Raven’s RV
The ongoing education and adventures of two rank newbie RVers

Oct 22, 2007

Taking “delivery”

Filed in Blog

Today was the day. We have spent a lot of time over the last couple of days going “RV!” at each other in much the same way as one might say “Squee!” :)

In the morning, waking up in Turlock–our last motel visit for what I hope is a very long time–I made a call and put insurance on our future rolling home.

We made our way to Bennett’s and slipped into the RV to get a feel for it, to make sure–even though we both already knew. Eventually Jim knocked tactfully on the door and asked if all were well. We arranged to have the walk-through then to figure out what was where and how everything worked and to make sure it all worked. A few minor deficiencies were fixed and a few others got forgotten. It was a 17 year old machine and unlikely to be in perfect condition, but with only 43,000 miles on the clock it had a lot less wear and tear than I had expected and was much better than I had imagined we would buy, too.

Then we took a ride to the bank so that I could get the cashier’s check to pay the balance. It took hours because of chatting and questions and finding out that Jim was a biker. Some salespeople are just glib; others are genuinely into what they’re doing and in particular like to meet new people. Jim appeared to be the latter kind, i.e. a genuinely nice guy who enjoyed his job. His teenaged daughters ride trail bikes and we have an invitation to see dirt racing in November, and to go riding together if we stay in the area.

A steady stream of calls and visitors were testimonials to the popularity of the dealership where he had worked since the early 80s.

The sun was setting and our plans to go to the storage unit and kit out the RV were kaputtsky. We had intended that I would sit with the cats in the RV while Don would take the van into storage then bring my bike so that I could tail him back to the shed long enough to find basics like pillows and blankets. I don’t have a Class C licence, though I suspect I’ll be getting one this winter.

Because we had spent so much time chatting, though, it was long past closing time when Don got back to me. I watched the sun set, eerily reminded of vampire movies when eerie music announces the arrival of nocturnal blood suckers. I didn’t know enough to realize that the RV systems run off a separate battery than the engine, so I didn’t want to run lights and thus risk having an engine that wouldn’t start. I lay down and snoozed until Don showed up. Meanwhile the cats explored their new environment and sneezed at the thick layer of dust accumulated in a machine that might have had a clean engine, but certainly hadn’t been cleaned.

I followed Don and we turned to the parking lot of Camp Wal-Mart for our first ever night as RVers. We had no bedding, cat food or even human food but hey–no problem. We were in Wal-Mart’s parking lot and it closed at midnight.

The general etiquette is that one camps in the parking lot for free in return for being quiet, clean, and doing some shopping. We plunked down anchors, let the cats out, and picked up some supplies.

It was an exciting night, watching the cats find impossible places to hide and finding spaces to put our tiny amount of stuff and learning about the systems. We played with the generator. We cooked actual food in the microwave: our first cooked dinner since early October was a little tub of microwaveable mac-n-cheese.

This is really neat.

Bennett's RV sales