Hello World! (on our way to go pick up our brand new 2018 Airstream Globetrotter 27 FBQ)
We are a middle-income, two-profession, asymmetrical-age couple trying to figure out how to enjoy the fruits of our labor in a time where we may not get to retire together.
We have made decisions to moderate our retirement goals in favor of living some of those dreams now. Doing so in a way that paves the way towards the future we dream of if we are so fortunate to experience it.
We have spent the last several years experimenting with the boating side of those dreams on our “classic” trawler, “‘tis Grand”, mostly in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior. If this online project works out, I expect we will branch out into boating resources down the road.
This year, however, we began a new leg of our adventures when we began to pursue another dream; that of owning and traveling the US and Canada in an Airstream trailer. As Jack eases his way into retirement from a long career of fixing things that are broken, he declared at the outset of this discussion that he did not want to buy another fixer-upper. It was a priority for him that we look at the new market and stay clear of anything that was more than a year or two old.
We didn’t spend much time looking beyond Airstream. We knew we wanted a classic; something that had solid construction, something that retained its resale value, and preferably a brand that had an established culture and community with which we could readily identify and feel a part of. It took one trip to an RV show to confirm that Airstream was the route for us.
This site has two missions. We have learned so much from other bloggers and Youtubers out there who have chosen to share their stories and the lessons they have learned through experience, we would like to reciprocate. We have talked to others in similar situations who are still dreaming and haven’t found the path to navigate the hurdles that stand between them and realizing some of their dreams. We hope that sharing our process might help others who just need a nudge.
We have also learned through our boating experience that we are gear heads and like to systematize our processes to help us not forget all of the things that need to be done when moving these big tiny homes around safely. By sharing our journey from the beginning, while our eyes are still fresh to RVing, we hope to help ourselves and others with similar goals.
And finally, we are both creators, users, and appreciators of good tools. We will spend part of our time developing online tools for RVers and ‘streamers that we think might be useful to others on a similar path.
In coming months, we will share some tools we are working on and a little bit of our process; everything from selecting and outfitting a tow vehicle, to some humor that came along with the fact that we both had to learn how to drive such a big rig. From there we got serious about shopping for our Airstream, only to learn first-hand that the new units were more in demand than we ever realized. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could bring myself to buy something of this magnitude sight-unseen. And I sure as heck would never have bet a penny that Jack could do it. But so it goes. We made an uncharacteristically fast decision about something big, and you will get the unvarnished view of how that worked out for us.
While our journey led us down the Airstream path, we think many of the lessons we learned along the way will resonate with RV’ers from other manufacturers. Thank you for joining us, and we hope you will share your stories with us as time goes on.
Looking forward to the journey,
Danna and Jack, new Globetrotters