Another Season on the Way

 

We're due to pick up Towed Haul from the dealership's storage facility at the end of April. 

I'm looking forward to getting her back on the driveway at home so that I can see how the winter has treated her, and to give her a wash and polish. We've been storing her at the CanAm RV lot in London every winter since 2011/12, and she's suffered very little from hibernating outside, in Ontario's Snow Belt. In only one winter was there an issue and that was because the little rubber boot protecting the hole where the TV antenna's coaxial cable enters through the roof, had become dislodged. There was the remnants of a small puddle on the front-end couch, but it all wiped up easily. There's also a small but persistent leak around the cooker exhaust outlet that, try as I might, I can't seem to stop. It only happens in certain weather conditions, and has a lot to do with wind direction I think, but at the storage yard the trailers are so close together, there's plenty of protection from the weather and there's never been any water ingress over the winter. So far.

We only have a couple of trips planned before the kids finish for the summer and we go into a self-imposed camping moratorium. It's hard enough getting camp grounds booked, but nigh on impossible through July and August, so we don't try. We'll stay at home and enjoy the garden.

We're doing a bit of non-trailer travel as well, with a trip to Toronto at the start of May and then a run to Fremont in Michigan at the end of the month. We debated about taking the Airstream to Fremont but felt that on this occasion we'd use a guest house. It's only about four and a half hours drive, but as it's trip to meet (distant) family for the first time, we'd thought we'd travel light, and be able to use the little Honda CRV for a change.

I expect we'll squeeze another trip or two into the itinerary before summer, particularly now that I qualify for senior's discount in Ontario Provincial Parks. Watch this space as I'll be blogging the trips.

More on Trucks

 

The Tesla Cybertruck. Not my cup of tea.

Someone on the Airstream Addicts Facebook group posted a photo of one of these hitched up to their Airstream. My reaction was a single word; "Awful".

My goodness, you should have seen the pushback!

My comment was based on how the truck looks. In my view, it's a design aberration, something a six-year-old might draw with it's straight lines and obtuse angles. I certainly wasn't commenting on the electric vehicle's capacity to tow an Airstream, nor that it was otherwise unsuitable for the task at hand, but seeing one of these angular beasts hooked up to the shiny curves of an Airstream just jarred my senses.

But the pushback came. I was being rude, apparently, and upsetting the clearly proud owner of the truck with my rudeness. Of course, if you publish a picture into the public domain, you automatically open yourself up to comments of all sorts, and if you're not prepared for that then I'd suggest that you don't publish the picture in the first place. The original poster wasn't fazed, though, because he had more positive comments than negative, and he said so. That didn't stop people trying to imply that I shouldn't say anything negative, ever, which is rich given the comments that pictures of my tow vehicle garner whenever I publish them.

Then, of course, there those who assumed I was saying that an EV wasn't up to the job. From what I see about EVs towing trailers, they seem perfectly capable, but I never mentioned its capability and was still assailed by people suggesting I was some kind of Luddite. Don't you just love the Internet?

I would just say that appearance aside, the Cybertruck looks a better tow vehicle than most regular trucks, although I say "looks" because I don't know how it's been put together, it dimensions and other key indicators. It does seem to have a low center of gravity, it's very aerodynamic in its shape, and it doesn't have a huge overhang behind the rear axle. If it has independent suspension then it checks quite a few towing boxes. But I still wouldn't use one, EV or not, especially as the prices start at USD82K!

I'm Back

 

It's been almost ten years since my last post here, but I did say that I might come back.

I had taken the decision to port my blogs over to my Weebly website, which went quite well for a while, but the cost of maintaining that became a wee bit burdensome, especially as Weebly was bought out by Square, and they're really only focused on sites that generate money.  

Being cheap, I copied everyone of my blog entries, and there were a lot of them, to Google Sites. Sites is free, beyond the annual fee I pay Google that is, and was quite a good home for the blogs, up until I made a monumental error in 2023.

A message came through on my 'phone about tidying up my Google work area. I happily went through the instructions, glibly passing the warnings that my actions couldn't be reversed, and saw that my Google storage space was looking much better. Then I went onto Google Drive.

Yes, I had managed to delete, permanently, twelve years of Airstream blogs. Gone. Completely.

It's my fault entirely, I hadn't read and understood the instructions, and I realised that I couldn't really get upset because there was absolutely nothing I could do to retrieve this self-inflicted situation. 

In 2023, I didn't do any Airstream blogs, but I did open up a WordPress account for my more general meanderings, and that is still running. 

I did have a bit of an epiphany when I realised, just this week, that the Blogger account I'd started with, this Blogger account, was still active and yes, there were the original entries from 2011 through to 2014. So not twelve years lost, just nine. Hey, you take the wins when you can.

For the 2024 camping season, I will start my Airstream blogs going again. There's a kind of neatness to it being ten years since the last entry. Towed Haul is still in hibernation in London (Ontario) at the moment, and will be until the end of April, which is only a few weeks off now. We'll get her home, clean her up and plan some local trips. Then, hopefully, we'll have a few more blog entries to retain for posterity.