The new RV

It's been a week or so since I started this blog and it's been busy. First of all, it's been a slow process in deciding to buy a new RV. We have been looking at other people's RV's the entire time we were on our "winter sabatical", read "snowbirding. Our fifth wheel is onlya year old and it's in perfect shape. We've ironed out severl bugs that were present at purchase, put in some furnishings to our taste and in general, installed some of own DNA. When we bought it we wanted to find out if the RV lifestyle suited us or not. By purching a relatively inexpensive fifth wheel and a ten year old truck to pull it, we had a minimal investment. If nothing else it could serve as a glorified tent and we could just use it locally. To make a long story short, we like it, we really like it!! Henceforth, a new, bigger, more expensive, motorhome. Did I mention expensive?

We went to a small exhibt that Dennis Dillon was having at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago and while we didn't see anything that caught our eye, we did meet a very honest sounding, pleasant salesman who was retired from Aloha Airlines as a crew scheduler. We had an instant rapport and Nancy and I decided that we'd go out to the RV lot and take a look at their rather large inventory. By the way, we had done a great deal of shopping on the internet and had primarily decided that we would try locally first and if we didn't have any luck at home, we'd probably go over to the Monaco dealer in Eugene, OR. We also thought that we most likely wanted a Monaco Diplomat or somehing about that quality and price range and that we'd prefer something a year or two old. We wanted to let someone else work out the bugs and assume the heavy depreciation of that first year.

We went out to Dillon's the next day and met up with Rich Disney, who we were so impressed with from the Best Buy exhibit. Rich showed us several new Maonaco's and a used Alpine unit. The Alpine is a very high end coach. It was a 2004 model with all the whistle's, horn's and bell's. The price was well within our reach and I tucked it away as a possible. From there he took us to a new National Pacifica. What a coach! It had everything we wanted and then some. There were two problems with it however. First of all, it was well over our projected budget, secondly. it was from a manufacturer that had just gone bankrupt. Nix that one, Next we went to the next coach over which was also a National, however it was, with some serious negotiating, within our budget if were to stretch a little.

It's a National Tropi-cal LX. We negotiated with them to add a washer/dryer, satellite dish and receiver, a sleep comfort bed, and also had them remove the dinette benches and replace them with free standing chairs. We also had them remove the roadside sleeper sofa and replace it with two recliners. We were able to go out and find two wonderful "Flexsteel" recliners that are two of the most comfortable chairs I've ever sat in. Nancy found two great chairs for the dinette set plus two folding chairs for when we have company.

All of the above sounds great, however, reality never seems to work as smoothley as we like. The first issue was the third TV. The coach arrived with just two tv's. One in the overhead compartment between the Captain and Co-pilot seats and the second in the bedroom. The model we saw that was configured just as we wanted, had a third tv mounted mid coach, on a bulkhead at eye level when you are seated. We both agreed that this was the tv we'd watch. Our fifth wheel had the tv mounted at about eye level when we were standing and we found that it was uncomfortable to look up to watch it. We made arangements with the dealer to go over to CostCo and pick out a new 32" Sony Brava that is actually better than the other sets that are allready mounted. The new chairs that we got for the living room are also considerably better than those normally installed.

By the way, I did get to drive the coach on the day that it got into town. It drives beautifully. Fortunately, I've had the good fortune to have driven quite a few motorhomes in years gone by when I used to deliver them from the factory in Indiana to the Crist dealership in Phoenix. None the less, I am studying everything I can find to reaquaint myelf with handling and caring for the new rig.

As of today, we are supposed to pick up the coach on Tuesday the 22 of April. I hope it works out. We were actually supposed to pick it up on Friday, however, some of the parts had not arrived. I was a little concerened when I went to the dealership on Friday and discovered that no one was working on it at all. The fellow (Tony) who had been working on it took the day off and no one else was assigned. I'm a little put off because the dinette is still installed, the wiring for the outlet in the slide hasn't been relocated, the tv hasn't been mounted and no one has picked up the chairs at CHF since we picked them out. As best I can tell, they're going to have a busy day on Monday if they're going to deliver on Tuesday. I won't accept the coach until its ready.

That's enough for now. I'll continue on latter.