Aspen does a pretty good job of discouraging motor home types like me from feeling at home. Its remote location beyond narrow mountain passes, its two hour street parking limits and its elimination of camping facilities has made the motor home camper all but extinct.

During the few days that I hung out in Aspen the only motor home/vans I saw were mine, Dave’s (of LivesinaVan.com fame) and an old camper van owned by an itinerant photographer named Brett. We were so rare that we actually took a photo of our three camper vans side by side, like a group photo for the members of the not yet formed “Aspen Mobile Residents Union”.

During the 4th of July weekend the Aspen airport was jammed packed with private jets and clubs were crawling with trust fund kids getting their kicks. This was the true “Jet Set”.

Dave (who LivesinaVan.com) and I felt a bit like wedding crashers who some how managed to infiltrate this exclusive world by sneaking over a mountain pass and into their town in our vans.

Wendy, a bright and beautiful woman we met while camping, joined us in Aspen for the 4th of July. We watched the fireworks over the mountain hills in Aspen, while singing the Star Spangled Banner. Can it really get any more all American than that?

After the 4th we all went our separate ways. Dave continued his journey West to Utah, while Wendy returned to her home in Denver. I ventured North through the mountains and then East through the Great Plains on my way to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I expect to rendezvous with Dave at the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert in Northwest Nevada at the end of August.

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Next Stop – the Great Plains of the USA

Mountains surround it and the Arkansas river runs right through town with kayakers and rafters flowing by. It has a real and beautiful mix of people and nature. It feels real, unlike some places where their popularity has turned them into virtual amusement parks.

But Salida has been discovered by the artists and is fast being revitalized. It won’t be long before the yuppies move in on their heels and buy it up.

A friend of mine who’s been living in Costa Rica for several years, Rick, caught up with me in Salida. He was visiting the USA and hungering for a dose of real America. He loved Salida and the area and so did I.

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Next Stop – Twin Lakes to meet Dave who “Lives in a Van.com”

The motor home culture is dominated by the likes of “Bob and Marge from Toledo“. These Middle American Walmart shoppers roam North America like migrating bison and herd together in crowded campgrounds and Walmart parking lots. I typically steer clear of them and the campgrounds they populate.

I’m a back of the bar type of camper, a lone wolf on the prowl for adventure and great stories. I prefer to mix urban camping and partying, with retreats into wilderness sanctuaries. I am admittedly an odd breed of RVer.

But this past week, I crossed paths with a member of my tribe. He is a true digital vagabond who, like me, lives on the road and makes his living on his laptop, while sharing his travels online at www.LivesinaVan.com

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Yes, Dave truly “lives in a Van”, though not always down by the river. I was a groupie from the moment I saw his Lives in a Van website and his disheveled Billy Bob Thortonesque photo and read about his “Vantagonize Therapy“.

Dave’s therapy subjects misbehaving brats to a full sensory behavior modification experience, complete with a leaking colostomy bag and his life story culminating with ending up in a van. In short, it’s much like the “scared straight” program where convicts talk about the dangers of bending over for soap. Dave’s facetious and sarcastic writing almost burst my bladder.

In an endless universe of travel blogs that document what their authors had for breakfast, Dave’s travel site is an oasis of inspired living and writing. Dave was a guy worth tracking down and meeting.

As luck would have it, Dave was in Colorado when I was heading up from New Mexico to Colorado. We rendezvoused in the middle of the mountains in Colorado and camped out near Twin Lakes. We compared notes on everything from finding water, dump stations and WIFI hot spots to the art and philosophy of living and writing travel stories.

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Dave believes in not just finding the story but making it. Like the circus coming to town, Dave does advance publicity by posting requests on Craigslist.com for ideas for oddball stories and people to feature on his travel blog.

In Denver his Craigslist posting uncovered Elliot and the secret, yet public, world of “padding”. According to Dave’s account on his website (see “Imposters Among Us“):

“A padder is one whose outfit makes them look like a morbidly obese person. With practice, a padder can develop a natural looking, super-paunchy profile by layering customized water bags and other padding under exceptionally large clothing. Elliot has been perfecting his craft for years now.”

Apparently Dave spent a night in Denver following Elliot around nightclubs and hot spots to immerse himself in the life of a padder. The photos and insights he gathered are presented on his website as “Imposters Among Us“. I love Dave’s facetious style of pseudo sociological journalism, which some how has more truth and certainly more entertainment value than “real” journalism. Perhaps Dave has invented a new genre of writing?

However, Dave’s writing sufferers from a serious handicap. His mother reads his blog as if reading his progress reports from grade school. Thus every story he posts is mom friendly and his most outrageous stories, which are certainly not mom friendly, remain offline. But it’s not just his mom. His old girl friends also monitor his blog like a staff of unofficial editors for a communist newspaper.

Fortunately my mother only has a vague idea that the Internet exists and so she can’t even find the front door to this site. As for my old girl friends, I don’t think they care enough to check to make sure I’m alive let alone what I’m writing.

My advice to Dave is to refer to his “My Rules of Writing“, specifically rules one and nine:

Rule #1 – Take risks and write about uncomfortable subjects. Embarrass myself.

Rule #9 – Choose revelation over ego. Write for strangers not friends.

If necessary I suggest he create a secret “backdoor” address for his website for people like me and probably you who didn’t give birth to him or date him. I look forward to being a long time back door reader of Dave’s blog. I truly admire his talent for living, writing and photography. I hope and expect that Dave and I cross paths on and offline for years to come.

To read Dave’s blog about our encounter visit “Day 198: Brotherhood of the Digital Vagabonds” and “Day 203: Open Books and Their Covers“. My comments at the bottom of his blog posts hopefully will set the record straight.

Next Stop – Dave and Pat take on Jet Set Aspen

With its dramatic mountaintops and snow fed rushing streams, Colorado is as beautiful as one would imagine or hope. It attracts lovers of beauty and recreation from around the world. In Aspen many of them, if not most, fly in and out on private jets.

While Aspen was beautiful and upscale and Boulder near Denver was hip and young, I preferred the relaxed town of Salida in Southern Colorado, which was down to earth, surrounded by natural beauty and quickly being revitalized by artists.

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