It was another millennium. . . . .
'Way back in the 1900s, April
of '99 to be exact, we and our 11-year-old
Keeshond, Snuggles, put on a garage sale. After
unloading a half-century accumulation of
"things", we moved full time into our
shiny brand-spankin' sparklin' and spiffy new
motorhome, a
1998 Fleetwood
Bounder 32K.
Before we jumped into this
thing they call fulltiming, we had never been so
relaxed. Before we jumped into fulltiming, we had
never been so stressed.
Just about every day since,
there's been something new to learn about this
sorta fascinating, frustrating, fun-loving life.
We've seen ocean, river and
lake from the shore and from the cliffs above.
We've taken a peek over the edge, gulped, and
driven to the canyon floor.
And do those dead-end roads
get dark! We've wound up in quiet campgrounds and
in noisy parking lots and on the street. We've
been lost and we've learned as we tossed and we
turned that there's darn little sleeping while
semis are creeping through your rest stop. It'll
make your rest stop every darn time.
We've paid $40 for
an overnight on a bumper-to-bumper and
mirror-to-mirror concrete slab in San
Francisco. But, without
spending a penny, we've eaten our dinner under a
Pacific sunset and dozed off to the lullaby of
the breakers right outside our window.
No town we drove through had
an off-leash rompin' park for Snuggles, but we
did find an off-leash
town where the visiting dogs are
lots more popular than the visiting humans.
* * *
June 21, 1999, we told our
neighbors goodbye and drove away from Lynnwood,
Washington on our first big
trip, straight down I-5 toward the Mexican
border, with side trips to Crater
Lake (finally made it!) and Sequoia
& Kings Canyon
National Parks. We also stopped off in the Los
Angeles and Orange
County areas to pass along
family stuff to three grown sons and to visit
other family and friends.
A U-turn at San
Ysidro began our plan for a
restfully exciting return trip along the Pacific
and
through the Redwoods on and
then up the Oregon and
Washington
coasts to the very end of on
the east side of the Olympic
Peninsula.
But as we were leaving Tillamook,
Oregon July 30th, and with only 8,500 miles on
the odometer of our 1999 Ford F-53 (it's a '98
motorhome on a '99 chassis), Brownie quit backing
up. After a walletful of cellular distre$$
calls to AAA and the Ford truck service centers
in Portland and Seattle, who warned us that when
one gear goes, others follow, we took their best
advice, crossed our many fingers, and tiptoed
back to Seattle and the Ford truck service center
there, SeaTac Ford.
A few days later, we were the
proud parents of a brand new transmission to go
with Brownie's nearly brand new rear axle.
The rear axle and springs had just been replaced
in April, thanks to a National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration safety
recall of all 1998 Bounder 32Ks
built on the Ford F-53 chassis;
because Fleetwood bought the chassis from Ford
and then (according to NHTSA) dangerously
overloaded them,
Uncle Sam said "Fix 'em - free!"
Ford dealers around the
country replaced the rear axles and springs at
Fleetwood's expense. The original rear end had a
carrying capacity of 11,000 pounds, the new one
13,500 pounds.
And, believe it or not, in
July, 2000, SeaTac Ford (now Horizon
Ford) replaced the innards of
Brownie's rear end yet again. Under warranty,
natch. They've done good for us.
* * *
We spent our first year and a
half of motorhome ownership living with damage
caused by massive rain leaks through our slideout
room (leaks that were known by our Fleetwood
dealer, Poulsbo
RV, to exist before we
bought the motorhome), carbon monoxide
leakage (which we live with (at least so far)
to this day), various 12 volt and 110 volt
electrical outages, a furnace and hot water
heater that quit working, waterlogged floors, and
some other items. Fleetwood spent about six weeks
on repairs in October and November, 2000 at its
repair and training facility in Riverside,
California while we holed up in a hotel. We had
hopes that the repairs would turn out better than
the building of Brownie and better than
Fleetwood's first fix attempt in 1998 (the one
the Poulsbo
RV liars hid from us).
Following Fleetwood's
repairs, the carbon monoxide leakage is at an
all-time high, and, if the wind's not just right,
prevents use of the generator while we are inside
the motorhome. We keep trying to fix it. We'll
keep trying to fix it. We'll fix it or die
trying. Bad joke.
We gave up trying to get the
powers of Poulsbo
RV to live up to their
advertised reputation and treat a customer
honestly. Instead, they hired two different
gaggles of lawyers to threaten us, and they have
tried to defame us,
living up perfectly to their true reputation.
They've occasionally paid a
lawyer experienced in fertilizer to
mail us a silly threatening
letter. And they paid someone who,
with typical lawyer modesty, calls himself (no
kidding) "super
lawyer", to swoop
down. A sooper swuper? Radio
lawyers routinely recommend these misguided
missives to their dimwitted dialers as a way of
putting easy money into their pals' pockets. Poulsbo
RV's lawyers knew better, but,
always happy to clamp their claws onto a client's
wallet (the first lesson learned in lawyer
school), they dood it.
* * *
Motorhome dealers in
Washington, where we bought our motorhome,
$ucce$$fully
per$uaded
the $tate
legi$lature
(Guess what? More lawyers.)
to rip the guts out of the
consumer protection laws. Those laws, as they
relate to motorhomes, have become so limpwristed
that they may as well not exist. The Washington
motorhome lemon law exempts those
parts of the vehicle that make it a motorhome!
And the Consumer
Protection Division of
the Washington State Attorney General's Office
doesn't protect the consumer. It can't; it has NO
enforcement powers.
You
can reach your
lawmakers here by entering
your zip code. Let them know how they should run
your country, your state, your county, and that
big or little burg that you call home.
That 1997  Wred
Rangler with the  license
plates is a-leapin' and a-Jeepin' along behind
whenever we hit the road. Maybe we'll spot you
traveling some peaceful and winding road as we go
out to find America.
Keep an eye open for us -- give us a wave, a
honk, and a "Howdy". We'll shoot one
back to ya!
Dick and Max (Kenai and Snuggles, too)
* * *
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