{"id":1619,"date":"2008-08-12T08:38:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T12:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2008-08-12T12:17:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T16:17:00","slug":"linking-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/?p=1619","title":{"rendered":"Linking up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our trailer service is done. The bottom line was $1500, with ceramic brake pads all around, one replaced rotor, axle alignment, a new bumper, straightening and repainting of the rear scrapers, and a few small parts.<\/p>\n<p>Today at the Airstream factory Brett and I will be running around trying to meet with various people on the staff, and conducting a few interviews for future articles in Airstream Life.  One interview was done yesterday afternoon, with John Huttle. He&#8217;s the head of Airstreams &#8220;B-van&#8221; division, which includes the new Interstate 3500 touring coach being produced in a separate building across the street from the main assembly building.  We took a tour of the assembly process (not part of the public tour, sorry) and were quite impressed by the complete redesign of this new little motorhome.<\/p>\n<p>I need to do several follow-up interviews today and over the next few weeks to get together a good story about this completely re-designed product.  That article should appear in the Winter 2008 issue of Airstream Life.<\/p>\n<p>Since the bulk of the day will be filled with business tasks, I am going to take the opportunity to share with you a few good links which have been passed on to me by blog readers recently.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/bolt-trailer-snapshot.jpg\" title=\"bolt-trailer-snapshot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/bolt-trailer-snapshot.jpg\" title=\"bolt-trailer-snapshot.jpg\" alt=\"bolt-trailer-snapshot.jpg\" align=\"right\" height=\"117\" width=\"189\" \/><\/a>Andy writes: &#8220;For one brief, er, it would have been a shining moment if it was the daytime, an almost Airstream is the trailer that appears in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moviedisney.com\/bolt-disney-movie.html\" target=\"_blank\">the trailer<\/a> (couldn&#8217;t resist that one) for the Disney movie &#8216;Bolt.&#8217;  The shape of the trailer (travel-trailer, that is) is definitely Airstream, but the side details look a bit different, like there&#8217;s a recessed waistband or something.  The travel trailer appears about 1\/4 to 1\/3 of the way into the movie trailer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Al wrote in a comment yesterday that there was a recall on valve stems going on.  I haven&#8217;t yet verified if our stems are in the recall, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.detnews.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20080612\/BIZ\/806120481\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s the link for more information<\/a> about that.<\/p>\n<p>Brad writes in from Oregon to tip me off to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/10\/fashion\/10ukulele.html?_r=2&amp;scp=1&amp;sq=ukulele&amp;st=cse&amp;oref=slogin&amp;oref=slogin\" target=\"_blank\">a good article about the rising ukulele phenomenon<\/a>.  (Registration may be required to view this article.) When the New York Times covers it, you know you&#8217;ve made the big time, right? Hey, even Warren Buffet plays the uke.  He thought it would get him girls.  (Hey Warren, it didn&#8217;t work for me either.)<\/p>\n<p>Some fellow full-timers, Jim and Debbie, have been keeping a blog of their travels for some time. Since the travels of Bobby &amp; Danine (&#8220;A Year About&#8221;) have come to an end, their blog will be replaced on the Airstream Community page of this website  with Jim &amp; Debbie&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/dreamstreamr.startlogic.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Dreamstreamr Odyssey<\/a>.&#8221;  But I still advise anyone planning to take an extended tour in their travel trailer to read the archives of <a href=\"http:\/\/ayearabout.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">A Year About<\/a>. It&#8217;s fun to read about their adventure and very informative as well.<\/p>\n<p>Deb and Jim have been particularly helpful in advising us on methods and concerns related to obtaining good nationwide health insurance for full-timers.  Deb has written up <a href=\"http:\/\/dreamstreamr.startlogic.com\/page6.html#C7\" target=\"_blank\">a short article on that subject<\/a>, which contains useful information for anyone trying to figure out individual health insurance while traveling.<\/p>\n<p>That ought to keep you busy while I&#8217;m running around Jackson Center all day.  More later.  Let me know if there&#8217;s a photo you want me to try to take while I&#8217;m here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our trailer service is done. The bottom line was $1500, with ceramic brake pads all around, one replaced rotor, axle alignment, a new bumper, straightening and repainting of the rear scrapers, and a few small parts. Today at the Airstream factory Brett and I will be running around trying to meet with various people on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tour.airstreamlife.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}