Archives for March 2015

Going to Chilliwack, the first time.

March 20, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

We were Chilliwack virgins. In fact we had never been farther east in British Columbia than White Rock, just north of the U.S. border. Our BC travel had been limited to Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, and locations en route to those places.

Cultus Lake, just up the hill from Chilliwack. By The High Fin Sperm Whale (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

I think it possible that we might never have stayed a night in Chilliwack if not for our proposed, and then later intended, then finally consummated RV purchase. Not that is isn’t a wonderful place to visit — it surely is. We just didn’t know about it, until we became interested in Escape trailers.

But we did. You’ll recall Sooz’s “I LOVE it!” response to our tour of a nearby resident’s own Escape 21. And what wasn’t to love? So I sent them an email asking how to get on the production schedule so we could have one of our very own.

The response was sobering. Well, they said, our production schedule for 2014 is completely booked, in an early April email. We’re happy to put you on our 2015 production schedule, but it isn’t out yet, and when it does come out we’ll arrange a special, frenzied, phone-in, lottery kind of event at which time you can maybe get on our production schedule and good luck to you. In the meantime we’ll put you on our list of people who want to know about such things.

Arrrggh. Here we were ready to plunk down most of Sooz’s life savings — oh, wait, don’t let her see this part — to buy an RV and the company was telling us ‘yeah, when we’re good and ready for you.’ Zounds! But they are a smallish and growing company with a fabulous reputation for both product and service, so okay whatever we’ll wait.

We talked about it. Maybe it would be helpful for us to visibly demonstrate our passion for their product, we mused. Maybe we should go up there to Chilliwack, take a factory tour, look at the ‘display models,’ and appear to be earnest buyers. Because sometimes it helps to show people you’re serious, doesn’t it? I think so.

So we began thinking about going up there — a 3.5 hour (plus border wait time) journey, according to Google Maps. And then

My client cancelled a meeting in California. Yes! I woke up on a Tuesday, ready to head out to SeaTac airport for a flight down to the Bay Area for a two-day meeting. But I checked my email and the meeting was postponed! I had blocked out the time… I didn’t have any looming deadlines… so I suggested we bug out to Chilliwack. All four of us enthusiastically agreed, although Tyler and Wally will agree to pretty much anything if you ask them the right way.

Online, I found a dog-friendly motel located practically in Escape Trailer Industries’ back yard. Booked a room. We threw together some stuff, put the mutts in their car-beds and off we went.

Through Tacoma, and then Seattle, and then on up to Bellingham, Washington. Then it’s secondary roads and farmland up to the border in Sumas, Washington. ‘You’re going to see the Escape trailers? Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about those. Have fun!’ Even the border agent was enthusiastic.

Chilliwack environs: Vedder River at dawn, Stephen Edwards. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

The countryside around Chilliwack is gorgeous. It’s the wide, flat, lusciously green Fraser River valley, flanked by towering mountains in purple and jade. Tourism Chilliwack has some great photos, which you might want to see since all I have to offer are these Wikipedia images. At any rate, a lovely place. And when you get to the part of Chilliwack occupied by the Escape Trailer Industries factory, you realize you are in… an industrial area.

A small one, really — and still surrounded by all those gorgeous mountain views. Still, kind-of… industrial. Truck stop. Aging motel. Chain coffee shop. And a row of those industrial-looking developments with roll-up doors.

Our Best Western lodgings were more than adequate. When you book ‘dog-friendly’ rooms, your expectations are always low. In this case, the place looked dated, but well-preserved and clean. And there’s a very cool atrium at the hotel where you can eat meals and watch talented-but-possibly-underpaid locals tend the plants.

Before checking in, we drove by the ETI factory. It was almost closing time, but Sooz offered to wait in the car with the boys while I dashed in to begin our Demonstration of Earnestness. One of the firm’s owners, Tammy, asked if I’d like to see a trailer or two, and dispatched her daughter Erin to escort me. I looked at an Escape 21 — cool! Then dashed back out to the car so Sooz and Tyler and Wally wouldn’t have to wait too long. Time to get to our motel and relax!

We did. We got to the motel. And, like all modern people, the first thing we did after checking in was to fire up our laptop, connect to the motel’s Wi-Fi, and check emails. We dared not use our Verizon Wireless network for data; the international roaming data rates costs more than an RV. Per megabyte.

Network up, password in, Terms of Use unread but agreed-to, and… there was an email to me, from Escape Trailer Industries. It had been sent at about the time I was out touring the 21 with Erin — by someone else at the company, Rhonda, who had had no idea we were anywhere near Chilliwack, because why would she.

The email said… we’ve had a cancellation! You want an Escape 21? We can put you on the schedule for a November 14 completion date!!!

We discussed it for a good three minutes, then I replied YES MAKE ONE FOR US ALREADY or something similar.

Our trip to Chilliwack was becoming more eventful (and successful) than we had imagined it might. Yes. Well, wait ’til you learn what happened next.

Soon.

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More on the quest for just the right amount of TV

March 19, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

Yeah, I know, this is not a brand-new topic, but we have made ever so much progress — possibly — and I felt that you deserved to know about it.

WARNING. Some material on this page may be too intense for less nerdly or geeky audiences. Sooz said I had to provide this warning.

I think I mentioned that we’ve used DVRs for a long time, and that we like the option to watch a favorite show or movie when we want to, not when it’s scheduled to air. We think this — our preference for TV flexibility — may be a thing even when we’re doing Wilderness Camping, although we don’t yet know for sure.

So we have Tivo at home, because why wouldn’t we? And we have an Android tablet (it’s a Google-branded tablet, which I convinced Sooz we needed when Google was a client of mine for a year or two). NOTE: the Android tablet is Wi-Fi only, doesn’t get mobile network signals. This may be important, or maybe not.

Google (the client) has since wised up and moved on to other providers of marketing blather, but I still have the tablet. And I have a 19-inch, high-def Sharp LCD TV that sports a single HDMI input. That HDMI input is an important part of this conversation, but it won’t be clear until I reveal the dongle. So wait a minute. As of yesterday morning, thanks to Amazon and the always-welcome-at-our-house UPS brown truck, I have a new dongle. It is a Netgear Push2TV device.

This is something I can plug into the TV’s HDMI port, which I believe I accurately predicted might be important. The device is capable of something called Miracast, which I just learned about. Miracast is a name for the ability to transmit HDMI info (high-def video and audio) wirelessly from one device to another. In this case, I will (according to everything I’ve read), be able to transmit whatever is playing on my tablet to the dongle, and it will play on my TV.

Of course there is the issue of getting something to play on the tablet, because, as I mentioned, it just has Wi-Fi, not mobile network capability, and when we’re out there camping in the wilderness there’s not going to be Wi-Fi. Maybe, sometimes, some mobile network (Verizon, in our case) coverage will be avaiable, but no Wi-Fi. So to get internet to the tablet, we’re going to need to get our smartphones to grab the mobile network (assuming it’s available), and act as a Wi-Fi hotspot, and then our tablet will connect to it via Wi-Fi.

That can all work. But then wait, will the tablet be able to receive Wi-Fi signals from the smartphone and then send Wi-Fi signals to the dongle all at the same time? Because Miracast, it turns out, is really just a specialized kind of Wi-Fi. I’m going to find out as soon as these pain pills wear off.

Through the magic of taking two days to get this post published, I already have the answer to this question: yes. The tablet can receive Wi-Fi and Miracast-transmit to the dongle. I got it working this morning.

But wait (as we say in the marketing drivel business), there’s more. According to Tivo’s website, I’m going to be able to watch, on the tablet, anything I can see with our Tivo at home, even though it’s back here on our sprawling estate and not with us. And with the dongle thing we can watch what’s on the tablet on our expansive 19-inch Sharp TV screen.

Again, the secondary fermentation of this post kicks in with more info: alas, I will have to buy an additional Tivo device, for $129, to be able to stream live TV and anything on my DVR to the tablet. And get this: if only I had iOS devices instead Android devices, I could also download stuff to the tablet and watch it later, with no Internet connection at all. Total, wilderness-ready TV. Wow.

But, as always, Android is the stepchild. I wonder if this will ever turn around. I do not know.

Now, back to our story: Maybe we can even get the sound to make its way to our Bluetooth speaker as well, but that’s too much to think about today. Especially with this next round of pain meds.

So, let’s review, because I don’t know about you but my head is spinning, and honestly the meds haven’t really kicked in yet.

Home Comcast content –> Home Tivo –> Internet –> Verizon (our mobile provider) –> Smartphone with WiFi Hotspot turned on –> Android tablet running the mobile Tivo app –> NetGear Push2TV dongle –> Sharp 19″ TV. Still not sure about the sound and the Bluetooth speaker. I think that might require another dongle, and it might be hard to sneak that by the team CFO. Hmmmm.

What I am sure of: maybe it’s time to just get a few books out of the library and leave all the electronics at home.

But I bet we won’t do that.

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The chairs, on their maiden voyage.

March 16, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

There has been some interest in our chairs. Most of the interest comes from Tyler and Wally, who spend a good 92 percent of their lives sleeping, resting, reclining, and (when possible) curling up next to a humanoid.

Here they are now. The chairs, I mean, but the terriers are here too.

Folding lounge chairs and ottomans, in front of Toto the trailer, with terriers attending.

Chairs and ottomans. Padded. Extra-wide to accommodate humanoid + terrier. Or maybe two terriers. Or Tyler, stretched sideways, as is his habit. That’s Wally on the lower left, startled (as always). That’s Tyler on the chair looking longingly (as always) toward wherever Sooz was.

We picked these chairs up at NO COST. You can too. Just put them on your Amazon wish list (you have to use a browser plug-in so you can point your wish list at items sold elsewhere). Then wait for a birthday, major holiday, or when a friend or relative just wants to show you the love (or save up brownie points before they ask to borrow your RV). (This would not work with us). (No one is borrowing Toto).

Another way to get these chairs is to just buy them. They’re at Camping World, and they’re almost certainly on sale right now, because, it seems, they have been for the last eight months. The price varies, but they’re always On Sale. There’s a ton of review content on both the Club Chairs, and the matching ottomans at the site. Who writes those reviews, anyway?

So there are a lot of chairs and lounges and whatnot out there, and I’m sure we’ll go through several types before we know what is Just The Thing, but these are a good first choice because one can accommodate Doug and Wally, and the other can accommodate Sooz and Tyler. This is how Tyler and Wally roll. Tyler adores Sooz. Wally tolerates me. If one is on a chair, the other wants to be on a chair.

Cairn terriers were originally bred to hunt down vermin and savagely end their lives. Tyler and Wally have evolved. They live to lounge.

Note: we tested these chairs in our living room, watching a Seattle Seahawks football game, to make sure they worked. They did! Our team won. Unfortunately we were not in these chairs during Super Bowl 49. So it goes.

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Inside Toto: Modern Appliances

March 15, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

The night before we were to get our orientation on Toto, and take delivery, we hadn’t seen any pictures of Toto since he was a mere shell. The wonderful people at Escape Trailer Industries (ETI) have a tradition of sending pictures of your trailer as it’s being built, once a week or thereabouts. Sometimes they miss a week or they get distracted with other stuff such as building trailers.

So there we were, in Chilliwack, BC in a lovely motel, with nothing to do and filled with anticipation and curiosity and all of it.

I checked my email and, surprise, here were some pictures to “tide us over,” as ETI’s ace customer service person put it, until the next day. Here’s one of the pix.

Toto's nightstand, microwave oven, refrigerators and some cabinetry

Some of Toto’s glorious insides, including, right to left, the “nightstand” as it is known in Escapeland, the microwave oven above the closet, the 6.7 cubic foot refrigerator, and way down there at the end a glimpse of the Toto Lounge. That’s the furnace just above the floor where the Toto Lounge begins, and up on top you can see a corner of the air conditioner.

We liked the look. At some point we may have found our way to what passes for a wine shop in British Columbia; you could also call it an extortion parlor, with its Tiffanyesque prices even for junk-jewelry-grade wine. Worth every penny (Loonie?), though, as we sipped the evening away, staring at pictures and imagining ourselves as officially recognized trailerists.

Toto interior shot of kitchen area and Toto Lounge beyond.

Another night-before shot of Toto’s interior; kitchen sink and stovetop on the left, the Toto Lounge in the distance. Shockingly bright LED lights everywhere. That dark square at the end of the floor is an electrical panel.

This was our first glimpse of just how plain a fabric we had chosen for the upholstery. (We have since livened things up a bit by adding pillows and recovering the matching window cornices).

It was so very kind of Crystal to go and get these pictures for us. She probably wanted to be going home and doing whatever British Columbians do after a long workday. Instead she took pix and sent them to us. We owe her. (But don’t tell her we said so).

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Paranoia strikes deep.

March 13, 2015 By drpaddle Leave a Comment

California Immobilizer vehicle theft deterrent.

This device deters vehicle theft. It may also keep small creatures in my side yard awake at night.

One of the downsides of combing through an online enthusiast forum: you identify stuff you decide you might need. In some cases, you really do need the stuff, and you’re just learning, and that’s super. But in other cases you might find yourself tripping down a path in cyberspace, only to land, hard, on your belly, your knees scraped, your palms rubbed raw, and your Visa balance inflated.

ON THE FORUM: Alert! Trailer stolen! Fabulous Escape trailer stolen from someone’s DRIVEWAY! Ouch.

(Side note: why are there thieves? Oh never mind.)

ON THE FORUM: Multiple discussion threads on insurance, theft prevention, man’s inhumanity to man, etc.

Several threads devoted themselves to theft prevention. Many products, in many price ranges, announced themselves to me. All yearning to be added to our monthly Visa statement.

We ended up ordering a few, including the yellow contraption pictured above. Yes, it’s called the California Immobilizer. Yes, it’s a garish yellow, on purpose, so potential thieves can see it from far way and decide to move on, hoping for easier targets. Yes, it can probably be broken with the right tools, time and willpower. Let’s hope I never find out.

The funny thing is, and I can say this as a native Californian and a marketer by profession, it’s called The California Immobilizer. Aimed at one of the largest vehicle-owning markets in the world, and aptly named.

But it’s made on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia.

I think it’s pretty secure. Hell, I can hardly remove it myself (sticky lock). I imagine a potential thief, crouching by this thing, wishing he or she had brought that sledge hammer along, but instead fiddling with the lock. THE LOCK IS IMPOSSIBLE, even if you have the key. Well, not impossible, but I swear it takes me 7.3 minutes every time I go to unlock the thing.

No one is stealing our trailer.

We hope.

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Whatever will we do about TV? What do YOU do?

March 12, 2015 By drpaddle 2 Comments

One of the many things we haven’t figured out yet is The TV Question.

In our initial thoughts about trailering our way around the countryside, TV didn’t seem important. We weren’t going to live in the trailer for months on end — at least not in the foreseeable future — and the idea was to enjoy destinations and/or nature. But.

We spent our first two nights out at Belfair State Park, and… we looked at our smartphones a lot. Email? Text messages? Seahawks news? It surprised us a little, but surprises are okay, right?

Next trip, two months later (it is winter, after all), was to Grayland Beach State Park, on the coast. Though we had read campground reviews that applauded the park’s Verizon coverage, we learned that mobile coverage can be a campsite-by-campsite thing. Shoulda known.

Did I mention it’s winter? It is. So there’s more time spent inside Toto’s warm, comfortable shell. It gets dark (and cold) earlier, and huddling around the campfire is okay, but being inside feels pretty good. So there we are, inside for a few hours before bedtime, and we have our books to read and our doggies to supervise and games to play but… we found we wanted to watch some TV.

We ended up, on that trip, watching a couple of PBS dramas we like. There’s no TV in the trailer — yet — but I figured out how to use my smartphone as a WiFi hotspot, then connect to it with the laptop. Then we went to the PBS website and streamed Downton Abbey and Grantchester. Sometimes the show would stop, momentarily, because we were in that marginal mobile coverage area I mentioned. But we got through ’em, and they were fine, and what does this say about TV for Toto?

Next trip: three nights at a different beachside campground. NO. MOBILE. COVERAGE. We listened to music and solved the world’s problems. (Sorry, can’t remember the solutions now.)

TV-ready on the inside.

For a few Canadian dollars (and even fewer US dollars), our friends at Escape Trailer Industries made Toto “TV-ready.” That means they set up a spot where we can connect our TV to a cable connection (when available from RV parks or campgrounds). There’s an AC outlet, too. We selected this option because we thought, even if we didn’t want to watch TV, this would be a good option to have for resale purposes.

Using a coax cable, we can connect this outside jack with an RV park’s cable service (or to our own exterior antenna if we want).

Our ETI folk would have added, had we wished, a streamlined, rooftop tv antenna for over-the-air programming. No, we said, please, the price is already over the moon, help, HELP.

We don’t like live TV all that much, unless someone is landing on the moon or something. We are longtime DVR users who don’t want to have to settle for whatever garbage happens to be on at the moment. And we don’t think we’ll spend much time in the sort of places that have TV hookups. We like the illusion of nature if not the reality (see this post on snakes at Waikiki for evidence).

Fortunately for all of us, video programming can come to us all sorts of ways these days. We can go the aforementioned laptop-and-smartphone-as-hotspot route — IF there is mobile coverage. There are those networks (NBC, PBS) and streaming services (Netflix, etc.) that we can use that way.

BUT. We have an unused 19″ TV in the garage. And Dad gave us one of those stick-on-the-window flat TV antennae we could use if we want. And it’s possible to buy a dongle (who invented THAT word?) that lets you send whatever is on your smartphone or tablet screen straight to your otherwise abandoned, sad and lonely 19″ TV ($45 or thereabouts if you catch them on sale at Amazon).

So there is the possibility of mounting that old TV (from a kitchen in our previous home) on one of Toto’s lovely walls. Of course we’d have to buy a mount. And a dongle. And we would have to agonize over where to mount it. And then someone on the forum says GET ONE of THESE MOUNTS which provide dual mounting locations. And then even if we scare up the dollars to get all this stuff I still have to install it, and that sort of thing is fun, except my back is on the fritz and nothing much sounds like fun except painkilling opiates.

Just a few weeks from now we’re supposed to head out on an 11-night trip. Will we have TV? (Will we have a healthy-enough back to even go?) HOW WILL WE LIVE WITHOUT WOPNER? These are the kinds of crises I face in my life.

I think that makes me a very lucky fellow. But that’s me. How do you watch TV in your RV (or do you watch it all)? Or if you don’t have an RV yet (what?????), how do you think you’ll watch? I’d really like to know. Comments?

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