Day 2 - Dead in Quincy

We got away from Pat's house in Venice, Fl about 10am. Pat had to go to work and Dick, her friend helped us back out of the drive. It was even easier to back out than it was to get in the drive...Yahoo!!

We drove the 350 (approx) miles to Quincy and found the fantabulous 'Beaver Lake RV Campground'. It was an older RV park/campground behind a BP convenience store right off Interstate 10. Location was great but it wasn't much in the way of a RV park. They had about 30 spaces (they were all pull-thru) but that was about it. It was basically a big open, grassy field with some rv hookups.

There wasn't this many motorhomes there when we parked. Only one next to us and a couple of 5th wheels to the left of us.

Pulled up in our assigned space #5 next to another motorhome. The guy was outside and told me he had to plug into the power next to his space because the space he was assigned to had reverse polarity. That didn't make me feel real secure about hooking up to this campground, but I didn't have much choice unless I wanted to run the generator all night (which I might should have done??). Don't have the luxury of having much when you fly. Limited on what you can carry in the way of tools etc.

So, I plugged in and everything seemed to work. Had my fingers crossed. Everything went well that evening. We ate and sat around and relaxed. Randy Dupree the Bluebird broker that had our coach listed was coming down in the morning from Bainbridge, Ga about 25 or so miles north of us.

I got up pretty early and went to the convenience store to see if they had some coffee filters. We'd bought coffee and a coffee maker but forgot to get filters. We tried to think of everything...but failed! Convenience store didn't have any filters. So I went next door to the other little fuel/store/BURGER KING and bought a couple of breakfast sandwiches. Went back to the coach and made some coffee using a paper towel as a filter. Life is good....at least for the moment.

I don't exactly remember what I was doing when I noticed the batteries not putting out any power, but I did notice at some point. I tried to start the coach and couldn't even get a click. Oh Boy, this is gonna be fun! Randy had not arrived yet so I called him and see if he had any tools with him. He didn't have too much in his jeep and offered to turn around and bring some equipment. But not knowing exactly what our problem was it was hard to tell what he might need to bring, so I declined his offer. He said he'd arrive pretty soon.

In the meantime I decided to use my roadside assistance (Coach-Net) to see how well they perform. I called and they set up a truck to come give us a jump to get the coach started and possibly check it out to make sure everything was ok. Randy and a buddy of his, Mike (another Bluebird owner) arrived and we/they started looking over the situation. The battery chargers were cold (I didn't even know where they were prior to this) so they weren't getting any power. Check the breaker - Breaker tripped! Flipped breaker back on but still not getting any power. Mike suggested getting an extension cord and plugging directly into the chargers. I didn't have an extension cord but the neighbor next to me did, which he loaned to us. Got power to the chargers and soon we had the coach running. The neighbor wanted to see the coach so we gave he and his wife the 30 second tour. Randy might have another customer on his list???

Anyway, there is a steep learning curve on how to operate one of this big mobil boxes powered by a big diesel engine with all sorts of electrical gadgets and appliances. Maybe I'll eventually learn how to operate this big behemoth of a machine.

That's about it for Day 2.......so

Until next time,......

Overthehump

It's Final - We have a Bird - Day 1

Well, we finalized the deal on the 1994 Bluebird BMC motorhome last Tuesday in Jacksonville, Fl. We flew out of Midland, Tx at 6:30 am last Tuesday. My good buddy Tommy Herring from Hobbs, drove us over to Midland Monday. We rented a car for the night so we'd have a way to get to the airport the next morning. We stayed at the La Quinta (the one on Wall St) which is the older La Quinta in Midland. I used all my reward points for the room so it didn't cost us much but the room was horrible. It didn't look like they'd vacuumed the carpet in many moons. Oh well, we're only there one night.

Got to Jacksonville the next day and Darrin Dyal, the owner of the BMC, met us at the airport. We looked the coach over, took it for a ride and filled it up with diesel @ $3.95 per gallon. That's the highest price we paid for diesel the whole trip. Went to eat with Darrin and his Melanie at Bono's BBQ. We were starving since we had not eaten anything since early that morning. Got the money wired to Darrin's bank and got all the paperwork done later that evening. We spent our first night in the bird at Darrin's beautiful place. Darrin is the pastor at Jax Assembly and they have 26 magnificent acres with their church, school, several houses, and RV hookups. Really a nice place. We really enjoyed their company and doing business with them.

We pulled out the next morning after Darrin had run us to the local Walmart to get some supplies that we couldn't carry with us on the plane. We tried to think of everything we needed, but invariably as we put the miles behind us we figured out various things that we'd forgot. Anyway, we finally got on the road about 11am headed to Venice to see Patsi's good friend, Pat, whom she hadn't seen in over 10 years. We'd called to let Pat know that we were in a large motorhome and she assured us she had room for it. I had purchased a Rand McNally GPS app for my iPad prior to  leaving so I put it to the test on our first leg of the road trip. It was guiding us perfectly. We saw all these road signs advertising the Orange Shop so we decided to stop and get some oranges. The coach had been running great.

I tapped the brake to turn off the cruise and pushed on the accelerator to keep my speed up until we needed to turn, but there was not pedal to the accelerator. It was all the way down on the floor and wasn't controlling anything. Kind of made my heart flutter...to say the least. Pulled over on the side of the road and was secretly saying all kinds of bad words. Got on the phone to Darrin and he'd never had this happen to him. He did mention that it was a cable system. So, I reached down to feel since I couldn't see and sure enough the cable had come loose. I felt around and found a pin that had fell out. Put it back in and was good to go...Whew, these things will make your heart rate increase exponentially!!

We pulled into this place......

and tasted some the sweetest oranges I had tasted in many, many seasons. 'Course I've not been to Florida or California during orange season either. We loaded up on oranges and grapefruit. They are definitely great eating.

Drove on down to Venice with no mishaps. That is until we got right to the place we were supposed to turn but there wasn't a street where the GPS said it was supposed to be, plus the GPS decided to totally change modes and screens!!! Great, here we are, really close and don't have a clue as to where we're really supposed to be. Patsi got on the phone and Pat guided us to her house. But, the drive we were supposed to pull into was not really long and wide. In fact it was rather short and pretty narrow. I was really wondering if I could even get it into the spot. But we did, just not real straight and not very level. Not level enough to level up. We were kind of twisted level, you know where one corner is much higher than the opposite corner, so the jacks wouldn't level us. Had an issue with the water hookup, it kind of leaked like a sieve. It was getting dark so I didn't want to fool with it at the time. We went to eat Italian food instead. 

Patsi did get a good visit in with Pat. I fixed the water the next morning before we left. I was kind of worried that it would be hard to get out of this spot but we backed out with no problem whatsoever. In fact it was easier to get out than it was to get in. We left for Quincy, Fl., Beaver Lake RV campground to be exact. 

More to come - 7 days left.

Until next time........

Overthehump

Been a Longtime....But, Been Really Busy!!

Don't remember when the last time I posted anything. Lots been under the bridge since then. I think I left off with trying to get the old Dodge van frame ready (sort of) for the '41 Chevy COE cab and getting my shop all cleaned up. It was ready to move the New Mexi-Can (Streamline) in to the shop so I could get some work done to it this winter.

One phone call in late September changed just about every direction that I thought I was going to go. LOL My mom called late one evening, can't remember exactly when, just before we were taking off for Niagara Falls for a fall foilage tour. She finally decided she wanted to move back to Lea County, specifically into the house with us.

Whoa, whoa, nellie. The house ain't ready for that. You see we have been living in a little over 800 sq ft of our approximately 3000 sq ft house. Way back, 'bout 1999, I remodeled part of this house that we're presently living in but never finished the complete remodel. We always had good intentions of finishing the house, remodel the main kitchen, the other bathroom, office and other bedroom, but we never really put it on the top of our list of things to do, sooo.....it didn't get done. We really like working outside or in the shop, or greenhouse (whichever the case may be) much more than we like working in or on the house.

We have another house, a really nice little house across the alley from us that Patsi's mom and dad used to live in. Patsi has been using it for her Stampin' Up classes.  I asked mom if she wanted to live there but she didn't think she did. Then it dawned on me that she probably didn't remember what it looked like, so I took a lot of pictures and Patsi and I took a trip to Comanche, Tx to show her what it looked like. Sure enough, she had our old office pictured in her mind. And the old office sure didn't appeal to her since it was basically an efficiency type apartment...which is not even livable at the moment.

After she saw the pictures of the house, she thought that might be a pretty good deal. We did have to move quite a bit of stuff out of the house. Some of Patsi's mom and dad's furniture and various odds and ends. Most of it ended up in my newly cleaned and straightened shop. BooHoo!

We did make the trip to Niagara Falls and it was really nice. The falls were fantastic but what was really, really nice was the fall colors when we came back through NE Ohio. I've never seen such beautiful colors. I'll post some pictures later, since I left my mac in Lubbock a couple of weeks ago, so I'm using an old computer to write this.

We upgraded the cabinets in mom's house and put down some new flooring in the hall and bathroom. Made it a little nicer and user friendly since the old drawers were pretty hard to get open. Most of this all happened the very last of November and the 1st week of December.

A buddy of mine has this nice 44' race car trailer that he let me borrow. Now that was a life saver. We were able to get all of her stuff into the trailer including her car. It was packed to the top and it pulled really nice. BIG THANK You to Bill.

Another perk that we had when we went to Comanche was Patsi's cousin Donna and her husband Kirk had just resigned their positions as assistant managers at an assisted living place in Arlington, Tx and were headed west. They called Tuesday, Dec. 11 and said they wanted to stop by Lovington. Well, I was headed east the next morning to move mom, so I wouldn't be here when they got to Lovington. They decided they'd just detour a little and spend the night in Brownwood (they had there camper with them) and then come to Comanche to help me pack mom up. Now that's some troopers....someone that will volunteer to help move.

Anyway, I got to Comanche on 12/12/12 about 12:00pm. Kirk and Donna met me and we proceeded to pack everything up. We were just about finished by 6pm. We had some turkey soup of dinner when my sister Karen got there about 8:30pm. She was pretty surprised that we were nearly through packing. Kirk and Donna were whirlwinds with the boxes and goods.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast. Kirk and Donna headed out for Phoenix. Karen and I finished packing the last few boxes. We hit the road about 10:00am CST. We made it to Lovington just before it started getting dark. We still had to unload some of the trailer to set up mom's bed and get some essentials in the house. It was a very busy weekend and the next week didn't seem like it was much slower even though we didn't work quite as hard.

Karen came back over the next weekend and helped mom get a lot of her things unpacked and set up. She doesn't have quite as much room here as she had in her old house but things are gradually taking shape. We got her a new cell phone. Pretty much like her old one but a little different. Different enough that it's a little confusing for her. But she is learning, figuring things out and doing really well.

Karen got her an appointment with a doc in Lubbock for a checkup. We were worried that she might have some sort of deficiency which in turn was causing her memory problems. We went over to Lubbock December 27 for the appointment on the 28th. We were going to go over on Christmas but Lubbock got some snow and ice so we decided to stay in Lovington and just have a Christmas dinner with mom at her new house. Anyway the doc looked her over, drew some blood for blood tests. Doc said she was in good health for her age. Blood test results will come back after the holidays.

Mom has trouble traveling due to not having a bathroom nearby. So when she has to travel she won't drink or eat much of anything which leads to dehydration, which ain't good. Because of the travel distance to Lubbock for the doctors, dentist and other places we might have to get her to, I decided it would be very helpful for her if we had a motorhome. I've had camper trailers and 5th wheels and even a truck camper once, but never even thought about having a motorhome.

But, when things change....things change. We have been looking quite hard for a nice motorhome that we could afford.

Last year when we were out in Arizona at Quartzite, we looked at some really swanky, nice coaches. I'm sure these weren't the very top of the line but they were very, very nice in the $200,000 range. Not something that we could afford to buy. A few years ago I drove an activity bus for the schools here in Lovington. Most of them were Bluebird buses. Right before I went back into the oilfields we made a trip to Fort Valley, Ga to pick up some new school buses and drive them back to Lovington. While there we got to go through the Bluebird Wanderlodge factory. This was around 2003 or 04. I had never seen such luxurious motor coaches and these babies went for anywhere from $500K to $1M. Definitely out of my range, especially at that time.

Ok, back to my story.....I'm looking for a motorhome. I happened to see a listing on ebay for a vintage Bluebird (a 1987, I think) and the bid on it was for somewhere around $20K. Wow, I thought, I might be able to swing something like this if I could find one that was in good shape and still had a lot of life left in it. I knew they were definitely built like a tank....that means really good and tough. I started looking everywhere on the net that I could find.

I found this great forum http://www.wanderlodgeownersgroup.com/forums/  and started reading, looking for used birds, trying to figure out what we could afford and what we could operate. There's not many around this part of the country. I found that most of them are in the southeast and northeast. I guess that is because of the proximity of the factory??? Anyway, I did find one that was listed on one of the sales websites in Weatherford, Tx. It just so happened that Patsi and I had to make a trip to Comanche to pick up a few more of mom's things that  we had left. We really hadn't planned on going back to get them but after unloading her things we realized she really related to some of the stuff we left.

So it all worked out. Patsi and I got to look at a Bluebird in the flesh and mom got her antique magazines. The Bluebird was a 1994 Wanderlodge Widebody. Here's a few pics of what one looks like.

 

 

So, as you can see, these are some very nice coaches. This one is the wide body series and they are a beautiful coach. This one had a 500hp 8v92 Detroit Diesel engine.  Bluebird built what they call an FC which is a forward control, which means that engine is in the front and they came with CAT 3208 engines. Some, the later models, were turbo charged, while the earlier models were NA or naturally aspirated. From all my reading the early CATs were kind of sluggish and slow. The Detroit Diesels had plenty of power but they were 2 stroke engines and I know nothing about those. Talking with all my diesel buddies and everything I read, I was a little apprehensive in trying to purchase one with a DD 8v92 2-stroke engine. 

So, if that's the case, I either had to look at other types of coaches or find a Bluebird BMC (bluebird motor coach) which was only produced for a few years. I think 94-97.

They were more of an entry type coach and not quite as expensive and luxurious as the others, but they had a Cummins 8.3L engine. It has the same P pump as the 5.9L engine in my old '94 Dodge, so I can figure out how to get a little more power out of the motor if need be.

Like I said, there isn't too many of these lying around for sale. I did find a couple tho. One was in Jacksonville, Fl. and the other was near Fort Worth. Turns out the one near Fort Worth was kind of on the weird side. Advertised for $1 on Craigslist. Then on ebay but it was a RV dealer's lot, supposedly on consignment. One of the forum members from Weatherford went by to look at the coach but wasn't told much about it. Most of these Bluebird owners keep meticulous records of what they do to the coach, so if records are missing or non-existent, the coach probably hasn't been cared for very well.

The other coach was listed on http://www.buybyebluebird.com/ with Randy Dupree, the owner of the forum. He knows Bluebirds, owns & drives Bluebirds and is very knowledgeable. I looked at nearly every coach he had on his site plus many on other sites. We came really close to making an offer on a 1988 FC 35' coach but decided the BMC was better for us. So we dealt with Randy and made a deal with Randy today, 12/8/13 on a 1994 Bluebird BMC.

So, we have to fly out to Jacksonville to pick it up. Mom will have a nice way to travel to the doc when she needs to go, plus she can keep a full set of clothes, toiletries etc in the coach so all she has to do when we decide to go somewhere is be dressed and step into the coach.

She says she'd like to go with us when we go on trips, so.....if she really likes it, we'll take her to places she has never been able to go to.

The year has taken off with a BANG!!! We still have lots to do, my shop looks like a tornado hit it. Lots of organizing, straightening up and re-arranging. Still have projects to work on and trips to go on. We hope to go to Alaska this year but don't know if that will happen or not. We'll see.

So.....until next time.....

Overthehump