I didn't want to pull the trigger on this target

As many of you have read, I love to pass SOB's. I find great sport in it for some twisted reason. I see one up ahead and the gun is loaded and cocked. I set my sight and it becomes a game to pass. This Sunday I had a hard time with the SOB I came across just North of York Pa.

I saw this and was smitten. She was just tooling along at 55mph in the right hand lane.

The odd thing was that I slowed down too and for about five miles I just rode side by side admiring the ribbed aluminum sides and the tremendous roar of the diesel engine. This girl has some charm that captivated me like I have never experienced before.

The driver gave me the best thumbs up I ever received. The air horn was a nice touch too.

Really hated to beat it on up the road, but home was calling and 55 was too slow for Anna and I.

What to do when it is raining outside

Not sure how many of you look at your trailers as a fun house, but that is exactly what we turned our trailers into. The weather was less than ideal and we all had to find other things to occupy our time. Anna went and goofed around in the fun house mirrors at the bath house.

So Saturday was not ideal for being outside, but Rob's trailer was ideal for having a family style breakfast. All nine of us sat down and ate breakfast together. Nine for a sit down meal in a trailer, and it wasn't even a double wide. How can anyone say these old girls are not comfortable. After breakfast digested a little we went on a day trip to Cabela's. The idea of going just had me excited as Ava is when she sees candy. I have been buying my work clothes from Cabela's for close to twenty five years now, and finally I was going to visit an actual store. Unfortunately every body within 200 miles had the exact same idea as to how to spend a rainy day. The place was beyond packed. Unfortunately it was not the shopping experience I had hoped for. When I shop from the catalog or the internet, some guy does not just stop his cart right in the main isle and walk away.

The rain continued off and on all day Saturday. It rained heavily right until about 8 pm. We did not even try to go over to the park, for we were certain the rides were closed. Instead we built a big fire and mixed up some adult beverages. You have got to make the best of what you have.

Just to make a point, we had breakfast together again on Sunday too. I am just astonished that nine people can sit down together at a table in an Airstream and have a meal together. Thank you Zoe and Rob for having us all in.

Sunday was one of those postcard days. The weather was perfect and the fall foliage was so brilliant. Sure wish the entire weekend had been this way.

We packed up and got ready to say our "see ya soons..." One last photo together.

Those smiles are for a great season of camping. Sad to think this is the final one of my camping season. Next week Anna goes in for major surgery.

Some good byes to all, and we are off for a little thing called a caravan.

Like I said in my last post, nothing makes the scenery more beautiful than seeing an Airstream in the center of your vision.

We went to Plan B or was it Plan R by the end of the weekend

Things do not always go as planned. We had planned to go to Knoebles Amusement Park for their special haunted park night. Well, to say the least, it did not happen. We did leave Friday afternoon right at 12:30 as planned. No traffic to speak of on the Baltimore beltway and we are up to speed in no time.

The first SOB gets passed with in five minutes of being underway and things are looking good. The first stop is to be a rest area right above Harrisburg on 81 North. Rob Baker and I were planning to meet there so we can caravan together the rest of the way. The first delay was in York, Pa where a crash scene investigation was taking place. That is required when someone dies. Further North on 83 we encounter another huge backup. This time we are detoured onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Some high speed chase had taken place up ahead and they were trying to find the guy after he bailed out on the highway. The one good thing about this diversion was that I have a Pa Turnpike water decal that needs to be put on the door now. Anyway, Rob was coming up from Virginia via a different route and he too was hitting a bunch of slow spots along his way.

We ended up waiting for about fifteen minutes for Rob and Sophia to come rolling in. A quick pit stop and we are rolling North again. As we travel North the weather looks less and less promising, but the trees are brilliant and we caravan together. I do not know how many of you out there caravan, but it is a ton of fun for me. Everything looks more promising when you are following an Airstream. Time passes very quickly too.

My desire was to see a place called Centralia, Pa. When I was eight years old I read about this town. In 1962 a dump fire caught a coal seam on fire and an underground fire began. It had been burning for twelve years when I read about this man made disaster, now it has been burning for the past 46 years. There is apparently no way to exstinquish it and it is thought to be able to burn for at least two hundred and fifty more years, possibly more. Most of the residents have been bought out due to all the poison gasses and possibility of cave ins.

There is not very much evidence of the fire, except these holes emitting smoke that scatter though out the town. With in twenty five feet of any of these smoke holes there is zero vegetation. Nothing lives close to the smoke.

There are a few holdout that refuse to go. You can just see the house in the trees there. It is well kept up, but with in 500 yards of the most active part of the fire. Some people just refuse to leave.

Slowly nature is taking over. Eating up the man made structures and obscuring mans touch.

Kind of spooky to see all the empty streets.

We arrived at the campground, Lake Glory, just before 5 and got right on setting up. Zoe and the boys arrived within a half an hour of us and then it started to rain.

A long time coming

Sorry folks the blog has gotten stale and I have not posted in a while. I have excuses and promises as to why no Airstreaming has taken place.

Excuse #1 "The House"... I now have all the siding and trim done. The house is now ready for a painter to come work his magic. I am not going to attempt to do it myself. Some jobs are just best left to others. Beth told me no Airstream renovations until the house is finished. I still plan to do some porch details, but it is far enough now to get painted.

Excuse #2 "Keeping Warm".... I also have been preparing for the cold weather quickly aproaching. We had a hard frost on Monday and winter is imenant. I have been cutting, splitting and stacking firewood. Now my back is all wanked out of sorts again, but we can stay warm. I heat my shop with wood and we suppliment the house with it. This is about 2/3rds of what we will need to get through the cold months. I am sure Marcus is salivating at all that oak stacked up. How much meat could you smoke with that?

Promise #1... In two days we go out with Anna to Knoebles Amusement Park for their Haunted Park. Not sure how many trailers are coming to this unofficial gathering. I promise something about the weekend by Sunday. This will be our last event for the year. One final event to top off an excellent year. This final trip will lead into....
Promise #2... By next weekend I will have the entire front end of the trailer gutted out. Yep, you heard that right. I will be removing everything in the front half of Anna right down to the frame. I want to get moving on the project so that by Cherry Blossom Rally everything is 100% complete.

Pressing issue at hand

I want to go camping very badly. Unfortunately I have to wait another eleven days till that happens, ten if I don't count tomorrow which isn't even here. So to divert my attention I have been trying to keep busy. I have been working on my house a great deal which will be a blog post later in the week. I needed a diversion that involved the whole family. The result was pressing cider.

My good friend Mike Patton has a cider press and we put it to use. Both my girls helped out with the process. Halle mostly picked out the best ones and proceeded to eat then. I feel sorry for her day care lady today.

Ava was a total trooper and helped non stop until everything was pressed. She kept feeding them into the chopper at a steady pace. Bruce is running the chopper which gives the old arms a work out.

We managed about nine gallons of delicious fresh juice. Now to encourage some of it it to get hard so that it can really be cider.

The thing I hate about a rally.....

Folks I have to tell you I love going to a rally. The anticipation builds and builds till I feel like emotionally, I might explode at any moment. I have a mini rally, or better called a trailer gathering in two weekends. At present, I am getting very excited again. However, there is a dark side to all this excitement. The dark side is the depression I feel on Sunday morning when it is over. As soon as the first trailer leaves I feel an overwhelming sadness come over me. I have come to absolutely loath that feeling.

The first trailer to leave at the installation rally was John Kwasnick's 1961. The guy with the shortest pull was the first to go. You can see the hole in the wagon wheel above. He had been parked between Rob Baker and Wayne Moore.

I wake up early. I was awake at about 4:30 am and reading, drinking coffee, and generally enjoying the comfort of my second home. At 5:45 I hear a truck pull up. I look out and it is John hooking up his trailer to his Land Rover. I could feel the depression come washing in like the tide in the Bay of Fundy. So strong and swift that there is no stopping it. Within five minutes I began packing Anna up and getting her ready to go home too. As co-host, I could not escape, though there was a great deal of stuff to take down and make the field look like it did before we arrived. I put on a smile and pretended that the ending of such a fine rally did not bother me. I think I heard at least 10 people say "I hate the Sunday of a rally" or "This is the worst part of the rally."

As I left for home there were three trailer still on the field. I guess a little depression is the price one must pay for such a good time. I guess there are down sides to all positive events. Now if the next two weeks would hurry the hell up...

I didn't forget why we came.

I know someone thought I forgot why we came. We came to North Norwich to install our new officers in the unit. Don Mc Kelvey was kind enough to officiate over the ceremony. He is our regions President and I thought it was kind of him to come down and take care of this kind of club business. It was done around the campfire as the sun was setting.

The ceremony was short and sweet, no big words, no serious overtones. Everyone smiled and seemed very comfortable with what was happening.

Congratulations to all. My offer to help in any way was not an idle offer. I hope you will all take me up on it.

Deborah Bede and her 1955 Bubble Whaletail named Ruby

Nice things happen to nice people. A few of us desided to do something nice for a member of our unit. Deborah has this cute little 1955 Bubble. She has been in the process of restoring her for a while now. A few of us in the unit thought it would be fun and a giving gesture to polish the trailer in an afternoon.

Deborah has had some panels replaced and other work done at GSM Vehicles. The workmanship was very professional and it stands out boldly in contrast to the rest of the body which has seen many years of hard living. The panels that were not replaced have a great deal of age showing.

As windows were fixed and lights replaced, the contrast has become fairy dramatic. She wanted to even her out so to speak and that is what we did.


I took the roof on. Now you do not see the roof very well, but I think it deserves equal treatment. Would you want some person in a plane looking down on a tranished roof? What is UFOs are real, they might not take you seriously.


Rob Baker and Doug Rowbottom started at ground level. Wayne Moore worked a cotton wheel on some problem areas. A few other people stepped in from time to time to get a feel for it. It was a great group effort.

Maybe two hours total and we had it all done. It is not perfect, a bit of detail work around windows and doors is still required. Now Deborah has a huge head start.

Now that is one fine looking trailer. The smile tells it all.

Dick Perkins and his amazing field find.

This is Dick. See Dick smile? See Dick grin? Dick has good reason to smile, he owns a 1955 Byam Holiday. Dick was asked if he was interested in seeing an old trailer and he reluctantly went and looked. This is one of those very rare, highly desired trailers of which only three have been seen. Some others have claimed to own one, but the pictures never surface.

Well Dick has himself one fine trailer as you will see in the following photos.






His approach to this trailer is to leave it as it is. He has replaced the floor, but he plans on preserving it in it's original condition. All the power to you Dick, it could not happen to a nicer guy.