I'm not even sure how to start this post. SO many words and phrases come to mind when I think about what I've done over the last couple of days. Sketchy, buyer beware, sight unseen!!? And my favorite one; well, did you ask the guy that?
I recently joined a group. I bought a camper van (1991 Chevy Chinook). Apparently there is a group...look it up. On a nice random Saturday in March I helped a friend from work go and pick up a camper van he had bought. I thought, oh that'll be neat! Then I drove it back to Boise and I LOVED it! So much so that I went home and searched far and wide for one of my very own. I found one finally in a town called Henderson Nevada, just outside Las Vegas.
And I bought it. Sight unseen!!?
So the following Saturday (and I do mean literally one week apart~I was THAT motivated) I was headed to Las Vegas with my friend (The recent van tripper) to pick up my new ride and bring it home.
There is nothing quite like that 10 hour journey through the eastern side of Nevada. Jack rabbits the size of large dogs, small towns with no amenities and more traffic than that little road can handle.
We arrived in Henderson about mid day Sunday. We both still aren't sure what time of day...you see at some point late in the night there was a time zone change, neither of us caught that. Then the following day was daylight savings, which we both knew about but already had no idea that we'd changed zones and there you have it. Two people going along completely out of time, haha.
When we finally found the right address and pulled in we were greeting by a posse of very large somewhat scary looking people. One of whom I'd spoken to on the phone. Who never actually gave me his name?! Sketchy. My van buddy and I went for a test drive around the place and were instantly in love with it. When we came back to the parking area and were exchanging money and paperwork etc he decides to ask for more money. The one thing I didn't mention is that he was asking alot for the van, my bank wouldn't even loan me that amount. I talked him down in price a little originally and he was pretty sure he could have done alot better than my offer but a deal was a deal.
He walked me around the van, showed me where to hook everything into (not how to use it) and then mentioned I should top it up with gasoline when I get a chance. No problem.
As I was driving it down the road to a gas station I noticed that the gauges weren't working. The speedometer and battery, oil, and temp gauge were non functioning. No problem.
I told my van buddy Andrew that I didn't need gas because it said it was full. So we checked the fluids and walked around it a little but and then took off down the road. Our goal being to get the heck out of Las Vegas. That place (its outskirts) are dirty, hectic, windy. We were hungry and both a little uncertain about how well this van was going to run.
At one particular intersection I made a left turn and the van died. Turns out when the gauges aren't working the GAS gauge isn't working either. Oops! I was able to roll it into what luckily happened to be a gas station on the corner. No joke I thought, how lucky was that. Little did I know that their card swipe on the pump wasn't working and did I know how many gallons it held? Well did I ask the guy that? No. So I told her "just put $20 on the card and I'll see if that does it". Nope. Okay, here's $40 in cash, "lets see if that'll do it". Still no. Sure, here's my card again "lets see if $15 will finally do the trick". $14.34, finally! I'm still totally uncertain as to the actual number of gallons but I was just under 32 gallons in my new 1991 Chevy G20 camper van, and just under $75 to "fill" it up.
All good now, we headed out of Las Vegas to the last stop on the highway before we had 259 miles of open desert to drive to get to Ely. Loves fuel stop, so much nicer sounding than the hell on earth that it was. Busier than I've ever seen a place. And just as I pulled in a tour bus pulled in. It was awful. But I was getting about 11 mpg so that was worth the stop. Since I still had no working gauges and no idea what kind of gas mileage I would get. Because no, I didn't ask the guy that.
Now all this time I'd been going along thinking everything was sort of okay. While I was in the Loves I picked up a couple little things and my bank card was declined. I thought I might know why but didn't have time then to deal with it. When I got to the little town of Alamo (which by the way, that gas station sells a ton of camping supplies, worth the stop!) my bank card was definitely not working. So I had to make a call and beg forgiveness for not calling them ahead to mention my little trip to Vegas. If I hadn't just lived it I would have definitely thought there was fraud happening. I was in all kinds of new and strange places.
I topped up the tank, did a rough estimate of mileage (based on Andrews trip odometer) and we took off. Trying in earnest to make it back to Ely NV at least. A mere 4 hours from Vegas....no problem.
Somewhere in the desert the jackrabbits and antelope are laughing. Climbing up a little hill my van came to a halt. Just enough power to roll it to the side of the road and stop. Andrew, being the sensible van owner he is, was packing a portable power pack. Basically a battery with jumper cables attached, so we jumped it, got it running and sped down the road. Till it did the same thing again...
After getting it running the second time we hustled as fast as we could go to Ely and made it there with no more incident.
At this point it was more fun. We had food, set up the camper, pulled the curtains (which were ALL intact and functioning) and made the beds. The easiest thing to do in that camper as they had nothing to do with electrical or gas.
The next morning we got moving pretty early. It had cooled down quite a bit and there were dark clouds way out in the distance so we thought getting a quick move on would be good. That was wise too because somewhere in the desert (again) the van quit one more time. This time there was high wind and blowing snow. That is never fun, for Andrew, who was outside the van trying to jump it. We got it running again and while it was running Andrew was messing with the fuses. I wasn't paying attention to it that much until he put a new fuse in and the engine suddenly started idling better. We both perked at that. It meant we could at least keep the van running if we kept a good fuse in there all the time. And there you have it. Van candy. We went through six in total. Yeah, electrical problems. Buyer beware!
Oh and it never hurts to see if things like wiper fluid work....or wipers. Because once the storms came they never subsided. It was beyond windy, snowing, raining, hail occasionally. It wasn't until I was in the middle of all that chaos that I realized the wipers worked, phew! But the wiper fluid spray didn't. Its really hard to see out of a windshield when its covered in road grime. Really hard.
Other than the wiper fluid, the wind was the last major obstacle to getting the van home. When I finally laid my head down on my pillow, in my own land based bed. I was still feeling the sway of that gentle gail force wind.
Next post I'll talk about the joys of registering a vehicle you're not totally certain wasn't stolen or something. Ha!
