the good old days

A couple years ago, I saw Arctic Passage: Prisoners of the Ice, a Nova episode about the last (and lost) Franklin expedition. Like all good ice-related stories of Victorian explorers, it involved the expedition making grand plans but ultimately getting overwhelmed by the weather conditions and dying. Sir John Franklin attempted to traverse the Northwest Passage (which exists, though it’s clogged with ice), got stuck along the way, and his entire crew died.

There were two things that really stuck with me about the story: the sailors spreading various sexually transmitted diseases among the Inuit (charming on so many levels), and the canned food supplies caused lead poisoning which sped up their deaths.

Evidence suggested that a combination of cold, starvation, and disease including scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, all exacerbated by lead poisoning, killed the entirety of the Franklin party. — Wikipedia

In 1845 when the expedition left England, canning was only a few decades old. And to seal the cans, manufacturers used solder… lead solder. The sick irony of that was very memorable — bring plenty of provisions, and get killed by them. Makes you grateful for modern science and food preservation, which prevents lead poisoning, botulism, and so on…

It turns out that more recent (September 2008) research suggests that the water system on board Franklin’s ship was responsible for the extreme lead levels, not the solder (or not solely the solder). They had a brand new furnace and a “Fraser galley” which would allow them to distill fresh water from seawater as they sailed (or as they were frozen in the ice). And since standard plumbing fixtures were made of lead… well, we’re left with an ironic poisoning. One of the modern features of Franklin’s expedition led to its downfall.

I’m a big fan of road trips, even as ridiculously long as driving from South Carolina to Chicago for Thanksgiving. I could save time flying, but consider:

1. airports suck
2. security lines suck
3. airlines suck
4. I have a toddler
5. I have a preschooler [worse than a toddler]
6. they each have a car seat

I hate all that so badly, I’d rather drive 15 hours. Even with a well-behaved toddler and preschooler who aren’t screaming like banshees, I hate hate hate air travel.

Of course, a two-day drive is no picnic. One thing that would make any road trip easier (and more affordable) would be simply pulling over at the side of the road and falling asleep. The reason that rest areas exist along major interstates, in fact! This is doable in a regular car — indeed, we had to do it once when no hotels had vacancies — but it is incredibly uncomfortable. It’s surprisingly humid, too; the inside of the car was completely fogged up (and we were doing nothing but sleeping, get your minds out of the gutter).

I would buy an RV, if only they had better gas mileage and were a bit smaller. So — a car with seats that can convert to beds? WANT. And this concept isn’t new, although you wouldn’t know it given the total lack of cars-with-beds on the road. The first picture is a 1931 version, the second is from 1972.

At that rate, I can expect another Great Redesign in just about three years… nothing to do but wait.

We are casual fans of geocaching, the game which lets you trick your child into getting some healthy exercise on a hike by telling her you’re actually doing a treasure hunt. Somebody hides something somewhere (in the woods, on a road sign, wherever), then posts the coordinates on a website, and anybody with a GPS goes to look for it.

It was also a handy excuse to buy a GPS; while I usually won’t splurge on something I don’t really need (I know how to read a map, what’s wrong with maps?), I will shamelessly splurge on things that are purely recreational. But I have to admit, one small gadget is much easier to keep track of than dozens of large folding maps. The only drawback is that it will eventually run out of batteries, which a piece of paper manages to neatly avoid.

It was with great interest that I found this little invention. The Plus Fours Routefinder

was designed to be worn on the wrist – relying on good old-fashioned paper maps wound around wooden rollers, which the driver turned en route.

The tiny scrolls also showed the mileage and gave a “stop” instruction at the journey’s end.

A tiny analog GPS — well, more of a UKPS, since it was British. Cute, no?

This has popped up on a few blogs I read, but my favorite of the assortment is Strange Maps, because it has excellent writing and really cool posts, so they get the Via!

If you’re rich enough to afford food and gas, but not rich enough to afford gas and a vacation, you’re probably taking the advice of news outlets anywhere and thinking of having a STAYcation. (Ha ha! It’s a pun!)

I found this one particularly, um, interesting: Make Your Backyard “Staycation” Central! It includes a $900 fire pit (admitting you can get one for $50, though), a $300 sno-cone machine, nearly $1000 in movie projection equipment, a $300 “beertender” (aka keg), and a $700 backyard waterpark. Congratulations, creative staycationer, you’ve saved spent an extra $3000!

Most recommendations I’ve seen — find local museums, parks, events, and so on — are more plausible. But if you’re really interested in budget vacationing, and your local attractions are simply crap (or have been staycationed by you so often that you could be the tour guide), gas prices probably aren’t the biggest cost on the trip. Hotel prices and dining are. Which puts me in mind of a couple semi-recent things seen on other retro-oriented sites…

My mother’s family used to do road trips; on the first one they stayed in a hotel, on the second they used a large tent (described once by my uncle as “incredibly awful”), and by the third they’d bought a camper trailer. The trailer would be used for decades afterwards for all sorts of destinations. A 1954 Popular Mechanics article described one couple’s modifications to their car to add a bed, with the headline SAVE $100 on your next vacation! (Saving $100 in 1954 is the same as saving over $750 today — no small potatoes.) It’s quite ingenious; they even put screens over the rear windows for insect-proof ventilation. Stopping in a campground is cheap, stopping at rest areas along the interstate is free; you do the math.

Want to save on food? Bring your own. There was even a name for it: Tin Can Tourism. (There’s a Tin Can Tourist club, almost as old as cars themselves.) Alternatively, since eating everything from actual tin cans gets rather… yucky… after a while, stop at grocery stores.

Picture of the mildly creepy tin can tourists at left is from Shorpy