Ah Memories: Our French Friends

Our friends Jean_Marie and Francoise from Paris were here for 3 days in a hotel right behind the Kodak Theatre here in Hollywood & within walking distance to our house. We hadn't seen them in 8 years & had a LOVELY, simple, family-type time. We went up to the Observatory & out to Venice Beach; Ate Indian food and at Baja Fresh. They brought us a can of Foie Gras made by her family in the south of France.

We miss them already but happily we both have Skype and WebCams so we were able to see and speak with them this morning ( 11am here) the "Magic" time there in Paris....meaning late in the day when everything turns a lovely yellow/orange color & long long shadows are magical. Best time for photos. Jean-Marie is a fabulous photographer & has take photos all over the world.

I met them in Japan over 27 years ago when we were all traveling there. We ended up traveling together in Japan for about a week & staying in Minshukus and Ryokans...yikes don't remember how to spell those but they're similar to a B & B or a guest house or some even like Hostel. It was a good time many years ago.

Over the years since then they've visited us in the states two or three times & we've seen them inParis several times as well.

OH my, the craziest trip with them in, maybe, 1984 was from Paris through the south of France to have an al fresco dinner & Foie Gras with Francoise's family. This is the trip where some dumb Americans learned the difference between pate & Foie Gras. WOW, what a difference!!! and THEN , and THEN on to the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain !

We slept on a blanket in a park because there were no rooms to be had. It was hot and noisy 24 hours a day. I don't thing ANYBODY slept much. I know WE didn't. No, we did not run with the bulls but had a great viewing spot on top of a fence. I would never be able to climb up on that fence today. Sure glad we did it when we were able to.

Note: Francoise told me that a Fig Chutney is especially good with the Foie Gras on top of a "good" , slightly toasted bread.

Well, I got carried away on memory-lane. It felt good !

BitterSweet PickUp

Today's the day! We weren't due at the dealership until 0730 but we got up at 5:30 am. Nerves!

The dealership's service dept fellow , Mark, spent over one hour showing us MANY things. We NEVER would have been able to remember most of it. I took our little FlipVideo camera & really used it. Mark was so good. Every time I'd stop recording to save time on the 1 hr video's built-in memory, he would say..."Nope, not yet...you'll want to have this for later viewing. " He was a fast talker but welcomed questions....dank gawd. I don't know WHAT we would have done if we'd gotten a non-personable or worse a poorly informed guy. Mark is the "sweet" part.

We picked up the trailer an hour south of us in Irvine, Ca ; practiced backing up for 3 hrs in a huge lot then drove to our house in Hollywood where we knew we were not going to even try to get it into the driveway today but hoping to at least to find a spot on our street where we could park it overnight.

Because we live within walking distance to the Hollywood bowl I think everyone was parked on our street for the night’s performance. There was no parking of any kind to be had!

The Bitter part is because we haven't towed a trailer since our trip toAlaska in 2007. That means we have totally forgotten how to maneuver backing up......meaning after practicing those three hours with orange cones to replicate our uphill driveway on a busy street in Hollywood we needed to then drive up to Castaic , Ca where my stepson, Stuart, has room for it. It was a VERY long day. . 1 hour south to Irvine, 3hrs parking practice, one hour north to Hollywood, 1 hour more north to Stu's & finally one more hour back home to Hollywood. Got home about 9:30 pm after a quick bite.

Rush hour in all directions...fun eh? Well, surprisingly, the traffic wasn't all that bad BUT when we were almost @ Stu's we heard the low-gas-beep signal & needed to get some gas with trailer in tow which put us to Stuart's house after dark.

Fortunately, Stu has over an acre of lighted, cemented parking for his own rigs (film industry 18 wheeler-type trailers) So we had almost no problem having a straight-back-up area to park our new "kid" between Stu's 40' RV & a boat. It was disappointing to not be able to get it into our own backyard so that we could pack it up for our anticipated first new-rig trip in September.

We currently have plans on waiting until Monday when there is street cleaning on our street from 11-2pm when there are no cars parked on one side. Hopefully, that will afford the maneuvering space we need to make-it-work! We've noticed that on other mid-week days the street is fairly clear of parked cars too...when people are at work, I guess. We'll play it by ear.

Well, we didn't wait to buy the new Trailer in Indiana!

Today is Sunday. I called the only Dealership , somewhat near us, for our chosen

Fun Finder X 189 FBS to see if they had received any of the new 2010 models. Yes, they did have two but they were both the 189 FDS.

The FDS is almost like the one we want except that it has a slide out with a dinette.

Even though we didn't want a slide out, more weight, more expensive, more possible problems in case of a failure we figured we drive the one hour drive down to Irvine, CA to see how the new 2010 models look anyway. There are new choices in upholstery & we wanted to check that out too.

All the Fun Finder X's made of fiberglass but we heard that the front panel with the window is now all one molded piece....sounded good. In addition, we wanted to take some measurements to see what needed sizes of various plastic storage bins for stowing things. There is a big sale for these storage bins now....gotta take advantage of that but not without measurements.

We lost lots of storage from our old 8' wide Wilderness....the Fun Finder X's are 7' wide so we can maybe now get it in our driveway without bumping into the house or the fence!

Cut-to-the-chase: We DID it. We bought our new trailer WITH the slideout. I'd told the salesman about the deals in Indiana without the shipping charges to the west coast. I also told him that the Indiana dealerships do not add on the extra charges for the trailer "prep" & the new owner one hour-ish orientation walk through. $700 in Calif!!!! He ended up waiving the $700 walk through charge & added lots of other stuff. Yes, we paid about $1500 more for the "slide" model than the NON-Slide price that was quoted from Indiana!

He added an extra battery with case so we have two 12 volt ones & an electric Jack AND they welded on or bolted (what ever they do) our removed-from-the-Wilderness trailer the load levelers & the sway control unit. They threw in the new "ball" for the connection..the one we had was too large.

As in the non-slide one from Indiana it includes the "fun pack" which has the BBQ that mounts on the trailer that quick-connects to the propane, a 15 inch digital HD TV on a wall-mount arm (so we don't need the new box thingy to use when we don't have a TV cable connection available in a park, an AM/FM radio w/ DVD/CD player & an MP3 connection port..cannot think what else. Oh, yeah, internal & external speakers. Of course heater & A/C.

No oven and only a 2 burner stove...yeah..I cook a lot...not. It does have a microwave & a large stainless 2door fridge & freezer. Bathroom is quite small but we prefer it like this to allow more living space.

It's pretty.

We also changed our mind from the Harmony White cabinets to the light wood color ones. That happened because the two units they had were side-by-side so it was easier to get a better comparison. The white looked so nice & bright & clean but somehow the wood color just seemed cozier...to both of us. It was hard to believe that we both felt the same way after going crazy about the white cabinets in the older models. So here it is.

The box part of the trailer itself is only 15'10" & the slide-out is about 9' long & goes out about 16". We don't yet know what date we'll be picking it up. More later.