RV Book Tour: LA to Austin

Here’s one of those “It could only happen on an RV book tour” kind of stories. And even though I should be taking a nap right now (I need it!), I can’t sleep because I really want to – NEED to – tell this story.

I’ve been sick – as in two trips to the ER, it’s going to cost me over 10 grand sick – so I thought I better find someone to help me do the 1,400-mile-drive from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas. (Actually, I did have someone lined up but a broken front tooth took her out of the running.) The deal for the co-driver was I pay for all their meals and their one-way airline ticket. I emailed a few unemployed people I know in LA to see if they could spare a few days off. In LA, it’s not too hard to find film editors and actors and other creative types in between gigs. But as a back up, I also posted a want ad on my Facebook business page, TheWorld Needs More Pie. Within five minutes, Barbara Fascat Szendrey, a woman in Austin – my destination – volunteered her husband. She even suggested flight times. I didn’t think I could get an affordable one-way ticket from Austin to LA at the very last minute, and I wasn’t even sure her husband would say yes, but lo and behold, everything fell perfectly into place all within an hour of that Facebook post.

My parents drove me to LAX the next evening to pick up Paul Szendrey, Barbara’s husband, who had been a longtime follower of my blog, ever since I lived in Terlingua, Texas. Since before Marcus died. I had never met him in person. But I have learned the ways to build trust in strangers, especially when the relationship centers around pie. It worked so beautifully last summer when Facebook friend Sue from Allentown, Pennsylvania, flew to Iowa to spend a week working with me at my Pitchfork Pie Stand. We had never met in person, but after five days spent in the American Gothic House drinking coffee at the kitchen table by morning, making pie by afternoon and eating dinners outside on the back patio by night, we cried at the airport when we had to say goodbye.

My dad holds the sign like a glorified limo driver.
Except limo drivers don't smile nearly as much.

At LAX, my mom dropped off my dad and me while she drove off to find parking. I had told Paul, “You’ll recognize me because I’ll bring the ‘FREE PIE’ sign.” My dad held the sign as I searched the throngs of passengers streaming into the baggage claim area. Many of them smiled when they saw the sign. Or gave us  the thumbs up. That alone made for a fun and interesting way to spend an evening at one of the world’s busiest airports. And then we saw Paul. Or he saw us. We exchanged warm welcoming hugs and soon we were giving him a tour of the beach communities, pouring him a martini, and putting him to bed in preparation for the next morning’s departure back East.

That's Paul, left, and my dad, right. With waffles, far left!
Oh, and Paul's tiny travel companion, Ribirto the Frog.

We had a nice send off of a hearty breakfast of waffles, bacon and eggs – Thank you, Mom! – and off we went in The Beast. Riverside, Palm Springs, Blythe, Phoenix, Tuscon…we checked off the cities as the miles clicked by and the gas gauge dipped lower. The following line became our constant refrain: “I wish we had more time to stop and check this place out,” as we passed wilderness areas and mountain ranges and rock formations and Joshua trees and Saguaro cactus fields.

Thumbs up to this Benson, Arizona KOA campground.
Especially the classical music playing in the clean showers.

We stopped overnight at a KOA Campground in Benson, Arizona, so we could “refresh” the RV (i.e.: empty the waste tanks and refill the water tanks). And since the water heater hasn’t been working this entire six-week book tour, we used the campground’s showers, which was an unusual treat because not only were they spotlessly clean, they had piped in classical music. While I think this is a very nice touch, I can’t say it helps in their desert water conservation. Because I was enjoying the music so much I took an extra long shower! Just saying.

When we passed through El Paso and then came to Van Horn, Texas, I managed to keep the grief pangs at bay. This was where one takes the turn off to Big Bend National Park. It's my old travel turf from that summer, the summer of 2009. The summer I rented that miner’s cabin in the Chihuahua Desert. The summer I was working on my pie memoir, the first version. The summer Marcus died. I was in love with that part of Texas. I still am. I felt the longing to go back. To take the exit south. To breathe in the wide open space. To gaze at the black sky filled with a billion stars. But in this case our refrain was probably a blessing. “Too bad we don’t have time to stop.”

Soaking my feet in the Llano River, while Team Terrier swims.

In fact, we were pushing so hard to get to Austin with so little time, we didn’t even stop for a proper meal until the third day of the journey, when we reached Llano, Texas. “There’s a good barbeque place,” Paul insisted. But when we arrived it was only 10:30AM. The place, Cooper’s Texas BBQ, didn’t open until 11. We found an easy solution. We walked Team Terrier first, discovering by accident the Llano River and an ideal place for the dogs to swim – and for me to soak my feet. This was a luxury. Anytime I've had a chance to just sit still and take in a dose of nature has been a luxury on this 6-week trip.

Cooper's BBQ. A must-stop on any RV tour!

And then, at last, a meal.  A big meaty, saucy, Texas-size meal. Oh. My. God. Yum!

Meanwhile, back in Austin, Barbara (Paul’s wife), had been texting and sending photos of what she had been doing to pass the time while her husband was driving me, my two terriers and my RV across the country. She had been baking pies! Barbara had just retired from her job as a sheriff’s department supervisor. She had also just read my book, “Making Piece.” She had never made a homemade pie crust before. Nor had she made any of the kinds of pies I write about in my story. My book is a memoir, not a cookbook, but I do include five recipes in the back, recipes that have direct relevance to the story. So while Paul and I were rattling down the highway at 60 miles per hour, Barbara was banging around in her kitchen making pie after pie after pie. She made the ones included in my book and several others, so by the time Paul and I pulled up in the driveway, we were greeted with EIGHT different pies to try!

Barbara saw us approaching – you can’t miss The Beast when it motors down a cul de sac – and rushed out to greet us. Another warm hug was exchanged with a woman who was previously a stranger, who is clearly now a friend.

Barbara Szendrey's Pie Experiment Extravaganza!
A whopping success!

I sat in the Szendrey’s kitchen – perched on a bar stool at the island where all the pies were lined up as if it were the Iowa State Fair – and proceeded to sample slices of each of her creations. In this order I ate the following: coconut cream, French silk, peach, apple, Shaker lemon, peanut butter, Tollhouse Cookie, and something called Jeff Davis, which is a buttermilk custard pie. There was no banana cream, but I didn’t say anything, as I had enough to fill my belly as it was! And the verdict? Every single bite was amazing, stupendous, mind blowing! This was damn impressive pie!

“Barbara,” I insisted in between gobbling down bites and moaning with approval. “It’s clear you are too young and energetic to retire. I know what you are going to do.” I looked up from my pie plates and smiled at her. “You are going to open a pie shop.”

I don’t know if she will. But I hope she does. What I do know is that I’m so very grateful to this Texas couple I met on Facebook. I am grateful, once again, for the community building, connecting powers of pie. I’m also grateful my health is returning and that The Beast is still holding together for its final leg of the trip. (I'm on my third roll of duck tape. And Paul made some repairs, donating six screws and some caulking to keep one of the side walls from falling off.) This time next week I will be parked at the American Gothic House, where I will be making a few pies of my own. The Pitchfork Pie Stand opens May 26.

RV Grief (er, BOOK) Tour: Welcome to the ER

I once heard that grief is held in the lungs. If that is true then it’s no wonder I’ve had bronchitis since I arrived in Portland on my book tour. (That was on April 6!) Portland is where Marcus and I had lived together for nearly two years out of our six-year marriage. Portland is where Marcus died, suddenly, unexpectedly of a ruptured aorta. Portland is where I spent that first year after his death tackling the arduous, unenviable process of grieving.

Marcus has been gone two and half years. I have done the work. The counseling. The crying. The pie baking. During that year in Portland I conditioned myself to being back in a city loaded with so many memories—the good, the bad, the sad memories—of Marcus. So coming back for a brief visit, I thought I would be fine. I was not. I hadn’t planned for situations like the fact that the adorable bookstore, Broadway Books, where I did one of my events, was across the street from the Zeller Chapel of the Roses funeral home where Marcus’s Portland service was held.

The Beast parked at my friends' house in Portland, the place
where Marcus and I spent our very last days together.

And so the aches in the joints, the muscles—especially in the heart—and the cough began. Grief had firmly established itself as a passenger on the tour.

My cough worsened when my RV book tour moved north to Seattle. In Seattle I was not immune to memories of Marcus. Seattle is where I lived when our courtship began. Marcus’s job brought him to Portland for weeks at a time so he spent his weekends with me in my cozy, romantic logger’s cabin in the woods, just 15 miles from where I was working at MSN.com. And because Europeans get such generous vacations, he spent an entire month with me there once. Driving around Seattle in The Beast to my book events and TV appearances took me right past the restaurants where Marcus and I had eaten, the movie theaters where we’d seen films, the coffee houses where we’d lingered and talked and fallen deeper in love.

At University Book Store in Seattle, in Q&A with my dear friend journalist Diane Mapes.

And so the cough grew deeper still.

As I headed south for San Francisco, relieved I would be free from the memories that were wearing me down, believing grief would stay behind in the Pacific Northwest, I drove past snow-covered Mount Shasta and finally parked in Mill Valley, California. But I couldn’t escape grief there either. Marcus and I had done this drive from Oregon to Northern California together several times. How could I have forgotten? And why couldn’t I just savor the beautiful memories instead of wallowing in sadness? Why couldn’t I be excited that I was on a book tour? A BOOK TOUR! I have always dreamed of being a published author. And now I was out on a cross-country adventure, promoting my book. My published book. My book about my dead husband.

Dubbed by my publisher as “Beth Howard’s Pie Across the Nation RV Book Tour,” I now privately renamed it “Beth Howard’s Retracing her Life with Marcus RV Grief Tour.”

By the time I reached Los Angeles I was on my third bottle of cough medicine. I finally got a prescription for antibiotics, managed to make it through all but one of my scheduled events, plus more TV appearances, without hacking my lungs out in public, and kept plugging along. Don’t think I was immune to grief in LA either. Marcus and I spent a lot of time in Southern California together. But being in the sun and warmth, and staying with my parents (who relocated to the beach from Iowa ten years ago), provided a temporary salve. But only temporary as I had to move on to San Diego for a few days, where I spent a day signing books at a farmers market, did another pie demo on live TV, and taught a pie class.

My speech in Orlando.

Bronchitis is a tenacious bastard. I was still coughing when I took the red-eye flight to Florida, to go to the National Pie Championships. Luckily I wasn’t judging pie this year. I wouldn’t have been able to taste much of anything with all that mucous in the back of my throat. But I did have to give a speech and pie demo at the Great American Pie Festival, the NPC’s joint event. (Side note here: If you read my book then let me just say, I was VERY well behaved in Orlando this time. When I wasn’t doing my work, I was too sick to leave my room!)

The trip to Orlando didn’t add to the grief, but it added to my exhaustion. When you’re sick, you’re supposed to rest. When you’re on a book tour, well, too bad. The show must go on.

I was in Florida for three days, after which I flew back to San Diego where I picked up my dogs from the dog sitter, got back in the RV, and drove straight back to my parents’ apartment. I had a few days’ grace period with nothing scheduled—except a long drive to Austin. Thoroughly depleted by this time, I postponed my Texas departure and parked The Beast at the beach so I could sleep. Except that the first night back, at 2:00 in the morning, I wasn’t sleeping. I was writhing in pain. The muscles in my neck and head and shoulders were seized up so severely I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe.

If you know me then you know I don’t run to the doctor when I’m sick. I figure I can muscle my way through anything, tough it out, and whatever it is it will go away eventually. And having been an extreme athlete, I have an exceptionally high tolerance for pain. But this time, at 2:00 a.m., I woke up my parents and cried out the words I have never said before: “I need to go to the hospital.”

Some fun this book tour was turning out to be.

My parents moved to a new apartment in Redondo Beach less than a year ago, so my trip to the ER was new territory for them too. How to find one? One of the most useful things I’ve learned on this book tour is how to use my location services/map search on my iPhone. Three miles to the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance. We were quickly on our way.

Both my parents came with me and waited, one sitting on each side of me. I’m almost 50 and here I was, feeling like I was eight again. Comforting, yes, but even their loving support didn’t take the pain in my head and neck away. I was worried about what was wrong with me. Infection from the lingering bronchitis? Pneumonia? Meningitis? Brain tumor? The swelling in my neck was so extreme I thought it might cut off my airways completely. But at least, now, if I did keel over I would get tended to immediately. (If I had come in bleeding profusely from the head or if I had been escorted into the ER in hand cuffs, I would have gotten even more immediate attention. Or, if like Marcus, I had come in via ambulance through the back door, well… Oh, so you see, grief found me again! In the ER. And hung out there with me all night.)

I was finally seen by a doctor—Dr. Gentle Hands, I’ll call him—a kind and compassionate man whose wisdom and impeccable bedside manner made me think if I could only just get a hug from his teddy bear body that alone might cure me. He ordered chest and neck X-rays, pumped muscle relaxants and pain killers into my veins through an IV, and finally sent me home. At 8:30AM.

I went back to the RV and slept, still in pain, for the next two days.

Dr. GH called a few days later. He wanted me to come back to the hospital. Huh?! What ER doctor ever calls a patient to come back in to the ER? He had already pre-arranged for me to see the daytime doctor on call so I wouldn’t have to wait. And he had ordered a CT scan. Now I was really scared. I didn’t have a fever, so it wasn’t meningitis. I didn’t have trauma to the neck, so it wasn’t a spinal injury (even though Ari’s suitcase fell on my head during Week Three of the book tour when driving from Seattle to San Francisco. California roads are so riddled with potholes that the bag dislodged and tumbled down from the bunk above me. Luckily I wasn’t the one driving.) X-rays showed my lungs were clear, so it wasn’t pneumonia. It must be a brain tumor.

My parents dutifully, lovingly, unhesitatingly both came with me again.

Back in the ER, my new doctor—Dr. Dark and Handsome—was so good looking it was hard to focus on what he was saying instead of on his dark curly hair, his shadow of a beard, his dreamy brown eyes and his fit body. What was he saying? Something about acute inflammation, tendonitis, probably brought on by the coughing from the bronchitis, lack of rest and that (damn) red-eye flight to Florida. I snapped out of fuzzy romance dream scene when he finally said, “But let’s wait and see what the CT scan results show.” And then he left us.

While we were waiting in hallway chairs (no lying on gurney for me this time) for the results of the CT scan, a priest approached, making a bee line for us. “Oh no! He’s coming to talk to us,” I said to my mom. “This isn’t good.” But my mom, who has worked for the Catholic church for many years, didn’t consider he might be there to read me my Last Rites. She struck up a friendly conversation with him, chatting with him about priests they knew in common. I excused myself and took a phone call I had been told I might be getting. It was from a Today Show producer. When you are trying to promote a new book, you take the call from the Today Show. No matter what. Even when you are sitting in an ER with an IV attached to your arm dripping electrolytes into your broken down, dehydrated body.

Dr. DH returned to give us the results of the CT scan. No brain tumor! The diagnosis was something I still don’t quite comprehend: calcific tendonitis—which is something like calcified fragments lodged in a tendon that get inflamed and eventually ruptures, the rupture being excruciatingly painful but it's when the relief finally comes. “Is that like passing a kidney stone in your neck?” I asked. Uh, not really. He prescribed prednisone and sent me on my way.

After that whole ordeal, I am finally continuing on the RV Book Tour today, heading 1,400 miles east to Austin. I found someone to help me with the 21-hour drive in The Beast, a longtime Facebook friend named Paul Szendrey. And while I know grief will still come along for this leg of the trip—it’s a trip Marcus and I made together, with the RV, when we moved to Mexico and back—I am looking forward to getting on my way.

I’ve met so many kind, caring and interesting people during this grand adventure. I’ve been so welcomed in every city at every event, had such glowing reviews about my book with such huge press, had such nice emails from people thanking me for sharing my story. I'm sure the adventure will continue, in some new form, but for now it’s time to turn the RV around and travel back east. 

I am looking forward to returning to the nurturing, grounding sanctuary, I have created for myself in the American Gothic House. It’s a place where I can breathe freely and my lungs don’t hold anything but the fresh, wide open, fertile farmland air.

NOTE:  If you are in Austin, please join me at my next book event at BookPeople on Tuesday, May 8,at 7PM. Free pie will be served. And I promise I won’t cough.

RV Book Tour: Week Five, Stats So Far

It is Week Five out of six on my "Pie Across the Nation" RV Book Tour to promote my new memoir, "Making Piece." I've traveled from Eldon, Iowa (where I live in the American Gothic House), driving the 24-foot RV my husband left behind. Affectionately called "The Beast," I packed up my two terriers, my pie baking supplies, and my "Free Pie" sign and left home on April 3. In the past month I have covered the entire West Coast with a side trip (by plane) to Florida. Here are the stats so far:

Number of days on the road: 32
Number of cities visited: 13
Number of tanks of gas: 12 (That's a rough guess. I'm too afraid to add up the receipts yet!)

Number of times I've emptied out the RV waste tanks: 3
Number of rolls of duck tape used to keep RV parts from falling off: 2
Amount of money spent on RV repairs: $800 (for new brakes)

Number of pies I've made in the RV: 5
Number of pies I burned in the RV: 1

Number of pies I baked in the RV that came out lopsided from being parked at an angle: 1 (That's a Shaker Lemon)

Number of times I've been on the front page of a newspaper: 3 (the biggest one being the LA TIMES! Pictured below: Seattle Times)

Number of times I've done pie demos on live television: 7

Number of times I've had my face air brushed with makeup to appear on HD TV: 1
(To see video of TV appearances & other press, see my news page)

Number of times people honked because they love pie: 187
Number of times people honked because they love pie when I was trying to take a nap: 6
Number of times people honked NOT because they love pie: in LA, countless!

Number of books sold: no idea (publisher says stats won't be available for 6 months)
Number of pens used up from signing books: 4

Number of slices of pie I've eaten: 15 (not enough!)
--banana cream 3  (from The Apple Pan in West Los Angeles)

--blackberry 1  (from High 5 Pie in Seattle)
--tripleberry 2 (one in Santa Monica, one in Florida)
  --strawberry rhubarb 1 (homemade in Olympia, WA)
-- marionberry 1  (from Bipartisan Cafe in Portland)

--key lime 2  (ordered from room service in Orlando, Florida)
--pecan 2  (from The Apple Pan in West Los Angeles)
--apple 3  (a few slices of my own homemade pie)

Number of bottles of cough syrup consumed: 4 (a chronicle of my bronchitis will be my next post)

Number of trips to the ER: 2 (bronchitis related -- ugh! -- more on that in the next post as well)

Number of times I've said, "I just want to go home":  I'm not going to tell you!

RV Book Tour: Week Three, California

I'm sitting at a Starbucks in Malibu right now with just a little time left before for tonight's 7pm book event at Diesel Book Store. I dropped off Ari Cheren, my last travel companion/co-driver/videographer, at his apartment in LA and am now traveling on my own in The Beast. Well, me and Team Terrier. But Ari left me with one last video segment to share with you -- the journey from Portland to San Francisco to Los Angeles.



With Ari jetting off to New York for his next field producer assignment, guess I'm going to have to get back to writing my own blog posts again.

Still Week Two on the RV Book Tour: SEATTLE!

Ari Cheren's video editing is getting even better. Here's his second installment of the "Pie Across the Nation" RV Book Tour video update. Here we are in Seattle. As you can see, it's been a jam-packed schedule. And as you can hear, I've lost my voice. With a little help from Vick's Vapo-Rub, my lungs and vocal cords are gradually improving. Enjoy the show. And enjoy the music -- it's by the Portland band, Keep Your Fork, There's Pie.  (Blogger is cutting off the right side of the video. If you want to watch in full screen mode, you can either double click right on the video or view it over at YouTube: http://youtu.be/7iC2Rdj-ryY)

RV Book Tour: Week Two, Portland, Oregon

Since I have had no time to write, here's a glimpse into Week Two of the "Pie Across the Nation" RV Book Tour in the form of a video. Thanks to Ari Cheren -- this week's co-"pielot" driving The Beast -- who is also a field producer. He's worked on shows including "Amazing Race" and now...my "Making Piece" book tour.

RV Book Tour: Week One -- Saint Glenn

The RV Book Tour for Making Piece is underway. The Beast, with its new decals that read "Pie Across the Nation" and "Honk if you love pie," has logged 2,000 miles so far -- which translates as about six tanks of gas. We have crossed six states -- Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and, finally, Oregon.

The entire first day and a half looked like this.

Our first overnight was in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
Wall-Mart allows free RV parking. Too bad there are no electrical hook-ups.

One leftover piece of Arlene Kildow's coconut cream pie made it on the trip.
But not for long. I ate it the first afternoon.

The only way I was able to sit in the front passenger seat was if I was
willing to have Team Terrier on my lap. So mostly I sat in the seat behind them.

Woke up to my worst nightmare when we stopped in Ogden, Utah for the night.
SNOWSTORM! Thank god it didn't last more than an hour and the roads stayed clear.

No sooner did the snow end, the windstorm began. It was a relentless, harrowing wind
with gusts of 50 mph that rocked the RV all over the road. I even got a little seasick.

This is Glenn Thrush, or "Saint Glenn" as I call him. He's an old friend/
coworker from Microsoft who offered to help me to the long drive from Iowa to  Portland.
He drove for 12 hours straight the day of snow & wind, and I rewarded him with PB&J sandwiches.
I think I got the better end of that stick. THANK YOU, GLENN!

We made it in the nick of time for my first book event at Pacific Pie Company.
The trip should have taken 5 days. We did it in just over three. Phew!

My body still feels like it's in motion. Probably because I haven't sat still since we arrived. More pics to come of our events at Pacific Pie Company and Bipartisan Cafe. But right now I have a packed schedule of interviews and another Portland book event tonight -- at Broadway Books at 7.

Time to get this day started! And the RV Book Tour "Pie Across the Nation" adventure continues.