this is for the birds!!

In the words of Jim Lovell "Houston, we have a problem". The past several days we have had a male Cardinal attacking our 5th wheel. He starts at dawn and dive bombs the little mirror thingy that is over our hitch. The mirror is there so when you are backing the truck in to hook on you can see the hitch in the mirror. I can't say if it's good or not because I really have never looked into it while backing up. Now that we have the HDT (rver code for really big truck) I mounted a camera on the back of it to use when I back up. This bird, which happens to be the State Bird for Indiana, thinks his reflection is another male and decides it's time to fight. He pecks at the mirror with gusto and leaves his "markings" on the hitch as well as scratching up the mirror. He has even attacked Rudee's car mirror. Being a compassionate guy, I looked for a non violent way to persuade the bird to move along. I researched on the internet and found that this is not just an isolated "crazy" bird and others have been in the same delima. The most popular cure seemed to be hanging mylar strips or something similar in the windows so Rudee and I went to the $1 store and bought some fancy bows w/ ribbons that you put on presents. I stuck these on the mirror and also on the bedroom window. Rudee also bought some shower caps and has been covering up her car mirrors with these. Well this morning we would get the result to our big experiment. The verdict is ........... I should have saved my $1.00 :). The bird is still here and he is still banging away at the mirror ribbons and all. I guess that's just another sign of spring.

Our Home

We purchased our home in December of 2006. We shopped around a lot before deciding what model we wanted and Rudee and I didn't always agree on what options were the most important. I knew I wanted lots of storage and as much tank capacity as I could get. She wanted lots of counter space and a comfortable living area. Doesn't sound too hard, right? Well we were in and out of every 5th wheel on every lot we could find for several months. We had a 35' toyhauler 5th wheel, these have the garage in the back for your toys or in our case our Honda Goldwing. I was amazed at how many different floor plans are available because we are basically in a 39'x8' box. We toured our Montana pretty early in the search and Rudee liked it a lot and compared all the others to it. I heard more than once "but it doesn't have ....... like the Montana has". We finally decided that the Montana had pretty much everything we were looking for and made the trade.

Our coach has 4 slide outs and is 39' long. The slide outs really open up a lot of living area inside the trailer. I have had units without a slideout and will never go back to that, you gain so much more room with them and it makes things a lot more comfortable. We are fully self contained meaning we have a tank for our fresh water and 3 holding tanks for waste water/sewage, of course these have to be emptied at some point which is my (Phil's) happy task to perform :(

Several options were on the trailer when we bought it including an electric fireplace which is really just fancy lights and an electric space heater. We probably wouldn't have gotten the fireplace if we were ordering the unit but we purchased one off the lot so got what it came with. We never thought we would use the a fireplace in a camper but actually use it quite a bit. In fact as I write this the outside temp. is in the mid 30's and we have the fireplace on and it's nice a cozy here sitting in my recliner. We have added a few options that we felt like we needed. One is our Spendid washer/dryer combo. We bought the unit used from an ad at the Escapees RV Club web site. We have used it regularly on vacations and it's getting a work out since we have moved in fulltime and we both are glad we found it. Outside the coach we have our patio awning which is a manual one, the newer Montana's come with an electric awning which I would like to have just for the convenience but it's hard to justify the extra $$ for it. Sure would be nice just to push a button vs having to unroll it by hand, lock down the arms and then adjust the height, oh well a guy can dream can't he.

We have been very satisfied with the quality of our trailer. We have only had a small issue with a water leak in the black tank clean out that was taken care of under warranty. It pulls nice, is easy to set up when you arrive and quick to tear down when you are ready to leave. All things considered we are very pleased with our decision and feel like this unit will last us for a long time to come.

Workin' RVers

We are Phil and Rudee Rubeck, a husband and wife team who are still toiling at our careers but have moved into, and are living full time, in our 39' fith wheel RV. Our dream is to work, save and be able to retire from the rat race so we can travel and see some of what this great country has to offer.

We moved into the 5th wheel on March 15th 2009. Our home is a 2007 39' Montana 3400rl (rear living) 4 slide 5th wheel trailer. We purchased our coach in December of 06 and have used it for vacations and week end trips with the intention of making it our home ever since.

Our home is currently parked at the KOA in Crawfordsville Indiana. We like the small town feel of Crawfordsville and it's only 20 miles from our soon to be former homestead. Speaking of our house, we put it on the market just before Christmas and ended up getting a contract from our first showing in January. The contract was finally signed in March after some back and forth negotiations but it looks like closing will be the first week in May if all goes well. We have had a huge garage sale and plan at least one more to finish getting rid of stuff. I'll write a little about the emotional turmoil of downsizing in upcoming blogs.

My plan is to update the blog as regularly as I can (remember I'm still toiling away at work). I think this blog will be a bit different from the typical fulltime RVer blog since we are not traveling the countryside (yet) and are living a more "conventional" lifestyle albeit from a "non conventional" home. Stay tuned and see what it's like to live and work fulltime from an RV.