Day 1 - Getting to know you.
General condition of our Airstream the day we bought her: Can you say 70's baby? Shagadelic! Basically, the entire interior is original except for the flooring. Carpeting and linoleum had been put in a year or two prior. All the documents were there, repair receipts, original sales brochure ( which I convert to PDF and post soon), owners manual, all there.
Task number one: hook up the umbilical cord to our van and see if any of the running light work. First I had to head to the RV store to buy a compatible flat 7-pin plug to connect the trailer to our van.
We hit the RV sore and $200 later were on our way to the Div. of Motor Vehicles to get our plates for the ride home.
Back to the AS Park to get work done. While Katy was busy doing her cleaning thing on the inside I worked away at getting the running light working. After many wiring changes with the different 7-pins, we got all the lights functioning. Truly amazing.
Next task, the batteries were dead. Here is where I can introduce the cast of wonderful character that inhabit the Jersey Shore Airstream Park. The hosts are Al and Mary Ann. The Park could not have two finer hosts. MaryAnn is a human radar gun. Yelling at me to slow down even when walking on my two feet :-). Without Al's help, we would probably still be down there.
Al got the two batteries on chargers in the work garage. He insisted that we would not safely make it home that night and that we were welcome to stay over the night there in the Park.
Well Al and Mary Ann weren't the only one's to swing by and say hi and lend a helping hand or provide general advise. Dottie paid us a visit and invited us to the Friday night Ice Cream social. Bob also lent us a tremendous amount of moral support in getting the Airstream ready for the trip home.
That pretty much wrapped up work for the day as we ran out of daylight.
Katy and I hit the Ice Cream social - had fun meeting all kinds of full-timers (our dream some day). We received plenty of advise on Airstreams, pulling Airstreams, the optimum speed to travel at, the optimum transmission gear to use over the road (created huge debate), etc.
After ice cream we went out to eat resigned to the fact that we weren't getting the trailer home that night. Had dinner, bought flashlights and headed back to our new old Airstream for our first nights rest in our new home away from home.
We awoke the next morning - Kate
went out
for coffee and I got back to work. This mornings project
was to check
the brakes. We lifted wheels on each side and discovered
only the
curb side brakes were functioning.
That was enough to give us a green
light
to hook-up and hit the happy highway.
Bottom line -- thankfully the NC
trailer
deal didn't happen.
It really was love at first site
with
our '78 Excella 500. Look for us at Camp Wilderness,
Disney World,
Easter 2004!