The official Dancing Deer Baking Company Blog

It’s 6am and I’m still on Trish Time. Back in the comforts of my own home, I no longer have to figure out the route, make the energy drinks or the peanut butter sandwich Trish takes with her, get the GPS working, or the videos downloaded, or work the checklist to make sure she has everything she needs before she rides off.

I can take a moment to breathe, and consider the journey.

There is the business of the day.

It began as I described above, with the tasks necessary to get Trish on the road on time. Making a peanut butter sandwich is easy; figuring out how to stay within miles of Trish, driving an RV through tight lanes and poorly marked streets in the rain, not so much. The morning often involved recalculating the route for any number of reasons, which meant that I got on Google Maps, Beth read the directions of the planned route, and Trish tried to reprogram her Garmin, the nifty little piece of technology that points Trish in the right direction down to the street, but never really shows the big picture. Needless to say, Trish never got lost, but we did. Often. That was tough on Trish, needing warmer clothes or food and we’re no where in sight. It was tough on me, because I hate bad signage. And there is lots of it out there.
So Trish would ride off into the rain (most of my days on board were rainy), and Beth’s phone would begin to ring. And ring. And double ring. I liked to start the day driving because it stressed me out to have Beth driving and trying to deal with a million phone calls, grabbing a pad, and trying to listen to me as I fed her the next turn.

Each day threw some wrench into the works, whether it was just the rain and wind, or something bigger, like a dead generator, or a fender bender, or a complete change of the day’s destination. And you have to imagine this: To create a blog, photos, video and text must to uploaded to a central site, which can then be downloaded to the Dancing Deer site. The creation of those things took place during the day, and generally I was in charge of uploading the photos and video at night. But one video could take 2 hours to upload. So some of it needed to be done the next day. No big deal. Except that the RV’s shock absorbers left us with something between a roller coaster ride and a trampoline on most of the roads. And that meant that for every 20 ft, I had to reach out and grab the computers to keep them from sailing off the table. And often, the video which had completed 20 minutes out of 90, would fail due to the jostled connections. And so we’d start again. RV’s need to be built like boats, with the ability to baton down the hatches. Food sailed out of cabinets, cameras hit the deck, and getting to the bathroom always produced a few bruises.

Mostly, we got to the evening events on time. If we were lucky, someone had unpacked the Ginger Bread houses before we arrived. The icing still needed to be made. Making icing in the RV is like an I LOVE LUCY episode, if you’re old enough to remember the show. Beth is crouched on the floor, cradling the mixer, icing hitting every surface around her, including herself.

Though sometimes late, we always made it, and the kids and their parents were always anxious to begin. Parents helped the little ones, and chatted with Trish while they worked. The icing went everywhere, the kids ate the decorations, the noise level increased, and the sheer pleasure of doing something creative was palpable. I took pictures, sometimes grabbed a video of someone’s story, and eventually accumulated a line of kids wanting their picture taken with their finished house. It amazed me what they did with some frosting and candy. Beautiful houses, often the house of their dreams. One boy attached 6 green candies onto the top of his roof. He told me they were cameras. They could see everywhere. They would keep his family safe. A sobering moment for me.

With the houses finished, lights out looming, the kids bouncing off the walls on sugar, we’d say goodnight and crawl into the RV, sometimes parked in a lot behind the shelter, sometimes the driveway of a friend, and for two nights in an RV park. The last part of our day took another few hours, with dinner, showers, and the Blog. Trish would begin to write, Beth might cook, and I’d start downloading and organizing the photos and Video. We’d exchange observations, edit back and forth, laugh at the days trials, wonder at the people we met and try desperately to get to bed on time. We wanted 7 hours of sleep. Sometimes it was only 6.

Lots of things broke along the way. What remained intact and true was Trish’s spirit. Every day was long, but some were harder than others. Still, Trish’s mind stayed on the goal at hand. Make people listen. Make people care. Set an example. And all these things she did.

Each person we met was different, just like anywhere else you go. One was friendly, one more reserved. One was strong, another carried the scars of a troubled life. One thing that is clear is that no one likes being homeless. There are those who might judge from the comforts of their home that sheltered people are there because they are lazy or careless. This experience showed me that there are many people who lack the community that might rescue the more fortunate, and left alone to solve the problem, they don’t have the tools to manage when the last straw breaks the camel’s back. It may be domestic violence, medical issues, loss of employment, or it may be as simple as a car breaking down. Whatever it is, that event can eat up the one paycheck that sets the working poor on a course to homelessness. It isn’t pleasant, it isn’t easy, and it isn’t the way these parents want their children to grow up. It’s not something anyone chooses.

Trish believes poverty is at the core of the problem, and education is at the center of the solution. I agree. The better educated the adult, the better employment they can attain. The better the employment, the more likely they are self sufficient. Self sufficiency brings security. Children need security to thrive. So the better educated the parent, the better educated the child. And the future of this country is its children. That’s why Trish rode 1500 miles. And that’s why I rode along with her.