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The unabridged version...consider yourself warned! Where do I start... Rob was born in Downey, CA a small town near Santa Fe Springs where Airstreams were built in the "old days" and I was born in Akron, OH...not too far from Jackson Center. How cool is that...neither one of us grew-up with trailers, but we both love to camp. But it seems that we since moved to Denver in 1993, it would ~ more often than not ~ rain at some point during our weekend mountain getaways! Now we don't really mind the rain, but it sure would be nice to stay dry and warm in between thunderstorms... We've always wanted to "someday" own an Airstream, little did we know it would be so soon! We really weren't looking to buy one now, we weren't even exactly sure what we wanted...having never been inside one before. However, we would make a game of counting them on the road throughout our travels ~ the latest trip resulted in 17 seen between Denver, CO & Scotsdale, AZ on December 22nd, 2001. I guess you could say we had been bitten by the "aluminitus-bug" and didn't even know it! When we got back home from our holiday travels, Rob gave me a challenge to "figure out what we want" and "find one, before he turns fifty and can join the AARP !" BTW ~ He doesn't turn fifty until October 2005...but, we tend to be a bit impulsive and this time it paid off! We searched online at every website we could
find to help figure out what we wanted...fortunately we found The weekend of January 18-20th was pretty much all-Airstream...the Annual RV show was in town, we were invited to be guests at the WBCCI Luncheon and we found Maxwell! Friday evening we visited the RV show "just to look at new ones". Wow, they sure are nice...but way out of our budget and not exactly our style either...we prefer "old & funky ones with character". Then Saturday morning we were just lounging around until it was time to go to the luncheon when Rob found "The Ad". It was too late to go check it out before lunch..."oh well, it's too small anyway". The lunch was alot of fun, we met so many interesting people from all different walks of life...we put out the word we were "in the market". Sunday morning we were reading the paper again, and there it was...the same little ad. We decided to "call about it, just to officially start the search" and to be a looky-loo. To our surprise, it was still available!!! So, we hopped in the car and drove about three miles from home to go check it out... Jim - the seller, knew absolutely nothing about Airstreams...he took this one in trade for a plumbing job he did...When we first arrived, there was another couple looking at it and Jim said that he had had about 35 calls on his message machine (he was out all day Saturday) and people had been looking at it all morning. He didn't know how anything worked, but he did have the original manual and all the paper work from the original owners...Maxwell Fleetwood & his wife Clytia. We did our best and checked out everything we could think of, but not having a clue what we were looking at, it really was rather silly! Everything seemed to be in pretty good shape for a 38 year old...and most everything was original! We mentioned to Jim that we were seriously considering it, but it was Sunday and we didn't really plan on buying a trailer this weekend so we had to wait until we could get to the bank on Monday. He reminded us that Monday was a holiday as he went off to greet some new-comers that had just drove up. We chatted amongst ourselves, continued to explore inside & out, a bit hesitant to buy the first one we had ever looked at...but it looked "just right" for us. Next thing we know, Jim walks over to us and says that the couple that just arrived wanted to buy it "sight-unseen". Jim told them he wanted to let us have first dibs, since we were there first. Well, that was it! We told him we would take it... Now we just had to figure out all the details! So we left a check with Jim and told him we'd be back on Tuesday afternoon with cash and be on our way. Well on the rest of Sunday & all day Monday was spent trying to figure out what we were getting ourselves into...we made a list of all the things we had to do...we hoped that our Jeep Cherokee would be sufficient to tow it home. Tuesday finally came...we had an appointment to get the hitch, we were planning on going to the bank at lunch, had already named "our trailer", we had it all planned out ~ then @ 10:30am the phone rang... It was Jim's wife. She was calling to tell us that "they changed their mind and decided not to sell the trailer after all!!!" Boy, were we deflated...after all the scurrying around we had done... We were certain that Jim had realized what he had and decided that he could get more for it than he was asking...Rob even asked him outright if he had another buyer offering more money. He said no, he just decided that he might need a place for his 86-year old father to stay if he comes out to visit...well, what could we do? We just asked him to keep our name & number, in case he decided to sell it after his father's visit. Well, needless to say, we were both "a bit cranky" that afternoon...and we had to make calls and undo everything we had spent the last two days setting up. Just as we were getting over the disappointment and becoming somewhat civil again, the phone rings again...it's about 4:00pm, and it's Jim! He called to say that he felt really bad about changing his mind earlier and if we still wanted the trailer, we could have it! YIKES!!! Now it's "how can we make this all happen before he changes his mind again"....Rob rushes off to the hitch place to get a temporary set-up and I run off to the bank to get the money. Somehow, we made it to Jim's before 5:00pm ~ being winter it gets dark early and we wouldn't have running lights with the temporary hitch set-up ~ so we hoped to get home before it got too dark and a storm was coming...good thing it's only three miles from home! We were like two little kids at Disneyland...so excited! "Here, take our money & let us go..." Yipee! We're on our way! Well, not exactly...at the end of Jim's street sat two police cars. Without running lights, plates or registration we just pulled over to the side of the road and waited. And waited. And waited! By now it was getting dark and it had started to snow! We couldn't exactly turn around and we didn't know how to back-up yet! Being that Airstreams are slightly bigger than a breadbox, we figured if we tried to just "sneak by" we'd look suspicious, so we just waited for them to finish their business with the delinquents. Finally we were on our way...and looking in the rearview mirror the whole way home! What an emotional roller-coaster day...but kinda cool how it all worked out! Now the fun begins ~
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