rv'ing is the life for me - or is it?

I feel like I signed up for a spiritual new-agey retreat and mistakenly got sent to a Christian camp for married couples. Instead of a uniform of yoga pants and Birkenstocks, my fellow retreat-goers wear khaki shorts and crocs. We walk the grounds with our heads bowed, not in meditative contemplation but on alert for piles of dogshit. (At my last count, out of 29 occupied sites, there are 26 dogs).

Thus continues my fish out of water feeling.

My tendency is to simplify the situation by merely concluding that the RVing life isn't for me. Or that RVers are a strange breed and I am much too delicate a flower to be in the midst of such crass and boorish people. But neither statements are true. The two men who made those racist comments during unhappy hour both coincidentally left the next day. And except for the two women here I don't care for, everyone else is really nice. They go out of their way to include me in gatherings and our interactions are always warm and cheerful. So it would not be fair of me to diss this gaggle of snowgeese.

That leads me to ponder "Is RVing the life for me? Am I an RVer?" Frankly, I don't see myself as an RVer, one who recreates in one's Recreational Vehicle as much as I do full-time trailer trash, someone living in a 30 year old travel trailer because that was all I could afford (however, because I have a nicely-inherited sense of style and class, I chose an Airstream over an SOB, thus paying way more for my Airstream than a 30 year old Some Other Brand might have cost). Also, I am not an RVer because I do not have the interest, nor the funds, in traveling hither and yon across our great country, or even this great country.

It's like when I went to Europe. When my daughter was out of the nest - basically pushed at the tender age of 18 because mama was tired and needed some "alone time" - I went to Europe for almost a year. I tell people that I saw less of Europe in 46 weeks than most people see in two. I had no desire to follow the usual tourist itinerary: arrive in a foreign city, explore museums, eat a nice dinner, sleep, next day head to foreign city number two, repeat process for 'x' number of days. I preferred plopping myself down in a homey pensione and hanging out in whatever foreign place I was in for an indeterminate length of time (in most instances two months) which allowed me time to develop patterns similar to those of the locals. Cappuccinos here, a brioche there, a glass of wine down this little side street, lingering in cafes trying to decipher the conversations around me, adding water to my pastiche, crying over letters from home while a kindly old man patted me on the head murmuring "molto dolce".

Which is to explain why I stayed at The Home of Dashed Hopes for two years, the length of time it took for me to give up my highfalutin city ways (i.e. switch from micro-brews to Milwaukee's Best; trade neighborhood deli's for Wal-Mart), replace my pale rain-plumped skin for the brown scaly-lizard look, establish "my" barstool at the local watering hole, and learn to identify and classify "tweaker" vs "crack ho".

Which is also to explain why I expanded my two-week Mexican vacation into 52. I wanted to immerse myself in a new culture (and avoid w-o-r-k for just one more year).

But back to that RVing question. If I am to be honest, I think I'd like the RV lifestyle if I was recreating with someone. If I, too, were coupled up. If I had someone with whom to share the driving, the chores, the dumping the black tank, the scenery, the shot of Maker's Mark at sunset. Hell, I'd even give up the Airstream for a humongous SOB.

So there you have it. Another dissertation examining why I have felt so at odds here and, in light of that, what happens next? Do I continue this trailer trash/RV lifestyle or chuck it all and settle into a nice little apartment somewhere, see if I can't revive my city girl ways, and get over my Maynard G. Krebs* fear of w-o-r-k?

*of course Maynard solved that problem by getting stranded on Gilligan's Island so there's hope yet