Paying the piper, and everyone else!

Hi Questies,

Well, we have hit a rather frustrating amount of difficulty trying to get our beautiful new truck (name pending, we are open to suggestions) registered. To do that we need insurance, and to actually get insurance we have to communicate with someone who wants to take our money, and that is surprisingly hard to find! It has now been 2 days of playing phone tag with agents from State Farm and Farmers, trying to give them the mountains of details they need, fielding their confused questions about what exactly a truck camper is, and repeatedly telling them that no, we will not be at a fixed location.

Anyway, we bought four new tires on Monday, that was another day long process of calling different stores for quotes, I didn't realise that there was so much to learn about them, but I'm now feeling significantly better informed! They are already waiting for us so when we are legally able to drive we will head to Costco and have them installed. Other expensive and complicated things are that we bought are: A new tie down system for the camper, so when the weather warms up ever so slightly I'll go and drill a few holes into the frame of the truck, and hope one or two of those line up as needed. A new battery to run all the electrics off of. Swing out brackets for the jacks on the front of the camper. These should provide just enough width so that the truck's big ole hips can squeeze between them. We would love to have the cash available to install a solar panel on the roof. But at this stage it's just not doable. Mind you I'd also quite like to haul around a hot tub and a fully stocked mini bar, but that might spoil the pioneering spirit of the quest.

Every step recently has taken more time and money than expected. Every stage involves more taxes and paperwork. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that it will be worth the headache in the end. And of course all the stress now is going to make being out and on the road even more uplifting!

Other than dealing with logistics, life is very enjoyable. We are regularly sleeping in. Michael is being an excellent host, and getting to make use of his kitchen is a real treat after cooking in our tiny Hawaiian home (an experience which will serve both of us well when we are adapting to the camper). On top of that it is six nations season, the winter Olympics has been pretty great, Nova rat is still alive, and my little sister just shared some wonderful news. So yeah, I'm a happy guy, and extremely lucky to be able to live this life. I can't wait to share some photos of the rig all loaded up!

Keep on Questing!

Tris 

Convening and such

Today was the day! The day when we were going to finally find the camper of our dreams. It was the day that we would visit the RV convention in downtown St. Louis. And visit it we did. It was incredible. Acres and acres of shining chrome accented license plate holders and majestically lofted motorized awnings, entire streets and communities of carefully ushered machines to pamper, comfort, and envelope their fragile, pasty white occupants, a mountain of the finest American made aluminum and plastic all engineered so that rich mid-western retirees can sit in air-conditioned luxury and look out of a bloody window. There was not a single truck camper in sight.

However it was a fine day tromping around and looking at the shinies. It was fun to play in the money. And we did find out some interesting things by talking to the staff of some of the dealerships. First off, truck campers are not popular in the midwest! One of the reasons given was that there are more trees here than out west... I know, I didn't really understand that one either, but we have it on good authority that if we want to find a truck camper then we have to go to either Utah, Colorado, or Montana. Hey, it's probably true. Most people were nice enough and seemed to agree that a truck camper was a good option, but also that we are naive to be looking in an RV convention for them (despite them being advertised for the show...). 

This trailer was marked down because there was a strange Canadian in it...

We found one local company that stocked a truck camper, a Camplite model, and would offer us a convention discount. It was in their lot rather than the show room so after 2 hours of wandering around we decided to rescue our car from the looming shadow of a meter maid and make the drive back across town to where they were based. This thing was crap! It was supposedly brand new but bits of trim were coming off it, other bits were splitting. There was needless space taken up with bad design, very little storage, and it was generally awful. The camper we went to see which was made in 1992 was a far better bit of kit. 

This one was marked up because there was a charismatic Welshman on it...

So here we are, back to the old plan I guess. We are going to see a camper on Sunday morning (hopefully before the Superbowl) in Illinois, potentially seeing another in the same area at the same time, but no confirmation yet. Both are super cheap. If we can get something light with a semi-watertight roof then we are going to go to work fixing it up. If not, then perhaps we will be trekking over to Colorado to find something half decent. Goodness this is a challenge.

Other things today; Zora and Michael completed the NYT crossword first thing in the morning, which is extremely impressive and a testament to the benefits of not going to work, we visited Aldi's on the way back home, which is a testament to the value of German based supermarket chains (Hawaii, you don't know what you are missing), and I cooked a lovely bit of Salmon and some damn fine roasties for dinner. A good, frustrating, day!

-T