West What makes an Airstream Boondocker? AIRdreamers, of course.

[Ray Eklund]

What makes an Airstream Boondocker? It all starts with A DREAM.

A DREAM of taking your trailer to places you had never thought possible.

A DREAM of being independent from your current life, from time to time.

A DREAM of not being a digit on a clip board or a paycheck... an unique individual.

A DREAM of finding a place on a map without regard to where... and Go to it.

AIRdreaming is a notion, a thought of wanting the forbidden fruit beyond your grasp in front of a television set. A Boondocking Adventure and YOU are one of the actors/actresses of this adventure without a script or producer to direct.

This is within your grasp. You are actually wanting to catch this dream and make it your own. Read the Threads on Boondocking. These people are no different than yourself, but AIRdreamers who have made the step into the unknown.

Dreaming within the comforts of home, watching and reading about "others" who are actively pursuing their dreams in real time, does not count as your dream. These hearty individuals are the AIRdreamers whose dreams were created by actually doing something. For once in their lives.

They can be your neighbor, a plumber, a car mechanic, a millionaire, a waitress, your banker... anyone with a dream of having an opportunity, for once, to be pushing an innate, but unused, ability to survive Off the Grid and... love it.

My wife, Nancy and I have been fortunate to have been AIRdreamers for nine years. It was a need to push our lives out of the comforts of home, a living organism held within a cocoon at a fixed location, waiting for that moment to be free of it.

Breaking out of the safety of this cocoon we all build around ourselves was an easy transition for us. We just one day decided to... do it. If Wally Byam could dream of being successful building an aluminum trailer and with years of ups and downs, succeed. You can also. Become an AIRdreamer.

This moment of enthusiasm was the result of opening a book that was given with our 2006 23 foot Safari. It was silver. This book had lots of pages. Exactly 192 pages of trial and error. A man who would NOT give up a dream and vocation. Anyone who has an Airstream, or Airstream RV, can share Wallace Byam's dream.

First. Read "Wanderlust- Airstream at 75" by Russ Banham, or any current editions. Mine is the June 2005 edition.

Airstreams provide a physical beginning to these DREAMERS that want to possess a unique trailer that is functional. These trailers have physical limitations from their creation. The Airstream trailer, an idea that began as riveted sheets of aluminum with windows in someone's back yard. Later to be a fabricated home on wheels, born within the engineering departments of Aircraft Designers and intended to have wings and powerful engines rotating propellers, yet able to towed by a vehicle on the roads with ease.

READ "Wanderlust" as I have just started and was inspired to try to put some of my initial reaction to words, that cannot be typed and express my enthusiasm.

Any trailer owner. Any tent camper. Anyone sleeping in the back of their pickup truck seeing the canopy of stars overhead... we are all AIRdreamers. It is an idea. Not a physical object, yet the Airstream is the closest anyone will get to having a Dream coming True.

Do not rely on my poorly chosen words to those of the author of this book and the trials and tribulations of Wallace Byam. On many adventures the Airstreams broke down. They were fixed and continued. Airstreams were born out of the mines of the USA after World War II from earlier attempts of taking aluminum and fabricating a Dream come True.

Be an AIRdreamer. Find that self that is waiting to step out and be first in line and not thinking about what could happen and prefer to let others go before you build the courage to push in front. Do it. It is a calling you will never regret and will be able to Dream your own dream.

[cwf]

Thank you!