Yesterday I was talking with a co-worker of mine and mentioned how excited I am for the 2010 RV season to begin so Deke and I can take advantage of all the events the WBCCI has planned. His response was: I hadn’t realized that the primary purpose of owning an Airstream was to spend time with other Airstreams.

I guess in a way, I hadn’t realized that either.

We received our WBCCI identification number in the mail a few weeks ago…..it’s the big red number you sometimes see on the forehead of trailers or motorhomes that belong to club members. Before we bought ours, we often wondered what they meant and by the looks of the number of postings about them on Airforum.com, a lot of other people wonder too. The numbers are utilitarian and symbolic and are not to be messed with (take note those of you who just want to paint numbers on your model or affix your own random numbers). The practice of numbering the trailers was adopted by Wally Byam as a way of recognizing members from a distance on those long caravans (he was #1 of course). After you join the club, you’re assigned a number and that number stays with you, and moves with you throughout the years – it can be transferred to new Airstream models as you trade up or scale down your home on wheels. Our number is 5 digits, and with the help of Sue Chestnut, Northern Illinois Unit Treasurer, we got one that’s easy for us to remember: 17707. One is easy enough to remember, and followed by the day we got married, we shouldn’t have any problems telling people what number we are. Technically, its 17,707 – but the numbers in the club go much higher. That’s a lot of Airstream members who have joined, caravanned and made the most of their experiences in the WBCCI.

When I got the club directory, one of the first things I did was look up who had the lowest number. Whether or not this person is the first official recipient of the number or it was passed on to them*, there’s something very romantic about imagining what the rallies were like when everyone had two digits.

As for the numbers themselves, keep in mind that in the age of vinyl letter cut-outs, instant banners and wall decals, these numbers are unlike anything we’ve seen. Their font is unusual, but does come up as the “Airstream” font (http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Airstream.htm), and not all the numbers seemed to be the same size when we got them. They’re incredibly angular and severe which is only magnified by being fire engine red. The thought of putting up 5 numbers in perfect alignment on a surface 9 feet up that wasn’t even flat did not have a promising ending, but we managed. Getting the numbers on the Airstream seemed a bit of a production as we read through the two page instructions that came in the envelope. In the end we learned that water is the key – probably the opposite of what you’d think. For more instruction, see our article on how to apply the Red Numbers in the Lessons Learned section.

The Weasel looks a little different now that she has a number, but it also makes her look like a member of the team – kind of like a number on a sports jersey. In our little Airstream community, I’m glad people will know we belong to the club and I look forward to the conversations I’ll have with others about what rallies I’ve been on. I’ll keep the WBCCI directory handy on trips so that when we pass someone or see someone in a park with a number, we’ll be able to look them up and see where they’re from as well. There’s a camaraderie about all this that I look forward to.

* If you let your membership lapse you lose your number. It then gets recycled back into the mix for the next person to use. If you buy a used Airstream, you might be able to see the remnants of the old number and be able to find out who owned it in the past.

What do you do in Chicago when you can’t spend time in your Airstream? You MAKE things for your Airstream!

Chicago can be the pits in the winter. I usually try to stock up on books to read, and the newest volume of the NYTimes crossword puzzle book gets me through all of Christmas vacation. But this year I decided to turn the craft meter up to 11 and take sewing classes so that, eventually, I can redo the banquette cushions in The Weas.

I love the décor of our second home, but I’m not sure powder blue cushions work for us or our dog*. I’m the last person that would want to mess with the integrity of the CCD interior, but I need to be practical for when that fulltime thing happens and be able to have cushions that will work a little better, and still match.

I asked for sewing lessons for my birthday and Deke found The Needle Shop in Chicago. It was a little more expensive than some of the other places but the 1:4 ratio of teacher to student, plus the great fabrics that they have, fit want I needed. For $70 I took a 4 hour class which covered everything from threading the machine to taking home a pillow with a zipper! I loved it and was hooked the minute I got there. My mom sewed a lot and taught me the basics, but Im looking forward to learning about patterns and the fancier stuff that I can use later on.

When we bought our Airstream, everything was in great condition, but as we realize we’re in for the long haul, we would like to make a few changes, like the banquette cushions and probably the curtains in the bedroom area — mainly just to make it our own. Ive spent a lot of time looking at interior modifications that others have made and there dont seem to be a lot of people who change their interiors. I also did some pricing around Chicago in case I wanted to hire someone to redo the cushions, but the drawbacks are 1) its expensive, and 2) you usually have to use their fabrics, not your own.

Since I started my sewing classes, Ive had one commission for a pillow and while that isnt much, Im going to start a website where I’ll take orders because there are some great fabrics out there that just scream “Airstream!!”. Stay tuned.

*Our lovely little miniature schnauzer, Sally, passed away over the weekend. She loved the little weekend trips in the Airstream and loved her extremely warm bed parked right in front of the heater. For now, we’ll remain a one dog family with Lucy in the co-pilot seat.

As much as we liked the look of the old, generic Times New Roman version of our logo, we’ve decided to refresh our look a little with a new one. What do you think?

Getting to this version was an interesting journey. We really wanted a cool logo – something that spoke to our interesting name and our playful nature, but we also wanted something readable from a distance. It should also look good on a T-Shirt (PS – Let us know if you want to order one)

I recently saw a logo that caught my eye from a bug tracking software called Mantis.

I felt this was a good direction, and fortunately, Tiffani agreed. Now we knew roughly what we wanted, we just didn’t quiet know how to go about getting it. We needed an artist. Yes, we work in an industry full of artists, but we really didn’t feel great about asking for free help. Since we’re just starting out, we also didn’t feel ready to throw down big bucks on graphic design. So what could we do?

We outsourced.

Most of you have probably heard of outsourcing. If you’ve ever called a customer service line, you’ve probably experienced it first hand. But did you know affordable outsourcing is available to anyone, not just major companies? Neither did we.

Our search for an artist started at a site called 99designs.com. They have a great system where people find artists, designers, and more by creating contests. You create a contest based on work you need done, and offer a dollar amount as a prize. Contestents sign up, offer design examples, and if you choose their design, they win the money. We found the quality very high, but the price was high as well. We’ll be going back to this site regularly for future design needs.

This lead to our next find, which turned out to be a jewel –

Odesk.com links people who have jobs to freelancers who want jobs. You post a job of ANY size, and within minutes, you get workers of all different nationalities and skill levels applying. Even more impressive, you see their hourly rate, reviews of other work completed, and a resume and portfolio of past work. We knew we had a winner when we saw the quality of work and the prices offered.

We found a great artist who helped us get to the logo you see above. In the end, we ended up tweaking the logo into exactly what we wanted ourselves, but Odesk and the artist we met there saved us days of time. Also, we learned a lot about giving art direction, the need for specific instruction, and more importantly, we set up a new relationship with a graphic designer who provides fast, quality work for a great price. Look for our site to take a more of a graphic style moving forward, especially now that we “know a guy” Special thanks to Keech from Odesk!

Here are a few logos that didn’t make the cut. Did we choose the right one? Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments section below!

“You remind me of my husband and I when we first joined” was something I heard a few times last weekend as Deke and I went to our first Wally Byam Caravan Club International meeting. The meeting was for the Northern Illinois Chapter of the WBCCI, an organization that we’d seen being referred to in blogs or on the Airstream site, but didn’t really know much about. Dwight Dixon, husband of Northern Illinois President Carol Dixon found us on airforums.com and invited us to come and see what the club was all about.

Personally, I’ve never met a nicer group of strangers. From helping us find a spot at the Lee County 4-H Campgrounds when we arrived on a very rainy Friday night to inviting us in to see their Airstreams, we enjoyed every minute of getting to know the people that kept Airstream caravans going. And what a group it was. We were the youngest folks there but a lot of the members led busier lives than we do. Some travel only on weekends, some up to 40% of the time in a range of Airstreams from a ‘63 trailer (The Dixons), a rare-and-in-fantastic-condition ‘77 Airstream motorhome (The Goykes) and a beautiful 2005 International (The Whitesells). Some have been in the club for almost 20 years, several owned more than one Airstream or were on their second or third model and Sue Chestnut, Treasurer, has been in her post for 16 years. These are people that have lived their lives and raised their families with each other around the passion that they all share, which is Airstreams and caravaning the WBCCI way.

You can find a club anywhere in the country and Canada. There are regions divided up by states/provinces, of which Illinois is in Region 5. At our meeting we were installing the new Officers for 2010, so the Region 5 President, Bob Moyers and his wife Lee joined us for the installation. Bob is in his 70s and still drives big rigs for UPS part time at his home in Kentucky, which would be why he handled the biggest Airstream Ive ever seen with ease – The Airstream Land Yacht.

I’m already looking forward to seeing these people again, and its a bit upsetting to think that spring, and camping season is so far away. Deke and I’ve talked non-stop about our weekend and last night we figured out what was so special about it — we’ve found our community.

In a city like Chicago, sometimes community is hard to come by. We have our condo association and our friends from work, but I wouldnt say we’re part of a community. We dont have a block party every summer, we dont have a club or a group we meet up with on Saturdays. We have friends that we like spending time with but there’s nothing that joins us to those people– there’s no commonality that we share. I think that’s the most attractive thing for us about the WBCCI — we belong, and no difference in age or occupation will change our status with the club.

Go here for more photos.

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I definitely should have brought warmer clothes. And wellies. Our first weekend out in the Weasel and its been raining since we got here; here being the Sycamore RV Resort in Sycamore, Illinois. For any Gilmore Girls enthusiast, we’ve entered the Midwest version of Stars Hollow complete with a diner, a town square, a small history museum right off the town square and a day where apparently everyone joins together to paint the town’s store windows in celebration of Autumn coming to town. The Weas has been at the garage for two weeks getting her 22 point inspection, her roof resealed and a few odds and ends looked at, including putting in a new rivet to replace one that popped out before we owned her. We took her to the only Airstream dealer in Illinois, Airstream of Chicago in Joliet, and although the bill was a bit more than I had anticipated, I’m really pleased with the work they did and at least I know that my valves, seals and dials are all working properly (See our review here).
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Sycamore seemed like a good place to start the camping test. Its about 90 min or so from Chicago, it looked beautiful from the website and I’m sure when the sun is out and the fishermen are on the lake, its really a great place. Its incredibly clean and has everything we need. We decided to spring for a Preferred Spot meaning we’re lakefront for $33/night including all hook ups. We have our own little patch of grass and our own picnic table and fire pit. This place is extremely quiet, even with some kids around, allows dogs and the owners seem like good, no-nonsense folks. Others must think so too because this place is packed. For the beginning of a typical, prematurely cold October, there are barely any empty spots. (We called about 2 weeks ahead to book ours).

I guess we encountered the worst of conditions pulling in — pouring down rain. Deke unhitched and got all the hook ups done while I unpacked the food and all the goodies we bought to help us get settled. I think drawer organizers are my favorite thing so far. I have stuff, and I feel that I need it all. Paperclips, Swiss Army knife, pens, tape measure….so a two level junk drawer organizer with a sliding top tray from Walmart ($7) is doing me right at the desk. Also, my new Ikea sheets are fantastic, as well as the new feather bed from our best friends in Raleigh. I also have a lot of nightstand things. I’m big on lotion, magazines, ear plugs and in this Airstream model, there’s no room for a nightstand. So I bought a woven, but very stiff, basket from Ikea that has a hook at the top. I bought some S hooks and hung it from the curtain rail in the bedroom. Its just big enough to hold all my stuff and its so much better than climbing over Deke to get a book. The medicine cabinet is also a place I anticipated some trouble. Being a fan of products, having them fall out of the cabinet every time I opened it was not going to work. Also from Walmart, I bought two white plastic 10″x 2″x 3″ trays and with a little stick on velcro, adhered them to the shelves in the medicine cabinet (well, Deke did it). The travel size containers fit perfectly in them and nothing falls out when I open the door. One brand of products that Ive been severely disappointed with for the RV is Oxo. I bought a soap dish, a toothbrush holder and a washcloth hook and all but the soap dish actually popped apart before I even got them on the wall. Also, the all-in-one kitchen soap dispenser and sponge holder has been pretty disappointing. I used it once and it started getting rusty. Oh, and the can opener– doesn’t work. I’d skip the Oxo products all together.

Even though we didn’t have any illusions about being able to buy an Airstream, we still looked at the Airstream website on a regular basis for ideas about floor plans. We’d been in a number of Airstreams and really liked the use of space and layouts of the models. Over time, what we discovered was the 19′ Airstreams were better designed and laid out than the 25′ SOBs, that we decided to start looking in the classifieds to see what we could find.

There’s one Airstream dealer in Illinois, and its about an hour away from us (nothing at all compared to the 2+ hours we’ve driven to shows). On display were Flying Clouds, Safaris, Bambis and Internationals. Being in each model and spending time sitting at the tables, lying on the beds and standing in the showers sealed the deal that this brand was the one for us.  The bathrooms are so well designed and the spaces so carefully thought out that the smaller Airstreams actually felt roomier than the larger SOBs.  A new Airstream was cost prohibitive to say the least – the new 19′ often ran up to $40K and the larger 22′ that we were looking at could go up to $60K, which meant that a used Airstream was our only option.

The Waters family is a research-oriented family.  There typically are not many destinations that are not well thought out and planned before travel, whether its the new Ikea in the suburbs or a remote island off the coast of Mexico, the research is complete. We work hard for our money and even harder for our time off, and are not interested in wasting either. Days and weeks were spent pouring over search results on Airforums learning about the pros and cons of each model that fit our size requirements. Around the same time as we were learning about installing solar panels on an Airstream, we found a 22′ International CCD for sale in Indiana. It was in our price range and looked in good condition.

The CCD wasnt really a model that we were familiar with. It was a 2003 with two owners and a quick search told us that the International was at the forefront of the Airstream rebranding effort — an effort aimed at younger more design savvy folks like ourselves. The CCD stands for Christopher C. Deam who was chosen as the principal designer by Inside Design on the rebranding project, but the project didnt start with Airstream, but rather with the interior laminate company, Wilsonart. For a design trade show, Wilsonart used a 16′ Airstream to showcase the new laminates they were making and Christopher C. Deam was hired as the designer. The new design was a huge hit, and Thor, the Airstream parent company, was interested. The problem was, it wasnt in production and there were no plans to do so. Due to a variety of market surveys and feedback, the design was given approval and Inside Design was brought into the fold of Airstream. A year later it was decided the 22′ International would be the next model for the redesign because of its designated bedroom area and its narrow body (easier to tow with SUVs). When the first Internationals came out of the Ohio plant, 55% were sold. Bingo.

Our interior is white. And powder blue. And gray. And orange. Its bright and sunny with clean lines and a hardwood-looking floor.  Its designed and decorated like a condo I’d like to live in. The colors allow me to make it my own with accessories and rugs instead of having to work around the colors and heavy wood cabinets of other models. The cabinets dont have pulls, they have built in nooks to slide them open. No catching my shirt or bag as I walk through the galley. The sink is stainless, the oven and stove top black.

I couldnt be happier, although there will be some design changes coming up.

*For more information, please read the AIGA article here.

We were always drawn to the Airstream much like we’re drawn to any new Apple product that comes out, but Airstreams are heavy and expensive — two of the most major drawbacks on our list.  As we studied other makes we continued to browse Bambis, Safaris and Flying Clouds on ebay and check them out at dealerships always with  the understanding that maybe we could get some good ideas on how to redecorate whichever trailer we would end up buying.  After all, we’re the Ikea generation — if we can’t own a Saarinen table or buy everything at DWR, we’re going to go after the next best thing.  After seeing two or three Airstreams in person, we couldn’t shake the fact that the others paled in comparison — the fiberglass boxy travel trailers with their sticker wallpaper border and their odd wood cabinets just didnt fit with us.  We could’ve gotten more for our money with SOB (some other brand) but the comfort level we felt — the ‘ahhh this is it’ feeling when we stepped into an Airstream couldn’t be matched.

Our search for an RV started about 8 months ago with a lot of grand plans and a little savings in the bank. Most Saturday mornings were spent driving to dealerships all over the state of Illinois, attending RV trade shows and reading any and all the information we could about types, styles, makes and models of C Classes, 5th Wheels, campers and trailers until we narrowed the field to what we felt fit with our life now and most importantly, the life we hoped to have.  A travel trailer was the one we were after, preferably 25-28′, with a walk around bed, an outside shower and outside storage.  What we ended up with was a 22′ Airstream International CCD with no outside storage or shower, a bed at one end and a wet bath…

Looking at RVs every week, I felt pretty confident in what would work for me. Although I’d never been a big camper, I’d traveled to third world countries, backpacked around Europe and spent many years living with no TV or computer. I could occupy myself with books and be happy with a roof over my head and running water — hot or not. Deke had pretty similar requirements as I did, he leaned a little more towards finding a trailer that would accommodate the more hi-tech needs of a video game developer — a little more wall space to put the TV and maybe some extra storage for the Xbox and Wii. What we discovered was a lot of travel trailers are meant for people who want to live in the same manner as they do now, just on wheels. New trailers have double sinks, large closets and even larger flat screen TVs. In some extreme cases, they even have washers and dryers. We weren’t looking for these things, in fact, we wanted to head in the opposite direction having just enough space to live in and carry the essentials that each of us needed, even if those essentials were video game consoles and two dogs.

Aside from rounded roofs for water run-off, reach through storage and bike racks, what we noticed the most and what kept bothering us with each and every trailer we saw was the decor. There seems to be one company that makes all the fabrics, decal wallpaper and bedspreads for all RVs, and they don’t do it well. The fabrics are cheap and feel like sandpaper, the colors are brown and brown. And more brown.  Brown doesn’t really work for us, so every time we looked at a trailer we mentally had to calculate the amount of money it would take to redecorate. Practicality-wise we had what we wanted, what was missing was the Apartment Therapy-worthy clean lines, minimalist drawer pulls and lush fabrics.

Then we found The Weasel.