In the Vans: Our Home Away from Home
Not only did we travel more this year, but we also had the largest class
in my four years of teaching the field course, numbering 23 students and
two instructors. I was glad that I had requested three vans for our
two camping trips, given that we needed all the room we had for camping
gear and the extra number of warm bodies. It was also fortunate that
two of the vans had roof racks, upon which much of the students’ gear was
placed for our last two trips. Ironically, I had ordered the three
vans for the final two trips because Transportation Services at NAU had
informed me two months earlier that no vans with roof racks were available
for those dates. The other option was to take a third van so that
gear could be stored inside the vans, and the students split up among them.
As it ended up, we needed the roof racks and the extra space, given the
large class. Two vans would have been quite miserable for all involved,
since their concept of a “15 passenger van” is quite an exaggeration: you
can really only fit eight or nine adults comfortably inside. I don’t
know how they stretched it to “15,” kind of like the number of servings
that they tell you are inside each package of food.
With an additional van, there were some interesting challenges not encountered
with two vans in the past. The first involved our favored method
of communication, CB radios. In my first year of organizing the field
class with Lee, I came up with the idea of purchasing two CB radios with
external speakers, so that we could talk to each other on the road.
I had thought of that during my first field course experience with George
Van Otten, given that sometimes the vans would get separated, or one would
stop, or any number of situations would occur where communication would
have helped. Thus, in 1999 the department agreed to purchase two
radio sets for the course. I then went on a shopping spree to Radio
Shack, chose the radios, antennas, and external speakers. It’s always
fun spending money that’s not your own. In this case, I also felt
the radios would greatly enhance the experience of our field class, and
since then I have not been proven wrong. For three years, we have
actually become accustomed to having CBs in our vans and to communicating
back and forth.
Aside from keeping in touch with road trip logistics, we have come to use
the CBs for instructional purposes as well. The external speaker
in each van sits on the dash. As we’re passing a certain place along
the highway, Lee can instruct our van about what we are seeing, and I can
instruct them in a similar manner. So occasionally there are impromptu
lectures provided by us over the radios. We have both noticed a concern
with this, however. That is, we have to repeat the information twice,
once over the radio and once to the students in our own van. It is
tough for students sitting more than one seat back to hear us from the
front seat. The air conditioner is invariably always on, as well,
and the relatively noisy vent is just behind the back seats. Thus,
it’s actually easier to talk to the other van through the radio and the
external speaker than it is to talk to our own students! We’re still
trying to figure out how to solve this dilemma – so far we’re thinking
of speakers for the backs of our own vans, or a PA system, or megaphone,
or something. We’ll have to think on it for next year.
Aside from that, the
catch this year involved our having three vans instead of two. For
this purpose, we needed another CB. Thus, I simply decided to equip
the third van with my old CB that I’ve had since my grad school days in
Illinois. Despite the tinny speaker in the radio, it served us well,
and it actually saved us after one of the other radio’s microphones went
dead outside of St. George, Utah.
If there was any real “hitch” or “unexpected challenge” to our final four-day
trip, it involved the radios. Upon pulling out of our campsite at
Snow Canyon north of St. George to begin our third day, we discovered that
one of the radios was not transmitting properly. For some time, we
weren’t sure what the problem was, but Lee’s van was having trouble transmitting.
Well, all the way from the Snow Canyon through St. George we all played
with our radios to try to get them to work. We had switched radios
and switched mikes, and tried various things, but to no avail. I
was actually a bit surprised at how important it was for us to have working
radios – we had become quite accustomed to them working. Lee, in
the front van, actually had us all pull over at a convenience store in
St. George, Utah, to try to deal with the radios as best we could.
He had even pointed out a Radio Shack a few blocks down where we might
try to get a new microphone. At the convenience store it occurred
to me how dependent we had actually become on the radios. But I guess
that’s a good thing, we have used them for all sorts of communication between
the vans, and so they were a sort of “life line,” as the “Millionaire”
show with Regis Philbin would call it. There will be plenty of radio-related
stories in the future, I’m sure.
Finally, since we were heading for Las Vegas from St. George, we decided
to set up the radios in the vans so that Lee could speak from his van,
I could speak from my van, and the third van would be able to hear us for
instructions, even if they couldn’t respond. That ended up being
the best possible solution, quite necessary for navigating in the heavy
traffic of greater Las Vegas. Along the two-hour ride on I-15 to
Vegas, however, my radio would occasionally emit an obnoxious “squeal”
in the other two vans. As we approached Vegas, then, we experimented
with getting rid of the squeel. The student sitting next to me up
front actually held the radio in his lap for a while, thinking that it
was a grounding problem. Then I held it in my lap while I was driving.
That didn’t help all that much, and as we pulled into a “bathroom break”
at a rural store outside of Vegas, Lee figured out the problem. My
old CB did not like the external speaker that was plugged into it – it
was causing some kind of feedback. After Lee removed the jack for
the speaker, the radio was fine after that. Fortunately, he figured
that out prior to heading into the urban bowels of Vegas.
Another challenge with three vans involved the number of drivers required.
Unfortunately, we have found that the vans do not drive themselves.
Who would drive the extra van, and who would be extra drivers for Lee and
I? This means planning ahead on my part. I have to recruit
student drivers in GGR 380, the prerequisite class during spring semester,
from which all field class students emerge. Interesting little story:
I teach 380, and so two years ago I asked the class if anyone would be
interested in driving for the field course. Big mistake. Predictably,
two of the flakiest students in the class raised their hands enthusiastically,
as I imagined myself putting my life into the hands of these people.
Not a good idea, I thought. Since then I have basically ended up
hand-picking student drivers, usually our so-called “returning students”
who have been adults for some time and tend to be more responsible than
the typical college kid out of high school. Yes, a stereotype, but
it’s generally true. This year, knowing that we would have three
vans, I sought to recruit at least three students for driving. Last
year I did allow a student to alternate driving with me, and there were
advantages to that – being able to read up on sites located up the road,
and to chat with students without worrying about staying on the road.
Well, I successfully recruited three returning students to drive this year,
and they ultimately either drove their own van or helped us with the driving.
Although we covered more miles this year, I came to realize that driving
isn’t so bad after all, and admittedly, I do prefer the control of being
in the driver’s seat. We stop quite often, as well, so it is rare
for us to be on the road for more than an hour or two at a time.
Thus, “butt-sore” usually isn’t a factor.
As one might imagine, a good chunk of the students’ time in this course
is spent in the vans, locked inside this steel and metal rolling tin can
for collective hours a day. Thus, they tend to socialize in various
ways and get to know each other better than they might without the travelling.
This year, the “van dynamics” were quite interesting. In fact, this
was the first time I ever saw a group of students in one van become close
enough to form their own identity: by the second week, they came to call
themselves simply, “gray van”. By the time we started the first camping
trip to the White Mountains, “gray van” had been adopted as the identity
of the seven students who regularly traveled in my van. Quite simply,
the other two vans were white and had roof racks, which made us a bit more
individual in terms of our transportation – we had the only light gray
van, with no roof rack. I must say that not having a roof rack was
a nice plus, it was one less thing to worry about. On the first day
trips, the students divided equally between the two vans – one gray and
one white, and sometimes a few of them crossed over from one trip to the
next. It was these “crossovers” or “van crossers” as I called them
humorously, who gave us a “look” into the social dynamics of the other
vans. On our trip to Jerome, one student in our van made a comment
that reflected what I had been thinking: that is, he wondered aloud how
the students would divide themselves up when we added the third van for
the camping trips. We soon found out.
While packing our gear and loading up the three vans for our first camping
trip, we told the students to divide themselves equally among the three
vans. And they did. After that first morning with three vans,
there was very little “van crossing” for the rest of the course.
There were, I think, five “loyalists” to Gray Van, as our students called
it – the van I was responsible for the whole time. Paul, whom I would
consider to be this year’s version of “class clown” (in a positive sense),
decided to switch to “Third Van” as I called it, I think because he was
a bit freer to verbally express himself. Paul, by the way, was an
interesting individual, academically at the top of his class, and an excellent
geographer. Straight “A”s on virtually all assignments, and excellent
reasoning and critical thinking skills. On the other side was his
dare-devil streak, seemingly attracted to any big cliff and/or water body
that he could find. If there was water nearby and a little free time,
he was in it, it was that simple. On our first night camping, at
Fool Hollow State Park near Show Low, Paul was in his glory. There
was water and tall cliffs from which to jump. No sooner had we arrived
at the campsite than I looked across the lake from above and saw Paul and
a few other brave souls swimming across the lake headed for the basaltic
cliffs. Soon after that, he was jumping off. I told some campers
“next door” while watching the show that the students were free to do whatever
they wanted within reason while at the campground, but “I refused to take
them to the hospital”. I used that line several times during the
course, when students and steep cliffs came into close contact.
One of our other students coined the term “Gray Van” to provide the group
in my van with their own simple identity. And it’s tough to exaggerate
how serious this became: I learned while grading their papers in the week
following our last trip that the “Gray Van” crowd was having their own
social gathering at one of the student's houses. Good for them, I
thought: they will remember their experiences for the rest of their lives.
Gray Van also promoted a “word of the day,” which was fine with me as long
as the “word” consisted of something related to geography. Especially
on the last trip, the words ranged from “desert varnish” to “bajada” (Spanish
for “alluvial fan”). There were a few others in there on other days
that I can’t immediately recall. Typically, the “word of the day”
originated from a type of landscape feature that was discussed in the morning,
and one student in the van would claim it to be the word of the day.
The word then became the brunt of jokes throughout the rest of the day.
Or, if someone asked a geographically related question, the default answer
would often consist of the word of the day.
The “Gray Van” identity thing became useful to me as well, as I encouraged
pride among the group. They were typically the first ones ready to
go and the cleanest of the three vans (at least in their opinion).
At our last camp site, though, Gray Van was anything but clean on its interior:
food lying around, grocery bags with supplies wedged between the seats
and the back doors. When opening the back doors at one point, grocery bags
with the various ingredients to make “smores” toppled out onto the ground.
So I suggested to one student that he and the gang might want to clean
up the van a bit before leaving the campsite to head back for Flagstaff.
He was also surprised, scanning over the mess on the floor. “Wow,
Gray Van used to be Clean Van – but not anymore,” he stated. They
did clean it up prior to departing. It was a bit later that morning
when I found them patiently waiting inside the van, talking to no one,
seemingly hoping that someone would eventually drive the van and head for
home. That was amusing, as you can probably tell.
Probably the most memorable moment in Gray Van came during our return trip
from Globe and Roosevelt Lake, running at dusk up through the towns of
Pine and Mormon Lake. Jack, being from Alaska, was discussing wildlife,
and he had a contribution of his own: an impersonation of an “Elk during
mating season”. Thankfully, another student warned me that it might
be loud. It was. Twice, Jack bellowed out this mating call
from the back of the van, and we were all in hysterics. Another noticed
that I was in tears myself. Then the fun continued when someone noticed
that it sounded like “Scooby Doo backwards”. On future trips, I could
tell where the Gray Van gang was located at the campsites by the occasional
Elk mating call emanating from their area.
Top
Photo: Students return to the vans along Route 89A in northern Arizona,
against the colorful backdrop of the Vermillion Cliffs.