L&K Take America

On July 16th, I went and signed the official paperwork for the camper. I then had to figure out insurance, registration and about a gazillion other details prior to my scheduled pick-up date. However, in that moment I was beaming when I went out and saw the little Bambi with a “SOLD” tag on her.

On July 30th, I was scheduled for a walk-through of my camper and to tow her away for the first time. Knowing myself pretty well by this point in life, I knew that I was going to reach maximum listening capacity (with the distant glazed over look when all I hear is the voice of the teacher from Charlie Brown) about half the way through the walk-through and would therefore need reinforcements. I politely instructed my father, Janice and Mike to block their calendars pretty much all day on July 30th in order to be my backup listeners and brains. In other words, when I was crying in the middle of who knows where, I could call them up and they would calmly talk me through how to flip the switch to resolve the current crisis.

Prior to the 30th, I registered her with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and joined the official Wally Byam Caravan Club International, Inc. That meant I had plates AND my official red Airstream numbers, and that meant that it all was becoming very real. Writing the check apparently was not enough for me to realize what I had done. P.S. If you ever want to really confuse the people at the downtown Boston Registry of Motor Vehicles, go try to register an Airstream trailer. By the end of the transaction, I had pretty much given my life story to three of the workers, including two supervisors, and had answered very perplexed faces when they asked, “Wait…is this a boat AND a trailer?”; “Wait…what are you doing with this thing?”; “Can you sleep in this?”; “Do you drive it?” In retrospect, I really should have filmed it.

On July 30th, with plates in hand at 1pm sharp, our party of 4 all arrived for the walk-through. The Airstream expert promptly said to me upon seeing me, “I know you, you do the weather on Good Morning America!” I politely informed him that, no, that was not me. He was somewhat insistent that I was Ginger Zee. When I assured him I was not, he thought for sure I heard that all the time. Sorry buddy…first time.

After he got over his initial disappointment, he then mocked me slightly for the number of people I brought with me for the walk-through. I explained the rationale and as we went through the next few hours, I think they began to understand my reasoning. Questions like “Have you ever towed something before?” or “Have you ever dry camped before?” or “Have you used an integrated brake system before?” and my response to all of the above and MANY more questions was a consistent “Nope….never”. In fact, I didn’t know what most of the questions they were asking even meant. In fact, I had never even camped before. Guess that would have been a logical first step, but why not just jump right in? Needless to say, I wrote down A LOT of words to google after the fact.

Relatively quickly I had my first, of what no doubt will be countless, “What have I gotten myself into?!?” moments. The kind of feeling when you are dangling at the edge of the plane when you’re skydiving and there’s no turning back. EEEEEK!

Finally, at around 5:30pm, I backed that baby up (with the assistance of several people) and drove her (VERY slowly) a whole 17 miles to my brother’s house in Bedford, NH. Figured that was far enough for one day. At that rate, it should only take me 6 months to get across the country.

Upon arrival, my dad was there to spot me into the driveway. As I pulled up, I calmly explained that I would need him to not yell at me. I can probably count on one hand the number of times he has yelled at me, but in all fairness, I was a little fried from the day of information overload and endless instruction. It was borderline time for a good cry.

We got her pulled in and parked with relatively low anxiety and zero tears, despite the fact that Dad tried to confuse me by telling me the opposite direction he actually wanted me to turn. He was just testing me, I’m sure.

She sat there until Monday morning, when Luna and I arrived bright and early, loaded her up with the assistance of Madison, Liam & Whitney. Around noon, after some hiccups with the stabilizer bars (yeah…I know what those are now…no big deal), which Whitney helped greatly to talk me through, Luna and I were on our way to Stop #1: Henderson, NY.