{"id":66,"date":"2009-08-21T22:15:45","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T21:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/?p=66"},"modified":"2013-07-04T00:13:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T23:13:03","slug":"airstream-dream-snomobile-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/airstream-dream-snomobile-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Airstream dream becomes sno-mobile reality"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"vintage

vintage Airstream Overlander 1966 and on the right a 1950’s one fully polished – now THAT’s what we need for our sno-mobile!<\/p><\/div>\n

After looking for the perfect vintage Aluminium (Aluminum if you’re American) caravan (travel trailer) for an age, we found the perfect one in the middle of the Arizona desert …<\/p>\n

… so I jumped straight on a plane from London UK to Phoenix AZ and bought it from a marvellous American chap who thought I was a ficticious e-person invented by an\u00a0internet scam artist… he was more than a little surprised when I rolled down his dusty drive the following night in an enormous U-Haul truck!<\/p>\n

(use these shortcuts if you’re looking for\u00a0ski holidays<\/span><\/a><\/strong> or a ski resort<\/span><\/a><\/strong> guide)<\/p>\n

I could try to write in some joepardy about how\u00a0my internet search took me down a few bling alleys and also about the\u00a0bonkers American\u00a0“dealer” who advertises vintage\u00a0Airstrreams for sale which he hasn’t actually\u00a0bought yet…<\/p>\n

…\u00a0but the saga is long and considerably less interesting than\u00a0the final\u00a05 day adventure to buy\u00a0my vintage\u00a0Airstream and\u00a0drive it 1500 miles to the container port in Texas,\u00a0to\u00a0put it on\u00a0a boat back to England…<\/p>\n

… so…<\/p>\n

Falling back on the old adge that a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few images which document\u00a0what happened when I went to meet retired US marine veteran “Arizona Bill” in the desert, with\u00a0thousands of dollars\u00a0cash in my pocket, to buy a caravan which was 6 years older than I am.<\/p>\n

\"Bill

Bill is an old-fashioned kind of young guy – hospitality like you used to get…<\/p><\/div>\n

This is Bill – in this picture he is the second owner of a 42 year old vintage aluminum travel trailer –\u00a0soon to become the former<\/em> owner of a 42 year old vintage aluminum travel trailer.<\/p>\n

I found his particular Airstream after many weeks of online and on-phone searching.\u00a0 I’m glad it took so long because there are really no short cuts to\u00a0learning the in’s and out’s of vintage Airstreams.\u00a0 They are things of beauty and rarity here in the UK, but they really are two-a-penney over in the good ‘ol US –\u00a0so you need to learn a lot if you’re going to buy one yourself.<\/p>\n

If you can afford to have it done properly,\u00a0have a real expert do it <\/span>for you.\u00a0 If you\u00a0need to DIY, like me, then take your time… because there are\u00a0some absolute shockers out there!<\/p>\n

1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 U \u00a0S\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MARINE\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CORPS !<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arizona Bill is a former US Army\u00a0infantry captain (don’ t know why I keep\u00a0thinking marine –\u00a0perhaps because Bill’s a bit of an anglophile and worked with our Royal Marines).\u00a0 Having served in some really very difficult circumstances and unpleasant places, Bill has seen things that he would really rather not have… and is more than a little thankful that he is now retired from the armed forces, back into civilian life.\u00a0 He was selling his Airstream because he used to take his boys camping in it\u00a0but now has a VW combi for that purpose (much more like camping, than the Airstream “home on wheels” approach).<\/p>\n

Understandably, it seemed\u00a0not entirely credible\u00a0to Bill that someone might fly eight thousand miles to buy a\u00a0two ton trailer, which\u00a0he could not possibly fly back with.\u00a0\u00a0After more than a few emails and phone calls to convince him,\u00a0Bill seemed to accept that I wasn’t going to ask him to deposit money into a Nigerian bank account – he agreed not to sell the Airstream until I arrived fresh off the plane the next evening.<\/p>\n

I decided not, at that stage, to get into a\u00a0long winded explanation\u00a0of\u00a0our cleverski holidays<\/span> <\/a>website which is designed to also work on all cell phones… or that his Airstream was about to become a sno mobile on a Grand Alpine Tour of three dozenSwiss<\/span><\/a> & <\/span>French ski resorts<\/span><\/a>… from Bill’s perspective, the story was already weird enough.<\/p>\n

My longish flight was delayed almost to the point of all the rental companies in\u00a0Phoenix closing but, after literally running around them all, I found not a single one willing to rent me a pickup with tow hitch… once they knew what I wanted to tow… and how far…<\/p>\n

… so I rented a U-Haul lorry (truck) and told the nice chap that I was taking my friend’s little boat-trailer down to go sailing in the port of Galveston (next to Houston TX 1,500 miles away) and required a (double the cost) one-way rental.<\/p>\n

I finally pulled into Bills yard, up a dirt road amid cacti and wagon ruts (embellishing slightly for effect) – it was dark and Bill was understandably surprised\/concerned that the Nigerian internet fraudster had actually\u00a0materialised and was affecting a British accent and red-eyed cheeriness.<\/p>\n

All credit to Bill – he was busy re-attaching the Airstream curtains which he had washed and ironed (!)\u00a0and even gave me a full set of fresh\u00a0bed sheets,\u00a0so I could “test-drive” the Overlander, overnight in his yard.\u00a0 He even had a cable hooked into his house to show me the vintage fridge freezer was super cold on that hot desert evening.<\/p>\n

\"everything

everything is perfectly formed and it all works! gas & electric fridge, 3 stove gas hob, gas oven, gas hot water tank, electric water pump, shower with mini-bath, vintage loo (hmm, not sure about that), plus all original furniture<\/p><\/div>\n

Cutting a long story only slightly shorter, after a hot but comfortable night, Bill helped me look around the Airstream and all of its facilities and foibles.\u00a0 We basically spent the day teaching me how to “Airstream” (lighting the water heater, runinng the fridge on gas instead of electric, using the stoves, oven and grill, purging gas, emtpying the black water tank, etc).\u00a0 I\u00a0should explain\u00a0that I have neither owned a caravan before, nor even stayed in one (not since I was 7 anyway).<\/p>\n

\"Bills

Bill’s favourite local bank teller signs to say I bought the Airstream fair and square<\/p><\/div>\n

After a visit to the local bank to pay in the cash and get the title notarised, we returned to Bill’s place\u00a0where I showered, enjoyed something spectacular in an omelette (what did you call that Bill?) and with a wave and many thanks… I\u00a0was off!<\/p>\n

\"U-Haul

U-Haul was the only company who would rent me a tow vehicle to pull the vintage Airstream – I thought a cheap 4×4 would be perfect but nope… it had to be a truck! 14ft U-Haul plus 26ft Airstream equals the first 40ft vehicle I’ve ever driven – still, only 1500 miles across the US driving on the wrong side of the road!<\/p><\/div>\n

first time driving a 40ft articulated vehicle?<\/strong><\/p>\n

1500 miles across the desert?<\/strong><\/p>\n

in a foreign country?<\/strong><\/p>\n

on the wrong side of the road?<\/strong><\/p>\n

… piece of cake!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inexplicably, I actually asked Bill to drive it out of his yard and to the nearest hard surfaced road…\u00a0as if\u00a0that was going to\u00a0be the trickiest section of the 1500 mile trip!<\/p>\n

And then I was on my own…<\/strong><\/p>\n

The road from Bill’s place to the highway had a 3 mile cone-lined narrow section which was almost exactly as wide as my new “rig” – so the first 10 minutes at the wheel were often\u00a0sphynctre clenching – but I got to the highway as the sun went down… and started truckin’<\/p>\n

convoy<\/a> (right click this link\u00a0and choose “Open in\u00a0New Window”, to listen to “Convoy” while reading the rest of this post)<\/p>\n

\"nice

nice Rs<\/p><\/div>\n

The 3 day and night drive from central Arizona to southern Texas was an exercise in ignoring the clock.\u00a0 My body\/brain wasn’t on local time anyway and all that really mattered was to maximise the mileage, rather than to be awake or asleep at the correct local times… so I\u00a0alternately\u00a0drove until I was tired and then slept until I was not… repeatedly… for 3 days.<\/p>\n

America is PERFECTLY geared up for travelling by road – a road trip is written into the DNA of an American… it’s second nature.<\/p>\n

But the US is\u00a0deceptively big by road, \u00a0if you’re from a small island, where you can drive the length in a day and the width in half that.<\/p>\n

The highways aren’t different from ours in Britain and neither really are the stops\/service stations, its just that its much more normal to be “on-the-road”.\u00a0 Its normal to drive until you need to sleep and therefore its normal to sleep in a service station\u00a0car park\u00a0(you’d have PC plod knocking on your window at 3am if you were found sleeping in the Scratchwood services car park on the M1).<\/p>\n

I slept in the Airstream sometimes by day and sometimes night – mostly alongside 18 wheelers, because my “rig” was too long to park with the other RVs and caravans.\u00a0 It was interesting to note that most people didn’t stop and stare or come to look\/talk – interesting because I knew they would do<\/em> in the UK and Europe – that was the whole point of travelling in it\u00a0on the sno<\/span> ski holidays<\/span><\/a><\/strong> “ski resort tour”, to get SNO noticed.<\/p>\n

Airstreams – even beautiful vintage ones – are utterly unremarkable in the USA and that’s why mine was just\u00a0$8000 (approx \u00a35300) from Bill –\u00a0it would\u00a0cost over \u00a330k to buy in the UK (well beyond my budget).<\/p>\n

I’m ashamed to say it now but that lovely old trailer of mine was bounced along behind the U-Haul truck at 80+mph for most of the trip, because time was tight and I kept telling myself that American miles, like their gallons, are smaller and therefore I wasn’t really do a proper<\/em> 80!<\/p>\n

That night I shared the price of a motel room with El Paso Airstream Guy<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"met

met Mark on the last leg to the port – he was shipping his to Japanese clients<\/p><\/div>\n

On the\u00a0final night before reaching the sea port of Galveston Tx, coming to the end of my driving wakefulness, I passed a slightly older and beautifully polished Airstream cruising along behind a pickup.\u00a0 I honked as I barrelled past and thought no more of it until, parked up that evening the owner\/driver pulled in at the same station\/motel area.\u00a0 We got to talking and I discovered that Mark was a retired preacher who funded his homeless charity, across the border in Mexico, with a little Airstream dealing on the side… as one does.<\/div>\n
\n
\"polished

polished 50s shows patinated 60s the way forward<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mark’s trailer was an empty shell so he needed a cheap room to sleep in… and my trailer was for camping only (I was determined to put no water or anything else into the tanks before dropping it off for the 4 week boat trip home) …<\/div>\n
… Mark needed a place to sleep and, after 3 days on the road, I needed a good shower and shave…<\/div>\n
… so we split the price of a room and I used his shower before retiring to the car park outside.<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
The following day was a comedy of errors as we tried to keep charging Mark’s pickup battery from\u00a0my U-Haul truck…<\/div>\n
…\u00a0eventually swapped out\u00a0his alternator…<\/div>\n
…\u00a0then went on a hunt for someone to “purge” (ie empty) my lovely polished aluminium gas tanks, so they’d be allowed on the boat.<\/div>\n
Fortunately Mark knows a lot of people (he has shipped a lot of these trailers), but no one could do the job and also<\/em> give the newly required certificate (its an insurance thing – they’d be sued beyond the horizon if they exploded on a container ship).<\/div>\n
In the end we resorted to opening the valves in an industrial area and hoping no one would smell it – very naughty – but it didn’t\u00a0come out nearly fast enough\u00a0so I had to give up on those lovely polished tanks.<\/div>\n
\n
\"quite

quite a loss these, but I later discovered you can’t get UK\/Euro adapters to fill them anyway and they’re not legal (must be steel over here)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Since Mark had been such a cracking chap, I gave them to him to “get what you can on eBay” – which turns out to be rather a lot!<\/div>\n
With all of the faffing around, we got Mark’s trailer on the boat before the yard closed for the day,\u00a0but not\u00a0my sno-mobile –\u00a0I would have to return in the morning – so Mark and I said our goodbyes and I drove to the beach to spend my last night in the US…<\/div>\n
…\u00a0and end the road trip…<\/div>\n
…\u00a0as is\u00a0fitting…<\/div>\n
…\u00a0where the road ends…<\/div>\n
\n
\"cant

can’t drive no further, the roads run out<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

… at the ocean…<\/div>\n
…\u00a0with a beer.<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n

NEXT:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the dash to getski holidays<\/a> website<\/span>, caravan and life ready for the Grand Alpine Tour…<\/p>\n

\n\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After looking for the perfect vintage Aluminium (Aluminum if you’re American) caravan (travel trailer) for an age, we found the perfect one in the middle of the Arizona desert …
\n… so I jumped straight on a plane from London UK to Phoenix AZ and bought it from a marvellous American chap who thought I was a ficticious e-person invented by an internet scam artist… he was more than a little surprised when I rolled down his dusty drive the following night in an enormous U-Haul truck!
\nFirst time driving a 40ft articulated vehicle,
\n1500 miles across the desert,
\non a foreign country,
\non the wrong side of the road…
\n… piece of cake!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ski-holidays","has-post-title","no-post-date","has-post-category","no-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sno.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}