December 2022
Let us introduce… Slim Charles!
Take a bow, Slim.
But first off — best wishes to you for an even better 2023
Well, here we are, at the end of December, in rural southern Alabama, busily planning for the coming year and working on the projects that will make it possible. We’ve been in pretty regular touch with some of you, and you are up to date on our activities. But many have not heard from us since we returned to the States in September.
In case you’ve lost track, we had a very busy 2022. In the eight months from mid-February to mid-October we traveled from Alabama west to California and then all the way east to Newfoundland before returning back to where we started. We put 21,000 miles on the Tiger and passed through a crazy 35 states plus the five easternmost provinces of Canada. It was a great trip, but could have been even better without the record high fuel costs we encountered everywhere. We won’t frighten you by reporting any further on that topic.
Towards the end of summer we made a quicker than planned dash out of Canada to keep ahead of a nasty hurricane (Fiona) that did a number on southwest Newfoundland just after we left. The port we had used to catch our ferry from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia was pretty much destroyed a week after we left it. Soon after, we learned that the horrid weather was also coming through Nova Scotia, so we kept moving, hightailed it west, sped through New Brunswick, and landed in Maine, where the weather promised to be more civilized. As it turns out, we were only a couple of weeks ahead of when we had calculated we’d probably be crossing the border, and the Fall colors had started even before we arrived. We were too early to catch ‘the best color’, but we got to enjoy plenty all the same.
All this kicked off our next set of adventures. First things first, of course: we needed to shift to the miles side of “how many kilometers are in a mile?” We’ve been making this shift for years, but it always brings us up short, even if just for a few minutes. The other change was that we now had gained an hour on life in general; that was both easy and very pleasant. Suddenly the sun was higher in the sky later in the day, a good sign we thought.
We spent the next couple of weeks wandering through the beautiful color displays, heading towards Vermont and a chance to meet up with our buddies Joyce and Larry at their summer cabin. Lovely, right on the water, and a great place to come to a halt. We could have stayed for weeks, but we all had to push on, and we will be seeing them again over the winter. We also were able to enjoy a drive-by breakfast with Brenda and Brian as we passed near each other. They were doing a lovely motorcycle trip through parts of Maine, and we made a quick detour to meet up. And a day or so later, down in Rhode Island, a real miracle occurred. It had been nearly 15 years since we’d seen Leesa, first encountered at a Fred Eaglesmith concert in Vermont back in about 2003; we’d kept in touch with each other ever since, spent a great evening together in Austin, Texas many moons ago, and now were finally able to get together again. We’ve always thought these encounters around the country are one of the best parts of our lifestyle.
And, by now we’d started working on Our New Plan (stayed tuned). Our fall plans HAD been to spend a month or longer moving gently down the east coast, which we’d not had the chance to do for many years, and ending up in Alabama, where we were intending to spend part of the winter.
However, after lots of talking and pondering, earlier in the year we had agreed it was time to replace the Tiger, our wondrous adventure machine that had taken us almost 300,000 miles across 65 countries on six different continents over the last 15 years. It wasn’t that we had fallen out of love with the rascal, and not that it was showing its age (not even slightly); it was more that we were realizing that we were getting a bit too ancient for our friend and travel companion. And the time to sell was ripe; Tigers are well appreciated and have kept their value over the years.
Rick had begun tracking sales and purchases of the kind of motorhome we had decided would be right for us as our next home. We wanted something larger but still capable of nourishing our adventurous souls. And in late September he’d found what he thought would be a good choice.
This of course was a lengthy and involved process, with many complications. We had no interest in anything new or even newer than the Tiger (2007) for many reasons, the first being finances of course. Also, several trends in the RV industry cause us to look at an older unit as being a better bet for us. Briefly, these include the merging and/or buying out of many older, traditional RV manufacturers. We feel that build quality was better when separate companies were competing against each other for customers rather than the current situation where many units in a given class are actually being built by the same overall corporation. Another key factor for us was whether we’d have to have a slide out, we’ve never had one before and didn’t much want one, let alone the 3-4 considered normal in newer units. Newer units also have much more in the way of electronics, are built taller to give ever more interior head room, have full body paint, etc., all things that do not appeal to us. We could go on, but the details aren’t that important. We felt that we wanted an older unit built between about 1998 and 2003, preferably diesel powered and with no more than one slide. Given that of our four prior motor homes three were 1999 units, you could say that we just have a comfort level for this era and you wouldn’t be wrong.
We weren’t likely to find what we wanted at any RV dealership, so Rick worked the internet looking for likely choices and finally found an attractive suspect at a good price in Colorado Springs.
Since our choice for a new home was residing in Colorado, and we were on the East Coast, our first plan immediately got a bit complicated. We were living in the Tiger, and would not sell it until a new vehicle was purchased and we could get settled somewhere with them both while we transferred stuff, did work on Tiger to be ready for new owners, and then got the Tiger on the market before the winter set in.
Luckily we have very good friends who live in Raleigh, NC. Rick was going to have to fly to Colorado to view the rig in question, then hopefully purchase and drive it back to the East Coast; during that time I would stay in Raleigh, preparing the Tiger for its next life and enjoying being with our friends. So at the crack of dawn one day, Beth and I took Rick to the airport, and waved him off. This involved a bit of unhappiness — neither of us had flown since 2019, and weren’t pleased to have him airborne again. But it worked out okay; the purchase was made and Rick drove our new home across country and collapsed in Raleigh.
Then we started moving south, me driving the Tiger, tagging along behind Rick and Slim Charles, as he has now been christened. Along our way, we stopped for a few days at the Tiger factory in Columbia, SC, getting work done to the Tiger; then continued on down to the Gulf Coast area of Southern Alabama.
You might find yourself wondering, why Slim Charles? Well, basically we just like it. It comes from our most favorite TV series ever, HBO’s “The Wire”, which is now twenty years old. Slim Charles is an interesting character who makes his appearance in the third season. We like him as a character and have decided we’d like to borrow his name. For any curious types, Slim is a 1998 Fleetwood Discovery, 36’ long, with a 5.9 liter Cummins and 6-speed Allison transmission.
Several weeks after arriving here, and after the work that needed doing was complete, we sold the Tiger, quite successfully we think. It has been bought by a very nice couple who live a few hours north of us, here in Alabama. They’ve been interested in Tigers for several years, but have not been able to make a purchase because the units they found advertised were mostly located in the mountain states and had sold so quickly no one further east could even get out there to see them. They came to see La Tortuga, were pleased, made a deposit and returned to finalize the purchase a short time later and drive it home. We now have new friends, and have been invited to visit whenever we come through.
And we’ve been working on our new rig, gradually turning it into our new home. Rick has adapted to the new unit much more easily than I, not a surprise. I’ve always been stubbornly opposed to change of any sort, and the differences now are major. However, after about 3 months, I’ve pretty much adapted, and am appreciating some of the very nice changes. Probably the biggest difference is the amount of room, the sense of spaciousness… yes, things do get lost, but not for long!
Rick can tell you more about what he’s been doing on the rig to make it our own; my biggest comment is that he has put in so many hours at these projects, and there’s still so much more to come. Here’s Rick!
Wow. What can I say that won’t immediately bore you all? Probably the most telling point is that since arriving at our Alabama base on October 15th I’ve worked on the coach pretty much every day and have not even gotten to the point where I’ve found time to wash the outside or even clean the windshield; that’s why we aren’t showing you more photos of the exterior. As for the interior, we are in the midst of significant changes so photos taken now wouldn’t mean a lot. Everything is neat and tidy and perfectly livable, but colors will be changing soon and the positions of things are still in flux. We’ll send updated photos later on.
The highlights of what I’ve been doing include some choices we made as well as some repairs that needed doing. Taking the repairs first, and bearing in mind that the coach was built in late 1997, we’ve replaced a leaking (original) water heater and a recalcitrant (original) convection/microwave oven. We’ve repaired some leaking plumbing, done repairs to one furnace and removed another - more on that in a minute - and have done work on the slide out, naturally. These sort of things have been done by local mobile service professionals we’ve been fortunate enough to find.
Among the optional changes we’ve made are removing the built in RV combo washer/dryer unit. This unit was fairly new, but a) Kathy had no interest in having it, and b) it took up far too much room in the small toilet enclosure where it was located. Removing the cabinetry housing the washer/dryer and cutting it back to a smaller size was a really time consuming project and by far the largest undertaking of all. The removal of the unit coincided with the replacement of the failed water heater, and in order to achieve the smaller cabinet size we also had to remove the rear furnace. This was fine with us as we didn’t see the need for a second one and the unit wasn’t working anyway.
Next biggest project was probably building a new bookcase to house a TV in the living room. We had done the same thing in our previous Class A motorhome and liked it very much. With a smaller TV installed there I could then remove the existing large screen mounted over the windshield where motor homes often have them. In the process I was able to remove twenty-five years of assorted cables and wires from the overhead cabinet area and begin turning it into some much more useful storage space. We also removed the small TV in the bedroom as we’ve never wanted one there. Even though we’ve moved into a much larger living space our motto remains, “Séa Menos Mas”, or “Less is More”.
It doesn’t sound like two and a half months of work, but it has been. There have been innumerable other items of course: dinette removed - replaced by a pair of chairs - shelving built, exterior storage spaces cleaned and improved, wiring run for our cell phone booster, and on and on. I can’t put in long hours like I used to, but both the work and the progress have been slow but steady and we are pleased with the changes we’ve made. The work will continue as we move on from here with the goal of having things looking good and necessary work done by the time we reach the west coast sometime mid-year.
We are preparing to leave here on January 11th. We will be heading northeast, back to Columbia SC, where we will stay for maybe as long as 6 weeks. We are having some upholstery work done there, along with new flooring, a reworking of our batteries, wiring, and inverter installation; also possibly some paint work. We are doing these things in Columbia because we know the area. This is where our Tiger was built and we’ve returned a number of times over the years for Tiger work. We know people there and they can refer us to other folks, etc. Both the upholstery and the flooring work are being handled by folks we’ve used in the past, the electrical improvements are being handled by the shop foreman at Tiger, and we hope to have some paint repair done by the shop that paints all Tigers, including our own.
Coming south in the fall, Kathy followed Rick, driving the Tiger; going back north she’ll be driving our little Honda. We think we will need the car while we are having all the work done, as there will be times when we won’t be able to sleep in the rig, nor use it, and will need transportation.
When all the East Coast work is finally completed, we intend to bring the car back to Alabama and leave it here in storage. We don’t intend to take it west with us for the rest of 2023’s activities. I (Kathy now) am particularly delighted with this plan, because it means we should be returning to Alabama when the magnolia trees will be in full bloom. We usually have already left before this happens, and I miss them. In case you don’t know these trees, I’ve attached one of my favorite photos, taken here in the park in April 2020, during the height of the pandemic.
As you can read between the lines, we have a ton of work yet to be done; some of it will be accomplished either on our way west, or after we get out to the Coast. All of this is one huge project; but it’s one we are welcoming, and it’s keeping us very active! There are mutterings about “shoulda done this 20 years ago, when we were younger!” — but we could also say “Hey! It’s keepin’ us young!” Rick’s response to that is two fold, “we did do it all twenty years ago — more than once”, and, “I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling all that young”.
We’re happy and active and eager to try out our new beast. We’ve promised ourselves that our lifestyle won’t be changing any more than is necessary. There will be some roads we choose not to take, and we know we want to slow down a bit from our former adventuring habits, and our days of forging rivers are probably past, but we plan to do any and every single thing that we want to! We think we’ve timed this change to pretty much match our personal slowing down with the reduced, no, say changed, capabilities of our traveling home. So stay with us for the next few years, while we continue to explore and enjoy our surroundings wherever we find ourselves!
We hope that 2023 brings new and delicious opportunities to you all, and a year without sickness and worry. Take care, and please do stay in touch. We love you all!
Rick and Kathy Howe, and Slim Charles on his maiden voyage