Weird priorities

The Guppy resting for a night in Missouri last year.

Being a glutton for punishment, a few months ago I joined a Facebook group for owners of Class C motorhomes. Class Cs, for the uninitiated, are the ones built on a van chassis, e.g., a Ford E350, and have that bunk over the cab area. The Guppy is a Class C.

The S.O., incidentally, is convinced I joined the Class C group simply so I have an excuse to feel smugly smarter than the average bear on a regular basis. It is rather astounding just how many fools are out there who are willing to drop $100,000 or more on a brand new motorhome but can't figure out how to operate their automated steps or tell the difference between alternating and direct current. You know, if you're going to go into major debt to buy something, shouldn't you at least have some clue as to how its various systems work? Did you know there are people around who are afraid to change a flat tire? Anyone who's intimidated by the prospect of changing a flat or having to learn how to use a tire pressure gauge really shouldn't be driving a vehicle at all, let alone something as big and awkward as the typical motorhome. (There are so many discussions devoted to the topic of automatic tire monitoring systems that a person could start to believe it's a miracle we geezers managed to survive for decades without an electronic signal warning us when tire pressure was low.)

But, as usual, I'm wandering away from what I meant to talk about. Weird priorities. It is absolutely astounding just how many RV owners worry about the wax jobs on their traveling houses. Discussions of the best detergents, car waxes, buffing cloths, you name it, are perennial favorites for the group. If someone asks a serious question the response is likely to be crickets, but if you want to know about locating a car wash that can accommodate a motorhome? Holy wah. Suddenly hordes of people are crawling out of the proverbial woodwork with testimonials for their favorite apps. Which in itself is a holy wah moment: there are apparently a gazillion specialized apps out there that you can use to eat up memory on your phone just to help you find a car wash that has a truck wash bay. One lady was kind of freaking out because the plastic housing for her side mirrors had begun yellowing with age. Why? The mirrors are still there, and that's the part that counts.

And then there are the concerns about the peeling or fading decals. Just how much ego does a person have invested in their RV that they fret about it starting to look like maybe it's not brand new, that possibly it's put a few miles in on the road, or that (heaven forfend) the owners bought it (horrified whisper) used?  There was a post recently by someone who said she and her significant other purchased a 1995 motorhome through a local garage sale site last month. Okay, that's an RV that's 23 years old. It's not going to have the flashy paint jobs and decals popular on current models. It's going to look its age, although it the "before" photo it actually looked pretty good. Clean, no visible damage, just a dated style.

So what was basically the first thing they did with their garage sale bargain? Took it to a shop that specializes in wraps. You got it. They had a full wrap put on a 23-year old RV. It looks nice, I'll give them that, but, holy wah, if it can cost $3,000 to do a full wrap on a car, just how many wheelbarrow loads of dineros did it take to wrap a Class C RV that's bigger than the Guppy? When you hear about people with more money with brains, it's pretty obvious there's a pair of those folks driving a thoroughly used motorhome in Georgia that fit that category. We spent less on the Guppy when we bought her than those people did on a cosmetic project that doesn't do a damn thing to improve the RV except make its age less apparent to the untutored eye.

Then again, so did the wrap purchasers unless they were total suckers. According to the NADA guide, the  current average sales price for their particular model is between $5,000 and $6,000. We joke about the tires on the Guppy being worth more the RV itself, but those folks in Georgia have us beat. That wrap is probably worth more than the vehicle under it. Like I said, some people have very strange priorities.