Our Latest Purchase

While most couples our age are eying those nice Malibu wake-setters, LR-2's, time shares on private beaches in some tropical getaway..........what have the Johnson's got their sights on?
A 1987 Fleetwood Tioga Travel Trailer with the classic Ford Chassis.....AKA "Mac" (After Fleetwood "Mac")

BAUW-CHICK-A-BAUW-BAUW!

This is Michael pulling the rig up curb side to collect his little lady at the Long Beach Airport. We met there on my birthday, ate at the Crab Cooker and stood on the trailer's roof to watch the sun go down over Newport Beach (all the while parked alongside a Porsche and Rolls Royce, no exaggeration). We then drove Mac to a midnight movie on the PCH, and then slept like babies on some side street in our new RV. We woke up and just started laughing at ourselves and our ghetto brown plush surroundings. I had to get out to help Michael out of our parallel parking sandwich but not being RV savvy, I wasn't watching every angle and so we took out a street sign in the process. We then drove the beaut to Harbor Inn Diner, had a couple of trucker breakfasts and then began our road trip home. We spent the next night in some Wal-mart parking lot just to really experience true RV living-- where you can wake up, take your morning breath and bedhead inside for a warm Wal-mart greeting (and no questions asked)use the facilities.....and then help yourself to a good continental breakfast all under a few dollars. Michael came out of the men's restroom with his hair wet like he had helped himself to a sink shower and we both just started laughing! This is a shot of Michael being the sophisticated driver he was and is. I sat shotgun and worked on some Calculus (I have a new student who's about to rock my math tutoring world and needed a quick review during the drive home). So by the time we rolled into Cedar City, Papa Tigger (Michael Carter) renamed our outfit "The Trig Rig" when he saw the math books and notes inside. We loaded up a weight set that Michael bought from Jim, stopped at Rachel and David's house for a birthday dinner, to collect the girls, and give all the nieces and nephews rides around the block. It was singing show tunes and laughing all the way home until reality hit with that #@$%! 35 pitch driveway of ours............and then as suddenly as our party had started, the party was over. We tried and tried making it up the driveway. The neighbors started coming out to watch. Michael tried every angle. Girls started getting tired and crying in their car seats. Tailpipes and bumpers were becoming casualties. Finally, we gave up. Michael drove it to our church parking lot and left a note so whoever found it would know that the brand new stake center's beautiful lot was just a temporary holding tank for the P.O.S. they were looking at.

A few days later, David Iroz came with his brain and 10 feet long steel ramps. He and Michael began sawing and scraping, pounding and hammering until they had custom ramps on our driveway and all the roof components off our trailer. But by then it was David standard time (like 3a.m. or something) and so not wanting to wake the neighbors, they parked the trailer on the driveway until the next morning. Finally, Michael and I started up the driveway with the trailer and almost into the 3rd bay garage when Michael realizes the ladder wouldn't clear the top of the opening by about an inch. "That's it." He says, exasperated. He goes and gets all the weights from his weight set. He secures them on the back bumper. He gets on the bumper and starts jumping. I drove and he jumped until finally......we got it in. Then, we put everything back in the garage and pretty soon it looked like it had been parked there for years.....like it was always supposed to be in our garage, in our era, in our lives.

Getting it out? Another day, another adventure.