Few surprises, good food, fun times

January 18, 2013—Our first night on Junior’s maiden voyage provided us with (thankfully) few surprises. The worst surprise was the bed: After all the work Jim did to fix the pump and patch the air chamber leak, last night something malfunctioned and the air leaked out. Fortunately for me, Jim had decided to assume the risk of air leakage, so he was the one who slept in a “hole.” Jim is convinced he’ll figure out what is causing the leak and will fix it. Knowing him, he will!

The other surprise was the refrigerator: It failed to cool, as we guessed it would. Mr. Fixit said he has a couple more things to check out, but if he can’t figure out how to fix it, he’ll have it repaired.

The benefit of not having a working refrigerator is that we “have” to eat out. The only food we brought with us was a pound of hamburger and some leftovers. The hamburger was still frozen last night. Since we didn’t feel like leftovers, we searched Restaurant.com to find a discounted restaurant. And did we find one! A wonderful Peruvian restaurant where we enjoyed two great meals, plus an appetizer of ceviche. Yum.

Tonight, after a full day at the Tampa RV Show, we were starving. We finally settled on trying out a Jamaican restaurant we passed by on the way back to the RV resort. Double yum! Tomorrow, however, I will have to cook (alas). That hamburger finally thawed out.

We spent the day at the Tampa RV Show, which is billed as the largest RV show in the country. The RV show was fun; it’s like going to a home show. You are able to see a lot of different products, hear spiels about services, and drool over million-dollar motor homes. We found that this show has traveling troubadours, clowns, and even cowboy unicyclists! Fun!

This show may have the most (11,000) new RVs on display (and for sale), but it did not have as many vendors as we found at Quartzsite last year. Today we scoped out the vendors; tomorrow we are going back to buy a drop-down attachment for our tow bar. We also intend to sign up for drawings and giveaways from RV resorts.

One other thing we are going to do tomorrow is talk with a consignment dealer. This particular dealer has been in business since 1982, in Fort Myers. His business model is selling on consignment, unlike other dealers whose primary focus is to sell their own inventory. We have a few questions to ask, but I did my research tonight, and we’re leaning toward having him sell our Baby.

I listed Baby on a number of Craigslist sites last week, and I’ve had a few inquiries, but no one has made arrangements to see it yet. Selling on consignment will free us in many different ways, including not being tied down to show the RV.

Until later,

Your Reluctant RoVer,

Linda