The Mother Ship

Wow. I knew it had been a long time since I wrote in this, but I didn’t realize it was almost a year! I’ll be posting quite a bit in the next month or so, because we are about to embark on a 3 week trip, and I intend to keep a journal in this blog.

Sheri’s new work schedule gives us a lot of time, and we intend to take advantage of it! When she was working Mon-Fri normal work routine, we seldom had any time for fun leisure activities, and literally could not travel at all without her taking vacation time. Her schedule now is quite unorthodox, but she loves working it, and we both really enjoy the amount of time she has off. Now she works 6 – 21 hour graveyard shifts in a row, then has 8 days off every 2 weeks! That means she only commutes 5 times for 2 weeks, rather than 10, which helps with the cost of commuting, and her shift differential covers the fact that she only works 36 hours per week (her six days in a row are the last 3 days of one week, and the first 3 of the next.) And she is only taking 2 weeks of vacation, yet we have 22 days for this trip!

We’re really excited about it. And since she has so much time off, we can go for short trips quite often now. We can’t really afford to just jump on a plane and take off very often, and since my immune system is often suppressed, and my eating habits somewhat unconventional and often hard to accommodate in restaurants, we decided to buy a motor home. With the cost of fuel today, if we drive very far it’s just as expensive as staying in a motel, but at least we can control our environment this way, and we really like the RV. We certainly couldn’t afford a late model one, but we found a terrific buy on a 20 year old 33′ class A that in its day was the top of the line, and by selling off some other stuff we were able to acquire it without having to take on a payment, which was very important to us! We call it the Mother Ship, because we will be towing our little yellow Jeep behind it, and it reminds me of the Apollo space program. Here are a couple of photos. I will be posting some of the inside, too, over time.

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It has a couple of issues, but it is worth dealing with them, because it has very low miles, it is in excellent condition, and EVERYTHING WORKS!!! Plus, we got it for about 1/2 what it should have been, because the seller needed cash! It is a 1988 Allegro basement model (you can see all the doors on the outside, and many of them go all the way through the coach). It has a gas barbecue that slides out of the basement right under the end of the awning, which I thought was a really neat feature! There are 2 captain’s chairs for the driver and co-pilot, then a 7′ jackknife sofa that folds out into a full size bed, behind the driver’s seat, and a small table that folds out of the wall behind the passenger seat, which will make a perfect computer desk. Then there’s a dinette that also folds down into a bed, across from the kitchen with a 4 burner stove and oven, and a large refrigerator that runs on either 120 v. (there is a ganerator in case we aren’t in a park with hookups) or propane, a full bath with a smallish bathtub, and a walk-around queen size bed in back. It has 2 tv’s (we don’t even have a tv in our bedroom at home), a cd player, dvd player, and even a central vacuum. Although the decor is somewhat dated, the upholstery is in pretty good shape for its age, and it is really quite luxurious

Next: Our trip plan

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