Trailer Troubles

We attempted to pick up our trailer today – for the 3rd weekend in a row. A few weekends ago we went looking for a trailer. Both Bruce and I are getting to the age where we think the ground is getting harder, or our bodies are getting softer (or maybe a bit of both). The idea of sleeping off the ground is much nicer. Therefore, we went on a trailer hunt. With some of the money from mom’s estate and the accident settlement, we intended to get a used trailer or tent trailer. Something we would be okay spending time in if it was raining while we are camping. We love to camp every summer, but the kids are getting so big now that the tent feels very small if the four of us are stuck in it for any length of time.

To begin with, Bruce had gone to a couple places to inquire about trailers. Then we picked a Saturday to go looking together. The first place we went to looked at our van and said they didn’t think there was much we would be able to get. I guess we’d need a heavier duty engine to pull a trailer. But they had one to show us. It was really nice and I loved it. But it was about $20,000 more than our price range. I was beginning to think that we were going to either have to give up on the idea of a trailer, or be willing to spend double what I had intended.

As it turned out, the place next door to the first one began by asking us what our budget was. When I told the sales lady, she stopped for a moment before saying anything to us, and then she took us to look at two trailers. The first one was kind of the thing that I thought we would probably end up with. It was older and small. But we needed to make sure we could sleep four in it. The next one was great. It was a 1967 Airstream. Inside looked really 60’s-ish, but I fell in love with it right away. We made an offer and they accepted. We signed the papers, paid the money and were told we could pick it up the next weekend. Yay!

So the next weekend we booked the babysitter so that we could give our full attention to learning about our new-to-us trailer, and headed out to pick it up. When we got there, blank looks met us and we were told that our trailer hadn’t been looked at yet. (They were going to look over the trailer before letting us take it to make sure everything was in working order.) We had two options – we could wait and they would have a quick look over for us to take later that day, or we could leave it for a week and come back the next Saturday to get it. I didn’t want a rush job over my trailer, so I opted for coming back.

So we went home and booked a babysitter for the next Saturday. Friday night we had a call saying that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get the fridge to work. They could replace the fridge for us, and would we think about it. So we spent the evening looking up RV fridges and Airstreams on the Internet. We learned a lot more about our trailer that evening than we had known previously. It turns out we made a fairly good purchase. Airstreams are built to last and we don’t just have an old trailer. We have a vintage trailer. Our research led me to believe that we shouldn’t just replace the fridge, though. We should attempt to have it fixed instead. So we discussed the matter with the owner who said he would look into it and get back to us. A few days later we got a call saying that, yes, the fridge could be fixed. But it’s going to cost about $750 and they would be willing to pay for half if we pay for half. Okay. That’s about what they were willing to give us in the first place by putting in a new fridge. And a new fridge would look out of place in our trailer, as well as not fitting properly. So I’m okay with that. The only thing is, it’ll be about six or eight weeks to wait for the fridge as it has to be shipped to Calgary. We don’t have anywhere in the city that will fix it. And since we are intending to go out to Bruce’s parent’s sooner than that, we will just do without the fridge for the summer and bring it back in the fall to be sent away for repairs.

So, we booked another appointment to pick up the trailer. It turns out we were going to have a busy day as Brendan had a soccer game at 11 and our appointment was for 1. We rushed home, grabbed the babysitter and sped to go get the trailer. Once there, we were told there was going to be a delay, and would we like to have a coffee while we wait. Alright. We sat in a new Airstream drinking coffee and chatting while waiting to get the tour of our Airstream.

An hour later someone came to get us. Then we find out the guy who is going to teach us about our trailer has to learn about it first himself. Someone else had done the check up, and so he didn’t know where everything was. Well, more than the fridge wasn’t working, and to his credit, the guy helping us did everything he could to get everything right for us. Okay, good. Now we could take the trailer home. Bruce got the van and backed it up. We put the trailer on the hitch and then went to hook up the lights. Oh, no! There were two different connections. The lights on the trailer wouldn’t hook up to our plug in on our van. Again, no problem says the guy helping us out. I’ll just do this and that and adapt your wires to fit. Well, to say his day wasn’t going well would be an understatement. He couldn’t get the signal lights to work with the wires and can’t figure out why. *shrug* I don’t know. All I know is that it worked when we towed the U-haul from my mom’s last year. So he figured maybe we had a fuse that was blown. After taking the time to figure out how to get to the fuse panel (another comedy of errors - keep in mind, neither Bruce nor I know much about cars), Bruce and I checked each of the fuses to find out that all of them are okay. Then we waited. We hadn’t been the only ones waiting for service. There were two other trailers that needed work and so while we checked the fuses, our service guy went to help the other trailers. In the end, we have to take our van to have the wiring redone so that we can actually tow our trailer without getting a ticket for having no lights.

On the way home Bruce said it would have been nice if someone had thought to check that out for us before because we could have had that done before today. Oh well. I was so excited about getting our trailer, and now we have to wait again. I sure hope it’s going to be worth it once we finally have it. And I hope we can figure out how to drive with it and back up. Neither of us are very confident about getting into tight places with the trailer. That will be another adventure.