RV

A former co-worker and contemporary of mine finally got fed up and retired earlier this year then went camping. He and his wife sold everything and consolidated their worldly goods into an RV. Last heard from they were on their way to Arizona from somewhere in Washington State.

Good for them.

I've had this same idea with another twist. I will have won a lottery and would invest my hard-won booty into an RV which will transport the lovely Miss Carol and our High School aged sons around the country in a quest to find bits and pieces of American History in a sort of mobile classroom. My only concern would be that I would have to teach the kids other subjects and there would be no extracurriculars like Cross Country or Band. With one kid having trouble with French and the other with Algebra, well, I think that the idea might not work out as well as I would like.

But the idea that one can consolidate and live in a compact home which can easily move from one place to another tomorrow has a certain appeal to me... and to the other half of us, too. Over the past several years I have read about the practicality of the lifestyle for retirees written by one of the writers for the Dallas Morning News. He pointed out the obvious that by shedding what we don't need we can live larger lives in smaller spaces.

With that in mind, we (that is to say Carol, Stuart and I), took in a large portion of an RV show in Dallas over the weekend.

Stuart was, at first, a participant with only a tepid interest in what went on. He's the Cross Country student with an aversion to French. I pointed out that my plan for yanking him and his step-brother around the country could include a trip to Quebec so that he could learn French from French-speaking people. He pointed out to me that his French teacher was a native of Quebec and was already fluent in the language. Point taken. I'm left wondering if she's teaching the class French French or Frostback French. There is a difference.

Just like French, RV has different meanings for different people. Carol, for instance, seems to like medium-sized motorhomes-her main concern in some being whether or not the two of us can hold hands while we're tooling along the Interstate at 65 miles per hour.
My preference is for a trailer that one can drop off and leave while going out and exploring whatever there is to explore locally. Part of what I have in mind is finding a resort like "Long's Retreat" up in Pike County, Ohio where I can park semi-permanently and have a place to which I can escape on a weekend.

Stuart seemed to be attracted to the huge and costly. Yes, if I were to live out my yanking the kids around the country dream, I would go for the huge and costly as well. How huge? Well, there was an RV there which required a ladder in order to get to the ladder. That's tall. The vehicle in question had a price tag north of a quarter million dollars - and that was on sale! What was more amazing to me was that there was a sign on the vehicle stating that the vehicle was sold (but we can get more!).

Vehicles costing more than $250k were in some ways not too very different than those under $100k which Carol liked. Yes, they were bigger, yes, they had real refrigerators and yes, they had more room to move around in, but, they were so wide that we just couldn't hold hands while driving at 65.

I'm also of the opinion that if I'm going to pay more for a camper than I would pay for a house, I should at least have the option of having a chandelier. No such luck.
We concluded our foray to the RV show with a couple of non-RV activities. Stuart flirted with the Canadian woman who was demonstrating electric motor scooters and a group of women selling magnetic wrist bands. Carol listened to the couple selling stainless steel waterless cookware which never wore out, et-cetera, while I poked around the Texas Parks and Wildlife booth, looking for opportunities to park my existing RV for a day or two this fall (a tent camper parked presently in my garage).

All in all, the RV show was fun... mostly. Although I'm not likely to buy any time soon, it was nice to see what is available. After all, I might just win the lottery and have need for an RV next week!

Be Seeing You!