Day 2: Welcome Back Cotter; ZAP!

I’m writing this blog entry on Sunday morning, June 23.  It’s a pleasant, cool morning here in Boone, North Carolina, and we actually had breakfast by the fire!  Image the crackling of the wood, the sweet smell of the smoke, and the sound of water rushing over the rocks in a nearby stream.  Yes, Dorothy, this definitely isn’t southwest Florida in the summertime!  I started the day, as I do most every morning, with my favorite breakfast beverage: Goat milk and Baileys hot coffee.  I invented this elixir a couple of years ago.  In case you want to give it a try, here is the recipe: In an 8 oz. mug, pour 6 oz. of freshly-brewed, hot coffee; add 1.5 oz. of Baileys Irish Cream, and one-half oz. of goat milk; stir.  One cup gives you nutrition from three different food groups: Dairy, coffee, and booze.  You can’t get something this good at Starbucks!

I’d like to tell you that after that harrowing first day on the road, the second day was without incident, but I can’t!  Before we can hitch up and leave the campground, I’ve got to get that new cotter pin.  Good news: There’s a Camping World just down the road.  (In case you are not familiar with it, Camping World is to RV owners as Home Depot is to homeowners.  They sell everything one could possibly need.)  Camping World opens at 8:00 a.m., and I’m there early, nose pressed against the door, ready to be the first customer of the day.  Bad news: They don’t have a cotter pin, or anything similar, that will fit in the hitch lever’s small-diameter hole!  How can this be?  I figure the odds are about the same as McDonalds not having any hamburgers!

Good news: There’s a big NAPA Auto Parts store a few miles away.  Bad news: They don’t have what I need either!  As luck would have it, there was another auto parts store down the street that had solid hairpins that would work nicely.  To insure that the hairpin would never break, I bought three of them.  Problem solved, and this time in only one hour.  “Perhaps today will be a better day,” I mused optimistically.  Ah, but it was still early!

The trip to our second stop, a campground in Anderson, South Carolina, was long, but fortunately, without mayhem.  We rolled in around 7:30 p.m.  Unhitching the RV went O.K.  (Thank you, well-made hairpin.)  Before hooking up the RV to electricity and water, I stepped inside and noticed there was no 12 volt power.  This is not good, because when the RV is not connected to external AC electric power (“shore power” in RV parlance), such as when on the road or staying somewhere that doesn’t have electric power, a 12 volt battery in the RV provides juice for lighting (interior lights and exterior brake, turn signal and marker lights), running the refrigerator/freezer on LP gas, powering the propane gas leak alarm, and controlling application of the RV’s brakes (which are electrically actuated).  A power converter in the RV keeps the battery charged when plugged in to shore power.  Additionally, a wiring harness that connects to the RV from the back of the truck during towing allows the truck’s electrical system to charge the battery.

There is a status panel in the RV that indicates the amount of charge in the onboard 12 volt battery when a button is pressed.  I had checked the battery before we left in the morning, and the status panel showed the battery had a full charge.  Now, the panel showed the battery was dead!  Zip, zilch, nada.  “That’s impossible,” I thought.  The battery is less than a year old; there’s no way it could have gone from full to no charge during the day.

I grabbed my trusty volt-ohm meter, popped open the battery compartment, and checked the battery at its terminals.  Guess what?  It was fully charged!  While that’s good news, it meant that the power from the battery was not getting into the RV.  As the sun was finishing its descent into the western sky, I started looking for impediments to the free flow of electrons.  I didn’t have to look far.  Just above the battery is a cutoff switch that can be used for turning the power from the battery to the RV on and off manually.  Dangling from the bottom of the switch, hanging on by a thread, was a thick, braided wire coming from the positive side of the battery.  Moments later, any delight I had at finding the source of the problem quickly turned into dismay.  I pulled on the wire gently, and it came right out of the switch.  Then the wire touched the grounded metal case of the battery compartment, which was a small fraction of an inch away.  ZAP!  A big spark flew, and suddenly, all power was gone.  “Houston, we have a problem!”  Did circuit breakers pop, or had everything just blown out?  The answer to that question would have to wait until I could repair the connection from the battery to the switch.

In the dying light of what would otherwise have been a pleasant evening, I started to remove the cutoff switch, which is attached to the inside of the battery compartment by four long Phillips screws.  The first three screws came out easily, but that darned fourth one – it wouldn’t budge!  I pushed and turned as hard as I could… no dice.  I needed a longer Phillips screwdriver with a much bigger head than the one I had.

As twilight descended upon the campground, I picked a nearby RV at random and knocked on the door.  By sheer luck, the friendly guy who answered the door had the exact size Phillips screwdriver I needed, and he was happy to lend it to me.  The stubborn screw yielded to the force of large Mr. Phillips, and I was able to remove the cutoff switch.  On the back was a post to which three wires were connected via large spade lugs.  And there it was: The spade lug to which the wire was formerly attached.  Using my socket wrench, I removed the nut that held the spade lugs to the post on the switch.  All I’d have to do was reattach the wire to the spade lug, reconnect the spade lugs to the switch… and pray.  Easier said than done.  The spade lug was crimped to hold the wire into it, so the wire would no longer fit inside.  (Why solder the wire into the spade lug, which would have held more or less forever, when you can just crimp it, which will hold the wire in place more or less until it comes out?)  I’ve got lots of electrical doodads, but a large-gauge spade lug isn’t among them.  Try as I did, I wasn’t able to force the lug open to get the wire to fit.

I returned to my friendly neighbor’s door, and with more than a little hint of desperation in my voice, I asked if he happened to have a large spade lug.  He didn’t, but fortunately, lady luck was about to shine on me again.  He said that a guy who lives in a trailer a couple of lots away happens to be an electrician.  Not only was the electrician at home, he had the tools to reuse my spade lug, offered to take care of it for me!

As the last embers of light faded from the late-evening sky, with the electrical repair completed, I reset the shore power circuit breaker and turned on the battery cut off switch.  Instantly, everything came to life.  Shore power?  Check.  Battery power?  Check.  The sun will come out tomorrow!

The next morning, in Anderson, South Carolina

Our Journey Started Off With A Bang!

As I write this blog entry on Saturday, June 22, 2013, I’m sitting under our awning in a comfy rocking chair.  We’re in Boone, North Carolina, and the weather is sunny and cool, with low humidity – a far cry from the hot, humid tropical summer weather we left behind in southwest Florida.  We arrived yesterday afternoon, after traveling 950 miles.  Whoever said “Getting there is half the fun” didn’t ride along with us!

We departed Fort Myers, Florida on Wednesday, June 19 at 9:00 a.m.  Everything was going smoothly until 9:45 a.m.  We were heading north on I-75 at about 60 mph, the dog and cat sleeping soundly in the back seat, when suddenly a loud BANG got our immediate attention. Seconds later, Janet looked in her side view mirror and saw chunks of tire flying across the highway behind us!  Oops, too bad those chunks came from ONE OF OUR RV’S TIRES!  Janet pulled off the road onto the shoulder, and we got out of the truck to assess the situation.  Where there used to be a tire on the rim attached to the left-front axle of the RV was now what could best be described as Goodyear shredded wheat!  Since you have to see it to believe it, an unretouched photo of what was left on the rim after the blowout is shown here:

On the RV itself, a wheel well trim piece and the sewer line end cap were blown away, now debris on the interstate.  Fortunately, the tire on the left-rear axle left held firm.  There was no loss of steering control, and no other damage was done to the RV.

I grabbed my cell phone and punched up Good Sam emergency roadside assistance (similar to AAA, but for stranded RVers).  I was glad that the week before we left, I had the foresight to put the Good Sam number and our membership number in the phone’s contact list so that in the event of an emergency, I wouldn’t have to waste time digging it up.  I was also glad that one of the “in case of emergency” things I had prepared for was to note and remember the location of the little crank handle that lowers the spare tire from the underside of the RV.  About 35 minutes later, help arrived in the form of a nice guy whose truck contained all the heavy-duty equipment needed to change the RV’s tire.  Knowing that all five tires (four on the rig, plus the spare) were the same age, and not wanting to chance another tire meeting the same fate as its erstwhile companion, I asked the guy if he could recommend a good place, as close to our current location as possible, that sells and installs RV tires.  In fact, he did know of a shop to recommend, about a half-hour drive to our south.  (Yes, I know, that’s the direction from which we came!)

We arrived at the shop without further incident.  Naturally, they didn’t stock the tires we needed, but the manager was very helpful, and was determined to find them for us.  After making several calls to tire distributors, the manager (we’ll call him “Dave”, which, strangely enough, was his actual name) told us that the tires would have to be delivered from Tampa, and would arrive the next afternoon!  Hoping for a better answer, I asked (or rather implored) Dave if he could find some place closer, perhaps in Fort Myers, that could get the tires to us later in the day.  A few more calls later, Dave found a distributor in Fort Myers that had tires we needed.  Problem was, it was too late in the day for them to deliver the tires to our location thirty miles to the north.  Hey, no problem, I’ve got a big truck and a burning desire to be a tire delivery guy.

An hour later, yours truly, newly-minted tire delivery guy, returned with the goods.  Here is a photo of me with the valuable cargo:

After a delay of six hours, with their RV sporting five new tires, the Griswolds were on the road again!  Just before we left the shop, I experienced the second blowout of the day; this time it was my credit card, dinged to the tune of $2,400!  And just for fun, I forgot to get my set of RV keys back from the shop, a fact that did not dawn on me until later that night!  (Thank goodness Janet had her RV key set with her!)

We finally arrived at our first stop, a campground near St. Augustine, Florida, just after 10 p.m.  I pulled on the hitch lever to unhitch the RV, and just as the hitch opened, a cotter pin that holds the hitch lever to the hitch broke off into several pieces!  This came as a bit of a surprise, because, don’t you know, the same thing happened when I unhitched the RV at the tire shop earlier in the day.  One of the guys at the shop remedied the problem by putting in a new cotter pin.  The new pin must have been made of a very soft metal, because it broke away the very first time a force was applied to it.  “Probably made in China,” I groused.  Enough already, I’ll deal with this tomorrow morning.  “After all,” as Scarlett O’Hara said, “tomorrow is another day!”

But wait, there’s more: As a ground crew guy dedicated to safety, I ordered a fancy tire pressure monitoring system for the RV a couple of months ago.  Thanks to modern technology, should a tire lose air, get too hot, or suffer a blowout, a display in the truck would indicate the problem immediately, accompanied by loud beeps and a flashing red warning light.  After I installed the system, I tested it by unscrewing a sensor from a tire’s valve stem.  Beep, beep, beep… flash, flash, flash – the system worked perfectly.  I’m pleased to tell you that under actual driving conditions, the system did indeed indicate a tire blowout – about thirty minutes after it occurred!  I reviewed the tire pressure monitoring system’s instruction manual, looking for something I might have missed, and I found it: “Made in China.”  Hmmmm!

Our first road trip

This past weekend (Jan. 18-20), Janet and I finally lost our RVirginity!  Yes, we took our first road trip.  Janet's bagpipe band's competition season kicked off with the Central Florida Scottish Highland Games, in Winter Springs, Florida.  Rather than simply drive to the games as we've done for many years, this year, we decided to take our house!  Early last week, I made a reservation for two nights in a nice RV campground in Sanford, Florida, which is near Winter Springs and 225 miles from our home base in Fort Myers.  I could tell you that the whole trip pretty much went without a hitch, but I'd be lying -- without a hitch, there would be no way to tow our 5th wheel!

Actually, we experienced two minor issues:

1. When we were getting the rig ready for the trip, we couldn't get the awning braces to line up in the retracted position.  We messed with the awning for about half an hour, opening and closing it several times, hoping that things would somehow line up properly.  Alas, they did not, but fortunately, a friendly neighbor with many years of RV experience showed what to do, which took all of about one minute!  (Nothing like the soothing voice of experience.)

2. Unlike our dog, Annie, who loves riding in the truck, our cat, Elkay, does not appear to be a big fan of traveling.  He's a big cat, and we put him in a large carrier in the back seat of the truck.  Normally, he has immaculate litter habits, but shortly after travel commences, he decides to relieve himself in the carrier!  Elkay demonstrates his joie de voyager by dropping a deuce.  On the outbound trip, we tried feeding him very little in the morning, but that didn't help.  On the return trip, the unsavory deposit was accompanied by an emptying of the feline bladder!  Lesson learned: We've put a small litter pan in the carrier for future journeys.  With any luck, Elkay will use it.  [Note to self: Never take Elkay on a plane in a cat carrier!]

Our driver (Janet), and the ground crew (me) continued our fine teamwork, handling departures, transit, and arrivals in style.  The odd thing was, as Janet pointed out, that after traveling 225 miles from Fort Myers and arriving in Sanford, we were still home!

We had a great time; the round trip was safe and uneventful.  Unsurprisingly, the largest expense for the trip was fuel: a whopping $165.  (OPEC has sent us a thank you card!)  The high cost of fuel will keep us from taking long distance, short duration trips.  Now we're looking forward to long trips this spring and summer.

Photos

You asked for 'em, you got 'em.  Here are interior and exterior photos of our Jayco 5th wheel trailer (at its base camp in Fort Myers, Florida).

 The dining table (left foreground) has an extension that pulls out, and the top opens up to access storage space inside the table.  Note the storage compartments above the windows.

The convertible sofa opens to a double bed.  Note the bay window at the back (and the cat snoozing on the floor in the right foreground).

 Computer work area on left, entertainment center on right.

 Full kitchen, including gas stove/oven, microwave, refrigerator/freezer, dual sinks, food prep island, pantry.

Yes, the main room is tall enough for a ceiling fan!

 Bedroom upstairs has a king bed!  (The bed is on a platform that pulls up, under which are two large storage bins.)  Behind the mirrored sliding doors (background, right) is a large clothes closet.

 Lots of dresser drawers and cabinet space.

(The bathroom is behind the door on the right.)

 On our lot at the Fort Myers Beach RV Resort.  (All of the slideouts are open: One on left, three on the right.  That's the trick for making a roomy interior!)  Hoisted up near the front of the roof is an amplified "batwing" antenna for TV and FM radio reception.

The rocking chairs (under the awning) are very comfy.  They fold up flat and get stowed in the large "basement" storage compartment (which has two doors, one of which is behind the right chair).

 The right side has connections for water, sewer, electricity and cable TV; exhausts for the water heater, furnace and refrigerator; and a compartment for LP gas bottles.  At the front (above the bicycles) is the coupling pin, which attaches to the hitch in the bed of our truck for towing.

Coming up next: Our first road trip.

Selling our house in Cape Coral, Florida, and the end of my days as a pack rat

There's nothing quite like the experience of trying to sell one's house in the midst of the housing bust in a location that is ground zero for the foreclosure crisis!  It's not a question of how much you're going to make on the sale; it's all about hoping for the lowest possible loss!  The new reality here is simple: If you can sell your house and not have to write a check to the mortgage company at closing, you've won!

Our house is in good shape, and it will show nicely.  However, its setting is not going to be everyone's cup of tea.  In an area where most houses are on plunked right next to each other on a plain, quarter-acre lot with a manicured lawn, our house sits on a private, two-thirds of an acre parcel, with over two hundred feet of our back yard on a freshwater canal.  There is virtually no lawn; instead, we've got a cornucopia of Florida native plants and trees.  It's like living in a house inside a botanical garden.  Not something one would buy for use as a rental property, and not luxurious enough to attract wealthy Germans looking for a second home in sunny southwest Florida.  The relatively large amount of land is actually a potential liability.  Someday, possibly within the next decade, Cape Coral will expand water and sewer utilities to our neck of the woods.  When they do, there is going to be an insanely large assessment, the size of which will depend on the size of the lot on which the house sits.  Large lot means large assessment.

Location, location, location; a reasonable asking price; a good Realtor -- this baby ought to sell without being on the market forever, but I'm going to pull out all the stops.  Back in May, I came up with the idea of posting a short video extolling our house's virtues to prospective buyers everywhere in a way that cannot be accomplished by traditional photos or virtual tours.  I envision a web site where Zillow meets YouTube meets Craig's List.  I added comebuymyhouse.com (and comebuymyhome.com) to my internet real estate holdings, storyboarded the video, and wrote the script.  When the house goes on the market in the fall, my secret marketing weapon will be ready.

Now that it's early October, and we've found a home for our new home (the 5th wheel), it's time to put the traditional (non-mobile) version in Cape Coral, Florida on the market.  The Realtor I wanted to use tells me she'll be getting out of the business soon, and now has an associate.  Not a good sign, but we set up an interview.  The associate has an attitude problem, and really doesn't understand (or like) our house.  Buh-bye!  As fate would have it, Janet was getting some plants from the place that did our Florida-native landscaping.  A woman who works there and Janet got to talking about selling their houses.  It turns out that the woman had just sold her Florida-native landscaped house in Cape Coral using a great Realtor who really appreciated the property.  Bingo!  We called the Realtor, who wowed us at the interview.  We gave her the listing, effective October 10th.  Time to make the video for comebuymyhouse.com

Timing is everything.  My buddy, and long-time co-conspirator in radio and TV production, Jeff Ronner, is coming to town for a visit starting on October 5, and he's going to help me do the video.  We plan the shooting, and decide to do it the next morning.  Come Saturday morning (note to self: what a great idea for a song title.  When I have some free time, I'll see if the Sandpipers are available.), the day dawns sunny and warm, with a clear, blue sky.  We start shooting at 8:30 a.m., and we're done by noon.  A few hours of post production work, and voilà, we've got a nice video that runs two minutes and forty-five seconds.  Up on the web site it goes, ready to supplement the MLS listing and the Realtor's marketing efforts.  (Check out our handiwork for yourself at www.comebuymyhome.com )

Two weeks later, we got a firm offer on the house, with a net value very close to our asking price!  It's great when a plan comes together.  Yes, we're going to lose lots of money, but we won't have to write a check to the mortgage company at closing.  The house is sold, and I still have my shirt.  Woo-hoo, we've won big time!

One small thing, though: We've got two weeks to vacate.  That's just a fortnight to get everything in the house either moved to storage, sold, donated, or thrown away!  We find a climate-controlled storage facility literally across the street from the RV park, and get space at a really good rate.  Between Craig's List and a yard sale, we sell lots of stuff we no longer need or want.  What doesn't sell, we donate.

Now here is my confession: The bulk of the time it took me to get ready to move out was caused by my being a consummate pack rat!  Stuff... stuff... so much useless stuff!  Product boxes by the dozens, things I was sure would be useful one day, junk I haven't seen or needed for over a decade all had to be sorted through and thrown out.  What on earth was I thinking that made we want to keep all this crap in the first place?  I'm not a hoarder, but come on, this is ridiculous!  I filled an eighty-gallon trash bin four times over, a fifty-gallon recycle bin three times, and still had enough worthless electronic junk for the recycling center to fill the bed of our truck!

I'm now a member of PA (pack raters anonymous), and I can attest that my days as a pack rat are over.  (In fact, I've told Janet that if she sees me saving so much as a box for a can opener, she's to shoot me!)  My new world of limited space and weight will keep me on the wagon.  Others who have gone through the "shedding excess stuff" process have told me it was a cleansing, liberating experience.  I used to think that sentiment was a bunch of hooey, but now, I get it!

Coming up next: Photos

Finding a home for our new home

Now that we have what will be our new home (the 5th wheel RV), we have to find a "base camp" that will be our location when we're not traveling.  We want to stay in the Fort Myers, Florida area, and fortunately, there is no shortage of RV parks here.  One day in August, Janet and I were driving to Fort Myers Beach, and just after we passed our favorite ice cream parlor (Love Boat Ice Cream -- all hand made), we noticed an RV park: The Fort Myers Beach RV Resort.  An interesting find for two reasons: First, the RV park is actually four miles before Fort Myers Beach, and second, we've driven past this RV park a gazillion times in the past fifteen years and we never really noticed it was there!  Funny how when you start looking for RV parks, they suddenly appear.  Janet suggested I do a scouting trip and check out the park later in the week.  I did so, and found the cost of an annual spot to be reasonable and the RV park to be really nice.  The location is great -- lots of restaurants, stores, and food shopping within walking or bike riding distance.  So too is Janet's dad's place, and a big public library (yes, we still like to read dead-tree tomes).  Fort Myers Beach is only four miles away, so we can bike there too. The park has a large, heated pool and big hot tub -- we'll surely enjoy those facilities all winter.  And best of all, Love Boat Ice Cream is just steps away (cue Jack Jones)!

We pick a lot that will be ours for the year, sign the papers (including giving management permission and money to do a required background check on us that we somehow pass), fork over a security deposit and the first month's rent, and starting on October 1, 2012, we'll have a home for our new home.

Now there's just one little detail that comes next: We have to sell our house!

Coming up next: Selling our house in Cape Coral, Florida, and the end of my days as a pack rat

How we got the rig home, RTFM, and other surprises

Now that we've bought the big rig, the first challenge is getting it from North Fort Myers to our house in Cape Coral, a distance of about ten miles.  Simply drive it home?  Not quite!  First, the fifth wheel RV has to be hitched to the truck.  How to do this is certainly beyond the scope of Janet's and my driving experience.  While the task seems daunting to us newbies, I remind myself that we see these rigs on the highway all the time, often being driven by geezers, and they manage to do it.  (By the way, the definition of "geezer" is someone who is older than we are.)  We don't want to enroll in The Tractor Trailer Truck Training Institute (motto: "with any luck, you can drive a truck"), so we opt for the learning by watching carefully method.

The day the RV was taken for its inspection (before we bought it), the owners were nice enough to give me a complete run through of how to prep the fifth wheel for towing (taking it from living condition, with its four slides out, all hooked up to water, sewer, and electric utilities, to ready-to-be-hitched condition), and how to connect the fifth wheel to the hitch in the bed of the truck.  Janet was not with me that day, so I decided to make a video of the whole process.  (A great idea, because there were so many details, I'd never have remembered them without several reviews, let alone try to explain it all to someone else.)  Janet and I watch the video, and wonder if we'll be able to do it ourselves.  We assure each other that since geezers can do it, we'll be able to do it too.

Fast forward to the big day when it's our turn to actually try it ourselves.  Janet has driven a school bus, so she's going to drive the truck.  I'm going to be the ground crew.  The means I get to prep the fifth wheel for towing, after which I guide Janet to line up the hitch with the king pin on the fifth wheel, hitch it up, make various electrical and mechanical connections, raise the fifth wheel's "landing gear", and verify we're good to go.  The first rendezvous and docking of the space shuttle with the International Space Station looks like a piece of cake (and seems much less dangerous) by comparison.  Oh, by the way, any errors or omissions on my part can result in severe damage to the truck and the fifth wheel.  Not too much pressure there!

Janet's first big challenge is lining up the truck with fifth wheel so it can be hitched.  They say that clear communication is the key to a good marriage, and boy are they right!  In order to marry the fifth wheel to the hitch at the proper position and height, I've got to guide Janet to the right spot, and she's got to maneuver the truck precisely, mostly going in reverse.  Somehow, we succeed in short order (what a team we are), and we're on our way to Cape Coral, Janet solo driving a 19-foot truck towing a 37-foot fifth wheel, while I follow in my car.  When we arrive, Janet's knuckles are a bit white, but she made it like a pro.

This is what's now in front of our house:

The transportation challenge behind us, I reflect on how my newbie naivete has already allowed me one surprise today: Waste management!  In an RV, when the water in the sinks or showers go down the drain, or after you do your business on the commode, the waste gets collected in tanks.  There are three waste tanks in this fifth wheel: one for the sink and shower in the bedroom, another for the sinks in the kitchen area (the "gray" tanks), and one for the toilet (the "black" tank).  The surprise is that even when the RV is connected to a sewer (via a flexible sewer hose), the waste is still collected in the tanks, and has to be emptied periodically by guess who?  The ground crew.  (Hey, that's me!)  And here I thought that I could just leave the waste tank valves open and let everything flow out the sewer line.  WRONG!

But wait, there's more!  An RV toilet is nothing but a fancy porta-potty.  One even needs to use special toilet paper (yet another surprise), where "special" means expensive, and about as soft as sandpaper.  Mister Whipple would never stand for this!  Fortunately, our fifth wheel has a great optional feature to help deal with the black tank's effluvia: a flushing system that sends jets of high-pressure water from a hose through the tank.  This helps flush out the poop and toilet paper remnants that stick to the tank's walls.  Now please don't read the next couple of sentences if you've just eaten, or if you are a bit squeamish about waste.  Where the waste tank outlet connects to the sewer hose, there is a fitting that mates the hose to the outlet.  That fitting is clear plastic, which allows the ground crew (me) to watch the waste as it flows from the tanks to the sewer hose.  This makes it easy to see when the tanks are empty.  Hey look, there's the corn from last night's dinner.  What fun!

Next, it's time to read the manuals -- and there are lots of them, forming a pile over four inches thick.  Practically every gizmo in or on the fifth wheel has a manual, and there's a great deal to learn and master.  Some items are so obscure, I've never heard of them before.  (For example, do you know what a de-flapper is?  I sure didn't until I read its manual.)  I realize that what I don't know can really hurt or cost us.  Advanced Calculus suddenly seems like a walk in the park.  What have we done?  I recite our RVing mantra: "Geezers do it all the time, so can we."

Coming up next:  Finding a home for our new home.

Getting Our First RV - The Purchase

The couple selling the truck and the fifth wheel RV are really nice folks.  They show us the truck – it's a 2008 Ford F250 Super Duty with the big 6.4 liter twin-turbo diesel engine.  This is a 4-door model with the King Ranch interior and a Reese fifth wheel hitch in the bed.  The wheels are 20-inch alloys, and this baby sits high off the ground.  With a powerful engine, heavy-duty transmission, built-in brake controller, and giant side view mirrors, this truck was made for towing a big rig.  And that's a good thing, because the fifth wheel, a 2006 Jayco Designer 34rlqs is indeed big – 37 feet from stem to stern.

We take a tour of the fifth wheel.  With four slideouts and 34 feet of living area from front to back, there is a surprising amount of room inside, on two floors no less!  It's like a condo on wheels.  Up front, and upstairs, is the bedroom, with a king-size bed, big closet, lots of drawers, a shower, and a separate, enclosed bathroom with a window and an exhaust fan that vents to the outside (thank goodness).  Downstairs is the kitchen, dining area, and living room area at the rear with a big bay window.  There are lots of windows, and lots of roomy storage compartments.  The kitchen has an island with two sinks and plenty of food prep space.  It has a gas stove and oven, microwave, and a refrigerator/freezer – just like a real house!  The ceiling is high, which gives a spacious feeling.  (There is even a ceiling fan.)  A large dining table seats four.  The living room area has a sleeper sofa and two very comfortable reclining leather chairs with matching foot rests.  There's an entertainment center for the TV and audio/video equipment, and a desk with space for a computer system.  This fifth wheel has about 300 square feet of living area.  (Nice and big for an RV, but coming from a house with over 2000 square feet of living area on 2/3 of an acre of land, it's going to take some getting used to!)  Janet and I can visualize living here.  The Jayco has been well-maintained, but with its age, it's going to need some work on the interior.

Next, we take the truck for a test drive (sans Jayco).  Make no mistake, this is a manly man's truck!  (Yet, who will be doing all the initial towing?  Janet!  She used to drive a school bus.  The longest thing I've ever driven was my old Ford Aerostar van.)  I get behind the wheel of the big Ford, and I feel like rustling cattle and smoking a pack of Marlboros.  The interior is HUGE, and it has the most comfortable leather seats that have ever caressed my bottom in a vehicle!  The truck's cab alone is almost bigger than my entire Honda Fit, and the back seat has tons of leg room.  The dog is sure going to enjoy riding in this monster.  The guy who is selling the rig shows me a great feature of the hitch: It has two positions – one for regular towing, and another for maneuvering to get in and out of spaces.  In the maneuvering position, the truck can make almost a 90-degree turn with the fifth wheel attached!  During the test drive, I notice that there's too much play in the steering wheel at the center position, but otherwise, the truck looks good and runs nicely.  It has been well-maintained, but it's going to need some mechanical work.  The owner tells us that while towing the Jayco on the highway, the truck gets about 12 miles per gallon.  While that's great for an RV, I still do the math.  Let's see, a 30 gallon tank, $4.00 per gallon for diesel fuel... YIKES, that's a $120 fill-up to go 360 miles.  I'm going to be some Arab Sheik's best friend!

The sellers are straightforward, and don't want to dicker on price, so they cut to the chase and come right out with the lowest price they're willing to accept for both the truck and the fifth wheel.  We've done our homework, so we know the price is right.  We agree to have the truck and the fifth wheel inspected (at our expense), and if there are no surprises, it's a deal.

The inspections are done the following week, and the only serious issues involved the truck.  One of the steering components will have to be replaced, followed by a wheel alignment.  The rear brake pads will have to be replaced, six lug nuts are bad and will have to be replaced, and I'll need to buy a new spare tire.  The service won't be cheap, but it's not a deal breaker.  (By the way, who knew that lug nuts for the spiffy Harley-Davidson alloy wheels were only available from Ford, in packs of eight, at a cost of $150?  Until I was informed by my mechanic, not me.  If you had told me I'd spend almost 19 bucks each for lug nuts, I'd have thought you were nuts!)

Inspections behind us, it's time to burn a hole in our savings account and make the purchase.  Cashiers checks in hand, we sign on the line and get the titles signed over to us.  Next, it's off to the DMV to register the stuff , get them titled in our names, and get tags so we can take 'em home.  And that's where the REALLY BIG surprise occurred: In Florida, every time any conveyance is sold (including used), the 6% state sales tax is due.  For used cars, motorcycles, trucks, fifth wheels, and motorhomes, the tax is collected by, you guessed it, the DMV!  OUCH!  I leave the DMV office feeling woozy, with wallet deflated.

Coming up next:  How we got the rig home, RTFM, and other surprises.

Getting Our First RV - Decisions, Decisions

Every year, there is a big RV show in North Fort Myers, Florida, a short ride from our home in Cape Coral.  At the show, one can ogle, drool, and check out many different types and makes of recreational vehicles, covering a wide range of price points.  Janet and I have gone to the RV show many times.  We did a lot of tire kicking, and tried to get an idea of what we'd like and what we could afford.  (We found many RVs we really loved, but the prices were astronomical, making a large, private home on a big lot look like a bargain!)

The first challenge was to determine the type of RV we want.  The two contenders were a "Class A Motorhome", and a "Fifth Wheel".  By way of introduction, a Class A motor home is a recreational vehicle built on a stripped truck chassis where the driving compartment is an integral part of the RV interior. A class A motor home looks like this:

A fifth wheel is a towable trailer that connects to a pickup truck directly above its rear axle by way of a special fifth wheel hitch.  A fifth wheel RV looks like this:

There are advantages and disadvantages for each one.

Class A Motorhome advantages:

• Driving and living compartments are connected. No need to get out of the RV during stops. Living area accessible even while moving.
• Usually has more storage space than a fifth wheel of equivalent size.
• Can tow a vehicle behind it.

Class A Motorhome disadvantages:

• More expensive than a fifth wheel of equivalent size and quality.
• The driving compartment and engine take up part of the living space, resulting in less living area than a fifth wheel of the same length.
• If there is a mechanical breakdown of the engine or drivetrain, we'd need to find another place to live while repairs are being made.
• Most are too large to drive around town; alternate local transportation required (such as a towed vehicle).

Fifth Wheel advantages:

• Spacious, open floor plans suitable for full-timers.
• Provides more interior living space than a motor home of the same length because it does not contain driving and engine compartments.
• Tow vehicle doubles as local transportation.

Fifth Wheel disadvantages:

• Must be towed by a large, powerful, (expensive) heavy duty truck with a fifth wheel hitch in its bed.
• Driving and living compartments are separate. Living area inaccessible while moving.
• Cannot tow a vehicle behind it.

Which type to get?  We vacillate.  One thing is for sure: To stay within our budget, we're going to have to buy something used.  We figure whatever comes along that we like, in good condition, at the right price will determine which way we go.

In early July, 2012, Janet starts our used RV search by pointing her iPad to rvtrader.com.  Lo and behold, she finds a fifth wheel and a truck being sold by the same person.  They are the type and size we are looking for, in our price range, not too old, and right near us in North Fort Myers.  Nearby is good: No long trips to check out the rig, and no transportation charges should we decide to buy.  We call and make an appointment to have a look.

Coming up next: Getting Our First RV - The Purchase

Introduction - How it all began

It's 2004.  Janet and I notice that we're not getting any younger, and our friends seem to be aging at the same ever-accelerating pace as we are.  Some have acquired nasty habits, such as getting very ill, and even dying!  With mortality becoming something to consider (I mean, really, we're grandparents, and aren't grandparents old?), we decide to do some long-range planning for the next phase of our future.  We are very fortunate to be in good health.  We want to have fun and adventures together before we're too old.  (Too old being defined as one or both of us having poor health, highly diminished mental, visual or aural acuity, ambulatory limitations, and the ultimate show-stopper: being dead!  The latter can really put a damper on spousal plans.  My step-father died when he was only 54.  So much for him and my mom enjoying happily-ever-after!)

We decide to do what we dub the "Eat Dessert First Retirement Plan": At the end of 2012, we'll retire and hit the road.  Lots of travel, lots of adventure.  We won't be really old at that time (I'll be 58, and Janet will be 62), so if all goes well, we'll still be healthy and we'll be agile enough to get around nicely.  Will our finances allow us to do this, without our becoming totally broke in our dotage?  Probably... maybe... or maybe not!  Who knows?  2012 is still eight years away.  But 'ya gotta have a plan.  So we decide that we'll eat dessert first.  If and when we get to the rest of the retirement meal after some number of years, and there's a financial problem, we'll deal with it then!  After all, we can save money, but we can't save time!  Time is a precious, non-renewable resource, and when it's gone, there's no getting it back.  Do we want to wind up having sat through the meal of life and for some reason not make it to the dessert course?  Heck no!  Come the end of 2012, we're going to get a recreational vehicle (RV).  It will become our home and our springboard to travel adventures.  We'll be all-in, full-timers.  We'll be Going Mobile.

Then came the "great recession".  We watched, with dismay, many of the assets we were relying on to fund our future vanish into the ether, never to return.  We could certainly use this reality to justify putting off our great plan, but we still have the most important thing going well for the both of us: good health.  Perhaps we can get back some money, but there is still one thing we can't get back: time.  By gum, we're going ahead as planned.  Come the end of 2012, we're Going Mobile.

Welcome to Going Mobile, a tale of how our plan actually turns out (including the good, the bad, the surprises, the adventures).


Disclaimer.  I've never written a blog before.  It's something I never considered doing, probably for two main reasons:

1. Would anyone really care about what I'd write?
2. Might my blog become a self-indulgent exercise?

I decided to write this blog for three reasons:

1. Several friends and relatives suggested that I do it.
2. My friend Pallas Hupé, who moved from California to New Zealand when her husband got a great job opportunity, started a blog about her experiences.  She, her two boys, and her husband, made a major life change, and I find her accounting of those changes, and how she deals with them, to be fascinating.  Perhaps someone will be interested in reading about Janet's and my major life change.  (Pallas is a great writer.  I can only hope that my writing skills are half as good as hers.)
3. I think it will be fun to look back on my ramblings years from now.

As a newbie blogger, I ask for your assistance.  If this blog is a waste of time, please be blunt and let me know.  If it can be improved, please tell me how I can make it better.  If there are things you want to know more (or less) about, please say so.

Coming up next: Getting Our First RV