Archive for Uncategorized
October 14, 2005 at 9:42 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our philosophy is that you take advantage of what each local area offers. So today we headed off to meet our friends Henry and Danean for a tour of the RV industry — past and present.
Elkhart is the center of the RV universe, and it’s only about 15 miles down the Indiana tollway from South Bend. Our first stop was the factory that Henry works at, which makes RV parts. Riding around in a golf cart, we got a great tour from Henry of robotic welding machines and manufacturing processes. Even Emma was interested. And at the end of the tour, everyone got a company baseball cap!
Next stop was the RV/MH Heritage Museum in downtown Elkhart. This place is basically a collection of really special antique RVs from the 1920s through 1970s. You can walk right into most of the units, and they are mostly in superb condition. The only Airstream in the collection is a early 60s Bambi. My 1968 Caravel and 1963 Serro Scotty would have fit right in.
In the front hall is the Hall of Fame. Wally Byam is there, of course. If you’ve ever wondered what Theodore Bargman (manufacturer of the infamous Bargman locks and lights) looked like, or Art Costello (Airstream’s president of the Los Angeles factory in the 1960s), you’ll find them too.
Then we headed off to Henry and Danean’s house. Henry has an interesting race car, which happens to be more or less street legal. It’s a 1978 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with a 454 engine. So we took it out for a spin around the block. When I was putting the five-point seat belts on, I started to sense that this might be a mistake, but it was too late to back out. Sure enough, Henry demonstrated the car’s ability to run the quarter-mile. Uh, 110 MPH in 12 seconds. A bit better than the Nissan Armada/Airstream combo I’m driving these days.
Emma got a chance to drive, too, but not the race car. She steered a golf cart while Danean worked the pedals and Eleanor hung on for her life. It made for an interesting ride around their front yard. The dog raced around in circles while Emma careened around, narrowly missing shrubs and ditches. She wants to tow the Airstream now, but I sense she’s not quite ready.
The day started with a little spin in one of Dr. C’s collector cars, a 1950s Mercedes 190. He took me for a top-down ride through the quiet cornfields and suburbs of West South Bend. A very pleasant touring car, that Mercedes, and as the doctor told me this morning, “It’s great for picking up chicks.”
That’s Elkhart/South Bend for us. Tomorrow morning, we head over to the northern Chicago suburbs to meet more friends.
October 13, 2005 at 6:17 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We’ve got the graphics on! Man, it looks great. This picture doesn’t show the other side, but I’ll get one of those up soon. Already as we drive around, I see people giving us long looks. I think that’s a good thing.
October 13, 2005 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Two developments today:
1) Episode 3 of The VAP is available for download at www.thevap.com. If you have iTunes and you’ve previously subscribed to it, just launch it and choose “Update podcast”. It features the second part of an interview with me.
2) We are heading off to get our cool new “Tour of America” decals put on today. I’ll post a picture tonight of the result.
October 11, 2005 at 11:42 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We fled Jackson Center this afternoon. We had a final bug on the new trailer (water heater shutting off), which was simply a matter of adjusting the air mixture, and then we spent the rest of the morning getting organized. We were finally ready to hit the road by 4 pm.
Normally I’d hang back and go the next morning, but let’s face it, there’s not much going on in Jackson Center. The factory closes up at 3:30 and I think they roll up the sidewalks at 9 pm. On Mondays “JC Pizza” (one of the three restaurants) is closed, and that leaves a pair of greasy spoons and the local movie theater. We went to see Wallace & Gromit in the old single-screen theater Monday night, so we’d pretty much blown through the local entertainment scene.
So it was with great eagerness that I hitched up the new 30-footer and hauled it outta there. Nice trailer, no problems. Tows as well as you’d expect an Airstream to tow. We had a pleasant four-hour tour through cornfields of Ohio and Indiana and then arrived at the home of our notorious cohort “Dr. C” in South Bend. We’ll be here a couple of days.
October 10, 2005 at 8:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today things went nuts. I ran out at 7:30 a.m. to tell Service about a few bugs in the new trailer. They said they could get on it right away, despite the fact that Monday is their busy day. So I made a quick run over to Marketing to schedule the signing of paperwork relating to the loan of the new trailer, and then back to the trailer to tell Eleanor that Service was coming for the trailer RIGHT NOW. We had 10 minutes to grab everything we needed including a sleeping child, and stuff it all in Vintage Thunder.
It went downhill from there. I had to do a last-minute fix on the Argosy’s water pump, then run over to Service to get more stuff out of our trailer, and when I got back Vintage Thunder’s new owner was standing there waiting for me. Of course the Argosy was a mess — littered with our junk, and not cleaned yet. I took the buyer and Emma for a walk around the campus so Eleanor could work on the Argosy in peace. Every 20 minutes we swung back by the trailer and Eleanor would tell me of yet another item she needed from the new trailer, so we made lots of trips back-and-forth between the Terraport and the Service department.
At noon we took a break to start some laundry at the local place, and have lunch at “Hobo’s” restaurant. (Not the most promising name, but it’s either that or JC Pizza and JC Pizza is closed on Monday.) Then the Service guys needed me (and the truck, to get the hitch adjusted) so Eleanor had to walk three blocks to the laundromat to put stuff in the dryer, and later make a second trip on foot to get all the laundry out.
At 3:30 the trailer finally came out of Service, the buyer had done the factory tour, and the laundry was done, so we all converged on the Argosy and tried to simultaneously (a) entertain Emma; (b) clean up the Argosy; (c) get the new owner hitched up to go. Of course, the hitch on the Argosy needed adjustment to fit his truck, and the tools required included two enormous wrenches which we didn’t have. Amazingly, right then one of the Service guys walked up to bring us our power cord, and he volunteered his personal tools to get the job done!
We finally got a chance to walk the buyer through the Argosy about 4:30 pm. Then we had to take our Bill of Sale over to the corporate offices for notarizing and also sign some paperwork related to the new trailer. A SNAFU ensued regarding my insurance company’s failure to fax a declaration page, and by 5:30 pm we gave up on that process and headed back to get Vintage Thunder on the road. The new owner was headed off to the KOA in Dayton by 6:30 pm, with a grin on his face, and then I had fifteen minutes to check voicemail & email, and then walk downtown once more to see “Wallace & Gromit’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit” at 7 pm — something we promised Emma we’d do tonight.
So here we are, sorting out the mess in the trailer we made today, having eaten only popcorn since Hobo’s, and a bit stressed out all around. Thank goodness for Wallace & Gromit, otherwise Eleanor and I would have exploded.
I need to resolve the insurance paperwork tomorrow, find the Owner’s Manuals that go with the new trailer, return Dan The Service Guy’s tools, get the interior set up for traveling, and do a few hours of real work too. With all that I don’t know if we will get out tomorrow, and at this point we are all thinking a day to catch up might be a good idea.
So we are re-thinking whether we will head to South Bend IN. We might just head southwest toward Denver instead. I need to settle in somewhere for at least two weeks to catch up on work. What a life! We all hope it gets easier after this.
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