We never really fancied ourselves the RV-ing types. We had the stereotypical view of RV goers, hardened by stays at state park campgrounds, of post retirement age, lazy, TV watching, faux adventurers. Thus the thought of a RV style camper on the back of the truck was a little out of the realm of comfort. At least with the truck separate from the camper it seems a little bit more rough and tumble. Our friend Simmon has one (pictured). Its actually pretty cool. There are lots of good surfer aesthetics to it too… I had just finished reading Allan Weisbecker’s excellent surfer epic In Search of Captain Zero and la casita viajera seemed like the way to go.
And pricey. Super pricey. We had a budget of about $13K for the truck and the camper. We wanted something reliable, but a little bit beat. Character welcome. There is nothing like rolling into a economically depressed town in the middle of nowhere with a flashy, expensive rig to garner some unwanted attention. $13K seemed like an OK amount, doable anyway. Doable until the “cash for clunkers” program. Classic supply and demand. The feds offered $4,500 in rebates to scrap vehicles with lower gas mileage. So basically everyone with even a moderate guzzler that was worth less than that scrapped their ride for a new one, essentially eliminating the supply of low-end trucks. All the buyers looking for used pick-ups were now thrust up a price level, to the $5-$8K price level. The price level we were looking at. Now all the buyers were in the mid-range market because the low-end truck market had virtually vanished. This drove up the prices by $2-$3K in a matter of months. Timing is everything.
We looked and looked… never really even finding something we wanted to look at. Our buddy Aaron suggested that we look at vans instead. Having been previous owners of a 89 Dodge Grand Caravan, inherited from the parents, I liked the idea. It was always good to us. Ok, so there was the saga of Big Red. A beauty of a 79 Chevy, inherited from some multi-cultural, surfer-hippie-vagabond friends. She was not so reliable and didn’t live too long after we got her.
The search shifted. To vans. Particularly Sportsmobiles. Talk about pricey! The nice, but still used, ones run in the $40-100K range. Um yeah… I don’t think so.
Our friend Meredith, having learned of our plans, had loaned us a tattered copy of Wide-Eyed Wanderers. It was fascinating. Like I had been handed a manual to what we were about to embark on. Instantly, I started searching for VW options: Vanagons, Eurovans, Westys. And then I got to the part where they overheat the engine trying to get up a steep hill. They weren’t surfers. They do their fare share of exploring and hiking and such, but they aren’t hard-core outdoor adventurers like we fancied ourselves. More cultural explorers. I wanted 4wd too… No, the VW option just wasn’t going to cut it.
We had been on every possible used vehicle site imaginable. We had looked at hundreds of listings and posts. I joined every camper van forum on the net. No dice.
The aforementioned Mary and Walt were visiting sunny San Diego in anticipation of the pending birth of my nephew Van Moczydlowsky. Mary had just finished chastising Walt and I for not letting her go to Cedar Sinai earlier to harass the parents to be when I lamented to Walt the agony of our futile and seemingly never-ending search. I logged on to Autotrader to demonstrate the hopelessness of the situation.
And there it was. Van-love at first sight, well first internet sight. Kinda like match.com for auto buyers. If she was as pretty in real life as her profile pics then we would be spending a lot of nights together.