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Show plan. Over the dinner table, weeks before we left, my parents would compare our upcoming adventure to their years in Asia. No maps, no guide books, and no reservations, they would simply wake up in the morning and decide to take a train across India or wander toward Vietnam or hole up in Singapore for a week. We set off that summer to experience the same adventure. It was my second trip in the Winnie. Ten years earlier, in the summer of 1976, when my family moved from Virginia to Seattle, we traveled with my grandparents in their new-to-them Winnebago. As a child, the Winnie was a place of wonders, full of secrets drawers and cubbies and an elaborate system of latches that kept everyone and everything from falling while on the road. Tables converted into beds, mattresses slid from the walls, and you could sleep in a loft perched above the driver's head and watch the world pass by through a narrow window that opened with a crank. The tiny refrigerator, the square sink, and the stove that slept beneath a removable countertop were constant delights to me, and I loved running the short length of hallway in one direction while knowing we were driving in another. At twenty, though, I could no longer see the charm of the Winnie. The table was now where I slept, and every night I had to clear away a day's worth of crumbs and papers in order to even begin the process of making my bed. We had to take showers while the Winnie was moving, so that the gray water could drain onto the interstate without anyone knowing. I would sit on the toilet, turn on the water that smelled like baking soda, wet myself down, turn off the water, lather up, and then rinse off, all the time trying not to fall while the Winnie barreled eastward. Often, due to negligence on the driver's part or the one showering, water would soak the roll of toilet paper, leaving 196 |