June 27th, 2008
A chronic issue for us on the trip is getting decent haircuts. First is finding someone to do it, and next is hoping that it turns out okay, and third is paying for it. I was so frustrated in December of 2007 when I was in Santa Ynez, California, that I asked my good buddy Gary Whalen to use his RoboCut on me. For those who don’t know, the RoboCut (www.robocut.com) is a device that looks like a hair dryer, and attaches to a vacuum cleaner. It sucks the hair up into the device with the power of the vacuum, and spinning blades cut the hair. You can do buzz cuts, layered cuts, or an even cut. You can do anyone’s hair, and can even do pets with it. Gary had been cutting his and Kevin’s hair with it for years, and their hair looked great. I had thought it all through, and realized that if my hair were all one length in layers, I’d be fine. It might not be a designer cut, but it should work fine. And sure enough, it did! That haircut was one of the best I’ve ever had!
Fast forward to March. My hair was really long again, and Chelsea had been making noises for a long time about getting her hair cut. So, we bought good quality scissors, and had Chelsea try to cut my hair. After 3 hours of sitting in the chair, I was ready to just shave my head rather than have to sit any longer, and poor Chelsea was very ready to sit down and have it be over. The haircut was hilarious. It was absolutely perfect on one side, but was about 1.5-2” shorter on the other, and had a number of spots where sections had been missed. Thanks to my curly hair, lots of errors can be hidden. Chelsea kept apologizing, but it wasn’t the worst haircut I’d ever had by a long shot, and I thought she did an amazing job considering she has never had so much as 5 minutes training. I didn’t want to spend the money on a haircut, considering how many things we still needed to get for our trip, so I just let it go.
Fast forward again to late June. I had nearly gotten a haircut from a former hairdresser in Centerville; I had tried going to Wal-Mart to get a cut but they were swamped, and then when we were in Abbeville, we finally decided to see about getting a RoboCut ourselves, and bringing it on the road with us. We ordered from the website and we were very excited because we found out that they had one with the machine attached to it – we wouldn’t need the vacuum. It looked like a sturdy hair dryer kind of thing. We were terribly excited about getting it, as Chelsea had decided (for the first time in her life) to get a short layered cut, and I could barely see because my hair was so long and heavy.
The RoboCut came in record time, and I opened it instantly, just like a little kid. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! What we thought was like a small hair dryer turned out to be a full small-sized vacuum cleaner used only for the RoboCut, weighing 13 lbs! There’s no way we could bring that with us on the trip! We decided to try the thing anyway, to see if we could get it to work for us. We’ll skip forward through the panic and anxiety I exhibited while Chelsea did my hair, and get right to the results, which were pretty good. It took us a couple of rounds to get it right, as I didn’t want too much cut off at once, so we kept adjusting the length and doing it again. The good news is that it only takes about 10 minutes for each round.
Chelsea has had long hair all her life, except for recent years when she twice donated 12 inches to Locks of Love, a program that provides real-hair wigs for cancer survivors after chemotherapy. Her hair was chin length after doing this, and then she’d grow it out again. But chin length doesn’t cut the mustard with our kind of lifestyle. She’s got the helmet to deal with; the hair has to be long enough to be pulled into a ponytail to keep it out of her face; it takes longer to shampoo and longer to dry, and it’s hot and heavy. So, after years of thinking about it, she decided to take the plunge.
When I started the haircutting process, Chelsea had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, and she wanted me to save time by just cutting the ponytail off. I was definitely more panicked than she was. I must have asked her at least 5 times, “Are you SURE you want to do this? Are you ABSOLUTELY sure?” She kept saying yes, so I took my Swiss Army knife scissors to the ponytail. Bottom line? She loves her new haircut. It’s now been about 2 weeks since the cut, and she’s never regretted it, even once. In fact, she’s now ready to go a little bit shorter. Who’d a thunk it? (Update: Chelsea did go even shorter on her hair and she loves it even more – check out the photos in the photo gallery under Gueydan.)
We did send the big RoboCut back and ordered the small one, so now we’ll need to be staying somewhere with someone who has a vacuum. But we figure that even if we only use it through Mexico, or use it hit and miss throughout, we’ll be saving ourselves about $50 for the haircuts each time, and that will add up fast, since we need cuts every 4-6 weeks. At $52 including shipping, it’s already paid for itself, and we can get our hair cut pretty much any time we find someone with a vacuum. Can’t you just see us bicycling into an exclusive Sheraton resort hotel in the Amazon or the Yucatan, asking for Housekeeping, and asking to borrow a vacuum for about 20 minutes?
One final note for those who are interested in it – it cuts more like a razor than like scissors, so your hair will look a bit frizzy for the first few days (but not too bad). After a few days and a couple of washings, the frizz look goes away. It does an amazing job on the layering! And it’s really, really easy to use.