You know how you’ll say that something major won’t be “real” until a particular thing happens? Our adventure just got real.
Saturday morning we left to pick up the RV. As I’ve said before though, nothing difficult is ever easy. The minivan had a leaking tire, so we needed to drop it off at a tire shop for a free repair. But that put us an hour behind schedule, even though it made logistics at home a little easier. We needed to get the minivan out of the garage, because the RV was going to live in the driveway until we left, and anything that was in the garage when the RV came home would stay in the garage until after our departure.
The weather was not looking promising as we left, either. It was snaining, although it was more rain than snow. I was a little concerned and briefly considered trying to reschedule the pickup, but as I ran down the next two weeks in my mind, I didn’t see a better date, so on we went.
The rain gave way to a light but steady snowfall as we reached Russells Point and stopped for fuel. Just under a hundred dollars later, we travelled the last five miles to RV Wholesalers in Lakeview, Ohio. We met our salesman Preston Rogan face-to-face for the first time, and he introduced us to Tyler, who would do our walk-through.
You might be wondering why this was the first time we met Preston. We decided on the 35 Loft first, then started looking for one. One dealership in Lancaster quit responding to us at about the same time Diana found one in stock at RV Wholesalers. She traded several emails with Preston, who worked out a pretty comfortable offer for us even before we saw the rig. In late October, we traveled up to see the rig, but as it turned out, Preston was out sick that day. We signed the deal that day, but didn’t meet him until the day we picked the rig up.
Our first thought as we walked into the service bay was “Wow, that looks bigger than it used to,” followed quickly by “Wow, is that going to fit in the driveway?” The RV is 42 feet long, and about 13 ½ feet tall. We’ve already told the kids that if they see a sign near a bridge or overhead structure with a number smaller than 14, they’re supposed to yell “CLEARANCE!”
Tyler took us through the entire rig, showing us basically how different appliances worked. The rig was sort-of winterized, in that there was no water in the tank nor was it connected to “city water” due to the weather. So we pretended to flush the toilets (yes, there’s a trick), pretended to light the stoves (propane tanks weren’t filled yet), and went through the motions of dumping the black and grey water. We made sure all the lights worked, and that everything that was supposed to be attached was.
After that, we headed to RVW’s shop to choose a starter pack. The starter packs include a variety of things that come in handy to get you started, like a sewer dump hose, a shore power cord adapter, some RV-safe toilet paper, and some leveling pads. We spent another fifteen minutes or so looking through the rest of the shop for any other goodies that might come in handy, but nothing made itself known.
Then came the moment of truth: it was time to hook things up. The delivery crew had already brought my truck into the service bay and basically lined it up, but they left it a few feet out so that I could have the honor and experience of hooking it up. I had pulled a few trailers before—the cargo trailer last week, and a large landscaping dump trailer for a neighbor several years ago. But this thing was BIG. I freely admit I was a little nervous about safely getting the rig out of the dealership without having to buy several more RVs than we’d ever need.
Bob The Mechanic (a cousin of Bob The Builder?) talked to me a bit about how high the king pin needed to be when it hit the fifth wheel, and generally tried to calm my nerves. He did a pretty good job of it, even telling me at one point that if I was really too nervous to do it, that he’d take it out. For reference, you want the flat part of the king pin to hit the flat part of the fifth wheel about halfway up. Let the fifth wheel sit at the angle it’s normally at, about forty-five degrees or so, and back straight up, letting the king pin push the fifth wheel flat.
I climbed up in the truck, backed it up, and got the hitch engaged properly. We plugged the umbilical cable in and tested the lights. Or tried to, anyway. We had nothing. No marker lights, turn signals, or brake lights. I didn’t have room to test them, but I assume I had no trailer brakes, either.
I had previously mentioned having a lighting issue while towing the cargo trailer back a few days prior. It suddenly appeared that the issue was with the truck wiring, not the trailer, and that did not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. On the one hand, we likely wouldn’t face an expensive bill at Starbrite for work on the cargo trailer. On the other hand, we might not be able to take our rig home.
Bob started checking fuses, and after about fifteen minutes, located the sacrifice to the memory of Louis-François-Clement Breguet. Bob seemed pretty unconcerned about the possibility of a short, pointing out that given the weather over the last few days, it would not be a stretch for water to have gotten in to the lighting connection at some point. At any rate, we had lights all around, so I was happy. About that part anyway. I was still a little nervous about pulling through the lot until I walked out to survey the situation, and realized I had about forty feet on each side of my rig to make the turn I’d need.
At this point, we had already taken as long as I had originally estimated we’d need, and we weren’t even on the road yet, so we settled in, cranked it up, and after a brief pause at the end of the driveway, hit the road. The rig pulled pretty easily all the way home. I kept my speed to a very sane 55 for much of the trip, except for one annoying stretch when a semi-trailer hit Route 33 just in front of me at about 45 on a grade. I was impressed with how well the truck and trailer handled, actually. I wasn’t going to set any land-speed records, but it didn’t really feel like I was pulling just over twelve thousand pounds of steel, fiberglass, glass and aluminum.
We arrived home at about 4:30 after a quick stop at Kroger for a few things. One advantage of driving such a big vehicle: the almost total inability to lose your rig in a parking lot. Unless of course you’ve parked it at an RV convention. I’m proud to say that I managed to get the rig in the driveway on my first attempt, and without damaging any fixed objects. I left some tire tracks in the drainage ditch across the street, but nothing too deep.
The kids spent the next couple of hours exploring everything, and asking me if they could sleep in the RV Saturday night. I had no problem with it, and went about turning the propane on and getting the furnace running. Not long after the furnace started, Erica thought she smelled something funny, but we chalked that up to the smell of a new furnace running for the first time.
About 8:30, Diana, Owen and I left to run a couple of errands. Five minutes later, Erica called us to say that Adam was hearing an alarm from the RV. Not good. I turned around and sped home as fast as my turbo diesel could carry us. As I opened the door, I could smell the propane and hear the alarm. I shut off the gas at the tanks, opened the front and back doors to ventilate, then went back in with a flashlight to see if I could figure out what was leaking. It was pretty easy to find, actually. The burner that Tyler had used to show me how to light the stove was still turned on. High. My guess is it took quite a while for the air to calm down enough for the propane to pool around the alarm enough to set it off. No harm was done, although I decreed that we weren’t sleeping out that night. I figured it would take another two to three hours to get the temps to a reasonable point, pushing bedtime to midnight at that point, and I just didn’t want to deal with that on a Saturday night.
Sunday I got the tanks set up and flowing properly, and stretched 45 feet of shore power cable to an outlet in the garage, giving us 15 massive amps flowing into the rig. Most importantly for the kids, that enabled them to watch Sunday evening TV shows (AFV, EMHO, and Undercover Boss) in the RV, since the TV only runs on shore power.
Now that the rig is here, I need to work on customizing some storage, and creating office space. The cargo trailer is still at Star Brite. They tell us the lights are fine, but the brakes need some work. Sigh. 14 days.
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