Picking up our new Airstream

Mark the day on the calendar - Friday March 21, 2014. Yesterday we traveled to Lakewood, NJ to pick up our new 25' Flying Cloud Airstream. What a day! It began at 3:00 AM and lead to a 3:50 AM departure from West Dummerston, Vt. Destination Lakewood, NJ and Colonial Airstream. Route finally settled on and took was:
 I91 in Brattleboro
I691 in Middletown, Ct
I84 Meriden, Ct
I684 in Brewster, NY
I287 in White Plains
Tappan Zee Bridge
Garden State Parkway

The entire trip was basically uneventful with the exception of the traffic at the toll booths in northern NJ. Don't know how people put up with that on a daily basis. Stopped about 5 miles from our GSP exit to fuel up and arrived at Dealership at just after 9:00 AM. Pretty good time I thought. Lauren was busy with a customer, so Patrick introduced us to Kevin, who was going to do the "delivery thing" with us. Before that began, he took my truck to their shop so that they could install a brake controller. For the next 2 hours we went over the interior and exterior of our new airstream. Last thing was actually hooking it up and having the Reese Hitch fine tuned. I know for a fact that we will not remember everything, especially how to operate and use 3 different remote control devices (for electronics - 2 flat screen tv's, sound/entertainment system, Blue Ray DVD player). Also, adjusting the Trailer Brake control. Going to take some reading and putzing around to understand how they all work. During the demonstration of the TV, Molly was especially fascinated with it. She was watching with interest, prompting a comment about a subscription to the Pet Channel. When we were done demo-ing, we were given a nice briefcase/bag with a whole bunch of reading material. That should keep me busy if this winter decides to persist anymore.

A neat story to relay. When we first arrived, naturally we had to go outside and see our new Airstream. There we found Lauren with another customer who was also taking delivery of his new Airstream - a 27' FC. When she got done with him, we introduced ourselves and started "talking Airstreams". Turns out he was from Boulder, CO and was on his way back. When I mentioned that we had spent some time in Durango he mentioned that his daughter had gone to school there at Fort Lewis College. We talked some about Wolf Creek Pass and he relayed experience of driving it in the winter time. We exchanged names and email addresses and promises to look each other up during our travels. His name was Mark Lacharite.

When we got ready to go, Mark was still there, having had them de-winterize his unit, since he was going to be living in it for the next 4+ days. We wished him a good, safe trip back home and both of us left about the same time.









Here we are just about ready to leave for Vermont:

The trip back, other than a section of I84 going in to Waterbury, Ct, was uneventful. The Waterbury thing had to do with being stop and go for miles for what must have been an accident at exit 22 near where Rt 8 intersects. We were in this mess for almost 1 1/2 hours. Very frustrating. Not to mention messing up my fuel mile calculation. Back to something brighter: the trailer towed beautifully. The truck handled it nicely. I was pleased with all aspects of towing the Airstream. A preliminary guess is that we got between 12-14 MPG, a number that I will confirm just as soon as I can refill the tank and recalculate.

Well, we made it back to West Dummerston at about 7:00 PM. Quite a long day, but still, we were both overjoyed to have made it back ok and finally have OUR Trailer in OUR yard. Even if it was still winter.

 The Reese Hitch setup.

A view from the rear with our new Vermont License plate. ANR206 is the one that will identify us, should you see us on the road. Next project is to create a place where we can park the new Airstream. This will involve creating a pad to park the trailer - one that I can back into easily. But first, we need winter to GO AWAY!