California itself had nothing to do with the avalanching clusterfuck, just so we’re clear. I know far too many people (usually in Texas) have made their hatred of California a part of their personality. I assure you the state itself has nothing to do with the state I’m in. Frankly, there’s no better place to be stressed out of your mind than in Southern California.
My plan, and yes I had a plan, was a good one. I was to be in a bit of a land lease situation with someone I flew out to meet in November of 2025 for a “soft landing” as it were. A place to stay while I scoped out properties. She lived in area which I knew to be safe and horsey. It was my understanding she would have RV hookups or at least power and a pad for my Airstream. We discussed a couple locations and, it was my understanding, those areas would be prepared for a trailer.
Before we continue, a little author’s note. I am 41. Middle-aged. I’m in what the kids would call, “her healing era.” Pre-perimenopause with my last fuck somewhere out there like a rock stuck between the treads of a shoe.
This translates into being especially attuned to that which I haven’t always prioritized for decades: my emotions. Women, especially, are conditioned to be polite, keep quiet, shrink, in order to keep the peace.
I’m done with that.
Leaving Texas
Anyway. House gets sold. I move in with mommy and daddy for about a week. Acquire an Airstream trailer. Load it up and prepare it for a 1330 mile journey halfway across the country with four dogs and four cats. The stress all that entails cannot be quantified or adequately expressed in what I hope to be a relatively short blog post. Okay? Okay.
During this whole ordeal, I communicated with my future land lease lady. Telling her my intended leave date, my intended arrival date. On the last day of the journey, I texted that our current ETA was 4pm.
At every leg, at every update, I had every reason to believe everything was ready for when I arrived.
Google Maps assumes that when one drives anywhere, that one doesn’t stop and that one is always in a car doing the speed limit. And not pulling an Airstream that needs to be babied over every tiny imperfection in the road.
Incidentally, a giant fuck you to westbound I-10 in Arizona. My god.
As lovely as it was to drive through the Anza Borrego desert during golden hour, twas a bit frightening going around a few turns. Expletives may have been uttered.
California dreamin on such a winter’s night
We arrived at our destination at the dark as hell hour of 7pm. The woman I’d communicated with wasn’t there, she had an appointment. Fair. I said 4pm and human and canine potty breaks plus scary roads, pushed us into the 7pm hour.
What I didn’t see were RV hookups. What I didn’t see was a leveled, graded area where we’d discussed my trailer might go.
It should also be noted that my Airstream had completely dead batteries. Dead. No juice. This should be part of a different post titled “I bought a used Airstream and found some whoopsies.” I’ll brainstorm it later.
So there I was, with four cats, four dogs, no lights, no power, no level pad, after a 1330 mile journey spread over three days.
The feeling was anger.
I then asked via text “Where are the RV hookups” because surely I was missing something. I had communicated my ETA for weeks now.
And that’s when I got the response that “power wasn’t in yet.”
The feeling escalated to rage.
But I kept it cool-ish. I had nowhere else to go. The road to this place was sketch. Bumpy. Narrow. Steep with a bumper-pull trailer.
Surely there was a solution that didn’t involve a mental breakdown. Spoiler: the breakdown came later.
The boyfriend of the lady offered to get the generator and rig something together. I cannot stress that it is insanely dark and there are NO LIGHTS. The boyfriend asks to see my plug. It is a 30 amp RV plug.
Writing this now, a month later after this all went down, why wasn’t the generator already down there since power wasn’t in yet? Why not at least have that going and say “we’re sorry, we are running behind, but we have the generator ready”? Or why not have said earlier in my journey that power wasn’t in yet?
My realization since is that some people are far more comfortable with chaos than I am. That’s not a knock, just an observation.
Anyway.
So he gets the generator. But there’s nowhere level for the trailer. Trailers need to be level just like houses otherwise you will go insane. I know this, because I didn’t have my trailer level someplace and it was maddening to keep sloshing the shower water up hill to the drain.
I was told I could back the trailer (IN THE PITCH DARK) down a narrow one lane drive with steep drop offs on either side. Since it was “out of the way.” This was an area we discussed I could park the trailer weeks prior…with adequate preparation. You know, like widening and leveling.
An Airstream trailer is a wide silver bread loaf. She be stout. Eight and a half feet, to be precise. So even if I were to successfully back up the trailer down a no forgiveness width of space, how in the heck would I be able to get into and out of the trailer without falling to my paralysis off a cliff?
I said “No.” Anyone would’ve said no. It was an insane ask. The next option was to park up by the arena where it was indeed flat. So I moved it up to the arena.
A little extra note. During this entire ordeal, my gut was screaming at me: “Leave.” My brain was chiming in with backup: “this isn’t going to work.” The voice was getting louder. The problem was I had nowhere to go.
When I parked up by the arena, in the dark, the boyfriend came to the window of my truck and asked if I could park closer to a stack of fencing panels on the ground so I would “be out of the way” since people would arrive the following morning.
“Out of the way.”
That was the final trigger.
See, I’m done shrinking. I’m done being small to make others comfortable. This was to be a paid arrangement and we’d even discussed my helping around the property. So to show up and find that nothing had been prepared for my paid stay, and that I would have to work around everyone else and “be out of the way” was it for me.
I said no, this wasn’t going to work, and I was “out of here.”
Texans don’t understand terrain. Most of Texas is flat, flatter and flattest. A Texan hill is to a Californian hill what a pond ripple is to an ocean wave. Seriously, it’s laughable what Texans call “hills.” Embarrassing really. I say this because the descent out of this area to the road was steep. And my hitch on my Airstream is built for straight highways, not areas best covered with a four wheel drive.
And yet down we went, because my intuition was thrilled with me for listening to it. And as I traveled back to the main road, in the dark without any idea where I’d go, I still knew I made the right call to leave a situation that wasn’t going to work for me.
Read part two: Stranded in California wine country with eight animals and zero sanity
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