Dear Friend,
I arrived in Dallas yesterday in a state of nausea. I guess that the 3 AM wake-up, herding the excited army onto planes in two cities (a layover in Atlanta), an accidental meeting and catching up with a friend, and then rushing in a strange city (Dallas) to find RV dealers buried in nooks and crannies, all to the tune of “Bobalina Says…” (don’t ask), left my equilibrium a bit mixed up.
It was at this moment that my wife and I began to seriously question what in the he** possessed us to intentionally put ourselves through this nightmare. I’m sure that, if you are a parent, you know that feeling.
After a quick stop at some industrial park to settle my innards and return to a somewhat sane state of consciousness, we began to get our bearings in Dallas.
The next stress source that hit us was a quick search of the online inventory listings of the area dealers that we planned to visit. We had brought with us printouts of these inventories, but by now these were a month old.
As slow as the economy has been, we really didn’t think that a few weeks would make a big difference in dealer inventories. We were in for a shock. The huge inventories of five weeks ago were now gone. GONE. One dealer said that they had never had lower inventories in their history.
The inventory reduction sales had done the trick. While we had been waiting for a more convenient time to get here, a time that better fit our family’s schedule, the rest of the world had made their move. A small stampede of deal seekers had cleared out the lots before we got there.
I guess we failed to learn the old lesson that “the early bird gets the worm.” So now what?
Today we find ourselves trying to find anything that might be available, anywhere. One possibility may be to open up our search area to include the San Antonio and Houston regions. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Dallas/Ft Worth, Houston, and San Antonio make up a triangular megalopolis. Perhaps we will keep our rental minivan a bit longer and head to those cities?
The kids say that they have already found their choice. It’s a class A gas toyhauler, with an upstairs area over the rear garage area that has a window and a TV. They fell in love with that space instantly. My younger son will not stop begging for that one. They are certain that it will sell before we get back to it. And maybe they are right? We’ll see, I guess. But we have to look around.
Where do we go today? We’ll just keep moving around the Dallas/Ft Worth “beltway,” hitting every dealer we can, and see if we have any luck.
We have internet connectivity much of the way. I’ll try to blog when I can.
Thanks for staying in touch. I’ll let you know what we find out here.
All the best,
Hugh
