inicio mail me! sindicaci;ón

Archive for January, 2006

Aluminum Repair Tip

Frequently in online RV travel forums, someone writes to ask, “What tools should I bring with me on trips for emergency repairs?” This inevitably results in a firestorm of lists from every anal-compulsive male member of the forum, each list being bigger and better than all its predecessors, trumping and trumping again until the final toolkit is so large that it would require a trailer all its own.

I tend to take a more minimalist approach. I’ll fix the basic stuff, and leave the big problems to trained professionals. (For this reason, the more important tool in my kit is the gold credit card in my wallet.) You know the basic tools we carry (duct tape, screwdrivers, rivet gun, etc), but there are a few specialized items that you’d never think of until the day you need them.

For example, we encountered our first road-borne rock in Oregon. The darned thing hit the front of the trailer like it was fired from a sniper rifle, and left a nice round half-inch ding in the driver’s side curved section of the trailer ““ right above the stoneguards, of course.

For this sort of metal repair, you have two choices: (1) have it repaired at enormous expense; (2) cover it up. I chose option 2, using my favorite Airstream beauty secret: the fake bullet hole.

bullet hole close.jpg

Available from ” Hardley Dangerous Illusions”, the fake bullet hole comes in a variety of sizes to accommodate just about any annoying ding in seconds. Best of all, with a slight indent on the trailer, the bullet hole looks remarkably realistic and provides a great conversation starter at rallies and campgrounds. I prefer the .38 calibre for general repairs.

bullet hole .jpg
Quick and easy aluminum “repair” for $1!

Laundry Tips

Joe, a reader of this blog, wrote to us today, asking: “How do you handle laundry? That has to be a bit of a pain…”

It’s not that bad. Every campground host knows where the local laundromat is. And when you’re staying near larger cities like when we were in Santa Cruz, there’s almost one every mile.

We pick a day to do errands. The first stop is the laundromat, where I take up three washing machines in a row (whites, lights, and darks). We head off to do a half-hour errand while the wash runs, come back, throw it in the dryer, run another errand, come back, fold and go! That way I don’t spend the entire day in the laundromat and I can do two weeks worth of laundry including sheets and towels. (When we were at the beach, I did laundry once a week.) It’s as simple as that.

Routine Maintenance

A reader of this weblog wrote in to say:

” I know your trip is about the experience, not technical issues, but it would be interesting to know routine maintenance needed for a new Airstream on a weekly and monthly basis and your checklist for setting up camp and leaving camp.”

Good questions. Actually we have remarkably little routine maintenance on the Airstream. Mostly we try to clean it periodically, inside and out. As I wrote in a previous blog entry, cleaning outside is either a matter of visiting a truck wash or borrowing a friend’s driveway. It seems to need cleaning monthly, and more often when we tow near the ocean or in cities. Inside, we use a little Dirt Devil handheld vacuum and a whisk broom, along with the sort of cleaning supplies you’d use in your house. The nice thing about a trailer is that it cleans up fast, so housework amounts to about 15 minutes.

Every time we dump the holding tanks we add a little enzyme chemical and water to the empty tank, to help keep them working properly. Sometimes we add a little Calgon water softener too, to help keep things from sticking to the insides of the tanks.

Every week I check the tire pressures, check the lug nuts for tightness, and look for damage under the trailer. I also need to start checking the battery fluid levels — haven’t done that yet.

About every two or three weeks I clean the pivot points in the Reese hitch and re-lubricate them. That takes about five minutes.

A basic tool kit in the rear compartment handles any minor repairs we need to do along the way. I carry a bag full of tools and supplies: screwdrivers, rivet gun, pliers, hitch grease, pressure gauge, various kinds of tape, glue, cordless drill & bits, and spare hardware (rivets, bulbs, screws, etc). Most of it hasn’t been needed — it’s just left over from when we were touring in a vintage trailer.

Pre-departure checklist is another matter. There are many details to attend to, so we have made up a two-page list. It took a few weeks to fine-tune this list (getting everything in order and dividing the work between two people). It includes things like turning off electronics, folding up the step, checking the propane, securing personal items, and closing roof vents. We’ll have an article on this subject in a future issue of Airstream Life magazine, with lots more detail.

Once you get the hang of your particular trailer or motorhome, and figure out where everything goes during travel, routine maintenance and packing are a breeze. It all becomes unchallenging, like refueling your car and refilling the wiper fluid. Overall, I think it’s easier than a house.

Tell us where you are!

Hey, great news! Frappr has upgraded their mapping capability so now you can mark your location on our map!

Just click the link in the left column of this page that says “Click to see our map!” (you may have to scroll down to see it). When you see the map page, click the link to the right that says “Add yourself to map” and enter your name, email address and zip code. A little red pin will show up on our map that shows where you are!

You can also put in any little message you want. For example, do you own an Airstream? Do you plan to take a trip like ours? Do you have courtesy parking for us? We’d love to hear from you!

Redwoods.jpg
Flashback: Avenue of the Giants, near Redwood National Park, Nov 23, 2005

Answers to your questions

Since we are in vacation mode through next Wednesday, I’ll take this opportunity to answer a few reader questions that come up frequently:

Airstream warranty. A reader of this blog wrote in to ask about the warranty, in light of our faucet problem back in November. The warranty is two years, bumper to bumper. We’ve had a few things fixed on the trailer and Airstream has always served us with a smile.

Tow vehicle. In November, I got a call from a Nissan dealer in North Carolina who said our photo from Wheeler Peak (Great Basin National Park) sold his customer on a Nissan Armada for his Airstream. For us, the Armada has proved to be a very good match to the 30-footer, using a properly adjusted Reese Strait-Line hitch and Prodigy brake control.

The truck has been reliable, with 10,700 miles logged since new at this point. Since we are towing a lot, we change oil every 3,000 miles. Be sure to follow the break-in instructions for towing very carefully regardless of which vehicle you buy. With the Nissan Armada or Titan, you need to log 500 miles not towing, then 500 miles towing below 45 MPH, before you hit the highway.

Email list. Down on the left column you’ll see a link that says “Enter your email and we’ll notify you of upcoming events.” Really what happens if you enter your email is that once in a while I’ll send you a note when something special is happening in the blog. For example, I’ll send you a short reminder when we get back on the road next week. It won’t add you to any spam lists.

Tell a friend! If you like this blog, the best thing you can do is tell a friend! We love sharing the experience with people and we’d love to help a few more people become travelers (or enjoy traveling more)!

On Vacation

You may notice that I’m not updating the blog with our daily travels this week. We have elected to take a week of “vacation” and so I’m only posting non-travel bits until next Thursday.

Now, when I mention the word “vacation” I inevitably get the response, “What — a vacation from your vacation?” So I’ll explain …

Our trip is that of a working family. I still do my day job nearly every day (7 days a week) while we are traveling in our Airstream. As I’ve written before, an Airstream trailer with mobile Internet, cell phones, a laptop computer, a cooperative family, and a lot of personal flexibility make this possible. I work whenever I get a chance, and see the world with my family at other times.

But there’s no substitute for just unplugging. So when we started this trip, we agreed that at least once or twice we would truly disconnect from work and use the time to re-gain our perspective on everything. That’s what a vacation is really about, for me. I don’t want to remember my Airstream year only as a time when I was constantly scrambling to balance the obligations of family and work.

I think the obligations we have taken with us are the key difference between us and retirees. The goal of being retired, for many people, is to have most of the responsibilities of work and family behind you, so that you can roam the country without care. We still have those responsibilities but are unwilling to wait until we are retired to travel, so this is our compromise.

In that sense, we are travelers, not vacationers. It works for us. Life goes on, with all its minor dramas and trials, every day we are in our Airstream, but we enjoy our lives more and suffer the trials less because we are simultaneously doing what we love: seeing America on our terms.

Next week we will go back to our regular program of work and travel. But this week, through next Wednesday, we are just a family on vacation. I’ll let you know what other perspectives I have gained, when we get back. In the meantime, I will post at least every other day, with some answers to your questions and lifestyle tips we’ve accumulated over the past two months.

1952 Cruiser pictures

You asked for them, you got them! I just uploaded a new album to Flickr with a bunch more photos of our 1952 Cruiser project. You’ll see it’s pretty rough inside, but wait … in six months this trailer will be awesome!

Rob is towing it up to Plattsburgh later this month so Colin’s team can get started on it. We’ll start a separate blog for it around then. The plan is to have it ready for the International Rally in Salem Oregon by late June. Not much time! We’ll have to hustle.

« Previous entries · Next entries »