Leaning by the dumpster-RoadNotes-2020

We start a new year heading out on the trail.

Exhibiting at juried art festivals started as a lark about 23 years ago.

Today it is an integral part of our business platform.

For us to continue to be in business and pursue our trade, we travel.

We travel at least 3 or 4 months out of each year.

In our miniature RV sprinter conversion van we call home.

While traveling in freezing conditions we have to motel like many other artisans and craftsman.

This week we are in a large city that endures freezing temperatures and its our time to succumb to motels and hotels.

These motels become a blur in our travels, one night here, three or four nights there.

Sometimes we stay at nice hotels and other times we don’t.
All we appreciate is a clean bed, limited noise and little or no violence.

This might be our 2,400th day exhibiting at festivals,…. I’ve lost track.

The road salt on the vehicle is thick enough to measure with a ruler.
I spend 45 minutes at a truck wash trying to save my RV home from certain entropy.

It’s time to check into the next hotel after yesterdays hotel and the hotel the day before.

It was economically booked well in advance, on line and now it seems at bit “down in the heels”.

At the check in desk they advise me to park where you “feel best”.

I proceed into a fenced area that was designed to keep out rim ball ramblers, neer-do-wells and marauders.

I’m fraught with concerns about setting up the exhibit and now I have to decide where I’m most apt to awake with all the tires on my vehicle.

The romance of the road seems to dim and I start to feel the salt stains that have bleached the finish on my RV.

We head next door to the newly opened Mexican restaurant to get a feel of the territory.

It is a large restaurant and we are the only ones there.

They greet us with genuine appreciation and we have a great meal, we didn’t realize we were tired and hungry.

The following night we returned and we ran into fellow Navajo friends and artisans from Santa Fe.

We were glad to see the restaurant was full with patrons having a great time singing karaoke within a half step of being on pitch.

Sometimes our accommodations don’t match our expectations, but neither do our wildest dreams.

As we check into our humble motel room we pass by a young women who is making her home for the night next to the dumpster.

The dumpster isn’t a new dumpster, it is old and not a pleasant sight and yet ….there she is.

We carefully check our room for basic cleanliness and it passes.

It is a room check that the woman by the dumpster didn’t make.

As we fall asleep, the temperature tonight will drop below freezing, the gal by the dumpster is forty five yards away and that is what divides us.

www.Billkeitel.com