The Guppy is
gone. We left the beast parked in a storage lot in Arizona in mid-May along
with instructions to The Younger Daughter to try selling it. We weren’t
particularly optimistic about it going anywhere. After all, her instructions
included being totally honest about its various mechanical flaws: the problem
with the gas line, for example, and the fact it had a mystery relay problem
that the S.O. was reasonably sure he’d finally solved but was burnt out on
dealing with. Then when you add in the metal pan sitting under the engine with
transmission fluid dripping into it. . . We were more or less resigned to seeing
the Guppy again in November.
It took the
YD a few weeks to get to a point where she knew for sure she’d be around to
deal with potential buyers – she’s an archeologist so does have to get out in
the field on a regular basis – but she did get it listed last month. Her phone
immediately blew up with messages. Apparently ancient RVs of marginal
reliability are in greater demand than one would think. She posted the ad on a
Monday; by Friday afternoon the Guppy was gone, heading down the highway to its
new home.
The Guppy
went for a proposed use that was more or less exactly what I thought would happen. Cheap local housing.
The young woman who bought it was a single mom with small children; they were
part of a multiple generation household. She was living in her grandfather’s
house. The Guppy was going to get parked in her grandfather’s yard; he said he
could easily connect the sewer and water to his own. For a relatively small
amount of money, they acquired a two bedroom, one bath addition to his house.
The young woman was enthusiastic about getting a room of her own. The kids
would get the dinette bed and the bunk over the cab. Grandad was not thrilled
with the fact the air conditioning was dead on the Guppy, but you know the old
dude was going to remedy that pretty quickly. Paying for a cheap a/c unit to
keep the granddaughter comfortable would be a small price to pay for getting
her kids out of his house.
It was
actually the perfect solution. We would have felt a tad guilty if anyone bought
it planning to actually travel with it, but for affordable housing? I have
no doubt that when the time comes that the woman no longer wants the Guppy, she’ll
be able to resell it to someone else locally for a similar purpose.
It does feel
a bit odd to know that it’s gone. The S.O. and I experienced a strange mix of relief and regret when we
got the news. It sold for less than our asking price but more than the amount
we had decided we had to get so I guess we’re happy. I know the S.O. is not
going to miss having to work on the Guppy’s engine. Thanks to the design and
the way everything was crammed under the hood, it was never fun. Lots of
inaccessible parts. You shouldn’t have to put a vehicle up on a jack stand and
remove a wheel just to change spark plugs, for example.
As for why we
decided to jettison the Guppy. . . the bottom line was it had gotten to the
point where we couldn’t relax in it. I knew the S.O. would have eventually
gotten the mystery problem solved, but we also knew that even if he did solve
it, we’d always be expecting something equally weird to happen. There’s only so many
times you can sit by the side of the highway waiting for a tow truck before you
have to admit the beast should have been painted bright yellow. It wasn’t a fish. It
was a citrus fruit.
On a side
note, when we decided we’d try selling it, we rented a U-Haul truck to get our
stuff home. We had an amazing amount of shit crammed into not many square feet.
Stuff really does expand to fill whatever space is available.
