Going Gypsy: One Couple's Adventure from Empty Nest to No Nest at All

by David James

  Were we near somewhere I had lived as a kid? Did David turn around while I was asleep? I knew I recognized something about the place, but just couldn’t quite conjure up what. Then I spotted the dumpy hotel by the airport on the edge of town. Oh my God, we were in Hell Centro!

  31

  Mexican Therapy

  Our anniversary blast from the past completed, it was time to kick the plan-is-no-plans system into high gear. For the first time, Veronica and I had no real notion as to where we were going or why, other than having narrowed it down to the hundred thousand square miles or so that make up Arizona.

  This new complete lack of any destination beyond the immediate changed our travel style more than we realized. It meant that we would be searching for new attractions on an almost daily basis, not just as diversions along the path to our next reunion. Our new goal was to find the interesting, enlightening, inspiring, and informative, as well as the offbeat, quirky, and unconventional, without regard to where it might take us.

  So we began this new phase of our GypsyNesting by meandering around the Grand Canyon State. We had seen the big canyon years ago on a cross-country vacation with the kids, so this time we set out to find the lesser-known points of interest and found hidden gems in some ­remote corners of the state. Nearly every mile along the ­Arizona highways brought some new discovery: the ancient cliff dwellings at Tonto and Montezuma Castle National Monument, Casa Grande’s giant pueblo, Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, the Petrified Forest, gunfighting at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, the Biosphere, and even a statue standin’ on the corner in Winslow, complete with a mural of a girl in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look.

  Any time we ventured near the Mexican border, BAMF had a knack for attracting the Border Patrol. At one point, on a lonely stretch of two-lane in the shadow of the fence that separates us from our southern neighbor, we had three of them following us. Our encounters were always polite and professional, and we certainly appreciate and respect the difficult and dangerous job the agents are doing. The idea that our nation’s southern frontier is an open, unchecked thoroughfare for ille­gal activities is patently absurd, and an insult to these brave men and women.

  Veronica seemed to have come around and kicked the kid-missing funk that engulfed her since leaving New York. I can’t say I blamed her for being blue. Saying good-bye to all three kids at once was a lot to take. I was less than jovial myself for a few days. It was the first time we had experienced that sort of unfair math.

  Still, no matter how well she was dealing with her separation issues, I was totally unprepared for the bombshell she was about to drop. Something so surprising, so out of character, I thought she had to be joking.

  “Let’s take BAMF into Mexico.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s drive BAMF down into Mexico.”

  Visions of hijackings, hostage situations, and our home becoming a rolling headquarters for coyotes and drug mules danced in my head. Taking a chance like that was waaaaay out of any comfort zone of hers that I was familiar with. She had to be kidding.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  I think the girl can actually read my mind sometimes.

  Looking at the phone she added, “We’ve been getting Mexican cell service for the last twenty miles. There’s got to be a town over the border close by.”

  I hemmed, and she prodded. I hawed, but she kept it up. This went on for a while, until I was convinced she wasn’t faking, or testing me, or giving up. She really wanted to go. We were having a role reversal. Playing the part of the cautious pragmatist, me; and starring as the carefree adventurer . . . why, that would be my darling wife.

  Finally, after usurping her famous fear-conquering mantra for myself (“people do it every day and do not die, people do it every day and do not die, people do it every day and . . .”), I gave in. Well, not completely. I agreed to drive down to a border town, on the US side, and look into it. I was pretty sure if we asked around everyone would tell us it would be crazy to drive a motor home across the border. Then we could walk across and poke around for an hour or two, maybe grab a bite, and say we’d been to Mexico.

  The only crossing for miles around was at the tiny town of Gringo Pass, Arizona, across from the somewhat larger Sonoyta on the Mexican side. So we headed there to see what was what.

  After parking at the gas station/store/café, otherwise known as the only place in town, I took a little stroll to scout out this lonely outpost. I found myself wishing I had spurs on ’cause the chinking sound would have accompanied the dust I was kicking up perfectly. I felt like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western. In lieu of spurs, I shook my keys as each footstep landed, just in case anyone was around to hear.

  Just as I was getting my Clint squint down, feeling like one tough hombre, Veronica caught up to me and broke the spell. A second later, a border patrol SUV came flying up beside us, finishing off the High Plains Drifter fantasy once and for all.

  No big deal, we knew the routine.

  “Where were you born?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  But this time, after the usual questions, the officer asked if we were going down to Rocky Point. We had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Across the border, to Puerto Peñasco. Are you guys headed down there?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a very good idea,” was my seemingly logical reply, but then my newly unrecognizably fearless spouse jumped in.

  “I really want to, but David here is a little worried. What’s the deal with going across?”

  Who was this person? She’d moved well beyond fear conquering and on to fear butt kicking.

  The agent acknowledged my apprehensions, but then addressed Veronica, explaining that most of my concerns were unfounded, at least at this crossing. Our new border patrol buddy agreed there are many parts of the border that better judgment would call for avoiding, especially near the big cities like Tijuana and Juárez, but Gringo Pass wasn’t one of them.

  He went on to fill us in about the inviting seaside oasis just an hour or so south, Rocky Point, or Puerto Peñasco in the native tongue.

  “You should go. It’s great down there.”

  With no reason to think he was trying to send us off to meet our maker, I conceded and agreed to head on down.

  Our preparations for the jaunt were minimal since, in a concerted effort to attract tourists, the Mexican government has declared about half of the state of Sonora, including Puerto Peñasco, a Hassle Free Zone. It’s a bit of a strange classification, perhaps a translation twist, but it means that vehicle permits are not required within the zone, and for visits up to three days a tourist card need not be acquired.

  We did purchase Mexican auto insurance though, since American policies are not recognized south of the border, and even a minor accident could become a rather large pain in the posterior without it. All traffic incidents are treated as crimes in Mexico and, as such, BAMF could be impounded and we might end up in a Mexican pokey. Coverage was available at the only place in town and only cost a few dollars a day, so there was no reason to take chances.

  I’m not going to lie, we were sitting on edge as we cleared customs and navigated BAMF through the potholed, dusty streets of Sonoyta, but once we passed beyond the typical border town, the road became very nice. A newly paved thoroughfare through a lonely stretch of the Sonoran Desert. Home to lots of cactus and very few people. An hour later, we were pulling into a campground right on the beach.

  Our border agent’s plug for Puerto Peñasco was not the least bit overblown. The beauty of the desert meeting the ocean was stunning, the sunsets spectacular, and the waterfront stretch of the little fishing village was lined with great spots for a relaxing libation or bite overlooking the Sea of Cortez. We watched the shrimp fleet heading out in the mornings, and the dolphins heading in every afternoon. Straight-out-of-the-water fresh shrimp was delivered to BAMF’s door in the evenings.

  Puerto Peñasco is all about shr
imp. Shrimp, shrimp and, yup, more shrimp. Bubba Gump would love Rocky Point. We ate shrimp sautéed, broiled, fried, ceviched, and relleno-ed, in enchiladas, tacos, scampi, and Mexican shrimp cocktails.

  After a few afternoons of sipping mariachi-serenaded ice-cold Pacificos at sundown, it was hard to imagine how a getaway so close could have felt any farther away.

  But farther away from what?

  We had whiled away most of the winter. The Boy was about to finish his first year of college, and we had no idea what we were going to do. We walked the beach and talked, walked and talked. We discussed going back to Generic Midwestern College Town, moving into one of our rental units, staying near The Boy, and finding new jobs. But that would make us boomerang parents, and neither of us wanted that. It was highly doubtful The Boy would be too thrilled either.

  We talked about finding a place in New York City, near The Piglet and Decibel. Too many people and too expensive. Not to mention, loud.

  We considered some of the wonderful towns we’d seen recently. Bozeman, too cold. Tucson, too hot. Seattle, too wet. Each place was mutually struck down. At least we were in agreement. We had found the fun side of everywhere we had been, but when it came to settling somewhere, we hadn’t found a home. Someday, back down to the islands, but neither of us was ready for that yet.

  My formerly homebody wife, when faced with the prospect of reestablishing an abode somewhere, was genuinely disturbed. She actually said, “I’m not sure I can go back to living in one place.”

  In fact, I wasn’t either. Neither one of us wanted to stop doing what we were doing. We had crossed a line, more than just a border. Veronica had not only grounded her helicopter, but sold it for scrap to become a risks-be-damned explorer, always looking over the horizon.

  As for me, I was back on the road and feeling right at home. We had gone well past the experimental stage of travel and stumbled headlong into a completely new life. We had become perpetual motion machines.

  We had to keep going. Going where? It didn’t matter, just going. Going. Going Gypsy.

  Epilogue

  We never anticipated that a twenty-eight-year-old, $3,200 motor home purchased through eBay would last beyond the first summer, which we came to call the Summer of BAMF. By autumn we fully expected his ultimate demise at any moment. But he kept going, all the way to Mexico and the Winter of Our BAMF Content.

  When it became apparent that BAMF had no intention of cashing it in, we instinctively took to following the weather, north in the summer and south for the winter, like geese.

  Along the way, Veronica created a simple little website for us. Just a page to keep a small circle of friends and family abreast of our ­goings-on, basically a travelogue and a place to post pictures of our antics.

  At some point, as we were posting accounts of our escapades, our minds went back to our initial empty nest Googling back on St. Croix. So we started voicing our opinions about empty nester life too. It may have started as a kind of digital therapy, but we figured that if we were appalled by the Alzheimer’s ads and the lack of websites promoting the empty nest transition without sorrow and lamentation, there had to be others like us. Surely we weren’t the only ones ready to embrace this new stage of our lives.

  When the first one found our site and sent an email, we were thrilled, surprised, and encouraged.

  “Woo Hoo! You are my newest role models!! We are in our early to mid 40s and we have two teens (13 and 15). Of course we love them so very very much—of course we have enjoyed the wonderful years of raising them—of course we will miss them terribly when they leave—of course we look at their baby pictures wistfully and think, “Where did the time go?” BUT . . . We are now in the countdown phase: 3 years with the oldest and 5 years with the youngest, then it is OUR TIME!!! The goal is to get them raised to adulthood—the goal is to teach them to BE adults who stand on their own two feet—the goal is to get to the end of the job of parenting and LET GO!!”

  We were not alone.

  So we stepped things up a notch and jumped into the blogosphere. Could our little family information site become an active blog? Why not? We composed our thoughts, organized our experiences, and pontificated with gusto. We even made a place for comments, and some began to trickle in.

  “Love it! I am so stoked to have found your blog. I am an almost empty-nester and have started practicing so I will be ready. Till then, I can live vicariously through your awesome adventures. Rock on!!”

  Yeah baby, role models and vicarious life exemplars! People were copacetic, and some of them were pretty funny:

  “There’s a reason teenagers are such a huge pain in the ass right before they leave—it makes it easier to let them go.”

  Interacting with these kindred spirits along the information super-highway made us want to seek out more of them. Waiting for people to accidentally stumble upon our unknown little blip among the millions of websites clogging cyberspace was not going to build the community of cohorts we were hoping for.

  Enter The Piglet. She had been monitoring our undertaking with a growing curiosity. At some point she must have decided that we might be onto something, and she had some ideas to help us spread the message. We always knew she’d come in handy sooner or later. She adamantly advised that we delve into the brave new world of ­social media. So delve we did.

  We were familiar with Facebook, but it was just another place where we communicated with close family and friends. We knew it had grown beyond just a place for college kids, but we had a lot to learn. Still, at least we had some idea how to use it.

  We had never even heard of the phenomenon called Twitter, much less ever dreamed of tweeting something or someone. To be honest, the whole idea of broadcasting tiny tidbits of information in 140-character tweets sounded kind of crazy. Crazy like a fox, since millions and millions are now doing it.

  With some Piglet tutelage, it didn’t take us long to see that there was a lot more to the social network sensation than saving on phone calls and finding old school chums. There was a whole world of people like us, restless empty nesters, ready to laugh, see the world, and love our children as adults. In short, we want to celebrate life after kids.

  So what if our butts sag or we have hairs growing in unfortunate, unwanted places? We can still visit the world’s great cities, or take off in an RV to see the next goofy attraction just around the bend. We can go back to school, volunteer to make the world a better place, or write the great American novel. We can join a roller derby team or jump out of an airplane. We can conquer our fears, and our bucket lists.

  We are GypsyNesters.

  We continue to travel the globe in constant search of new adventures. Our recent journeys include a fortnight along the Queensland coast in Australia, a month in South America and the Galapagos, a crazed ten-country Barcelona-to-Prague rental car expedition across Europe, a whirlwind foray into Central America, twenty days along Asia’s Pacific Rim, a two-week cross-country Amtrak rail pass expedition, and of course, ongoing excursions across North America in BAMF.

  If someday we settle somewhere, we will look back at this time as those crazy years when we lived in a state of perpetual motion.

  And when we do, we’ll smile.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a blog and writing a book are two entirely different animals. While we had become adept at firing off quick thoughts on random topics in an Internet setting, we never could have accomplished the jump from bloggers to aspiring authors without our independent editor and mentor, Beth Lieberman.

  From the moment we handed Beth our first draft, which probably looked like a bunch of blog posts all mashed together, she just got us—something for which we are forever grateful. Through her patient ­guidance, we learned the importance of a backstory, how to weave a consistent narrative, and that our English teachers were right: you shouldn’t try to write a book without a proper outline. Once we began looking for a publisher, Beth stuck with us throughout as adviser, cheerleader, and pillar o
f strength. Without her counsel we would have not known how to write a book proposal, approach a publishing company, or talk about our manuscript without sounding like complete idiots. Simply stated, Beth is the best.

  Then there’s Jenny Pierson, Skyhorse editor extraordinaire. Conqueror of the comma. Master of the em dash. Tackler of tenses. Hero of the hyphen. Seriously, what editor would look at an atrocity like “if I go down in a hang gliding / bungee jumping / snowboarding / street food eating blaze of glory” and masterfully suggest “if I went down in a hang-gliding/bungee-jumping/snowboarding/street-food–eating blaze of glory” without flinching? Jenny rescued us from Unknown Writer’s Purgatory, raved about us to her bosses, championed our ridiculous ideas, and still found the time to hold our hands and steady us as we took our baby steps into the publishing process. Hero of the hyphen, yes, but she is also our personal hero.

  We would also like to pass along our gratitude to:

  Tony Lyons for taking a chance on a crazy story like ours, and Jay Cassell for having faith in our manuscript.

  Danielle Ceccolini for being an early Napkin Sketch (2013) supporter—we still can’t believe it squeaked by a talent such as yourself. Anyone who can take airplane napkin stick figures scribbled by a half-asleep, brain-addled GypsyNester and turn it into the wonderful, whimsical cover it is today is Van Gogh in our eyes.

  Brian Peterson for not laughing off (okay, you laughed, but in a good way) our book cover idea.

  Uber-photographer Nick Coleman risked his life shooting our book cover photos. The fear in Veronica’s eyes is not because she’s falling from the nest, but that Nick might fall from the ladder on which he was precariously perched.

  Christine Ragasa for her amazingly creative ideas; there’s a good chance that she’s the reason you’re holding this book right now.

  Meghan Walker, who promised to crawl through windows for us, no matter how small the opening. She proved to be more agile than we could ever have dreamed.