Linking In on Linkedin

It's time to get serious about our future; the time keeps on passing and I am not sure what our plan is in a couple of months. Short of spending my time packing, I still don't know whether we're moving into an RV, an apartment, or a house. Sigh.

So, today I'm spending a few hours trying to get LinkedIn. Hopefully my SCA network up in Oregon will assist in finding a job or an internship. I do see jobs on craigslist, but without a contact, I understand I won't even be called. My alternate plan, if we move up there and I don't have a job, will be to complete my Paralegal Certificate that I've about half-finished here in Cupertino. I always enjoyed being a legal secretary way back when I did it, and I look forward to extending the responsibilities I had back then.

We still have no firm decision on the trip. We want to go, but we haven't really come up with a good compromise plan that we're both satisfied with. Jeff suggested we travel during the summer and use our SCA gear. While that's probably a great idea, the thought of actually camping all summer is a little intimidating to me. Okay, while it's not exactly roughing it, we would still be setting up, taking down and dealing with dirt and bugs. Not exactly the plan I had in mind when I agreed to the trip last fall.

I continue to peruse the Portland MLS and have a few options I plan to check out when I visit next, assuming they're still on the market. I have probably set the criteria too high, because I'm really not finding a lot of good options, despite thousands of houses for sale. While I have about 40 houses charted out on a spreadsheet, most of them are either too expensive for their condition or they are in less than ideal locations. I know of 3 I'm likely to see right away when I get there. Other than that, we are waiting for sellers to recognize the world economy has changed. I found a report yesterday which notes Portland has record-high inventory of houses for sale right now; that should work in our favor.

I received a list of sold house listings from my Laurelhurst realtor for East Portland and it was very instructive. There were some really stunning markdowns on the listings that actually closed last month. There was one house we looked at last June that would have been tempting but for the $450K price tag; it actually ended up selling for $319K. It never occurred to me to make an offer so far off their asking price, but I guess that's what you do in this market. The realtor also told me that a lot of sales continue to fail due to inability to get financing.

I guess we just keep working towards finishing projects and packing and keep watching the market. Maybe something good will come up and we can pounce on it.

Having a Nice Visit in Portland

Luckily, my 700 mile drive up to Portland yesterday was quite uneventful. Though, on a few of the hills near Grants Pass the truck wasn't going very fast, the Ford Ranger was a quite a trooper and didn't give me any problems towing that very full trailer.

I've been enjoying the visit up here with our friends. Much catching up has taken place.

Today I went to two different RV lots in Portland. While both of the RVs I went to specifically see would be fine, the dealers didn't appear to be motivated to make amazing deals. Sure, the units were marked down a bit off list (maybe 10%), but clearly they aren't in enough distress for me to be interested. =)

I was also happy to get a chance to go to Burgerville this afternoon. I know it's lame, but it's one of the things I missed moving out of the area.

Quilt Tops Done, Done, Done

This morning I finally finished the border on the third quilt for my nephews and niece. Yah! So, now I am going to take those three quilts, plus my dragon lap quilt, up to Portland with me to have them machine quilted. Hopefully the machine quilter won't be so busy that he can't get to them fairly quickly, because if he is, they'll just end up staying up there until I can make it back in a few weeks.

I am going to try and finish loading the trailer today. It's pretty hard to make sure all of our SCA gear is packed and in the trailer because, really, we have it everywhere throughout the house. I was hoping to get off early tomorrow, but Jeff threw out his back and hasn't been able to help me with the loading and we've been busy with social visits. So, if we don't manage to get the trailer loaded tonight after work, then I won't go until Friday.

I plan on doing some fifth wheel shopping while I am in Oregon. Today, I am also trying to pull my list together of RVs I want to go look at. It's going to take some organizing, because I have piles of craigslist ads all over the place. I'll probably spend several days driving around looking at new and used RVs. If I don't find one up there on this trip, we'll go ahead and buy the one I like here (assuming it's still available) and have it shipped up to Oregon.

I am grateful for our friends up in Oregon who are kindly housing me/us during visits, storing our considerable amount of stuff during the trip and allowing us to borrow their address during our adventure--Thanks!

Shopping for RV and Starting Packing

Yesterday we drove almost 3 hours up to Sacramento, because there were a couple of new 2007 RVs that looked promising from the posted floor plans and pictures and we wanted to finally go looking for our home for our trip. I really enjoyed myself and it was also really educational. 

We learned RV manufacturers have mastered the art of making cheap materials look good for the pictures! Also, the high end units also have some of these "cheats" in their manufacture. And, by cheats, I mean they use woodgrain wallpaper/vinyl or whatever you call it. They use real wood cabinet doors but then paper over the cabinetry framework. My guess is that a unit, after living in it full-time for a year with that paper, won't look too good.

One of the RVs, a 2007 Holiday Rambler Presidential Suite, had a desk, nice shower, decent kitchen, and had only minimal woodgrain wallpaper (just on the least accessible/noticeable areas) and had most all the rest of the options I really wanted. In fact, we almost bought it, but we'd agreed not to buy anything on this trip. And it was still considered new, as it has been sitting around the dealer lot. The dealer was basically discounting it something like 40% from the retail price. However, when I got home and discovered we were going to have to pay something like $8,000 in sales tax and registration use fees if we buy the truck and fifth wheel in California, it quashed our plan to purchase this unit. Bummer, I forgot about the frigging 8.25% sales tax. That is too high a price to pay for basically two months of residency down here.

Luckily, in the evening, I was able to locate some similar units up in Oregon, so I guess we're going to go buy in Oregon. So, now I've decided I need to get hustling and start shuttling stuff up to Oregon. We have our SCA cargo trailer which Wendy and Ross have kindly agreed to store for us during the trip, so I think I'm going to try and get that loaded and bring it up to Portland later in the week, probably Wednesday or Thursday. Then while I'm up there, I'll go ahead and rent a room from somebody and start to reestablish our residency; I'll see what I need to get my Oregon drivers license back and reopen our credit union account. Then by the time we need to leave on our trip, we should be able to register these new vehicles up in Oregon. 

Jeff is off looking at trucks today. We need a Ford F-350 or the equivalent in another brand and he wants to test drive them. Though, since we don't know if GM is going to make it, we're slightly hesitant to buy their truck. We're not sure what we're going to do. It will probably depend on what we find the best deal on at the time we go shopping. ☺

Today I am working on packing the SCA trailer. I'm packing up our SCA costumes and feast gear, except for what we're bringing on the trip. Though, now that we're going to Pennsic, I'm going to have to rethink how much clothing we bring. We were just going to bring one medieval cotehardie outfit and one T-tunic outfit but two weeks is a long time in two outfits; I may have to try and make more. I'll have to go see if they have laundry facilities on site.

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Since writing this earlier, I learned we can buy the RV and avoid paying sales tax by having it "shipped" up to Oregon for about $500. We'll have to think about how much we want that particular fifth wheel.

Fifth Wheel Shopping

Well, I've mostly finished the trip maps and attractions we want to visit; I'll still want to spend some time looking up restaurants, but that isn't really necessary before the trip. I just like doing it, because I prefer non-chain restaurants that get good reviews, but I can live with the chains if we don't have time to make a full list of restaurants. ☺ 

Yesterday afternoon I turned my attention to shopping for a used Fifth Wheel. My first impression is that there are fewer of them available, as compared to the massive glut of motorhomes I found when I was shopping for those. Oh well. I guess that will be good on the back-end, when it's time to sell. So, we probably won't be as successful in getting a really good deal, as far as price.

I'm trying to buy the reviews for the Fifth Wheels now, but I haven't been able to get a hold of the company where I bought the reviews for the Motorhomes last fall. So, right now I'm just shopping based on the interior finish. Clearly, in my recent years, I have become a wood snob. I really like the units that are finished nicely with wood cabinetry and panelling. Gad, the unit is going to be pretty expensive, unless we manage to find an older one we like. 

Also, it seems most trailers seem to be set up to sleep as many people as you can cram in there. I really wish I could find a smaller trailer that had a luxury setup, but designed for only two people. I keep finding the nicer trailers are all 35+ feet long (which is longer than we want), but they use probably 1/3 of the space for seating. There is only going to be the two of us and we don't need a couch, recliners and extra chairs.

If I could dream up my trailer, it would be about 30 feet long or less, if possible, and have only two comfortable chairs to sit in, plus the table with chairs. I also like the kitchen in the rear. And rather than the couch, I'd like a desk and storage space. I'm wondering whether it makes sense, or is even possible, to buy a used unit that is mostly finished the way I like and then rip out the couch and put in a desk or low storage. Unfortunately, in my several hours of searching various online listing sites, nothing "perfect" has presented itself. At least, not in the lower end of our price range.

I'm off to the dentist for a cleaning. Hope you all have a good day.

Shopping for an RV

Jeff and I subscribed to an RV rating service: www.rv.org, mostly because it helped us narrow down our choices. I was surprised to see that there really are not many motorhomes that get good reviews. Here is the list of brands and models with three stars and above we get to choose among:

Triple E, Commander
Triple E, Embassy
Newmar, Kountry Star
Newmar, Mountain Aire
Newmar, Canyon Star
National, Tropi-Cal
National, Dolphin LX
Newmar, Grand Star
Rexhall, RoseAir
Newmar, Dutch Star
Newmar, Scottsdale
(sorted from highest rated, to least)

I've already spent a fair amount of time searching for RVs on the internet. In typical Sharon fashion, I have assembled a spreadsheet and binder to compile my findings. =) The Triple E's are mostly non-existent, I've only found one and it was way too expensive, same with the RoseAir. It looks like it's probably going to be a Newmar. We also don't want any motorhomes that are older than 2002, as we're looking at having to resell in 2010 and don't want to have a motorhome that is 10 years old by then. Ideally, we are looking for something that is from around 2003 to 2007. We don't actually want a new motorhome because they typically come with manufacturing problems, and many of the manufacturers are going out of business, and we won't be sure of being able to collect on the warranty repairs.

We actually went and looked at a Scottsdale locally, but the price was too high for the lower end model. What I'm hoping to get is a Dutch Star, but we may not be successful in our time frame. The Dutch Stars originally sold for over $200K, and our budget won't go above $80K (we'd actually like to keep it under $60K) so that may be too much of a discount this close to the beginning of the depression. Anyway, I have been scouring craiglist postings along the west coast, and hope to find a good deal between now and March. The picture is of the interior of a Dutch Star with the cherry wood.

I think we'll really start looking seriously in March. Though, there's a fairly good one in Portland right now, so it's tempting to jump in our car and head up there (and get to attend AnTir's 12th Night), but both Jeff and I have colds from Christmas, so it will just have to wait.