RV Trip with Di, Joe, Mist, Smoke — Summer 2018

RV Trip — Part 1

It was towards the end of June and we were going to leave on our Summer Trip  in the next couple of weeks. I quite look forward to these trips except for one thing: hotel/motel reservations.

You see, we have a pair of cats, Di smokes and needs an ADA/Handicapped Accessible room — especially, the bathroom. We have to have a hotel/motel which accepts cats and where she can smoke — those are non-negotiable. The accessibility? Well, that ‘s on the “want” list.

Di does not want to make the reservations herself and I hate three-way conversations/negotiations between the hotel/motel, myself and my wife. I’ve done it (grumble, grumble, grumble) but . . .

It is getting increasingly difficult to find places that have rooms available for smokers and many allow dogs but not cats. In fact, two places we stayed at on our last few trips have converted to non-smoking and no cats. Neither Di nor I want to spend our trip in ten Motel 6 rooms across the country.

Well, to make a short story long, one morning in late June I dropped Di at Mimi’s in Fountain Valley to have a late breakfast/early lunch with one of her friends and took an hour and a half walk.

Looking

I passed by an RV dealer (Mike Thompson’s RV / https://www.mikethompson.com/) and began to browse — mistake. I looked at van-conversions/Class-B motorhomes. Something large enough to take me, Di and the two cats for a week or two or more and still small enough to drive around town and store in our driveway.

Found some nice ones built on a Mercedes (diesel) Sprinter chassis 20+ feet long. Seating for two or three up front, toilet, shower, cook-top, oven, sink, fridge, storage and a sofa/fold-out king/queen bed.

I phoned Di at the restaurant and she liked the idea so I brought her to the lot after lunch. Eventually, she picked a white Road-Trek Eco-Trek model (2018)/ (https://www.roadtrek.com/models/e-trek/) — the, of course, most expensive one. I’ll be paying for it beyond my currently expected expiration date — which I will do my best to extend.

Got it

I picked it up July 5th but: the kitchen sink leaked and they didn’t have the parts to fix it before we were going to leave — the next day. So, (dirty word, dirty word) we were without a working sink — the one in the bathroom was fine. Also, the bar which held up the engine hood was bent and needed to be replaced, but was adequate if you were careful.

That night and the next morning I stocked the RV with food, drink, luggage, the cats’ litter box, toilet paper. And Di’s rollator and Tzora battery-powered mobility scooter. It was quite crowded. Things had to be moved around to use the toilet or get to the sofa/bed in the back.

On Friday, July 6th, we set off for Minnesota — first stop, Bill and Artie’s (Artie and Bill’s) in Gilroy, California.

To be continued . . .

The Trip — 2016: Part 2

The next problem had nothing to do with the government but with American Express.

Charlie made our flight reservations through an American Express (https://travel.americanexpress.com/home) travel agent. She, very explicitly, wanted to fly British Airways (https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_us) and was assured by the travel agent that our flight to the UK was on BA. It turned out, however, that the BA flight, operated by American Airlines, was actually an American Airlines (https://www.aa.com/homePage.do) flight.

BOOM! The fecal matter met the rapidly spinning rotary impeller.

She proceeded to spend many, many hours on the phone with BA and AA and AMEX trying to find out how they would handle her battery-powered scooter (http://www.tzora.com/Easy%2DTravel%2DScooter.html) and batteries and whether it would be allowed on the flight at all. Phone tag played with customer service representatives shunting her off to the next company’s customer service representative. And round and round we go unable to get definitive answers to just about any substantive question. Phone Tag Hell.

Eventually, it boiled down to: Yes, she could bring her scooter. No, no spare batteries. No, bring the sealed dry-cell battery and not the longer-range lithium-ion battery. Yes, the plane check-in and departure would be from the Tom Bradley International terminal at LAX. Well, sort of . . .

Trip -- Di on Tzora Scooter
Di on Tzora Scooter

Thursday — We arrived at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport — http://www.lawa.org/welcomeLAX.aspx) about two and a half hours before our scheduled departure and entered the Tom Bradley International terminal. Looking at the displays, we, to my wife’s great displeasure found that our flight’s check-in was not at TB but at the next terminal in line — Terminal #4.

It was the matter of a three-minute walk, for me with our luggage and Charlie on her scooter, to get to Terminal 4 and then a couple of more minutes to find check-in. Five minutes later we were at the front of the short line and spent the next ten or twenty minutes going through the formalities with boarding passes, luggage and scooter and sorting things out.

Then on to the lift, elevator, and through security — less than ten minutes in line. I went through the regular line while Charlie, seated in her scooter, got some individual attention. Following this was a l – o – n – g hike (especially as I was carrying all of our carry-on bags) across the bridge from Terminal 4 to TB and the very last gate to board our plane.

Less than fifteen minutes later we were pre-boarded and ensconced in our Business Class lay-down seats. The only hassles being removing the twenty-pound battery from Charlie’s scooter and folding it up so the attendant could put it in cargo (while I put the battery in my seat storage area on the plane’s floor). I then returned to the front of the plane and helped Charlie through the aisles to our seats at the very back of Business Class (right in front of the toilet so Charlie would not have to walk any distance when she would need the facilities).

As I also had the battery charger with me (no, it was not packed away in our luggage), I was able to re-charge it during the flight. Clothes can be replaced without too many problems if the carrier loses our luggage. Her scooter charger and her medicines would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace if lost on the way to Europe so they were all a part of our carry-on luggage with our electronics and cameras.

The plane was a Boeing 777-300 (https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/experience/planes/boeing-777-300er.jsp) with comfortable seating and an excellent entertainment suite. Charlie took the window seat, and I got the interior seat with no outside view (dirty word, dirty word, dirty word). But that’s how it is when we travel.

Although Business Class is quite expensive compared with Coach, Di’s medical problems do not allow her to travel comfortably in Coach seating. As we do not travel by plane more than a couple of times each decade, we find the expense tolerable and can juggle our budgets sufficiently to afford the expense. I cringe a bit when looking at the actual financial figures, but . . . .

(to be continued)