Riveted

Gah! They have silver!

(Posted by Laura)

Colorful Tivoli Audio

I have one of these little guys (a non colorful version) in my photography studio and I love it (I know, kinda low tech for me, huh?) It has surprisingly good sound and cool but simple retro styling. I just saw these brightly colored ones and thought they'd go great in a properly matched Airstream interior.

(Posted by Laura)

Fitness on the Road

Getting in a good amount of exercise while traveling around the Pacific Northwest in a trailer in the winter can sometimes be a challenge. We hike and walk in the rain (Gore-Tex) and that's fine, but sometimes you just don't feel like being out in the cold wet weather. I thought I'd compile a little list of the things we have and use for keeping in shape (or, trying to get in shape, whichever) while on the road.

We have two folding Dahon bikes that I bought for us after winning some money from a slot machine in Las Vegas. If you know me, you'll think that's funny. I'm not a big Vegas fan, and neither am I much of a gambler. We were in Las Vegas for a friend's birthday party, and we stopped spur-of-the-moment and decided we'd each spend $20 bucks on penny (!!!) slots. We were to either (a) double our money, or (b) lose it all and we wouldn't stop 'til either thing happened. I was playing one of those slot machines that has all the combinations lined up...straight across, diagonal, etc. and you bet a certain amount for certain rows or combos, and I had no clue what I was doing. I mixed it up every time, and just pulled the lever (or pushed the button for variety). Pretty soon at about ten dollars into this game, my machine lit up and started making noise. I'd won something!! What had I won?? I had no idea. But the machine kept going. I looked at the levels, and it looked as if I'd either won 4 dollars, 38 dollars, 160 dollars, or 1007 dollars (roughly). It passed the 4 dollar mark and kept going. It passed the 38 dollar mark and kept going. It took quite a while. The lady next to me looked over...I had my feet up on the ledge and I was texting my mom ("I won!") and I looked up and her and said "I'm winning." She asked how much and I said "No clue."

Anyway, with my winnings (turns out it was just over $1000) I bought us the majority of two really nice folders, with racks and upgraded tires....but no fenders. So we don't ride those much in the rain.

Wow, that was a long story to get to folding bikes. So we have a pair of these: Dahon Speed P8

Folded, they're small and fit nicely in the back of the truck (in sweet carrying case/bags):

We have these racks (but not these fenders):

Okay so those are the bikes. 

For the times when it's crappy outside and we want to stay inside, I got us this set of elastic resistance bands called Bodylastics:

It all fits in that black bag and stores nicely under the bed. There are two doorway anchors which work great in the door of the Airstream. It's a versatile, compact solution for resistance training. We also have one of these:

...and a yoga mat. Turns out trailer yoga is totally doable. :)

Perhaps our favorite fitness equipment, however, is the Fitbit. It's fabulous. You just clip it to a pocket and it tracks how many steps you've taken, how many flights of stairs you've gone up, how many calories you burn in a day/how active you are, as well as your sleep efficiency. It syncs to a web app (and/or iPhone app) and in the app you can enter any activities you do, what you eat, etc. using a simple, colorful, well-designed interface full of helpful graphs and charts.

It's so easy to just get sucked into work (or reading, or whatever) when we're traveling, and this cool little device (and its web app and iPhone app) all work together to remind you of the exercise you're getting (or not getting). Highly recommended.

So there you have it. Travel trailer fitness. 

(Posted by Laura)

Streaming the Super Bowl

Well, it's Super Bowl Sunday, and we're in the Airstream... and we only get one network channel and it's not the channel that is showing the game.  

Oh my!

However, we do have iPads and iPhones - with unlimited data plans. We also have good 3G service here. Best of all - at home, connected to our cable TV box/DVR, we have a Slingbox.

The Slingbox allows you to control and watch your home cable box from anywhere you have a good internet connection. You can do it from any computer web browser (which would be a bad idea for us because we do NOT have unlimited data plans on the 3G cards we use for our Airstream Wi-Fi network, and watching a 3 hour game would use probably an entire month worth of data). You can also do it from an app on the iPhone and iPad. Since we have unlimited data plans on those, they'll be our ticket to the Super Bowl.

We have a nice little cable that plugs into the ipad and routes the video signal to our flat screen TV. It routes the audio to the Airstream's sound system.  We just plug that baby in and fire up the Slingbox app on our iPad. The Slingbox app finds its way through the Internet back to our home cable box... tunes in the right channel... (sets the game to record on our DVR just in case anything goes wrong)... and voilá! We are watching the game on our Airstream TV - complete with pause, replay, and fast-forward.  

Now if we could just stream some guacamole...

(Posted by Kevin)

Jambox in the Airstream

Kevin got us me one of these for Christmas for the Airstream. Now, I can play music from my iPhone straight to a great-sounding speaker without needing to have it tethered to the speaker at all...totally wireless. So I can keep playing Words with Friends or whatever, with a soundtrack (and the control of it) right it my hand. It's great!

From their website:

JAMBOX delivers stunning hi-fi audio in a portable wireless speaker so compact you won't believe it when you hear it. It's loud. With an output capacity of 85 decibels, JAMBOX fills even the largest rooms. Unlike other portable speakers, JAMBOX is powered by a pair of proprietary, highly sophisticated acoustic drivers, unmatched in their ability to produce extreme high (tweeter) and low (woofer) frequencies from a single, ultra-small dome speaker. They work in concert with an innovative moving-wall passive bass radiator and airtight enclosure to deliver shimmering highs and thumping lows that you can literally feel - the richest sound all in the palm of your hand.

(Posted by Laura)

Retro Breakfast

I think this looks like it would go perfectly in a vintage trailer, don't you?

Available here, but currently out of stock.

Electric Heat in the Airstream

We recently picked up one of these to use when we're plugged in (to save propane) and I highly recommend it. It's incredibly quiet, small and portable, and can heat the whole trailer just fine.

We got ours here.

(Posted by Laura)

We won!

Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the "Show Us Your Chiasso" contest, and thank you Chiasso. We are the proud owners of a $500 Chiasso gift card (not for long!!)  I don't think I've ever won a contest before...this was a good one to win!

(Posted by Laura)

Op Art Afghans

I think the AS needs this (nice, now it's "the Airstream needs....")
The Crystal jacquard afghan from Core Design.

Lovely and op-arty.

Images: Core Design

(Posted by Laura)

Someone needs this mod set of 50s barware, don't they?

Etsy ($50)

(Posted by Laura)

Add some silver to your aluminum

Chiasso has some great pillows if you'd like to add a little more bling to your bling:

 
(Posted by Laura)

Tea Towels!

These tea towels from www.todryfor.com are super cute and I'm having trouble deciding which 15 of 'em I want! :)

(Posted by Laura)