johnny November 13th, 2008
A couple of months back, we posted about three guys that got laid off from the Northwood of Virginia factory and have gone into the repair business. Well, we still needed a few things fixed because of problems with our appliance vendors and had a few days left on our warranty, so we figured it would be a good time to visit Bruce, Jerry and Roger again. I’m happy to say they had about a half dozen RVs in for repairs - primarily insurance claims and warranty work. Fortunately for us, everything they had sitting was because they were waiting for parts to arrive, so they had some time to work on our fan and air conditioner without having to wait.
We’ve been working on their website for a few days and instead of trying to figure out how much to charge a start-up that we really want to see succeed, we talked them into doing some customization on the camper. You’ve seen my oh-so-humble efforts on the liquor cabinet, so let’s just say I was thrilled to see what they made of my request to add a spice rack. And here I was about ready to buy some wire and plastic contraption from Wal-Mart!
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johnny October 1st, 2008
I posted back in April about our table upgrade that has saved my sanity, but I figure it’s time to cover a few more minor modifications that have improved our enjoyment of the camper. Also, we’re about to be engaged slinging fried chicken for a couple of weeks and we’ll probably be rather quiet in the blogosphere.
I’ve really got to say I’m still very happy with our choice of camper and options. We’ve looked at quite a few both before and after we made a decision and I still haven’t seen one (yeah, I know Paul will tell me to look at his Snowriver) that I would be happier with for fulltiming.
We had a couple of things customized on the camper that have made life a lot easier. One was getting a wet bath instead of a dry bath. For starters, it’s very easy to clean a wet bath. The only thing you really sacrifice is having a dry place to store towels and toilet paper. It’s also a good idea to buy a squeegie to swamp out the bathroom after your shower. But what we got in return for a dry bath is a wardrobe that’s two and a half feet deep, three full length drawers and a shoe cabinet.
After we quit work, I found I didn’t need hanging clothes anymore and built a cubbyhole system inside the wardrobe. Now, I have four shelves for clothes, a liquor cabinet and a handy place to store our bows which we previously had to squeeze behind the backseat of the truck. Rene has been asking me, for months now, where we hide the booze and I finally have a good answer. With some wiggling, I can get roughly eighteen liters of booze in the liquor cabinet. Just right for a couple of unemployed, homeless folks, right?
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johnny September 26th, 2008
We had to have a few repairs done recently, and after talking to the factory out in Oregon, we were pointed to a dealer in Amherst, Virginia. I was getting a bit scared when the lady there mentioned that their repair guy only worked for them part time. However, she told me she had recently sent some folks up to the factory in Winchester for repairs. Now, this struck me as odd since I’d just got off the phone with the factory in Oregon and they’d confirmed that the Winchester factory was now closed. It turns out that three of the senior guys are starting a repair facility and are still working out of the Northwood factory for the time being!
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I can’t recommend Bruce, Jerry and Roger highly enough. Between them, they’ve got something like 102 years of experience manufacturing RV’s for Fleetwood and Northwood. Both times we’ve dealt with them, they have been very professional and extremely fast while managing high quality repairs. In fact, I’ll go so far as to give out their phone numbers for anybody on the east coast that needs some excellent work done.
Phone: 540-542-6140
Cell: 304-268-2339
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Hitek Homeless July 23rd, 2008
Hi.
We’re Johnny and Jenn, a couple of hardcore IT geeks; the hairy, furry toothed sort that speak in TLA’s (three letter acronyms), can’t explain anything without drawing a diagram and walk around the office barefoot. After a combined 24 years in the field, we got fed up with cubical life and started plotting our escape.
For more than nine months, we applied the sort of intense research and out of the box thinking that is only normally seen at 3AM when the coffee and Mountain Dew are flowing and the project is due tomorrow, but seriously in need of a complete rewrite. All of that research and preparation paid off with… well… you see, we live in the back of a pickup truck. It is a large truck. For a pickup truck, I mean.
Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is that we got out. Now, we’re roaming around outdoors (that’s the big blue room for those of you still inside) and seeing what else life has to offer. We’re going to places where they’ve never heard of the Internet along with places that have heard of it, but think it’s something you fish with.
So, if you want to see what it’s like in the big blue room, come right on in. The beer is cold, the campfire smoke will get in your eyes and the pay is lousy.
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johnny May 4th, 2008
We dropped the camper off with the Northwood guys around 7:30AM and needed to kill some time. Luckily, as the factory was very nearly closed, they allowed us to leave the cats in an unused stairwell for the day.
Wednesday evening, we had stopped at a Civil War battlefield next door to the Opequon church where we ran into a retired teacher who proceeded to fill us in on the history of the church and the surrounding area for about an hour as well as suggest a few things to see in town the following day. On advice of our Presbyterian tour guide, we aimed to get out of town before the festival got started if possible as we have had our share of festivals and fairs.
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