-foot rigs, towing boats and cars, who try to fit into 24-foot spaces. The drunks. The woman who shouted at me at midnight, “If you want to sleep, go to a motel!” The teenage boys who lurked around the entrance of the women’s showers. The people who leave huge bags of recyclable materials in the Dumpsters rather than recycling them. Those who decorate their campsites with lighted pink flamingos.

One of the most appealing motorhomes I have seen, designed in the 1930s, is a Pierce Arrow on display at the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar, near Los Angeles. The interior was wood-paneled, and had cleverly planned built-in compartments somewhat like those in an Arts and Crafts home. Appliances were basic and simple. There was nothing ostentatious about the coach, even though it was the high-end line of its day, but everything was functional and attractive. I’d be willing to bet that the wealthy owner would be appalled at some of the rigs—and their owners—of today.

WHO WAS AT THE WINDOW?

 

 

When camping in national parks and forests, of course we’re cautious about predators. We store food in bear boxes or the RV fridge, watch for mountain lions when we hike, look behind rocks for rattlesnakes before sitting down, eye scraggly-looking strangers with initial suspicion.  Just as we don’t display jewelry or electronic gear when walking through city streets, we don’t invite trouble in the boondocks.

At home we feel safe in general. Our home bordering  the El Dorado National Forest is hidden from the road and seems immune even from the occasional El Dorado County crime.  So, when we saw a paw print in the pollen on a bedroom window, we were startled. What could have made a print that large, more than four feet above the ground? It was definitely  nothing human.

Our first thought was the neighbor’s large dog, which tends to wander through our yard and leave his paw prints on everything, but we compared the print with the original dog paws, and realized this animal was much larger.

Could it have been a black bear? Bears do wander into the surrounding area once in a while, and the paw looked like the right size. Bears are notorious for tearing apart anything that might contain food, and that might give us a clue.  In a nearby area not long ago, a bear broke into a cabin where the owner had left a liquor supply. After smashing a bottle of rum, the bear promptly lapped up the rum, got very drunk, and tore apart everything in the cabin. So we looked around for any disturbance, found our compost pile looked untouched, remembered that we have no liquor, and concluded that our visitor was not a bear.

That left us with the frightening main possibility that a mountain lion had been there. The print seems to match those I found online, but I am no expert on identifying animal tracks. (Or scat, aside from deer and dog poop.) We plan to have the county trapper look at a photo of the print soon. In the meantime, we will be a little more cautious walking in the woods—or even walking out the front door.

THE NEANDERTHALS AMONG US

You never know what you may see from an RV window. The South seems especially rich in remarkable sights: One day as we drove along, minding our own business, we saw a huge billboard advertising a dinosaur museum, and we slowed down to check it out.

As it turned out, the museum was too expensive for us—$24 per person, even for us senior citizens. Good grief! For that price, we could have visited a world-class paleontology museum such as the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, or the American Museum of Natural History in New York. More important than the egregious admission price, the museum was anti-science; it was a thinly disguised exhibit about special creation, or the creation of living things as presented in Genesis. We saw no benefit in supporting it, and kept driving.

Some scientists believe God created life; others do not. What nearly all of them agree on is that living things have evolved (changed gradually) since they first appeared on Earth, branching in various directions to form the millions of species that have lived and died over the eons. Evidence from paleontology, anatomy, genetics, embryology, physiology, and  other areas of biology all show similarities among organisms that make sense only if they evolved gradually .

The comic strip Alley Oop is delightfully entertaining. (Oop is a time-traveling Neanderthal who rides through a Carboniferous forest on a dinosaur, battles other cavemen, and so on.) The strip is a pleasant fancy, but of course it is nonsensical. The dinosaurs were wiped out 65,000,000 years ago, millions of years before the Neanderthals appeared. Creationists, though, have tried to insist that all living things were created within 6,000 years, and so humans and dinosaurs actually co-existed. In a hilarious exhibit at one creationist museum, fossils appear to show a dinosaur eating a person.

The creationists have been ridiculed for years, and are thin-skinned enough to have gone through a sort of evolution themselves. Now they call their ideas “intelligent design,” a supposedly scientific theory that is less obviously religious. However, they dodge the question of how there can be a design unless there is a designer. For that matter, what would unintelligent design be?

Back in 1958, just before the centenary of The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, a famous scientist wrote that “a hundred years without Darwinism are enough.” He was appalled that there was still any opposition to a theory that was accepted by the scientific community. And that was more than 50 years ago! There have been amendments to Darwin’s theory of evolution—punctuated equilibrium and the molecular structure of DNA, for instance—but the basic idea of evolution by natural selection has stood the tests of time and of challenges from naysayers.

In recent years researchers have shown that Neanderthals interbred with some groups of modern humans, which means that most of us have some Neanderthal genes. In another sense, though, Neanderthals are all around us—denying evolution, denying climate change, denying science. Will this denial continue for another hundred years? Or will we say this is already more than enough?

WHICH WAY? HOW FAR? WHERE ARE WE?

Having a ghostly voice provide directions as we are driving might simplify our RV life, but what sort of challenge is that? We pride ourselves on making serendipitous discoveries of places that don’t appear on maps. Much better to blunder along with the questionable help of my old Rand McNally road atlas, and with the even less reliable aid of locals.

Conversation with the locals can be amazing, revealing much about current education. When we can get the attention of a young woman who is absorbed in texting about last night’s date, we may ask, “Can you tell us how to get to Wal-Mart?”

“Yeah, sure. Actually, it’s down that street.”

“Which way, east or west?”

[Blank stare.] “That way. Like, past the big mall a ways.”

“How many miles?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. Not too far, actually. You can’t miss it.”

Much later, we pull into a gas station where we can again ask for directions. A slack-jawed young man reluctantly approaches.

“Can you tell us where Wal-Mart is?”

“Well, it’s, y’know, over on the other side of the highway.”

“How far over?”

“Not too far. Like, y’know, half an hour, maybe.”

“Do we go north or south on this street?”

[Glazed expression.] “Just go that way. Y’ go over a coupla bridges.”

Despairing of ever finding Wal-Mart, we stop at a fancy coffee shop filled with people glued to their laptops. The barista—no doubt an MBA looking for permanent employment—listens sympathetically and whips out her expensive tablet. She searches desperately, then brightens. “Here we are. It says the closest one is over in Illinois. About 200 miles.” 

We are in Wisconsin. Three cheers for technology! This is so much better than relying on the locals.