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July - Sept. 2010
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The Motor Home Deal
By Cliff Popkey
Several years ago I found
God. He had been right there the whole time but until that day I had been blind
to his presence. I was a strong man with a strong belief that I was responsible
for myself and that Praying to God was a crutch for the weak minded or for
those who wished to blame their troubles on someone or something else.
When my wife’s mother passed away she left my wife a small inheritance which she instructed her to use the money for family fun and not to pay bills with it. After discussing the issue of family fun for several days we hadn’t been able to reach a decision as to what family fun could be so the whole idea was tabled or so I thought.
Several days had passed when my wife asked if I thought I’d like a motor home. Now we were a camping family and we had at times talked about someday owning a motor home of our own but it wasn’t really something I’d thought we could afford until we retired and maybe not even then.
I said sure, not giving it a second thought let alone believing we could buy one for the few thousand dollars we had from her mother’s estate. I had hoped that by agreeing that I too would like a motor home and it might help my wife decide that we could buy a used travel trailer which was something I really wanted. I was very tired of our popup camper with its cold drafts and leaky canvas and the next step up in the camping world was to a travel trailer.
Several more days had passed when my wife came to me and asked if I’d go with her for a short ride, she wanted to show me something. We drove into the countryside near our town and after following a twisty road for a few miles she told me to turn into an unfamiliar driveway. I was thinking she was about to show me a house because we were attempting to design our home at the time and that she was wanting me to find away to incorporate some of the design features into it. I was fledging builder at the time beside my full time job, but no, it wasn’t anything to do with the house I soon learned.
Rounding the last bend in the drive before reaching the house we came face to face with a motor home. It was a dozen plus years old, you could tell by the design, but it looked nice enough. She informed me before I could even ask, that yes, this was our new motor home.
I was shocked and a bit dismayed because she had bought it without telling me or even asking my opinion. When I confronted her about that, she smiled and said. “I asked you if you wanted one and you said yes, so I bought it. Besides it was money from my mother and I thought it was good compromise rather just spending all the money and having nothing to show for it.”
After getting the cook’s tour by the seller and their help getting it started after giving it a jump because the battery appeared to be dead. I should have ran away as fast as I could, but I’m good husband and a good guy, so I bit my tongue, pleased the wife and dutifully drove the motor home, home. It was less than an auspicious start to our motor homing adventure.
Over the next few weekends we took the home for several short day trips, attempting to determine if it was road worthy enough to take the long trip we had planned to South Carolina. From our home in Michigan we were looking at approximately fourteen hours to and fourteen hours from South Carolina. That would be a stressful trip even for a newer vehicle, let alone our new, used motor home that was fifteen years old.
Finally the big day had arrived and we began packing the home for the trip. My wife had taken the day off from work to be able to pack it just so but I still had to check on my crews that I supervised at the refuse company I worked for. So I went to work expecting to return home and head out on our newest adventure mid-afternoon sometime.
Loading the home was not an easy task. Our family at that time consisted of two dogs, two daughters, two cats and a bird plus my wife and myself. Each of us had clothes, toiletries, what nots, plus food and dishes to pack on board. It was a huge task that I was glad I wasn’t going to be involved in. My wife was confident that she could handle it all with the help of our daughters. The one thing she had not counted on was that the oldest daughter decided that it was a perfect day to train her bird to sit upon her shoulder while she made trips back and forth from the house loading the home, making her effort less than 100%. Needless to say it wasn’t going as smoothly as she had hoped.
My wife sometime during the morning confusion decided that the motor home wasn’t parked conveniently enough in the driveway and that was the reason she wasn’t making the progress she had anticipated, so she decided to move it. Despite having never driven anything this large before she decided that it couldn’t be that hard because I had made it look so easy. The fact that I was a trained and experienced
When my wife’s mother passed away she left my wife a small inheritance which she instructed her to use the money for family fun and not to pay bills with it. After discussing the issue of family fun for several days we hadn’t been able to reach a decision as to what family fun could be so the whole idea was tabled or so I thought.
Several days had passed when my wife asked if I thought I’d like a motor home. Now we were a camping family and we had at times talked about someday owning a motor home of our own but it wasn’t really something I’d thought we could afford until we retired and maybe not even then.
I said sure, not giving it a second thought let alone believing we could buy one for the few thousand dollars we had from her mother’s estate. I had hoped that by agreeing that I too would like a motor home and it might help my wife decide that we could buy a used travel trailer which was something I really wanted. I was very tired of our popup camper with its cold drafts and leaky canvas and the next step up in the camping world was to a travel trailer.
Several more days had passed when my wife came to me and asked if I’d go with her for a short ride, she wanted to show me something. We drove into the countryside near our town and after following a twisty road for a few miles she told me to turn into an unfamiliar driveway. I was thinking she was about to show me a house because we were attempting to design our home at the time and that she was wanting me to find away to incorporate some of the design features into it. I was fledging builder at the time beside my full time job, but no, it wasn’t anything to do with the house I soon learned.
Rounding the last bend in the drive before reaching the house we came face to face with a motor home. It was a dozen plus years old, you could tell by the design, but it looked nice enough. She informed me before I could even ask, that yes, this was our new motor home.
I was shocked and a bit dismayed because she had bought it without telling me or even asking my opinion. When I confronted her about that, she smiled and said. “I asked you if you wanted one and you said yes, so I bought it. Besides it was money from my mother and I thought it was good compromise rather just spending all the money and having nothing to show for it.”
After getting the cook’s tour by the seller and their help getting it started after giving it a jump because the battery appeared to be dead. I should have ran away as fast as I could, but I’m good husband and a good guy, so I bit my tongue, pleased the wife and dutifully drove the motor home, home. It was less than an auspicious start to our motor homing adventure.
Over the next few weekends we took the home for several short day trips, attempting to determine if it was road worthy enough to take the long trip we had planned to South Carolina. From our home in Michigan we were looking at approximately fourteen hours to and fourteen hours from South Carolina. That would be a stressful trip even for a newer vehicle, let alone our new, used motor home that was fifteen years old.
Finally the big day had arrived and we began packing the home for the trip. My wife had taken the day off from work to be able to pack it just so but I still had to check on my crews that I supervised at the refuse company I worked for. So I went to work expecting to return home and head out on our newest adventure mid-afternoon sometime.
Loading the home was not an easy task. Our family at that time consisted of two dogs, two daughters, two cats and a bird plus my wife and myself. Each of us had clothes, toiletries, what nots, plus food and dishes to pack on board. It was a huge task that I was glad I wasn’t going to be involved in. My wife was confident that she could handle it all with the help of our daughters. The one thing she had not counted on was that the oldest daughter decided that it was a perfect day to train her bird to sit upon her shoulder while she made trips back and forth from the house loading the home, making her effort less than 100%. Needless to say it wasn’t going as smoothly as she had hoped.
My wife sometime during the morning confusion decided that the motor home wasn’t parked conveniently enough in the driveway and that was the reason she wasn’t making the progress she had anticipated, so she decided to move it. Despite having never driven anything this large before she decided that it couldn’t be that hard because I had made it look so easy. The fact that I was a trained and experienced