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Showing posts with the label RVdesign

Taking Nominations for a Lightweight Tow Vehicle

It is easy to overlook things when you think alone, so I might benefit from readers' ideas about choosing a tow vehicle to pull my converted cargo trailer: 2900 pounds loaded, 6 foot wide, 350 pounds of tongue weight. But before getting concrete, let's reflect on the temptations in thinking that I can tow this trailer with 'almost anything.' Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said something like 'A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing?' Well, 'brevity is the soul of wit' and that aphorism is brief, pithy, and easy to remember. But is it actually informative about what makes a cynic? I think not. A cynic is not a "negative" person. Rather, he is someone who has been undisciplined with his expectations about new situations and people. He has the bad habit of expecting too much, and therefore, he is usually disappointed, if not completely disillusioned, by how things turn out. He then reacts to that disappoin

Ready for Material Sacrifices in the RV Lifestyle?

With only a little bit of exaggeration I can claim to have felt "panic" about giving up some creature comfort, for the first time in 17 years of full-time RVing. No kidding. Because my new trailer is smaller and lighter than the first one, the office chair was getting in the way of everything. Perhaps it should be switched to a folding chair with arms. But first let's look at the big picture. Wikipedia has an interesting article on the subject of chairs. It is quite surprising how new-fangled the Chair is, at least when it comes to widespread use (no pun intended for Americans.) And perhaps rightly so. They were always rather uncomfortable things.  It has only been the last 20 years that chairs have accepted the fact that the human back is curved. The office armchair is the most comfortable chair I know of. I don't understand how people can live with slouchy sofas, overstuffed easy chairs, or those dreadful little RV dinette things. Hence my panic. You might be

Appreciating More Things in Life

Readers probably laughed off my "getting better with age" arguments as a mere pep-talk.  But I don't give pep talks, and roll my eyes when I catch somebody else doing it. Here's another important thing that can get better with age: the ability to appreciate more things in life. This ability is not guaranteed or automatic with age. It requires broad and varied experiences. Most of us don't really get this from our lives and jobs. Life has become too bureaucratized and regularized for that. But let's not surrender completely. Retirement offers enough independence and freedom to allow for wider experiences. (Must I say that I'm not talking about trivial experiences like looking at pretty scenery?) Of course early retirement offers more opportunities than retiring at the standard age, where, unless you are lucky, doctor appointments start to take over life. For instance, even though I have owned a stick-and-brick house, I've never before had the exp

Quickly Categorizing Travelers

Some people think it un-PC to stereotype people, that is, to categorize them. They think you are being "mean" and disrespectful. Nonsense. Every word in a language creates categories. If you said that a fire engine was "red", would a PC nambie-pambie immediately take offense because 'not all red things are alike?' Similarly with RV travelers. We look for categories because they are mental shortcuts for understanding and predicting others' behavior. Standard small talk, when playing 20 Question with Fred and Mildred at an RV park, might start off with 'sooooooo, where ya frum.' But it would be more informative to ask them about their shower. That quickly categorizes the RVer for me. If somebody can't survive without taking a 20 minute shower and using 20 gallons of water, they belong in an RV park or a house back in the suburb of the metropolitan area. It probably categorizes them as a vacationer or newbie. In any case, they will never suc

Closure on Projects

It does do a blogger some good to mouth-off on the internet. After doing so -- about the great vice of putting tools down in such a reckless way that you can't find them three minutes later -- it helped me go on a massive cleanup campaign.  It is not in front of me at the moment but I think that Thomas Edison visualized his thoughts and inventions as an excrudescence (?) from his head, somewhat like dandruff. I smiled thinking of tools and materials flying off my person, in random directions. But today brings another issue: closure for a project, its difficulty, and whether it is objective or subjective. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a project's end is fixed, absolute, and objective, when in fact much of it depends on us saying, 'Enough!' There certainly is a disconsolate phase in the natural history of any project when we are like a hiker who is fooled again and again by false summits. The hiker keeps climbing, keeps making demonstrable

A Chance to Work Productively

Around the New Year I argued that 'I am not getting older, I am getting better,' need not be an empty cliche. There really are things we naturally get better at, with age. So why not pound the crap out of these things, and put aside the things we must lose on? Such qualities include: 1. Self-mastery and self-restraint. 2. Patience. 3. Perspicuity. 4. Setting more realistic (i.e., lower) expectations on new projects or people. 5. Understanding the consequences of our actions. 6. Thinking more independently. 7. Better juggling of trade-offs when making decisions. This project of converting a cargo trailer into a travel trailer has offered me an impressive and perverse example of how difficult it is to achieve #1 on the list. If you were to step back from the thousand-and-one machinations of the day, and ask yourself why you can't work faster, you wouldn't have any trouble coming up with a list. But it was fun to identify the top problem on the list.  For

One of the Prettiest Words in the English Language

Let's assume that most readers find discussion forums as painful to read as I do. I'm almost glad they are, because it created a delightful surprise. On the forum for converting cargo trailers to travel trailer/campers, several people have used the term, "re-purpose," as in 'they repurposed a metal bracket from a shelf in their basement to a new life in their cargo trailer.' It really caught my eye. What a wonderful word. In some ways, it is magic to create a new function and add value to something that you already own. When camping in the outback, repurposing scraps and other things is the only way to make your little house more comfortable, unless you are willing to make several long round-trips to town for the hardware store. Personally this is when I've gotten the most pleasure from repurposing. You feel so clever when you succeed! The downside is that the result looks amateurish and ad hoc.  When you drive a half dozen times a day to Home Depot

The Need for a Visual Representation

What would a high-minded humanist think about some poor devil building a house, or the small version of that that I am doing right now: converting a cargo trailer into a livable travel trailer? So many machinations! Why, it's like I've become a machine for measuring, marking, cutting, and drilling. And therein lies the challenge: to keep alert for the Ghost in the Machine, and to think like I still have an intellect and a "soul" that is concerned with civilization and the human condition. ______________________________________ It was the moment of truth. The batteries were installed, the wiring was done. Now it was time to switch on the first electrical appliance, the water pump. (I like to get switches that have the little red LEDs in them.) As I switched the pump on, there was only a gurgling sound -- no red light. I was more disappointed by this than anything in years! My reaction was so strong that it seemed odd. Things like that are sometimes opportunities

Fast Forwarding Through a History-Movie of Domestic Comfort

These days I frequently fall asleep to "Star Trek, Original Series." One episode, from the first season, relates well to my current project of converting a cargo trailer into a travel trailer. The episode was called "City of Tomorrow," starring Joan Collins. Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy encounter a "Time Portal" on some planet. It played images of the past at high speeds. The "Guardian" explained that they could jump through the portal when they saw an appealing image from the past, and off they would go to that time and place.  At one point during the playback of images of the past, Kirk said, "Strangely compelling, isn't it?" And indeed it was, and is. This is one of the "profoundly satisfying" benefits of converting a cargo trailer. You get to experience something rather like the Star Trek episode, above.  (Rather than give the readers a blow-by-blow account of my cargo-trailer-conversion, I refer them to the discus

What Does "Profoundly Satisfying" Mean?

While converting my new cargo trailer to a travel trailer, I've had "profoundly satisfying" experiences. The question is: does this phrase really mean anything, or is it just a pretentious way of saying, "Wow man, like, this is a great experience?" I want to believe that this phrase is significant. But before theorizing and explaining, let's put some 'boots on the ground.' I apologize for these details. They are petty in themselves but they keep me from floating in the clouds of platitudes and generalities. For instance, 1) An incipient purchase of a major item brings on anxiety. In my case I altered the freshwater tank and procedure in my old trailer, just because I wanted to see if the improvement would work in the new trailer. I haven't changed this in a decade. Why not? Why had I procrastinated so long? Did I really not believe that the water pump could self-prime by lifting water upward for two feet? Anyway, it can. Now I just bring

"Kabloona" at the Four Corners

Last week I went to Utah to pick up my new cargo trailer. It was a long drive, so I decided to spend the night in my tow vehicle (a full-sized van), and pick up the trailer the next morning. How odd that I had never done this before! It was pretty uncomfortable sleeping in the back of a van with four bicycles inside. Nobody wants to roll over in bed and plant their face into a greasy bicycle chain. But after a bit of obsessing over 'space' I started to grow suspicious that this reaction was too conventional and easy. Perhaps I was mislabeling the problem. The real problem wasn't space per se , tight as it was. The problem was 'transitioning.'  People (like me) who aren't any good at transitioning can easily dislike conventional travel. It never occurred to me that the problem wasn't travel per se, but rather, packing and unpacking, looking for everything, zipping and unzipping, forgetting stuff, learning and unlearning daily habits, etc. The real brea

Vertical Freedom for Travelers

Motorists are not completely oblivious to gaining or losing altitude, but generally they think in terms of miles traveled.  Horizontal miles. The same is true for most RVers, since they are just motorists. Of course the limiting case of "horizontalists" are boaters. Bicyclists and hikers can go both directions. One way to quickly assess a new hiking or cycling buddy is to see where they line up on horizontal/vertical divide. The limiting case of a "verticalist" would be an ice or rock climber. Leaning heavily towards the verticalist end of the spectrum is the back-country, RV-ing dispersed camper. (I frown on the term, boondocking.) In particular, it has always been my dream to get higher ground clearance in my rigs, especially the travel trailer. Of course, the low spot on most RVs is the holding tank drain valve. A commenter once encouraged going to a welding shop and having a serious steel-skid-plate installed, to protect that vulnerable drain plumbing.

Update on RV Boondocking Rig -- Sold!

Apparently my boondocking travel trailer has been sold. Tomorrow I drive up to Utah to pick up my new trailer, a rather standard cargo trailer.  Those who do something like this might be wise to order a trailer in the slow season, that is, any time but spring. Of course your winter location might be a long ways from your state of residence, where you will need to drive to, in order to register the trailer.  Because spring is the busy season, I would have had to wait ten weeks if I'd ordered a trailer just like I wanted. That pushes the conversion into the Dry Heat of June, quickly followed by the monsoons in July. Thus I bought one off the lot. Doing a conversion needs more than just good hardware stores and lumber yards. It should benefit from a commercial infrastructure of  "hard hat" and truck industries. There are remarkably few practical cities in the Four Corners area. Farmington NM is such a place, probably because of its oil and gas drilling economy. Bette

Part II, A Retro-grouch Goes Pickup Truck Shopping

Choosing a motor vehicle is a big part of most people's lives. This is even more true for RVers who tow trailers. But there's a lot more to this decision than picayune "practical" details, which could drown the writer and the reader if they didn't spend some time looking at the big picture. Conversely, if all we did was float along in the clouds of platitudes, hackneyed political theories, and socioeconomic statistics, the situation would become mind-numbing and sterile. What we need to do is slosh back and forth between the bottoms-up and the top-down approaches. By luck I happened upon a juicy and profound quote by Tocqueville -- yes, Alexis de Tocqueville of "Democracy in America" fame. (I only recommend volume 2.)  But the quote was from another book of his, "The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville," written a couple years after the communistic (and aborted) revolution of 1848, which he experienced first-hand in Paris. (The remainder

Sometimes an "Emergency" Can Just Be a Problem to Solve

Most of us have had an automobile accident or two. I'll bet you've launched into a retelling of the accident, only to notice that your audience has started fidgeting, has lost eye contact with you, and then changed the subject. Why is that? Lack of empathy on their part? Poor listening skills, short attention spans? Or was the story teller too animated and self-absorbed? ____________________________________________________ In either case, I haven't had an accident; but I did manage to spin out and lose traction near the top of a mountain in the Gunnison CO area; it was the first time in 16 years, and with two wheel drive, that's not a bad record. Now the question is, can I write about it with more efficacy than is typical in "horror stories." This wasn't a reckless stunt. I had probed the slope the day before on my mountain bike, and had let out half the air in the rear (drive) tires of the tow vehicle. And there was good motivation: the most sceni

A Retro-Grouch Goes Truck Shopping

Urban Dictionary dotcom defines a retro-grouch thusly: -noun 1. One who is skeptical of technological developments until their usefulness and reliability have been proven. 2. One who insists on minimalist equipment that may be user-serviced. 3. Sagacious but irritable expert. OK I plead guilty. Nevertheless I defy you to find a better example of the absurd depravity of modern American culture than the pickup truck. I have never liked them, especially compared to vans, which are my preferred tow vehicle. Alas, vans are going through big changes these days to meet the fuel economy requirements. I am not eager to buy a used van that has become orphaned and obsolete. And really, their fuel economy does suck. Considering how many complications they are willing to add to the new vans to coax them into slightly better fuel economy, wouldn't it make more sense to just make them smaller, like the late Chevy Astro van? Ahh, but that would be 'turning the clock back', which woul

RV Camping is a Game of Inches

...positive inches, when you're lucky. I've done a lot of back-and-forth about whether my next travel trailer should be a converted cargo trailer 6 foot or 7 foot wide. When we discussed trailer size a few months back, didn't an experienced RV camper say that width doesn't matter much? He wasn't necessarily wrong, of course. It all depends on your camping style. If you spend a lot of time camping in ponderosa forests, where trees are far enough apart to suck you in, width does matter. Note the driver's side mirror and the nearest tree. To heck with 7 foot wide trailers. Six feet is the width of the tow vehicle. But in this case, I was using a flank attack (where width mattered) rather than a direct frontal assault, where ground clearance was even trickier. It's an example of how logically-distinct design criteria blur together in the real world. At any rate, the campsite (near Luna, NM) was worth it. The forest fire last year near Glenwood NM. 

Trying to be a Better RV Camping Mentor

Silver City, NM. The other day I took a friend and his dog out for a "field trip" near my dispersed campsite. I soon became aware that I was futilely -- and a little hu morously -- proselytizing a man who prefers to stay in RV parks. Real RV camping of the dispersed, hookup-free kind has given me much pleasure and satisfaction over the years. It was not an original invention. I was influenced by other people to take it up. 'What goes around...' is the old adage. So why haven't I returned the favor to the world? The most brutal explanation is that this is pure snobbishness. RV park dwellers are the "ignorant masses," you see, and ol' Boonie doesn't want to waste his wisdom on them. Most of the time the other person is the male half of a couple. The minute I realize that there is a woman in the picture, I lose all motivation to preach boondocking. And rightly so .   But in this case the man had no such encumbrances. It's always confusi