Progressive car insurance vs. the gypsies

I'm finally back on the West Coast from my Grand Teton National Park fieldwork. We had no electricity this time (we were in the no-generator part of the Gros Ventre campground) so I wasn't on the laptop much and was not keeping up any of the blogs, obviously. But I'm going to squeeze in a couple updates.

Got into a fight with my car insurance company, Progressive, last week. I'd made the tactical error of getting a chip in my windshield fixed while driving through Seattle on my way to Wyoming, which suddenly convinced Progressive that I either live in Wyoming or Washington, but NOT in Oregon. They sent me a little email that I didn't get till I was living in a campsite in the Tetons: "We are cancelling your car insurance policy effective September 1st unless you can provide proof of residency in the state of Oregon."

Where do I live, anyway? If you tally up all my time this year it comes to:

Ten weeks in Brazil (Carnival)
Two weeks in Boston (whale research)
One week in Seattle
Three weeks in Portland (music)
Another week in Seattle
Three weeks in Greece (fun)
Three weeks in Portland again (music, working on book)
Three weeks in Wyoming (fieldwork)
One week in Seattle
Two days in Portland (picking up drums for Brazil Camp)
One week in California (Brazil Camp)
One week in Nevada (Burning Man)
FIVE whole weeks in Portland!!
Three weeks in Brazil
One week in Chicago
Four weeks in Boston.

Portland wins, right? Eleven whole weeks in Portland! But all my mail goes to Seattle, I've spent almost half the year in foreign countries, I've put in more rehearsal hours with Cubango and Monobloco (my groups in Brazil) than with my own Portland-based Lions; and I've been at living in so many Portland addresses that I'm incapable of remembering my own zip code. "Uh, wait a minute, it's either 97203 or 97211 or 97212... or 98115 or 98195... wait a sec..." I actually have to look up my damn zip code, every time, in my iPhone, where I have it filed in a little electronic note.

Anyway, I placed a phone call to Progressive:
Progressive agent: "All you need to do to prove residency is fax us a utility bill that has your current Oregon address and that is dated within the last 60 days."
Me: "But, I don't have any utility bills."
Her: "We also accept bank statements. Or an evidence-of-residence letter from your Oregon employer. Or a copy of your lease."
Me: "But I don't have any of those."
Her: (befuddled pause) "...How can you not pay any utilities and have no lease and have no bank statements and no employer and still say that you live in Oregon?"
Me: "I'm unemployed this year. I don't have a lease; I pay week-to-week. Utilities are included in the rent. I don't have any paper bank statements because I do all my banking online - they don't send me physical statements any more."
Her: (silence)
Me: "But I could have Bank of America mail me a paper statement, but it always takes them at least two weeks to do that."
Her: "That's too late. We need it within, oh, ten days at the very latest."
Me: "What if I had AT&T mail me a paper cell phone bill?"
Her: (snippily) "That's no good, because you can have a cell phone bill mailed anywhere."
Me (thinking: but you can have a bank statement mailed anywhere too... ): "What if I show you my Oregon driver's license, or my Oregon car registration?"
Her: "Sorry, we don't accept those. According to this list I have here, let's see, if you don't have a bank statement or utility bill, you'll have to show us an Oregon voter registration card."
Me: "But I don't have an Oregon voter registration card right now. 'Cause I'm moving before the next election anyway."
Her: "I'm sorry, you'll have to get one."

I wondered what the state of Oregon thinks about all this. Does Oregon think I live in Oregon? Oregon always has seemed happy enough to take 5.8% of my income in state taxes every year, and has never asked me to prove residency. I looked up Oregon's own criteria for whether or not you live in Oregon, which turned out to be rather charming: You live in Oregon "if you think of Oregon as your home."

New call to Progressive Insurance Company:
Me: "I think of Oregon as my home."
Her: "That's nice, but we have to see a utility bill, bank statement or voter registration card, with your Oregon address on it, dated within the last sixty days, or we will be forced to cancel your car insurance policy as of September 1st."

But, but, I pay taxes in Oregon! I have an Oregon driver's license and an Oregon car registration! I even changed my phone number so it would start with that beautiful Oregon 503!

Sigh. I drove the 20 miles through the vast valley of Jackson Hole, dodging bison (literally; they were all over the road) to get to the town of Jackson, Wyoming, so I could use their library to print out an Oregon voter registration card application, and then drive to the Jackson post office to mail it off...

... and I discovered ALL you need to get an Oregon voter registration card, mailed to ANY address that you care to make up, is an Oregon driver's license number. Progressive requires the Oregon voter registration card, but won't accept the actual Oregon driver's license? Ours is not to reason why.

As it turned out, the voter registration card didn't arrive in time, nor did the paper statement that I requested from Bank of America. So I solved the whole thing with one simple call to State Farm ("I live in Oregon and would like to insure my car starting September 1st." "Sure!"). Got a better rate, and a much friendlier attitude. So much for Progressive.

But the whole thing did remind me of how ill-suited our society is for the concept of people being nomadic and not having a permanent address. If you spend your year in five different states, or half the year in a different country, where do you actually live? The same problem occurs with wildlife management, actually - I've run into it in my professional career. Those $*!% bison and elk keep migrating out of Yellowstone National Park and crossing state boundaries. They just won't stay PUT in one state like they are supposed to! Stupid bison! The Yellowstone wolves have recently gotten clear across Idaho to Oregon. (And Oregon, perhaps realizing that these wolves clearly "think of Oregon as their home", has allowed them to stay. Unlike the other states recently colonized by gray wolves, Oregon has announced it will not be doing any wolf hunting.) Then there's the time that we found we weren't allowed to carry Lapland longspurs (birds) through Canada between Alaska and the United States, because they are "American birds" - even though, as we explained exasperatedly to the customs agent, they FLY through Canada on their own when they migrate to Alaska every year. ( "What if we let them out of their cages, and they fly through Canada, and we follow them, and we re-catch them once they leave Canada?" "Oh, that would be fine; but you just can't bring them into Canada yourselves, because they're American birds.") And then there's the entangled right whales that swim blithely across the US/Canada border in the Bay of Fundy, requiring the American and Canadian whale-disentanglement teams to do a ridiculously bureaucratic hand-off of the care of the whale from one team to another. The American disentanglement team goes home, the Canadian disentanglement team motors out...Then the whale swims back across the invisible border a day, or an hour, later.

So, me and my birds and whales; migratory, nomadic, call it whatever you want, but it's the original way to be.

After five years of samba-gypsy travelling, I have been through long, alternating phases of frustration, exhilaration, disillusionment, exhaustion, freedom, resignation about having no permanent home. First, you love it. Then, about two years in, you get "SO FUCKIN' SICK of being a FUCKIN' NOMAD!!!", as one of my world-traveller friends memorably put it one evening.

And then, as you settle into it for the long haul - beyond two years - you realize it's not a temporary phase any more; it's a permanent way of being. Your sense of "home" simultaneously vanishes, and also expands, as the other places that you've stayed also become your home. Rio, too, becomes your home. Then London. Then Crete. All beds become equally comfortable, all roofs equally beloved. When you wake up in the morning you have no idea which way you are facing; where the street is, where the door is; what city you are in. It ceases to bother you. Your physical possessions shrink. Your land-based ties are successively jettisoned, simplified, or moved to the Internet. And the knowledge that you can up and go to Thailand in a moment if you want, or London, or Crete, or wherever you want.... or... New Zealand! Istanbul! .... and STAY there, for weeks and weeks and months and months. To know that you can hop in my car and go live in Grand Teton National Park for months, if you want; to hear the nighthawks calling overhead, see the stars, to dodge the bison in the morning, to walk in the lupine meadows all day... without having to arrange anything. Or notify anybody. Or stop any mail or set any of those friggin' stupid light timers. Or pay a mortgage or pay any utilities.... you can just GO.

When people ask 'Where do you live?' I sometimes now get a deer-in-the-headlights look. I have tried to train myself to just spit out "Oregon", but sometimes I stall, because though I do indeed think of Oregon as my home, I also know perfectly well that I sure don't spend much time there. Eleven weeks ain't much. Recently when people ask me the inevitable "Where do you live?" I say "Here." If I'm in Athens that day, I say Athens; if I'm in Jackson Hole, I say Jackson Hole. Even if I'm only going to be there for that one day. 'Cause I'm living there at the moment that they asked me the question. I'm ALIVE, RIGHT HERE, right now, this moment, so "here" is where I live.