Hitek Homeless » preparation

A Railroad Tycoon’s RV

johnny — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:00:51 +0000

What do you get when you combine one of Jenn’s favorite games (Railroad Tycoon) and the RV lifestyle? You get a railroad car fitted out for fulltiming! That’s just what we found as we were passing through Jefferson, Texas a couple of weeks ago. The Garden Club has acquired the personal car of Jay Gould, a railroad tycoon, and restored it to something close to it’s original splendor.

The car had four staterooms for passengers, two of which were adjoining with a bathroom, including tub and shower between them. The others all had their own plumbing, even if a bit primitive by modern standards. There was a couch as well as a pullman bed in each of the staterooms. The car would be able to take on water at the same water depots that the train used. We didn’t ask, but I assume the black and gray water would have been simply dumped along the tracks as soon as it was generated.

There were two rooms devoted to cooking with a pass through between them. Based on the layout, I would assume that the car originally had bunks for two servants, but only one of the kitchen cars still had a pullman berth at the ceiling. The icebox had something I think we could all use today, a glass door. How often have you opened the fridge and stared at what was there while deciding what you wanted?

In addition to the above mentioned rooms, the car also had an observation/lounge room and a dining/office room. Many RV’s today have a table that fold out from the wall with a leg that folds down to support the table. The design is more than a hundred years old! Jay Gould’s car had slots along the side where a table with a folding leg could be secured to place a table wherever it was needed at the time. The observation room included a speedometer so that Mr. Gould could see how fast the train was moving and call the conductor if he wanted to go faster. Apparently, Jay Gould was often in a hurry to get somewhere.

The entire car was lavishly appointed with a different decor for each room. How much of this is original is hard to say, but the Garden Club has done an excellent job recreating what must have been a very high class conveyance in it’s day. You can still see the original mother of pearl buttons to summon servants and the glass fixture with Jay Gould’s signature jay bird, which he would draw when signing his first name.

If you’re ever in Jefferson, I recommend taking the tour. It’s cheap and the ladies will tell you all kinds of stories about Jay Gould and how he was connected to the town during the heyday of the railroad. The town also has some interesting ‘antique’ shops full of all kinds of junk and a hotel that dates back to the days of the wild west. Overall, it’s a gorgeous small town with a nice drive along the Texas Trails system if you’re tired of the interstate route.

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Update

jenn — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:42:34 +0000

Well, we have been sitting in the same place so long I think I have a root or two starting. We need start moving before that root makes contact with the soil. The two main reasons we have been here so long are my new web page and the fabulous hospitality of my Aunt and Uncle. And, well a little lack of motivation on my part compounded with being sick.

Being with family has been great. It was nice to be able to spend the holidays with loved ones. What is Christmas w/o excited little children ripping open presents? My relatives provided that and much more. Roasted lamb, spiced eggnog, rum cake, holiday cheer, and much more. We have had some nice times while we have been here and really appreciate their concern and hospitality. We will miss them for sure. But, now its time to ramble.

I really wanted to get the website live before we hit the road again. Being on the road can provide a lot of wonderful distractions, and I wasn’t sure that I would get it done otherwise. The possibility of no Internet access would have put a damper on it, too. Once I got it online, it was very well received. By most folks anyway. There are a one or two people, namely pianotuna and dumolebob, who have taken an active interest in the site. Many thanks go out to them. The other users have been keeping me busy with features and requests, too. Its great.

Hooray! We are almost germ free. I was worried that I was going to have to go get some antibiotics. Thankfully, 1 1/2 weeks later, we are almost healed! I can’t remember the last time I was (flu type) sick. Johnny got over it pretty quickly. For me, it got worse every day. Finally, yesterday was so bad I couldn’t even sit up to use my computer. Today, I fell 70% better. I am still pumping the hot fluids into my body. Hopefully it will be 100% gone tomorrow.

The good news is I am feeling well enough to get us ready to leave. The bad news is that there are going to be strong/severe thunderstorms for the next few days followed by freezing temps. Fun.

Well, I must be off. I have lots to do.

Best of luck to eveyone in this new year.

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Two People, Two Cats, Two Hundred Square Feet

johnny — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:54:00 +0000

So how do you fit two people and two cats in a truck camper long term? The classic answer is to stack the people on top of each other in a corner and strap them down, then let the cats fight over the remaining 194 square feet. Since we’re not having any of that, the cats are having to learn to deal with it. Somehow, they’ve convinced me to let them use one of my drawers as a ‘princess seat’ in between the times I actively need to get clothes from them.

For those of you that haven’t met our local anarchic overlords, the gray tabby is simply ‘The Cat’ as she was here first and hasn’t bothered to tell us what she prefers to be called, although she has no such compunctions against telling us when its time to be fed. The Siamese is Hunter. I was all for calling her ‘The Other Cat’, but Jenn overruled me and now we have a Siamese cat that thinks she is people because she has a name.

What you can’t see in these oh-so -cute pictures of napping cats is the constant turf war that goes on. Sure, it’s peaceful now, but there’s nothing more entertaining than watching these kids both jump in the drawer, get on their hind legs, lay their ears back and bat each other about the head and neck. OK, maybe we’re just lacking for entertainment, but it’s still pretty interesting.

In the bottom right hand corner of the first picture, you can see their food and water bowls. I took one of the faces off of a small cabinet that happened to be just the right size so we wouldn’t be constantly knocking over their bowls.

But what about the people you ask? One of our special requests when we ordered the camper was to have a couch instead of a dinette. This makes lounging more comfortable and makes the inside of the camper seem larger.

The problem with this arrangement is that Northwood still tries to fit a ginormous table in front of the couch. Sure, it’s been engineered a bit so that it slides in and out to make it easier to walk past it, but you almost have to turn sideways to get onto the couch! And forget sitting anywhere but the very ends of the couch, those metal legs will be in your way. The final straw was trying to get past the table while the slide was in: overnighting in parking lots, stopping for a quick snack or bathroom break, etc. Jenn had a bit easier time, but I get awfully tired of trying to ’suck it in’ and having so much of the camper practically unusable.

After thinking about just what to do with the table for over a month, Jenn and I finally came up with this solution:

We built a new table that is roughly 25% of the size of the OEM table. It is considerably narrower as well as being shorter, so there is no trouble walking past it while the slide is in and we can easily hop in and out of the couch. Since it only has one leg, it can be swiveled to use as a work surface such as a sewing table.

To make up for the lack of surface area, we made a couple of lap desks from 1/2″ plywood and an ‘end table’ that mounts onto the divider wall next to the stove.

The final piece of the puzzle is a vinyl center console intended as an add-on for vans apparently. It acts as a clutter catcher for all those things that never seem to have a place but need to be where you can get to them easily. I didn’t take a picture of it as it is doing an excellent job of keeping lots of miscellaneous junk organized at the moment!

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Braking in the Timbrens

johnny — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:33:00 +0000

Monday night we drove the camper back to the campground through the Orlando highway system; about 45 minutes if you skip interstates and toll roads. Between the new brakes and the timbrens, it drives like an entirely different vehicle.

Its not quite a sports car, but it does stop with a lot more firmness and a lot less noise. While it won’t be doing pace car work over in Daytona, it certainly deals with corners and uneven pavement a lot better than previously. It’s still top heavy and prone to lean a bit, but there is no side to side rocking to speak of.

The truck still bounces a bit front to back when going over bumps such as railroad tracks or the concrete slabs used to build bridges on the highways. We’re considering putting a set of Rancho 9000’s on next to counter this ‘porpoising’ effect, but it will have to wait until after our Christmas travels.

The truck is now at the point where it rides better with 5,000 lbs in the back than it does empty. Hitting a set of railroad tracks can cause the Timbrens to engage and put a kink in your spine. Overall though, I like the Timbrens more than airbags because they are ‘always on’ and have very little that can possibly go wrong with them. We can’t use them to level the camper, but so far it’s riding pretty level side to side and we can always drop the jacks for fine tuning once parked. They were certainly quite a bit cheaper and easier to install as well!

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Give me a brake!

johnny — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:52:00 +0000

It poured on us pretty good late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, but by about 9:30 in the morning, the rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing out.

With great enthusiasm, we hopped out of the camper (well, after wearing out the snooze bar and having a cup of coffee) and started tearing off one of the front wheels and the brake caliper. We broke a couple of cheapo sockets breaking some nuts free and had to run out for replacements, but eventually we got the caliper off and got to the brake pads.

And then we had to run out for parts again. Apparently the last guy to work on the brakes couldn’t be bothered with putting things back together correctly. He left off one of the anti-rattle clips and BOTH of the V springs. Eventually, we found a auto store with a ‘brake kit’ that consisted of 4 V springs and 8 anti-rattle clips. A whopping $20 for about one ounce of cheap steel… but if you don’t have it… Anyway, we now had what should be all the parts and proceeded to try and pull this apart:

Nope, didn’t budge. Rust is surprisingly strong stuff. We finally gave up and got it back together a bit after dark. We moved the camper to the side of Jenn’s sister’s yard, went out for Mexican and declared ourselves beaten.

This morning, we dropped the truck off two blocks down the street and they installed our pads and rotors for 1.5 hours in labor. For my money, they can do the rear brakes as well!

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Truck Maintenance

johnny — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:15:00 +0000

Today was a work day as we try and get the truck ready for a trip to North Carolina over the Christmas holidays. We were hoping to change the air filter, fuel filter, oil, the front brakes and add a set of timbrens.

We managed to get everything except the brakes done today. Thankfully, the rain held off, but it should come in full force tonight. We’re hoping it will be over by tomorrow and we can get the brakes done as well.

There was some mild excitement during the proceedings. Mostly, myself cursing the engineer that decided to use fine threaded bolts in the timbrens as I tried to get them to line up without being able to see them. The other exciting bit involved screwing the fuel filter cap down too tightly, which caused the gasket to bunch up and allow diesel fuel to spray out. It was a very fine stream, but between the wind and the spray, it covered the entire front half of the truck.

The effects of today’s maintenance are already pretty obvious. We took the truck for a 20 mile drive with the camper on the back. There’s still a bit of leaning in corners, but since the overloads are engaging more readily, the truck doesn’t rock back and forth as it rights itself. The ride is considerably better. We are getting about a half mile per gallon better fuel economy. I think we’ll need to take a bit longer trip to get good numbers, but I think we might be almost 10% more fuel efficient as long as I don’t let lead foot behind the wheel.

Since we didn’t think the campground would appreciate us doing too much work on the truck, we’re parked in Jenn’s sister’s driveway. Hopefully the weather will cooperate tomorrow and we can get the front brakes upgraded.

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Welcome Home!

johnny — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:15:00 +0000

As of December 1st, we are officially homeless!

Apparently the delivery driver decided to take an extra long Thanksgiving holiday. Thankfully, Robbie and the rest of the service team over at Conibear were able to get the camper finished in under a day, so we were able to pick it up late Thursday afternoon.

Here’s our sexy new vagabond machine loaded up the first night.

I thought we had done a pretty good job of emptying the apartment out, but we still ended up moving for about 36 hours straight at the last minute. This was definitely the worst move ever. At least the upcoming moves will be painless for the foreseeable future.

We’ve still got a bunch of stuff in short term storage that needs to be sold, has been promised to relatives and friends or needs to go into long term storage at my parents’ place in South Carolina. Other than that, we’ve found a place for everything we plan to bring with us. Not everything is in the most convenient places, but we actually have a fair bit of extra storage so far.

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Downsizing

johnny — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:15:00 +0000

Sadly, the camper didn’t make it here prior to Thanksgiving, so instead of packing things into it, we’re moving as much stuff out of the apartment as we can live without. We’ve gotten rid of 75% of the furniture and the rest will go into storage in the next week. Jenn says I need to downsize my workstation even further than this:

We’ve still got a couple of big items we’d like to sell. One of them is Jenn’s Xterra. Unlike my old beater, it’s actually worth a few bucks. We’d probably have to pay someone to haul the hardbody away, so we’ll store it with my folks for a year or two.

Supposedly, the camper should be ready to pick up Tuesday or Wednesday. We’re going to be cutting it pretty close as our lease is up on Friday. If anything goes awry, we may just end up in a hotel room for a week or two. There’s still much to do to even get as far as living in the campground. Who knew going on an extended vacation would be so much work?!

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One Day At A Time

jenn — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:57:00 +0000

As Johnny stated, we are very busy getting ready and haven’t been able to post much. I have been working on selling my vehicle, but I am not having much luck with it. I guess that I am the last person on earth who loves a manual transmission. As soon as they hear that its a stick, the conversation ends. We are still trying to empty out the house in an ethical way. Our families have picked out everything that they want. Our friends have come over and, after some rummaging, decided on some items. We have lots of ads running on Craig’s list at the moment. I still have tons more to add. I am about to start listing on freecycle as well. We just have too much stuff. I have learned that being a pack rat is a bad thing.

We have a better idea of when the camper will arrive! It is supposed to leave Oregon on the 15th. It will come via a tractor trailer. It will probably take a couple of days for them to inspect it and do all of the dealer setup stuff. We are really hoping to have it before Thanksgiving. It would be great to be able to pack it up over the long weekend. Here’s hoping!

We have also picked out a campground to stay in for a couple of months while we get acclimated to the RV lifestyle and continue to make a living in the corporate world. We decided to spend the winter and part of the spring working at our current jobs so that we can put the money that we spent getting ready for this adventure back into our savings and sock away a few pennies more.

We have marked a few more items off of our list, but we still have lots to go. Half the fun of getting there is the journey, right?

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Odds and Ends

johnny — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 05:23:00 +0000

Well, the big day is getting closer. I still don’t have an exact delivery date from Conibear, but we expect the camper sometime in the next week or two. Meanwhile, we’ve got only three weeks left in our apartment.

We’ve canceled cable television and internet service. There’s still way more television being broadcast in the area than we really need. Quite frankly, I wish we watched even less television than we do.

For internet we’re using Sprint’s wireless data service. We have the new Novatel U727 usb modem. One of it’s big selling points is the built-in GPS. Unfortunately, the GPS is pretty lousy. Most of the time, you can’t even get it to lock onto satellites in a vehicle. Perhaps it would work better in the open air, but I rarely walk around with a laptop and actually need a GPS.

At least the internet service works pretty well. It took some fiddling with the EVDO settings and finding a good place to put the router, but we’re getting about 800kbps downstream. There is not currently an external antenna cable available for the U727. Hopefully it will take less trial and error with locations once we can permanently mount an antenna on the outside of the camper.

I’ve been very happy with the EVDO router. Its a Cradlepoint C350. It acts as a wifi hotspot and NATs the IP address that Sprint assigns. The interface is pretty intuitive and packed with a ton of features. The only real problem we’ve run into is trying to get WDS to work properly between this router and the Linksys access point we’ve been using. Since the C350 is wifi only, a fair portion of our network is currently unable to reach the internet. We’re making due with a couple of PCI wifi cards I had laying around from another project and multi-homing our workstations so we can still reach the NAS.

Switching ISPs has forced us to move along with some other things as well. The biggest one so far has been relocating our email and web toys to a domain hosting company. For the past ten years or so, I’ve run all the services for my vanity domain and Jenn has done the same with hers. Its a bit of a change letting someone else deal with all the root level things and rather frustrating when you have an issue that you could solve in five minutes if it were your box but instead have to ask someone else to look into.

We’re using Hostgator as our domain host and so far I’ve been very impressed with their customer service as they dealt with some dumb questions and some more esoteric technical issues.

The other big thing we need to deal with is our phone service. We have VOIP through our company, but we’re planning to switch to Skype. I’m still in the process of researching wifi VOIP phones. I also haven’t been overly impressed with Skype’s website interface or their customer support when we ran into some website problems. Hopefully we can resolve that issue and get set up. In the meantime, we’ll use cell phones for a bit longer.

The last bit of setup this week has been our mail forwarding service. We’re using Good Sam’s mail forwarding service. So far, it’s been a nightmare to get set up and taken far longer than I expected. If you want to use Good Sam mail forwarding service, save yourself a lot of headaches and just call them instead of trying to sign up online.

It’s been a pretty hectic time for us as we try to get all of this sorted out. There’s still a ton of things to do before we get as far as moving into the campground for a few months. As I have more time, I plan to go into a bit more in depth review of the products and services we’re using. In the meantime, if anybody is using a good wifi phone for Skype, let us know about it!

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Insurance

jenn — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:46:00 +0000

Well something that I should have researched better is insurance. I have called my current agent a few times over the last couple months with questions about insuring the camper and F450s. Every time they would promise to research it and get back to me. Emails have gone back and forth as well. Neither yielded any results. I have given up on my agent. I have been spending the last week looking at my options. They are quite varied. GEICO being the cheapest and Good Sam (GMAC) being more than twice as much as anyone else. Just like my current Allstate agent, the folks that I spoke with at Progressive had no idea on how to insure the camper while it is off of the truck.

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Truck Hunting

jenn — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:53:00 +0000

Well, I still haven’t found my dream truck. As our time frame gets smaller, I am opening up to more vehicles. I do not think that I am going to find the exact combo that I want anymore. At least not anytime soon. So, it is settled. I will purchase a less than perfect truck soon. I am mostly ok with that. Except well, now I have a new standard for the perfect truck. Sadly, the prospects seem grim for it as well. Why is it so hard to find a manual transmission?! I love driving one and do not want anything else. It looks like I am going to have to assimilate into the automatic world because searching for one is a kin to searching for buried treasure with only 1/4 of a map. Its making me a bit frustrated tonight. I guess it can’t all be fun all of the time…. Hopefully the car gods will hear my prayers for my new “Perfect Truck”. Its a 1999-2003 F350 DRW, Crew Cab, 4×4, MANUAL! 6speed with decent mileage. Shesh.. its such a tiny request. Time to get back to praying. Now where’d I put that dead chicken…..

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Waiting…

johnny — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:55:00 +0000

Well, there’s not too much going on currently. We’re waiting on the camper to arrive. We’re waiting on the title to Jenn’s Xterra to arrive so she can sell it. We’re waiting on the right truck to show up on the market at a reasonable price and we’re waiting on our current lease to end.

The lease is up the end of October. The camper will be here around mid November. And the title should arrive in 2-3 weeks. Who knows when we’ll find the perfect truck? Hopefully sometime before the camper arrives. At the moment, it looks like we’re going to try and scale down to living in a hotel suite for a few weeks before finally moving into the camper.

Meanwhile, we’re slowly whittling away at the massive pile of junk people can accumulate when there is no need to get rid of anything. Hopefully we’ll get rid of 6-8 computers this weekend along with some of the furniture. It’s barely a dent in what needs to go, but every bit helps.

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It’s Official!

johnny — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 15:24:00 +0000

Yesterday, we put down a deposit on the camper. We added and removed a handful of things that should really optimize the overall comfort for two people.

No oven. Really, how often are we going to be baking cookies? A stove is plenty and Jenn wants to play with a solar oven anyway. Maybe we’ll pick up a small grill to go with the thermal cooker. We get a large cabinet where the oven would be.
No dinette seating. We opted for the couch instead. This should be more comfortable for general lounging. There is still a table we can set up in front of the couch, although I think we will probably build our own articulating desktops.
Wet bath. A lot of people don’t like wet baths. They do, however, provide a lot more room to move around by combining your toilet and shower space. Additionally, we get a very large wardrobe next to the bathroom by saving space. The only real downside in our mind is that the ‘bathroom storage’ is limited to what will fit in a medicine cabinet. But with all the extra storage we gain outside of the bathroom and the increased space to shower properly, it’s a net win.
Full wall wardrobe in the cabover. This was a bit more difficult decision. It cost us a nice window, but the extra storage space is considerable. For long-term living, storage is one of our most important concerns. Besides, the window on the driver side is a wide escape hatch instead of a narrow, divided window.
No skylight in the kitchen. The benefit of the skylight really seemed questionable to us as we stood in the unit on the lot. It added some light, but only in a limited area. It is one more potential leak and one more place to introduce heat and cold. We save a few bucks by getting rid of it as well.
No generator. The standard generator burns LP gas inefficiently, is rather noisy and costs about $3k. We can pickup a quiet, efficient gasoline unit for around $800. It won’t make quite as much juice and we can’t push a button to start it, but overall I prefer this route.
7K BTU air conditioner. Hopefully, this will put an end to my search for the perfect AC unit. It’s a bit higher wattage than I’d like, but I’m more comfortable with it’s ability to cool the camper. Sadly, we actually had to pay more for a 7k unit than if we had gone up to a 13.5K unit. However, with this unit, we should have no problem running it on our downsized generator.
Thermal pane windows. They really charge a premium for these, but if we’re going to be in the cold weather, it’s thermal pane or storm windows. And just where are we going to store those storm windows when we’re not using them?

The rest of the camper is pretty much standard.

I’ve got to say this was one of my better shopping experiences. Conibear RV in Lakeland, FL is certainly one of the better RV dealers we’ve visited. Their sales team (well, salesman and general manager) is very low pressure, friendly and easy to work with. Primarily, we dealt with Don Mills, the general manger. We negotiated the price and options we wanted via email and a couple of telephone calls. The negotiations started out a bit slow at first because of the complexity of the order, but once I called and spoke with Donnie, we were able to get things moving along pretty well.

I did a fair bit of the legwork for them by speaking with Northwood (the makers of the Arctic Fox camper) and figuring out which options weren’t really options and which standard things could become options. The pre-sales folks at Northwood were easy to work with as well. They didn’t waste too much time going back and forth, they’d just flat out tell me I couldn’t do something and we’d move on.

By the time we were ready to head out to Conibear again, it was Labor Day weekend and they were closed for the long weekend. However, Donnie told me he was going to be around trying to catch up on some of his workload and to come on by. So we drove on out and looked over all of the campers one more time to be sure we had decided on the right one for us. Again, there was no pressure when we got there. Donnie told us to go ahead and take our time and he’d be working in the office.

After we signed the paperwork, we sat around and visited with Donnie for an hour and a half or so. He’s one of the nicest guys we’ve run into during the entire process and I don’t doubt that he will take care of any issues we run into with the new camper right away. If you’re shopping for an Arctic Fox, Host or Northwood in Central Florida, you could do a lot worse than giving Conibear RV a call.

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A little update

johnny — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:31:00 +0000

We haven’t posted in a bit, so I figured it was about time to at least make a note of what’s been going on. The last few weeks have been a little hectic as we’ve been trying to integrate with the server team from the company we merged with. In addition to that, we’ve been tied up on the weekends visiting with some friends out of town and going to Hunter Safety classes.

The good news is we are both 100% legal to hunt and are possibly less likely to shoot each other with bow and arrow, shotguns, rifles or black powder firearms. The bad news is we have jobs for the foreseeable future instead of a 6 month severance package.

So far, we haven’t found anything we like much better than an Arctic Fox 1140 in our price range. I just sent off a quote request to the local (well… kind of local) dealer to see what they want for one with all of the special features we can get if we order from the factory. If all goes well and we can actually agree on a reasonable price, I hope to put in the order this weekend. A reasonable price is, of course, the sticky bit.

The dealer is telling us roughly 8-10 weeks for delivery once we order, so we should have a bit of time to locate the right truck to go with the camper.

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The hunt continues

jenn — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 23:11:00 +0000

Today, we had a great time searching all over the state for the elusive truck camper. We were lucky as we were actually able to observe multiple herds in the same day. First, we traveled West. Here we found a nice sized herd. We were quite amazed to find the Host breed mingling with both the Arctic Fox and the Adventurer. These three also allowed a couple of others to graze the same area. It was quite an interesting grouping, and we were glad to have the finally opportunity to examine so many of them.

We looked all of them over. We found all of them to be great in their own way, the Arctic Fox 1140 stuck out from the rest of the pack. It was quite roomy inside, yet no space was wasted. It had a decent amount of storage with lots of little hidden compartments inside. The only complaint that I have with it is the lack of ventilation. There isn’t an overhead escape hatch (in case of accidental ingestion), so no light or air from there. That also means that one of the windows next to the bed does not open. On the three windows that do open, kitchen, dinette, and bed area, the area that actually does open is very small. For me, this is the only plus that the Hosts had over the Foxes.

The Hosts had large windows that opened wide and allowed for a nice cross breeze. They also had a large, nifty skylight (my euphemism for escape hatch) over the bed. While the host had a nice open airy feel, it lacked in what the Fox excelled at, utilizing space.

We also had the opportunity to look at an 2004 Host Yellowstone with 2 slides. It had not held up well at all. We noticed some seams inside that had separated. The wallpaper was bubbly. Both slides had delamination. One of the slides had dry rot. This specimen didn’t speak well for the longevity of the Host brand in our eyes. It looked much worse than I expected any 2004 to look. I would love to see an older Fox to compare it to.

The other species weren’t too noteworthy in our eyes. We weren’t happy with the size or layouts. The prices were nice though.

Once we saw all that we could, our journey led us South to the next hunting grounds. Here we found a domesticated group that had been caged up in the middle of the city. It was comprised of Travel Lites, Lances, Okanagans, and Palominos. We observed them from a distance. This was our second attempt at entering their corral. Unfortunately no one was there to let us in this time either. We will have to venture this way yet another day.

We decided to take our hunt to the truck camper’s natural environment. Had we known the sort of reptiles we’d encounter in the Florida swamp, we might have turned back sooner.

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No, we still haven’t decided

johnny — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:46:00 +0000

At this point, it’s almost a joke. I talked with my folks the other day and the first question they asked was ‘So, have you decided what you want yet?’. The answer is ‘yes, but…’

Our goals are (in no particular order):

The ability to go almost anywhere
Maintaining as much self sufficiency as possible
Keeping to a modest budget during both the purchasing and living phases
Being able to bring along a few toys to help occupy the time
Having enough living space to not kill each other

The perfect vehicle would be roughly:

4×4
diesel
no more than 25′ long
larger on the inside than the outside
very popular in order to be available used and at more affordable prices

Amazingly enough, we can get everything except popularity with… wait for it… coming back full circle to… the venerable truck camper. It’s not too difficult to find a 4×4 diesel truck for a reasonable price. Truck campers are relatively small and many of the more modern models are ‘bigger on the inside’ thanks to slide outs.

The two problems we run into with truck campers are weight and availability. In Florida, there just aren’t very many available and the ones that are available tend to be older or smaller with no slide outs. Luckily, its the end of the model year. We can probably get more or less what we want without spending an arm and a leg, but it’s still going to cost a bit more than a good 3-4 year old camper.

The other tricky thing with a truck camper is weight. The nicer units with lots of space because of slideouts, overall length and insulation are just darn heavy. On top of that, we need to carry fuel, water and a few more batteries than the average camper. Depending on the unit, we’ll either be pushing the max cargo capacity of top tier ‘consumer trucks’ or well over into the range of commercial trucks.

Now, maybe 500 pounds over max capacity is ’safe enough’ on a dually with an exhaust brake if we tool along at 50 mph on the highways, but I’d sure hate to find out the hard way that it’s not.

All things considered, you gotta admit, this just looks like a helluva fun way to live:

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The best laid plans…

johnny — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:17:00 +0000

Well, another weekend pretty well shot. People just don’t understand how to take care of RV’s. Everything we’ve looked at has had water damage due to not being regularly resealed. I’d like to believe that people tell us there is no water damage out of ignorance rather than actually lying, but it’s getting hard to believe in a lot of cases.

We’ve pretty well decided to consider anything we come across at this point. We’ve looked at class a’s, class c’s and 5th wheels. We’re pretty open to the 5th wheel idea as it will let us get a 4×4 diesel truck for gas mileage and accessibility. The hard part is finding one that isn’t ginormous! We’re having a hard time finding anything nearby that’s 26 feet or less.

After a weekend of frustration, we headed over to the range again and I ruined a few more arrows. I’m not too happy with the replacement arrows I picked up last trip. The fletchings are a bit more ‘rubbery’ than I’ve been using and they tend to deform and rip when I get my shot groups too tight. The archer was off today, so I’ll have to get him to build me some new arrows the next time we’re in. Range fees: $4, replacement arrows: $14. I’ve gotta stop aiming for the center with every shot!

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Geared up for RV shopping

johnny — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:28:00 +0000

Well, it’s almost the weekend again and we finally have what I think is a pretty good shopping plan worked out. We keep records of everything we’ve looked at or considered looking at. At the rate the good RV’s are getting snapped up, we figure we have to hit the new listings ASAP. We can quickly cull through anything that we’ve already deemed unsuitable and will probably assume anything that was already listed in a previous week is also unsuitable.

We’ve done a bit of this earlier in the week; a handful of publications have already come out for the weekend. We compared everything that was roughly the size/price we wanted with the ones we looked at last weekend and only had 1 unit to look at. It appeared to be in very good condition, but had recently developed a leak and was holding a gallon or two of water in the cab over.

Tonight, we’ll be making lists and culling out the unlikely ones. This will probably mean we don’t have a large amount in one area as we did last weekend, so lots more driving will be the order of the day. Even if we don’t find the perfect RV, we will hopefully be looking at less units that have been sitting week after week without being sold.

We’ve got to remember to take the camera this weekend. We missed all the goofy pictures of Christmas, FL (where it’s Christmas all year round!) last weekend. Neither of us had ever been to Christmas before and Jenn has lived in FL 2/3 of her life. We drove through a neat campground there that gave discounts to Airstream trailers. There must have been 7-8 Airstreams there… in July… in Florida.

Using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 (henceforth referred to as KIA for ‘Know It All’), we got to see a lot of interesting back roads we would have missed just hammering down the interstate at 80 mph. We’ve already decided that when we find the perfect vehicle, we will never drive it on the interstate. There will be no hurry, so we’ll just tool around on the older roads and soak up the scenery and culture. Finally we will get to see whats in all those gaudy tourist traps that our parents never wanted to stop at!

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Everything Must Go!

johnny — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:20:00 +0000

Thankfully, we can’t take everything we own with us in the motorhome. We have way too much stuff and it will be a pleasure to get rid of most of it. The last few times we’ve moved it’s been quite a chore and we’ve actually had to start considering ‘do we want to move all this crap?’ everytime we consider changing apartments.

For starters, every piece of furniture we own can be given away or sold with the exception of our camping chairs and tables. The entire room full of old computer hardware will be useless. The only computers we plan to keep are 2-4 laptops, the NAS (network attached storage – a little black box full of hard drives) and a wifi router. We may keep one of the 19″ wide screen LCD’s if we end up with an RV large enough to sport a permanent workstation area, but that remains to be seen.

It’s amazing how much things depreciate. Our extensive technical library probably ran 2-3 thousand dollars over a 10 year period. It looks like we’ll be doing very well to get $200 out of it. Oh well. I’m keeping a few of the more useful programming and network books and the rest of the subject matter we can find on the internet. The harder decision is which fiction to take with us. I have a large collection of electronic fiction stored on the NAS, but it’s nice to have hard copy when you’re relaxing outdoors.

We’ve got relatives lined up to store and borrow some of our things, but the more we get rid of, the less we have to haul out of state and try to find a safe place for. It looks like we’ll be keeping both vehicles in storage for a while until we’re sure we like the lifestyle. Then Jenn will probably sell her vehicle as it still has decent resale value. My pickup has depreciated about all it’s going to and is still in excellent condition, so we’ll probably keep it stored a bit longer.

Unfortunately, we don’t have room to have a garage sale where we are currently, so we’ll have to get rid of things slowly via craigs list and ebay. Maybe we’ll make a bit more money that way, but it’s definitely going to take a lot longer, which means will be spending more time living with only the things that have no resale value.

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