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Health & Fitness

Mad Cap Camper Builder

Have you ever started a nice, simple little project and once you get it going, it takes on a life of its own? It grows, becomes more complex, more complicated and compelling than you ever imagined. I owned this pickup truck that I had for a million years, it was my “second car,” the car that was always there when the “first car” (usually, for me, a sport car) would need repair, maybe having to wait until I had saved up enough money to effect the repairs. I called this pickup “Gray” and it was really more of a pet than a car. I loved this truck. I could twist it and turn it and throw it in a ditch and crumple it up like a piece of old binder paper and it would always be ready for the next task, like a bright-eyed, naive, anxious-to-please puppy. I think they call this “unconditional love.” Anyway, Gray was always there for me.

When I had owned Gray for about ten years, my parents started RVing, you know, taking some big recreational vehicle to specialized RV camp grounds to hook up with a bunch of other retired old folks. While I never went to one of these get-togethers, my parents would tell me of how they played pinnacle, canasta and dominoes long into the night, spinning all sorts of historic and memorable yarns way into the darkness. While I never much got into this mobile, life-on-wheels mentality, it did open me up to some new possibilities. Since I had no intention of ever getting rid of Gray, perhaps it would be a good idea to consider expanding its functionality; perhaps I could put a camper in its bed, maybe even a cab-over and have him offer the potential of being a portable motel room. I don’t really travel that much, but the thought of this offered an interesting opportunity, I could use this to show off my ingenuity and wood working skills. I could build a show-piece mobile home.

About the same time I was considering the potential of this project, my dad offered to take me to a big RV show at the fair grounds. Though I actually had little interest in these plastic clad, cookie-cutter mobile dwellings, it never hurts to see how the other guy does it. It turned out that these high-priced, much touted, rolling structures really weren’t much more than one inch by two-inch strips of some very blond, light weight wood sheathed on the inside of the wall with some sort of composite wood fiber sheeting or plastic panels while the exterior side of the walls were covered with light gage, corrugated aluminum. They would stuff some sort of insulation between the interior and external skins but there wasn’t much more to it than that. It turned out that none of the walls of these RVs were much thicker than two or three inches. Upon detailed examination, it was clear that there was no real foundation or frame upon which these mobile structures were built. They were conceived to rely on the “egg-shell” or monocoque style of construction where the entire structure was integrated to bear the stresses of weight and movement without a separate foundation. The really obvious thing was that they were very minimally constructed. Out of concern for weight, these things were built to be as light as possible.

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Certainly, I could easily build such a structure. In fact, as Gray was an over-engineered orchard truck with a . . . 

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