Before looking her over, I handed Max (the previous owner and my ex-husband) the agreed upon price. A decision I began to regret.
When last I took her camping, Miss Maizy was in fine condition. That was, of course, close to 16 years ago. Her license plates expired in 2004 so she has sat in the weather unused and unloved for at least 12 years. She did not fair well with this neglect.
My original plan for her was that I would bring her home, clean her up, replace some plumbing here and an ice box there, put down new floors, paint and decorate.
With all of Max's stuff out of it, we were finally able to get a good look at her interior. We have leakage and rot. I am sure what we can see is just the tip of the iceberg.
As we inspected the exterior we noticed some loose siding and signs of more trouble. Peter and I briefly discussed trying to back out of the deal. But for some reason we chose not to. Eternal optimism maybe?
A deal is a deal and we hooked her up and off we went. V-e-r-y slowly and cautiously. We were both afraid she would blow apart at freeway speeds. And we had 300 miles to go! As we approached 50 miles an hour we heard ominous creaking and groaning from behind us. I rode twisted around facing backwards so if she started to go I could give fair warning and Peter kept checking the mirrors. We also checked the faces of the people passing us and none appeared to be concerned about us. There was no looks of terror or mad gesticulations trying to tell us we were leaving a trail of parts on the highway behind us.
We made it to the first rest area for a systems check. Indeed, we had lost something. The door threshold had blown off, now a permanent part of the debris along the freeway. In so doing, it exposed yet more rot.
Although I thought we might want to turn around and demand our money back I didn't say it out loud. We continued northward. We talked about the process of dismantling her and putting her back together. It's going to be a much bigger job than I originally hoped for. She is going to have to be "skinned" and gutted and pretty much everything replaced and then put back together. We also decided we can do this.
After another 100 miles we decided that if she hadn't blown apart yet, she probably wasn't going to and we relaxed a bit. Finally making it home about 8:00.
This morning we gave Miss Maizy a bath. It's encouraging because even just mostly clean, she looks quite adorable.
The next step is to get her in the barn and start disassembling her (and when I say that I hear in my head: "Number 5 is alive. No disassemble!!"
OMG...when you wrote "disassemble",all I could think was "No disassemble!" and then there was your next comment! Ha! Love the Shasta! So darn cute! Can't wait to follow the progress.
ReplyDelete