September 5 – 7, 2014
Yellow Springs, OH, Yoga Workshop out of our Advanced RV
Friday, September 5,
2014: Dry-camping in Yellow Springs
parking lot
Mike and I depart from home at 1:00PM for the 3-½ hour drive
to Yellow Springs, OH, just east of Dayton, OH, where we are participating in a
weekend yoga retreat. It is 89 degrees
F, humid and sunny. We are driving the
Advanced RV model called Pebbles, built on an arctic white standard length
Mercedes Benz Sprinter chassis, with a contemporary, light interior warmed by
brown leather/cream suede twin beds.
This interior, a weekend away and finally being on the road energize
me. After a half hour, I take over the
driving. We enjoy the Coffee House
channel on Satellite radio, which creates a good vibe for what we’ve heard is
the hippie-throw back town of Yellow Springs.
We arrive in this funky village at 4:30PM. First, we find
the Bryan Community Center, where the yoga workshop will be. There is a huge parking lot, the Police
Department is in the building and the center’s bathrooms are open 24 hours, so Mike
suggests dry camping right here. Maybe,
but I have made reservations at John Bryan State Park, two miles away, but since
we were only able to get a non-electric site, we’d be dry camping anyway. But, I’m picturing a lush, green, quiet park
so I am not yet convinced to stay in a parking lot in town. We park on Dayton St., in front of a
Laundromat where two older guys, one with a foot-long white beard, are chatting
on a bench. We walk past small shops and
eateries, and stop in a bike shop for a look.
On Xenia Ave., the next leg of the triangle which forms the town, we find
the tiny Sunrise Café, where we have an early dinner, enjoying fresh
wheat/rosemary rolls, garlic and rum sautéed flaming shrimp, and veggetti and
beetballs (spaghetti squash topped with vegetarian meatballs). All was delicious. Mike admired the booths and trim all made of
walnut.
We get back to the Community Center at 6PM for the 6:30
session and get the last few spots for our yoga mats. Everyone else apparently knew to get here
early. There are 106 participants on
mats lined up on the gym floor, facing a stage to participate in this workshop
with Erich Schiffmann, teaching the Essentials of Freedom Style Yoga. At 8:30PM, after this first session ends,
Mike talks to the police dispatcher who assures me that it is fine to camp in
the parking lot. We save a trip in the
dark to the State Park and go explore the town at night on foot. At Emporium Wines/Underdog Café on Xenia Ave,
we find a wine tasting and a young band doing 60’s covers interspersed with
their originals. It is a small, age-diverse
crowd, with some people sitting at the few tables, some standing like us among
cases of wine, and a few dancing in front of the band. Everyone is friendly and laid back.
We pull the curtains on our camper, crank up the fan and
fall asleep, grateful that it had cooled off enough that we did not need the
AC.
Saturday, Sept. 6,
2014: It Takes a Village, Yellow
Springs, OH
About 7AM we are awakened by people getting ready to bike
the Little Miami Scenic Trail, which passes right behind our camper on its
19-mile route between Xenia and Springfield.
In the parking lot we meet another yoga participant and walk up the
short hill into town in search of breakfast.
Down S. Walnut St. we discover a large farmer’s market with produce,
flowers and fresh bakery. A local woman,
loading her purchases into her bike basket, recommends the bakery stand in the
corner for ciabatta bread and almond croissants, which she warns us, sell out
quickly. The first bakery stand we come
to is not the one, but when I point out to Mike the wheat/rosemary bread we had
last night, this baker says he makes all the bread for the Sunrise Café. We buy a loaf.
At the Blue Oven stand the almond croissants are gone, but we buy a
ciabatta bread. The houses on this
street are old wood-framed, probably pre-Civil War, but painted well with pretty
yards and flower gardens. Back on Xenia
Ave., there is a very old log cabin that houses Ye Olde Trail Tavern. For breakfast, we sit outside at the Underdog
Café, where Mike and I share a good breakfast burrito.
After the first yoga session, which is excellent, we eat lunch
out of our camper at a picnic table under the trees. This Community Center is well used. The Police Department is inside, there is a game
room where last night we saw a young mother and several kids hanging out, and
the large gym is usually open for sports.
After our picnic lunch we walk up into town for a coffee and bump into
another yoga student at the Spirited Goat Coffee House. Their cookies are made by the first baker we
met this morning. The owner invites us
to come back tonight to hear a local 13-year-old girl he has invited to sing
for Saturday’s live music. A community,
“it takes a village” spirit pervades this place.
In the afternoon session, Mike asks Erich Schiffmann a
question. Erich first responds that we
have a cool van, which he had seen outside. Later that afternoon, while we are
relaxing at the picnic table, one of the yoga students asks to see our
van. I give her a tour as she takes
pictures for her boyfriend, an architect, who she is sure will love our clean
design. Then, she tells me that a good
friend of hers, Jen Kogan, was meeting people from an RV company in Cleveland
to discuss an RV rental business. That
was us at Advanced RV and our good collaborator from California!
That evening we meet Tina, our yoga teacher from Willoughby,
her husband Greg and another yoga student from Cleveland at the Winds Wine
Cellar on Xenia Ave. for a wine tasting.
We then move next door to The Winds Cafe for dinner. While waiting for our table, we nod to Dave
Chappelle who is picking up take-out. He
gives us a friendly, “How you all doing?”
He grew up in Yellow Springs where his father was a professor at Antioch
College and now he lives here with his three kids. We have a delicious mostly vegetarian dinner,
surrounded by tables filled with other happy yoga participants. I am touched again by the feeling of
community.
Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014: Dumping, good-bye and plans to return to
Yellow Springs, OH
