If The Shoe Fits, Buy It

I only got about 50 miles north on 183 when my brother nearly caused the swift demise of this experiment.  Not to mention me.  He called me.

Well, I suppose it was a leetle bit my fault.

You see, the Daze is a van.  A very pretty, gussied up van, just in case she's listening, but a van nonetheless.   And if you are hardwired to drive a pickup, like I am, that can lead to trouble.  When I reached for the phone, all those wires hanging off it got caught on the table, and the armrest, and each other, and I had to lean over to free it up.  And promptly swerved into the left hand lane.  At exactly the moment a big tanker truck full of gasoline was attempting to pass me.  As you can imagine, I dropped the phone toot suite.

Fate gave me a pass, the truck slowed down, and I got my butt back in the right hand lane.

All Class C's are like this.  They are squirrelly as hell.  They are, after all, vans.  I mean, you are sitting right on top of the steering box, and any little pressure on the wheel makes you careen off in unexpected directions, lickety split.  There's very little forebearance.  All I did was look to the right, and give the wires a flip, and in my truck that evolution would have been nothing.  But in a van it was nearly suicide.

I need to have that printed on my forehead.  When you drive a van, you pay attention to what you are doing.  You don't fiddle with things on the seat, you don't try to write your memoirs, you don't even talk with your hands.  If you drop something it's just gone until you can pull over.  And God help you if try to pick out a new CD or sort through the million plus channels on Sirius Radio.

When you are driving, you drive.  Got it?  Yeah, I got it.

And while I'm finding fault with Her Majesty, I might as well let it all out.  If you are 6 feet 4, as I am, you are going to be cramped.  There's the engine hump on the right, and the door on the left, and a diminishing cone of darkness into which you may put your size 13s.  It's not quite as bad as trying to drive an MG Midget, but you are going to be playing footsie with yourself, and over time you are going to get stiff, and when you get out after a couple of hundred miles you are going to have kids point at you and say "Mommy, why is that man walking funny?"

None of this is the Daze's fault, I know.  It's what I get for outgrowing just about everything in Christendom, including my hair.

This shouldn't be a surprise.  I noticed it when I was trying out the Daze, of course.  But I thought it was just an upper body problem.  "Ted," I said, "I'm not going to be able to drive this thing comfortably.  I'm backed up right against the toilet, and I can't get far enough from the pedals to tell which is which, and that speaker is rubbing a hole in my knee....blah, blah, blah."

Ted just looked over behind my shoulder and said "I can fix that."

Sure, I thought.  And pigs have wings.

This was on a Monday.  On Wednesday he called me and said I ought to come by and take another look.  Here's what I saw:

Now that may look to you like the Clampetts have gone and built themselves a car, but it seemed to work.  I took it for a test drive, and it's amazing how much more comfortable it is just to be able to lean back a little.  He had me.  After that, I had to buy it.  I mean, how many people have their RV custom tailored to their personal physique?

A pair of boots is one thing, but a motorhome?


Bob