The Shakedown Cruise

When we first bought our Bounder in 2004 we were introduced to the concept that every new motorhome has problems. It seemed like every time we took a trip, the first thing we had to do on our return was take it into the repair shop to get things fixed ranging from minor niggling defects to relatively major problems. This lasted for probably the first three or four years that we owned it. Only in the last two or three years was it broken in to the point where we could take two or three trips between visits to the RV mechanic.

After we bought the new Allegra, we took one weekend trip to Julian, which is only a couple of hours away, and other than that all it has done is sit in our driveway. Yesterday, however, we hit the road on its first real shakedown tour. We are headed, ultimately, for the Black Hills but yesterday we drove from Redlands to Cedar City, Utah.

Our first problem was just getting on the road. I was on call the night before our departure and ended up having to go into the hospital to finish up a patient admission in the morning. I also had not been able to get around paying bills, which definitely needed to be done before we left town. (In the long run, we will need to be able to do that on the road, but we aren't really set up for it yet.) In the end, we didn't get away from Redlands until just before noon.

The first thing we learned was that now that Vicki is unemployed, she doesn't drive the car very much. In fact, it had not been out of the garage for several days. So even though she just put a new battery, it did not have enough charge to run the brake assist device for our toad (tow vehicle). So we lived without it for this leg of the trip.

Our second discovery was that this motorhome was not going to be able to go everywhere at 70 or 75 miles an hour the way the Bounder did. It is okay on the flat, but climbing hills we frequently had to slow down to 40 or 45 mph to keep the transmission happy and the RPMs under 5000. We had already decided we were going to travel more slowly as full timers. I guess this is as good a time as any to start.

Perfidious, lying piece of junk

Vicki bought a super-duper Rand McNally GPS system allegedly designed specifically for RV drivers. It's supposed to keep us on RV safe routes with no low bridges or underpasses and no narrow roads. It may actually do all of that (I don't really know), but if it doesn't get you where you want to go it's pretty useless. When we were approaching Cedar city last night, this thing told us to get off the freeway one offramp too early and then turned us the wrong direction, eventually indicating that our campground was off in the middle of some farmers recently plowed field about 13 miles from its actual location. So we had to turn on the GPS in my cell phone (which knew exactly where campground was) and it informed us in rather snippish terms that the first step was to make a U-turn. In a 37 foot vehicle towing a car on a barely two-lane farm road this is quite a bit easier said than done. We finally found a short stretch with what looked like reasonably well packed dirt on each side of the asphalt and slowly cranked that baby around, clearing the barbed wire fence on the opposite side of the road by a safe margin of about 3 inches. Our next few stops we will definitely have more than one GPS running when it comes time to get off the freeway. It never hurts to get a second opinion

Finally, as we were getting ready to go to bed last night, we discovered water seeping up out of the floor in the back bathroom. We have a leak somewhere… terrific. We really don't know where it's coming from or why. For now we're going to try running completely on our water tank and keeping the pump off as much as possible to keep pressure out of the system. At the moment, it seems manageably slow, but if it gets worse it may be a killer for the trip. I'm not sure we want to hand the rig over to a shop 1000 miles from home to rip it apart looking for a leak. Hopefully, it won't get too bad and we will be able to complete our journey.

Vicki, who has read every RV related book available on Amazon.com, tells me that everyone agrees this is a normal part of the "full timer" experience. It's all part of the fun, she assures me. Maybe, but for fun I prefer swimming or reading or TV.  Plumbing problems, not so much.

-RR-

To become a fulltimer

Roger tells me we have to blog regularly or people will lose interest and not come back to this site.  So he wants me to tell a little about preparing to become full timers.  

As many of you know I haven't been happy working for Vitas for at least 1 1/2 years and it gradually got worse.  I also found that I was having to do so much Medicare required administrative work that I was burning out.  It was clear they thought that I was paid too much and things were changing.  Roger had already decided that he is going to leave his practice by the time his lease runs out on his office in Oct. 2013.  He also wants to move out of California because our tax burden is way too high and he is convinced that Calif. is going to go broke.  So I started reading retirement books and blogs.  I searched the internet and we considered where we want to relocate.  In the meantime we decided to buy a new RV since our last one was 8 years old and we knew we were definitely going to travel more.  We bought the RV based on our ability to find a rig that met our requirements - a shower large enough for Roger to comfortably take a shower and more room in general.  We did a lot more researching for this one than we did for the previous 2.  We discovered that the Allegro brand is the highest rated Class A motorhome and we found a 37 foot (almost) Allegro Open Road gas RV.  I have been asked, "Why not a diesel pusher?"  Well, when we were RV shopping, we asked that question.  None of the salesman seemed to recommend them even though they would have made more money.  

Somewhere along the way I read an article about RV'ing full time.  I gingerly discussed the idea with Roger.  Work was becoming unbearable.  I decided to read books by fulltimer's.  Per our son, Chris, I became obsessed.  Well, I have read about every book out there about the full time life style at least twice.  But it gave me something positive to be focused on rather than all the negative emotions I was experiencing.  Oh, and I also joined about every RV club in existence...well 4 anyway.  Oops, it's 5.

My last day of work was the 10th of August and I haven't looked back.  Well, not much.  I have been asked what I am doing with all my free time.  I haven't had any.  It takes a lot of time getting rid of 20 years of junk that I haven't had time to touch for 20 years.  I got and filled a dumpster for that.  Bit by bit I'm getting the house ready to put on the market.  We've had to decide what we are going to take in the RV when we go full time.  We decided to use this year to iron out all the kinks in our RV.  We're leaving on August 30th to go to South Dakota to see if that's where we want to establish our domicile.  We might buy vacation rental property with the money we get from selling this house.  That would give us a place to put much of our furniture and stuff.  Much of the stuff we just have to get rid of.  I think we might have estate auctioneer come and set up the sale.  I'm just not a salesperson.  I just can't see myself doing yard sales and using Craigs List.

That's all for now.  My next chat will be to tell you about our RV.  I took pictures to inventory it for insurance purposes so I can use some of those to explain to those of you who can't understand how 2 people who have been living in 3800 sq. feet are going to be happy in about 300 sq. feet.

Beginning a Blog

My wife, Vicki, and I are starting this blog to mark a rather momentous decision in our lives. We have been married now for 36 years. We've been practicing medicine in one form or another for 34 of those years. We had a son and raised him to young manhood. In June he will graduate from college and, hopefully, strike out on his own in life (i.e. get off our payroll). And we are ready to move on.

After much thought (5 minutes at least) we decided that while we are still young enough to enjoy it, were going to chuck it all and become vagrants, bums, vagabonds, drifters, prodigals, tramps, shiftless transients. Yes, we've decided to become full-time RVers. To that end, we traded in our 10-year-old Bounder and purchased a shiny new 37 foot long Allegra motorhome. The most important feature of the new wheels is that it has a bath and a half. We decided that if we are going to live in a motorhome, it is critical that we be able to pee at the same time. It is also nice that it has a shower I can stand in without touching any of the walls. For years, our motorhome showers have been so claustrophobic that I have opted to walk to the campground community bathrooms to wash in the mornings during our vacations. Now, I can actually shower in the motorcoach, an unequivocal luxury.

New Wheels

When, exactly, all of this is going to take place is not entirely clear. I have to be able to sell my medical practice, and it is not clear how long that is going to take. We also need to sell our house, but the real estate agent thinks that should actually go faster than the medical office, so we're not putting it on the market just yet. Our best guess is that we will leave Redlands, CA sometime between February and July of 2013. This blog will cover our planning and preparations and, eventually, our traveling adventures.

Vicki is already unemployed, having finally parted ways with VITAS Hospice last week. I might con her into doing an entry about her trials and travails, just to take up space. The frequency of entries might be a little haphazard at first, but once we actually hit the road we will try to update about once or twice a week.

I will go-ahead and turn on blog comments but they will be heavily moderated. I would like to think that some posts might generate reasonable conversations but my Internet experience is that comment threads can attract idiots who think anonymity allows them to abandon all rules of civility. I reserve the right to remove inappropriate posts without explanation or justification. Hey, it's my blog. I'm God here.

Well, that's about as much introduction as I'm up for today. I'll be back before too long. See you all a little further on down the road.

-RR-